What You Leave Behind (2)

DVD, DS9 S7 (What You Leave Behind) (2)

Not the perfect finale I thought it was when I first saw it one Bank Holiday in 2003, viewing it on video as I'd missed the TV transmission on BBC2, or avoided it because I'd missed 'The Dogs of War' and wanted to watch it all complete (nor was I impressed the BBC chose to split up what was supposed to be one long conclusion into two parts), but still the best Trek finale of them all. It kicks into high gear right away with the new Defiant heading off with Klingon and Romulan forces to deal with the Dominion fleet once and for all. Seeing it today (and in my previous viewing, almost ten years ago to the day), I noticed the flaws more fully. The fact is that, though the battle is a terrific one, and far superior to anything done in Trek to this day (only the Battle of The Binary Stars in 'DSC' can really show even an attempt to rival what this series did), it isn't as good as those seen in 'Tears of The Prophets,' 'Sacrifice of Angels' or 'The Way of The Warrior' (though I loved the camera perched on the Defiant's hull as it does a loop-de-loop to plough through pursuing enemies - reminded me of the realistic camera positioning in 'Interstellar' that makes you think of real ships and real launches). There's a slight disjointedness between all the events that makes them a little episodic in narrative structure. The episode required more than the resources they had at their disposal to pull off such an epic story, so we see a lot of intimate spaces and the full grandeur and scale is sometimes nipped in the bud.

The two greatest things to seem smaller than they warranted regarded the two heroes of the story: on Cardassia, Damar's ignoble demise, and on Bajor, Sisko's simple solution. But neither is as problematic when thought about. That the Emissary to the Prophets had had his whole life geared to the point where he would have a moment in which to push Dukat, starring as the Emissary of the Pah-Wraiths, into a fiery pit, seems reductive to so much of what he went through. But to the Prophets that was the most important moment. Time has no meaning for them: a moment is an eternity, as a famous android similarly once said, and so it makes complete sense that years and years passed until this moment came. And if Sisko had had a moment's hesitation, that moment would have been his last. He had to do what he knew to be necessary, and though it was only a simple physical task, he had to be sure and willing to sacrifice himself to the unknown. And it's not like his whole life was geared to just that moment, as Sarah, his Prophet-Mother said, he was to learn new things with them and he knew he'd return to the realm of the corporeal eventually ('Star Trek: Picard'? Somehow I doubt it!), this was just one task he had to perform in his life.

Damar's death, too, can be seen in the light of all that he achieved: he unified Cardassia against their oppressors, and like Rom he prepared the ground for a new Cardassia. Though Garak is bitter that his world is gone, Kira reminds him to fight for a new one. One that was largely birthed by Damar and his choice of reconciliation - to put down the booze that he was using to cover his cowardice and take a stand for his people. To employ the services of a bitter rival in Kira, who stood for Cardassian failure, and not just that, but Cardassian military failure, something they can't endure. And to tell her that without her it wouldn't have been possible. So yes, he'd achieved much, and yes, perhaps it was foolhardy to risk him in the firing line of the Jem'Hadar, but he'd already survived one execution squad in the episode, saved when the Cardassian soldiers turned on their Jem'Hadar counterparts, and this was a last-ditch effort to get to the 'snake head' of the Dominion, as Garak put it. Now Cardassia can remember a great downed leader and erect statues in his honour and sing songs of his heroism, and, because that's all they can do, unable to have such a fair-minded leader to guide them into a new era, as the Ferengi received with Rom, it's a great tragedy, and such an epic tale required some form of sacrifice to add bittersweet meaning to the risks everybody was running. Damar's death is largely small and pointless, but it emphasises that point.

