I get emotional every time. Deep Space Nine ends with a beautiful farewell that manages to cover a lot of bases. It wraps up the Dominion War and gives - mostly - satisfying farewells for these characters. This show had by far the characters with the most depth and development in the franchise. There is no room for arguing that fact at all. They felt real. They had faults and they had arcs and evolved throughout the show.
So, it's a real shame that this is the final on-screen appearance for all of them bar Worf. If there was any Trek show that deserved a continuation in film format it was this one. The stories developed here were so rich, and even though this episode wraps things up it still leaves enough open questions and paths for exploration (with one MASSIVE cliffhanger in particular).
This episode itself is strong though certainly not without problems. The pacing is mostly good, but every time we cut to Kai Winn and Dukat on their pah-wraith search it really spoils the momentum. I've now learned (thanks to online forums that didn't exist for me back in the day) that a lot of people were not fans of any of this storyline. I can kind of understand why, even though it never bothered me too much. I really like the mythos that was slowly built up around the Bajoran religion, and certainly when I was younger I couldn't see the way elements became shoehorned in. The pah-wraiths amount to little more than hand-waving magic when you really look at them and they had the effect of turning both Winn and Dukat into pantomime villains.
I don't really accept the way that Winn changed her entire religious beliefs so readily, even though she tries to justify it. I also don't quite understand most of Dukat's motivations after he loses his daughter in season 6. If we are supposed to believe that he's just gone a bit insane then it could have been portrayed better. The whole showdown is over and done with far too quickly and it all gets a bit Star Wars (which I adore, but Star Wars is fantasy-based whereas Star Trek is science fiction/technology based). It doesn't fit. And we get a fast wrap up where Sisko and Dukat just fall into the fire which is... silly, to be polite.
The rest of the episode makes up for this, though. The final battle of the Dominion War is a visual feast and a gripping rollercoaster. The space battle is a tremendous accomplishment for 1990s television standards, but the best part is the Kira/Garak/Damar resistance storyline. Those three characters have such rich histories of conflict to mine that putting them together leads to nothing but joy on screen. The death of Damar does feel like a gut punch even though we've spent so much time hating him for his actions over the course of the past few seasons. It's a shame that his murder of Ziyal is never directly addressed by Kira or Garak. The love-to-hate-him character Weyoun gets a satisfying send off, and the war is ended with a moment of compassion and understanding when Odo offers to give himself up to save everyone.
The individual character bookends are also greatly satisfying, and often bittersweet. Odo leaves, O'Brien leaves, Worf leaves. Odo's decision feel natural even though he leaves hurt people in his wake, but Miles' is much more unexpected and actually the more emotional for me. The O'Brien/Bashir bromance was among my favourite parts of this show, so the video collage of their past moments is heartbreaking for me. Worf's departure is a bit stranger, since we will see him again in Star Trek: Nemesis and it doesn't acknowledge his decisions here at all. Additionally, I will be forever disappointed that there are no flashback to Jadzia due to licensing reasons.
In happier endings, Julian and Ezri are finally together and I like it. It was all a bit forced but I'm just happy at the thought of them together. Nog gets promoted to Lieutenant (take that, Harry Kim), Kira is in charge of the station and Quark gets to keep running the bar while Rom has become Grand Nagus!
That leaves the saddest ending of all: the Siskos. In particular, I think Jake gets the short straw. His dad is gone but just within reach. Benjamin has not only left his son behind, but his pregnant wife. It's a bold ending that leaves you wanting to know more, and extremely bittersweet. Ben and Jake were the heart and soul of this show from the very beginning and I think it's appropriate that it finishes on a shot of Jake thinking about his dad while being comforted.
I said in my review of 'Emissary' that DS9 was my favourite TV show of all time. This rewatch has solidified that statement for me. The characters here are mismatched, broken people who grow and evolve into true friends and take us on that journey with them. It has also really struck me how much DS9 continues to stand up to today's modern TV landscape, while the other Trek shows feel very much liked dated products of their time. Here we have a tale of terrorism, religion, war and through all that a thread of hope and idealism.
I absolutely can't leave it here, and I'm going to be delving into the "relaunch" novels that pick up where the show ended and continue the journey. It's not official canon and could easily be overwritten at any time (especially given the announcement of all the new Trek heading our way on TV), but that doesn't take away from these new stories at all, and given the "black sheep" nature of DS9 in the franchise I have a feeling that these stories are probably the best I can hope for. There's also the upcoming documentary What We Left Behind to look forward to, and maybe one day we'll get a nice HD upgrade for the show.
See you again down the road, DS9.
