2504: Tears of the Prophets

Reached the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s sixth season this evening and despite inadvertently spoiling myself on the death of a major character some months earlier (though given Deep Space Nine’s age, I’m surprised I lasted this long without spoilers!), it remained an impactful episode and an excellent season finale.

I really like how Deep Space Nine developed. While it started as something of a “soap opera in space”, which is why some people found it a little dull when compared to the galaxy-spanning adventures of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the gradual buildup of the Dominion storyline into all-out war throughout the sixth season gave the show scope to deftly and subtly readjust its focus over time.

At the end of the sixth season, it’s still recognisably distinct from the more “mobile” Star Trek series such as The Next Generation and Voyager, but the action following Sisko and his comrades into battle against the Dominion gets the action off the station often enough to keep things fresh and interesting — and Tears of the Prophets, the sixth season finale, features some spectacular space combat sequences, an area in which Deep Space Nine generally excels.

One thing I’ve found particularly interesting about the show as a whole is the development of the character Gul Dukat. Initially presented as a character whose motivations and overall alignment wasn’t entirely clear, he’s had plenty of significant moments over the course of the series, ranging from joyful to tragedy. When he’s at his lowest ebb, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him, because the show certainly kicks the shit out of him, but Tears of the Prophets makes it abundantly clear why it took such pains to make us sympathise with Dukat as he lost everything he held dear.

Dukat’s losses drive him to absolute desperation. He willingly allows himself to be possessed by a Pah-Wraith, the antithesis to the “Prophets”, aliens who live in the wormhole that Deep Space Nine protects. The Wraith kills [REDACTED so you don’t have to suffer like I did] and apparently cuts off the connection between the Prophets and Bajor before leaving Dukat’s body. We’re left to see Dukat with a few regrets — most notably the death of [AHEM] — but an overall sense that he’s enacted vengeance that he’s satisfied with.

This sequence — and the consequences therein — highlight another reason why I enjoy Deep Space Nine: it doesn’t attempt to explain everything away with (fake but plausible) science. Oh, sure, there’s plenty of traditional Star Trek technobabble throughout the series, but also there’s a real sense that some things simply are unknowable and impossible to understand by humanity at its stage of development in the 24th century. The recognition and embracing of this is the basis of religion (or spiritualism at the very least) and Deep Space Nine as a whole handles this sort of thing very nicely. It also makes for some extremely dramatic moments, as metaphysical, “supernatural” things are far less predictable than those which can be explained by science.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the series ends, and am very glad that I’ve finally got around to watching it all the way through for the first time. I’m even more glad that doing so is a simple matter of watching it on Netflix rather than collecting however many hundred VHS cassettes would have formed the complete run on its original release!