LizstarTrek - DS9 Season 6, Episodes 21 - 26

Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!

So, there’s only one more episode left in DS9 season 6. We’re going to watch it next week, where I’ll repost this with the additional episode.

---

The Reckoning - DS9 7/10

The war is going bad, though a BIT better with the Romulans entering. That’s good! Odo and Kira are cute and lovey dovey now which will take some getting used to.

Anyways, Sisko, Kira, and Jake go down to Bajor, cause apparently some monks found a thing that might be important for the Emissary. Jake is being a weird little bitch about it like “Why is my dad okay with being Jesus now, why are we here, isn’t there more important stuff to worry about”. Jake. You’re an adult now. You’re like, 20. You don’t need to tag along when your dad goes away. As they see some old door that says “Welcome Emissary”, Sisko gets a vision that tells him that THE RECKONING APPROACHES.

They bring the stone door up to the station and give it to Dax, who has one of my favorite lines. “Yep, I know what this was the moment I laid eyes on it. It’s a hunk of stone with some writing on it.”

Sisko: “The prophets are never clear in their messages”

Kai Winn: “Ah, I wouldn’t know. They’ve never spoken to me.”

WHY IS THIS WOMAN POPE?? Anyways Kai Winn is a bitch like she always is, and demands the stone tablet back, just cause she’s a weirdo xenophobe. And then they translate the tablet and it says, very clearly: “DS9 is going to blow up”. Uh oh. And then the wormhole gets unstable and it starts fucking up Bajor.

And then Sisko gets fed up with it all and throws the fucking tablet against the wall. We then see Things release from it. I’m sure that’s fine.

We then find out what’s happening. Some Prophets and some Pah-Wraiths were released. The Prophet takes Kira, who it says is willing so that’s fine, and says that it is going to fight a Pah-Wraith here once it takes its own body to fight with. Kai Winn is like “FINALLY, A PROPHET” and begs it to give her something to do, she wants to help, and its basically like “who are you” by just, ignoring her.

They call for an evacuation, and everyone leaves, except Winn who’s being annoying as always, and we see the Pah Wraith’s choice of body: Jake. There’s a lot of body horror in his face, it’s extremely upsetting to watch. There’s a fucking DBZ-ass battle, with energy beams, and it’s unsure who’s going to win, and who might die… Until Kai Wrinn uses a button that hurts Prophets, and knocks them out of their body. Why? We don’t know. She goes “Prophets forgive me…” but uh, I dunno if they will.

Keep in mind that everything that follows is probably her fault. The prophets said everything would be good if they win, which wasn’t guaranteed, but it looked like it was. So yeah, she just killed a LOT of people, and Space Satan is still out there. Kira calls her out on it, and blames it on her pride, which y’know, makes sense. It’s what the whole episode was about.

Interestng lore, just alright episode.

Valiant - DS9 8.5/10

While Jake and Nog are going to Ferenginar to deliver a thing to the Grand Nagus, they’re attacked by some Jem’Hadar, oh no! They’re rescued by… the Defiant! Nope, not the Defiant, it’s a ship called The Valiant, which is clearled based on the Defiant. So they’re trying to mass produced the Defiant now. That’s… gonna go well I’m sure. The people on the ship are all cadets… kind of. Turns out they’re RED SQUADRON! You may not remember them. They were the Elite of the Elite cadets at the Acadamy. They ALSO tried to help set up a coup a season or two ago. They explain that they were supposed to just be on a training exercise (the same one they were sent on in that episode actually), and then all the senior crew died in an attack, and one of them, Shepard, took command and now they’re stuck behind enemy lines and basically doing run and hide tactics to hit at the Dominion.

They invite Nog in to join them, and Nog’s always looked up to Red Squad, so he’s on board, and they need an engineer. But Nog is a little suspicious… because this captain seems to be doing this under the radar, and all the missions are sent to the dead captain instead of him, and they don’t know he’s just assumed command. But everything is on the level so far. So far.

Jake befriends the doctor on board, and asks her about home. This gets her kinda emotional and missing home. Y’know, normal human stuff. But this is a WAR and we are a MILITARY. Please ignore the fact that Starfleet is not, in fact, military. They are a MILITARY. They bring her and Jake in and are like “You are not allowed to be friends because you’ll DISTRACT THEM”. Also, the captain appears to be addicted to pills, and is kinda wigging out in a very sussy way. Jake is side eying all of this.

They’re all just kids. They’re kids who are thrust into a situation they aren’t ready to handle, and they are kids who are basically being used to play out the captain’s Captain Fantasies.

