The Search Part 1

In the Dominion introduction story arc, the story sequence is The Jem’Hadar : The Search Part 1 : The Search Part 2.

The Search Part 1
Series	Deep Space Nine
Production Details
IMDB Ref	tt0708636
Story by	Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe
Script by	Ronald D. Moore
Directed by	Kim Friedman
Guest cast	Martha Hackett as T'Rul, Salome Jens as Female Shapeshifter, John Fleck as Ornithar, Kenneth Marshall as Michael Eddington, Andrew J. Robinson as Garak, Natalija Nogulich as Admiral Nechayev, William Frankfather as Male Shapeshifter, Dennis Christopher as Borath
Previous Production	The Jem’Hadar
Next Production	The Search Part 2
Release Details
Episode Code	DS9 S03E01
Original air date	26 September 1994
Previous Release	The Jem’Hadar
Next Release	The Search Part 2
Continuity Details
Previous Story	The Jem’Hadar
Next Story	The Search Part 2
Story Date(s)	48212.4 (2371)
Source

Summary

Commander Sisko arrives at Deep Space 9 with the Defiant, the only Starfleet vessel built especially for combat and equipped with a Romulan cloaking device. His plan is to meet and to come to terms with the mysterious Founders of the Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant. Odo, who has been replaced by Commander Eddington as head of security, grudgingly joins the Defiant crew. They proceed into the Gamma Quadrant under cloak. Staring at a star chart of the sectors ahead, which show the way to a comm relay of the Vorta, a race belonging to the Dominion, Odo feels strangely attracted to a place called the Omarion Nebula. Dax and O'Brien have to be left behind on the communication relay on Callinon VII. Moreover, the Defiant, in spite of the cloaking, comes under attack by three Jem'Hadar vessels and is boarded. Odo manages to escape in a shuttle with an unconscious Kira and sets a course for the Omarion Nebula. Inside the nebula they land on a planet that turns out to be Odo's home.

To Be Continued....

