“The Changing Face of Evil”
Written by Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler
Directed by Mike Vejar
Season 7, Episode 20
Production episode 40510-570
Original air date: April 28, 1999
Stardate: unknown
Station log: Worf and Dax return to DS9, greeted by a very happy Bashir and O’Brien. (Apparently Morn won the betting pool as to when they’d come back.) Sisko arrives soon thereafter, foregoing reprimanding Dax for stealing a runabout and disobeying orders because he wants to hear more about the Breen alliance with the Dominion, which they only know about because Worf and Dax reported it. They also discuss Damar’s dissatisfaction with Cardassia’s place in the Dominion.
They’re interrupted by Kira with a priority-one message from Starfleet Command: the Breen have announced their alliance with the Dominion by attacking Earth. They fired on Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco, badly damaging the Golden Gate Bridge as well. Starfleet was able to destroy most of the Breen ships that attacked, but by then the damage was done.
Weyoun is thrilled with the attack on Earth and effusive in his praise for the Breen. After he goes to report to the Founder, Damar tells Thot Gor that the Dominion used to sing Cardassia’s praises in much the same way. But the war didn’t end as quickly as they’d hoped, so now they blame Cardassia. If the war doesn’t end soon, Damar warns, they’ll shift the blame to the Breen.
Sisko returns to his quarters to find a disaster area: Yates has attempted to cook dinner, which is something less than a howling success. She’s ruined Sisko’s peppers (he’d been growing them for months). She was hoping to cheer him up after the attack on Earth, but she’s just annoyed him further—and then she doubles down by reminding him that she’s going on a cargo run early next week, which doesn’t make him happy as it isn’t safe out there.
Damar meets with Gul Rusot, one of the people who feels as Damar does: that the alliance with the Dominion was supposed to be the dawn of a new age of prosperity for Cardassia, and instead they’ve become an occupied power. Rusot has a list of Cardassians he trusts—which, he adds, isn’t a very long list.
On Bajor, Winn is having Solbor cancel all her engagements—including a talk before the vedek assembly. She’s testy with Solbor, and even more testy with Dukat. She hates having to pretend to be the kai of the Prophets, and wants the Pah-wraiths to get up off their asses and embrace her, already. Dukat drops the next shoe: they need to release the Pah-wraiths from the fire caves, and to do that, they need the text of the Kosst Amojan. It’s forbidden for anyone to open that text—anyone, that is, except for the kai…
O’Brien and Bashir are playing with a miniature model of the Alamo with figurines to represent the combatants. Bashir, who plays Travis in the holosuite, is trying to figure out a way to win the battle—O’Brien’s cheeky response is, “Be Santa Ana, he wins every time.”
Weyoun is impressed to see that Damar has reported for duty early, and isn’t carrying a bottle. The Vorta mistakes this renewed confidence for Damar realizing that the Dominion will win the day thanks to their new Breen allies. Damar gladly lets him think that.
Solbor very reluctantly brings the text of the Kosst Amojan to Winn and Dukat. He’s suspicious of Winn for wanting to read this book of evil, and incredibly suspicious of Dukat. But he gives in, buying Winn and Dukat’s line that the Prophets sent “Anjohl” to her, leaving the book with Winn.
But when she opens the book, she finds that it’s full of blank pages. Winn refuses to give up, requesting that Solbor bring her lots of texts from the archives to try to figure out how to make the words appear. She kicks out Solbor—and then kicks out Dukat, too, as she needs to concentrate.
Yates is furious to learn that Sisko has arranged for Bajoran Freight & Shipping to give Yates a month’s paid vacation. She will not let him interfere with her job. So he talks to BFS and they put her back on the active list, which Sisko informs her along with flowers.
Ross then informs Sisko that the Breen is trying to take back the Chin’toka system. The Defiant is sent to join the task force that will defend Chin’toka. Weyoun, meanwhile, is also heading to Chin’toka on a Jem’Hadar ship alongside the female changeling. Weyoun is concerned that the Founder is going to be too close to the front lines, but she wants to see this battle up close.
Dukat sees Solbor taking the texts away from Winn’s office while she sleeps, angrily telling him to put them back on Winn’s desk. He smacks Solbor around and then takes the texts back to the kai himself.
The Defiant destroys two Breen ships in the initial salvo, but the Breen have a weapon that, when it hits a ship, drains all power from it. They become a sitting duck, and Sisko has no choice but to abandon ship. Moments later the Defiant is destroyed—as are dozens of other Starfleet, Klingon, and Romulan ships. The female changeling belays Weyoun’s order to destroy the escape pods, as those pods are filled with frightened officers who will bring the tale of woe back to the Federation.
Solbor reveals to Winn that the real Anjohl Tennan died nine years ago. He took a sample of “Anjohl’s” DNA, which revealed that he’s Cardassian—not only that, he’s Dukat. Winn pulls a knife on Dukat, but then Dukat forces her to reveal to Solbor that they’re working for the Pah-wraiths these days. Before Solbor can go out and proclaim her heresy to all of Bajor, Winn stabs him in the back.
