I cried. I cried at how such a sappy, cornball plot wasted an hour of my life and even worse, a perfectly-good episode slot of DS9 as a series. Plus, the literal sound of her voice was really, really creepy.
I didn't cry, but I certainly liked this episode well enough and don't see the problems many seem to have with the end.
Wow, I didn't know there was resentment for this episode. It doesn't make my list of favorites but I certainly didn't dislike it. I thought the way it explored where the characters were in their lives at that point helped in the over all sense of clarification and development. The ending was a bit of a gimmick but then you couldn't really have that character not become somewhat recurring after so much had been intimated to her, ya know? And DS9 had plenty of recurring characters at that point. I didn't cry but it was certainly a heart string puller for me. -Withers-
It's an OK episode. I do think the characters' personal troubles sort of came out of nowhere, though, and I wasn't keen on the Odo/Quark sub-plot. However, unsubtle though it was, I did like O'Brien's toast at the end. It didn't make me cry, though. Time's Orphan, on the other hand...
It's OK the first few times, but if you are watching the Seasons in order for the umpteenth time, it doesn't hurt to skip over this one, IMHO.
Ok, so TSOHV isn't terribly imporant in the entirety of the season or series but it's still a good character piece. What I really get out of the episode is that the crew is in a minor state of depression because of the war as they were in "In The Cards" and the catharsis of both is seeing them come out of it. Until Ezri came aboard there was no real ship or station counciler (reffered to of course) to help these people though there problems but in comes Captain Cusak a complete stranger who begins to talk to the crew while they are on the way to rescue her. Both her situation and theirs tie in nicely to one another. I really like this episode because it is such a nice quiet character piece and one of the strengths of DS9. Btw, only DS9 episode has made me tear up but I won't mention which one, lol.
I like this episode, it brings up some good things that hadn't been spoken of much at all that season. Sisko's relationship with Kassidy for example, reminding us It still exists for one thing, also what she's doing, I'm pretty sure she lost her job with the Bajorans when she got caught smuggling. I also liked that for once they were all working on a non-save-the-galaxy-from-doom mission. It was to save one life. The whole time transmission thing was a bit silly, but it was a good way to make sure that it wasn't a predicatble "We saved her in the nick of time!" or a "We're just too late by a few minutes"
I definitely cried. I thought it was a very touching, character-focused episode. I've always been more concerned with characters than with plot myself, however, so I'm a bit biased.