star trek ds9 waltz

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Waltz (Review)

One of the more common observations about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is that it is the most “morally ambiguous” Star Trek series, with characters engaging in actions that Picard never would have considered on Star Trek: The Next Generation .

In some ways, this observation makes sense. After all, Deep Space Nine was the first Star Trek show to feature an extended interstellar conflict. Its primary cast is comprised of unapologetic terrorists and untrustworthy wheeler-dealers. The Federation were no longer the unambiguous good guys of the larger Star Trek universe, monolithic humanity giving way to factions like the Maquis or Section 31. Deep Space Nine never took Gene Roddenberry’s utopia for granted, daring to ask what it might look like when paradise found itself under threat.

Eat, pray, hate.

However, Deep Space Nine also a very strong moral compass. While there are episodes that flirt with the idea of the end justifying the means, like In the Pale Moonlight or Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges , they are very much the exception rather than the rule. Section 31 are unequivocally monsters, and never proven to be a necessary evil. The Federation wins the Dominion War without the help of their attempted genocide in Extreme Measures . Even the Maquis are treated as ineffective in Defiant , and only romanticised through eulogy in Blaze of Glory .

More than that, Deep Space Nine clearly has a very strong social conscience. This is particularly true in episodes written by executive producer and showrunner Ira Steven Behr. Past Tense, Part I and Past Tense, Part II rage against the treatment of the homeless in contemporary society, sending three regular characters back in time to protest a nineties Los Angeles ordinance. Bar Association insists upon the right to collective bargaining. Far Beyond the Stars is a poignant ode to the power of science-fiction as a window to a better future.

Psycho Sisko!

Even in the context of the show’s more controversial elements, that moral compass shines through. While the Dominion War might lead to murky compromises, the show goes out of its way to cast the Founders as monstrous; the enslavement of the Jem’Hadar as explored in The Abandoned or of the Vorta as touched upon in Treachery, Faith and the Great River , the use of biological weapons in The Quickening , the disregard for soldiers’ lives in Rocks and Shoals . The Dominion is monstrous, as unequivocally evil as Nazi Germany.

As such, Waltz really serves to confirm something that has always been true of the series. Despite the familiar refrain that Deep Space Nine embraces “moral ambiguity” , the truth is that Deep Space Nine has always believed “that there is really such a thing as truly evil.”

Rocky road to recovery.

Taken on its own merits, Waltz is a superb piece of television. It is an episode built around throwing two great characters played by two great actors into a confined space, and watching them play off one another. Much like Duet , which is an obvious point of comparison, even the title of Waltz suggests an intimate performance between two oppositional forces coming together to tell a singular story. In Waltz , Captain Benjamin Sisko finds himself stranded on a hostile planet with Gul Dukat, and sparks fly.

Part of this is down to the two actors in question. Avery Brooks is a tremendous performer, with a style that feels half-way between William Shatner’s staccato delivery and Patrick Stewart’s lyrical Shakespearean approach. Brooks is an actor with considerable opera experience, and he fares well in theatrical episodes.  Waltz is an episode that could easily be adapted for the stage, driven primarily by the charge between its two central performers. Avery Brooks plays righteous anger with incredible force, and  Waltz gives him plenty of opportunity.

Last stand at the Alaimo!

However, Waltz is primarily driven by Gul Dukat. Marc Alaimo has been a recurring fixture on Deep Space Nine since Emissary , but the character really came into is own through episodes like The Maquis, Part I , The Maquis, Part II and Defiant . In The Fifty-Year Mission , Alaimo takes a lot of credit of that nuance:

I believe the objective in the beginning was to have Dukat be a fairly one-dimensional, aggressive Cardassian. But then I began to add to what they gave me in the scripts and slowly made the character my own. I began to endow him with a number of characteristics, which they then picked up on, and perhaps they realised that I was more versatile than they originally thought. So they started writing these wonderful situations for Dukat where he could be seen as being sensitive or irrational or intellectual.

Put simply, Alaimo played Dukat like he was the hero of his own show, which is a compelling way to play an antagonist and which led to episodes like Indiscretion and Return to Grace that played upon this aspect of the character. The Star Trek franchise has never had a villain as compelling and intriguing as Dukat.

Signal strength.

Waltz works so well because it essentially throws Dukat’s narrative into conflict with that of Sisko. Waltz is fundamentally the story of two antagonists sitting down around a camp fire, each convinced that they are the heroes of their own narratives and finally hashing it all out once and for all. They cannot both be right, and they cannot both be heroes. There is a fantastic conflict there, because one of those two characters must eventually shatter their own sense of self-image.

The stakes might not be “the Alpha Quadrant itself” or anything that epic, but they are still tangible. There is a real danger to this situation, even beyond Dukat’s slipping grip on sanity. Either Sisko or Dukat will be broken by this experience, forced to confront that their world view has been built upon entirely incorrect assumptions. Those are very visceral stakes for a character drama, in that most people can empathise with that situation. Few people have ever fought to save the galaxy, but most have experienced moments of doubt and had their faith in themselves tested.

Caving under pressure.

It helps that Waltz has a fantastic script. The episode hinges upon two fantastic central performances, but those actors are working from one of Ronald D. Moore’s best scripts. Both Dukat and Sisko articulate themselves very clearly in that extended fire-side chat, which the script clearly outlining how Dukat can justify his own narrative by tailoring his account of events or quoting statistics. Both the characters feel true to themselves across the length and breadth of the episode, without hitting a false beat.

However, Moore’s script is simply well-constructed. It is a very clever piece of television writing, one that understands the form and the expectations that come with it. Most notably, the episode trusts the audience and does not feel the need to spell everything out. Despite its very clear central thesis on the nature of good and evil, Waltz understands the appeal of lingering ambiguity and doubt. At several points in the episode, Waltz avoids tidying away dangling plot threads, accepting that the messiness adds texture and nuance to the episode.

These are the times that try men’s souls. And their war criminals.

When Sisko awakes on the planet surface with Dukat, he asks about the officer guarding the brig. “Where’s McConnell?” Sisko wonders, clearly having missed the memo that this was meant to be a two-hander. “Dead,” Dukat responds. “A piece of shrapnel hit him in the head just as we were carrying you into the shuttle.” The audience is left to wonder whether Dukat is telling the truth. There is no awkward final act reveal of McConnell’s murdered body in the caverns or the shuttle, even if it still seems more than likely that his death was not an accident.

Despite the fact that Waltz is a character-driven psychological thriller, Moore still structures the script with any number of clever storytelling choices. There is a rather brilliant act-break that finds the Defiant picking up two life forms on the surface of the planet as the situation between Sisko and Dukat escalates on the surface. As it looks like Dukat is about to come to blows with Sisko, the Defiant beams the two life signs onboard. They are two random Starfleet officers. Dukat then continues brutally beating Sisko.

“Damn it. I told Dax not to detect live signs until at least the fourth act.”

It is a very nice bait-and-switch, one that provides a very effect act break in a very character-driven episode. It plays skilfully upon the idea of a last-minute rescue by the Defiant, before offering a bait-and-switch. It is a hardly a novel or radical subversion of the trope, but the sequence is structured beautifully. It bounces between the planet and the Defiant in such a way that the tele-literate audience buys that the two events are overlapping. It is a much more satisfying “dramatic act break” than Jack’s sudden threatening of Sarina in Statistical Probabilities .

Waltz feels very effectively heightened by its setting and its structure. The final act works phenomenally well, as any hint of civility breaks down between Sisko and Dukat. As that rage simmers to the surface, so do the combatants. A tempest stirs around them, the planet’s raging atmosphere a literal representation of the energy flowing between them. It is more than a little melodramatic, but it works. The final act of Waltz plays like something of a gothic horror, as if the landscape of the planet reflects the psychology of its central characters.

Forks in the road.

Interestingly enough, Waltz went through an interesting development cycle. According to writer Ronald D. Moore, the production team knew that they wanted to do a story like this episode around Dukat, but were unsure of exactly how they wanted to tell it :

Waltz began life as a story we called “Dukat’s Head” around the office.  The notion was for Sisko to go visit Dukat in the mental hospital and while Sisko was trying to engage the catatonic Cardassian in conversation (by speaking in alliterative sentences) we would push in on Dukat’s face and then go inside his head and show us the fantasy life he was living.  The story would’ve gone into the past, dealt with his Bajoran mistress (Ziyal’s mother, whose name escapes me at the moment) his rise to power, his treatment of the Bajorans and even the fantasy life he was trying to construct for himself on Terok Nor with Kira as his wife and himself as beloved leader of Cardassia and Bajor.  We struggled with the storyline for quite a while, but never found a way to make it compelling. Eventually, we noticed that the scenes we liked the best were the ones in the hospital room between Sisko and Dukat and we decided to toss out everything but that.  However, some of the character dynamics we had envisioned for the fantasy sequences eventually were realized in the phantom images of Weyoun, Damar, and Kira as they appeared in Dukat’s hallucinations.

