Star Trek rarely does predestination paradoxes, but…sometimes it does. Your idea sounds plausible.

I think there are some factors to consider that might make it seem less bad.

Firstly, it may not be reasonable to impose human-scale values upon Zora - you could argue that she’s already hundreds of thousands of years old, and she almost certainly has a unique perspective on existence.

There’s also no indication that she was coerced into accepting the assignment, and she had demonstrated the capacity to disobey orders before. It appears she’s there by choice, even if she is lonely.

It’s probably just as “locked” as any other time period, which is to say not at all. Recent SNW episodes have hammered home the idea that the present, past, and future are all somewhat malleable.

I’m not sure to what degree the PD would apply in a situation like this:

• As is tradition, I must point out that whether a species is warp-capable influences whether Starfleet can make first contact, but even if they can, the PD itself applies to all civilizations, and Starfleet is compelled to minimize their interference.

• Cultural contamination/interference is minimal, since it’s one individual entering the Federation’s sphere of influence. Ethically, they should probably help the person return home, assuming they want to.

The closest analogue I can think of is Gillian Taylor in Star Trek IV, and the Federation put her to work in pretty short order.

In “Duet,” Kira acknowledges to Sisko that her detention of Dar’heel violates policy, and may in fact be illegal.

Thanks for that - I thought of “Civil Defense” but couldn’t remember the exact circumstances of that pop-in.

The Bajor-Cardassia peace talks occur just six episodes later, so it’s easy to imagine that the peace process was well underway by that point.

And, of course, Dukat was there to “help”.

The political situation in the region is incredibly complicated - if Bajor is interested in prosecuting, they risk a renewed conflict with Cardassia, which neither they nor the Federation particularly want. On top of that, many Bajorans are skeptical of the Federation and its intentions, at least in the early days.

Plus…did Dukat ever “visit” DS9 (as in, physically board the station) without explicit authorization from the command staff?

The TNG Technical Manual has another line that I think supports this general idea:

The combination of forces produced within the warp engine core and the flow of space and subspace around the vessel created the particular engineering solution to the problem of faster-than-light travel.

This seems to support the notion that subspace itself is bleeding into real space around the ship, at least to a degree.

As far as I know, the directive mainly applies to officers who are sent back in time and/or given the opportunity to change established history. I don’t think it would prevent someone from making an arrest in their “proper” time.

At most, it might limit their ability to interrogate the prisoner, if they can verify that the intruder is from the future and possesses knowledge that the contemporary officers can’t have.

I think you might be able to draw a parallel with long-running serials like comic books, or even Star Trek itself. They tend to revisit old themes and revolve around a certain status quo.

They tend not to involve multigenerational obedience to an authoritarian regime, though…

Even accepting this to be true, Spock sure wouldn’t have any way of knowing, or any reason to care.

Well that’s the thing - something can’t really “disappear from existence,” unless we’re talking about something that did exist and was destroyed.

But if it never existed at all…well, there’s literally nothing lost.

The exception to this would be if Kirk and his crew remembered the Cerritos existing before the time travel shenanigans.

The interesting thing about cars like this, in which something is literally erased from reality, is that it’s completely victimless.

One cannot destroy that which never existed to begin with. From that perspective, I’d say Spock made the right call.

The Romulan operative Nedar wore sunglasses while on duty as Starfleet Commodore Oh - this suggests they’re at least an option for Starfleet officers.

If you go way back to the United Earth Starfleet, Archer and Trip both wore sunglasses while on duty.

Scotty managed to keep a whole ship crew alive for decades in the buffer of a transporter, and did not need the entire ship’s storage.

It was just him and Ensign Franklin, and Franklin didn’t survive the attempt.

didn’t the DS9 incident happen entirely on accident?

No, it was a deliberate decision by Eddington.

ODO: Do we still have their patterns?

EDDINGTON: Yes. They’re in the buffer. But the patterns will start to degrade if not used immediately. We need to store the patterns somewhere.

ODO: This is more complicated than just an ordinary transporter pattern. We’re going to have to preserve all the neural signatures of everyone on that runabout. Do you know how much memory it would take to save just one person’s neural signature, much less five?

EDDINGTON: I don’t think we have any choice. Computer, I need to store all data currently in the transporter pattern buffer. Where can I save it?

COMPUTER: There is insufficient computer memory to save the data.

ODO: The pattern buffer’s beginning to lose coherence. The patterns will start to degrade any second now.

EDDINGTON: Computer, what if we wiped all computer memory in every system on the station and then stored the patterns?

COMPUTER: That procedure has not been tested. It cannot be predicted.

ODO: The buffer is depolarising.

EDDINGTON: Computer, this is a command priority override. Wipe all computer memory necessary in order to save the patterns from the buffer. Authorisation Eddington 0-6-5-alpha enable.

Sure, “Rascals” breaks the transporter rules in pretty much every way.

The TNG Technical Manual explanation is pretty straightforward - storing “neural energy” (and indeed replicating any living creature) requires capturing the quantum state of every particle in the organism, with a zero percent error rate, and they simply don’t have the storage capacity to do so reliably. The one time they managed to store neural patterns long-term, it required the entire storage capacity of Deep Space 9 to store the neural patterns of five people (“Our Man Bashir”).

The transporter buffers can handle these patterns on a short-term basis, but the tradeoff is that they start to degrade over time (typically portrayed as within a few minutes, though there’s some variability).

Picard also mentioned having recently learned more about his family.

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There’s nothing contradictory about the seasons, and they were written and filmed back-to-back. There’s no need for a retcon.