OK... A few things which I've noticed on this episode:
1) At the beginning, Kira is celebrating the aniversary of the Emissary's coming. Sisko came to DS9 on stardate 46379.1 and was declared emissary around then.. but the exact date is irrelevant. Anyway, this episode is on stardate 49263.5, and if Kira was celebrating the anniversary, then isn't she a bit early? Shouldn't this be celebrated around stardate 49385 or something?

2) After Engineering loses contact with the bridge, O'Brien immediately concludes that the crew up there are all 'probably dead'. Isn't this a bit of a pessimistic remark after the events Of 'Disaster'? In that episode, Ro assumed the crew in the engineering hull were all dead. O'Brien immediately jumped back, claiming that that couldn't just abandon them. Isn't O'Brien now doing exaclty the same thing as Ro?

This show is kinda like "The Poseidon Adventure", but more like TNG's "Disaster", only "Starship Down" is better.

Phillip: Maybe a Bajoran year is less than a Stardate year.

If this is a Bajoran holiday, then why is Kira working instead of taking the day off?

If the Dominion doesn't want people coming through the wormhole, then why do they allow the Karemma to trade with the Ferengi? (I don't remember Third Talak'Talan making an exception for the Ferengi in The Jem'Hadar and I do believe that the Jem'Hadar holding Quark & Sisko prisoner knew that Quark was a Ferengi.) Since they obviously allow the Karemma to trade with the Ferengi, then why don't the Karemma ships go through the wormhole to deliver the goods instead of allowing Ferengi ships to come to the Gamma quadrant?

A big deal is made out of the sensors not being able to detect the other ships and using tetrion particles for sonar. Why not use the sensors in the hull of the ship to detect the atmospheric particles hitting it? As a ship travels through the atmosphere, it will create waves and send particles flying outward and sooner or later these particles will hit the ship and they can estimate where the other ship must be? (This would be a variation of how the original Enterprise detected the cloaked Romulan ship in Balance Of Terror, except that the Defiant would have to wait until the particles hit the ship instead of scanning for displaced particles.)

I'm not an expert in starship design, but there were two questions I had about the Defiant's construction. First, aren't most spaceships designed to hold air pressure in, since space is pressureless? Did Starfleet engineers really think it would be necessary to build a space ship that could withstand pressure nearly 9,000 times Earth normal? Secondly, one would presume that the hull would be the strongest part of the ship, so when the atmosphere bursts into the ship, shouldn't the interior walls buckle as well?

Lights appear to be dim all over the ship, but the lights in the turbolifts are bright.

I would have figured that the mess hall would be placed farther inside the ship, but apparently it's right next to the hull. The people who work on the right side of the ship must need the extra exercise.

The torpedo had a somewhat blunt nose, so how did it penetrate the hull so easily?

Now that the hull was punctured why didn't the bulkhead burst in like the bulkhead on Deck 2?

We see wisps of a gas leaking in around the torpedo, so why didn't Quark and Hanok suffer from fluorine gas poisoning?

Rather than worry about defusing the torpedo, why don't Quark and Hanok just push it back out of the ship?

If all the systems are down, then how can Kira and Sisko understand each other? Shouldn't the Universal Translators be down also?

At the end, at DS9, Kira says that the Karemma transport will arrive and the Defiant will escort them back to the Gamma Quadrant. Well, that will be a short trip. The Karemma transport and the Defiant fly away from the station, go through the wormhole, then the person commanding the Defiant just says, "Bye now. You're safely in the Gamma Quadrant. You're on your own now." and the Defiant quickly flies back through the wormhole.

Does the turbolift have it's own
life support system? Bashir remarks that
the shaft above them is full of gas.
I also assume that there is enough of
a gap between the turbo lift and the wall to let
the gas into the bottom shaft. If not, shouldn't
the turbo lift be pushed downwards? Are the
brakes that strong? On another note, if
the pressure level is safe enough, why dosen't
Bishir try to let the turbo lift down to an unaffected
level instead of freezing in the lift? Surely
they can check the levels to see whether
they were flooded with gas or not.

In response to the torpedo nits:

Gas should be gushing out of the
hull breach (must be a very strong seal :).

And if Quark pusheed the torpedo out (which
would probaly be impossible with all
of the airpressure outside), the room would be
flooded very quick with gas.

In response to my own nit about Bashir
checking the levels to see if they were flooded
with gas, I ment his tricorder (that's how he
found out how there was gas in the turbolift
shaft).

