There’s a lot to like about Deep House 9 earlier than it quote unquote “Gets Good.” The present’s first two seasons are, in a whole lot of methods, concerning the issues many reward DS9‘s again half for coping with: the price of compromising Star Trek’s utopian future on the furthest fringes of its last frontier. However even then, few issues ready its viewers for the second every thing modified with the arrival of the Dominion War.
Whereas the opening volleys of that battle are a few of its most well-known, for good cause, the precise turning level that sees DS9 start to pivot to a warfare footing occurred 30 years in the past at present with the published of the season two finale, “The Jem’Hadar,” and the beginning of a Chilly Conflict that might quickly flip scorching, and current Star Trek the most radical challenge to its beliefs to this point. For essentially the most half, it’s a Trek episode like many earlier than it. Considering he was getting a quiet trip to the Gamma Quadrant together with his son Jake, Commander Sisko finds himself coping with the difficult annoyance of Jake’s greatest pal Nog tagging alongside, after which Nog’s uncle Quark, hoping to get the Commander’s ear, becoming a member of uninvited, just for all of them abruptly to search out themselves prisoners of a wierd, hostile new race they’ve by no means encountered earlier than the primary evening they make camp.
Little in the best way of assets—Deep House 9 didn’t have a ship at this level, so our heroes simply have their runabout shuttle, and what tenting gear they purchased with them—and going through an unknown enemy with all the facility, that is the sort of episode we’ve seen many occasions earlier than in Star Trek, as Sisko, Quark, and a possible new ally in a psychic alien lady named Eris who was likewise caught fleeing the titular Jem’Hadar, try to fail to both escape the clutches of their new foes and even join and perceive them diplomatically. It’s maybe in any other case the sort of episode that ends with our heroes getting rescued, or breaking out, and proving that Starfleet’s most interesting and their allies, even caught unawares and with out their standard assets, can work collectively, save the day, and make it out of hurt’s approach. They’re Star Trek heroes! That’s what they do. However “The Jem’Hadar” shouldn’t be a typical Star Trek episode in what was already not a typical Star Trek present, and whereas we get that partially, it’s the climactic twist that makes Deep House 9’s boldest gambit crystal clear.
Within the climax of the episode, after Sisko has didn’t test in with the station, Kira and Odo work with the Federation to ship the USS Odyssey, and one other runabout to the Gamma Quadrant in quest of the Commander. They meet up, Jake and Nog rescue Quark, Sisko, and Eris, and a combat breaks out between the Jem’Hadar and the Odyssey. A combat the Odyssey in a short time begins dropping. This too is maybe anticipated generally—Star Trek has loads of firefights get away the place our heroes can seemingly not land a shot, however their foes can discover methods to lance by way of their shields, normally earlier than some intelligent techno babble and problem-solving finds a technique to flip the chances in Starfleet’s favor. That doesn’t occur right here, after which the opposite shoe drops: because the Odyssey and the runabouts start to retreat again to DS9, the Jem’Hadar ship—unhurt by what little the Odyssey might throw at it regardless of it being the overwhelmingly bigger ship—performs a kamikaze cost immediately on the cruiser, blowing itself and the Odyssey up immediately. In surprised silence, the remaining shuttles are left to hobble again house.
With one last twist—that Eris was actually working with the Jem’Hadar, and is a consultant of their shared masters within the Dominion, who do not need the Federation encroaching on their territory; she teleports away to elements unknown earlier than she might be detained—the season ends on this uneasy area. This one fight is over, and was arguably over earlier than it even started, however the Dominion will inevitably return… and Starfleet is clearly not prepared for what it’s able to.
It’s the second every thing adjustments on Deep House 9. The present had dire threats earlier than this—the station had been boarded and occupied in a hostile coup d’etat, Sisko had already handled the emergence of a brand new guerrilla entrance within the Maquis, opening up previous wounds with the Cardassians. However there’s a weight in seeing a ship just like the Odyssey not simply unable to the touch the Jem’Hadar, however be taken out like nothing, simply to ship a message that the Federation has no thought what it’s coping with. It’s an particularly potent message, as a result of the Odyssey isn’t just any Federation ship, it’s a Galaxy-class cruiser, at that time the idealized apex of Starfleet shipcraft, the imaginative and prescient of its scientific expansionary goals. It’s not simply the perfect of Starfleet, it’s the perfect of Star Trek: the Galaxy-class was the Enterprise. It was The Next Generation. And right here was its successor present, having already danced with the complicated legacy of its predecessor, blowing that image up: what the Federation is, what Star Trek was earlier than this, shouldn’t be ready for what’s to return.
The affect was made clear when Deep House 9 returned. We’re instantly introduced to the Defiant in “The Search,” the primary Starfleet vessel we’ve seen on-screen explicitly designed for fight, a two-part premiere that reveals even with Starfleet baring its enamel like this, Deep House 9’s heroes are nonetheless not prepared for what the Dominion represents. The subsequent few seasons of the present symbolize a sluggish and sure splintering of the Alpha Quadrant powers as we’d come to know them over TNG and the opening seasons of DS9, because the Dominion’s brokers sowed paranoia and mistrust—the seeming destruction of the Cardassian and Romulan intelligence businesses, a return to hostility between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, brewing navy coups on the coronary heart of Starfleet itself.
By the point the Dominion War turns hot on the climax of season 5, Deep House 9 has all however accomplished its transition into the present it’s now at all times lauded for being. However even because it went on to these nice heights, there are nonetheless few stronger pictures in all the sequence than the Odyssey wreathed in flames as its hull splinters into items—a warning, and a promise that Star Trek would by no means be the identical.
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