Being a Star Trek fan in the 90’s was rubbish if you lived in the UK. Especially when you wanted to see the latest stuff. By the time Deep Space Nine arrived on BBC two we were already two or three seasons behind and the official magizine, Star Trek Monthly, seemingly ignored this fact by giving away news and information as if people weren’t having to smuggle tapes across the channel just to be slightly less out of the loop.
Just as I’d thought of Deep Space Nine as the ‘new’ show, STM was chucking up pictures of Commander Sisko in a Captains chair with no context making me wonder if the show I was watching was just teasing an eventual overhaul of the Station to look slightly more Starfleet. Thankfully Blockbuster came to the rescue in 1996 and I was able to skip ahead a bit while trying to figure out why Worf was on the box….
I was hooked. The show I was starting to like on the snails pace BBC schedule was suddenly the best thing ever. And suddenly all my pocket money was pre-planned. I didn’t have Sky, who had first rights to DS9 in the UK, until a year or two after the show ended. By the time the final season was launched, the only option I had was to stalk my local Virgin store and buy every single tape as they came in, watching impatiently while the Dominion War raged on every two weeks until that Season 7 box set was complete.
Since picking up that last VHS in November 1999 – still sitting in a collectors box in a cupboard twenty five years later – I’ve watched the episode an embarrassing amount of times. It was a rarity for Star Trek. A multi season arc culminating in a ten part episode that tied up seven years of the most complete story telling Star Trek had achieved so far.
To this day DS9 is the only full Star Trek series I own on physical media. Of course, it’s DVD now and take pride of place on the shelf even if they’ve not been watched for a few years now. Fifteen year old me was blown away by DS9 at the time so with a fresh pair of eyes I wondered if 40 year old me would still enjoy it as much now that the Star Trek Universe has expanded in many multiple different directions…
In comparison to it’s predecessors, Deep Space Nine is a show that built on it’s concept expanding in story, setting and character unlike we’d seen before. In bringing the series to a close, it wasn’t just a one and done grand finale. It was the culmination of story threads reaching back from the beginning; from the spiritual state of Bajor and the aliens they heralded as Gods, to the slow creeping Dominion threat that became all out war that dragged in nearly every faction that set foot on the station.
The second half of the season wrapped up as many threads as it could while escalating towards the final battle. The Dominion were winning the war to extinguish the Federation and their allies. The Founders, including once intentionally orphaned Security officer of DS9 Odo, were dying thanks to Section 31 secretly using Odo to plant a biogenic weapon. Bajor’s under threat as Dukat’s managed to fully corrupt their spiritual leader to the dark side while his former aid is leading a rebellion alongside Kira. Oh, and Starfleets decided to have one last stand and launch a full invasion of Cardassia after the Founder occupied the occupiers.
Going into it there’s a lot going on and it all focuses on how far the characters have came from their first appearances and how their paths have led to the day the war thats been raging ends. It’s a culmination of so many things that something that could be seen as an action packed war episode becomes an emotional journey with a lot packed in that brings everything to the table.
From the opening scenes the unravelling of the past all comes together. It’s everyones final mission as collective team and there’s plenty of time for showing the relationships and bonds they’ve built, most notably with Sisko planning out life after the war with his family. That personal aspect is as ambitious as the plot itself, wrapping everything up to give each character their own goodbyes.
After setting up the finale, everyones kind of split. Sisko’s leading the charge towards the invasion of Cardassia while Kira and Odo are helping former Legate Damar lead a resistance against the Dominion from within the capital of Cardassia Prime. Meanwhile Dukat, still hiding as a Bajoran, takes Kai Winn to Bajor to complete her allegiance to her new Gods in defiance of the Prophets. The turnaround from the first episode is a bit mad. Cardassia is suffering the bad decisions of joining the Dominion before being quietly occupied by their new Lords and Masters; meanwhile Bajor is slowly being plunged into darkness thanks to Dukat manipulating Winn’s selfishness.
There is some dodgy stuff in here. Mainly with the plotting. The first half focuses a lot on the inevitable action: The Defiant leading the way to break through Dominion defences is the focus while the resistance on Cardassia builds steam; leading to the Cardassians switching sides and all sorts of chaos. There’s a lot going on, and thats great.
But there does feel like a moment of it being a little too easy. Sure, it makes sense for the Dominion to surrender in the end seeing as Odo swoops in with a promise to come home and offer his people a cure to their fatal disease. But even with some verbal sparring between Garak and Weyoun, with how easy the solution was it makes you wonder why Odo didn’t volunteer this plan before thousands of corpses were flying through space.
Then there’s Bajor. There’s no real indicator of just how long it takes to gather the fleet, fight through Dominion lines and then onto Cardassia, but it’s probably a long time. Then there’s Garak and Bashir saying their goodbyes in a strangely sweet moment of realising Garak’s where he always dreamed of being, at home on Cardassia, or the inevitable sit down between the Founder and Admiral Ross to formally sign a peace treaty.
But I imagine that might take a few days. Yet from the beginning to everyone chilling out at Vic’s after the ink had dried and new assignments handed out, Dukat and Winn were wandering the Fire Caves with a bag of fruit and a book. Thats an awful long walk!
Despite some weirdness, the plot is one of the most complete endings we’ve seen in Star Trek, but with the amount the show as balancing it really had to be. The second half really made the effort to hammer home it was the end of an era for everyone. O’Briens going home to work in a cushy Academy job. Worf’s staying by Martok’s side and heading home to Qonos, similar to fellow exile Garak. And in the second half the Sisko’s story comes to it’s own end.
Considering Sisko’s origin story for the series, it makes sense for everything to come full circle. As Dukat represents all evil, advancing to become Emissary of the Pah-Wraiths rivalling Sisko’s position to the Prophets, Sisko leaves the station to confront Dukat in a fight leading to both their deaths. There’s a certain similarity to the ease of the war ending, admittedly. Sisko just ramming into Dukat after Winn realises she’s messed it all up and reveals how to kill him seems a bit flat. Considering their history there should and could have been a lot more tension. At the very least a fist fight between them.
On the flip side, thematically it was quite satisfying. Good defeats evil as the once reluctant Emissary gives his life to save Bajor and the Prophets reveal that this was always meant to be; they warned him getting married would bring sorrow and that sorrow was his physical death, leaving his family behind to advance to their celestial temple.
Overall it was a flawed episode, but had more than enough highlights. The Cardassia part of the story always fascinated me the most. Kira representing the Federation as a fully commissioned Starfleet officer teaching her old enemy how to become a freedom fighter was a great thread of the season. Pairing her with Damar worked really well. Especially with Garak in the middle keeping them safe in his family home. Damar’s whole story was his realisation of how evil Cardassia was, and as his resistance gains traction he suffers devastating consequences, dying as a martyr to the rebellion.
The final battle itself was also fairly cool. Sure, we’ve seen flashier and more chaotic since then. Discovery’s Such Sweet Sorrow was a brilliantly executed battle episode. But the scale DS9 presented for the time was always incredible, and it’s satisfying to see everything come together against the Dominion in the end.
It was also an episode with closure. Where TNG went for the next mission and Voyager had an untold next chapter finale, DS9 opted to give everyone a send off. With half the extended cast either leaving or dead, only a handful stayed on Deep Space Nine with Kira in command and Jake looking into the depths of deep space…
What You Leave Behind may not have been a perfect ending, but with so many plates spinning, it was a solid way to close the book on one of Star Trek’s most unique and adventurous series.
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