TV #87 of 2021:
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 5
Another strong year of life aboard this space station, where an ongoing plot provides important background context for the episodic concerns, where the characters and their relationships change over long-term arcs, and where the local geopolitics likewise continues to develop with a history and momentum all its own. This show remains unlike any Star Trek series before it, not to mention what I’ve seen of Voyager so far.
My one complaint is that for the first time, it feels as though there’s a bit of regression in some of those storylines, as if the producers worry they’ve gone down a wrong path and are trying to recapture a former status quo. Thus this season we’ve got — spoilers ahead — Quark’s Ferengi business license returned, Odo’s shapeshifting powers restored, and the speedy unraveling of the recent cliffhanger that suggested Klingon leader Gowron was an undercover Founder agent. The hostilities with his people are then dropped altogether, with focus placed instead on the enemies beyond the wormhole once more. Later when the Cardassians join the Dominion, that forward development is weakened by its side-effect of turning Gul Dukat from awkwardly tense reluctant ally to outright villain again. On his way out, he taunts Kira, “Goodbye, Major. You and I on the same side. It never seemed quite right, did it?” But that seems like the writers talking, in my opinion.
Still, this is a run that gives us Dax/Worf as a couple, the start of the Dominion War and end of the Maquis, and the best, most shocking and apparently game-changing finale yet. Each individual hour is pretty good, and a few episodes such as “Trials and Tribble-ations” and “Children of Time” surely must rank among the franchise’s finest. I don’t care for the occasional sense of backsliding, but I continue to deeply enjoy this program overall.
[Content warning for genocide, terrorism, and torture.]
★★★★☆
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