An episode like Waltz or Dukat’s Head makes a great deal of sense. After all, Sacrifice of Angels had ended with Dukat as a broken man in Federation custody. More than that, there was a long-standing anxiety on the Deep Space Nine writing staff about how best to approach the character of Gul Dukat.

Winding up Dukat.

Dukat is one of the most compelling Star Trek antagonists because he is very much the hero of his own narrative. As played by Alaimo, Dukat is a man who has created his own alternate version of reality in which he is a selfless servant of the people who wants nothing but the best for those around him. As played by Alaimo, Dukat is an excellent salesman. Dukat can bend facts and history to suit his own account of events, portraying himself as a victim of cruel fate subject to undeserved scorn and mockery.

Deep Space Nine has never believed this. After all, Dukat has always been a cynical self-serving opportunist. He is perfectly willing to attack political enemies through their families, as demonstrated by Cardassians , in spite of his own many familial shortcomings. Dukat believes that he deserves love and affection for declining to murder his own illegitimate daughter in Indiscretion . Sisko has acknowledged in The Way of the Warrior that Dukat was something of a moral cockroach, willing to ride the prevailing political winds wherever they may take him.

“I’ve got some ideas in the pipeline.”

However, there is also a sense that the Deep Space Nine writing staff are worried about Dukat. The production team seem anxious that some audience members might actually believe Dukat’s narrative. Marc Alaimo is a fantastic salesman,  after all. More than that , there are a significant portion of fans who actively ship Gul Dukat and Major Kira . Given that Dukat effective oversaw the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor, an event comparable to the Holocaust at a time when Holocaust denial was becoming more and more mainstream , this unease makes a great deal of sense.

As such, Deep Space Nine worked increasingly hard to present Dukat as a clear-cut villain. This was most notable in the fifth season episode Things Past , which flashed back to Odo’s time on Terok Nor during the Cardassian Occupation. Despite taking place entirely inside Odo’s head, it still found time for Dax to embark upon a subplot which explored the ways in which Dukat preyed upon and exploited Bajoran women under his care. This thread would even develop into Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night .

A blast to shoot.

As such, Waltz feels like the logical end point for Dukat as a character. It is an episode that chips away at the last of Dukat’s self-delusion and self-deceit. The entire tension of the episode lies in whether Dukat will admit to himself that he knows himself to be evil, whether those lies can be stripped away and Dukat can finally recognise his own moral vacuum. As Sisko and Dukat spar, the episode suggests that the battle is over Dukat’s self-image. After all, if Dukat acknowledges that he is a genocidal maniac, what else needs to be said?

And so Waltz very carefully and very meticulously strips away the rationalisations. Dukat makes his eloquent defense to Sisko, hinging on familiar rhetorical tactics. Dukat insists that he was just a cog in a larger machine, that he needed to get results. Dukat claims that he was as compassionate as he could have been, given the circumstances. Dukat points to terrorist actions by the Bajorans to justify his own brutality. Dukat argues that he actually cut the death rate, making it lower than it had been before. However, Sisko doesn’t buy this. And neither does Dukat.

Trio of terror.

One of the cleverer touches of Waltz is the way in which it explains Dukat’s psychosis. Over the course of the episode, Dukat is haunted by three psychological projections – psych! Kira, psych! Weyoun and psych! Damar. These are obviously a handy storytelling function, allowing for some exposition and set-up, but they also enlighten Dukat’s psychology. Each of those three characters represents a reflection of Dukat, a way for his fractured psyche to reflect some part of him back at himself.

psych! Damar most explicitly outlines this vision of Dukat as the hero of his own story. psych! Damar is spineless and sycophantic, hanging on the every word of his superior officer. When psych! Damar dares to question the validity of this experiment with Sisko, Dukat slaps him down. “It’s my time to waste, Damar. Remember your place.” However,  psych! Damar then offers a glimpse of how Dukat sees his role in the larger tapestry of events. “I mean no disrespect, you know that. But without you the war will be lost and Cardassia will lie in ruins.”

“Don’t let this Damar an otherwise constructive conversation.”

While these three fragments of Dukat’s fractured psyche provide key insights into the character, they also hint at a more fundamental aspect of the character. Dukat has started imagining these three characters as a result of his breakdown after Sacrifice of Angels , but their presence and function hints at a deep truth about Dukat as a character. Dukat had to manufacture these three avatars to reflect his own image back to him, but the implication is that he would be happier to use real people to serve that purpose.

To Dukat, the entire universe serves as a projection of himself. Waltz underscores this idea through Dukat’s relationship with Sisko. Dukat does believe that other people have agency, instead insisting that they exist primarily to validate himself. “If you only want me to tell you what you want to hear, just say so,” Sisko states at one point. Dukat clearly wants that, but doesn’t want to have to admit it. In fact this is the central tension of the episode, the conflict between what Dukat knows of himself and what he can bring to admit while preserving his self-image.

She’s in his head.

The episode’s climax comes as Sisko goads Dukat into expressing his own rage towards the Bajorans. “They all wore their pride like some twisted badge of honour,” Dukat complains. “And you hated them for it,” Sisko elaborates. “Of course I hated them!” Dukat cuts across. “I hated everything about them!” Sisko goes for broke. “You should have killed them all,” he suggests. “I knew it!” Dukat responds, “I’ve always known it! I should have killed every last one of them. I should have turned their planet into a graveyard the likes of which the galaxy had never seen!”

This is the moment that confirms Dukat is pure evil. Sisko takes the opportunity to bash his skull with a pipe, sarcastically taunting, “And that is why you’re not an evil man.” Later on, with Dax, Sisko explicitly states the theme of the episode. “You know, old man, sometimes life seems so complicated,” he acknowledges. “Nothing is truly good or truly evil. Everything seems to be a shade of grey. And then you spend some time with a man like Dukat and you realise that there is really such a thing as truly evil.”

“I hope you enjoy my one-man show. It’s called ‘So Long, Cardassia Prime…’ It may involve some flashing lights.”

As much as Waltz is an episode with Dukat acknowledging that he is truly evil, it is also an episode about Sisko coming to terms with the concept of moral absolutism and firmly rejecting any hint of moral relativism. Waltz has a clear character arc for both of its lead characters, fitting comfortably with the larger character arc of Captain Benjamin Sisko. Deep Space Nine frequently invites its central characters to question the larger universe and their place in it.

Repeatedly over the run of Deep Space Nine , Sisko is forced to confront uncomfortable truths and to grow as a result. He learns to question Starfleet in The Maquis, Part I , The Maquis, Part II , Homefront and Paradise Lost . He earns a new found respect for Eddington in Blaze of Glory . He accepts the role of Emissary in Accession and Rapture . In Waltz , Sisko is forced to confront and reject the comforting utopian fiction that evil does not exist and that everybody is fundamentally good deep down.

“Luckily, I brought this handy external monitor of my relative sanity.”

Deep Space Nine has generally been absolute in its morality. It genuinely believes that concepts like “good” and “evil” exist in absolute forms. Indeed, the entire series is set in the aftermath of the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor, an event presented as analogous to the Holocaust. Over the course of the series, characters are repeatedly presented with opportunities to grow and evolve, to learn from their mistakes. Sisko is a character who is willing to evolve and grow, which makes him the hero. Dukat’s stubborn refusal to even acknowledge past failings makes him a villain.

Deep Space Nine consciously and repeatedly rejects moral relativism. The Dominion’s use of biological weapons in The Quickening does not justify the Federation’s use of a biological weapon in Extreme Measures . The existence of the Tal Shiar or the Obsidian Order does not excuse the methods of Section 31 in Inquisition . The Dominion War might force its characters to make tough choices, but there is never any real sense of moral equivalence between the Federation and the Dominion. The Federation might be flawed, but they are the heroes of the narrative.

“Feelin’ fine.”

In discussing Waltz in The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion , Ira Steven Behr made a similar argument:

I wanted us to come away from this show with Dukat finally having faced who the hell he is and what he’s done. To get him to finally admit that he hates the Bajorans and he wishes to kill them all. And he does. Evil may be an unclear concept in this day and age. But Dukat certainly has done evil things. And since he refuses to admit to them, we then have to simplify things, deconstruct things, until we get to the most simplistic level. Which is: ‘He does evil things, therefore, he is evil’.