Errors and Explanations

The Nitpickers Guide for Deep Space Nine Trekkers

Plot Oversights

1. The episode opens with Kira and the senior staff unhappy with their chances for survival during a Jem’Heddar attack. Kira says they have run seven simulations, and in every one the Jem’Heddar overwhelm the station in two hours. if you watch The Jem’Hadar immediately followed by this episode, you get the impression that very little tine has passed. In fact, weeks have gone by. What have they been doing all this time? Well, Dax got a new hairdo. And, from the sounds of it, the senior staff got up every morning and comforted themselves with the fact that if the Jem'Hadar attacked that day, at least it would be over in two hours! The probably spent some of the time devising variations to the simulations.
2. Speaking of what station personnel have been doing since we last saw them, Commander “I intend to Be Ready tor Them” Sisko takes an interesting tack. Just after the revelation of the greatest threat ever to the Federation (according to the hype talk from Paramount), he leaves for Earth! Now, wouldn't this inspire your confidence if you were a member of his senior staff? You're staring down the barrel of the wormhole. You've just watched the Jem'Hadar blast through a Galaxy-class starship, and the next thing you know your commander is saying, “Listen, I need to go to Earth for some debriefings. I’ll be gone for several weeks. Keep things together until I get back.” (If I were stationed on DS9 I think I’d be suggesting that he send his reports over subspace!) Starfleet Command probably want to brief Sisko in person, to avoid the risk of anyone intercepting the reports, while allowing him the chance to collect the Defiant.
3. One wonders why the Defiant doesn't have a registry number of NCC 1764-A in honor of the Constitution-class vessel that disappeared near Tholian space in The Tholian Web (It it’s good enough for the Enterprise …) This new Defiant is an experimental ship, the first in it’s class, and deserves it’s unique registry number, especially given the circumstances surrounding the loss of NCC-1764.
4. This mission to find the Founders of the Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant reminds me a lot of the way penguins determine it water is safe. I've been told that when it's time to take a swim, a herd of penguins will begin shuffling toward the water. They’ll keep pushing forward until a few of the penguins in front drop into the water; then the rest watch to see what happens next. If the penguins in the water aren’t attacked, the others join them.(Okay, Sisko. You go over there and tell the natives we're friendly. Yeah. that's the ticket. Take this ship that needs lots of work and see what you can find out. Okay, buddy?”) The Federation probably understand the need to display a show of strength – possibly to convince the Dominion that they won’t be intimidated.
5. Somehow l have a hard time figuring out how Sisko is supposed to communicate a message of peace to the Dominion when he's sneaking around their territory with a cloaked warship that has gonzo phasers. Wouldn’t a diplomatic envoy be more appropriate? The Dominion might interpret that as a sign of weakness.
6. According to this episode it takes only about a week to get from Earth to Bajor. As Sisko attempts to figure out when he started to think of DS9 as home, Jake offers that it occurred last Thursday around 1700 hours” when Sisko pulled his “stuff” out of storage on Earth. In other words, Jake and Sisko were on Earth “last Thursday. At the most, this “stuff-pulling” could be only thirteen days past. Remember that Bajor is supposed to be in the sticks. After all, the station is named Deep Space 9. Here's what’s interesting. According to The Star Trek Encyclopedia, the Federation is 10,000-light years across—-a distance that would take more than seven years to travel at warp 9. Granted we don't really know where Earth is in the Federation. (Yes, there are maps available, but nothing canonical at this point.) For all we know, Earth may be slung off to one side and to reach Bajor requires only a short hop in intra-galactic terns. Still-—at warp 9-Bajor would have to lie approximately 50 light-years from Earth for the trip to be possible in the allotted time. At warp 7, Bajor would have to be approximately 25 light-years away Does this seem right for at “deep space” station? The station is presumably located on the edge of Federation space, close to the border with Cardassia.
7. I'm a bit puzzled by Sisko’s decision to bring “one of the finest collections of ancient African artifacts” back to the station with him. Yes, he wants to make his quarters feel like home. But, by his own admission, the chances of success for the coming mission are “slim” (translate that: “the chances of coming back alive are slim”). And the chances of the station withstanding a Jem'Haddar attack are practically nonexistent. Wouldn't it be a bit more prudent to let Jake live with his Grandpa Joe for a few months and leave the artifact collection in storage as bit longer until events play out? Of course, if Sisko left the collection in storage, the creators would miss the chance to have him act out the “I'm here to stay - and so is this series - because l brought my stuff” scenario. He’s an optimist!
8. I wonder why Sisko doesn't use his phaser on the Jem'Haddar when they board the Defiant? That would have been interpreted as an act of aggression.
9. I wonder why Kira survives a Jem'Hadar phaser blast; in the last episode Eris said everything about the Jem'Hadar was fatal. Was that just fearmongering propaganda? There may be an experimental non fatal setting.
10. I wonder why the Jem'Hadar aren't better at hand-to-hand combat. Sisko takes out several in their attack on the bridge. They didn’t know what he was capable of!

