S7E17, “Penumbra” (René Echevarria)

All right final arc time. DS9 home stretch.

Per the title metaphor, this is mostly an episode of setup and foreshadowing. Worf has gone missing, and it turns out, Ezri especially misses him. She even uses her security clearance to barge into his quarters, where she sees his bat’leth, and reminisces about all their great bat’leth sparring dates. She decides to go out after him against Sisko’s orders, in what I am sure will be a straightforward rescue mission that goes off without a hitch.

…Of course it doesn’t. She does find him in like twenty minutes, which raises the question of just how incompetent the Federation Search Team must have been. But they get stranded on a planet and are captured by the Breen, too, so it’s not like they can call the mission a total success. Also they are immediately sniping at each other. As lifelong viewers of TV and movies, we know this will culminate with them sleeping together. But I like how they have handled the Ezri/Worf situation this season. It’s obviously super weird, and they’re going to have lingering feelings for each other, but also the chemistry’s off. As usual with DS9, they manage to find an interesting new angle. It’s maybe the thing I appreciate the most about this show.

Meanwhile Sisko and Kasidy are the picture of domestic bliss. Ben has bought a parcel of Barjoran land in a pre-emptive warning shot towards his retirement. I don’t know if I’ve expressed my love of Kasidy’s character. In short, she rules. (Now that we never see Keiko anymore, I am changing my mantra to “Kasidy for President.”) She’s a perfect, no-nonsense independent freighter captain who does the exact opposite of every dreamy TOS woman who immediately abandons their career once they fall in love. Anyway everything seems great with them, so they’ve decided to get married. This spurs an exceedingly rare Jake Season 7 appearance to accept Best Man duties and start planning the bachelor party. Everything seems like it will fall into place.

…Of course it doesn’t. Party-pooping comes in the form of another Sisko vision. This one of his mother, who promises a Great Trial ahead. Gosh thanks Mom. I still don’t really care for the prophet stuff. It’s too random and contrived. And I know we’re going to get a lot of it in this final arc. Hopefully it will be well-grounded in thoughtful plotting, but the showrunners have earned my trust and I think they’ll handle it right.

Finally, Dukat resurfaces with cosmetic surgery to make him appear Bajoran, and tells Damar he has a cunning plan. Dukat has maybe earned “Ugh, it’s him” status, reserved for characters for whom an appearance merits an: “Ugh, it’s him” from me, the viewer. We’re bound to have a few of them over the course of a long series like this. Bareil and Winn come immediately to mind. We just know they are going to do something to annoy us (or in the case of Bareil, bore us). Dukat has become that in his recent turn as born-again pah-wraith follower. I sorta can’t believe he’s still on the show?

Mostly just setup here but intriguing enough for a 4 out of 5. But I’m very excited for this final arc. Been watching the show for about two years and ready for the finale.

S7E18, “‘Til Death Do Us Part” (David Weddle & Bradley Thompson)

Sisko has come to believe it when the prophets tell him stuff. It’s not like it’s all pure faith. They simply erased a whole Dominion fleet to bail him out a couple seasons ago, so probably he’s gotta take them seriously. Plus Prophet Mom doubles down on the Great Trial bit, saying that getting married will cause him great sorrow. Well, it would be the lamest breakup excuse ever, so they go ahead. This feels similar to when they introduce some bright young ensign and tell us just enough of his background that we know he’s getting killed in the next thirty minutes or less. That is, it’s kind of exploiting our emotions. But also, the Prophet/Wormhole Alien mysticism has been an underlying driver of the whole series, so it’s earned here. Still, casts a grey pall over whatever’s coming.

Most of the episode, however, is two threads:

One, Winn (“ugh, it’s him her”) shows up to further dampen the mood. She has a vision for the first time ever, only it’s from the pah-wraiths, and that’s enough to drive her into a full-blown crisis of faith after a lifetime of servitude towards the prophets. Gad, she’s the worst. Naturally our boy Dukat is quite ready to take advantage of this, in the worst possible character pairing. I will say I liked the ambiguity of who’s controlling who here. The pah-wraiths seem to be manipulating them both, or at least, they have such a perfect vehicle in Dukat that they can really make some progress. Either way Kai Winn is so hopeless it’s bound to work. Interestingly this is also a bit exploitative and could go wrong, but I don’t think it will. DS9 has earned all of this: we’ve seen years of Dukat having the worst kind of greasy charisma and Winn being a weasel.