But she isn’t exactly on “Anjohl’s” side anymore, either, now that she knows who he really is. Her life, she thinks, is over now, this whole thing a Cardassian plot. She goes to destroy the book—but the knife drips Solbor’s blood onto the pages, and the text is revealed. Winn does another heel-turn, realizing that the Pah-wraiths have found her worthy. Dukat promises to dispose of Solbor’s body while she studies the text.
Sisko moping over the loss of his ship is interrupted by a transmission from Cardassian space by Damar. He expresses his dismay at how Cardassia was promised to become the conquerors of the Alpha Quadrant with the Dominion’s help. But instead of gaining territory, they’ve lost it, and they’re now second-class citizens in their own home. The streets of Cardassia are overrun with Jem’Hadar, Vorta, and now Breen. Damar’s allies have attacked the Dominion outpost on Rondac III, destroying the cloning plant there (a shot at Weyoun, since his clones were produced at that facility). While the female changeling orders Damar and his allies found and killed no matter what it takes, Sisko, Kira, and Ross agree that they need to find a way to help him.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The Breen have a weapon that drains all energy from a ship it strikes. This is bad for the people they’re firing on.
The Sisko is of Bajor: Not Sisko’s happiest week—yes, he gets Dax and Worf back, but he majorly screws up his marriage (though he fixes it skillfully) and loses his ship.
Rules of Acquisition: Quark’s role in this is to play Greek chorus, commenting on both Bashir and O’Brien’s Alamo obsession and on the Sisko-Yates argument over the former manipulating the latter’s job.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Worf and Dax share a drink and discuss whether or not Dax should tell Bashir how she feels. Bashir himself is obviously way more happy to see Dax than he is Worf at the beginning.
Victory is life: The Dominion takes back the Chin’toka system, but they lose the cloning facility at Rondac III. However, the Breen’s arrival brings with it an energy-dampening weapon that may be unstoppable.
For Cardassia! Damar finds three fleets among the Cardassian forces that are willing to turn against the Dominion, and he assures Rusot that more will join them once they strike back.
Tough little ship. Rest in peace, Defiant.
Keep your ears open: “Kasidy, you don’t cook!”
“I know—I was just making sure.”
Sisko’s response to Yates’s failed attempt to cook, and Yates’s acknowledgment of same.
Welcome aboard: James Otis makes his final appearance as Solbor, while John Vickery makes his first appearance as Rusot, who will recur over the next couple of episodes. Vickery, possessor of one of the finest voices extant, previously appeared in TNG’s “Night Terrors” as a Betazoid, and he’ll appear in Enterprise’s “Judgment” as a Klingon lawyer.
Meanwhile, we get the usual suspects: Marc Alaimo, Casey Biggs, Jeffrey Combs, Aron Eisenberg, Louise Fletcher, J.G. Hertzler, Barry Jenner, Salome Jens, and Penny Johnson.
Trivial matters: The Breen attack on Earth was dramatized in Dave Galanter’s short story “Eleven Hours Out” in Tales of the Dominion War (edited by your humble rewatcher); the Enterprise plays a significant role. In that same anthology, Howard Weinstein wrote “Safe Harbors,” which shows what Scotty and McCoy were doing when the attack on Earth occurred.
Chin’toka was captured by the allies in “Tears of the Prophets.” It was their only foothold in Dominion space, and they lose it in this episode. It isn’t specified whether or not AR-558 is abandoned or if the troops assigned there (like the ones in “The Siege at AR-558”) were killed. It’s also never revealed whether or not they finally doped out the protocols for the communications array on that world.
O’Brien will eventually find the William B. Travis figurine that Bashir lost in this episode in “What You Leave Behind.”
Walk with the Prophets: “Our ‘allies’ have conquered us without firing a single shot.” There’s a lot going on in this episode, and I really wish more of it was interesting. Or, at least, not repetitive.
Indeed, this episode takes great joy in repeating itself. Worf and Dax twice have the same conversation about Dax’s feelings for Bashir, once in Quark’s, once on the Defiant. Damar and Rusot have the same conversation about Cardassia needing to throw off the Dominion twice, and many of the things they say to each other are repeated (far more effectively, I might add) in Damar’s speech at the end. Sisko does something stupid and Yates castigates him for being stupid, and then she castigates him again for being stupid when he fixes it. And the Dukat-Winn-Solbor dance is endless: Solbor disapproves, Winn assures him everything’s fine, Dukat gets snotty, Solbor leaves in a huff, Dukat reassures Winn that everything will be fine when Winn doubts, lather, rinse, repeat. When Solbor reveals Dukat’s true identity, it’s less effective as a scene of tension than a relief that one of these many scenes will finally end differently.