Jake is thrown in the brig because he’s questioning this guy’s bullshit. Everyone else has kinda swallowed the poison. The captain has them go attack a destroyer. It’s basically like the Millenium Falcon trying to blow up a Star Destroyer. It does not go well. It predictably does not go well, and everyone starts dying as the Explodium goes off. It’s now just Nog and the girl Jake befriended, and then they rescue Jake from the brig and escape in a pod, barely making it out. The girl is like “the captain was a good man, and if he failed that means we failed him.” She’s STILL drinking the coolaid, but Nog makes the episode’s message clear: He may have been a good man. But he was a bad captain. And he killed a lot of innocent people with his arrogance.

Profit And Lace - DS9 1.5/10

Here it is. One of the big ones. This is often considered the worst episode of DS9 of all time. And as a woman myself, I am sure I will have a LOT of opinions about it. But who knows? Maybe it’ll surprise us, and be good!

The episode starts with Quark sexually harassing one of his workers by demanding she sleep with him or he’ll fire her.

Well, that didn’t last long!

Anywayst the REAL episode starts when Grand Nagus Zek shows up on DS9 with Quark and Rom’s mom, Moogie. She’s wearing clothes! and in PUBLIC! Zek explains that he recently passed a law that allows women to wear clothes. And if they can wear clothes, they can go out in public. And if they do that, they can make profit. Yay! Unfortunately, this caused societal upheaval, and all the men in power banded together to depose Zek, and now Brunt is acting Grand Nagus, to be sworn in in only a few days. Zek drags the other main character Ferengi in trying to get people on his side. It doesn’t go well. Everyone is sexist. Fuck, even Zek is. He’s progressive… for a Ferengi. Anyways they get ONE person on their side, ready to see a female to prove females can interface with society

Brunt continues to be the most punchable man in the galaxy.

Quark and Moogie get in an argument and she has a heart attack. That’s not good. They need a woman to show to this guy, but where are they going to get one?

Good thing Bashir does gender reassignment surgeries like every other day. It IS the 24th century.

Yes. That’s right. This is the transgender episode. Kind of. It’s actually the Gender Bender episode, but like, this hits a lot of trans energy. And not in a good way. Quark is now a woman, MEDICALLY, like he’s filled with estrogen. And it’s making her emotional. Ha ha, you know them women. ALWAYS emotional. They have a lot of things to grill Quark on, she has to be presentable in like, 12 hours. She needs to work on her walk. And her voice. And she needs to smile more! They don’t literally have that last one, but god, they might as well.

This is one of those feminist episodes that…. fails in almost every way, but god, is it insulting. I mean, I guess it’s trying. Kind of. The original concept was to make it a kind of comical farce, like a Shakespearean farce, but the director, Bashir’s actor, and Quark’s actor decided to play this DEAD serious. As such, the writing and the visual intent clash in a way that is very, VERY uncomfortable.

We literally get three straight minutes of this guy they invited chasing Quark around her room, trying to sexually assault her.

Brunt bursts it and is like “THAT’S NOT WOMAN, THAT’S A MAN, BABY” but when Quark shows her tits to this guy, he doesn’t care. Well at least he’s a chaser, I guess. Anyway alls well that ends well, and he backs Zek to put him back in office. Quark’s experience with being a woman makes him more sympathetic, at least for a bit, and he apologizes to the woman he sexually assaulted, and she’s like “oh but I was looking forward to fucking you :(“. Ha ha, what… fun.

Yeah, this blows a lot. To be fair, Armin Shimmerman, Quark’s actor, also agrees. He thinks the half-serious half-joke idea failed horribly, I agree, and he actually toned down some of it, because the script wanted him to cry a lot, and he felt it was a bad stereotype, and went against the feminist angle of the episode. Yea, that’s true. It could have been even worse. Also, Quark really learns nothing by the end, and yeah. THey LITERALLY go “You’ll be back to your old self soon~”

And obviously, this episode wasn’t built with trans stuff in mind, but as trans stuff is VERY in the public conscious these days, it’s hard to ignore that reading. And that voice outing scene made me want to gag. I hated this episode, but I can’t give it a 1. It’s at least TRYING to be good, it’s trying, but fucking god.

Time’s Orphan - DS9 7/10

O’Brien is back! We haven’t seen him in a few episodes. And KEIKO IS BACK! We haven’t seen her in AGES! They’re back from Bajor, and O’Brien doesn’t want them to ever part again. The bad news is, they are immediately parted. O’BRIEN MUST SUFFER! They’re playing on a Bajoran colony on vacation, and Molly finds a weird gate thing in a cave and falls into it, disappearing as the gate closes.