There is something I don't understand. O'Brien makes a comment that his engineers did not go Starfleet Academy, so they aren't as familiar with procedures. Why is this? Does it make sense for the engineers not to be aware of Starfleet protocols? If Starfleet has a Medical branch, shouldn't it also have an Engineering branch? And when did engineers stop going to the Academy? Scotty and Geordi did. What's the story?

I think he's referring to engineers that start life maybe repairing spacecraft (like a mechanic) and gradually working there way up into Starfleet with field commissions.

Geordi and Scotty where officers and went to the acadamy. Chief O'Brien is enlisted and therefore anyone under him is also enlisted (I still don't understand why the Defient doesn't have an officer in charge of Engineering like every other starship and present day Navy ship). Enlisted people (at least present day) don't go to 4 year Acadamies. They go though a couple months of 'Boot Camp' followed by a few months to a year or two of vocational training in their chosen field. They should still be perfectly knowledgeable on Starfleet Proceedure, but I think O'Brien's point was that technical types function more effectively when they are given creative freedom to accomplish the objectives.

Here's another question: these "engineers" didn't go to the Academy - did they go to university or some other post-secondary institution? If not, then how can they POSSIBLY qualify as engineers? It's not something you learn over the summer.

btw, E.R.T.W.

Could they possibly have learned on the job over the years and then gained credits for their experience?

According to "Drumhead", there is an Academy program for enlisted personel.

There is something I don't understand. O'Brien makes a comment that his engineers did not go Starfleet Academy, so they aren't as familiar with procedures.

I don't think it's so much that they don't know the procedures as they can't do their best work within the procedures. As for how they can become engineers without going to the academy. They could study engineering at a civilian institute (perhaps the Mars Institute of Technology or some such place) and while there also belong to something like the starfleet ROTC and serve in starfleet after graduating but without ever going to the academy. To put it in modern day terms; being in the ROTC program at a civilian school like Georgia Tech as opposed to spending 4 years at the Navel Academy at Annapolis MD would be very different experiences.

After Engineering loses contact with the bridge, O'Brien immediately concludes that the crew up there are all 'probably dead'.

The diference is in Disaster Ro wanted to seperate the saucer which would leave any survivors in the drive section to die when the containment breach happened. In this one O'Brian wasn't talking about cutting that section loose and giving up hope of rescuing survivors. He meant that they would have to figure out how to save the ship themselves and not base their plans on getting any help from the bridge.

How come the fluorine gas did not burn the skin of Bashir and Dax, this stuff is highly corrosive. It is also highly oxidizing and would react with hydrogen to form hydrogen fluoride in the reducing hydrogen atmosphere of a jupiter like giant. Thus the gas would be hydrogen fluoride rather than fluorine, which is just as corrosive and causes gangrene if exposed to skin.

Also did the dominion take reprisals on the Karrema homeworld after discovering their trading with the feds.

