Review for Star Trek - Deep Space Nine - Series 7 (Slimline Edition)

Introduction

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had the most epic ride in its seven year run, taking the franchise in unexpected but creatively lucrative directions. What started off as an episodic story-based sci-fi show like all Star Trek before it, gradually transformed into an arc based saga, with great emphasis on character. We’re used to arc based storytelling now, and even back in the nineties there was a trend towards longer form television. It was just something that Star Trek didn’t do; still believing its appeal lay in single episodes aimed at broad audiences. In the nineties, with the proliferation of satellite channels, audiences started to break up, fracture into their little niches, and genre based television stopped appealing to the mainstream. The Next Generation pretty much had the airwaves to itself in the 80s, but by the time Deep Space Nine started, it was up against shows like The X-Files, Buffy, and of course Babylon 5 (when two TV shows went to war...) Of all the Star Trek television there has been, the original series has held its appeal both for nostalgia, and for the fact that it started the whole thing. But in terms of storytelling and character, Deep Space Nine has only grown in critical stature over the years, as the show’s fans remain devoted to it, still clamouring for the Blu-ray, and with more and more people discovering it through the boxset. It may never reach the same kind of numbers as its predecessors, but it has far greater longevity, with its story still relevant even today, when some episodes of The Next Generation feel quaint and twee. Season Seven is where all that careful world-building, character development and narrative would finally come to a climax in an epic ten episode arc, something Star Trek had never done before. Unfortunately there was a pitfall to deal with first, the loss of a major character at the end of season 6.


At the edge of the final frontier there’s... politics. The planet Bajor has finally been returned to its population after decades of occupation, oppression, and exploitation by the Cardassian Empire. The wrecked world needs help getting back on its feet, and the provisional government has called in the Federation and Starfleet to administer the space station the Cardassians left behind, now dubbed Deep Space Nine, in the hope that it will become a hub for trade and commerce in the sector. To that end, and to move the Bajorans toward eventual Federation membership, Captain Benjamin Sisko has been assigned to DS9, while the Bajorans has assigned Major Kira Nerys of Bajoran militia as his second in command. But the discovery of a stable wormhole in the nearby Denorius Belt, offering a shortcut to the Gamma Quadrant, turns a galactic backwater into the strategic centre of the galaxy. What starts off as a gateway to exploration turns a lot more sinister when they encounter the dominant power in the Gamma Quadrant, the Dominion led by the shapeshifting Founders, Changelings who can only see the Federation, and all other ‘solids’ as a threat.

At the end of season 6, things had just started going the Federation’s way. The tide of the war had turned, and for Benjamin Sisko personally, both commended and put in charge of planning the invasion of Cardassia, there was room for optimism. But when he chose to disregard a vision from the Prophets, all of that changed. Gul Dukat unleashed a Pah Wraith into the wormhole, causing it to vanish, the first battle of the invasion proved more costly than anyone expected, and Sisko lost his oldest and dearest friend.


Disc 1
1. Image in the Sand
2. Shadows and Symbols
It’s been three months since the wormhole sealed up, since the Prophets abandoned Bajor, since Benjamin Sisko left the station and returned to Earth. Worf has been grieving the loss of his wife, Jadzia, and lamenting the fact that she didn’t die in battle, unable to reach the Klingon afterlife. Meanwhile, the cult of the Pah Wraiths has proliferated on Bajor, preaching the coming of a new age. Since Sisko left, Kira is now commanding the station, but working with the Federation’s new allies, the Romulans is far from easy, especially when they request the use of one of Bajor’s moons to site a hospital. And as for Benjamin Sisko, he’s back home in New Orleans, cleaning clams at his father’s restaurant. But he’s been spending the time, waiting for a sign, a revelation from the Prophets. When that sign comes, it’s more confusing than ever, a vision of a woman’s face, buried in the sand on an alien planet. It turns out that the woman isn’t a stranger, not to Joseph Sisko, and the truth that he reveals to his son is one that compels the Sisko family on a journey across the galaxy, in search of the mythical Orb of the Emissary. But at the last minute, joining their party is a young Trill woman, a Starfleet Counsellor that Sisko has never seen before, but who knows Ben Sisko from old. Her name is Ezri Dax.