They find out it’s a TIME PORTAL that was just sitting around I guess, and it sent her hundreds of years in the past. She’s now somewhere in the past, when the planet was uninhabited. They reactivate the portal, and get her back… but 10 years too late. She’s now 18, and is a wild child. She bites O’Brien before she’s sedated. She’s VERY unga bunga. Now they need to re-integrate her into society, and good luck with that,.

Meanwhile, the B-plot is that Worf needs to baby sit Yoshi, and he is VERY bad with kids. At least the A and B plots fit. It’s also a fun concept.

The episode then becomes Keiko and O’Brien trying to rehabilitate Molly, who seems to have repressed all her childhood memories and remembers nothing. It’s actually REALLY heartwarming and sweet to watch, tinged, with some sadness.

Eventually she becomes a little unstable. She’s improving, but she wants to go “home”. They take her home, but no, not THAT home. HOME. They can’t go back to the planet though, so they take her to the holosuite. But they can’t keep her there forever, and when other customers want it, Molly goes…. feral, and freaks out, and then runs through the bar and STABS A MAN IN THE STOMACH WITH A BROKEN BOTTLE. Oh. Oh that’s very bad. The man presses charges and wants her incacerated, because she’s dangerous. I mean, she kind of is… it’s a very unfortunate situation. She needs wide open spaces, but they can’t really give her that on the station. And they’re going to send her to a therapy center, which is PROBABLY not going to be good for her either. And imagine her being on a transport for a few days.

So what are they going to do? Time for O’Brien to do crimes.

They kidnap Molly and drag her, sedated, back to the planet. She’s not safe there, she’s not really safe anywhere… so they try to steal a runabout, and are caught. Odo’s like “Come on Chief, I thought if ANYONE could steal a runabout without getting caught, it’d be you. On your way”.

They send Molly back through the portal, planning to destroy it after. It’s a tearful goodbye, but Molly goes through, to his home… and then finds out she’s been transported not to her time, but to the exact time she went through the first time, finding herself as a 7 year old. She sends her back through, and fades away due to temporal shenanigans.

Well, that KINDA negates the gut punch. That’s a real shame. Like, I liked everything about this episode, it was cute and heartrending, and then it meant nothing! Hmmrf. Good, but didn’t hit the landing.

The Sound of Her Voice - DS9 9/10

On the way home from a long tiring mission, the Defiant gets a distress call from a woman who’s apparently a star fleet officer asking for help. They head over to help her. They can’t get any messages back through the planet, and O’Brien is on the case. He leaves her SOS message on as she rambles, basically. She’s just rambling about her life, because she has no one to talk to and is scared she’s going to die. Everyone is like “why are you doing that”. And he’s like “I dunno, it just feels right, like someone HAS to listen, otherwise she’s falling on deaf ears, and that’s sad”

Also the B-plot is Quark is distracting Odo by reminding him of his love for Kira in order to do illegal stuff, and Jake is researching him. It doesn’t fit.

Anyways they connect and can communicate with her now. She’s a captain who was returning to the Alpha Quadrant after an 8 year exploration of the Beta Quadrant. She’s the only one in her squad left, and she’s dying on an L-Class planet, so they’d better get there fast, but they keep her company. Most of the crew find her boring as fuck. Especially Bashir. She tortures him for ignoring him by pretending that something got her and ate her. It wakes him up and makes him realize he was being shitty. She’s his patient.

It’s kinda interesting seeing this. Everyone talks to her in a different way. O’Brien practically uses her as a friend and therapist. She tries to give advise to Sisko. And she and Bashir jab at each other. But things take a bad turn; the medicine she’s using runs out faster than expected, as her last dose was tainted. She’ll die in two days of CO2 poisoning. And they’re still 3 days away.

The b-plot ends in a cute way. Quark gets outplayed by Odo, who hears Quark like “and after I helped him with with Kira, tsk tsk”, and Odo decides to… let him have one. JUST this one. It’s cute. Odo’s been pretty good these episodes, he’s really grown as a person.

Tried taking a picture and caught this picture instead that looks like Sisko just heard someone on the bridge make a racist joke

They have to risk their lives in a few ways to make it in time, but they do it, to save her life.