That’s nothing! When I turned two, I realized my age DOUBLED in just ONE YEAR! I was terrified, because I figured, if this keeps up, I’ll be 64 by the time I’m seven!
This episode is one of several that helps us deduce the length of the Bajoran year, as compared to Earth’s. Because the anniversary of Sisko’s arrival on DS9 is being celebrated by Bajorans in this episode, this means that the span between Emissary and this episode is either a year, or an even multiple of Bajoran years. What’s great is that whereas many DS9 eps don’t have stardates, both of these episodes do! Emissary was on stardate 46379.1, or May 19, 2369. Starship Down is on stardate 49263.5, or April 7, 2372. Now if the period of time between these two episodes was 1 Bajoran year, then a Bajoran year is 1,054 Earth days, or 2 years, 324 days (or 2 years, 10 months, 18 days), since that is the length of time between May 19, 2369, and April 7, 2372 (given that 2372[DS9’s fourth season] is a leap year, and therefore, has 366 days instead of 365). Given that the annual Bajoran Gratitude Festival was first seen in The Nagus, and then in Fascination, it would seem that a Bajoran year is probably 527 Earth days, or 1 year, 5 months and 12 days (17 and a half Earth months), which means that 2 Bajoran years have passed between Emissary and Starship Down. This is further confirmed by the fact that the next Gratitude Festival is just wrapping up in the beginning of Tears of the Prophets, which seems about that long after Fascination.
Well, at least Sisko isn’t sitting in the command chair in his underwear and slippers like last week!
Sisko is really laid back when it comes to food and drink on the bridge, as compared to other Starfleet captains. I pointed out how, in The Search part I, Sisko took a drink from a replicator on the bridge, despite the fact that the Enterprise never had such amenities, and Geordi told Sonya Gomez in Q Who(TNG), that food and drink by the workstations was a bad idea, even though the Defiant was said to be a comfortless, somewhat Spartan ship built only for function. Now in the beginning of this episode, Dax practically has a picnic going on on a console surface, munching on some stuff with thermoses present, while working with Kira, and offers some to her.
And the Greenpeace Award for best use of recycling goes to…
This episode bears a striking similarity to Disaster(TNG), in which A. there’s a big catastrophe on the ship, B. the captain’s injured, C. the Chief Medical Officer is isolated with another crewman in a situation involving hazardous material and suffocation, D. the officer in charge may or may not be ready for command, and E. the show shifts between several different groups of people trapped together, in which each have individual emergencies to deal with.
Well, at least he’s not running around yelling, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" like he used to whenever the wormhole opened up
After the attack, right before a commercial break, O’Brien laments that there probably isn’t anyone left alive on the bridge. Isn’t this a bit overdramatic a statement for O’Brien to make, given that almost the exact same situation occurred in Disaster(TNG), in which he was on the bridge, and survived, as did three other crewmen, (two of which died, admittedly, before another, Ro showed up) and it was reasoned that everyone else in the stardrive section might be dead, not to mention numerous other episodes involving crisis situations?
Maybe they went to APEX technical schools?
After Worf treats two engineers harshly, O’Brien reminds him that they’re engineers; they haven’t been to the Academy. Excuse me? Starfleet engineers don’t attend the Academy? Then where do they go to learn to be Starfleet engineers? The APEX Technical Schools? How do they assimilate all the Starfleet procedures and protocols? If they didn’t attend the Academy, why are they wearing Starfleet uniforms? They can’t be civilian engineers. Dr. Stubbs from the episode Evolution(TNG) was a civilian specialist, as was Dr. Marr from the episode Silicon Avatar(TNG), and Amanda Rogers was a civilian intern, as seen in True Q(TNG), yet none of them wore uniforms or comm badges. In fact, even Nora Satie from The Drumhead(TNG) actually was an admiral pulled out of retirement, and even she didn’t wear one. Besides, Geordi LaForge indicated that he attended the Academy in Menage a Troi(TNG), and B’Elanna Torres, the chief engineer of the Voyager, attended the Academy for one year, according to Parallax and Day of Honor(VOY).
Gotta light? Sure. KABOOM!
When Quark pulls out the correct diode out of the dud Jem’Hadar torpedo, deactivating it, the light from inside of it dims. But when Muniz arrives in the mess hall at the end of the episode, and sees Hanok and Quark chatting away, the torpedo in the background is lit up again!
Of course it’s substandard. Sisko wants to recreate authentic stadium food!
When Sisko invites Kira to a baseball game at the end of the episode, he tells her to get the hot dogs from Quark. Why not just replicate them? Kira even indicated in Return to Grace that Quark’s food is substandard.

As I pointed out above:

The diference is in Disaster Ro wanted to seperate the saucer which would leave any survivors in the drive section to die when the containment breach happened. In this one O'Brian wasn't talking about cutting that section loose and giving up hope of rescuing survivors. He meant that they would have to figure out how to save the ship themselves and not base their plans on getting any help from the bridge.

O'Brien wasn't talking about cutting that section loose and giving up hope of rescuing survivors.

Luigi Novi: Who said he did? All I said was, when he was on the bridge in the former ep, they wondered whether there was anyone left alive in the stardrive section, and in this ep, his position is reversed: He's in Engineering, and thinks everyone on the bridge might be dead. I didn't say or imply anything about what he intended to do or how they'd solve the crisis. I simply found it ironic that he automatically assumed that everyone on the bridge was dead. You'd think his experience in the prior ep would've taught him to be a little more optimistic, and a little less melodramatic.

Would you prefer he assumed everyone on the bridge was alive, and that they would solve the problem, and that therefore he doesn't need to do anything? That would be crappy for him if everyone on the bridge *were* dead.

By assuming he has no resources that he cannot personally verify, he can try to make a plan that will work without those unverified resources, and any extras that come along will be an unexpected bonus.

If, in planning, he assumes that he has resources that he cannot personally verify, it may turn out that those resources are unavailable after all. If this is the case, he and anyone else who *is* left alive is SOL.

