6x26 Tears of the Prophets

[7.6/10] In my book, the simplest distillation of drama is “choices plus consequences.” A character makes a decision, hopefully one that reflects who they are or what they value, and then they’re forced to deal with the fallout of that decision, perhaps even in a way that changes them. You could do worse than building your story around that idea.

On that front, “Tears of the Prophet”, the season finale to Deep Space Nine’s sixth season, fits to a tee. Starfleet Command tells Sisko it’s time to take the fight to the Dominion and attack Cardassia. The Prophets come to him in a vision and tell him he is “of Bajor” and not to stray from the past. These two great forces in Benjamin’s life seem to be pulling him in opposite directions. Admiral Ross (and the writers) press the issue, and it comes down to that old DS9 chestnut for Sisko: are you the Emissary of the Prophets, or are you a Starfleet officer?

Now as I mentioned in my write-up for “The Reckoning”, we’ve done that dilemma before, many times in fact. But it’s never had quite the same stakes, with Sisko having the opportunity to score a major victory for the coalition of the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans, where if he hesitates, he may never have this chance again. As Odo noted in the last Prophet-focused episode, they’re not exactly clear or specific about why Sisko shouldn’t lead the attack on Cardassia or what will happen if he does.

So when pressed, persuaded, and ultimately ordered, he picks his duty to Starfleet over his connection to the Prophets. And then everything goes to hell.

Well, sort of. Before that happens, the Defiant leads a coalition force to take down a weak point in the Dominion’s defenses around Cardassia. The two best things about it are the chess game between the two sides, and the cleverness in the defeat. Seeing Sisko have to convince General Martok and the Romulan representative, Letant, to cooperate and play nice adds a little more diplomacy into the story. And seeing Weyoun and Damar go back and forth on tactics, and who’s living up to whose end of the bargain while they anticipate Sisko’s moves adds to the tension before the battle.

Unfortunately, the battle itself is no great shakes. Maybe it’s just the more rudimentary CGI, but the dogfights and skirmishes seem more like a bunch of random, undifferentiated dust-ups rather than a more captivating sequence. Deep Space Nine has delivered some epic space battles in the past, but unfortunately, this isn’t one of them. That said, while “destroy the enemy’s power source to stymie them!” is an old trope, the strategy to fool the Cardassians’ orbital defense weapons to fire on their own generator by projecting a Federation warp signature lets our heroes earn their victory with smarts, not just superior firepower or the element of surprise, which makes their win more satisfying.

Only, they don’t have much of a chance to bask in their glory. One of the cannier choices in the episode is to contrast the momentary afterglow of what could be a turning point in the war, with the immediate and grave consequences of greater forces leaving our heroes shrouded in darkness and remorse.

They’ve struck a blow for the Federation, but while they were off protecting the quadrant, they weren’t home to protect their dear friend. Now, Dax is dead.

Sigh. I have real mixed feelings about this, which isn’t great for the dramatic demise of one of the show’s original main characters. Some of that is how the story is told, and some of that is the behind-the-scenes B.S. that spurred it.

In-universe, with the chance to make a final statement one of the show’s most unique, signature characters, why in god’s name would you focus on Julian and Quark’s pathetic crushes. For the love of all that is holy, I thought we’d gotten past that. It’s not even taken seriously, but instead presented via a sad sack Vic Fontaine song and some cartoonish pining. In an episode with military battles, spiritual confrontation, and the death of a dear friend to cover, “Tears of Prophet” chooses to spend precious time on the same, “Gee, Dax is alluring” nonsense that was tiresome in season 1. It is utterly baffling.

I also don’t love the way she dies via Pah-wraith. Again, as I mentioned in “The Reckoning” a lot of the Pah-Wraith stuff just looks and sounds silly. As a result, it’s hard to take such a dramatic death seriously when it comes from Dax being blasted with a big orange energy beam and vibrating like a Tickle Me Elmo. This plays as Saturday morning cartoon nonsense, rather than a shocking murder of a major player.