Anyways they go, and find out she’s been dead for years. The anomaly that they had to get through caused her SOS to go forward in time. They couldn’t have EVER made it in time. She had no chance ):

They couldn’t save her, but they have a funeral for her, because over those six days, she had become a friend. And not only that, but she taught them all that they needed to talk, that they were holding things inside. It’s really touching. A very good scene. And a good episode! The Quark B plot was alright but mostly unrelated and didn’t fit in, but it ended quite nicely.

Tears of the Prophets - DS9 5/10

Things are gonna be changing around here.

An admiral shows up to award Sisko an… award, and also tell him that he’s been chosen to plan the invasion of Cardassia! A big call. He only lost 70% of the fleet taking back DS9, so it’ll go better this time.

Meanwhile, Worf and Dax are thinking of having a baby! Quark and Bashir are being weird about it because they’re being weird incels cause Dax is hot. Look, yes, she’s hot, I want to date her too, but she shot you both down SEASONS ago, get over it. You’re already dating one of the hottest lizards in the quadrant, Bashir, stop being greedy.

Meanwhile, guess who’s back at Cardassia? That’s right, it’s Dukat! And he’s looking… a little off. His makeup feels more rough, less correct. I think it’s on purpose, especially when he’s side by side with Damar. He’s not doing so hot. No one on Cardassia, even Damar, really wants anything to do with him, but they ask him what he wants. And all he wants to do is give them the Alpha Quadrant… and all he needs is an artifact they took from Bajor and is still sitting on Cardassia, somewhere, probably

Hey, our boy is back! Yes, he’s gonna be an actual fixture! He sings a serenade to “the losers”, AKA Quark and Bashir, and then tells them to fucking get over themselves, they never had a chance and this was over years ago. Namely, six fucking seasons ago. This also feels weirdly out of nowhere considering the rest of the episode is planning to invade Cardassia, but it WILL come together. For better or for worse.

Oh hey we found out what Dukat is looking for. “We’ve spent too long fighting the Bajorans. We should have fought their gods”. And then he released a Pah Wraith and accepts it inside him. Super Powered Dukat D:

While the invasion is going on, Dukat beams onto DS9, murders Dax in cold blood in a VERY brutal and upsetting scene, and then released the Pah Wraith into an Orb, basically breaking it apart. Dukat, then fully in control of his faculties, is like “I never intended to do you any harm, sorry~” then beams back away. The broken orb seems to have affected Sisko out in the battle, and he’s taken to his room while Kira takes control of the battle. They manage to win the battle and ground troops land on Cardassia. So I guess Dukat’s plan didn’t work? Uh no, bad news. The wormhole is gone.

Dax is dying, and while Bashir saved the symbiont, Jadzia can’t be saved. She’s come down with an extremely terminal case of Rick Berman. While this might have been emotional if I watched it in the late 90s, I watch it in the mid 2020s with hindsight about WHY it happened, and I’ll be real, I fucking hate it. It also doesn’t help that this entire episode has been her being all happy and going “oh boy a baby oh gee I’m so happy I love my life I sure do love living and being alive”, like the death flags are ALL OVER HERE.

Everyone takes this poorly, ESPECIALLY Sisko, who is so shaken that he essentially quits, both as Emissary and as Captain. Everyone says they’ll be waiting for him when he gets back, and then he leaves with Jake. Kira thinks that he’s not coming back. Why? Cause he took the baseball with him.

So basically, Dax’s actor was like “So, since the show is ending next season, I want to look for more work. Can we re-negotiate my contract so I’m more of a recurring character and not a main character?” and Berman went “No, guess we’ll fire you and kill of your character”. And none of the writers or other co-producers knew this conversation at all, they just assumed that she was leaving cause she wanted off the show. And when they found out, they were PISSED. I’m pissed. Its the most Rick Berman thing in the entire series, and it’s AWFUL to me. What this means for the future of the show, we’ll see, but it already starts in a VERY gross part. And her death wasn’t even very good or exciting, like. She’s just one shot with no agency, and then is given a “there’s nothing we can do, they lost the will to live”. And this is AFTER the episode starts with two horny bachelors going “God I wish I could fuck Dax”. I hate this. A lot.

The rest of the episode is FINE? It’s a lot of religious stuff that’s okay, but it jumps around a lot. And it ends even worse. And that “I’ve failed as a starship captain” thing??? Like, what would have changed if you stayed home? Could YOU have stopped Ultra Instinct Super Saiyan God Dukat??? He one shot Jadzia with a Red Laser Beam that looked HORRIBLE to experience. At least now we have a foothold in Cardassia!!