Changed Premises

1. In the previous episode Quark told Eris, “The Ferengi have trying to open up trade negotiations with the Dominion for over a year now.” In this episode Sisko reminds Quark that he established a trade agreement with the Karemma eight months ago for tutabeny wine. Sisko goes on to say that the Karemma are part of the Dominion. Though he tries to downplay their importance in the organization because he doesn’t want to go on the mission, Quark does admit that the Karemma are part of the Dominion. So haven’t the Ferengi already concluded a trade agreement with the Dominion? ln The Jem’Hadar, did Quark mean that the Ferengi were still trying to open negotiations with the Founders of the Dominion? The Karemma are just one part of the Dominion.
2. After arriving in the Gamma Quadrant, Sisko engages the Defiant at warp 7. Either (a) he got permission to exceed the warp speed limit set in Force of Nature (TNG) or (b) he couldn’t give a rip about the fabric of space in the Gamma Quadrant or (c) the creators would just as soon forget that they brought up that silly warp speed limit thing in the first place! Perhaps the experimental equipment on the Defiant includes a warp drive designed to protect subspace - possibly a precursor to the one fitted to Voyager.
3. After helping Sisko get the information he needs from the Karemma, Quark stays behind on the Karemma home world. He tells Sisko that he will book passage on the next ship going through the wormhole. In the previous episode, Captain Keogh of the Odyssey said that Starfleet orders were simple. No traffic through the wormhole until Starfleet could assess the Jem'Hadar threat. So what happened next? The Odyssey got blown to shreds. Now either Quark is going to have a long wait for a ride, or Starfleet really did decide they had accurately assessed the threat and let traffic recommence (“lt’s bad. Go on in.”) Mr Crusher on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 - 3:55 pm: (Nit Central) Traffic was suspended from the Alpha Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant, no one said anything about a suspension of traffic from the Gamma to the Alpha. Seniram The Federation probably decided to lift the suspension after the Defiant returned, to indicate that they weren’t going to be intimidated.

Equipment Oddities

1. This isn’t really a nit, since the Defiant is a whole new class of ship. lt’s merely an observation. On the Defiant, Tactical and Weapons are controlled from two different consoles. On the Enterprise, Worf did both. This may have been a way to split the workload.

Continuity And Production Problems

1. Evidently Odo decided that his outfit needed some accessorizing. He shape-shifted a belt for the beginning of the third season. Perhaps he wanted to experiment.

