We’ve (I’ve, sorry) given it long enough, let’s finish this epic three-part story arc!
Instead of getting the hell out of dodge, Sisko is explaining to his crew that he’s going to pack up and evacuate as slowly as possible in order to buy them some time to show the bajorans that all the bad Circle business is a cardassian ploy. We may be in for a standoff!
Jake Sisko and Nog have become great friends in the background, while we weren’t watching. It seemed to me they were just a couple of no-good hoodlums, always getting up to trouble. Now it seems, though, that they are also tight homies, so obviously it is super sad that they have to split up during the evacuation.
A plan is hatched to send Kira and Dax to one of Bajor’s moons to snag an old ship to bring Li Nalas’ evidence to the surface, so that they can explain the cardassians-manipulating-Jaro’s-terrorists thing to the Provisional Government. A signal won’t get through, so they have to go in person in a ship, and the runabouts are tied up with the evacuation.
Apparently, we won’t get an exciting space standoff - the bajorans go all BOARDING ACTION right away. There’s nobody there to meet them, though, so they end up looking kind of silly running around and pointing their guns at nothing.
The remaining Starfleet crew on the station have decided to throw out the rules of war, ditch their uniforms, and go all guerrilla on the bajorans with sabotage and ambushes. I’m not sure this kind of thing was covered in the Starfleet Station Operations Manual. It’s a dark picture, there, but I assure you that the handsome gentleman on the left is none other than Miles O’Brien.
The guerrilla campaign makes for interesting television (Odo as a tripwire, a running gag about combat rations, a holosuite used as a trap) , but it’s all dark and it makes it hard to take screenshots that look like anything other than a bunch of shadows with maybe a phaser blast in them. Come on, Star Trek, think about me! Think about my needs!
Dax and Kira have made it to Bajor in their sub-impulse raider. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. They’ve crashed on Bajor. The picture’s actually of another ship crashing on Bajor, but I’m sure Dax and Kira’s looked much the same on its way in. Luckily, they crashed within walking distance of Liam Bareil’s monastery. He helps them disguise themselves as members of his order, which involves giving Dax fake nose ridges.
In a colossal anticlimax, the evidence is presented without incident to the bajoran provisional government and control of the station is returned to Starfleet. Li Nalas is killed by a Bajoran officer after finding out that the Circle had been exposed as an unwitting tool of the cardassians. I guess the news made him go crazy? It’s not really clear.
What about Minister Jaro? Nobody knows! But we’ve returned to status quo just in time for the credits to roll on the last episode of the longest continuous arc so far in a Star Trek TV series.
Dabo!
- Minister Jaro is played by (an uncredited) Frank Langella, who I know best from Cutthroat Island. I feel like I should send Frank Langella an apology letter for knowing him best from Cutthroat Island.
- Rom evacuating with a Dabo girl instead of Quark is probably the best thing he’s ever done.
- Giant Bajoran spider-dog thingies on the moon? Great! Having Dax be scared of them? Great! Having her open up a service panel on the ship she and Kira are supposed to be fixing up and not having one of the spider-dog thingies jump out at her? Opportunity: missed!
- The smoke grenades of the future are far less advanced than the smoke grenades of, oh, say, 1960. I wonder what the story there is.
- Odo as a tripwire is a goofy gimmick that I’m happy to see.
- The old “it’s easy to die for a cause, but would you be willing to live for one?” chestnut finally gets trotted out. It took a while, though! This is the last of a three-part arc, after all. And in the end, Li Nalas dies for his cause anyway. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, maybe. No, seriously. There is. What, you don’t see it? Come on!