The only scene truly worth watching is the latest running joke about the Bashir-O’Brien bromance that started in “Fascination”:

O’Brien “You’re not an in-between kind of guy. People either love you or hate you. I hated you when we first met. Now, I don’t… I mean I really do… not hate you.”
Bashir: “Thanks. That means a lot.”
O’Brien: “Well, it’s from the heart.”

Star Trek is supposed to be our possible ideal future. Treating the viewer as mindless morons is what makes me touchy. DS9 has some truly brilliant stuff. ‘Explorers’ is not one of them IMO.

Tachyons are postulated particle in real life that go faster than light, which have known consequences for established temporal physics. It Trek they are commonly abused in their purpose, often as a plot point.

How did the Phoenix get into orbit on a planet that had been ravaged by the third world war? They used their limited resources and pooled them… Lily, in fact, talks about the process of getting the base components for the cockpit as she is awestruck by Enterprise-E. Additionally, the Baku are a race of people, and not the first in Star Trek, to abandon their advanced science for a more agrarian philosophy… Either that or Bajor clearly went through a series of dark ages… There were plenty of engineering marvels that the Romans constructed that were not matched until the 20th Century… Does that mean that because 16th century Europe couldn’t do what 3rd century BC Europe could do that the Romans are fictional?

It seems more to me like you’re just threatened by the idea that some of your bedrock notions aren’t true. I mean, are you distant cousins of Columbus? What stake do you have in whether a Viking ever landed on Newfoundland or not? You seem awfully touchy about it all…….

As for the Bajoran ship escaping the planet’s atmosphere, it is possible it was built in space.

“Also if the discovery of warp speed donates a civilisation rise to prominence to space-fairing cultures in the galaxy, then why are the Bajorans still have such primitive space technologies and the Cardassians having superior ones?”

The Bajoran internal religious and political strife and subsequent devastating invasion are good reasons; as for before that, not everyone immediately builds a war fleet with their best technology. Cardassia, with its totalitarian government, did.

Clearly the distance to Cardassia is light-years away, which takes considerable time even at warp-speed let alone a sail-craft driven by some mysterious technobabbled wind. (Tachyons too, are supposed to be time particles not light particle (photons).)

Even if the could get around all this, it would take millions upon millions of years to get there — dumping the relativistic limitations of sub-warp / impulse travel. Warp speed works by twisting space not by being blown along by the celestial wind. (Were it true, then wouldn’t they be using this technology as a back-up? Also if the discovery of warp speed donates a civilisation rise to prominence to space-fairing cultures in the galaxy, then why are the Bajorans still have such primitive space technologies and the Cardassians having superior ones?

The science here is plainly stupid, where ye’ old common-sense is thrown out the window. Dukat, like any intelligent person, is right to be sceptical. (The producers of DS9 clearly think their audience is equally dumb, too, BTW.)

I think the story here is likely a mirror (actually a parody) of the Polynesians crossing the Pacific to occupy Hawaii, Tahiti then New Zealand. Crossing the ocean is one thing. Crossing the gulf between the stars is another.

The second thing I also really despise is the whole underlying reason behind the Bajorans claims, and is based on being the ‘presumed’ old culture having the higher ground. It is plainly like our recent modern history of the last two or four centuries (or longer) of the displacement of indigenous peoples and their claims of ownership and spiritual connectiveness to ‘their’ presumed god-given ‘Promise Land.’ I.e. Jews to Israel, the American Indians or Australian aboriginals, or even the now extinct Neanderthals. The storyline is basically to ‘stick-it-up’ the Cardassians for their illegal and immoral occupation of Bajor, all in the hope of proving some superiority over the once occupiers.

All this story is fable, just like mostly fictional stories of discoverers; like that of pre-Columbus America, pre-Cook east coast Australia, or god’s gift of ‘sacred land.’ I hate being lectured too, and this DS9 reviewed here presents it in exactly these terms. Frankly the presumed stirring nationalistic singing of “Jerusalem” (sung like it is some Viking chant) is almost like spitting in your face.