25 Years Ago Today, Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War Changed Star Trek Forever

Deep Space Nine revolutionized a lot of what could possibly be attainable on this planet of Star Trek, however it’s going to all the time be remembered for one in all its most transgressive plot threads: the devastating outbreak of the Dominion War, a battle that, 25 years in the past, challenged every part the franchise’s idealistic imaginative and prescient of utopia may stand for.

Although the Dominion had been an ever-growing menace all through the fifth season of Deep Space Nine, its dramatic finale—and the approaching six-part opening to season six that may conclude with “Sacrifice of Angels,” which aired 25 years in the past immediately—introduced the battle its heroes and villains alike had been dreading to an explosive, horrifying new degree. Across these seven episodes, Star Trek advised a serialized arc in contrast to something it had carried out earlier than, at the same time as components of tried-and-true tropes nonetheless weaved out and in of it. Deep Space Nine had been invaded earlier than, even way back to the climax of the present’s first season, however there’s something profound in seeing the Cardassian’s re-occupation of the present’s coronary heart and residential, routing the Starfleet personnel aboard it and leaving a complete chunk of the principle solid—Odo, Kira, Quark, Garak, Rom, Leeta, and extra—underneath the yoke of enemy occupation.

Even extra profound is that the disaster shouldn’t be settled instantly. Star Trek has carried out huge threats earlier than, however they’re tales that, at most, are advised throughout two episodes, both back-to-back or bookending and opening two seasons. It takes six episodes, six hours throughout six weeks of tv, for Captain Sisko and the crew of the Defiant to attract up the plans to re-take the station, struggling alongside the way in which with the price of combating a conflict on the dimensions in contrast to something Starfleet has seen in centuries up thus far. Across these episodes—“A Time to Stand,” “Rocks and Shoals,” “Sons and Daughters,” “Behind the Lines,” “Favor the Bold,” and “Sacrifice of Angels”—the Defiant’s crew isn’t given an opportunity to relaxation, and neither are the characters left again on Deep Space Nine both. The scope of what this arc does, pertaining to every part from Worf’s relationship to his son and Klingon honor, climaxing Kira and Dukat’s beguiling, tense relationship, Odo’s divided loyalties to his lengthy misplaced changeling peoples and his associates, and the very our bodies of our Starfleet heroes as they’re desperately chased from one wartime disaster to the following, is unthinkable in comparison with even a few of Star Trek’s most enduring epics earlier than this.

The size of the Dominion War arc works simply as a lot on the viewers because it does our heroes. We are as unsure as they’re. Is this the week issues return to regular? Is this the week they win, like all good Starfleet heroes do? As issues drag on, issues worsen for everybody—whether or not they’re drained or shedding hope, or it’s in arcs like Odo’s as we see him conflicted and finally straying from serving to Kira and his associates resist the Cardassian occupation. Small victories like Worf’s reconciliation with Alexander or the straightforward reality the Defiant crew makes it by means of their missions week to week, scrambling to poke holes on the Domnion’s encroaching forces, really feel essential within the ominous tone that echoes all through every episode. No one is aware of if victory is feasible, even in case you assume that it has to be, masterfully utilizing the size this arc takes to weigh upon the viewers.

So when, 25 years in the past, we get to “Sacrifice” and are flung into the do-or-die battle for Sisko’s barely-prepared fleet to retake the station, that uncertainty coalesces into an hour of tv that’s Star Trek’s final epic up thus far. Yes, the ship battle scenes are daring and huge on a scale unseen within the franchise up thus far, however they’re greater than their measurement and spectacle as a result of we have now spent 5 episodes earlier than this resulting in this effort—a fleet half the scale of the Dominion’s, scrounged collectively in desperation, being torn aside. Every loss issues not simply because it’s what these ships characterize—Starfleet thrust right into a battle Trek had by no means touched on this manner earlier than—however as a result of it retains the strain constructed up throughout the episodes earlier than it at a relentless fever pitch.

Which is why, finally, the deus ex machina of Sisko’s gambit to the Prophets within the Bajoran Wormhole, an equally determined plea to avoid wasting not simply Deep Space Nine and the Federation’s forces, however Bajor itself, works on the episode and the arc’s second of reduction. It forces Sisko to confront the quasi-religious standing he has assumed in Bajoran society as a bridge between the Prophets and Bajor, a standing he has in any other case up thus far prevented or tolerated. A heavy worth remains to be paid—personally on the station when Gul Dukat’s daughter Ziyal is killed for aiding the resistance, sending Dukat even additional down his villainous path, and on a macro scale when the Federation’s fleet remains to be decimated even in victory. Everyone on the present is modified by the occasions of this arc’s conclusion, in basic ways in which go on to form their tales for the remainder of the sequence. And in fact, so is Deep Space Nine itself, now not simply Star Trek present, however a Star Trek present about wartime, concerning the sorts of battle generations of Trek earlier than it had solely allowed to exist within the shadows of the previous and in worldbuilding, by no means on the core of its story.

“Sacrifice of Angels” ends the battle, but it surely doesn’t finish the conflict—however arguably it ends a minimum of some degree of Star Trek’s wider optimistic innocence, difficult it to embolden its loftiest of values, and within the course of, altering what Star Trek might be without end.

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