Sunday, May 10, 2015

Star Trek DS9 Episode 176 - What You Leave Behind pt. 2

So it continues. The visuals in this episode are amazing. The battle scenes between the Federation/Klingon/Romulan and the Jem'Hadar/Dominion/Breen (plus the Cardassians) are so cool looking. Think back to TOS, did you ever think you would see Starfleet forces ever combined with Romulans and Klingons? Excellent stuff.

Now thing begin to wind down. Odo meets up with the Founder and offers to cure her and all of the rest if they agree to end the war. She eventually agrees. Odo must now go back to the great link, forever. Garak heads to Cardassia to help them rebuild, he says goodbye to Bashir and doubts that they will ever meet again. The rest of the crew meet up at Vic's for the peace treaty signing. Suddenly Sisko feels that he must hurry up and leave. He is being drawn to the Bajoran fire caves, he says goodbye to Kassidy (who is pregnant).

At the caves, Dukat has been in a fight with Kai Wynn. She had poisoned "fake Dukat" but the Pah Wraiths brought him back to life and made him even more powerful. Sisko finally shows up but Wynn is dying, she tells Sisko to destroy that book thing. He does and suddenly Sisko is transported to the Celestial Temple where the Prophets tell him that he has finished his task. He must now rest with them. This could take years. Sisko visits Kassidy in a dream and tells her that he will return but doesn't know when.

Everyone says their final goodbyes. Quark makes amends with Odo and Odo shares a sad moment with Kira before he leaves forever. O'Brien goes to teach at Starfleet Academy and Worf joins Martok as a Klingon ambassador.

There is a great montage at the end highlighting the relationships between all of the characters. The final scene is great, it shows Jake and Kira looking out one of the DS9 windows as the camera pans out into space. Beautiful. I didn't always get the Dominion plot, I didn't particularly like the prophet plot but I thought that this final episode as a whole was great.

176 down

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Great series finale. Not as great as All Good Things, in my opinion, but that was the best series finale of all time.

Some behind the scenes info: After reading the script, Avery Brooks had issues with his character dying because he didn't want to portray another african american character who abandons his wife and child, so that's why they wrote in the whole "he's not dead, just temporarily with the prophets thing," which hurts the ending a bit because they really were building up to his death. But I can understand Avery Brooks's misgivings. But it does make it confusing, because you can't tell if it's supposed to be sad or not.

But, yeah, great ending to a great show.

Mugato said...

I think I was too harsh on All Good Things, mainly because after watching the TNG series straight through I just got so sick of Q that having the finale being all about him just annoyed me. Going back however, I see how much I did enjoy that one. The ending, with them playing poker, resonates much more than the DS9 montage.

I find the entire Prophet plot to be very similar to the Q plot, with both captains being "chosen one's" to some extent... and I did not think either plot was great.

I did not know that fact about Avery Brooks, but I completely agree with him. It would have been very powerful though if they killed him off, I mean killing off the captain in a Star Trek finale? Wow. But, I understand.

Unknown said...

I liked how All Good Things ended with the possibility of more. Obviously, they were starting to do movies so that's why they kept the crew intact, but it was still nice to see the ship fly into the sunset knowing they'd have so many more adventures.

DS9 had a more final ending, which works too, but in a different way. Just for the record, Avery Brooks, we're still waiting for Sisko to come back. I think maybe it happened in the novels.

Then, of course, any mention of Worf being a Klingon ambassador is dismissed in the movies so they could have Worf back on the Enterprise as the tactical officer. I don't begrudge Michael Dorn collecting those paychecks, but it really turned his character into a joke.

I think there have only been two times in the history of Star Trek when the actors put the characters ahead of just making money: When George Takei took a smaller role in Part VI so he could be a captain of the Excelsior, and then when Leonard Nimoy said thanks but no thanks to appearing in Generations.