3. Afterimage
It may be disconcerting for Ezri Dax on DS9, the familiarity of the previous Dax host Jadzia’s experiences, against her own difficulty in assimilating the symbiont and eight past lives. There are plenty of reasons for her to stay, but there’s one overriding reason to leave, Worf, who can’t get used to a new Dax host with his late wife’s life experiences. But it quickly becomes apparent that DS9 needs a counsellor, when Garak, who up to this point was providing Starfleet intelligence by decrypting Cardassian transmissions, falls victim to his claustrophobia. The only problem is that Ezri’s an assistant counsellor, still in training.


4. Take Me Out to the Holosuite
The all Vulcan starship T’Kumbra has put in for repairs, only its captain Solok has a past with Benjamin Sisko, ever keen to point out the Vulcan superiority to humans. This time he’s picking a fight on Sisko’s home turf, challenging him to a game of baseball. So it’s the game of the century, the Niners versus the Logicians, only Sisko has just two weeks to teach his team how to play baseball. At least Worf has the right attitude, “Death to the opposition!”

Disc 2
5. Chrysalis
The Jack Pack is back aboard the station. The genetically engineered misfits have returned having heard that Bashir is working on a treatment to bring Sarina out of her permanent catatonic state. Jack, Patrick and Lauren are eager to get started, but no-one is quite prepared for what happens when the treatment starts to take effect on Sarina, least of all Julian Bashir.


6. Treachery, Faith and the Great River
Odo gets a message requesting help from a Cardassian informant, a man he had thought perished when the Dominion allied with Cardassia. When he crosses the border into Cardassian territory, he’s surprised to find that it’s actually the Vorta Weyoun, who wants to defect to the Federation. Back on the station, Sisko gives O’Brien three days to repair the Defiant, but getting the replacement parts will take three weeks. Where Starfleet channels fail, maybe Ferengi spirituality will provide.

7. Once More Unto the Breach
If the Dominion war is good for someone, it’s the Klingons, who like war. Everyone gets their chance at glory, everyone that is except Kor, the Dahar master, who in his long life has managed to make many enemies and few friends in the Empire. The result being that in his twilight years, he’s left without battles to fight, glory to attain. He comes to DS9 asking for Worf’s help in getting a command, but that proves difficult when it turns out that General Martok despises Kor. But it turns out that there are far more immediate reasons why Kor shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near command.


8. The Siege of AR-558
It was supposed to be a simple supply run to the unprepossessing planet AR-558. But this hard fought for piece of galactic real estate hosts a Dominion communications relay that the Federation are desperate to decipher, while the Jem’Hadar are committed to taking it back. The Defiant warps straight into a battle, while the landing party are left behind, with the embittered Federation soldiers trying against the odds to hold the planet.

Disc 3
9. Covenant
Kira is happy to reminisce when a Vedek she knew from the occupation years visits, but she isn’t expecting him to use a Dominion long range transporter to whisk her off to Empok Nor. For her friend has fallen from his faith, and has now become a worshipper of the Pah Wraiths as the true gods of Bajor. Empok Nor now hosts a colony of Bajorans of the Pah Wraith cult, which is enough to offend Kira’s sensibilities. Worse than that, the ‘Master’ leading this flock is none other than Dukat, and he’s had Kira brought to him so that he can convert her to the true faith...


10. It’s Only a Paper Moon
Nog returns from the hospital to a hero’s welcome, but the Ferengi isn’t feeling heroic. He’s still not used to his cybernetic leg, and complains of pain, using a cane to get around. The thing is that the doctors can’t find the cause of the pain, and assume it to be psychological. He’s assigned medical leave, and expected to get counselling from Ezri Dax. Instead, he takes refuge in a holosuite, choosing to live life at Vic Fontaine’s hotel.