The series was written in many ways to be quite moral. Aside from Damar, the deaths and losses come mainly on the side of evil, and if there was any question of which side was truly evil it is in the actions and decisions of the Female Changeling, whose superiority to all other life forms and hatred of them, leads her to order the complete slaughter of every Cardassian on the planet. She even has a twisted logic about her: that this final act of vengeance will make other powers think twice before they venture into the Gamma Quadrant to destroy the Founders forever. As has always been the case in their history, they are still, despite all this great power, driven by fear, driven by the memory of how they were treated by the solids, blinded from the reality that not all people are of a kind. If only the Federation had sprung up in the Gamma Quadrant, then the Changelings would have had a safe haven to flee to when solids hunted them, but instead they created their own anti-Federation of fear and control. The parallels with the Cardassians are there to be weeded out, and there is much talk of how they deserved what happened to them, but again, it was their racial attitudes that allowed them to fall victim to Dukat, a leader who promised to make them the winning side against the other races of the Alpha Quadrant, a Hitler figure that was willing to sell the national soul in exchange for total power (under the Dominion, of course).

It could be said that the Female Changeling's complete one-eighty on her vicious proposal to sour the allies' victory with genocide was a rather quick reversal for one so set in her ways. But I think it shows how deeply she cared for her own kind: not just in sending a threat message of fighting to utter destruction, but mainly in the proposal Odo made. For him to return to the Great Link at last and take up his place in it as she had always wanted him to do, as she wanted all the infant Changelings that had been sent out, to do. The Link was not complete without him, so like Locutus being willingly given over to the Borg, Odo was willing to become part of the Link again. It's what he wanted to do, and his experience as, or among, solids would be invaluable to life after the war and a lasting peace across the Quadrants. It only makes you wish that the story could have continued, that this highest caliber of writers could have continued the deeply fascinating mix of galactic politics and personal journeys that they had wrought across seven years on the station. It's funny, but the situation has completed switched around from the time I last reviewed this episode in 2009 when it seemed as if the Kelvin Timeline (as it eventually became known), had spelt the end of 'our' universe forever. Yet now we have the possibility (and I keep mentioning it in my reviews because it's still astonishing to me), that the Kelvin films are done and we're going to get post-'Nemesis' stories again with the potential for any characters from 'DS9' returning. And that was an impossibility only a decade ago.

I do find it sad that 'Voyager' was so competitive with 'DS9' rather than being cooperative. They preferred to tighten links with 'TNG' and largely ignore the developments their older brother made in the Alpha Quadrant so that we never saw anyone from 'DS9' crossover post-series, and there were few connections they made beyond recognising the culling of the Maquis. Partly that was down to the series choosing to remain in the Delta Quadrant for so long instead of returning to Alpha to take up the mantle of familiar lore, but I also get the impression they were jealous of the quality of the writing and of the vastness of its cast. It's only an impression, but I don't remember seeing a change in the Ferengi when we got an episode on them in the latter stages of 'Voyager,' nor was there much mention or consequence of the aftermath of the Dominion War. The same goes for 'Star Trek Nemesis,' the final data point in the 24th Century canon until 'Picard' arrives next year, which gave passing reference to the war, and it could be argued all the Romulan stuff came about as a result of it, but it wasn't integral to the story for fear that the mainstream audience couldn't cope with connecting to TV shows - laughable considering the connectivity in superhero franchises today, and such a slapdash approach to appeasing the casual viewers didn't help the film, either. It was criminal that Worf was merely back in his old position at Tactical on the Bridge of the Enterprise-E without any mention of his ambassadorship to Qo'noS, as if he just drifted back to Picard's wing, having moved on from one Captain to another.

The fault of the reins of story not being grasped with relish by the few remaining Trek productions to continue on in the 24th Century is not a concern of 'DS9.' It set up the pieces, and if no one chose to knock them down, then that's their affair. The end of this series was like a tolling bell, warning of the coming end of Trek in its then form, never to have been succeeded since (until the hope inherent in 'Picard'). It was the end of an era, just as it was for the characters, and for me. This isn't the kind of episode you can just stick on - to me, a finale has to be earned because it is the culmination of so much, which is why it takes so many years for me to get round to it again, thus it has even more meaning because each time I see it another chapter of my own life has concluded in the interim. No other Trek series did it this way: 'TNG' felt as if it was just another day, and the series was going to continue as before (which it did with the films), which has its own feeling of security and cosiness. 'Voyager' wasn't afforded even that, ending abruptly with myriad questions about the futures of the characters left unanswered. 'Enterprise' posited a future a few years down the line where things had largely remained the same ('the more things change, the more they remain the same,' said Quark in this episode). 'TOS' had its ending in the films with a hearty conclusion. I suppose the closest comparison is 'Nemesis' where the 'TNG' cast is split up, leaving Picard to face the future 'alone,' but with hope.

