To Boldly Stay...

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE
SEASON SIX

November 4th, 2003

Season Six of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the series' best year. It's the apex of the learning curve that built through the first three years, then really started to deliver in Seasons Four and Five. Season Seven's good, too, but this is the true height.

Season Six contains one of the show's most memorable events, the inaugural 7-episode, serialized plot arc that would only be upstaged in the final season by the 10-episode grand finale. It features several of the series finest and most original episodes, including "In the Pale Moonlight," "Waltz," "Far Beyond the Stars," and "Rocks and Shoals." And it concludes with an absolute showstopper: the death of a beloved principal character.

Oh, and Iggy Pop is in it.

I'd like to begin, however, by discussing someone that I've intentionally left aside in past reviews, because the true magnitude of Gul Dukat's contribution to the series doesn't really become apparent until the late seasons.

Season Six was Marc Alaimo's glory. He is the Machiavellian master of the season's opening plot arc, and the personal consequences of those events for Dukat are the most tragic. A scant five episodes later, he is starring in "Waltz," and the pure, measured voice that speaks throughout much of that episode cloaks the great reservoir of madness and pain that will explode by the season's end. It's one of Alaimo's truly great moments, and the series' as well.

I was fortunate enough to meet Alaimo in the midst of DS9's time on television, and what was delightful about the man was the degree to which he really believed that Dukat was the hero of his own story. That is the fundamental nature of Dukat: a self-important, preening sociopath whose one great ongoing concern is to have his cruelty ratified by the people he is hurting. In Dukat, the writers fashioned Trek's most horrifying villain, if only because of his brazen unwillingness to embrace the naked vulgarity of his actions, and his continuing insistence that he is indeed a good man.

Dukat is not a good man. Of course, the writers humanized him considerably through the fourth and fifth seasons, but that is an important step in the development of any fine villain. By Season Six, he's back in his genocidal element, but with the added complication of his relationship with Ziyal - a relationship which would, of course, undo him. Post-Ziyal Dukat is a frightening (and frightened) creature, one of DS9's most evocative members of the Extended Family.

The producers (Ira Behr in particular) found the character's growing fan popularity in the middle years abhorrent, rather like discovering a Hitler fan club on the Internet. By Season Six, the writers are actively working to undo any momentum Dukat has picked up in his efforts to redeem himself. There is no cheating here, however. Dukat has had a legitimate chance to remake himself (through his renegade efforts in Season Four, and with his daughter, Ziyal), and has chosen the "quick and easy path" once again in Season Five. He has fallen to darkness, and as in the great myths of old, there are no second chances - his path to glory will not open again.

As I've said, Dukat is the master of the 7-episode arc that opens the season, but he is hardly its only great element. A tract of episodes that seems more like a great novel than the installments of a television series, the arc deals conclusively with no less than four interconnected plotlines.

The most important one, overall, is the Plight of our Heroes, staged in deep space, following the battles of Captain Sisko and a handful of his crew. This is the series' first ongoing analysis of war and its effects. It works great from the footsoldier's point of view in "Rocks and Shoals," and works just as well when Sisko is promoted and must take the battlefield general's stance in "Behind the Lines." There is also some great work here for Dax, who takes command of the Defiant after Sisko's promotion. Then it all comes to a rousing conclusion as Sisko masterminds the successful recapture of Deep Space Nine, momentarily breaking the Dominion's power block in the Alpha Quadrant.

Meanwhile, throughout all this, there is the second plotline, the Station Underground. Probably one of my favourite all-time Trek elements due to the combination of characters it manages to bring together, this fabulous thread follows Kira, Jake, Quark, Rom and Odo as they attempt to liberate the station and pave the way for the return of Starfleet.

This plotline weaves together with Odo's Betrayal, where the shapeshifter presages his eventual return to his people, by turning against the underground movement. Odo leaves human matters behind and mingles with the Female Changeling, which raises one of the most important story points leading to the conclusion of the series: although Odo has "played human" for years, he just isn't human. He is a Star Trek rarity, an alien who is truly alien, whose priorities and goals are completely foreign to the human understanding. That reality begins to become apparent here, and in spite of his temporary return to the good side, the writing is on the wall as far as Odo's future is concerned.

And amidst all this, we have Dukat, Ziyal, Damar and Weyoun cavorting on the station and trying to hold their strategic positions in the war. Ziyal's relationship with Garak is given an incredibly lovely moment after her death, when Garak speaks of her strange feelings for him. And of course, Damar's execution of the girl right in front of her father brings to light a character who, over the next two years, will become one of the series' strongest, mostly thanks to the incredible performance of Casey Biggs.

Season Six is unwaveringly strong as a whole but stands out from the pack, perhaps, due entirely to the presence of two very unconventional episodes. I have repeatedly referred to both in this series of reviews, for they are the watershed marks of Deep Space Nine: "Far Beyond the Stars" and "In the Pale Moonlight."

"Far Beyond the Stars" is arguably the single biggest gamble ever taken on a Trek series. It is the only episode in the entire canon to deal directly with human racism. What is even more unique about "Stars," however, is that it is Trek's only significant example of meta-text. By the episode's end, the theory has been genuinely advanced that all of this - the entirety of Deep Space Nine, and perhaps by extension, all of Star Trek itself - is nothing but the imagination of Benny Sisko, a black, science fiction pulp writer in the 1930s. This is Trek about Trek, or rather, about the nature and importance of science fiction itself. It is the only episode of the series to deal directly with how Trek works, and frankly, it's a confrontation that the franchise had to make sooner or later. Thank god it was done here, and not on Enterprise. This is one of the saga's greatest victories.

