While on a mission in the Gamma Quadrant Dr. Bashir, Dax and Kira receive a distress call from a planet just outside Dominion territory. When the doctor and Dax beam down to the surface they find what looks like a medieval civilisation in the grip of a plague. They learn that up until two hundred years before it was an advanced civilisation but all that changed when they defied the Dominion and the Jem'Hadar introduced a disease that effects everybody. When they will die is uncertain, some die as children others survive until adulthood but ultimately all are doomed to die in agony. When Bashir takes a woman to the hospital he is shocked to discover that instead of trying to treat the illness people are just offered a quick death. Determined to help he tries yo work on a cure with Dax and a pregnant local woman called Akoria. Things don't go well and most of his patients die screaming. Dax returns to DS9 with Kira but Dr. Bashir is determined to stay with Akoria, trying to keep her alive until her child is born; trying to find a cure all the time. When the child is born he happily announces to its mother that it doesn't have the illness, shortly after however she dies.
Even though there is little action in this episode I really enjoyed it. I was sure that bye the end we'd get a clichéd ending where the doctor would find the cure for all the sufferers. The fact that he found a vaccination which would stop babies being born with it meant that in the long term the society should recover but all the current sufferers were doomed just as they were before his arrival, this gave us a bitter-sweet conclusion. Alexander Siddig put in a fine performance as the doctor and guest star Ellen Wheeler was good as Akoria.
Even though there is little action in this episode I really enjoyed it. I was sure that bye the end we'd get a clichéd ending where the doctor would find the cure for all the sufferers. The fact that he found a vaccination which would stop babies being born with it meant that in the long term the society should recover but all the current sufferers were doomed just as they were before his arrival, this gave us a bitter-sweet conclusion. Alexander Siddig put in a fine performance as the doctor and guest star Ellen Wheeler was good as Akoria.