And that’s before you get to the crud happening behind the camera. In brief, Terry Farrell asked to be reduced to a recurring role on the show; producer Rick Berman played hardball, bullied, and demeaned her, and when she stuck to her guns, they killed her character off. (And that’s before you get into his comments about her body.) None of that is the writers’ fault, necessarily. But it taints my ability to fully immerse myself in the story or the death, without having the unfair B.S. that prompted Dax’s demise intrude. Suffice it to say, I didn’t quite feel the tragedy to the level the show intended.

But I felt it some! We do get goodbyes, of a sort, from most of the crew. While all the focus on her and Worf trying to conceive gilds the lily a bit, Worf’s gentleness as Dax lay dying, his Klingon guttural roar when she departs, and his wounded animal chants all sell the loss better than anything else in the episode. And Sisko’s conversation with her coffin, about how Curzon was a mentor, but Jadzia was a friend, and he needs her now more than ever, is a touching way to show both how much Dax meant to him and how lost he feels in this moment.

He has reason to feel lost! The cost of Sisko’s choice isn’t just the death of his dear friend; it’s the closure of the wormhole, and with it, a closing off of the Prophets from Bajor and its Emissary.

As with Dax’s murder, I’m of two minds on this one. Gul Dukat’s new strategy is a mixed bag. There is something poetic about Dukat looking beyond the temporal world to explain his fall from grace, and instead blaming Bajor’s gods. As Weyoun notes, he’s gone a bit mad after all he’s been through, but the sense that your loss is a product of divine protection, and so the gods themselves must be shut off from their children if your revenge is to take effect, has an epic, Greek tragedy feel to it, whose intrigue I can’t deny.

But again, always with the Pah-wraiths. Dukat digging up a heretofore unknown Bajoran relic, imbibing the soul of a Pah-wraith, and then using magic powers to just pop over to DS9, knock off Dax, and shoot all kinds of negative energy into the Orb of Contemplation is more cartoonish goofery. The idea isn’t a bad one, but the presentation saps the ability to buy into this outlandish situation, especially for a show where even the more supernatural elements feel more grounded than this.

Despite all that, it’s hard to imagine a cost to Benjamin and Bajor greater than Dukat and the Pah-wraiths severing the connection between the Bajorans and their gods, not to mention Captain Sisko himself. The sense from Benjamin that he’s done a great wrong, left Bajor bereft while trying to protect it, inadvertently shut himself off from the spiritual guidance and intervention that saved him earlier in the season, is a monumental consequence to his choice, one he has to live with for what seems likely to be a long time.

There is, as I like to say, power in him walking away from DS9, expecting never to return. At the end of last season, he abandoned the station, but left his baseball in his office, a sign to Dukat that he’d be back. This is different. His trusted number two is in charge now, and the baseball is gone from the desk, headed to Earth along with himself and his son, a harbinger of an absence far less likely to be rectified. All he can do is scrub clams in the alley behind his father’s restaurant, losing himself in the tactile work, while his mind turns over all that he might have done differently, all that’s gone terribly wrong on his watch: for a planet, a people, and a friend.

“Tears of the Prophets” is not my favorite Deep Space Nine finale. The dark cloud hovering over Dax’s departure and the junk involving the Pah-Wraiths drags this one down a bit. But it gets the most important things right: a choice that matters, consequences that are serious and taken seriously, and an impact on the characters that is felt both on and off the screen. This one isn’t perfect, but that material is the backbone of the episode, and it leaves things on the right, if devastating, note as the show ventures into its final season.

It leaves behind a season that admittedly has some series lowlights (the Dax/Worf wedding episode, Quark’s gender-changing episode), and some wheel-spinning while you wait for the main plot to move forward, but also some all-time highlights. The opening six-episode arc is a landmark achievement for Star Trek which delves into the Dominion war with conviction and earns our heroes retaking the station. “Waltz” is the definitive statement on Dukat; “In the Pale Moonlight” is rightfully iconic; and “Far Beyond the Stars” is a gutting but moving examination of racism and other hardships that’s unlike anything else in Star Trek.

There is still more to come from the world of Deep Space Nine, but in its penultimate season, the Dominion War arrived, and the writers felt comfortable busting out some major story elements and character beats they’d otherwise been saving for a rainy day. Well, when it rains, it pours, and season 6 is one of the most eventful and impactful years any Star Trek series has had.