This is very similar to the argument that Kira about Dukat’s morality to Ziyal in By Inferno’s Light .

Shining some light on his psyche.

There is a tendency in popular culture to equate moral ambiguity with complexity. After all, very few people see themselves as the villains of their own narratives. Most convincing antagonists can offer their own reasons or justifications for what they are doing. Pop culture is frequently evaluated through its willingness to humanise its villains (as much as any of them are villains) and to invite the audience to see the world from the perspective of these characters.

This is nothing new. The same arguments can be made about any classic works of art that portray people who terrible things as nuanced three-dimensional characters. As Rachel Martin writes of Humbert Humbert from Lolita , “When writers portray a pedophile, a rapist or a sexual predator as a villain, it can be complicated business because their actions are despicable. But written too broadly and the character is cartoonish, too deep and it makes the villain too sympathetic.”

“Come now, Captain. You haven’t once had to shout ‘DUKAT!’ into a communicator while physically trembling with rage. How bad a villain can I be?”

Of course, this approach can be taken to ridiculous extremes in matters of pop culture. To pick a recent example, artist Stephen Byrne produced a work named Trump Rally that featured Trump’s Inauguration attended by a host of fictional supervillains . Commenters quickly protested that given fictional characters had moral standards that would prevent them from attending such an event . Who can forget the ridiculous image of Marvel supervillain Doctor Doom crying in the rubble of the World Trade Centre, horrified by the violence ?

However, it is not just low-brow pulpy culture that falls into this trap of presenting villains as having standards and excuses. Contemporary prestige television is still driven by the male anti-hero, as cemented by The Sopranos and The Shield . Those are just the most high-profile and successful examples. There are plenty of less engaging television shows about bad men doing bad things to one another, to the point that “male anti-hero” seemed to become shorthand for “prestige television drama.”

“Am I really any more evil than that guy who cuts in line to get ahead at the men’s room?”

The best of these shows work incredibly well, crafting nuanced examinations of deeply troubled individuals operating in a complicated world. However, there many of these shows often embraced the aesthetic of moral complexity and relativity without ever fully grappling with the concept. Todd VanDerWerff has argued that some of these shows tended to play down the true of the violence inflicted by their protagonists :

When David Chase put The Sopranos on the air, he famously argued that Tony Soprano should be allowed to kill a former mob snitch in episode five because if he didn’t, the audience would never respect him again. He would have broken his code and would be uninteresting as a protagonist forever after. There were things like “the right thing” and “the wrong thing” on The Sopranos, but they more often broke down as “the hard thing” and “the easy thing.” The series’ argument was always that the vast majority of us choose “the easy thing” every day of our lives, even if that’s as basic as eating a burger instead of a salad for lunch. Tony Soprano’s easy things may have been many degrees of latitude worse than our own, but we were at least somewhat in concert with who he was. In contrast, choosing the hard thing is ultimately rewarding but rarely so in the moment. The only way a human being can truly change is to do so, but few of us want to engage with the work necessary.

To be clear, The Sopranos is a masterpiece of television, but there is some weight to this criticism that becomes clearer when looking at the broader tapestry of contemporary television. These are difficult stories to tell well; these moral faults tend to compound, and false equivalences abound.

Distressed beacon.

With that in mind, the clear-cut moral certain of Deep Space Nine feels almost like a relief. Its protagonists might find themselves challenged and conflicted, but they generally at least try to do the right thing. There is a clear difference between Gul Dukat and Benjamin Sisko that runs deeper than mere circumstance or environmental factors. Indeed, Resurrection was a forty-five minute episode largely dedicated to the idea that good people are fundamentally good, regardless of their upbringings or their surroundings.

As with a lot of the sixth season of Deep Space Nine , the spectre of Battlestar Galactica haunts the moral framework suggested by Waltz . Ronald D. Moore’s revival of the cult seventies television series won a lot of praise for tackling the War on Terror in an interesting and provocative manner. However, it occasionally struggled in its attempts to suggest moral complexity and ambiguity. Critic Abigail Nussbaum makes a strong case that the Battlestar Galactica was too morally relative in its approach to the Cylons, giving them a free pass on genocide .

“Um, I think it’s your head we need to worry about.”

As such, there is a lot to be said for how readily Waltz can label Dukat as evil. Sure, Dukat can rationalise all that he wants; he might have excuses for his actions, he might be able to cite statistics in his defence, he might be able to rationalise the horrors conducted under his watch. However, he actions still resulted in millions of deaths and untold suffering. Even as he wastes away in Federation custody, he is responsible for the escalation of the Dominion War that threatens to kill billions.

In some ways, Deep Space Nine exists against backdrop of the late nineties. Although less firmly rooted in the decade than Star Trek: Voyager , the series was still informed by contemporary anxieties and trends. Deep Space Nine has aged remarkably well because so much of the series is timeless and resonates beyond that original context, but parts of the series are undoubtedly a product of its nineties origin. While Waltz stands in sharp contrast to the looming boom of cable anti-hero dramas, it also exists in the context of nineties fears about the erosion of moral certainty.

Outreach programme.

These anxieties and uncertainties had long festered in the American public consciousness. Indeed, much of the unease with moral relativism could be traced back to the establishment’s anxieties over sixties counterculture. Richard A. Posner argues, this engagement with moral absolutism in the nineties was largely reactionary :

Gertrude Himmelfarb is a well-known intellectual historian, but she is also, and in this book primarily, an influential social conservative. She argues that the counterculture of the 1960’s, with its unbridled sexuality, its flight from tradition and personal responsibility, its flouting of authority and its cultural relativism, has become the dominant culture of today, while the culture of the 1950’s — the culmination of an era, stretching back to the founding of the nation, when strong family values, a belief in absolute standards of truth and morality and respect for religion and authority were the cornerstones of the national culture — has become a dissident culture. We live, she thinks, in a period of moral decay, but there is growing resistance to the cultural revolution — resistance manifested in increased religiosity and in the recent improvement in social indicators like the number of abortions, births out of wedlock and crimes.

With all of that chaos in the world, it is easy to appreciate the appeal of moral absolutism. At a time when everything is subject to change at the drop of a hat, it is important to remember that there are some certainties at work in the world.

Keeping Kira near-a.

Following the end of the Cold War, there was a lot of political and social uncertainty. Without the Soviet Union against which it might define itself, the United States became more introspective and philosophical. There were serious debates to be had about the country’s place in the world, about its history and its sense of moral identity. Without the immediate threat of nuclear annihilation and without a singular rival standing in opposition, there was time for reflection and examination.

The nineties were a decade when everything seemed open to interrogation and criticism. Paranoia was the currency of the decade, as reflected in the conspiracy-thriller mood of films like JFK or shows like The X-Files . Even reality itself was treated was fungible and flexible in films like Existenz or The Thirteenth Floor or The Matrix . If concepts like history and the real world could be seen as malleable, then what of basic concepts like “decency” or “goodness” ? Were those also up for grabs in a postmodern age?

“Oh, hey. We’re in this episode too.”

At the end of the twentieth century, moral relativism was seen as an existential threat by conservative intellectuals. As Jonathan Merritt contends :

Moral relativism has been a conservative boogeyman since at least the Cold War. Conservative stalwarts like William F. Buckley claimed that liberals had accepted a view that morality was culturally or historically defined—“what’s right for you may not be right for me”—instead of universal and timeless. It’s true that the ethical framework was en vogue, particularly in places of higher education. Liberal college professors stocked conservatives’ arsenals with copious quotes to back up the claim that a squishy, flimsy understanding of morality had taken root in America.

As such, it is no small irony that the Republican Party would eventually produce the most abstract and postmodern presidential candidate . Donald Trump would not just blur the lines of right and wrong, but of fact and unfact .

Major problems.

In the nineties, this anxiety about moral relativism played itself out in a number of different ways. Most superficially, it was reflected in the concerted attempt by right-wing voters and politicians to impeach President Bill Clinton (in effect) for the moral transgression of having an extramarital affair . More seriously, and more justifiably, it played out in the fear that postmodernist doctrine could be used as a tool to justify Holocaust denial . Indeed, Voyager touches repeatedly on that fear in episodes like Remember or Year of Hell, Part I and Year of Hell, Part II .

Given that Gul Dukat is responsible for an atrocity analogous to the Holocaust, that subtext plays out in Waltz . Arguing with Sisko, Dukat trots out the sort of relativism that was used by Holocaust deniers during the nineties. He argues that his policies were nowhere near as harsh as people would claim, much like deniers try to revise down the estimated deaths in the Holocaust . He insists that he was not hateful or vindictive towards the Bajorans, much like David Irvine tried to argue that Hitler was oblivious to the Final Solution .

