[Nate the Great]

TORAN: We can't postpone. And if he stays, he'll be committing suicide. We'll have to beam him off the surface.
KIRA: If we take him like that, we'll be killing him.

How? I don't think Mullibok is the type to commit direct suicide, he prefers the romanticism of being killed for a cause, to make a point. As soon as that opportunity has passed he should snap out of it.

TORAN: I thought we'd agreed phased energy retrieval would take too long. It would mean waiting a full year before we can extract any meaningful amount of energy. I wish we had the time to be more delicate, but we don't.
KIRA: So instead we'll act like Cardassians.
SISKO: Easy, Major.

This isn't like being a Cardassian! The Cardassians would've done it by now. Maybe they'd give the Bajorans one chance to be evacuated (they always need slaves on Terok Nor), but it would only be one.

Personally I don't find the ethics of evacuating three people who couldn't survive here long-term that complicated.

NOG: We're, the Nog and, er the Noh-Jay Consortium, and we have a hundred gross of self-sealing stem bolts.

Only appearance of the Noh-Jay Consortium in canon, but it did make an appearance in a novel when Jake and Nog told someone about the events of this episode. Personally I would've liked it if the Consortium made a few more cameos in DS9. Nog using it as a cover during "Treachery, Faith and the Great River" comes to mind immediately.

NOG: We'll let you have them for five bars of gold-pressed latinum.
CH'ANO [OC]: Five bars!
NOG: Four bars.
CH'ANO [OC]: I don't think I
NOG: Three bars.
CH'ANO [OC]: If I had any latinum, I'd already have the bolts.

Yikes, Nog really doesn't have the lobes for business. Dropping the price forty percent at the least resistance?

Then again, we have #109: Dignity and an empty sack are worth the sack. And maybe you could apply a rule with an unknown number, "time, like latinum, is a highly limited commodity."

CH'ANO [OC]: I can't hear you. Can I interest you in a piece of land?
JAKE: Land is good.
NOG: For what? It's nothing but dirt.

Now that's a bit shortsighted, Nog. Where is this land? Is it possible that someone would want it?

I can't help but think of the Land Deeds in Majora's Mask that the Business Scrubs use to set up shop in various locations.

CH'ANO [OC]: I can let you have seven tessipates.
JAKE: Seven sounds good.

Tessipates only appear again in "Children of Time." One of the novels reveals that Sisko's land on Bajor encompasses several tessipates. This implies that a tessipate is roughly equivalent to an acre. Seven of those is nothing to sneeze at.

BASHIR: Just rest easy. You took a phaser blast which punctured your peritoneum.

The peritoneum is the "bag" of tissue that holds your abdominal organs. I wonder why Bashir would mention the puncture wound without also mentioning the phaser burns.

BASHIR: He's got to be cared for. I'm going to take him without his permission.
KIRA: No, you're not.

Now that's another screed to be had, the ethics of leaving someone who is passively suicidal unattended by a doctor. I'm not interested in this one either.

BASHIR: She didn't offer a word of explanation, sir. She simply removed her uniform tunic and started building.
SISKO: Well Doctor, right now she stands a pretty good chance of being out of uniform permanently.

That seems harsh. This could be a court-martialable offense by all means, but a dischargable offense? I don't think so.

KIRA: I don't really know. When I was very small, I remember there was this tree right outside my window. It was the ugliest, most gnarled and battered old tree I've ever seen. Even the birds stayed away from it.
MULLIBOK: But you loved it.
KIRA: I hated it. Because it'd grown so huge that its branches blotted out the sun for kellipates. And its roots buried themselves so deep in the soil nothing else could grow there. It was a big, selfish, annoying
MULLIBOK: Nasty
KIRA: Nasty, nasty old tree.
MULLIBOK: Sounds to me like it had a lot of character.
KIRA: A lot.
MULLIBOK: So what happened? Did you cut it down?
KIRA: I don't know yet.

The metaphor sort of fell apart on this one.

SISKO: You and I have a material subsistence report to finish by the end of the week.
KIRA: I don't think I'm going to be able to help you with that.
SISKO: It's part of the liaison officer's job.
KIRA: I know.
SISKO: I don't like the prospect of having to break in a new one.

There's a time and a place for this kind of gallows humor, and this isn't it.

ODO: I was contacted by a government official this morning. They want to build a reclamation facility on a strip of land owned by four different people. Three of them have agreed to sell, but the government doesn't know how to reach the fourth, this Noh-Jay Consortium.

This doesn't seem like Odo's job. It really seems more like Kira's job. Of course she's occupied, but like I keep saying, all of the senior officers should have an assistant who can be in charge (and the captain should have a yeooman/secretary).

For that matter, are you really allowed to do business in the Bajoran sector without registering as a corporation with a ton of paperwork?

MULLIBOK: So you chose your uniform over me after all.
KIRA: That's not true. The time I've spent with you here has meant so much to me, but it's over. It's time we went on with our lives. Mine and yours.
MULLIBOK: You say you're my friend. Prove it. Use that weapon on me.
KIRA: I can't.
MULLIBOK: If I leave here I'll die.
KIRA: No, you won't. I won't let you. Two to beam up.

This has to be one of the top five "the major drama of the episode wasn't actually resolved, they just stop the story" episode endings in all of Trek. Yikes is this not satisfying.

Memory Alpha

* The wiki compares this episode's resolution to that of "The Ensigns of Command." There's a screed to be had on the simularities and differences, but I won't write one.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Phil brings up the point that Bajor has a lack of decent farmland and that the Federation could provide more energy supplies.
* "The Wire" proves that Quark still has contacts in the Cardassian Empire, so why can't he unload this stuff to ANYONE?
* The Bajorans had solar sailing ships hundreds of years ago and they didn't manage to colonize this planet until a few decades ago?
* How did Bashir get to this moon so fast when it takes six hours by runabout to reach Bajor?
* In "The Nagus" Nog clearly states that Bajor has three moons, yet this episode features the FIFTH moon. Oops.
* Why didn't Jake and Nog ask the computer what you can use self-sealing stembolts for?