A tense and (literally) dark war drama. No other show in the franchise dared to show so much of the horrors of war and personal loss. As such it's a continuation of The Ship and Nor the Battle to the Strong. Like the latter episode, some of the depictions of warfare and the actual warriors are a cheap or cartoon-ish version of real (anti-) war movies. Some aspects of the actual battle don't even make sense (like the ubiquitous mines that could easily have destroyed the whole base when detonated at once). But what did you expect? DS9 doesn't have the budget or production time to morph into Platoon, Full metal Jacket or Apocalypse now. That's not the point. That was never the point. They had to work with what they got even if that's the same old same old paper mache cave. Within the constraints of a weekly 90s TV show they produced an extraordinary episode that discussed topics that nobody else dared to discuss. And it's not even the main reason why I will always remember this episode. First time viewers think that's an isolated episode, but it isn't. I will always remember it as the prelude to one of the franchise's best episodes It's only a Paper Moon.
I also like how these officers (and the Ferengis) suddenly do what had to be done w/o being trained or prepared for their new task. People adapt to the atrocities and hardships. That's another parallel to Nor the Battle to the Strong. And although we've seen Benjamin contemplate similarly about personal sacrifice in exchange for futile wartime victories in The Ship, this never gets old.
Tbh though, w/o It's only a Paper Moon this would be a solid 6/10 or low 7/10 but due to its connection to the "second part" this is a very solid 7/10.
This is the type of episode you won´t forget. Doesn´t matter how long ago I watched it, this stayed in my mind.
If the rest of DS9 were more like this, and less like a bad soap, it might be worth watching.
Review by LeftHandedGuitaristBlockedParent2018-07-09T11:55:18Z
I don't feel that this episode deserves quite the amount of praise that so many people give it. It delivers a message about the effects of war, but because this is '90s Star Trek it's so watered down. None of the guest characters feel like real people and indeed they exist only to be cheesy caricatures. Raymond Cruz (I'd totally forgotten he was in this) comes off the worst as the near psychotic soldier on the edge of a nervous breakdown with a really OTT performance. I don't believe in a single one of these characters (I had similar issues with season 5's 'Nor the Battle to the Strong', although on a smaller scale).
The ketracel white necklace also looks extremely silly.
The themes of the episode are important ones, but they've been delivered so much better in other places, be it war films or even other episodes of DS9. Quark (whose reasons for being there are kind of iffy) actually manages to be the best part of the whole thing and manages to bring a bit of weight to proceedings. Ezri and the engineer also have some nice moments. We see Nog lose his leg here but the full impact of it won't be felt until later, at this point I think we're all assuming that future prosthetic technology will be able to fix him up good as new.
The "houdini" mines are a scary invention, but once we see just how many are floating around in the Starfleet camp they suddenly become a bit dumb. If there were that many in there, the Jem'Hadar could have wiped out everyone in the camp at any time they wanted.