I guess that makes Quark the Picard figure in this instance as he is the only one that doesn't really change. His life remains the same, he's the one that stays behind. Sure, Kira and Jake, Bashir and Ezri stay on the station, but all their lives are irrevocably altered by recent events. Quark is the only one to continue on his lonely path to profit. Well, not quite - he does still have his trusty customer Morn to keep a barstool warm from dawn to dusk. But that's what I love so much about this ending, that it shows that though these events have been so damaging or so rewarding, and so much has changed in this world we've viewed so long, the essential world is still there. Quark's Bar will continue. Perhaps Bajor will move towards Federation membership now that the Dominion threat is passed. The rebuilding of Cardassia will throw up new problems. We already know what happened with the Romulans in both 'Nemesis' and 'Star Trek XI,' so it wasn't all roses for them. The Ferengi have a new, kinder Nagus. The Breen… well, they remain as mysterious as ever, even though Kira pulls off another coup, finding a Breen uniform to hide in, just as she did in their first appearance back in Season 4's 'Indiscretion' - we still don't know if she saw what was inside, or whether it was merely discarded. When the Breen express their wish to go and join up at the front of the battle, I really expected them to be evacuating Cardassia as a tactical move so they could slink off from the battle and leave their Dominion allies in the lurch, but to their credit they stuck it out. They must really have wanted Romulus and Earth - perhaps they were avid collectors of homeworlds? (I can see it now, a subscription to 'Star Trek Homeworlds' where the price for signing up is undying loyalty to the Founders, and the reward a new homeworld to add to the collection each month, with a magazine detailing everything the Dominion knows about it!).

The moral of the story is that evil's day will come: Legate Broca, the puppet leader of the Cardassians is turned on by his superiors when the Cardassians switch sides in the midst of battle, revenge for the Dominion laying waste to Lakarian City. He's taken out into the darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, and even worse, we see one last stab (literally!), of showing the Jem'Hadar's brutality as they bayonet him and his fellows to death. The Jem'Hadar had been lost in recent seasons - they reached the point of becoming more than a blunt instrument for the Founders to use to batter their enemies, as we were presented other views of them as an honourable, duty-bound force that held their loyalty in the highest honour. But this season especially they weren't given a voice, and even the potential development that would have ensued from the differences between Alpha and Gamma Quadrant-bred types, fell through the cracks as so many other things had to be tied up. That's perhaps one reason why the season doesn't work as well as the preceding one, Ezri taking up a little too much screen time to the detriment of other elements. But at least the Jem'Hadar do have a bodily presence in the finale, even if it's to fail in executing the traitors or protecting their leaders. They demand their prisoners stand to be executed, but deny them any last words, death their only concern, and that's what they received, failing to gain an inkling of what motivates their Cardassian associates, to their undoing.

Weyoun, too, couldn't preserve enough survival instinct to save his life (literally), as he boasts of the waste laid to Cardassia, right at Garak. To be fair, he was still giddy with the kindly praises the Female Changeling (who always remained nameless to the end), gave him as the only solid she could trust, so he was cock of the walk in his last moments, guard down, and body downed by Garak's Phaser. Anyone else would have been gratified to have captured a war criminal, but unfortunately Garak isn't anyone else and has always shown an ability to kill in cold blood. Which is a sort of contradiction in terms since all Cardassians are coldblooded all the time. And if anything, his blood was up, revenge filling his mind so that it only took one trigger from Weyoun to set it off. He was almost ready to shoot Odo for wanting to link with the Female as they really don't want a healthy shapeshifter morphing off into freedom. But no, thanks to Odo's reconciliation, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall inherit the Great Link, she was more than happy to stand trial for her crimes and take responsibility. That's something we never hear about: what was the judgement, and her penance? Could she be judged as an individual or would the whole Link have to be judged. It was enough for the story that we see the historic signing of peace between the peoples in the Ward Room, packed out with humans, Romulans, Klingons, even Vorta, though no sign of Weyoun for he was the last of his clones. Does make you wonder though: did they have copies back in Gamma? Could other forces have been built up there so there was another fleet of Jem'Hadar ships waiting to come through the Wormhole?

