One Little Ship (episode)

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"One Little Ship"
DS9, Episode 6x14 Production number: 40510-537 First aired: 14 February 1998
←	135th of 173 produced in DS9	→
←	136th of 173 released in DS9	→
	{{{nNthReleasedInSeries_Remastered}}}th of 173 released in DS9 Remastered
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Written By Bradley Thompson & David Weddle Directed By Allan Kroeker
51474.2 (2374)
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O'Brien, Dax, Bashir, and their runabout are reduced in size while investigating an anomaly. Meanwhile, the Jem'Hadar attack and commandeer the Defiant, leaving the runabout crew with no choice but to take their miniature ship inside the Defiant and help Sisko and the others recapture the vessel.

Contents 1 Summary 2 Memorable Quotes 3 Background Information 3.1 Awards 3.2 Video and DVD releases 4 Links and References 4.1 Guest Stars 4.2 Co-Star 4.3 References

[edit] Summary

Captain Sisko and his staff are taking a break from the Dominion War. They are investigating a subspace compression anomaly. The vortex was discovered recently, and gaining an understanding of the principles behind the subspace compression could give Starfleet a significant tactical advantage over the Dominion. The USS Rubicon is going through the anomaly's vortex to collect data and the Defiant is stabilizing them with a tractor beam. As the Rubicon enters the anomaly, it begins to shrink in size, until the runabout is less than a foot long.

A short while after the experiment's start, the Defiant is attacked by a Jem'Hadar ship. Because it must remain tractored to the Rubicon with its shields down, the Defiant makes a very easy target and it is quickly disabled and boarded by a Jem'Hadar team and loses contact with the Rubicon.

Back on the Rubicon, the crew is fine but many systems are damaged. Fortunately for them, Miles O'Brien gets on it while Jadzia Dax homes in on the Defiant's transponder signal. When the blast shutters are finally repaired, a surprise is awaiting them. Having left the anomaly by a different path, the Rubicon has stayed small. The Defiant is huge compared to the Rubicon. Their communications system down, the crew decide to enter the Defiant by the aft plasma vent hoping to have a better chance of drawing attention from the inside of the ship.

On the Defiant, the Jem'Hadar are in control but they have to rely on the Starfleet crew to make the repairs because of their vulnerable position. Sisko jumps on the opportunity and plans a takeover of the Defiant from the engineering room while Major Kira is making repairs to the warp core. The Jem'Hadar ship then resumes its mission to the Coridan system and the boarding party's First orders them to set a course for the nearest Dominion outpost.

After O'Brien finishes restoring the visual sensors on the Rubicon; he, Dax, Bashir are able to figure out Captain Sisko's plan and they decide to give it a little help. If the Captain is to take back the Defiant from engineering, he will have to override the bridge lockout and release the codes, but since Nog is having a hard time with the task, O'Brien suggests they reroute the encryption subprocessors manually.

To prevent Bashir and O'Brien from suffocating from the absence of breathable oxygen molecules of the right size, Dax beams a bubble of the runabout's compressed air into the airtight circuitry compartment and Bashir and O'Brien carry on their mission, with a limited air supply for the next 20 minutes.

Back in engineering, Sisko is trying to get the job done as best as they can, pressed by time and constant Jem'Hadar surveillance. The Jem'Hadar team being composed mainly of the new batch of Jem'Hadar, bred in Alpha Quadrant and trained under a different conditions than the main Jem'Hadar forces, the captain is using their lack of experience to his advantage. Unfortunately, he is constantly opposed by Ixtana'Rax, an experienced, soon to be retired former Jem'Hadar First born in the Gamma Quadrant. Sisko tries to gain some time by playing on the tensions between him and the new Jem'Hadar First, Kudak'Etan, who thinks of the Gamma Quadrant Jem'Hadar as obsolete and unfit for the Alpha Quadrant warfare, thus justifying their own existence.

