Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Final episode What You Leave Behind
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Starring Avery Brooks, Rene Oberjounois, Nana Visitor, Colm Meaney, Michael Dorn, Alexander Siddig, Nichole deBoer, Armin Shimerman, Cirroc Lofton, and the rest of Deep Space Nine players.
This is one of my dirty, little secrets: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is my favorite Star Trek show. Why? Because it dared to be different. It showed us the darker side of the Federation. It showed us a Federation at war, and officers dealing with secrets from their past. Sisko, as captains go, has been one of the most underrated by the fans, IMHO. Plus, they had the Defiant, which was the most ass-kickingest ship in all of Star Trek. So, with the final episode coming, I was eager, yet sad.
The plot was fairly simple: with the evil Dominion on the run, the Federation was launching one massive offensive to end the war once and for all. They were off to invade Cardassia, and free the Cardassians from the rule of the Dominion, and thus crush the Dominion’s main base in the Alpha Quadrant. Kira, having been stranded on Cardassia in the previous episode, was helping the Cardassians lead a resistance against the Dominion. Of course, the good guys won, but the victory celebration didn’t last for long, as Sisko was called by the Prophets to launch one last battle against the evil Gul Dukat.
For the final episode of my favorite Star Trek, I found this to be a little. . .dissapointing. For a final episode, I was expecting more! But, based upon the episodes before, this just all felt a little anti-climactic. I guess my expectations were to high, and this just didn’t deliver. I also found it depressing that this ended with the crew being broken up! (OK, I’ll spoil it: Sisko goes off to be with the Prophets, Odo goes to the Great Link to teach his people that solids aren’t all bad, O’Brian goes off to teach at the academy, and Worf becomes Federation ambassador to the Klingon Empire.) Who knows, being the darker series, maybe a depressing end was the best way to go. But I didn’t get the big pay-off I’d been hoping for. All in all, it was good, but not as good as All Good Things…, the final episode of The Next Generation.
And one last gripe: Sisko’s original mission was to oversee the restoration of Bajor, and it’s eventual entry into the Federation. I had always hoped that the final shot would be some grand ceremony in which Bajor was finally admitted into the Federation; kind of like the medal ceremony at the end of Star Wars. Oh, well, as Spock said, having something is not as pleasureable as wanting something.