Whenever you ask a DS9 fan where to start, the answer is rarely from the beginning. The first seasons of the show were good, sometimes great. The foundations were laid for a darker show than the flagship adventures of the Enterprise We had Federation turncoats in the Maquis; an uneasy peace between Bajor and their former oppressors in Cardassia; there was politics and religion crossing over on all fronts and from the end of season two we had the Dominion lurking on the far side of the wormhole teasing their incoming takeover of Federation Space.
It was a packed show with a lot of threads running. And then Paramount made a decision. They wanted more Klingons. They hired Michael Dorn to carry Worf over from the Enterprise to DS9. Decisions made above the producers heads forced them to change course, push their planned Dominion story to the back burner and focus on something new. But after a chaotic season that had many challenges behind the scenes, no one got angry and threw a shoe. They saw an opportunity and they ran with it.
What was supposed to be the season opener became a (very good!) mid-season episode and Ira Behr and Robert Wolfe sat down and wrote something new. Without knowing it at the time, that something new would be the episode that many considered to be the second beginning of Deep Space Nine.
Often called a second pilot, or new beginning, Way of the Warrior is the episode near everyone recommends a new fan to start from. As the first episode under Behr’s reign as the man in charge the fourth season built on several of the ideas and themes laid out within the third season. The framework of what DS9 was and what it can do had already been laid out, but it hadn’t quite met it’s potential yet. Even though it did utilise the shows history, and wasn’t an entirely clean start, Way of the Warrior would set a new template for the red headed step child of the Trek franchise and as all eyes were on the launch of Voyager Star Trek’s new flagship exploration show DS9 found itself in a new groove.
As Sisko prepares his station and his crew for the inevitable Dominion attack, we’re introduced to General Martok as he requests his fleet his ENTIRE fleet stop by for some R&R. Knowing the Klingons are up to something as they scowl around the station intimidating Quark and beating up the local tailor, Garak, Sisko knows that they won’t spill their secrets with any outsiders and not even Odo can crack their wall of silence. He needs a Klingon to help figure it out, and lucky for him… Starfleet has one in their ranks.
Since the destruction of the Enterprise, Worf has been considering his future. On the edge of retiring from the fleet, he’s ordered to Deep Space Nine to help Sisko crack the ranks of the Empire. And he does, finding an old friend of the family who’ll fill him in on the plan. They believe Cardassia’s been taken over by the form-assuming Founders; that the whole government has been infiltrated and they intend to take matters into their own hands.
Caught in the middle, Sisko doesn’t believe Cardassia’s been taken and he can’t defy the Klingons without risking their long standing alliance. Leaking information to Garak, who in turn leaks it to Cardassia, Sisko risks the peace to save Gul Dukat and the Cardassian government from their slaughter; resulting in the station being caught in the crossfire as the Klingons declare war.
After securing the council and returning to Deep Space Nine, the Klingons invade the station; resulting in massive ground and space warfare as Sisko and the Defiant hold off until reinforcements arrive to scare off their attackers. But saving the station isn’t enough; Gowron has the war he wanted. Not just with the Dominion, but in dissolving the near hundred year alliance with the Federation, the Klingons end up reigniting their long standing conflict with the Federation too.
There are a lot of new elements highlighted in the Way of the Warrior. The most obvious being Worf and the Klingons. This isn’t the first time DS9 broke in a new eleent to the show, hauling in an established character or faction to inject something familiar the format. The season 2/3 bridge two parter introduced the Defiant and the Romulans. Obviously the Defiant stayed. The Romulans, not so much despite efforts there and in The Die Is Cast. Where the Klingons could have been another element that was introduced and quickly forgotten, Way of the Warrior ensured their threat wouldn’t be a one off. They’d become woven into the shows ever expanding tapestry. That would mostly come through Worf.
A familiar face to audiences, Worf had spent seven seasons and at that point one feature film with The Next Generation; a wholly different show from DS9. Yet Worf fit the show like a glove. He was a complex character with a troublesome past. An honourable and decorated officer, but one that had reached the limit of what he could do in the Next Gen world and was destined to be Chekoved into being support staff until retirement.