When working out your budget, do you assume you're going to win the lottery this month and spend accordingly? Of course not. And O'Brien, in formulating a plan of action in a crisis, would be foolish to assume that people he cannot contact are alive to assist him.

You're talking about an assumption made for the purposes of the moment. O'Brien's assumption was not that. It was a moment when he sincerely lamented that he thought they were dead. We're not talking about :

"Okay, people, listen up, this is what we're gonna do. We're cut off from the bridge, so we're gonna assume that they're all dead, and that it's up to us to pull ourselves out of this mess."

We're talking about O'Brien looking into the camera all wishy-washy, and ACTUALLY believing they were all probably dead, before the camera fades to black, and the show cuts to a commercial. I could understand the former. The latter, was ironic, for reasons I gave above, and a bit melodramatic.

Hmm, my mistake. I admit it has been quite awhile since I saw the episode. My memory says it's not as bad as all that, but I could very well be wrong.

I'll have to look for it again to see if I agree with your assessment of the situation.

I'll send you a copy if you want one.

No thanks -- I have it on tape *somewhere*. Goodness knows which tape it's on, but I know I do have it.

*glances around sneakily*
You know, you can download the eps?

I'm listening. I assume you need a DSL or cable modem for that, right? And which site on the net allows you to do this?

No site. A program called mIRC. It helps to have a DSL or cable modem, but if you don't mind a long wait, 56K modems will work too.

1. Where do I get it? Can it be downloaded, or do I have to buy it? If I have to buy it, how much are we talking here?

2. Where exactly do you download them from?

1. download it from www.mirc.com
2. choose Dalnet
3. try various channels that seem likely

ex. #startrek-chat

Thanks. I'll try it.

By Phillip Culley: At the beginning, Kira is celebrating the aniversary of the Emissary's coming. Sisko came to DS9 on stardate 46379.1 and was declared emissary around then.. but the exact date is irrelevant. Anyway, this episode is on stardate 49263.5, and if Kira was celebrating the anniversary, then isn't she a bit early? Shouldn't this be celebrated around stardate 49385 or something?

Luigi Novi: It's a Bajoran holiday, not an Earth one. You're assuming the Bajoran year is the same as an Earth year, and as I pointed out above, it is obviously not.

Keith Alan Morgan: If this is a Bajoran holiday, then why is Kira working instead of taking the day off?

Luigi Novi: People don't always take days off on holidays on Earth; No reason why Bajorans would. People go to work on Ash Wednesday, for example. For all we know, taking days off isn't even a part of holiday observances for Bajorans.

KAM: I would have figured that the mess hall would be placed farther inside the ship, but apparently it's right next to the hull.

Luigi Novi: Not necessarily. It could have penetrated several sections inward, and forcefields went up to seal off the exterior ones.

KAM: The torpedo had a somewhat blunt nose, so how did it penetrate the hull so easily?

Luigi Novi: Its speed, and the force of impact it exerted?

Mark Bowman: Gas should be gushing out of the hull breach (must be a very strong seal)

Luigi Novi: Not necessarily; see answer above.

Morit, is mirc compatible with Mac? The program download links on their page is only for Windows.

NANJAO: Kira says she is fasting to celebrate the arrival of the emissary. Wasn't that a happy occurence for the bajorans, and shouldn't it therefore be celebrated with a big feast instead of fasting? in major earth religions, fasting is connected to festivities with somber rembrenaces (before easter because of good friday), penitance (sp?) and forgiving of sins. Arrival of a emissary is usually celebrated with a feast (christmas and the like).

I thought it a pity that the karemma minister turned out to be just as shifty as a ferengi. Are there no honest dealers in the future? It would have been a nice counterpart to the ferengi idea of trade.

Why is sisko so surprised that the ferengi cheat? Doesn't he know what they are like, after watching quark all this time? Didn't he hear about the rules of aquisition? If the federation has to accept the ferengi as go-between (and I still don't understand why the dominion would accept them, since they are from the Alpha quad, too), why doesn't it monitor the ferengi closely to prevent cheating? Did nobody think something like this would happen, the ferengi's cheating making your partners mad?

Kira seems to have very little training in first aid, telling a wounded person, half awake, a lot of fine details, which would require concentration, instead of starting a story, sing a soft song, or simply assuring him he will come through.

even without a tricorder, shouldn't kira check regularly on siskos breathing and pulse? Maybe move him into the position for unconsious people, instead of letting him lie on his back?

and why are there no med-kits on the bridge for emergencies? (probably were dismissed as too expensive by the same clever person who always dismisses the seatbelts.)