Which is too bad, because there’s some great moments in this episode. Two are visual: the destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge and Starfleet Headquarters at the beginning and the Defiant’s destruction at the end (with a lovely followup of Weyoun commenting that Captain Sisko really liked that ship in that unctuous tone of his). The third is Damar’s speech. Damar has been a toady, a killer, a drunk, but in this episode he finally lays the foundation for being a (Cardassian) hero. Damar has always been a follower, and until Dukat made it clear that he wasn’t coming back and that Damar had to take charge, Damar was waiting for someone to come along and tell him what to do. The only person fulfilling that role was Weyoun, which wasn’t really helping.
But once he gets his fecal matter together and starts fighting for himself, he kicks some serious ass and takes all the names. His rallying cry to his fellow Cardassians is magnificent, beautifully written and phenomenally delivered by Casey Biggs. It’s a moment of hope after a bleak battle.
The battle itself was skillfully done, as things start promisingly with the Defiant blowing stuff up, but then the Breen energy-dampener hits and the Defiant is destroyed—and then we cut back to the rest of the fleet, which is equally devastated. It’s the most effective “ship graveyard” we’ve seen since “The Best of Both Worlds Part II,” and it’s horrible in all the right ways.
What’s especially fascinating is that the Dominion is once again using terrorist tactics, which we haven’t seen much since the war actually started. But here they are doing a symbolic attack on Earth, and then leaving the escape pods intact so they can report back how awful the battle was.
These moments are almost enough to leaven the repetition, not to mention the fact that the Winn-Dukat plot is moving at a snail’s pace…
Warp factor rating: 6
Keith R.A. DeCandido is buried in snow.
The real reason the escape pods were left intact was because they were filled with opening credits regulars.
Seriously…that’s pretty dumb. Wouldn’t the enemy be equally as demoralized and frightened (if not more) if NO ONE came back from the battle? Oh, and then also, they wouldn’t have a clue about the energy weapon until it was too late. And now they’ve let a bunch of people survive so they can figure out how to defeat it, or at least to not go near the Breen ships.
I guess if I was in a war, I wouldn’t care so much about demoralizing my enemy as destroying my enemy.
Oh, and why the bridge? Why always the bridge?
That ship graveyard offers an interesting bookend for Sisko. We first see him aboard the Saratoga at Wolf 359, just before it is destroyed. The loss of the Defiant under similar circumstances has to have a tremendous emotional resonance for him.
And Damar’s speech is terrific and is the perfect setup for the conclusion of his arc. Did the show runners really have this in mind wayback when they introduced him and they had to talk Biggs into taking the role with the promise of great things to come?
Why is it terrorism to attack Starfleet HQ? You’re at war, you attack each other’s military facilities. It would have been terrorism if they’d blown up the Hawaiian islands or half of Australia, but Starfleet HQ is fair game in my opinion.
(They hit the bridge so the visuals would show it was San Fran – it is after all rather a distinctive bridge.)
@1
Agreed.
I actually enjoyed the shifting Winn-Dukat dynamic through all of these episodes. It was a lot of fun to see the characters so good at manipulating the others around them try to get the upper hand on each other. The Defiant’s destruction was more of a punch in the gut than the damage to earth. Maybe it’s just because the end of an arc is always exciting, but I have to give this episode at least an 8.
A few issues:
1) For krad, it’s Santa Anna, not Santa Ana.
1b) I’m glad to see more Travis in the Alamo conversations. While Crockett was the face of the Alamo, I’d argue that Travis was the real hero (with Bowie being the alcoholic third in that trinity). I may hate living in TX and complain to those around me, but it’s where I am and I’ll defend it against outsiders.
2) I don’t really get Yates. She knew what she was marrying, and when. We have last week’s mess with the Bajoran ceremony. Similarly, she knew she was marrying one of the foremost commanders in SF, who are at war with the Dominion. That changes her from generic ship captain to high-value target. Toss in the Breen attack on Earth, and now you can’t be sure being behind the lines is safe (although, I do like the attack on Earth and how it demonstrates that lines really aren’t lines). Getting mad because your movements are being restricted is fine. But that restriction should not have been lifted without escort or other protection assurances.
2b) Now we have her taking and using his carefully grown peppers when she admits that she doesn’t know how to cook. It wasn’t a case of “I have some skill and tried to help,” but “I have no skill and am going to use your and damage stuff.” Sure it was an attempt to be nice, but I doubt Keiko would have tolerated Miles futzing with her plants either.
3) And here is where the Winn/Dukat storyline goes from bad to unsalvageable. Ugh. The oneupmanship is now painful.
4) @@.-@ – great point. This was a battle strategy. I’m not sure what element of the attack could be considered terrorism. I suppose you could argue the Breen attacked as or before they declared war, but that still doesn’t rise to terrorism.
@1 I think it goes to the psychology of either Weyoun or the Founders as a whole. They like order, they like people to know their place. They don’t so much want victory as they want the Federation to admit defeat and knuckle under, that is how they’ve always done business in the Gamma Quadrant and have always had it work. So they do dumb stuff like leaving escape pods intact. Just like the Federation hasn’t quite grasped the reality of fighting an enemy like the Dominion (there is the Borg, but they are more like what tvtropes calls the giant space flea from nowhere), the Dominion hasn’t quite grasped that just demoralising and forcing submit aren’t quite working here.