Who else dies? Why, the home grown villains of the piece, Kai Winn and Gul Dukat. Fittingly for their hateship, they each kill the other: Winn poisons her fellow cult member gleefully, and Dukat burns her to a crisp (though it's all very tastefully done, the fire too intense for us to see anything - 'DSC' would take as much glee with showing every burn as Winn took in murder), once he's been revived by the evil power of the Pah-Wraiths. Was Winn's turn against them just one more self-serving decision, or did we see a glimpse of the true penitent once more, the one that requested answers from Kira when things weren't going well in her walk with the Prophets? It's difficult to see what the benefits would have been if she had managed to hurl the book of evil into the fire. She might have survived, I suppose (no one will ever know what happened to her as no one comes back from the Fire Caves to tell the tale), but I'd like to think that she finally saw the light at the end. It's never too late for redemption, but unfortunately, thanks to the pattern of her life and choices it's just as, if not more, likely that she was merely interested in hurting the Pah-Wraiths because they rejected her as their Emissary, so like Khan she was spitting her last breath at them, rather than being noble and taking the side of the Prophets' side. Either way, it gave Sisko the moment's diversion he needed to plough into Dukat and end the whole sorry state of affairs.

None of the main cast are killed off, mercifully, whether that was in the vain hope that the series might one day become popular enough that it demanded a film sequel as had happened with its two predecessors, or because it would have been ungrateful to punish such wonderful characters merely for surviving to the end, I don't know. Perhaps it was even in response to the bad taste left from having to execute Jadzia at the end of Season 6, which no one really wanted, I think. I can't help feeling that the current runners of Trek would take great joy in killing off some main cast, believing that only with this will people feel the drama, but for me that is only something to be done if there is no other option because you're taking away the audience's ability to imagine that this world and these people will continue on outside of the adventures we've been privileged to see. It's a lazy choice to kill for dramatic effect and in the name of realism (as if any of this is really real!), so I'm very glad to see they didn't do it to the heroes here. It makes you think anyone could return to the Trek fold in future, though sadly the time has passed for Nog (Aron Eisenberg), and Admiral Ross (Barry Jenner), both having died since the last time I saw this episode, adding a new poignancy to their scenes: Ross the best Admiral ever seen on Trek, and Nog a promising, newly promoted Lieutenant with a career towards captaincy guaranteed. They will be missed, and it makes me wonder how many more of these great actors will have gone by the time I come round to seeing the episode next time?

If the main characters were spared, the writers at least had some fun with the concept, setting us up to wonder about their fates by opening with so many domestic scenes before the stride off to battle. Bashir is toying with audience expectations when he says it would be a shame if anything happened to him or Ezri when they've just found happiness together, and O'Brien is there in the familiar Quarters with his whole family (I wonder if they got the same baby Kirayoshi as last season?), a delight to see and all too brief - he's planning to return to Earth to teach at the Academy. In the same vein we see the Sisko family together in their Quarters with Kasidy requiring a promise that her husband will come back safely. One thing they didn't stint on in this finale is giving the characters chance to breathe and live in this world one last time - the domesticity of the station is one of the things sacrificed on the altar of war over the last few seasons. It may have irked some viewers that there were small stories in the early seasons, but it gave us the chance to get to know these people from all angles and made the station a living place, the 'Cardassian monstrosity' became a home, and a homely place to visit week by week. That's why it's so enjoyable to go back to the beginning and watch through again because you've almost got two different series', the first half concerned with more intimate details and the second a brassier, bolder epic, even heard in the main theme's brassing up.