Drink it all in.

“So in my first official act as Prefect, I ordered all labour camp commanders to reduce their output quotas by fifty percent fifty percent,” he promises Sisko. “Then I reorganised the camps themselves. Child labour was abolished. Medical care was improved. Food rations were increased. At the end of one month of my administration, the death rate had dropped by twenty percent.” Of course, even if Sisko could trust those arguments, the simple fact is that Dukat was still operating a sprawling system of slavery and mass murder.

Dukat’s appeals to Sisko hinge upon moral relativism. “All my victims,” Dukat protests. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? All my crimes. I’m such a monster, such an evil man. Behold Benjamin Sisko, supreme arbiter of right and wrong in the universe. A man of such high moral calibre that he can sit in judgement on all the rest of us.” Dukat argues that Sisko is no better than he is, that Sisko has no right to judge Dukat because only Dukat can understand what he has lived.

A darker worldview.

In fact, Dukat repeatedly suggests that he is somehow equivalent to Sisko. “You know, when I was out there in the shuttle just now, it occurred to me that the Bajorans would be very confused if they could see us here, sharing the same food, the same hardships,” Dukat reflects at one point. “What do you think they would say if they knew the Emissary of the Prophets and the evil Gul Dukat were sitting here together, getting along like the two old friends that they really are?” In fact, Dukat even tries to cook a nice seasoned dinner for Sisko, reinforcing that equivalence.

(This is perhaps the most compelling justification for the creative decisions that are made with Dukat starting with Tears of the Prophets . While Dukat’s character arc comes off the rails in the aftermath of Waltz , it makes sense that Dukat would effectively try to position himself as a counterpart to Sisko. In Waltz , it is suggested that Dukat sees himself as equivalent to Sisko. When that illusion is shattered at the climax of the episode, it feels logical that Dukat should compensate by coming to see himself as a twisted reflection of his adversary.)

Letting it stew.

One of the more interesting aspects of Waltz is the recurring implication that Sisko is tempted by moral relativism, that he wants to believe that Dukat is not pure evil. This makes a certain amount of sense. After all, people are generally thought to think the best of others, to assume that other people have their reasons and are fundamentally decent. More than that, Sisko has grown up in the Roddenberry utopia of the Star Trek universe, a world where the Federation is open-minded and idealistic in how it approaches the wider universe.

So, in spite of everything, Sisko seems willing to forgive Dukat at the start of Waltz . He reflects in his opening log, “As terrible as it sounds, there’s a part of me that wishes he were dead. But that’s a thought unworthy of a Starfleet officer. He lost an empire, he lost his daughter, and he nearly lost his mind. Whatever his crimes isn’t that enough punishment for one lifetime?” There is something very tempting in that idea, something quite alluring about showing compassion to a vanquished foe and forgiving past transgressions.

The matter comes to a head.

Even in the teaser, Sisko extends some measure of sympathy to Dukat. When Dukat gets defensive and paranoid about the perceived meddling of “Doctor Cox” , he lashes out. He regains his composure and apologises. Sisko seems to take his apology at face value. “It’s all right,” Sisko assures Dukat, seeming genuinely sympathetic to the man who has fallen so sharply from grace. Although it might be too much to believe that Sisko could ever completely forgive Dukat for everything that happened, Waltz does suggest that Sisko might be sympathetic to Dukat.

As such, Waltz forces Sisko to confront the idea that Dukat is absolutely evil. More than that, Waltz suggests that any refusal to acknowledge evil is downright dangerous, that compassion is something that can be weaponised by an opponent. In some ways, this is a very cynical perspective, but it clearly only applies in the most extreme of cases. After all, Dukat’s refusal to be redeemed and his intrinsic evil is juxtaposed against other morally flawed supporting characters on Deep Space Nine who do find some measure of redemption for their sins; Odo, Damar, Garak.

All about the Benjamin.

Waltz is very much a tour de force for everybody involved, and a highlight of the sixth season. The biggest problems with the episode lie in its aftermath, in the way that Waltz shapes the remaining season-and-a-half of Deep Space Nine . This is most obvious in the way that it reconfigures the character of Gul Dukat. By just about any logic, Waltz should have been the last appearance of the character. It represents a logical endpoint for the character’s arc, and a fitting place to leave him were the ending only slightly tweaked.

So much of Dukat’s character is tied up in his self-image and narrative that stripping that away from the character should be a crippling blow. Sisko effectively defeats Dukat in Waltz , tearing away those last delusions of grandeur and exposing him as a self-deceiving fraud. For a character so fixated on his own heroism and pride, forcing Dukat to admit his own vindictiveness and his own pettiness should be the end of the line. So much of what makes Dukat a great character is taken from him in that moment, which would be great if Waltz were his last appearance.

I shall fear no evil.

Unfortunately, Waltz is Dukat’s last appearance. As a result, the Deep Space Nine writing staff have to figure out where the character goes from this point in the narrative. The results are not pretty. Dukat cold-calls Kira late at night in Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night to reveal that he slept with her mother, which is just a douchebag move. Dukat makes himself host to evil gods in Tears of the Prophets so that he can fridge Jadzia Dax. The closest this version of Dukat comes to working is Covenant , but even that comes off the rails by What You Leave Behind .

Waltz tears Dukat apart, and exposes his inner workings. Deep Space Nine never figures out how to put the character back together again, and so he devolves into a two-dimensional ranting-and-raving cartoon supervillain. The vindictive ranting in the storm at the climax of Waltz is effective because it can be juxtaposed against all of the character’s earlier appearances. It is less effective as the cornerstone of the series’ primary antagonist. Dukat becomes a lot simpler after Waltz , and the show insists upon returned to him time and again. It is a major loss.

Everything comes to the surface.

However, this issue with Dukat after Waltz is indicative of the larger issues that stem from this approach to large questions of good and evil. Waltz is very effective in its willingness to label Dukat as “evil” , rather than opting for a more nuanced or ambiguous term. However, the later episodes of the sixth season comes to embrace an overly simple moral calculus. For all the moral shading of episodes like In the Pale Moonlight or Inquisition , the sixth season of Deep Space Nine works to streamline the moral balance of the show.

The Reckoning builds upon the reworking of the Prophets in Sacrifice of Angels and the moral reframing of Gul Dukat in Waltz to realign the broader cosmology of Deep Space Nine . Towards the end of the sixth season, Deep Space Nine becomes a very conventional (and even archetypal) story about good and evil standing in opposition to one another. Sisko and the Prophets stand on one side of the arena; Dukat and the Pah-Wraiths on the other. However, these are never really contextualised. Why are the Pah-Wraiths evil, beyond their ominous red colouring?

The Pah-Wraith of Khan.

Waltz is so effective because it completely eschews moral relativism in favour of a very straightforward moral reading: somebody who does lots of evil things is by definition evil . It is a very refreshing argument, particularly in the context of an increasingly postmodern world. However, later episodes run even further, adopting a befuddled and confused moral reading: somebody who is defined as evil is by definition evil . It seems unreasonable to blame Waltz for the shortcomings of later episodes and plot beats, but they do haunt the narrative.

Still, Waltz is a powerful piece of television and wonderful episode of Deep Space Nine . It cements some of the core themes of the series, in a well-written script that gives two great actors strong material to play. It brings a sense of closure and resolution to the arc of one of the franchise’s most compelling supporting characters. The biggest shame is that Waltz is not allowed to stand as a defining closing argument.

You might be interested in our reviews of the sixth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine :

• A Time to Stand
• Rocks and Shoals
• Sons and Daughters
• Behind the Lines
• Favour the Bold
• Sacrifice of Angels
• You Are Cordially Invited…
• Resurrection
• Statistical Probabilities
• The Magnificent Ferengi
• Who Mourns for Morn?
• Far Beyond the Stars
• One Little Ship
• Honour Among Thieves
• Change of Heart
• Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night
• Inquisition
• In the Pale Moonlight
• The Reckoning
• Profit and Lace
• Time’s Orphan
• The Sound of Her Voice
• Tears of the Prophets

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: deep space nine , Dukat , evil , marc alaimo , moral relativism , nineties , star trek , star trek: deep space nine , waltz |

23 Responses

This is a bravura performance by Alaimo, and (as many have noted) it should have been his last episode.

At least they didn’t have him join the Scooby Gang.

There’s lots of info on the wiki about the creative differences between Alaimo and Behr. What thing I noticed was that a lot of Dukat’s fan mail made it into this episode. That is to say, his self-justification rant at Sisko is taken verbatim from the Dukat apologists. Apparently this was an idea of Ron Moore. I don’t know for certain, but I have a feeling that, by the end, the only way to get a performance out of Alamo was to let him think that he is the hero of DS9. ‘The problem is the solution’, as the saying goes.