To me Janeway's reaction to her older self isn't very credible. Couldn't she be just a little bit confused? Then she discusses breaking the rules with her older - disturbingly confident - self. Is that how we can imagine her decision making process throughout the series? She contemplates breaking the rules, knows it's wrong but does it anyway? That's at least in line with her previous somewhat erratic behavior. Plus, the way both the Queen and old Janeway regard Seven as their pet project is strange. It's really like they wanted to assign an importance to Seven, that I fail to understand. Yes, she's a valued member of the crew and Janeway always used to be her custodian, but she shouldn't be the raison d'être for both the finale and the show. One last praise to Ryan. Although Seven's romance is surprising (and ill-prepared) and makes no sense to me, Ryan can effortlessly adapt her character. For years, she played the reserved Borg drone but now (ill prepared over the course of the last few episodes) she's able to add a very romantic and flirty side to Seven. The interactions between Seven and Chakotay, her alternating between being the professional science officer we used to know and experiencing a teen romance, are great. Could this maybe the only romantic story of the show depicted decently? Too late too find out whether that story could actually work, though.
The actual exit is a hodgepodge of ideas: time travel, doppelgangers from the future (who basically guides them single-handedly blindfolded to the exit w/o much help of the crew), Borg, the Borg Queen, trans-warp tunnels (extending all the way to Earth), future technology (integrated within days), space battle, a mind communication interface, an anti-Borg virus and whatnot. Compressed into 20 minutes or so. Show runners desperately needed a positive outcome and since they never concocted a concise framework for the overarching story, they never prepared the viewer for how it all will end. It all feels isolated, random and desperate.
And the absence of any emotional gratification is stunning. Really? No reaction? The admiral asks for minutia (while Tom is right there and he became a grandpa this very moment!)? Janeway announces to file a report about the events? Not even a Q2-style party in engineering? Not a single emotional outburst? No outlook? What will happen to our heroes? Does nobody care? (Given how the show was designed, they will probably have forgotten these events by next week) No welcome-home scene? No emotional looking-back to their adventures (like DS9 did in a very kitschy way)? Over the course of seven seasons characters and audience have imagined how it is to come home, but ... nada. Kim is not even promoted to full officer; the Marquis members not pardoned?
I'm perhaps a bit too critical with this episode. Overall, it's an exciting action episode and how could you not be captivated by the end of such an epic odyssey? How could you not feel relieved they made it home? Thus, it's an 8/10 (it's of course not an ubiased judgement after all the time invested in watching but as long it's not a fiasco to the proportions of GoT's finale, I'm very generous about show finales - they are hard to master).
[8.0/10] I don’t think I appreciated how much of Star Trek is founded on morality when I was a kid. So many of the franchise’s sci-fi thought experiments go beyond “What would you do?” and into the harder question of “What’s the right thing to do?” From the beginning, Starfleet has had tremendous power -- ships, weapons, daring officers -- but has also been keen to think about what it means to wield that power, and the onus on those it’s entrusted to use it ethically and responsibly.
So an episode like “Prey” could get by on its premise alone. The Voyager crew teams up with a wounded Hirogen hunter to track down an injured member of Species 8472 that's skulking through the ship. That is, as Aristotle explained in Poetics, some big deal shit. Seeing the two big new species who stepped into the spotlight in season 4, suddenly in conflict with one another, with a Borg nanoprobe chaser, is an almost fanfiction level mash-up of cool concepts smashed together with urgency and dramatic flair.
But the part of “Prey” that's going to stick with me, the part that makes the episode worthy of Star Trek’s legacy and not just another sci-fi monster mash, is how this unique situation leads to moral conflict between Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine.
There are plenty of moral and practical questions to chew on here. Voyager detects the wounded Hirogen on the ship. Do you go explore to learn more about an enemy, or forebear lest you be caught in some booby trap? When you find a belligerent Hirogen hunter, do you let him die in case he becomes a threat to you, or do you help heal him in the hopes of opening peaceful relations?
When a member of Species 8472 invades your ship and starts taking over systems, do you try to stop it by any means necessary, or hope to simply subdue it so that you can make contact with it too? And when a group of Hirogen fighters descend upon your vessel, demanding you turn the alien over as their quarry or else, do you give in to protect your crew and hope to start a diplomatic dialogue, or do you help the alien get home, because it’s wrong to trade someone else’s life to save yours?
These aren't easy questions. For creatives making network television, they come with the added benefit of providing excuses for you to send hulking, armored brutes down darkened corridors to fight CGI Xenomorph knock-offs. (That’s right folks, Voyager basically gave us Alien vs. Predator years before the actual licensed characters squared off on the big screen.) As much as I enjoy the highfalutin moral quandaries that are the franchise’s stock and trade, I can’t deny the simple pleasures of the suspense and action “Prey” delivers here.
While the Species 8472 CGI is still a bit rudimentary, and the lack of gravity on deck eleven is overcome a little too conveniently, watching our heroes stalk through the hallways in environmental suits, with a tenuous ally in tow, facing down a psychic alien who can't be scanned and seemingly can’t be killed by conventional weapons, comes with a badass verve we don’t always get in Star Trek.
