10 Star Trek Characters More Important Than You Realised
2. Sarina Douglas
The character of Sarina Douglas is introduced in the Deep Space Nine episode Statistical Probabilities. She is brought aboard the station as part of a group of genetically engineered psychiatric patients to meet Doctor Bashir and, hopefully, benefit from his ‘example’ as a Starfleet-approved superman.
The band of self-titled ‘mutant’ outcasts soon make a bigger impression than anyone expected when they suss out Damar and the Dominion’s hidden agenda and backstory by watching one speech. They are put to work for Starfleet Intelligence and come up with a dizzying array of insights and statistical analyses.
Their zeal and self-assuredness get the better of them though, as their war projections lead them to the apparently inescapable conclusion that the Federation must surrender now to avoid catastrophic losses down the road. Of course, Starfleet refuses the idea, so the group ties up Bashir and goes to leak war secrets to the Dominion. This is where Sarina enters the fray and becomes of pivotal importance to the events that follow.
Sarina is now the only one who can free the captive Bashir and prevent our would-be traitors from attending their rendezvous with Damar and Weyoun. She does so and, thus, stops the rest from divulging classified information that would have guaranteed Dominion victory and cost billions of lives (at least!). She is, therefore, in that moment, arguably the most important person in the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Quadrants (if not the Delta, for good measure). As Bashir states in the episode, “One person changed the course of history”.