@1 – totally agreed. I pretty much yelled at the TV in frustration at that point. Well, you were there, so you know ;)
I haaaated that shot of the Bridge. San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in the world (in addition to being where we went on our honeymoon) so it was rather a visceral shock to see it destroyed. I actually had zero reaction to the Defiant being destroyed, since I have never been that interested in ships. Joe kept saying he didn’t like this episode because something really bad happened at the end, and I was like, “What? Oh yeah, that.”.
I couldn’t help but think the dynamic between Sobor/Dukat/Winn could have gone just a little bit differently if Sobor hadn’t automatically assumed (well, he was right, of course) that Winn was a traitor…of course, at that point she didn’t realize how badly she had been played – so maybe if he had also assumed it was all Dukat’s doing and Cardassian trickery, she wouldn’t have stabbed him. But then of course the plot would have been resolved, and goodness knows what a loss to the show that would be.
I do love how unrepentantly bitchy Winn is once she has a task to do, haha.
Also, I know this was not the intent, but I raised my eyebrows a bit at one of Damar’s big gripes being that there are *other species* on their planet. Obviously, the other species are there for sucky reasons so I can’t say I blame him for wanting them gone. But he does seem to be appealing to one of the more base characteristics of the Cardassians there. It’s the next episode (I think) where I really started to like him.
@7: Well, that’s certainly I thought I’d had–that the Founder are used to dealing with GQ peoples who are easily frightened into submission. But they should know that won’t work with the Federation by now, especially given the extensive spying on them that was set up in earlier seasons.
The Defiant was destroyed? I totally forgot that…
— Michael A. Burstein
Always wondered how Starfleet managed to destroy Breen ships in the attack on Earth. Why didn’t they use the energy draining weapon?
@11: Maybe they destroyed them with ground-based weapons or orbital drones that weren’t affected by the weapons the way starships are.
Since I’ve been saving this for the Final Chapter, let us eulogize the Defiant SF Debris style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgIOdcBkkzg
(NSFW due to language).
The killing of Solbor (who I keep calling Sobibor in my head, unfortunately) is just painful to watch. It makes me think of that vaudeville sketch – “Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch…” Solbor has just revealed something truly shocking, and has to go run and tell others. Except he just ambles out, letting Winn stroll up behind him and stab him, with none of the strength you’d figure for a stabbing. This is not how you kill someone, dammit. Sigh…
For some reason, special-effects artists never bother to learn how suspension bridges work, so they always get the physics and engineering completely wrong. Quoting Phil Plait’s review of The Core:
In short, the cables and the deck shouldn’t be there at all; there should be nothing left but the towers, and they might be bent outward. The image in “Changing Face” is even worse than the one in The Core, because it has the deck somehow managing to stay horizontal despite there being nothing holding it up. It’s basically levitating.
Admittedly, ST:TMP shows the bridge with some kind of high-speed transit tubes along its deck, so maybe those are rigid enough to hold the deck in place, with the cables being just for show. But that doesn’t seem to make a lot of engineering sense. Also, those tubes don’t seem to be there anymore in the matte shot here.
And somehow Kosst Amojan, which was the name of an entity in “The Reckoning,” is now the name of a book. Well, I guess they’re actually calling it “the Text of the Kosst Amojan,” so that would explain it. Still, it’s a cursed book of evil whose words are revealed by blood, which furthers the degeneration of this story thread into fantasy cliches. But it only gets worse from here.
I don’t remember how the destruction of the Defiant affected me at the time, since it had no real impact in the long run, because they replaced the ship a few episodes later — and didn’t even change the registration number, since they couldn’t afford to ditch all their stock footage. Which makes me wonder why they didn’t plan for it more carefully.
I haven’t seen this episode in a while, but I seem to remember it has two of the most memorable lines in the entire series:
Weyoun <on hearing=”” the=”” cloning=”” facility=”” has=”” been=”” destroyed=””> : “I am the last Weyoun.” Combs just delivers it with such pathos.
And Dax exchange with Worf:
Worf: He plays with toys.
…
Worf: … besides, there is no way they can hold that position with so few men.
Dax <smiling>: You can go join them if you want?
Worf <scowling>:… He plays with toys!</scowling></smiling></on>
The attack on Starfleet HQ felt more like the Dominion version of a Doolittle raid to me. “You are touchable deep behind what passes for front lines, and no target is safe.” It may have had a limited strategic impact, considering most of the battle commanders are much closer to the front, but as a demoralizing attack and with a slim potential of a high reward if you manage to actually take out some major leadership it’s a brilliant move.
And it forces the Federation to start redeploying assets, because if they can hit Earth they can hit anywhere – including the shipyards. And that has to start forcing a strategic rethink of the situation.
Who knows, with those extra ships from the Dominion the Wormholiens got rid of, the Jack Pack might well have been right.
@17 – The Doolittle Raid is great comparison, though it purpose was terror in the strictist sense of the though carried out by regular military forces.
