Visionary

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Chief O'Brien takes a radiation blast in the face, and shrugs it off with a dollop of old school hyronalin, yo. But the lingering effects keep tossing him a few hours into the future, for a tiny glimpse of what he's about to do... in 5 hours time. (Time in the Star Trek universe seems like an extremely accessible, infinitely malleable dimension. Pick up the wrong fork- travel through time. Lean against a dimmer switch exactly on the quarter hour- travel through time. Sneeze and hiccup at the same time near a warp core- kiss the universe good-bye.)

Meanwhile, brusque Romulans try to wring out of Kira every scrap of information they can legally find about the Dominion. Drunk Klingons are picking fights and setting booby traps like the Spy Vs. Spy comics.

Somebody blows up the station for some reason. The explosion of DS9 with fleeing runabouts is some really beautiful effects work. Cheers!

Miles and Miles meet in the middle and figure things out. Mainly that time travel makes no sense and they both hate it.

Technogeekery is the star here. Not logic, not emotion, just people saying science-y things and O'Brien passing out now and then.

Yet a true technogeek knows if you have Romulans around, and a troublesome quantum singularity that's also INVISIBLE, then maybe you have a cloaked Romulan ship! How come no one, especially science officer Dax, mentions that likelihood? So that's the big surprise at the end... unless you're been paying attention to other episodes ever. Or decided that Dr. Bashir's doohickey made from the Romulan warbird model kit owned by plenty of nerds (yours truly included) might be a clue.

"Visionary" is more fun than 'Time Squared', though it quickly invites the comparison with its Double Picards, explosions, and non-logical time events. At least 'Visionary' has action and semi-believable jeopardy, and most importantly, when one O'Brien perishes and his "future" self somehow doesn't, it wasn't because one COLD-BLOODEDLY SHOT the other, like the Picard in 'Time Squared'. Possibly the local Miles has died, and been replaced by one from a virtually identical parallel dimension. Since there's no dead body a few hours later, where did that guy go? Did he die at all or was that prevented somehow? Question mark?