11. Prodigal Daughter
O’Brien said he was on vacation, but he actually went undercover to find Bilby’s widow, the Orion Syndicate member he befriended the last time he worked for Starfleet Intelligence. Only now O’Brien’s gone missing on New Sydney. It’s useful then that Ezri Dax’s family run big business on New Sydney, and Ezri can use her family’s influence to find O’Brien. The problem is that Ezri hasn’t really spoken with her family since she stopped being Ezri Tigan, and got joined to the Dax symbiont. And the Tigan family has a whole lot of dysfunction.


12. The Emperor’s New Cloak
Quark has problems. For one thing, the love of his life, Ezri Dax apparently only has eyes for Dr Bashir, and then news comes in that Grand Nagus Zek has gone missing. Quark thinks he’s just taken a side trip to Risa, and he actually thinks his luck has turned when Ezri comes on to him in full dominatrix mode. The truth is that this Ezri’s from the mirror universe, where the Regent of the Alliance is holding Zek prisoner, in exchange for a cloaking device.

Disc 4
13. Field of Fire
There’s a serial killer loose on the station, targeting Starfleet officers. The method of killing is such that the chilling likelihood is that the suspect is in Starfleet too. As a counsellor with training in forensic psychology, it falls to Ezri Dax to come up with a profile and a list of suspects. For that, she’ll need to put herself in the shoes of the killer, and given that one of Dax’s past hosts, Joran was a convicted murderer, that may be easier to do than she thought. In fact it might be a little too easy.


14. Chimera
Odo has found another Changeling! The Founders originally sent out 100 shapeshifters into the galaxy, just as they did with Odo, to grow up isolated, learning about their environment, and hopefully one day finding their way back to the Dominion. Laas is the first that Odo has encountered, and it’s refreshing to meet a Changeling that isn’t part of the Dominion and at war with the Alpha Quadrant. Laas has some very distinct opinions about ‘mono-forms’ and he isn’t out to make friends. But his arrival will give Odo cause to re-evaluate his life.

15. Badda-Bing, Badda Bang
Vic Fontaine’s holoprogram has been a friend to the station crew, and invaluable for some in particular, notably Odo and Kira, whose relationship would never have gotten started without Vic’s help, and for Nog, who needed Vic’s unconventional rehabilitation following his grievous injury. But now Vic’s program has been online so long, that a ‘jack-in-the-box’ has been triggered, a program event designed to make it more interesting. Vic’s Lounge and Casino has been taken over by the mafia, and he needs the help of his DS9 friends to get it back again.


16. Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges
A conference is scheduled on Romulus to discuss the progress of the war. Garak is happy to speculate on possible intrigue, but Bashir, who will be attending as an expert on Jem’Hadar physiology and Ketracel White is toeing the Federation line of peace and amity between two rival powers turned allies. And then Sloan from Section 31 shows up with a mission for his newest recruit Julian Bashir, despite the fact that Bashir never agreed to join the clandestine Federation group.

Disc 5
17. Penumbra
18. ‘Til Death Do Us Part
19. Strange Bedfellows
20. The Changing Face of Evil
Disc 6
21. When it Rains...
22. Tacking Into the Wind
23. Extreme Measures
24. The Dogs of War
Disc 7
25. What You Leave Behind: Feature Length Conclusion
The finale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine unfolds over a ten episode arc, an indication of the several plot arcs it has to tie-up. When Worf and Ezri are captured by the Breen, they learn that the Dominion has a new ally in the Alpha Quadrant that could spell doom for the Federation and their allies, until the leader of the Cardassian Union realises that his predecessor picked the wrong side. Damar starts a rebellion against the Dominion that might just buy the Alliance the time they need, and to learn how to be terrorists, Damar gets some unlikely help. As for Damar’s predecessor, Dukat is following the path of the Pah-Wraiths, and with the aid of some judicious plastic surgery, he’s got a new ally in his cause against the Emissary, none other than Bajor’s religious leader, Kai Winn. The Emissary isn’t listing to the Prophets either, ignoring their warning and marrying Kasidy Yates, planning for their future together. Bashir discovers that Odo is infected with the virus that threatens the Founders of the Dominion, and that the infection has an unlikely and unsettling source. The tide turns, and the war heads towards its bloody and tragic conclusion, but the real battle remains to be fought closer to home.

