There’s a lot to like about Deep Area 9 earlier than it quote unquote “Gets Good.” The present’s first two seasons are, in plenty of methods, concerning the issues many reward DS9‘s again half for coping with: the price of compromising Star Trek’s utopian future on the furthest fringes of its closing frontier. However even then, few issues ready its viewers for the second every thing modified with the arrival of the Dominion War.
Whereas the opening volleys of that battle are a few of its most well-known, for good cause, the precise turning level that sees DS9 start to pivot to a battle footing occurred 30 years in the past immediately with the published of the season two finale, “The Jem’Hadar,” and the beginning of a Chilly Struggle that will quickly flip sizzling, and current Star Trek the most radical challenge to its beliefs up to now. For essentially the most half, it’s a Trek episode like many earlier than it. Pondering he was getting a quiet trip to the Gamma Quadrant together with his son Jake, Commander Sisko finds himself coping with the sophisticated annoyance of Jake’s greatest buddy Nog tagging alongside, after which Nog’s uncle Quark, hoping to get the Commander’s ear, becoming a member of uninvited, just for all of them abruptly to seek out themselves prisoners of an odd, hostile new race they’ve by no means encountered earlier than the primary evening they make camp.
Little in the best way of assets—Deep Area 9 didn’t have a ship at this level, so our heroes simply have their runabout shuttle, and what tenting gear they purchased with them—and dealing with an unknown enemy with all the ability, that is the type of episode we’ve seen many occasions earlier than in Star Trek, as Sisko, Quark, and a possible new ally in a psychic alien girl named Eris who was likewise caught fleeing the titular Jem’Hadar, attempt to fail to both escape the clutches of their new foes and even join and perceive them diplomatically. It’s maybe in any other case the type of episode that ends with our heroes getting rescued, or breaking out, and proving that Starfleet’s most interesting and their allies, even caught unawares and with out their standard assets, can work collectively, save the day, and make it out of hurt’s method. They’re Star Trek heroes! That’s what they do. However “The Jem’Hadar” just isn’t a typical Star Trek episode in what was already not a typical Star Trek present, and whereas we get that partly, it’s the climactic twist that makes Deep Area 9’s boldest gambit crystal clear.
Within the climax of the episode, after Sisko has did not test in with the station, Kira and Odo work with the Federation to ship the USS Odyssey, and one other runabout to the Gamma Quadrant seeking the Commander. They meet up, Jake and Nog rescue Quark, Sisko, and Eris, and a struggle breaks out between the Jem’Hadar and the Odyssey. A struggle the Odyssey in a short time begins shedding. This too is probably anticipated typically—Star Trek has loads of firefights escape the place our heroes can seemingly not land a shot, however their foes can discover methods to lance by their shields, normally earlier than some intelligent techno babble and problem-solving finds a approach to flip the percentages in Starfleet’s favor. That doesn’t occur right here, after which the opposite shoe drops: because the Odyssey and the runabouts start to retreat again to DS9, the Jem’Hadar ship—unhurt by what little the Odyssey may throw at it regardless of it being the overwhelmingly bigger ship—performs a kamikaze cost immediately on the cruiser, blowing itself and the Odyssey up immediately. In shocked silence, the remaining shuttles are left to hobble again residence.
With one closing twist—that Eris was the truth is working with the Jem’Hadar, and is a consultant of their shared masters within the Dominion, who do not need the Federation encroaching on their territory; she teleports away to elements unknown earlier than she could be detained—the season ends on this uneasy area. This one fight is over, and was arguably over earlier than it even started, however the Dominion will inevitably return… and Starfleet is clearly not prepared for what it’s able to.
It’s the second every thing adjustments on Deep Area 9. The present had dire threats earlier than this—the station had been boarded and occupied in a hostile coup d’etat, Sisko had already handled the emergence of a brand new guerrilla entrance within the Maquis, opening up outdated wounds with the Cardassians. However there’s a weight in seeing a ship just like the Odyssey not simply unable to the touch the Jem’Hadar, however be taken out like nothing, simply to ship a message that the Federation has no concept what it’s coping with. It’s an particularly potent message, as a result of the Odyssey isn’t just any Federation ship, it’s a Galaxy-class cruiser, at that time the idealized apex of Starfleet shipcraft, the imaginative and prescient of its scientific expansionary goals. It’s not simply the most effective of Starfleet, it’s the most effective of Star Trek: the Galaxy-class was the Enterprise. It was The Next Generation. And right here was its successor present, having already danced with the complicated legacy of its predecessor, blowing that image up: what the Federation is, what Star Trek was earlier than this, just isn’t ready for what’s to come back.
The influence was made clear when Deep Area 9 returned. We’re instantly introduced to the Defiant in “The Search,” the primary Starfleet vessel we’ve seen on-screen explicitly designed for fight, a two-part premiere that reveals even with Starfleet baring its enamel like this, Deep Area 9’s heroes are nonetheless not prepared for what the Dominion represents. The following few seasons of the present characterize a gradual and sure splintering of the Alpha Quadrant powers as we’d come to know them over TNG and the opening seasons of DS9, because the Dominion’s brokers sowed paranoia and mistrust—the seeming destruction of the Cardassian and Romulan intelligence businesses, a return to hostility between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, brewing navy coups on the coronary heart of Starfleet itself.
By the point the Dominion War turns hot on the climax of season 5, Deep Area 9 has all however accomplished its transition into the present it’s now all the time lauded for being. However even because it went on to these nice heights, there are nonetheless few stronger photographs in the complete sequence than the Odyssey wreathed in flames as its hull splinters into items—a warning, and a promise that Star Trek would by no means be the identical.
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