Nit Central

1. Greenpen on Wednesday, December 09, 1998 - 2:26 pm: When the Defiant is boarded by Jem'Haddar the fighting starts. they attack everyone including Kira and Odo. hmmmmm isnt Odo one of those changeling guys that Jem'Hadar are genetically programmed to worship? How on earth can they attack Odo? They may not have realised he was a changling, as it is established that most Jem'Haddar have never seen one.
2. Omer on Thursday, December 10, 1998 - 3:47 am: Reality check. Suppose you have a real nasty enemy, with billions of starships and troops, or willing to go for war. And suppose you can sop all the problems by blowing up the wormhole. who thinks we should blow it up? Matthew Patterson mpatterson on Wednesday, December 16, 1998 - 6:52 pm: Hey Omer-we can't anymore. As of By Inferno's Light the wormhole's matrix has been strengthened so that nothing but the Prophets can close it now. Omer on Saturday, December 19, 1998 - 3:27 am: Mathew - they can still blow the wormhole off, they said so in that episode, they just can't close it without damage to the wormhole aliens. I'd have to strategies - I'd either go to the Aliens and ask them to shut that stupid wormhole off, or, if they don't agree, I'd blow it up with a couple of really big bombs. Ed Jefferson (Ejefferson) on Tuesday, March 02, 1999 - 5:06 pm: Omer - You are wrong. While discussing strategy, they decide not to blow the wormhole up to protect the prophets. Instead they use the graviton thingy (or whatever) to close it permanently. However because a 'Bashir' changeling sabotages it, it simply makes the wormhole more stable than ever. They actually say something like 'not even trilithium good blow it up now'.Omer on Wednesday, March 03, 1999 - 12:38 pm:Then they should find a way. Or fill it with debris so that nothing will be able to move through. mine it. put a cloaked H bomb inside. Anything. BrianB on Wednesday, April 14, 1999 - 1:28 am: Sisko should just negotiate with his "parents" to close the hole. There's nothing in the Gamma quadrant worth a darn. (Do they expect to extinguish the Dominion in the Gamma q. too?) Alfonso Turnage on Saturday, April 17, 1999 - 4:53 pm: Well, the Dominion aren't going to go anywhere near the wormhole now because 1000+ ships disappeared inside. They know that Sisko is the Emissary of the Prophets.
3. Cableface on Thursday, December 17, 1998 - 12:33 pm: Why do the Changlings look like Odo? Odo looks like that because he can't recreate a human face properly. But the Founders have shown that they can recreate faces indistinguishable from the real thing. So why did they go for the simplified look? To make him feel at home? Hans Thielman on Thursday, December 17, 1998 - 3:27 pm: I would suspect that the Founders look like Odo (or Odo looks like the Founders) because that is their normal appearance. Odo simply isn't as good a shape shifter as the Founders. Steve Oostrom on Thursday, March 04, 1999 - 3:42 pm:Actually, I think all the Founders look like Odo in their "natural humanoid state" simply because when they look like that, they want the people they are dealing with to know that they are indeed Founders. They adopted this look because it is easy to maintain (it must take energy to maintain a particular appearance, and the more complicated the appearance, the more energy it takes), and also gives them assorted humanoid attributes like the ability to talk and listen and see like humanoids do, since us "solids" cannot so easily join the Great Link. Chris George (Cgeorge) on Friday, January 29, 1999 - 7:50 pm:To expand on Steve's point, the founders seem to disdain all "solid" life forms - so why put any effort into looking like any of them? Just create the most basic humanoid shape possible, just enough to interact with other humanoids. This could also explain Odo's early appearance - it could be that Odo was trying to look more human, but it was taking too much energy to hold such a shape, so he just settled on his natural humanoid appearance.
4. ScottN on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 - 10:16 am: Why do they need Romulans on the Defiant to run the Cloak? Are Romulan cloaks better than Klingon cloaks? If not, then why not use a Klingon cloak instead of a Romulan, so you don't have to have an enemy on your newest, most powerful starship! Chris George, DS9 Moderator (Cgeorge) on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 - 3:18 pm: Scott - the cloak treaty was made with the Romulans, not the Klingons, so obviously to get around the Romulan treaty you needed a Romulan on board. If the Romulans heard that the Federation was breaking the treaty - with the help of the Romulan's worst enemies, all heck would break loose. ScottN on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 - 5:23 pm: I still think the Fed. Council should have canned the idiot who agreed that "you guys can be invisible, but we can't" Incidentally, the Romulan Peace treaty in the TOS Tech Manual (I know, not canon) makes no mention of that idiotic provision.Adam Howarter on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 - 9:11 pm:Well we don't know the context under which the treaty was signed. Maybe the Romulans gave up something that the Feds felt was worth the trade. I have no idea what it might be, but its a possibility. Or juxtapose it to the Pacific War. Despite the fact we had the bomb we accepted Japan's condition that the Emperor (their head of state) not be prosectuted for war crimes. Maybe the Federation (Earth?) was just happy to