Picture

Deep Space Nine gets a 4:3 regular transfer that is just about passable on an SD screen, and you have to be a little more forgiving to watch it on an HD panel. Just like for The Next Generation DVDs before it, the show may have been shot on film, but its special effects and final editing were completed on videotape. Even on 480 NTSC, the show will look soft, and it’s a tad softer on PAL DVD with its 576 line resolution. The clarity never approaches that which a DVD can offer, and detail levels are low, colour somewhat faded. Having said that, the latter half of the show improves on the first, offering a smidge more clarity and definition; you can certainly see more detail in Quark’s lavish costumes, and colours are a tad crisper too.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 5.1 English and German, DD 2.0 Surround, French, Italian and Spanish, with subtitles in these languages, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Swedish. I opted for the English track quite naturally, and found that the dialogue was clear, the show’s music and effects came across well, and the surround soundstage was put to decent use in conveying the action sequences, establishing the show’s ambience. It’s a pretty decent surround presentation for a 90s TV show.

Extras

This slimline budget release of Deep Space Nine collects the seven discs of the clamshell box release, and repackages them into four thinpak cases, with one disc getting a case of its own, and the other six sharing three cases, held on opposing inner faces. They’re all held in a sturdy card slipcase, with the art not season specific.

The discs take their time in loading up, insisting on sending The Defiant through the wormhole before letting us see the main menu screens. The episode discs merely list the episodes, selecting one will allow you access to language options, scene select, play episode, and navigate back to the main menu.

All of the extras are on disc 7.

Ending an Era lasts 15:11 and has the cast and creators talking about concluding the epic series.

Crew Dossier: Benjamin Sisko lasts 12:52, and Crew Dossier: Jake Sisko last 9:58, and both featurettes have Avery Brooks and Cirroc Lofton interviewed about their characters, and the course of the seven years of the show, which for the latter meant a fair bit of growing up.

The Last Goodbyes lasts 14:02, and offers looks behind the scenes of the final day of shooting, interviews with the cast and crew, and a brief peek at the wrap party 2 days after.


Morn Speaks lasts 7:24 and offers an interview with Mark Allen Shepard, the man beneath the taciturn barfly’s mask.

DS9 Sketchbook with John Eaves lasts 6:35 and takes a look at the props and ship designs, as well as the matte paintings used in the final season.

Special Crew Dossier: Ezri Dax lasts 9:36, and offers an interview with Nicole de Boer about DS9’s last regular cast member.

The Photo Gallery offers dozen of stills and production images to click through.

Finally, unlike the previous collections, there is one fewer Section 31 Files Easter Egg to locate, just 9 on this disc, although for the final collection, they are the best yet, interviews with several of the supporting cast about their characters, who in this ensemble cast may as well have been named regulars given their importance to the stories. The total runtime for these eggs is 29 minutes.

Conclusion

I finish watching What You Leave Behind, the final double length episode of Deep Space Nine, and my first urge is to go back to season 1 and watch it all over again straight away. Much as I love other iterations of Star Trek, particularly the Original Series and The Next Generation, I only get this feeling with Deep Space Nine, an obvious indication of which Star Trek spin-off is my favourite, and also a testament to the quality of the writing, the characterisations, and most importantly the overarching story, which no other Trek to that point had attempted. It’s notable that many key personnel from Deep Space Nine would eventually wind up working on the Battlestar Galactica reimagining, another overarching space opera storyline. And if Trek fans thought Deep Space Nine was dark...