As much as DS9 had to adapt to him, he adapted to Deep Space Nine and one of the biggest successes of the show was bringing this familiar character and presenting him with a new cast of characters to integrate with; characters that were less polite and in many ways more of a challenge. In one conversation with Odo you could see Worf was thrown in the deep end. No one was going to react to his moody by putting the kettle on. He had to take a scolding, make a decision and live life the DS9 way. And it worked.
In the same vein, so did the Klingons. Life in the Bajor sector was already complicated. Sisko was challenged on all sides. But the Klingons joining in dind’t just delay the Dominion story, it helped emphasise just how much damage they would and had done to the status quo. People were scared. The Klingons were scared. They just drew blades where the Federation sat on hopes and rainbows; camping out in Quarks and hoping it all blows over.
Adding to the depth of DS9 would be something that played out over many seasons, resulting in the Klingons being so integrated by the end that you can’t imagine the final episode without Martok by Sisko’s side. In this one episode though it balanced out that depth rather nicely in re-introducing you to the show.
Written with the deal of new viewers in mind, everything seemed to be reintrodued with a certain subtlety. Without the teasing, we knew instantly the Dominion were a threat to come and that Odo was conflicted with and disconnected from his people because of it. Without the history we new Dukat was a sneaky political player with an interesting relationship with similarly sneaky Garak with the episode actually giving them some rare time together as well as one of their best scenes. Sisko’s family life was thrown in straight away before making sure we all knew he was a morality focused bad ass who’s not one for backing down in the face of danger. And Worf… we all knew Worf. But even he had the catch up treatment as Gowron jumped in to remind us of their political struggled together and letting us know Worf’s impression of his own honour would mean more to him than being accepted by his people.
The whole crew got their defining features pasted in for a new audience; Bashir got his moment as the bold doctor as he prepared the wounded, O’Brien was the friendly fixer; Kira’s childhood and rise to soldier was dropped in as they gave Dax a spotlight on her former life as an ambassador while raising her playfulness in one scene…. where such things can feel very forced, this episode felt slick. Everything was calm, natural and written in a way where all that background and detail wasn’t overwhelming, but showing a depth the Next Generation being an episodic show compared to the more arc-like DS9 – didn’t have. And the feature length of the episode helped ensure there was time to fit in all those character moments without taking away from the main story.
That story of course was all about the Klingons lust for war. But it doesn’t jump straight into the action. It takes it’s time in exploring the station, it’s people and how they react to the suspiciously large amount of Klingons. All the character moments are based around the reaction; from Sisko racing out in the Defiant to stop Klingons searching his future wife Kassidy’s ship for Dominion spies to Garak being a punching bag for some trigger happy warriors. Worf coming aboard doesn’t even act as a catalyst; he comes aboard and adds to a drawn out tension, helping to raise the tension levels until the first shot is fired an hour into the two-parter.
When the action finally happens, it’s something different. Something Star Trek hadn’t seen before. Combat in space at this stage had mostly been a chess game. Khan and Kirk’s legendary battle was all about outmanoeuvring one another; a theme The Next Generation picked up on. The most bloody battles all happened off screen for dramatic effect (or budget) with the biggest Wolf 359 only being briefly shown in DS9’s pilot episode.
When the Defiant rushed in to save the Cardassians from the Klingons, the fight became chaotic. Phasers firing everywhere, blood, shouting, screaming. Eventually Klingons boarding DS9 and stabbing everyone they could. The fight scenes aren’t incredibly choreographed; they do have the issue of seeing Klingons in the background waiting for their cue especially when they raid Ops. But there was a sense of chaos unlike any other; morose in space when we got to see a storm of Klingon ships trying to tear apart the station, sweeping in and out of it’s pylons and rings in one of the best and biggest visual feasts at the time.
The Way of The Warrior had a bit of everything. All of the shows characters had matured and grown from their cardboard cut out form of the actual pilot episode. The show’s history had formed a strong, but not too overwhelming, The action was by far the best that Star Trek had seen at the time and instead of jumping straight to it, the drawn out build made it all the more satisfying. And of course, the introduction of Worf and Avery Brooks sudden comfort in the role felt like the show had found a piece that was missing.
The Way Of The Warrior Retro Review was first published in the Discover More edition of Comms in January 2019. You can read the original format, as well as other Retro Reviews & More in the Comms archive.
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