Letting the Defiant escape pods go is befuddling, whatever the notion of demoralizing the enemy is, the Changeling should know Sisko was likely on that ship and he should be a high priority to capture or kill for the Dominion, both as an officer privy to Federation strategy and as the Bajoran Emissary.
The Xindi attack on Earth was more a terror raid. The Breen hit a military target, like the Doolittle Raid, which hit military and industrial targets in the Tokyo area.
Anyway, RIP Defiant. You were one of a kind… until you weren’t.
I’m not convinced that the Breen destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge purely by accident. Granted, the bridge is kind of surrounded by Starfleet facilities (though the TMP-era HQ/tram station on the San Francisco side of the bridge seems to be missing in the image here), so it could conceivably be collateral damage, but it’s also a very symbolic structure and it’s hard to believe it was targeted by accident. So yeah, I’d say there was a terroristic element to the strike, because terrorism is about using violence as a political statement or symbol to demoralize an enemy, and destroying a beloved landmark definitely fits the bill.
@15 – Just playing devils advocate here, but by the 24th century most people travel by transporter and by flying transportation, I’m not sure how much ground traffic there would be but presumably by this point the Golden Gate Bridge is mostly just for show. And over the preceding centuries it would have had to have undergone a lot of maintenance. Is it not possible that at this point the deck is held up by anti-gravity units, and that the towers and cables are essentially just decoration? In which case, the depiction in the matte painting would be essentially correct. The deck, where it still exists, is being held up by anti-grav, one corner on the opposite side seems to be drooping so presumably the anti-grav units have failed there but it is being held up by the rest of the deck. The nearer tower is twisted over, so the cable is being pulled taut on the side it is twisting away from, and hanging limp on the nearer side. If it wasn’t holding the weight of the bridge or under tension to begin with, that is essentially how it should look, I think. (All that based only a very rudimentary knowledge of engineering.)
The Golden Gate Bridge shown in the various Trek shows is almost certainly a 22ndC replica of the original. Remember the big nuclear war the Trek-verse had but ours didn’t? It was in the early 21stC (any day now), so there is no way that the original survived. It either fell during the war itself, or the lack of maintenance destroyed it shortly thereafter. Therefore any criticism of how it looks in Trek can be explained as it was only meant to look like a suspension bridge.
@21: “Is it not possible that at this point the deck is held up by
anti-gravity units, and that the towers and cables are essentially just
decoration?”
Umm… why in the world would they bother? It takes power to operate an antigrav, while it takes none to let a cable do its job. Suspension bridges operate according to simple, reliable physics — why overcomplicate things?
@22: We’ve seen enough familiar landmarks surviving into the Federation era (the GGB, the Eiffel Tower, most of the current London skyline hidden amid the futuristic towers in STID) that it seems unlikely that most major cities were totally destroyed in the war. The Pocket novels posit that most of the nuclear detonations in WWIII were aerial, destroying cities’ infrastructure with electromagnetic pulses rather than physically destroying their buildings.
Besides, we know it must have been a limited nuclear war, or civilization would never have survived it. It seems likely to me that the war would’ve been fought primarily with smaller, tactical nukes than with big city-destroying bombs. After all, it’s a different world in the 21st century than it was in the Cold War — not two great superpowers engaged in escalating brinksmanship, but a more fragmented geopolitics with smaller, non-state actors like terrorist groups exerting more influence.
And, again, where’s the sense in building something that looks like a suspension bridge but isn’t? There’s nothing wrong with suspension bridges. They’re simple, effective, reliable engineering. If something is in the form of a suspension bridge, if it’s designed to be structurally indistinguishable from the original GGB, then it will be a perfectly functional suspension bridge. The physics of its own shape will hold it up perfectly well, and it would therefore be the height of redundancy and waste to use some alternative mechanism like antigravs to do something it already does by itself.
Besides, if the span were being held up by some other means, the cables wouldn’t be under tension and wouldn’t retain their catenary shape. It would be inauthentic. If you want it to look like the original, it has to work like the original. Form follows function.
@16 – I love every single one of Worf’s one-liners about Bashir, haha.
Keith, shouldn’t there be a Tough Little Ship section in this episode? Given what happened to the Defiant, it feels odd to not have it.
I’d forgotten it was Vickery who played Rusot. I’ll always remember him for his outstanding performance on Babylon 5 as Neroon, especially his death scene.
To me, this was one of DS9’s highlights. A perfect setup, with a worthy climax. Losing the Defiant is one crippling blow, with very evident parallels to Best of Both Worlds. The only other Berman-era episode that I believe provides this kind of visceral reaction to a ship being torn apart was Enterprise‘s Azati Prime. Not surprisingly, both episodes were helmed by the best directors available. This one done by Mike Vejar, and Prime being done by Allan Kroeker.
I never felt bothered by the repetitive arguments between these characters. So much of television is driven by repetition that it feels natural. Some of it has to do with the Winn/Dukar/Solbor thread, which does feel stretched out, by that’s because Ira Behr – like any good showrunner ought to – realized he could get some mileage out of a good actor like James Otis, who was only set up for one episode.
