In this episode, a collaboration between the United Federation of Planets and Cardassia to establish a communications relay on the other side of the wormhole is complicated by an ancient Bajoran prophecy of doom.
A team of Cardassian scientists arrive at Deep Space Nine to help build a relay that will allow communication through the Bajoran wormhole.
This information makes Major Kira, Sisko's devout Bajoran second-in-command, begin to believe the prophecy.
Instead of vaporizing it, the phasers fire a standard burst that breaks the comet into three fragments; O'Brien's modifications never came online.
Kira and Sisko realize that the prophecy has come true: the three vipers were the comet fragments, and the silithium ignited the wormhole, "casting open the temple gates" to allow communication through them.
Scoggins had such a good time making this episode that, during breaks in filming, she took to wandering around the Paramount lot in full makeup taking the opportunity to scare schoolchildren on buses, to the extent that the security called the DS9 set, and asked them to "do something about keeping your aliens contained over there?"
[2] Erick Avari plays Vedek Yarka, previously appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Unification".
Club was skeptical of the episode saying: "Prophecy is a lousy way to tell a story" but optimistic that the show would "find some interesting things to say about all of this".