Wrongs Darker than Death or Night: Paradoxery ahoy

[Deimos Anomaly]

Why didn't Dukat remember meeting Kira Nerys in the past? She actually saved him from a bomb and everything, that's bound to leave an impression. When he met her for the "first" time (in the normal time) he should have found her face intensely familiar...

Likewise Nerys should have gone through her whole life remembering meeting her adult self in a refugee camp when she was little. As she grew and her face assumed its adult look you'd think you'd be like "I look exactly like the woman who I met when I was a kid, right before my mother was taken off by the cardassians"

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

My personal theory is that she didn't travel in time, but the Orb allowed her to experience something like a 100% accurate holomovie.

 

[Paradon]

That episode was one of my favorite. The prophets might have done something... I don't know. She might not look the way she does in the past.

 

[boco]

One of the best DS9 indeed, together with The visitor, Far beyond the stars and others.
I think too that Kira experienced that using the Orb's power, she was not actually in the past

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

That episode was one of my favorite. The prophets might have done something... I don't know. She might not look the way she does in the past.

You're thinking something like Quantum Leap? That was a possibility I considered too, and perhaps the second most likely explanation.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

I'm pretty sure that both young Kira and Dukat had more important things on their minds than remembering one Bajoran woman's face.

Dukat saw the Bajorans as little more than animals, even if one did save his life, and Kira was just young.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

However, Dukat has an eidetic memory; Cardassians are trained to have that from a young age.

Which leaves us with either the possibility that Kira did not actually travel in time, or the possibility that she "quantum leaped" and did not look like herself to Dukat. That would be a "better" explanation of Dukat's fixation on Kira if she indeed traveled back in time: not only is she Meru's daughter, but her attitude--though not her appearance--would remind him of Luma Rahl. But he would not be able to get the answer out of his eidetic memory.

 

[Paradon]

This is a very powerful episode. It's no joke when people die. People have difficulty dealing with life and death...trying to make sense why their love one has to die and why they and their love ones have to suffer and eventually die. That's why it makes sense for almost every culture to develop some kind of religion. It's not easy for anyone coping with death and trying to make sense of it.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

However, Dukat has an eidetic memory; Cardassians are trained to have that from a young age.

That's not how eidetic memory works.

Eidetic memory doesn't imply immediate and flawless recall of everything one has ever experienced in his life.

Much like any other memory, the intensity of the recall may be subject to several factors such as duration and frequency of exposure to the stimulus, conscious observation, relevance to the person, etc. This fact stands in contrast to the general misinterpretation of the term which assumes a constant and total recall of all events.

And if it's training instead of a biological ability, the actual recall ability may be even less.

edit: Or maybe they did time travel but the Prophets erased the memories of everyone in the past about what happened.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Elias--I'm aware that it doesn't; actually, one of my Cardassian fanfic characters has the ability but is known for being a scatterbrain because he sometimes does not concentrate.

However, remembering the face of one's lover is something that one would expect of a person who has an eidetic memory.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

Sure.

If the lover weren't Bajoran and we weren't talking about Dukat.

But conservatively, how many lovers do you think he had in his time as prefect? Kira's mom and Ziyal's mom at least, but I thought the implication was MANY more. I'm sure one didn't really stick out.

 

[Tiberius]

Also remember that unless Bajorans don't age, neither Dukat or Kira would think that the person they saw was the Kira we know and love.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Because as I said in my thread on this in the DS9 forum (!!!), the episode makes no sense!

First of all, its clear that she definitely did travel back in time. So yes, Kira probably changed history or something because Dukat saw her.
Its just a big mess.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

The Prophets can mess with history without changing anything.

See: Akorem Laan.

 

[Timo]

Exactly.

Which leaves us with either the possibility that Kira did not actually travel in time, or the possibility that she "quantum leaped" and did not look like herself to Dukat.

Or that Kira did travel back in time, did things there that only had consequences in that particular past, and was yanked back to her present where nothing had changed. Except, of course, inside her own head. The Dukat from her present had never interacted with her in the past, but she had with him (a different him, one out of the infinite number available). Nothing paradoxal about a little bit of temporal asymmetry.

The bigger problems in the episode are related to the general timeline of the Occupation, the construction of Terok Nor and the career development of Dukat. To sidestep those, it might be attractive to pick the Kira-did-not-travel-in-time-but-merely-lived-through-an-artificial-"what if"-experience-of-deliberate-inaccuracies theory instead.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Paradon]

You know...I suspect that Ziyal is Major Kira's sister. Why else would Dukat love her so much. It seems like he is always focused on Kira and Ziyal.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

He had Ziyal by Tora Naprem rather than Kira Meru.

As for his fixation on Ziyal, I think it was because Ziyal gave him unconditional love without ever questioning him. I think he viewed her more like a puppy than a daughter.

 

[Tiberius]

Because as I said in my thread on this in the DS9 forum (!!!), the episode makes no sense!

If you suddenly realise that you look similar to the way you remember a person that you only met once twenty years ago, do you immediately leap to the conclusion that the person you saw was you from the future?

 

[Sci]

My best friend recently watched all of Deep Space Nine because her fiance is a Trekkie. She mostly liked it, but this episode really bothered her. She felt that it was dishonest in its depiction of what it's like to be a "comfort woman" -- that, in reality, being a "comfort woman" or an equivalent role in occupied societies has always meant a life of rape and sexual violence, and that it is is never the vaguely pleasant, alluring thing it was in "Wrongs Darker." I can't bring myself to disagree with her.

 

[Timo]

...Perhaps Cardassians just did it differently? They are aliens, after all.

The episode wasn't about that particular aspect of Earth history anyway, but of certain family disputes in the Kira household. Instead of the comfort woman story, it could have been about Nerys' mother eloping with an enemy, or marrying the next door neighbor, or whatever.

Timo Saloniemi