As for Damar, kudos to Casey Biggs for rising to the occasion (I like it that both him and Roxann Dawson had pretty good careers post-Trek).
It’s impressive how little secondary characters who start out so small can become so meaningful on DS9. Nog started out as a petty thief in the pilot, and Damar was only a mean-faced loyal aide to Dukat in season 4. It takes a dedicated writer to make so much out of these small characters.
@22 A few years ago I was rewatching these episodes as preparation for a DS9 panel at Lunacon. Seeing the wrecked Golden Gate Bridge in a post-9/11 world brought some powerful flashbacks to the horror of that day. Has anyone else had a similar reaction?
I recall wondering how Winn could possibly not have recognized Dukat’s distinctive voice and inflection up to this point. And then Solbor, while savvy enough to have recognized that Dukat was up to no good, nonetheless unwisely announced his intention to tell the whole world what they were up to. If he’d only kept his mouth shut or said something like, “Of course you understand that I’m not very comfortable being part of this. Good day,” then he would have lived and we would have been spared the rest of this lamest aspect of the DS9 multi-part finale.
When the Breen had joined the Dominion, I wasn’t particularly wowed or anything, because we hadn’t really seen much of the Breen at that point. So I guess them having a superweapon now is the writers’ attempt to make up for the Breen not having been very scary beforehand. Still, I feel like it would have worked better if we’d had a sense already that the Breen were someone not to be messed with.
-Andy
I have no problem with the Breen attack on Starfleet HQ – it’s a legitimate target and like the Doolittle raid, good strategy. It forces Starfleet to keep extra defenses back to guard it’s home planets (I imagine the defense fleets around Earth, Andoria, Vulcan, etc) were beefed up, which means fewer assets elswewhere. It also brings the war “home” so to speak- it’s not just something that’s happening in a distant sector and can be ignored by the average Earth citizen, the people have to confront that it’s happening and that can be unpleasant politically. Similar raids could have the effect of the population pressuring the civilian government to reach a peace agreement rather than keep fighting the war.
What I do have problems with is the Breen weapon- it feels too magical to me, like the Borg adaptability. I just rewatched the episode to double check the dialogue and they don’t bother to explain what it does, just that it drains the power from the ship. I’d prefer a little more explanation as to how it gets through the shields, how it disrupts power, whatever- but instead it’s just the magic weapon (it magically gets reverse engineered later too). Does it somehow stop a matter/antimatter reaction- if so why does it work on Romulan ships that use singularity cores? Does it prevent the energy from reaching systems by somehow overwhelming ODN networks? If so then why do you need to blow up the ship with other weapons- eventually the power is going to just build up in the core and explode and the use of torpedoes is superfluous. I get that we we’re trying to make the Breen into superbadguys, but their push is a little forced.
@28: Wouldn’t “bringing the war home” be more likely to have the opposite effect, inspiring the people of Earth to want to fight even harder, rather than backing away? That’s what Pearl Harbor and 9/11 did. One of the many, many reasons that war is stupid and dysfunctional is that people always think that attacking their enemies will frighten them into submission even though it almost always angers them into fighting harder instead. People never seem to learn from history, and so they keep making the same mistakes.
This is where I recall seeing Damar and the Cardassians as more than the thuggery-like evil manipulators they’d been shown for so blasted long. It is a great rise to one of the more scenery chewing non-human races in ST history, and Casey Biggs drew me back into a show I barely found worth watching after a lengthy time.
I also agree that the Dukat-Winn-Solbor nonsense was bleeding annoying. In fact, I’ll go even further. The character of Winn had gone from being a total manipulator and vile personality to being a complete puppet so quickly, it’s hard to watch… except that Louise Fletcher lets you get drawn in to how pathetic Winn has become. You may differ.
@29 – It equally likely that the effect could go either way. Plus, Earth history doesn’t mean the Breen and Dominion haven’t encountered plenty of other worlds that would surrender right away after such an attack or be demorialized by it. Maybe even some of the Federation worlds with a different history than Earth (a history of surrender after raids like this) would be demoralized by the Breen attack on Earth / Starfleet HQ. IDIC.
@28 – The Breen weapon is basically an Ion Cannon from Star Wars. I agree that the Breen weapon does seem somewhat “magical” or at the least a super weapon (which has great dramatic effect), I don’t think we need a full on explanation of it within the show for the same reason we don’t need a full on explanation of how quantum or photon torpedoes or phasers or deflectors or warp drive work. Is there an episode that explains warp drive?
@29 – I think this is why the Dominion’s response to the Cardassian rebellion is also equally as dumb.
Like, let’s give the majority of the population who had no reason to rebel before, a legitmate reason to, especially if there are now no guarantees that they won’t be slaughtered even if they don’t.