end the war. Omer on Friday, April 23, 1999 - 12:02 pm: Maybe the Federation was afraid of getting into a weapon race? Maybe that's why the Romulans don't have ships like the ones in Pegasus or The Undiscovered Country cableface on Saturday, April 24, 1999 - 7:01 am: Well the Feds seem to have got some sense as far as cloaks are concerned. They're slowly starting to use them more and more, in the minefields and on the scientists in Insurrection. Now all they need to do is put them on their really huge ships. I think that initially everyone except the Feds had cloaks because the writers wanted to make them seem like the honorable ones.They don't go sneaking around invisible, cos they're so great. Of course, now it just makes more sense to have them. Keith Alan Morgan on Thursday, May 06, 1999 - 6:51 am: The Romulan/Federation agreement about cloaking devices had to have been made after Balance of Terror, since the device is new in that episode. The agreement was probably made after The Enterprise Incident when Kirk stole a Romulan cloaking device. Possibly that theft could have given the Romulans some legal & moral grounds on which to demand that provision. Seniram It could have been added as an amendment to the Treaty of Algeron as a result of the Tomed Incident, judging from Pressman's comments in The Pegasus.
5. Odo threatens Quark with "You'll regret the day you ever met me!", but doesn't Quark already regret the day he met Odo? Maybe Quark views Odo as a welcome verbal sparing partner!
6. If the Dominion didn't want Alpha Quadrant ships in the Gamma Quadrant, then why do they allow the Karemma ships to deliver tulaberry wine to the Alpha Quadrant? The Karemma were probably forced to use their trips to gather intel about the Federation and their allies.
7. Why does a Romulan cloaking device have a Federation display? It’s installed on a Federation ship!
8. So why hasn't Odo had this sense of being pulled somewhere in previous excursions to the Gamma Quadrant? (Vortex, The Alternate, Shadowplay & The Jem’Hadar) Mark Bowman on Wednesday, May 19, 1999 - 6:06 pm: It might have been like a timed genetic program that would draw him to his homeworld. The reason why he and a lot of other changelings were sent out was to make contact with other life forms, and explore how they (solids) behave, and to come back with that info at a later date. Seniram Besides, he may not have been close enough on the previous visits.
9. Even if this rogue M-class planet is somehow warm enough to keep the atmosphere from freezing to an icy covering on the ground, how does it keep the plants alive? When walking on the surface Kira and Odo walk past some green trees. Green trees implies that they have chlorophyll which uses photosynthesis and without a sun, where would they get the light? Of course, those trees could have been Changelings in the form of trees in which case this whole nit falls apart. It could be similar to the planetoid encountered in the ENT episode Rogue Planet.
10. Mark Wells on Tuesday, July 06, 1999 - 4:34 am: I'm a bit confused by the way everyone worries about closing the wormhole. They're afraid (and this is repeated in By Inferno's Light) that they'll cut the Bajorans off from the Prophets. So why not seal the other end? It's a wormhole. It has an end near Bajor and another end in Dominion space. They could have taken a ship into the wormhole and sealed it off at the other end, so that the Bajorans could stay in contact with the Prophets, the Federation could still study the properties of the wormhole, etc., without the danger of the Jem-Haddar coming through and annihilating everyone. Matthew Patterson (Mpatterson) on Tuesday, July 06, 1999 - 10:14 am: You can't seal just one end of the wormhole. The only way to keep it closed for travel is to collapse the whole thing, which is impossible as of By Inferno's Light. A wormhole is not like an interstate highway. You have to collapse it all or nothing.
11. George on Sunday, July 02, 2000 - 5:01 am: The Defiant-class USS Defiant is introduced in this episode. Sisko says it was built five years earlier to fight the Borg. Yet the brand-new Starfleet insignia is all over the ship. Is this why O'Brien's crew still had to work the bugs out of it, because Starfleet was more concerned with updating its official decorations? Seniram It was probably fitted with updated equipment while in storage.
12. Ratbat on Wednesday, July 10, 2002 - 8:38 am: During the big battle, the guy at the conn buys the farm, and Julian yells that he'll take the helm. (I don't know how good a pilot he's supposed to be, but let's be nice and assume most people in Starfleet have pass Flying Spaceships 101.) The first thing Sisko does is have him fire weapons! 'Fire!' says our beloved Commander. Wasn't he paying attention? Julian's at the conn, not the weapons station - that's the seat where Major Kira was at the start of the trip! There is most likely an auxilary weapon controls at the Conn station, as the conn operator in Tom Riker’s Maquis cell also fires the Defiant’s weapons during the battle in Defiant.

Deep Space Nine Season 3

The Search Part 1 I The Search Part 2 I The House of Quark I Equilibrium I Second Skin I The Abandoned I Civil Defense I Meridian I Defiant I Fascination I Past Tense Part 1 I Past Tense Part 2 I Life Support I Heart of Stone I Destiny I Prophet Motive I Visionary I Distant Voices I Through the Looking Glass I Improbable Cause I The Die is Cast I Explorers I Family Business I Shakaar I Facets I The Adversary