It's an episode full of action, I just wish that it all didn't remind me of this show's worst tendencies, and that DS9's peak lasted all the way from season 5 until the end of season 5.
On the eve of an assault into Cardassian territory Sisko receives a message from the Prophets not to go. He then tells his commanding admiral about it, in an overly quick and poorly written exchange in which the admiral stupidly denigrates the experience and demands he go or resign. It's a small point really, just a little excuse as to why Sisko goes anyway, but the writers still have to turn it into a moment of idiot plot. "Super powerful aliens who live beyond time and space and know the future have told you something important... I've heard enough of this religious nonsense!"
This is not an exploration of religion, which DS9 never actually does, it's not a look into how the secular Federation handles a "religious" culture. It's just a character being stupid. And I know this isn't The Expanse, but considering the Federation is hundreds of worlds probably many with groaning population levels, shouldn't you really have to be the absolute best of the best to be a Starfleet admiral? With a population pool of hundreds of billions, seems like competition should get tight. Yet this idiot commander sounds like he's out of central casting for some old war movie.
Meanwhile on the other side, wild eyed Dukat shows up with some cockamamie scheme involving a Bajoran artifact that he claims will swing the war. It's not even clearly explained in the episode what happened, and certainly never explained why this would significantly affect a war. But worse than that, another super powerful Bajoran artifact? These people had so many space MacGuffins it's laughable anyone even tried to conquer them, let alone succeeded. The Justice League didn't provide as much protection as all these wacky artifacts would, Bajorans should have conquered the galaxy by now with space magic. All the quasi-religious stuff and the Pah-Wraiths, it's SO half-baked.
Back with the good guys, a joint task force attacks a planet that seems to have no actual value because they must "take the system" even though the writers can't ever attach a logistical meaning to that statement. Unfortunately for them the Cardassians have just employed a new, unstoppable technology in the form of weapons platforms that cannot be destroyed, I kid you not. Why the leader of the Cardassians didn't simply stab the Dominion forces in the back and deploy these weapons platforms to force the Founders to serve him, I don't know, because they're literally unbeatable. These weapons platforms are now the ultimate power in the universe. Except(!) that each one doesn't carry it's own power generator (one assumes as a cost saving measure) and by destroying a space rock where all their power is generated and then beamed to them, the allied ships can still win!
Unfortunately the combined firepower of the Defiant, the Federation fleet, the Klingon fleet, and maybe the Romulan fleet, I can't remember if they came along, cannot harm the space rock, I kid you not. But then Garak realizes Unstoppable Force vs. Immovable Object, and they trick the space platforms to shoot their own space rock, and of course these weapons platforms easily destroy it. And they win!
Yes, the set-up is very stupid, but one could overlook it as being typical Star Trek all the same, except Deep Space 9 has made it their business to make their space battles never have any internal consistency and it spoils the fun. To start the battle Jem'Hadar fighters RAM the Klingon battle ships. They kamikaze attack the vastly superior Klingon force since they're just going to be destroyed anyway, how does this make sense? A matter/anti-matter torpedo releasing 500 gigatons worth of explosive force just bounces off a starship's shields one week, but flying your little space ship into it cuts the thing in two the next? If shields don't work on space fighters, why do they work on torpedoes? Or don't even answer that, why don't we just put the explosive devices in space fighters and forget about torpedoes? That should handle anything short of a weapons platform.
And this goes for the whole battle, none of the ships have shields. Every shot just goes through and damages the ship being fired at in real time. Which is odd because again, these torpedoes they're firing are supposed to be the equivalent of modern day nukes right? Even a tiny tactical nuke would instantly vaporize a star ship and probably any other starship close enough to also be on camera. That's a nitpick, but my point is, these tense action scenes that are supposed to make you "worried" about the main characters and if they're going to succeed have no rules to them whatsoever. And so it becomes a high stakes game of Calvinball. You never know what's going to be true in the next moment, there are no rules save the ones the writers just made up, until it becomes impossible to feel anything toward the action. It's just dull. Sorry DS9, but TNG followed its own internal logic in battle and elsewhere, it wasn't a game of Calvinball.
Anyway, undercutting the victory, Terry Farrell is written off the show because Rick Berman is an awful human being... I mean back on the station Dax is murdered by Dukat who then collapses the wormhole or something like that, as I mentioned before it really is not explained.
Overwhelmed by Dax's death, and I also like to think the writing, Sisko overacts his way off the station on a leave of absence. We are left with a Sisko-less space station, a collapsed wormhole, and a dead Dax all as a cliffhanger going into the final season of DS9.