GREAT MOMENT: Kira praying over Sisko...another "Religion is good" moment!

Also...the Karama guy sounds like Zephram Cochrane

NANJAO: The battle scenes in this episode reminded me of the Enterprise vs. the Reliant in STII-TWOK

NANJAO: This episode reminded me a lot like "Disaster" (STTNG)

KAM: i{We see wisps of a gas leaking in around the torpedo, so why didn't Quark and Hanok suffer from fluorine gas poisoning?}

d31: Perhaps the level of exposure was too low, or perhaps fluorine does not affect Ferengi and Karemma as badly.

Rather than worry about defusing the torpedo, why don't Quark and Hanok just push it back out of the ship?

I suspect the force of entry into the bulkhead was tremendous, and it was probably lodged in there pretty good, too good to be pushed out.(They would also have to overcome the force of the atmosphere pushing on the torpedo) Also, disarming it is the best choice because (1) it still might detonate close to the ship and destroy it even if it was pushed out and (2) Quark and Hanok would die from full exposure to the atmosphere(without forcefields or pressure suits)

If all the systems are down, then how can Kira and Sisko understand each other? Shouldn't the Universal Translators be down also?

Universal Translators are built into their combadges.

dotter31: I suspect the force of entry into the bulkhead was tremendous, and it was probably lodged in there pretty good, too good to be pushed out.(They would also have to overcome the force of the atmosphere pushing on the torpedo) Also, disarming it is the best choice because (1) it still might detonate close to the ship and destroy it even if it was pushed out and (2) Quark and Hanok would die from full exposure to the atmosphere(without forcefields or pressure suits)

Not to mention that they probably wouldn't be able to push it past the forcefields that are most likely up anyway.

For those who are curious about why there are engineers in Star Fleet uniforms who didn't go to the academy (re)read Craig Livingston's post in 10-13-1999. One of the main differences between enlisted people and officers is that they have not gone to an academy/unversity, or received a field commission but that almost never happens in today's Navy. Enlisted members are trained just as well, if not better, in running the equipment but not in command protocol. Why O'Brian is Chief Engineer is a mystery to me, but he was a LT at one time.

and why are there no med-kits on the bridge for emergencies?

There was one, Kira asked someone to get it for her.

I remember Phill saying that considering their situation Worf shouldn't be asked to give the elisted some slack. BUT lets look at what he chews them out over, he demands that the controld be reconfiguered when A it's much more iportant that you have the buttons to fly the ship than they're all in the right place and B he doesn't actually fly the ship in the first place he lets the other bloke do it. Surely its more important the bloke flying the ship has a comfortable configuration.

The second thing he has a go over is when the engineer makes a perfectly valid technical argument that the structual integrity field generators might not be able to handle the strain. We never see Kirk thereated to relive Scotty for saying the engines canne take it.

So he may be right to ask for a lot but he shouldn't be petty or fly off the handle for stupid things.

This thing was an obvious submarine fight analogy.

A lot of companies are like that when it comes to their computers. They want everyone to use a specific configuration rather then give people the freedom to make even a small change (even if it makes the system more comfortable for them to use). If you change it, they could fire you for that.

Having been the IT guy, I can understand that.

1. It makes maintenance and upgrades easier.
2. It prevents "it broke", "What did you do?", "nothing"

Oh, I can understand that. One doesn't want to risk people messing things up.

However, when it gets to the point where the company leaves all the monitors at the lowest resolution possible, no desktop wallpaper and uses a refresh rate that makes the monitor noticeably flicker (granted this is/(was?) more of an issue with CRTs but still...), to me, it's just silly. The flickering thing even sounds like a health and safety issue.

However, as one might say, it's not worth it to risk getting fired over say, desktop wallpaper. Unless we're talking some violation of a law or something (although the flickering thing makes me wonder), if the company says to keep it at a basic configuration and don't change it, let's face it, they mean it. It's their equipment and all. It's prolly one of those "we're not asking you to like it..." sorts of things.

But such things are perhaps better suited to another discussion.

In this case, I think if it's something the Engineers use and cleared with O'Brien, then I think it's O'Brien that should take heck for it if it's a problem. To be honest, I would think that Worf should have known about it given he commands the Defiant (he said he does in Apocalypse Rising. I'm not sure he did at this point). If not then I think they need to review their communication and rules about that sort of thing.