The joy of the series is to see it as a whole - in fact, if you think about it, not only does the series make Sisko a Prophet, but the dedicated viewer, too. Just like those non-corporeal aliens that live outside time, we see the whole picture of the series, the complete story. Like them we can dip into any part of it in any order, but it remains its own bubble of time internally. You can't say that about all TV shows! The series has always meant so much to me as the first TV show I really 'discovered' on my own over a number of years, and the first and only series I collected the videos for to completion. It came along at just the right time in life and fitted the bill of what I wanted, perhaps moulding my view of how TV should be, and while not exclusive as the only series I am so strongly attached to (both 'BUGS' and 'Voyager' are in the vicinity, though they can't touch it), still, to this day, it remains and shall ever so, my favourite. I'm with Quark when he says he doesn't like change, and it's just one more character trait that cements him as my favourite character across all Trek. Around him everyone is moving on to new places or different roles, but he's still there, just as the series will be still there to revisit.

There's been so much chatter over the years from people wishing they'd hurry up and create a higher resolution version of the series, but to me I think it's better that it remains as it is. It is grainy, and it is gloomy, particularly in this episode which takes place in so many dark spaces, whether it be the Fire Caves, or the smoky Bridge of the Defiant (I couldn't quite make out whether the plaque on the wall said USS Defiant-A, or not - but I like that ambiguity), the dank cellar or the cramped streets of Cardassia, even the low lighting at Vic's. Perhaps it's not good for those of us with poor eyesight, straining to see every detail (Ira Steven Behr just walked past!), but it somehow pulls you in much more than the flat, bright lighting of 'TNG,' and invests the place with a Christmas lights glow. Perhaps for such a huge scale story things were too close and claustrophobic, but they were leavened with some beautiful matte paintings such as the contrast between the sunny, peaceful Bajor, and the ominous red sky over Cardassia, and finally its broken capital, the familiar view replaced by smoking, blackened ruins - there's even a sense of imminent danger as the rebels leave dead Mila's basement for their final attempt on the Dominion stronghold before Jem'Hadar weapons flatten the building. The best stories show the end is just a new beginning, like 'The Lord of The Rings' (I'm sure I've mentioned before, but if 'DS9' were a literary work it would be on par with that great tome), and through the devastation we can imagine the lives of the characters continuing on.

The most heartbreaking sequence of the finale is the montage of scenes from other episodes as characters take a brief moment to recall some of their memories, and well chosen they were, even if it is a tragedy that they couldn't use any clips of Jadzia, which is bizarre considering you'd assume they own the rights to whatever's been filmed - does that mean Terry Farrell refused to allow her image to be used? I can't imagine that. It's unashamedly sentimental, but not indulgent, or at least only as much as the series had earned and these wonderfully drawn characters deserved. That was the key to the series' success, not the action spectacle, nor even the sci-fi trappings, but how well these people were made real in our minds. Worf gained a sense of humour on the station, Sisko found his place, Kira learned control, Bashir could be himself, O'Brien lived life, Quark learnt from the hew-mons, Jake found a career, Dax changed her life, Odo answered the mystery of his… It is a positive, life-affirming series, even though it often appeared murky in tone and visuals, and it had the Trek vision all over it, but with added depth and complexity. They let slip the dogs of war, but still learned, in the words of Jean-Luc Picard, 'what we left behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all, we're only mortal,' except perhaps for Benjamin Sisko, the Builder of Bajor. I'd like to believe the writers, whether consciously or not, took the title from Picard's speech at the end of 'Generations,' because that film also deals with destruction and the moving on of life. Crucially, Kira finds the baseball still on Sisko's desk, an affirmation the Captain is coming back. One day. Until then we pull away from Jake and Kira, standing in front of a window, much like in the alternate future of 'The Visitor' when his Father was ripped away from him. The difference now is that he's grown up, his own man, and Sisko makes it known to Kasidy that it's not over, he will return. As we pull back from the station we see it as a tiny jewel in the vastness of space, among all those other stars. A perfect end.

*****