On the eve of an assault into Cardassian territory Sisko receives a message from the Prophets not to go. He then tells his commanding admiral about it, in an overly quick and poorly written exchange in which the admiral stupidly denigrates the experience and demands he go or resign. It's a small point really, just a little excuse as to why Sisko goes anyway, but the writers still have to turn it into a moment of idiot plot. "Super powerful aliens who live beyond time and space and know the future have told you something important... I've heard enough of this religious nonsense!"
This is not an exploration of religion, which DS9 never actually does, it's not a look into how the secular Federation handles a "religious" culture. It's just a character being stupid. And I know this isn't The Expanse, but considering the Federation is hundreds of worlds probably many with groaning population levels, shouldn't you really have to be the absolute best of the best to be a Starfleet admiral? With a population pool of hundreds of billions, seems like competition should get tight. Yet this idiot commander sounds like he's out of central casting for some old war movie.
Meanwhile on the other side, wild eyed Dukat shows up with some cockamamie scheme involving a Bajoran artifact that he claims will swing the war. It's not even clearly explained in the episode what happened, and certainly never explained why this would significantly affect a war. But worse than that, another super powerful Bajoran artifact? These people had so many space MacGuffins it's laughable anyone even tried to conquer them, let alone succeeded. The Justice League didn't provide as much protection as all these wacky artifacts would, Bajorans should have conquered the galaxy by now with space magic. All the quasi-religious stuff and the Pah-Wraiths, it's SO half-baked.
Back with the good guys, a joint task force attacks a planet that seems to have no actual value because they must "take the system" even though the writers can't ever attach a logistical meaning to that statement. Unfortunately for them the Cardassians have just employed a new, unstoppable technology in the form of weapons platforms that cannot be destroyed, I kid you not. Why the leader of the Cardassians didn't simply stab the Dominion forces in the back and deploy these weapons platforms to force the Founders to serve him, I don't know, because they're literally unbeatable. These weapons platforms are now the ultimate power in the universe. Except(!) that each one doesn't carry it's own power generator (one assumes as a cost saving measure) and by destroying a space rock where all their power is generated and then beamed to them, the allied ships can still win!
Unfortunately the combined firepower of the Defiant, the Federation fleet, the Klingon fleet, and maybe the Romulan fleet, I can't remember if they came along, cannot harm the space rock, I kid you not. But then Garak realizes Unstoppable Force vs. Immovable Object, and they trick the space platforms to shoot their own space rock, and of course these weapons platforms easily destroy it. And they win!
Yes, the set-up is very stupid, but one could overlook it as being typical Star Trek all the same, except Deep Space 9 has made it their business to make their space battles never have any internal consistency and it spoils the fun. To start the battle Jem'Hadar fighters RAM the Klingon battle ships. They kamikaze attack the vastly superior Klingon force since they're just going to be destroyed anyway, how does this make sense? A matter/anti-matter torpedo releasing 500 gigatons worth of explosive force just bounces off a starship's shields one week, but flying your little space ship into it cuts the thing in two the next? If shields don't work on space fighters, why do they work on torpedoes? Or don't even answer that, why don't we just put the explosive devices in space fighters and forget about torpedoes? That should handle anything short of a weapons platform.
And this goes for the whole battle, none of the ships have shields. Every shot just goes through and damages the ship being fired at in real time. Which is odd because again, these torpedoes they're firing are supposed to be the equivalent of modern day nukes right? Even a tiny tactical nuke would instantly vaporize a star ship and probably any other starship close enough to also be on camera. That's a nitpick, but my point is, these tense action scenes that are supposed to make you "worried" about the main characters and if they're going to succeed have no rules to them whatsoever. And so it becomes a high stakes game of Calvinball. You never know what's going to be true in the next moment, there are no rules save the ones the writers just made up, until it becomes impossible to feel anything toward the action. It's just dull. Sorry DS9, but TNG followed its own internal logic in battle and elsewhere, it wasn't a game of Calvinball.
Anyway, undercutting the victory, Terry Farrell is written off the show because Rick Berman is an awful human being... I mean back on the station Dax is murdered by Dukat who then collapses the wormhole or something like that, as I mentioned before it really is not explained.
Overwhelmed by Dax's death, and I also like to think the writing, Sisko overacts his way off the station on a leave of absence. We are left with a Sisko-less space station, a collapsed wormhole, and a dead Dax all as a cliffhanger going into the final season of DS9.