Ira Behr compared Dukat in this episode to President Nixon, which seemed strange to me until I realized what he meant: Nixon was a paranoid personality with a deep need to be loved by everyone. Even his crimes and misdemeanors were, in his mind, somehow provoked or orchestrated by his enemies.

>At least they didn’t have him join the Scooby Gang.

But he could have become a comical parody of himself, had meaningless sex with Kira, then sacrificed his life to save the quadrant! Can’t you imagine the “Dukat is so much more heroic than Sisko” blog posts?

Sometimes, you don’t realize you needed something until you dream it. And for me, Morn singing “They Got the Yamok Out” falls into that category.

Nixon’s an interesting point of comparison, given that Dukat has also become an avatar of the current United States President. I particularly liked that twitter account that reworked Trump’s tweets to fit the politics of DS9.

You mean @RealGulDukat? Love that account.

Yep. Great account. The best account. It has all the best tweets. You’re gonna love it.

What is chilling about Dukat, and in this episode in particular, is how I always got a very 19th century American imperialistic vibe from him. The line “We did not choose to be the superior race. They handed us that role” reeks of the same kinds of excuses that Americans gave for why the Native Americans deserved to be wiped out. He is essentially playing the role of beloved American author, James Fenimore Cooper, here, which I think adds an extra layer to why he is Star Trek’s best villain. Unlike most villains, he has no interest in destroying the world, but rather creating his own history of the world and erasing any memory of the old history, as he himself says “a true victory is to make your enemy see that they were wrong to oppose you in the first place. To force them to acknowledge your greatness.;” This is much more realistic, and thus more terrifying.

Yep. I’d agree with that.

Dukat is a fascinating character because he does exist as a reflection of various protagonists in the Star Trek franchise. Sisko is the obvious one, but there’s more to it than that. There are certainly echoes of Dukat’s philosophy to be found in the rhetoric of the TNG regulars in first and second season episodes like The Last Outpost, Lonely Among Us and The Neutral Zone. Of course, those characters would be far to civilised to actually act on the notion that they are the “superior” race with more “civilised” values than these primitive cultures, but there’s also a sense of that in the justifications that Dukat provides for his own atrocities.

And, in the context of DS9, Dukat’s refusal to learn from his own history provides a nice powerful contrast with his two primary foils; both Sisko and Kira fundamentally change over the course of DS9 in a way that Dukat would never allow himself to evolve.

Dukat is a great character, one of my favourite’s in the franchise (favourite as in enjoy to watch, not approve.) I like his post-Waltz appearances more than most but I agree he was never quite as good again.

I find it fascinating that he is the only major Cardassian we have seen without an almost compulsive sense of duty towards to something or someone beyond himself. Damar and Garak are deeply patriotic to the point of going through mental agonies for it (alcoholism and panic attacks respectively.) Marritza outright tries to martyr himself to save Cardassia by forcing it to admit it’s guilt. Tain has some of Dukat’s arrogance maybe, but I’m not sure we see enough of him to tell.

Yeah, Tain is probably closest, in that The Die is Cast is more about Tain proving he still has his mojo than about any tangible greater good.

But, yeah, Dukat is a fascinating character because he’s so invested in himself rather than the culture from which he emerged. And I do like Covenant a lot, even if I think that dickishly late-night calling Kira to say “i f**ked your mom” was not the best direction they could have taken the character.

Your review prompted me to re-watch “Waltz” on Netflix this evening. After all these years it holds up very well indeed.

Gul Dukat is totally narcissistic, dangerously charismatic, he re-writes history and the facts to conform to his own world view, he’s paranoid, he constantly casts himself in the role of the persecuted victim, he is an egomaniac who craves approval & validation from others… oh lord, you’re right, Dukat really *is* Trump!

Watching this, I’m left wondering, did Dukat actually ever love Ziyal? What do you think, Darren? It’s difficult for me to say. It seems likely that at least he *thought* he loved her. I suppose she served as a prop for his ego, a validation to himself and others that he was actually a good guy. Dukat could pint to Ziyal and say “Look, there’s my half-Bajoran daughter, who I could have killed to protect my reputation, but I let her live because I love her. See, I’m not such a bad guy after all!” Then again, Dukat did seem genuinely upset that she was killed.

Of course, Dukat could have loved Ziyal and still been an evil monster. I’m reminded of the anecdotes of SS officers who could compartmentalize their lives, murdering Jews in concentration camps, and then at the end of the day go home to their wives & children, transforming into loving husbands & fathers.

I always thought Dukat loved Ziyal as an extension of himself. Like, his love of Ziyal was in some way performative, in that it allowed himself to believe that he was capable of love and affection. After all, sparing her was largely a gesture to convince Kira that he was a decent human being. I don’t think that Dukat is aware of this. I believe that he genuinely thinks that he loves Ziyal. In the same way that (before Waltz) there was a part of him that believed he genuinely loved Bajor.

But you can see how he really feels when things come down to the wire in In Purgatory’s Shadow and By Inferno’s Light; he’ll tolerate her, to a point, but he’s perfectly willing to sacrifice her in pursuit of his own selfish agenda.

This episode really cements what a great character Dukat is. At his core he’s a narcissist with an undercurrent of insecurity. It’s the reason he resents the Bajorans, needs Sisko’s approval, spared Ziyal, the reason why he loved her, everything. That core trait crowded out and eventually smothered anything potentially good about him. Interesting that two seasons ago, when self-reflection may have resulted in Dukat letting go, he was too cowardly to do it. When you say he sees himself as the hero of his own story that’s very perceptive, and I think it’s largely about his inability to give up on his own will. Better he admit his evil and retain his will than admit it and let it go. That was the ultimate theme for Vic Mackey in The Shield, since you brought it up!

Yep, Dukat is probably the franchise’s best villain. I mean, if you stopped here, maybe throwing in Covenant, you’d have it easy. He’s just such a compelling presence and one of the rare franchise villains who is both fully fleshed out and allowed his own perspective on events, as horrific and self-serving as that perspective might be.

I’d like to call a moratorium on use of “postmodern” to mean a vague sort of moral relativism as defined by conservatives who need a French scapegoat for social trends. It’s just flat wrong on the facts, and even worse, the usual examples given of “postmodernists” are people like Foucault and Derrida, who were nothing of the sort.

Each’s own, although I think this is a case where the word’s common meaning has become an effective and efficient shorthand, and it makes sense to use it in that context. (Like “literally” meaning both one thing and its exact opposite.)

(There is also a bigger academic debate around it; for example, around Holocaust Denial. I touch on that in my Voyager reviews around the same time, although you shouldn’t need to hop between them to understand the points I’m trying to make.)

Gul Dukat’s arc on Deep Space Nine is a source of much joy and frustration to this Trekker. First introduced in Emissary, we slowly watch him go from the colourless Cardassian prefect of Bajor to an ambitious Gul with a constant eye on his former prize, living under the constant delusion that everything that was his…will be his once again.

Delusion is a running theme with Dukat’s character. From here to Memory Alpha to Tor.com, everyone knows that Gul Dukat sees himself as the hero of his own story. In his mind, he was not the heartless dictator that condemned millions of Bajorans to they’re deaths during the Occupation – he was the benevolent father figure to a primitive culture of red headed stepchildren. When he planned to murder his illegitimate daughter, it was motivated not by a desire to protect himself – but to protect his wife and seven children from threat of recrimination. And when he allied an impoverished Cardassia with the Dominion, it was not borne out of a wish to conquer the Alpha Quadrant – it was to restore his people to power after they had lost they’re way through the mistakes of others.

The events of Dukat’s life are highlighted throughout several episodes of DS9 but Waltz is where it all comes together – it’s the joyful culmination of six years of storytelling and would have been a wonderful closing chapter for this fascinating character. But alas…it was not to be.

We can discuss the proper faults of Dukat’s subsequent appearances when we come to them, so let’s enjoy Dukat’s natural evolution while it lasts. A breakdown had been a long time coming for Gul Dukat. He lost so much throughout DS9’s first five years, including family, rank and his own command. But with the onset of the Dominion War, the writers began to get increasingly crueller with they’re treatment of Dukat. He managed to get back his beloved Terok Nor only to lose it to Starfleet once more. He was on the verge of conquering the entire Alpha Quadrant only to have it thwarted at the last second by divine intervention, and before he can even deal with this major setback, he then loses the most precious thing in his life, his daughter Ziyal, which brings about the loss of his own sanity.