Things do get dark in the final season of Deep Space Nine, and they certainly get epic, as a galaxy spanning war comes to its bloody conclusion. Understandably the focus is on the war arc, so fans of standalone episodes will be hard done by, and as you might expect, the season can be a little uneven, with so much emphasis on the bigger picture. It can feel as if the smaller, character moments become rushed, or missed out altogether. There are stronger seasons of Deep Space Nine, but none of them are quite this satisfying, hence my final grade, which is as much for the series as a whole, as it is for this season.


The one thing that Season 7 of Deep Space Nine gets right is closure. It takes the time, ten whole episodes to wind up its story, and to see that as many loose ends are tied as possible. There might be a few threads hanging, but no final episode of Star Trek is as satisfying as What You Leave Behind. The original Star Trek was unceremoniously cancelled, The Next Generation ended with the expectation that the Generations movie was just months away in cinemas, Voyager’s conclusion got the crew back to Earth, but they didn’t even get to step off the ship before the end credits rolled, while Enterprise’s conclusion was an utter travesty, the whole thing presented as a 24th Century holodeck simulation. In contrast Deep Space Nine had the strongest pilot episode, the strongest finale, and it was a series that did something completely out of the box when it came to Star Trek convention, yet the increasingly fragmentary landscape of 1990’s television meant that its viewer-base only shrank over the seven years instead of growing.

Much as I love Deep Space Nine, my favourite Star Trek series, I do recognise that it had its imperfections, and over the last few reviews I’ve been pointing out those aspects that weakened or were distractions in an otherwise strong show. You might think that I’d begin with Crazy Dukat again, whose grief-inspired lunacy plumbed new depths in season 6, but he’s on a more even keel in this final season. He might still end up as a moustache-twirling villain, as opposed to the multi-faceted and complicated despot of the first five years, but in season 7 he does have a long term game plan, and there is something so despicably perfect about his teaming up with Kai Winn for the conclusion of the story. It does make you go ‘Eww’, but given the twisted paths that both characters walk, in their desire for power and aggrandizement, no other conclusion would have been half as appropriate.


But I do feel that another leader type winds up short-changed by Deep Space Nine; Gowron, leader of the Klingon Empire. He was introduced some 10 years previously in The Next Generation, a wily, ruthless politician, who could be just as intimidating in negotiations as in confrontations. But once he started appearing on DS9, the character assumed a clown-like air at times, a geniality and lugubriousness that didn’t quite seem appropriate, and in the end, he also revealed a desire for personal power that outweighed any sense of duty to the Empire he served. It too was at odds with the initial image of the character, although it could be that old cliché of absolute power corrupting.

But by far the biggest weakness to Season 7 is Ezri Dax. The Dax character needed replacing after Terry Farrell’s departure at the end of Season 6, and naturally casting a new host for the symbiont made sense, and there is nothing wrong with the Ezri character, nor the actress’s portrayal. It’s just that establishing a character takes time, and it seems in season 7’s 14 episode stretch of stand-alone stories, that too many screen-minutes are devoted to Ezri, and other character arcs lose out as a result. Afterimage, Prodigal Daughter, and Field of Fire are all Ezri episodes, with a fair number of b-stories in the other episodes devoted to her as well, and it’s worth noting that Dax-centric stories to this point never really went more than one or two a season. It’s to the writers and actress’s credit that the character is interesting enough to carry the episodes, but the imbalance is still felt.


So much for the negatives. There is a whole lot to be positive about when it comes to Deep Space Nine’s final season, not least the fact that it gets a conclusion worthy of the seven years of narrative, and character development that it has put in. Things get epic and large scale on a par with Star Wars when it comes to massive fleet battles, but it never steps away from the characters that are at the show’s heart. The politics and impact of the story may be large scale, but the characters driving that story have small, personal stories that unfold, and Deep Space Nine continues to deliver the drama, and indeed comedy that has typified it to this point. Of all the Star Trek series, it may seem odd to say it, but DS9 was the funniest, again a fact that’s down to its emphasis on characters. It’s not just the Ferengi that are comic relief, but when you have Bashir and O’Brien in a scene together, a random aside between Odo and Quark, an unexpected Worf-ism (only Star Trek could make a broken neck hilarious), then you realise that this show managed to emphasise its darker storylines by leavening them with humour.

