DS9 Flashback: The Siege

With "The Siege," Deep Space Nine's grand experiment of a three-part episode came to a conclusion.

Sisko has been ordered by both Starfleet and the new Bajoran government to withdraw from Deep Space Nine. But with proof in hand that the Bajoran revolution has been armed in secret by the Cardassians, he's not going away without a fight. As Kira and Dax struggle to take the evidence to Bajor, Sisko leads his officers in a guerrilla operation through the guts of the station to harass and delay the Bajoran occupying force.

Continuing the trend of this trilogy, this final installment isn't bad, but isn't as good as what came before. It does have a few undeniably entertaining elements. Kira and Dax's team-up to fly an old jalopy of a fighter to Bajor is great fun. We see the normally unflappable Dax out of her element, fearful of insects (though, admittedly, enormous ones), frustrated by outdated technology, and skeptical of improvisation. And the very idea of showing Star Trek's version of dog-fighting in small "planes" is a wonderful change of pace -- though I do wish it hadn't taxed the budget and VFX limitations of the time just to show us this much, because it definitely leaves you wanting even more.

Some of the dramatic moments play well too. Sisko opens the episode with a rousing speech about the bonds between Starfleet personnel and the Bajorans, and closes the episode with a heartfelt compliment to Kira ("There are heroes all over Bajor. I'm sitting with one."). On the opposite end of the nobility spectrum, we see just how cutthroat a political animal Winn is, when she turns on Jaro the instant it looks like his plan has been foiled.

But a lot of this episode is a mixed bag. Take the use of Jake. The writers give him a nice moment with Nog, calling back Nog's underdeveloped language skills (when he can't pronounce "coup d'état" and calls it a "stupid French thing"). But then they don't really explore what it would mean for Jake to lose his father after having lost his mother. Take the scene in which O'Brien says goodbye to his wife and daughter -- it's dramatically resonant, yet having it calls out how preposterous it is for him to choose duty them. Take the subplot of Quark selling seats in the station evacuation. It shades his character back toward darkness in a fun way, yet he doesn't actually get into any legal trouble for it. His only comeuppance comes in getting double-crossed by Rom... and then we don't get to see the fallout when brothers reunite after the crisis.

The writing of this trilogy's guest characters falters most here in this final installment. Jaro and Winn are barely featured, squandering actors Frank Langella and Louise Fletcher. Li Nalas remains a flat presence (as in the previous episode) until the moment he all but commits suicide to return everything to normal. This death was apparently a bit of a controversy among the writing staff. Peter Allan Fields felt that killing Li off to reset everything was too pat, that he might as well have never been around. Ira Steven Behr felt that the character's moment of sacrifice would be heroic (and was concerned that actor Richard Beymer would be unavailable and/or too expensive for future episodes). Showrunner Michael Piller, who wrote this script, broke the tie.

Weirder still is the character of General Krim, who leads the occupation of Deep Space Nine. He rightly concludes that Sisko hasn't abandoned the station, but does absolutely nothing about it. His lackey Colonel Day may be wrong about all the xenophobia, but he's certainly right that his commanding officer is lazy and derelict in his duty. (Side note: Day is an oddly one-note character to get a recognizable actor like Steven Weber to come in and play, but I guess he was a Star Trek fan who didn't want to miss the opportunity.)

Then there are all the missed opportunities in this final act of the story. Though it's solid logic to have Kira take the evidence of Cardassian meddling to Bajor, the far more intriguing dramatic angle would have been to have her, an experienced guerrilla warrior herself, hiding out on the station to strike against her own people. And where is Garak in all this? (Well, besides being until this point only a one-off character.) Where would an exiled Cardassian flee to in Federation space? Or what would it have been like to have him with the group that stayed behind on the station?

Other observations:

• Again, they weren't afraid to spend money on this trilogy. Besides those spaceship battle scenes, this episode has a noticeably large number of background actors, costumed in Starfleet or Bajoran military uniforms. All the main characters get civilian clothes too.

• As he would later in a far more effective story arc, Sisko leaves his baseball on his desk to signal that he's not really abandoning the station for good.

• "The Circle is broken." Clever line. I wonder if they worked backward from it to name the Bajoran nationalist group?

I'd grade "The Siege" a B-. It's possible I'm being a little generous there, since I think the trilogy as a whole probably earns a B, and "B-" is the mark that makes that average work. In any case, this episode is a taste of things to come, but only a taste.