Yes, a breakdown was always on the verge of erupting within Dukat before we finally got it in Sacrifice of Angels, but Sisko is the first to deal with the fallout in Waltz. He is the one who bears witness to Dukat’s dementia, as years of loss, anger and self-delusion spill like a geyser.

The episode begins deceptively. Dukat is in the brig of a Starfleet vessel en route to be tried as a war criminal. Sisko comes to visit him where Dukat has apparently made a full recovery from the “temporary instability” he suffered from Ziyal’s death, but after Sisko’s extension of an olive branch, the ship comes under attack by the Cardassians, and forced to abandon ship, the two are marooned on an inhospitable planet.

Gradually, the script peels away the layers of Dukat’s madness. In a Misery-like scenario, he tends to Sisko’s wounds, sends out a general distress call, and even cooks Sisko’s meals. But even in these early scenes, there are danger signs, like Dukat calling Sisko Benjamin, which just doesn’t sound right. Then Weyoun appears to Dukat before he’s revealed to be an hallucination, soon followed by Damar and finally Kira. The transmitter isn’t really transmitting anything, and Sisko and Dukat’s cordial conversations slowly erode as simmering resentments begin to resurface as Dukat tries to appeal to Sisko’s judgement with the illusory Kira, Weyoun and Damar as a silent jury.

The scenes on the planet are electrifying. As Dukat’s delusions increase in frequency, so does Marc Alaimo’s performance (his acting really was award-worthy). He travels the whole route from a cooperative prisoner to a ranting, raging madman within the space of 45 minutes flat. Avery Brooks has the less showier role but he is effective at providing a sounding-board for Dukat’s insanity. Neither actor was ever better than they were here.

The last-minute rescue by the Defiant is never in doubt, and we know that Dukat will slip though the net (he’s too good a villain to stay caught) but Waltz is an episode that towers with a confidence Star Trek has never known before. It puts front and centre the most intriguing villain we’re ever likely to see in this franchise, and takes us on a tumultuous, emotional 45-minute rollercoaster ride as his dark soul is laid bare. Season 6 just gets better and better.

It is fantastic, isn’t it?

I think the most impressive thing about Waltz is that it is so good that it escapes the retroactive taint of later developments building from it. Even knowing how Dukat’s arc develops, Waltz is still a near-perfect piece of television. (Inquisition is perhaps a contrast here, an episode that is somewhat retroactively overshadowed by the albatross that is Section 31. Although Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges is the Section 31 episode that is good enough to get out from under that shadow in its entirety.)

But, yeah. The writing. The performances. The sense that the show has been building to this moment for years. It’s beautiful.

The audience reaction to Waltz astonished the writers, because of the way they sympathised with Dukat, showing what a multifaceted villain they had created. The cave he and Sisko share (something that foreshadows their final confrontation in What You Leave Behind) sets an impressive stage, allowing these two great actors to barnstorm they’re way to a literal stormy finale.

Season 6 does get better and better… until the last four episodes.

This episode is fantastically written apart from the ending. It’s clear Ron Moore was itching to write this script-it’s time for DS9 to have its final statement on Gul Dukat. This is where Moore shines. And it all goes so well. Just like a good essay conclusion, it starts off by recapping everything that’s come before, then reaches a deeper conclusion. It’s a very nuanced and smart script, and Brooks and Alaimo knock it out of the park as well. So, the question is, WHY wasn’t this the ending for Dukat? This is the natural endpoint for his character. Just like the 11th Doctor in “A Good Man Goes to War”, he’s risen to his highest point in “Call to Arms” then falls so much further in “Sacrifice of Angels”. And finally, the show tears him to shreds in “Waltz”. This would be the perfect place to leave his character.

Yep. There’s really no reason for Dukat to continue to exist after this point, and I say that loving Covenant . Dukat is an amazing character, but his final season-and-a-half are… not a good look for him.

It’s so clunky and strange, too. “I learned there is such a thing as truly eeeeeeeeeevilllllll….”

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• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Following the destruction of the starship Honshu, Sisko finds himself stranded on a deserted planet with Dukat, who has become increasingly unstable since the death of Ziyal.

Marc Alaimo

Jeffrey Combs

Casey Biggs

Cast appearances.

René Auberjonois

Alexander Siddig

Colm Meaney

Nana Visitor

Michael Dorn

Avery Brooks

Terry Farrell

Episode discussion.

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Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Waltz

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4 comments:

Thank-you for a wonderful review. This episode is one example of why DS9 is my favorite of the Star Trek series. I'm really enjoying these reviews. Also, please forgive me for being a grammar cop, but the word you meant was "taut" not taught.

This episode is one of the many amazing DS9 episodes. You have given great praise to Brooks and to Alaimo, but I also loved Visitor's performance - especially in her role in the figment of Dukat's imagination.

One of my all-time favorites. Excellent review.

Wow. Listening to Dukat's diatribe, one can clearly imagine the slaves in America having to listen to such dribble. Listen and never say a word in protest while this scum of a human justifies what he was doing to them. The nerve of the Bajoran's to want to be free. Although it is true that many societies judge how sophisticated they are in how many people they can kill. Dukat is a wonderful villain, or should I say the actor Marc Alaimo. He was breathtaking in his hate-filled performance, so utterly believable. Brooks I knew would be great and he was. Many years ago I got to watch him perform in a free play in Central Park. The man is a force of nature and I'm thankful I got to see him. Loved this episode, love Deep Space Nine.

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• View history

"Waltz" was the 135th episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , the 11th episode of the show's sixth season , first aired during the week of 3 January 1998 . The episode was written by Ronald D. Moore and directed by Rene Auberjonois . Benjamin Sisko is stranded with an unstable Dukat .

• 2.1 Characters
• 2.2 Locations
• 2.3 Starships and shuttlecraft
• 2.4 Races and cultures
• 2.5 States and organizations
• 2.6 Science and technology
• 2.7 Other references
• 3.1 Related media
• 3.2.1 Notable cast and crew
• 3.4.1 Timeline
• 3.5 External links

Summary [ ]

Sisko is aboard the starship Honshu , as is Gul Dukat, who is being taken to the start of his war crimes trial. Dukat's mental health seems better than it was the last time Sisko saw him, just after Ziyal was murdered.

References [ ]

Characters [ ], locations [ ], starships and shuttlecraft [ ], races and cultures [ ], states and organizations [ ], science and technology [ ], other references [ ], appendices [ ], related media [ ].

• "Waltz" is Dukat's first appearance since " Sacrifice of Angels ". Dukat was first seen in " Emissary ".
• The Kornaire appears in the Star Trek: Terok Nor novel Day of the Vipers .

Background [ ]

Notable cast and crew [ ].

• Avery Brooks as Benjamin Sisko
• Nana Visitor as Kira Nerys
• Rene Auberjonois as Odo
• Alexander Siddig as Julian Bashir
• Terry Farrell as Jadzia Dax
• Armin Shimerman as Quark
• Michael Dorn as Worf
• Marc Alaimo as Dukat
• Jeffrey Combs as Weyoun

Connections [ ]

Timeline [ ], external links [ ].

• " Waltz " article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
• Waltz (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) article at Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia.
• 1 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
• 2 Achilles class
• 3 Odyssey class

• View history

The USS Honshu (NCC-60205) was a 24th century Federation Nebula -class starship operated by Starfleet .

In 2374 , the Honshu was responsible for transporting former Cardassian leader Dukat to stand trial for war crimes at Starbase 621 . Captain Benjamin Sisko was also aboard and was scheduled to testify at the trial.

At approximately 1030 hours on the second day of the three day voyage, the ship was intercepted and destroyed by a wing of Cardassian destroyers . At least three of the starship's escape pods and a Type 6 shuttlecraft managed to escape.

The USS Defiant and the USS Constellation were assigned to retrieve survivors . The Defiant recovered at least fifteen survivors, including Sisko. ( DS9 : " Waltz ")

Dukat continued to travel aboard the Honshu 's stolen shuttlecraft throughout the continuation of the year. ( DS9 : " Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night ", " Tears of the Prophets ")

• 1 Honshu personnel
• 2.1 Background information
• 2.2 External link

Honshu personnel [ ]

• See : USS Honshu personnel

Appendices [ ]

Background information [ ].

The Honshu was " named for the largest of the islands of Japan . " ( Star Trek Encyclopedia  (4th ed., vol. 1, p. 346))

The interior corridors of the Honshu seen in "Waltz" appeared to be a re-use of the Defiant sets, while the brig was a re-use from Star Trek: Voyager , which had previously been seen as Michael Eddington 's starbase prison cell seen in " Blaze of Glory " as well as the starbase holding cell Gaila was bailed out from in " The Magnificent Ferengi ".