Personal conflicts between these two different Jem'Hadar breeds are instrumental in saving the lives of the crew, as "Alpha" Kudak'Etan repeatedly refuses "Gamma" Ixtana'Rax's requests to immediately execute all Federation officers and repair the ship only by the Jem'Hadar, trying to differentiate from the old "Gammas" and prove his own new methods. However, even though this buys the crew some time, Nog is unsuccessful in bypassing the security protocols and the stalling is eventually uncovered. The only satisfaction Sisko gets is that after Worf secretly planted a virus into the system, the Defiant will auto-destruct as soon as they go to warp, killing all onboard.

Fortunately for everyone, when the Rubicon's crew realizes nothing is happening after the circuit modification, they make a rush in engineering. The Jem'Hadar are taken by surprise by the tiny ship and two are quickly killed with miniature photon torpedoes, now as powerful as a disruptor pistol. The rest are taken care of by Kira, Worf and Sisko. With no security protocols in the way, Sisko orders the release of anaesthetic gas through the rest of the ship, incapacitating the remaining Jem'Hadar soldiers.

With the Defiant back under control, the Rubicon re-enters the anomaly under a different path and returns to normal size. Back on Deep Space 9, O'Brien and Bashir recount the adventure at Quark's to M'Pella and Morn. Odo and Quark take the opportunity to tease O'Brien and Bashir about being "a couple centimeters shorter" than when they left.

[edit] Memorable Quotes

"I don't feel any smaller."

- O'Brien

"I do not see what is so humorous about being small."
"Neither do I."

- Worf and Nog

"Chief... you're not going to like this."

- Bashir, after realizing that the Rubicon is still small

"Are you telling me I'm gonna be (holds two fingers up, about 5 centimetres apart) this bloody tall for the rest of my life?"
(Holds two fingers up, about half a centimetre apart) "This bloody tall, actually."

- O'Brien and Bashir

"This conduit is filthy, Chief. Don't you ever clean in here?"
"All right, all right. Let's not badger the chief."
"Thank you."
"Sorry. It was very... small of me."

- Bashir, Dax, and O'Brien

"The magnetic plasma guides are heating up."
"They must've initiated the impulse prestart sequence."
"What does that mean?"
"It means this entire conduit is about to be filled with superheated plasma."
"When you say superheated..."
"Unless I can find another way out of here, we'll be vaporized. Is that clear enough?"
"Crystal."

- O'Brien, Dax, and Bashir

"Mr. Worf, I think your wife is here."

- Benjamin Sisko, when the runabout and crew are reunited.

"This is the story of a little ship, that took a little trip."