Consequently, episodes that fell flat are very few in this season. I think the only stinker for me was Covenant, the last gasp of crazy-Dukat, who started a religious cult on an abandoned space station. As well as Dukat’s daftness, this also managed to make those who fell for his insidious religion look like idiots too. As a point of comparison, it would be like Jews following a religious sect started by Hitler. You can see where the writers are coming from, what they want to accomplish in terms of the bigger picture, the Prophets, the Pah-Wraiths and the Emissary, but as a concept, this episode fails at the first hurdle. Otherwise Chrysalis seems like a last gasp TNG style stand-alone episode in a season that really didn’t need it. The Emperor’s New Cloak similarly took a break from the main storyline, to have one final dalliance in the Mirror Universe, but it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. The Ferengi got to be the ‘heroes’ this time when they had to rescue the Nagus, and Rom’s confusion about the Mirror Universe almost makes the episode work. We also get to meet Mirror Ezri, and it pretty much concludes the Mirror Universe story.


Finally there is Extreme Measures, which just like Sons and Daughters in Season 6, feels like a standalone episode amidst an arc. It has Bashir and O’Brien wandering through someone’s subconscious thanks to some medical technobabble, looking for information. It’s one of those metaphorical episodes that Star Trek, DS9, and indeed Bashir have partaken of before (when he aged over the course of 40 minutes), and the motif is tired by this point. It also glosses over the fact that Bashir actively provokes the death of a person to get the information he needs; Dr Mengele indeed. But, this is the last gasp for the O’Brien Bashir friendship, so it gets a reprieve on those grounds.

But when it comes to standout episodes in season 7, I’m in the odd position of finding so many of the 26 to be noteworthy, that they don’t actually stand out. It’s just classic episode after classic episode for the final year, although really only if you’re invested in the long term narrative. I love Take Me Out to the Holosuite, the show’s last, pure comedy episode. Treachery, Faith, and the Great River is another great story, mixing comedy and drama. The Siege of AR-558 is maybe as dark as this show ever got, with a pessimistic message about just how easy it is to strip away the humanity from humans. This leads to another fantastic episode dealing with its aftermath in It’s Only a Paper Moon, a notable episode in that it was carried by two of the guest stars, the main cast is hardly in it. Field of Fire is a resounding serial killer story, and with Badda-Bing Badda-Bang, DS9 hits an Ocean’s Eleven remake out of the park years before Clooney and Pitt. That’s followed by Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges, another cynical look at the business of war and the Intelligence community that really impresses. And that’s before the final ten episode arc, which other than the single bum note of Extreme Measures, just gets better and better all the way to the final frame of the show.


For me, Deep Space Nine was the pinnacle of Star Trek. It had smart writing, an epic storyline, and characters that were developed in a way that none of the other shows ever attempted. It probably benefitted from being run at the same time as the last two years of The Next Generation, and the first five years of Voyager, as the studio emphasis was on their cash-cow in the case of the former, and the star of their new UPN Network in the latter. Deep Space Nine slipped through the cracks and the creators had a lot more leeway to be creative. I pulled out the old VCR, and started watching Star Trek Voyager, one final time before throwing those tapes out, and it is puerile, juvenile in comparison. I won’t be getting those on DVD. But I will be re-watching Deep Space Nine on a regular basis. It’s been a revelation revisiting the show on DVD, as it’s actually improved in my estimation over the intervening years. It’s been fun revisiting the episodes for these reviews, which would have been a lot harder without the invaluable assistance of the Deep Space Nine Companion by Terry J. Erdmann, the definitive reference guide written for a TV show.