The interior of the Type 6 shuttlecraft stolen by Dukat to escape the Honshu was used as a backdrop for his later appearances in " Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night " and " Tears of the Prophets ".

The CGI Honshu was the first Nebula -class starship to clearly feature the new gold Starfleet insignia since its introduction on other ships such as the USS Defiant and the USS Voyager , as opposed to the red and white insignia previously seen on Nebula -class ships such as the USS Sutherland and the USS Farragut . The insignia can be seen on the warp nacelle pylon in the opening shot of the DS9 6th season episode "Waltz". However, the physical model of the USS Leeds , featured in the later opening credits of Deep Space Nine , already had the newer markings. [1]

A model of the Honshu was released as part of the Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection .

External link [ ]

• USS Honshu at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 2 ISS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

• The Inventory

Deep Space Nine Was Getting Good Long Before the Dominion War

Star trek 's compelling exploration of the stress points in its utopia didn't start when the dominion showed up— deep space nine was cooking long before that..

A lot of Star Trek opinion is based on the paradoxical idea that the series within the franchise simply “get good” at some point. TNG ’s not TNG until Riker has a beard , we say, ignoring all the fantastic ideas the series got into before that. The idea of Trek shows usually having a dodgy first season has been thoroughly refuted at this point in the modern renaissance, and was arguably not entirely true even before that.

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And then there’s Deep Space 9 —simply exquisite, remarkable television, perhaps the franchise’s darkest, finest hour ... but only, we’re to believe, once the show begins tackling the Dominion subplot and its eventual escalation into all-out galactic war. Except I’ve been revisiting the show from the beginning recently, and cannot help but think that such a framing does DS9 a huge disservice. While the Dominion War forced open the cracks in Star Trek ’s idealized world, those cracks have always been there, and DS9 was prying them open with gleefully gritted teeth from the get-go.

I already got an inkling of this revisiting the debut season of the series last year for its 30th anniversary—and found remarkable gems in a season that most Trek fans tell you is not worth checking out beyond the establishing premise of the show. But season two really picks on up on the threads laid down across season one of the various tensions still at play in the messy story scenario DS9 found itself a home in, where most other Star Trek series simply moved on to the next adventure: what happens when a society is saved from violent oppression, and Starfleet steps in?

From the get-go, we see the tinderbox of the various struggles Bajor’s Provisional Government faced establishing itself in season one—an issue we mostly saw explored through the eyes of Major Kira and her own exasperations with both Starfleet and her past as a resistance fighter—explode in season two, as the machinations of Vedek Winn (the always remarkable Louise Fletcher , lacing every utterance of “My child” with more venom than thought humanly possible) set the stage for a coup attempt that sees Deep Space Nine become a battleground long before the show became the “war show.” Settling the Bajoran coup d’etat early on in season two likewise creates a ripple effect throughout the stories being told, ones we really begin to see reflected in the two-part storyline “The Maquis.”

A fascinating mirror to the tensions of the Bajoran/Starfleet conflict of season one—the idea that people are looking at our heroes and asking them what the point of them being here on the frontier is really worth—“The Maquis” explores the establishment of, and the beginnings of wide-scale dissent with, a guerrilla group of Federation colonists in the demilitarized zone established between the Cardassian Union and the Federation. Starfleet’s diplomacy re-drew lines of territory between the two powers, changing the control of colony worlds in that area of space and uprooting the lives of civilians—not members of Starfleet, just beings from the Federation and from Cardassia alike—without a care in the world. It’s that careless degree of thought and consideration is really what comes through in “The Maquis”—we’ve seen Starfleet officers humbled by hubris before this in Star Trek , but rarely has Starfleet as an entity, and even the Federation, been portrayed as so ignorant as they are in these two episodes.

Commander Sisko and his team investigate reports of conflicts between Cardassian and Federation colonists—including a terrorist attack on DS9 that destroyed a Cardassian ship—with Starfleet’s liaison to the region, Calvin Hudson. As they do so, the terrible plight civilians on both sides are facing, from the Cardassian military commander’s subtle attempts to destabilize the region further and play intra-command politics, to Starfleet’s attempts to police from afar, becomes incredibly clear. But as the revelation of the Maquis’ existence (and the twist that Hudson himself has resigned from Starfleet to aid them) emerges, and tensions begin to ramp up towards open conflict, DS9 bares its fangs directly at Star Trek ’s utopia in an absolutely stunning scene in part two of “The Maquis.”

Recieving a meeting in person with Admiral Nechayev in his office on DS9, Sisko, already reeling from his old friend Hudson’s betrayal, can barely contain his disdain when he’s simply told by Starfleet that if he establishes a dialogue with the Maquis, they will remember that they are citizens of the lauded, grand Federation, and the day will be saved—and that because it’s all that simple, he’ll be getting no extra help from Starfleet beyond such sage advice.

The second Nechayev leaves his office—and crucially, a likeminded Kira enters— Avery Brooks unleashes himself . We’ve known up to this point that Sisko is not a man afraid of throwing a few punches, literally or otherwise, or that he’s willing to keep his sense of justice in check, but even for all the traumatized disdain he had for Jean-Luc Picard in DS9 's premiere , we’ve never seen him unload on Starfleet like he does here, blasting the Federation for looking outside its window and nowhere else. “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise,” he rails, “but the Maquis do not live in paradise. Out there, in the demilitarized zone, all the problems haven’t been solved yet. Out there, there are no saints: just people .”

Star Trek has always characterized itself as a series about people—about the best and brightest of ourselves going out into the stars to explore, to defend innocents from justice, to preach and practice the ideals of their post-war, post-scarcity, post-shades-of-grey utopia. But in one stirring speech, DS9 puts forward that these are the people that Star Trek should never have been about: it’s the people on the fringes of that society, shaped by the decisions of its leadership, and never supported to put those decisions into practice, only judged when their world doesn’t match up to the well-maintained gardens of Starfleet Academy, the pristine hallways of its San Francisco command center, or even the plush carpet of a Galaxy-Class’ bridge . What on earth are those people meant to do when things go wrong?

“The Maquis” is a fundamental stepping stone to the stresses Deep Space Nine would explore with the Dominion, starting shortly after in season two’s finale, “The Jem’Hadar.” Already having shown just how good Starfleet Command is at letting down its own people, in giving the Federation a seemingly overwhelming foe in the Dominion’s titular footsoldiers, we see how thoroughly unprepared the Federation has been left. But its hubris and ignorance was not established in its response to the Dominion, and the war that was to come—it was established where Deep Space Nine has always worked best: in the muck of it all, on the edge of the galaxy, with the people trying so hard to do the good work with the little they’ve got. And that was something it was doing from the very beginning .

Deep Space Nine is available to stream now on Paramount+.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Change of Heart

• Episode aired Mar 4, 1998

Worf and Jadzia travel to the badlands to procure some information on the Dominion from a traitorous Cardassian. Bashir wants to engage in a holo-suite spy simulation, but O'Brien prefers to... Read all Worf and Jadzia travel to the badlands to procure some information on the Dominion from a traitorous Cardassian. Bashir wants to engage in a holo-suite spy simulation, but O'Brien prefers to brush up on his tongo game after watching Jadzia lose to Quark. Worf and Jadzia travel to the badlands to procure some information on the Dominion from a traitorous Cardassian. Bashir wants to engage in a holo-suite spy simulation, but O'Brien prefers to brush up on his tongo game after watching Jadzia lose to Quark.

• David Livingston
• Gene Roddenberry
• Rick Berman
• Michael Piller
• Avery Brooks
• Rene Auberjonois
• Michael Dorn
• 13 User reviews
• 4 Critic reviews

• Captain Benjamin 'Ben' Sisko

• Constable Odo
• (credit only)

• Lt. Cmdr. Worf

• Lt. Cmdr. Jadzia Dax

• Chief Miles O'Brien

• Doctor Julian Bashir

• Major Kira Nerys

• Jem'Hadar Guard
• (uncredited)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Trivia This was the 500th episode of Star Trek to air.
• Goofs As Major Kira said that Worf and Jadzia are the only two left to do the mission, she shouldn't send them away because she knows the Federation rules, not to send family! At the end Worf is reprimanded by Sisko over this although Major Kira should be reprimanded that she allowed them to go on this mission together. Instead of Jadzia she should send another officer or send an message to the Federation for assistance.

Lt. Commander Worf : You were at my wedding. You heard the story of the first two Klingon hearts, and how nothing could stand against them, and how they even destroyed the gods that had created them. I've heard that story since I was a boy; but I never understood it - I mean really understood it. Until I was standing in the jungle, with my heart pounding in my chest. And I found that even I could not stand against my own heart. I had to go back. And it did not matter what Starfleet thought or what the consequences were. She was my wife, and I could not leave her.