I know that in some circumstances, demoralizing/frightening an enemy can work in keeping them in line – but not if you push it to the point where they now have nothing to lose/fear.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin… ;)
Re: the bridge damage – Based on the thumbnail at the top of the page, it isn’t clear to me that the two main support cables are cut, only that a section of the deck has fallen and one tower is bent. If the cables are still intact, I think the depiction is roughly correct. I do think the buckling depicted in the near tower would weaken it to the point that it would collapse under the weight of the decking and cables. I guess I can hand-wave that away by assuming the towers have been retrofitted with tritanium or some such futurish thing that gives it enough strength to stand even under significant lateral torsional buckling.
On the other hand, it is unclear how the tower could end up bent as shown. It shouldn’t be under any additional weight. Actually, its loading would be reduced slightly from the missing deck section. Maybe a really heavy Breen assault vehicle landed briefly on the bridge deck long enough to bend the tower but not long enough to collapse the bridge? Hmmm… now I’m having to wave a lot of hands to rationalize the image.
Also, the deck should be shown to sag more, since the bent tower has introduced more slack in the support cables.
Ok, once again I’ve come around to CLB’s thinking… How does he do that?
People never seem to learn from history, and so they keep making the same mistakes.
@29: If it were a human-led assault, I might understand, but we’re dealing with Weyoun 8 and his new Breen allies in this case. They never had the benefit of studying Earth history. They have plenty of reason to assume humans might cower in fear over Operation Strike Fear.
Truth is we don’t know how other Gamma Quadrant powers reacted to the Dominion takeover back there, whether they reacted violently or just let them stop on their territory the way the Bajorans initially did with the Cardassian arrival. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that none of the Gamma Q people stood a chance.
@34: Here’s a larger image:
There’s no sign that the cables extend across the gap. Indeed, on the far side, the right-hand cable (from this perspective) seems to follow its normal catenary shape and then suddenly droop straight down before breaking off, as if most of it is somehow magically suspended in midair but that little bit at the end is subject to gravity. Even if the creator of the image was assuming that the bridge deck was rigid and self-supporting and the cables were anchored to it on either side of the gap — which is really missing the whole point of the phrase “suspension bridge” — there’s no way to explain the appearance of that particular cable.
By the way, does anyone know if the Golden Gate Bridge was rebuilt by the time they aired Voyager’s Pathfinder? I can’t recall if we saw it after DS9.
@38 According to memory alpha it was repaired by the time of Pathfider.
Let’s see, who else besides the Breen has destroyed or damaged the Golden Gate Bridge?
*A giant radioactive octopus (It Came from Beneath the Sea)
*Lex Luthor, indirectly, in Superman: The Movie
*The Sun, or something, in The Core
*Insectosaurus and the alien robot in Monsters vs. Aliens
*The title creatures in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
*Magneto in X-Men: The Last Stand
*The kaiju called Trespasser in Pacific Rim
*Godzilla in 2014
(Far from a comprehensive list, I’m sure)
It’s also had a couple of close calls elsewhere in Trek: in The Voyage Home when the Bounty just avoided crashing into it, and in the ’09 movie when Nero’s collapsing drill just avoided landing on it.
@39: Given that the episode takes place roughly six months after DS9’s ending, I’m guessing they rebuilt the thing pretty fast! Then again, there were probably replicators involved.
@40 Awesome! I’ll make a note not to drive on that thing just in case.
@23
“@21: “Is it not possible that at this point the deck is held up by
anti-gravity units, and that the towers and cables are essentially just
decoration?”
Umm… why in the world would they bother? It takes power to operate anantigrav, while it takes none to let a cable do its job. Suspension bridges operate according to simple, reliable physics — why overcomplicate things?”
Maybe because San Francisco is an earthquake zone, and therefore there are likely to be a lot of things built into the structures there in the 24th century to make sure that if the big one hits, everything doesn’t fall over.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying this is the way it should be. I’m handwaving, starting from the point that “this is the way it looks in the show” and then finding explanations as to why that could be. Isn’t that what happens quite a lot in Startrekworld?
@32: I understand the answer is ‘very well, thank you’.
@29
Maybe, maybe not… The German blitz of London in 1940 was basically built upon the assumption that the British could be forced into peace after a terror attack. It was never going to make the Brits incapable of fighting but might force them to sue for peace.
@29 A lot depends on how terrifying your terror attacks are. Didn’t the Dominion try to destroy Bajors sun at one point? If they had made Earths sun go supernova, and started doing the same thing to other major Federation systems, that might well have an intimidating effect.
But an attack whose major damage is the destruction of a bridge on a planet that has teleportation, is not going to be very terrifying in an interstellar war.
@43: Sorry, the “earthquake zone” excuse doesn’t work for me. If you want a structure that’s earthquake-proof, the best kind is one that’s flexible enough to absorb vibrations — like, say, a suspension bridge. I mean, it’s not like the designers of the bridge were unaware they were building it in an earthquake zone. Granted, it wasn’t as earthquake-resistant as its designers originally believed it to be, because the science wasn’t as advanced at the time, but it’s currently undergoing a years-long “seismic retrofit” project to make it strong enough to withstand the largest credible earthquakes that could occur in the region. And that mainly involves strengthening the towers and the anchorages at either end. After all, those are where the forces are concentrated by the design of a suspension bridge.
