"Shadows and Symbols" is the second episode of the seventh season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the 152nd overall, premiering the week of October 5, 1998. The episode's premiere received Nielsen ratings of 4.2 points corresponding to over 4.1 million viewers. This episode was written by Ira Steven Behr and Hans Beimler, and directed by Allan Kroeker. Set in the 24th century, the series follows the adventures of the crew of the Starfleet-managed Bajoran space station Deep Space Nine. The station is adjacent to a wormhole leading to the distant Gamma Quadrant; the wormhole is home to powerful alien beings worshiped by the Bajorans as the "Prophets", who have made station commander Benjamin Sisko their "Emissary". The later seasons of the series follow a war between the United Federation of Planets and the Dominion, an expansionist empire from the Gamma Quadrant. This episode resolves Sisko's crisis of faith in the wake of the events of the sixth season finale, "Tears of the Prophets", and establishes the status quo for the remainder of the seventh season. Background In "Tears of the Prophets", the Prophets came under attack by their ancient enemies, the Pah-wraiths, sealing the wormhole and incidentally killing Sisko's friend Jadzia Dax, who was a symbiotic relationship between the sluglike creature Dax and the humanoid Jadzia. The loss of the wormhole, combined with Jadzia's death, caused Sisko to experience a crisis of faith, leading him to take a leave of absence from Deep Space Nine and visit his father Joseph in New Orleans. While visiting his father in the following episode, "Image in the Sand", Sisko experienced visions convincing him that he must seek the mysterious "Orb of the Emissary" on the planet Tyree. Meanwhile, Colonel Kira Nerys, left in command on Deep Space Nine, came into conflict with the Romulans, powerful but untrustworthy allies of the United Federation of Planets, as they attempted to install weapons on the Bajoran moon of Derna; Jadzia's husband Worf planned a dangerous mission in order to secure a place for Jadzia in the Klingon afterlife, Sto-Vo-Kor; and the surviving Dax symbiont was transplanted into a new humanoid host, Ezri Dax, who arrived in New Orleans to visit Sisko. The episode also returns to the scenario of the earlier episode "Far Beyond the Stars", in which Sisko imagined himself as Benny Russell, a science fiction writer in the 1950s. Plot The Siskos are