• Connections Featured in What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (2018)
• Soundtracks Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Main Title (uncredited) Written by Dennis McCarthy Performed by Dennis McCarthy

User reviews 13

• Nov 10, 2020
• March 4, 1998 (United States)
• United States
• Official site
• Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (Studio)
• Paramount Television
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 46 minutes

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Star trek: ds9 changed a big detail to avoid another babylon 5 clash.

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Cast & Character Guide

After 31 years, star trek confirms a deep space 9 in-joke in the most hilarious way, star trek: ds9's armin shimerman hated portraying quark as "ugly".

• Star Trek: DS9 changed the name of Cardassian spy ring from Gray to Obsidian to avoid plagiarism accusations from Babylon 5.
• Both DS9 and Babylon 5 are political thrillers that revolve around intergalactic conflicts.
• Despite accusations of plagiarism in the 1990s, both DS9 and Babylon 5 can now be enjoyed free from fan arguments.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine changed one key detail of the show to avoid another clash with their arch rivals, Babylon 5 . There are various similarities between DS9 and Babylon 5 , that go beyond their space station setting. Both shows are political thrillers, dealing with the nuances of intergalactic conflict, be it DS9 's Dominion War or Babylon 5 's Shadow War. Indeed, the similarities between DS9 and Babylon 5 led to accusations of plagiarism back in the early 1990s.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe avoided further accusations of DS9 plagiarizing Babylon 5 when writing season 2, episode 22, "The Wire". The episode is centered on Garak (Andrew Robinson) and his shady past as a Cardassian spy. "The Wire" is a key moment for Garak's friendship with Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) , and it's also the episode that introduces the Obsidian Order, the Cardassian intelligence agency that would go on to play a role in future DS9 episodes. However, they almost had a different name that would have risked plagiarizing Babylon 5 .

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had the biggest cast of characters of any Trek show, meaning that Captain Sisko had numerous allies in the Dominion War.

Star Trek: DS9’s Cardassian Spies Were Renamed Because Of Babylon 5

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2, episode 22, "The Wire", it's revealed that Garak was a member of the Obsidian Order , the primary intelligence agency of the Cardassian Union. Originally, the Obsidian Order was going to be called the Gray Order, but the name was changed when Robert Hewitt Wolfe realized that the Gray Council played a key role in five seasons of Babylon 5 . The Gray Council in Babylon 5 were the main governing body of the Minbari Federation , one of the member races of the Interstellar Alliance.

Robert Hewitt Wolfe described how he approached changing the Cardassian spy ring's name in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion :

" I thought, 'Damn!,' and then I made up a huge list of different kinds of metals, gems, and colors, and finally came up with obsidian, which I actually like better than grey! "

Hewitt Wolfe has a point; the Obsidian Order sounds far cooler than the Gray Order, and its namesake is more fitting for the Cardassian Intelligence agency. Obsidian is a hard, brittle mineral which is generally black . A pitch-black harshness perfectly sums up the methodology of the Obsidian Order in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , proving Hewitt Wolfe made the right choice.

Star Trek: DS9 And Babylon 5’s Rivalry Explained

Although Babylon 5 premiered in 1994, one year after Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , DS9 was accused of plagiarizing J. Michael Straczynski's space station show. The reason for this was that Babylon 5 had been in development in parallel with DS9 , and Straczynski had pitched his show to Paramount. Not long after Paramount rejected Babylon 5 , they announced Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , suspicious timing that suggested the studio took Straczynski's ideas and adapted them to their new Star Trek TV show .

During its early development, Rick Berman and Michael Piller considered setting Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on a colony planet, but the location shooting required was deemed too expensive.

J. Michael Straczynski has always made it clear that he never believed that Rick Berman or Michael Piller had directly ripped off his ideas . However, he did believe that Paramount may have been influenced by his Babylon 5 pitch, though he declined to mount legal action. While the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 creative teams were magnanimous toward each other, each show's respective fan communities were far less civil, engaging in arguments about plagiarism and which show was better throughout the 1990s. 30 years later, both classic sci-fi shows can be enjoyed, freed from the petty fan arguments of the 1990s.

All episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, also known as DS9, is the fourth series in the long-running Sci-Fi franchise, Star Trek. DS9 was created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller, and stars Avery Brooks, René Auberjonois, Terry Farrell, and Cirroc Lofton. This particular series follows a group of individuals in a space station near a planet called Bajor.

Babylon 5 is a sci-fi television series that revolves around a group of humans and aliens that work together on a space station known as Babylon 5 during the twenty-third century. The show explores intergalactic relations, conflict, and the relationships of the crew as they try to help their respective species thrive and survive.

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993)
• Babylon 5 (1993)

Star Trek: DS9 Almost Did Strange New Worlds' Super Soldier Drugs 20 Years Ago

• Star Trek: DS9 planned super soldier drugs 20 years before SNW's Protocol 12
• Kira's drug backstory was considered in "The Wire" episode.
• DS9's Kira and SNW's M'Benga both have dark connections - combat experience and murder, but they are redeemed by heroic actions.
• DS9's dark storytelling success in SNW echoes through shared character struggles. Watch both series on Paramount+ for more.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine planned a storyline involving super soldier drugs nearly 20 years before Dr. Joseph M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) used them in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2. It was revealed in SNW season 2 that Dr. M'Benga had developed a combat drug known as Protocol 12, which was used by Starfleet officers fighting in the Klingon War . The drug was a cocktail of adrenaline and pain inhibitors that made the user stronger, more aggressive, and more resistant to pain, all of which were valuable attributes when fighting in Star Trek: Discovery 's Klingon War .

The existence of Protocol 12 was disavowed by M'Benga and Starfleet, but Star Trek: Strange New Worlds revealed that the USS Enterprise's chief medical officer still had a supply of the drug. Both M'Benga and Chapel used Protocol 12 in Strange New Worlds ' season 2 opener , when they had to fight their way through a group of Klingon and Federation conspirators. Nearly 20 years earlier, while breaking the story of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode that would become "The Wire", the writers' room considered introducing a similar story about combat drugs involving one of DS9 's regular characters .

Strange New Worlds Dark Klingon War Episode Makes It Star Treks True DS9 Successor

Star trek: ds9 nearly did strange new world's super soldier drugs first.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2, episode 22, "The Wire" revealed that Elim Garak (Andrew Robinson) had burnt out a pain-inhibiting implant in his brain, leading to disastrous results for his health. However, writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe's original intention for the episode was to reveal that Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) was suffering withdrawal from repeated use of combat drugs during the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor . As a story for a Star Trek episode, this pre-empted Dr. M'Benga's Protocol 12 by about 19 years.

Eventually, it was decided that the revelations about Kira's drug use and addiction were too major to not factor into future episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . It was also felt that Kira's character would be tarnished by her reliance on combat stimulants. Instead, the episode became a key moment in the friendship between Garak and Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig). As Garak was a recurring character with an enigmatic and sinister past, the revelations about his implant and addiction to pain inhibitors were a better fit. However, Kira's own dark past would continue to influence future DS9 episodes.

"The Wire" is the first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to name the Obsidian Order, the shadowy intelligence agency that Garak once worked for.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' M'Benga And DS9's Kira Have 1 Dark Thing In Common

Although Kira's combat drugs storyline was dropped from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , she still has a dark connection to Dr. Joseph M'Benga. Both Kira and M'Benga have seen brutal conflict from the Bajoran Resistance to the Klingon War. However, many Starfleet officers have seen combat throughout the Star Trek timeline , meaning that these two tragic characters aren't alone in their wartime experiences. What does connect Kira and M'Benga, however, is the fact that they have both committed murder .

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2, episode 8, "Necessary Evil" it was revealed that Kira murdered a Bajoran collaborator aboard Terok Nor during the Occupation. Kira acted in self-defense, but her disdain for collaborators suggests that she may have done it regardless. Similarly, Dr. M'Benga murdered Ambassador Dak'Rah (Robert Wisdom) aboard the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 8, "Under the Cloak of War", and claimed it was self-defense. However, despite Kira and M'Benga's crimes, they are both Star Trek characters whose heroic acts far outweigh their villainous ones, going some way toward redeeming these complicated characters .

All episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are available to stream now on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, also known as DS9, is the fourth series in the long-running Sci-Fi franchise, Star Trek. DS9 was created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller, and stars Avery Brooks, Ren Auberjonois, Terry Farrell, and Cirroc Lofton. This particular series follows a group of individuals in a space station near a planet called Bajor.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds