were the exact same names of the people who were reported to have crashed on a distant planet three months prior to the battle. Sisko concludes that the entire incident was staged by the Empire to frame Worf for the purpose of smearing the Federation. Despite having no civilian deaths on his conscience, Worf admits that he did accept the mission assignment because he was hoping for vengeance against the Klingon Empire. Sisko reprimands Worf for accepting the mission for that purpose, and for not following Starfleet regulations and identifying the vessel before firing upon it; but he tells him that he will make a fine captain some day. Production The episode is very loosely inspired by the 1988 USS Vincennes shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655, a passenger flight. The episode includes a Federation officer accused of performing such an act of recklessly destroying a civilian craft, although differs in that the destruction of the craft was merely a ruse with no lives lost. Early versions of the story considered having it be Captain Sisko who was accused of such an act. Reception In a 2014 retrospective, author Keith R. A. DeCandido criticized the episode as poor, scoring it a 2/10 and the overall worst episode of the fourth season of Deep Space Nine. DeCandido thought that while Avery Brooks did a good job as Sisko in his defense of Worf, the plot of the episode made no sense. The episode directly mentions that the Klingons have no extradition treaty with the Federation (after the events of "The Way of the Warrior"), and that the attempt to frame Worf was strained and weak—hardly a cause for the Federation to throw one of their decorated officers in a cell, even temporarily. Ch’Pok's claim that a civilian ship would be cloaked, come to the site of a battle, and decloak precisely in the path of the Defiant, in the vastness of space, as an innocent coincidence was ludicrous on its face to DeCandido. While more of a nitpick, the question of how the Klingon plotters could have even known that Worf would be commanding the Defiant that day was left unexplored by the episode. In 2015, Geek.com recommended this episode as "essential watching" for their abbreviated Star Trek: Deep Space Nine binge-watching guide. This episode's Nielsen rating during its original airing was 5.8 points. References External links Star Trek: Deep Space