- Worf

[edit] Background Information

• This episode was dubbed "Honey, I Shrunk the Runabout" behind the scenes.
• This episode went into production before "Far Beyond the Stars", but it aired the week after, presumably due to the lengthy post-production special effects work.
• The story originated with René Echevarria. When Echevarria was still a freelancer, before he had sold the script for "The Offspring" to The Next Generation, he wrote a spec script about a shuttle and its occupants shrinking due to an accident, and then using their newly reduced size to save the USS Enterprise-D from an occupying force. He didn't pitch the script at the time, but several years later, after he'd become a staff writer, during the sixth season of the show, he approached Jeri Taylor about doing it, but she was uninterested. When he joined Deep Space Nine, he pitched it to Michael Piller, but Piller was also uninterested. Then, when Ira Steven Behr took over as executive producer, Echevarria pitched it again, but, once again, it was rejected. He spent the next several years trying to convince Behr that the show had potential, and eventually Behr capitulated. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion).
• It is revealed in this episode that the Dominion have begun producing Jem'Hadar in the Alpha Quadrant that have a different genetic makeup than the ones produced in the Gamma Quadrant. The 'Alphas', as they are called, are supposed to be better suited for battle in the Alpha Quadrant than their predecessors, the 'Gammas'. There were plans to further develop the differences and animosity between Alpha and Gamma Jem'Hadar in later episodes, but the plotline was abandoned after this episode. No other mention of the two breeds is made. From a story point of view, it could be hypothesized that after their loss of the USS Defiant, even after they appeared to have secured it, the production of the Alphas was simply terminated.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, Ira Steven Behr and René Echevarria both note that they wished they had used more comedic characters than the Jem'Hadar. Echevarria later said they should have used the Pakleds, while Behr thought they should have used Harry Mudd.
• The notion that the USS Rubicon is shrunk by a subspace compression anomaly is most likely based upon the real scientific theory of Compactification, which, in physics, refers to the changing of a theory as it relates to a particular space-time dimension, hence the 'rules' of that dimension become malleable, and alterations can conceivably occur (such as shrinking). The idea that the crew would not be able to breathe the air on the USS Defiant is also scientifically accurate, and was written into the script at Andre Bormanis' suggestion.
• Kira's role in the teaser of this episode was written specifically to act as a surrogate for the audience; according to Ronald D. Moore, "It is an absurd premise, and Kira's reaction acknowledges that. It's like a signal to the audience: 'This is kinda silly folks, and we know it's kinda silly, but try to run with us on this one'." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)
• Ira Steven Behr says of this episode, "How many shows can do a salute to Land of the Giants, to The Incredible Shrinking Man? We had to do it! We owed it to all the schlock science fiction that had come before us. If we hadn't done it, it would have been a crime - a creative crime, and, dare I say, a crime against humanity itself." Technical advisor Andre Bormanis, who had to devise a 'plausible' way for it all to happen, was less sure however, "For years I'd been dreading the day the writers would decide to do some version of Fantastic Voyage. I didn't know if whether I'd want to ask for a credit or a disclaimer on the episode." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)
• The crew of the USS Enterprise were shrunk to similar proportions as that of the USS Rubicon crew in the animated series episode "The Terratin Incident". This episode is also similar to the Next Generation episode "Rascals", insofar as a group of crew members are altered physically (in the case of Next Generation, they are turned into children and in Deep Space Nine, they are shrunk to miniature size), after which the ship is overrun and captured by an enemy force (the Ferengi in TNG and the Jem'Hadar in DS9). In both cases, this anomalous accident is actually a benefit to the crew, who are able to use it to their advantage and retake the ship.
• When Sisko says of Worf and Nog, "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship," it is most likely a reference to the final line of the 1942 Michael Curtiz film Casablanca.
• Gelnon would also appear in the subsequent episode, "Honor Among Thieves".
• Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko) does not appear in this episode.

[edit] Awards

• This episode was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series.

[edit] Video and DVD releases

• UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 6.7, 6 July 1998.
• As part of the DS9 Season 6 DVD collection.

[edit] Links and References

[edit] Guest Stars

• Aron Eisenberg as Nog
• Scott Thompson Baker as Kudak'Etan
• Fritz Sperberg as Ixtana'Rax
• Leland Crooke as Gelnon
• Christian Zimmerman as Lamat'Ukan

[edit] Co-Star

• Mark Allen Shepherd as Morn (uncredited)
• Cathy Debuono as M'Pella (uncredited)
• Unknown actor as Duran'Adar

[edit] References

Alphas; anesthezine; auto-destruct; Auxiliary Control; Benzites; blast shutters; bloodwine; class-7 warp drive; Coridan; dabo girl; Defiant, USS; Dominion; Duran'Adar; Elder; Excelsior-class; gamma ray flux; Gammas; hypoxia; Immelmann turn; interlink shunt; isolinear chip; Jem'Hadar; Jem'Hadar attack ship; ketracel-white; Klingons; Operation Return; plasma; rectilinear expansion module; Rubicon, USS; Seltan carnosaur; subspace compression anomaly; tesla; transponder; transwarp corridor; Yeager-type starship.

Previous episode: "Far Beyond the Stars"

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 6

Next episode: "Honor Among Thieves"