It is also Avery Brooks' finest hour on the series, and what makes this all the more mind-boggling is the fact that Brooks directed the episode himself, carving not only his most nuanced performance ever, but crafting a lovely episode that is a true visual and stylistic standout for the program.

Brooks takes center stage again before long in "In the Pale Moonlight," the first episode of Trek to utterly shatter every notion of "Federation morality" as described and envisioned by Gene Roddenberry. (Fascinating that the two episodes would appear in the same season. The first is essentially about why Roddenberry is a genius, while the second is about the limits of his vision.)

In "Moonlight," Sisko becomes involved with conspiracy, politics, and ultimately cold-blooded murder, all in an effort to bring about a massive turn of the tide in the Dominion War. It is the most ethically ambiguous episode of Star Trek ever produced, and Sisko's defining moment as a character. Back in "Q-Less" when he barked "I'm not Picard!", he may only have been posturing. Here, he finally proves it. Sisko is unique among all Trek captains, and his ongoing maligning at the hands of the critics and some fans shows just how self-serving and pathetic many Trek followers have become.

"In the Pale Moonlight" is a Trek rarity in that it needs a few runs to really digest. The first time I saw it, I just thought it was a nifty little thriller. Five years on, I find it more fascinating every time I watch it, a distinction shared with only a handful of Next Gen episodes ("Family," "The Inner Light," "All Good Things"), and exactly one episode of Voyager ("Equinox").

Far lighter, but equally satisfying, are two comedic entries in the season. The first is the unofficial final part of the season's opening plot arc, "You Are Cordially Invited," where after so much grim war-mongering, the crew gets to kick back and enjoy the wedding of Dax and Worf. Viewed with "Change of Heart" as a companion piece, we really get the sense of the poetic (and ultimately tragic) relationship between the Trill and the Klingon, one of the series' more audacious pairings and, perhaps, its most resonant.

Then there's "The Magnificent Ferengi." On the whole I am not a fan of the Ferengi-centric episodes because they tend to fail more often than they succeed. Well, no worries here. "Magnificent" is just that, a hysterical commando mission staged by Quark that involves not only all of our favourite Ferengi guest stars (with Rom and Nog in principal roles), but manages to dredge Empok Nor into the situation, and even has a lugubrious guest role by the Life Luster himself, Iggy Pop.

The Kira/Odo romance is finally solidified towards the end of Season Six, which is good in that it just finally gets the whole thing out of the way. I reiterate my objections to the coupling, but admit that when the writers finally stopped hemming and hawing about the whole deal and just got it done, they did a very nice job of it. Kira's love for Odo feels earned, rather than automatic, and it is their parting scene in the series finale the following year that is, for me, that episode's highlight.

"His Way," the episode in question, also introduces Ira Steven Behr's final note of total wackiness that he would add to the DS9 mix: Vic Fontaine, a holosuite-generated lounge crooner straight out of the Rat Pack (literally) and played with unending panache and humour by Jimmy Darren. It's a real kick in the head, although I can't imagine what the hell the Trekkies thought was going on at the time.

Some episodes in the season remain lacklustre, such as the inevitable fourth part of the "Mirror" saga, "Resurrection," which has the bad taste to bring Vedek Bareil back from the dead as a dimwitted con man. I'm also not fond of "Statistical Probablities," although the newfound genetic engineering angle for Bashir is one of the finer notes of Season Six and Seven. Just lose the Geek Troop!

Bashir (and his genetic enhancements) are treated far better in "Inquisition," a tightly-crafted thriller, directed by Michael Dorn, that introduces the notion of Section 31. It's too bad Section 31 came into play so late in the game; the plotline is followed nicely the following year in a couple of episodes, but on the whole it's such a perfect DS9 concept that it's really a shame it couldn't have been plumbed to greater depths.

"The Reckoning" establishes important mythological grounds that will lead all the way to the series finale, when Winn makes a fateful choice to defy the prophets (in Sisko's name, no less) that will bear major consequences in episodes to come. By this point, Louise Fletcher has become one of the series' mainstays, and her consistently measured performance of Winn is a great delight. It's difficult to ever really know Winn's true motivations, and even at the end of her story, she continues to flipflop between right and wrong.

So then there's that ending. "Tears of the Prophets" lays to waste everything that has been gained through Season Six, and of course, does it on a personal, rather than political, level.

I must voice my incredible aggravation with Terry Farrell for not signing on for what had already promised to be the series' final year. Having been a pivotal arm of Deep Space Nine for six years, Farrell should have had the integrity to see things through to the end, regardless of her personal mores. After all, this is Trek, and one of the best Trek series, not some dimwitted sitcom. It's an actor's playground, and at the time, her jump to Becker seemed completely insane. (I have no choice but to admit that time has proven us all wrong on that, but Becker remains an execrable show, and Farrell's ability to choose material must be highly questionable.)

No matter. Deep Space Nine survived just fine without her, thank you very much. The exit of Jadzia allowed the series to introduce one final grace note, the next host of the Dax symbiont, as everything began to wend its way towards the grand finale...

"To Boldly Stay..." has been an ongoing review of all seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The complete series is now available on DVD.

You can access the complete series of reviews on the left.