Kudak'Etan
O'Brien, Dax, Bashir, and their runabout are reduced in size while investigating an anomaly. Meanwhile, the Jem'Hadar attack and commandeer the Defiant, leaving the runabout crew with no choice but to take their miniature ship inside the Defiant and help Sisko and the others recapture the vessel.
Summary
Captain Sisko and his staff are taking a break from the Dominion War. They are investigating a subspace compression anomaly. The vortex was discovered recently, and gaining an understanding of the principles behind the subspace compression could give Starfleet a significant tactical advantage over the Dominion. The USS Rubicon is going through the anomaly's vortex to collect data and the Defiant is stabilizing them with a tractor beam. As the Rubicon enters the anomaly, it begins to shrink in size, until the runabout is less than a foot long.
A short while after the experiment's start, the Defiant is attacked by a Jem'Hadar ship. Because it must remain tractored to the the Rubicon with its shields down, the Defiant makes a very easy target and it is quickly disabled and boarded by a Jem'Hadar team and loses contact with the Rubicon.
Back on the Rubicon, the crew is fine but many systems are damaged. Fortunately for them, Miles O'Brien gets on it while Jadzia Dax homes in on the Defiant's transponder signal. When the blast shutters are finally repaired, a surprise is awaiting them. Having left the anomaly by a different path, the Rubicon has stayed small. Their communications system down, the crew decide to enter the Defiant by the aft plasma vent hoping to have a better chance of drawing attention from the inside of the ship.
On the Defiant, the Jem'Hadar are in control but they have to rely on the starfleet crew to make the repairs because of their vulnerable position. Sisko jumps on the opportunity and plans a takeover of the Defiant from the engineering room while Major Kira is making repairs to the warp core. The Jem'Hadar ship then resumes its mission to the Coridan system and the boarding party's First orders them to set a course for the nearest Dominion outpost.
After O'Brien finishes restoring the visual sensors on the Rubicon; he, Dax, Bashir are able to figure out Captain Sisko's plan and they decide to give it a little help. If the Captain is to take back the Defiant from engineering, he will have to override the bridge lockout and release the codes, but since Nog is having a hard time with the task, O'Brien suggests they reroute the encryption subprocessors manually.
To prevent Bashir and O'Brien from suffocating from the absence of breathable oxygen molecules of the right size, Dax beams a bubble of the runabout's compressed air into the airtight circuitry compartment and Bashir and O'Brien carry on their mission, with a limited air supply for the next 20 minutes.
Back in engineering, Sisko is trying to get the job done as best as they can, pressed by time and constant Jem'Hadar surveillance. The Jem'Hadar team being composed mainly of the new batch of Jem'Hadar, bred in Alpha Quadrant and trained under a different conditions than the main Jem'Hadar forces, the captain is using their lack of experience to his advantage. Unfortunately, he is constantly opposed by Ixtana'Rax, an experienced, soon to be retired former Jem'Hadar First born in the Gamma Quadrant. Sisko tries to gain some time by playing on the tensions between him and the new Jem'Hadar First, Kudak'Etan, who thinks of the Gamma Quadrant Jem'Hadar as obsolete and unfit for the Alpha Quadrant warfare, thus justifying their own existence.
Personal conflicts between these two different Jem'Hadar breeds are instrumental in saving the lives of the crew, as "Alpha" Kudak'Etan repeatedly refuses "Gamma" Ixtana'Rax's requests to immediately execute all Federation officers and repair the ship only by the Jem'Hadar, trying to differentiate from the old "Gammas" and prove his own new methods. However, even though this buys the crew some time, Nog is unsuccessful in bypassing the security protocols and the stalling is eventually uncovered. The only satisfaction Sisko gets is that after Worf secretly planted a virus into the system, the Defiant will auto-destruct as soon as they go to warp, killing all onboard.
Fortunately for everyone, when the Rubicon's crew realizes nothing is happening after the circuit modification, they make a rush in engineering. The Jem'Hadar are taken by surprise by the tiny ship and two are quickly killed with miniature photon torpedoes, now as powerful as a disruptor pistol. The rest are taken care of by Kira, Worf and Sisko. With no security protocols in the way, Sisko orders the release of anaesthestic gas through the rest of the ship, incapacitating the remaining Jem'Hadar soldiers.
With the Defiant back under control, the Rubicon re-enters the anomaly under a different path and returns to normal size. Back on Deep Space 9, Odo and Quark take the opportunity to tease O'Brien and Bashir about being "a couple centimeters shorter" than when they left.
Memorable Quotes
"I don't feel any smaller."
- - O'Brien
"I do not see what is so humorous about being small."
"Neither do I."
"This conduit is filthy, Chief. Don't you ever clean in here?"
"All right, all right. Let's not badger the chief."
"Thank you."
"Sorry. It was very... small of me."
"The magnetic plasma guides are heating up."
"They must've initiated the impulse prestart sequence."
"What does that mean?"
"It means this entire conduit is about to be filled with superheated plasma."
"When you say superheated..."
"Unless I can find another way out of here, we'll be vaporized. Is that clear enough?"
"Crystal."
- - O'Brien, Dax, and Bashir
"Mr. Worf, I think your wife is here."
- - Benjamin Sisko, when the runabout and crew are reunited.
"This is the story of little ship, that took a little trip."
- - Worf
"Chief... you're not going to like this."
- - Bashir, after realizing that the Rubicon is still small
Background Information
- Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko) does not appear in this episode.
- The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise (NCC-1701) were shrunk to similar proportions to that of the runabout crew in the animated series episode "The Terratin Incident."
- It is revealed in this episode that the Dominion have begun producing Jem'Hadar in the Alpha Quadrant that have a different genetic makeup than the ones produced in the Gamma Quadrant. The 'Alphas', as they are called, are supposed to be better suited for battle in the Alpha Quadrant than their predecessors, the 'Gammas'. There were plans to further develop the differences and animosity between Alpha and Gamma Jem'Hadar in later episodes, but the plotline was abandoned after this episode. No other mention of the two breeds is made.
- In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, Ira Steven Behr and René Echevarria both note that they wished they had used more comedic characters than the Jem'Hadar. Echevarria later said they should have used the Pakleds, while Behr thought they should have used Harry Mudd.
Awards
- This episode was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series.
Links and References
Guest Stars
- Aron Eisenberg as Nog
- Scott Thompson Baker as Kudak'Etan
- Fritz Sperberg as Ixtana'Rax
- Leland Crooke as Gelnon
- Christian Zimmerman as Lamat'Ukan
Co-Star
- Mark Allen Shepherd as Morn (uncredited)
- Cathy Debuono as M'Pella (uncredited)
- Unknown actor as Duran'Adar
References
Alphas; anesthezine; auto-destruct; Auxiliary Control; Benzites; blast shutters; bloodwine; class-7 warp drive; Coridan; dabo girl; Defiant, USS; Dominion; Duran'Adar; Elder; Excelsior-class; gamma ray flux; Gammas; hypoxia; Immelmann turn; interlink shunt; isolinear chip; Jem'Hadar; Jem'Hadar attack ship; ketracel-white; Klingons; Operation Return; plasma; rectilinear expansion module; Rubicon, USS; Seltan carnosaur; subspace compression anomaly; transponder; transwarp corridor; Yeager-type starship.
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