Time Travel and Alternate Realities.

Like all Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine has its fair share of time travel stories. Some, like “Visionary” are your standard trips through time. Others, like “Past Tense,” carry strong social commentary. And still others, like “Children of Time,” create alternate realities and mind-boggling paradoxes that can send you in search of the aspirin bottle if you try to make sense of them. But through it all DS9 does what it always does best—build characters. In this episode of The Orb hosts Christopher Jones and Matthew Rushing discuss time travel in general and compare and contrast two specific episodes—“Visionary” and “Children of Time”—as we look at how the DS9 writers utilize one of science fiction’s most popular plot devices.