The intimidating demands of the Hirogen, the way Chakotay stands his ground, the image of an exobiological organism floating in the middle of the hallway, all leads to some tense moments and exciting action. (Even if the show conveniently cuts away in moments where there’s not enough budget to show the member of Species 8472 in action for too long.)
The bigger conflict, though, is not between the Hirogen and Species 8472, or between Voyager and the invader; it’s between the Captain and Seven.
Janeway wants to investigate the Hirogen ship in case there’s intel worth gathering. Seven objects that it’s too big of a risk given how combative the Hirogen have been in the past. Janeway wants to shoot to stun the member of Species 8472 who’s boarded Voyager in light of Starfleet principles, while Seven thinks its life is forfeit for invading their space, in the shadow of Borg enmity for this foe. Most of all, Janeway wants to send the alien home to fluidic space in the name of mercy, even if it means having to fend off the Hirogen, whereas a bewildered Seven thinks they should turn the wounded being over at the first opportunity to protect the crew from another attack.
There’s been a parental relationship between the Captain and Seven, and to date, it’s mostly been a copasetic one. Janeway is patient with her new charge, helping Seven to see the benefits of the Federation’s “irrelevant” ways. But these debates take on a different character, that of a parent trying to instill not just practical advice, but deeper values to their child, while a rebellious teenager pushes back and asserts their own independent thoughts.
It’s a good dynamic to transpose onto this larger than life situation. And here’s the thing -- I largely think that Seven’s right! As I mentioned in the Tuvix episode, I tend to be more of a utilitarian, so I see the logic in sacrificing someone who invaded and threatened your ship in order to protect the hundred plus people aboard. Seven isn’t wrong to suggest that Janeway can be reckless (see, uh, her collaborating with the Borg), or that Starfleet principles can create more risks, or that, as another logical thinker once put it, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
But I’m also heartened by Janeway standing up for the values that have been at the heart of Star Trek since the beginning. As Seth MacFarlane, of all people, once noted, the phasers were always first set to stun. The urge toward discovery and explanation represented by Janeway wanting to investigate the Hirogen vessel, the impulse toward diplomacy over combat that comes through in her interactions with the Hirogen in sick bay, the drive to put compassion over pragmatism that befits a people with tremendous technology and power, all speak well of Janeway, and the organization that instilled those values in her. Those choices make me like and appreciate where the Captain is coming from with all of this, even if I ultimately disagree.
Her story about her commanding officer ordering her to treat a dying Cardassian soldier during the war gilds the lily a bit. But it speaks to the idea that ultimately, Starfleet is devoted not only to being humane, but to upholding one’s own humanity. There's a grand debate in the fandom over whether or not Starfleet is a military organization, and frankly I think it’s pretty silly. Whether they have ranks, or use weapons, or are out there primarily for exploration or defense, there is a deep code of ethics at the heart of all the Federation does, one which values life, mercy, and altruism above any other formalities.
At the same time, what I appreciate about “Prey” is that it makes a very Deep Space Nine move here. I can imagine the Next Generation version of this story ending with Seven seeing Janeway’s perspective, internalizing the need to show kindness even to one’s enemies, and taking the steps herself to send the member of Species 8472 back into fluidic space.
Instead, she disobeys a direct order. She argues with the Captain and tells Janeway she’ll fail. She acts entirely opposite to the values Kathryn tried to instill in her recalcitrant ward. In essence, she takes a life, condemning an innocent soul to death to protect her own.
That is bold! It’s a sign that, for all her progress, Seven can’t be trusted yet. It creates meaningful friction and distance between her and the Captain. There are real consequences, with Seven being restricted from key systems and kept on a short leash. The nascent crewmembers who thinks they know better takes direct action, and countermands her superior officer not just on a pragmatic basis, but on a matter of deep conviction. That's significant!
It’s also the act of a rebellious teenager. Seven has a point, that Janeway encouraged her to think for herself, make her own choices, apart from being in a collective. And Janeway has a point, that individuality has its limits, especially when there’s a chain of command necessary to keep a complex ship and community running. Where the lines are between presumptuous betrayal and noble disobedience, isn’t clear, especially when the lives of your fellow crewmates are on the line.
Because at the end of the day, this isn’t a battle between the Federation and the Hirogen and Species 8472 and the Borg. As Janeway’s closing log hints, there’ll be time for such things later. Instead, this is a battle of values, between compassion at a cost, and pragmatism to protect those you’re responsible for. It’s a tug-of-war that's been with Star Trek since its earliest days, and normally, the devotion to altruism and principle wins out. If only for an episode, far from the place where such principles were born, it’s nice to see someone not steeped in such ways make a different choice, and force her caretaker to realize that however much progress they’ve made together, with an act like that, Seven isn’t one of them just yet.