And yes, there are plenty of times when writers like Keith and myself come up with handwaves to explain odd things in the Trek universe, but the idea is to come up with something that makes more sense. If the only explanation you can come up with is something completely ridiculous and senseless, like antigravs on a suspension bridge, you’re better off just admitting that it’s a mistake and ignoring it. There are plenty of images in Trek that can’t be taken literally, like those shots in TOS where the ship’s nacelle pylons wink out due to a matte misalignment, or where you can see the wires holding up the alien puppets. Sometimes a mistake is just a mistake.
@46: The bridge was either a secondary target or collateral damage. The Breen’s main target was Starfleet Headquarters, as you can see in the foreground of the shot.
Also, I’m not sure, but I thought in TNG or somewhere they made reference to “seismic regulators” or some such technology to imply that they had earthquake control on Earth. I could be misremembering.
@48: You’re quite right. In TNG: “Time’s Arrow,” Data’s disembodied head was discovered by a team installing seismic regulators in a cave underneath San Francisco. The regulators were also in use on Risa according to DS9: “Let He Who Is Without Sin.”
@25: My instinctive response was “well, she’s not so tough after all, so maybe not.” Here’s how I’d have written it:
Whaddaya think, Stubby, am I qualified for the job?
@50: Not cool, MeredithP…Captain Sisko wasn’t the only one rather fond of that ship, you know.
*lies down*
*tries not to cry*
*cries a lot*
@47 – Well, to paraphrase Dr McCoy, “I’m a historian, not an engineer.” Like I said, just speculating based on a very rudimentary knowledge of how these things work. It’s fun to speculate, this after all being a speculative fiction show. However if you find it “completely ridiculous and senseless,” well, I shall go and flagellate myself immediately.
By the way, my first published work of Trek fiction, SCE: Aftermath (which Keith bought from me, thereby starting my Trek career — thanks again, pal), followed up on the attack on Earth in this episode. Its events were, as the title indicates, part of the long-term aftermath of the damage the Breen inflicted on San Francisco. It also establishes that the Golden Gate Bridge has been repaired in the year since the attack.
Meredith: There is now a “Tough little ship” entry. :)
Christopher: You’re welcome. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
“Where’s the kaboom?”
Well still lurking!!! :)
Wonderful episode. I still remember my reaction from 16 years ago with the attack on Starfleet Headquarters at the top of the show “This is not going to end well” to when the Breen fired the energy dampening weapon at the Defiant, forcing them to abandon ship. It made the Breen seem much scarier on the one hand. On the other hand, what I don’t understand is why the Breen were said to be so “mysterious” and underestimated. They had been mentioned a number of times on TNG and DS9; the Cardassians even had an embassy on the Breen homeworld, which is an ice planet while the Cardassians as reptiles, like heat. The Defiant drove off Breen raiders (off screen) before returning to the station in “To the Death”. Why this “energy dampening weapon” never used before? It was also nice to see Starfleet engineers develop a countermeasure to the weapon only an episode later. How convenient for them.
@56: If Cardassians were reptiles, they wouldn’t have hair and breasts — nor could they procreate with Bajorans. They’re clearly mammals; they just happen to have some superficially reptile-like attributes, the scales and the fondness for warmth.
Can’t get over Sisko’s smarmy smile as he tells Yates he pulled an end run around her plans to do her job because now he’s her husband, and well, you know, that gives him the right to ignore her autonomy. I’ve never seen him quite so oily. Bleccch.
RE: the Alamo, one thing I couldn’t understand was Miles’ and Julian’s fascination with playing the Alamo (and later the Spartans). They were in the middle of a war that wasn’t going well and they chose to play war games they couldn’t win? At least their earlier games (ie the Battle of Britain and the one with the fur capes) had the end result of winning. Somehow, I can’t imagine choosing a losing battle for fun when in the middle of a battle I may be losing for real.
At the risk of sounding sexist: Is it a guy thing? I know re-enactors play both sides in the Battle of Gettysburg so someone must be losing.
For that matter, I don’t think I’d enjoy playing war games during a war at all.
CathWren: Don’t look at me, I don’t get the notion of reenacting wars at all…………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The Dukat-Winn scenes are really really boring. I even forgot that the destruction of the Defiant took place in this episode.
About Kasidy-Sisko, it’s so very annoying that “television prophets” can never straight out say what they want, but always have to speak in the most cryptic way possible. “Bad things will happen”, and then – hahaha – Kasidy completely ruins the peppers. Isn’t that funny?!
I was re-watching the episode last night and I still think it’s one of Jay Chattaway’s stronger scores from the Berman-era of Trek music.
The Second Battle of Chin’toka is a really great music cue and I’m glad La La Land Records included it in the DS9 sets a few years ago.
It never occurred to me that Rusot was Neroon; I only watched Babylon 5 for the first time three years ago.
I’d also kind of repressed the knowledge of how prominently a magical demon book features in the final arc of DS9. Alas.