And two, Ezri and Worf sorting out their feelings while in Breen captivity. I’m still finding this interesting, even though we’re just rehashing the established particulars. There’s part of each that loves the other, and part of each that doesn’t. What worked for Jadzia/Worf doesn’t automatically work for Ezri/Worf. Naturally, as it’s not the same Dax. As it happens, this Dax prefers Julian.

Part Two of our arc ends with the reveal that the Breen have joined the Dominion. Which feels spooky I guess because they’ve done such a good job making the Breen terrifying. We really haven’t seen much of them in this series so there’s not much to go on. But their ships are creepy and asymmetrical?

I think another 4 out of 5 until we see things come together a bit more. Like everyone else in this episode, we’re taking a lot on faith.

S7E19, “Strange Bedfellows” (Ronald D. Moore)

I remember a bit from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics where he drew a series of faces ranging from very detailed to basically a plain smiley face. He explains that readers will identify most with the latter, seeing Mr. Smiley as Mx. Everyperson, while the highly detailed face is seen as another person, not us. Part of Trek storytelling is leveraging various levels of this, naturally all the main characters are humans, or very comfortably human-like aliens. They can introduce some really weird-looking aliens if they want us to feel more neutral, like the silicon-based creates from TOS, which seemed basically like big rocks. Or it can induce negative feelings too. Over many years of indoctrination, Klingons have seemed less and less gross, but once in a while they still go into a little too much detail about their food and we’re back to revulsion. The Cardassians have seemed like the most foreign regulars in DS9: utterly cold and brutal personalities, neck scales, pallid grey skin, wearing thorny militaristic clothing. The Jem’Hadar’s pure viciousness makes them comparably icky.

That was, until we met the Breen. Now anything seems relatively human if it has eyes, isn’t covered in armor, and produces natural speech rather than metallic shrieking. Damar is skeezed out by them, and that’s before they waste half a million Cardassians in service of the Dominion. Basically Damar has had it with everyone at this point. He gets a good laugh ragging on Weyoun for totally getting his neck snapped, but they just make more, so it’s a hollow victory. We could definitely see his flip coming in one form or another, and it’s further credit to the show’s overall writing strength that we believe it. It doesn’t happen in a day, Weyoun has been the worse co-worker ever for years now: overruling him all the time, tut-tutting him at any signs of flagging loyalty to the Dominion. Slowly he (and we) have realized that he has no power at all. The Cardassians have essentially become cannon fodder.

We have a few threads going now besides this. In no particular order:

• Kristen wants me to use the phrase “Dukat is playing Winn like a cheap violin.” I can’t think of a better way to describe it. All of Winn’s flaws are just sitting out there for exploitation by someone as cunning as Dukat. Though frankly, Winn has never been a very interesting character (“ugh, it’s her”). She’s the most transparent kind of cheap religious huckster to me. She’ll use her faith to justify whatever she basically just wants to do. Here’s she’s outed as a totally spineless fraud, bailing on her life’s mission and succumbing to the temptation of the pah-wraiths. All it took was a couple of visions and a few smooches from Dukat.
• Ezri and Worf continue to use their imprisonment productively, working out their relationship issues and settling on being friends. This will avoid the sticky problem of them committing what I seem to remember was the most serious crime possible amongst the Trills—rekindling a past-life relationship. Damar also busts them out of prison. So, cool! Everything’s good news today on the Ezri/Worf front.
• Kasidy is getting sucked into Emissary Wife stuff but she is not into it. She needs her freighter time. Anyway I wouldn’t agree with Martok calling marriage a lifelong battle, much less Sisko taking to the metaphor. He must realize that Klingons see literally everything in terms of warfare. We’ve also met Martok’s wife, and can understand where he’s coming from. And that that’s precisely what he wants in his marriage.

Things are starting to click together. Suddenly DS9 is unlocking its potential as a modern, multi-threaded show. 5 out of 5.