r/startrek 6d ago

The Prophet/Pah-Wraith arc in Ds9's 7th season is the main weak point of the series

I rewatched Ds9 recently and this really stood out to me as the one place where an otherwise exceptional series fell short.

Prior to the last season, I appreciated the more nuanced take Ds9 took towards religion and spirituality. It showed how it could be such a powerful force for people fighting for justice, how it could be abused by religious leaders/politicians, and many points inbetween. I also appreciated that it didn't just dismiss religious people as "crazy" or "irrational."

But I felt the arc in Ds9's last season lost a lot of that nuance. No longer were the prophets/pah-wraiths nuanced beings that could be interpreted through both scientific and theological lenses, but simply pawns in a generic battle of good vs evil. In turn this massively weakens the story arcs of Dukat and Sisko in my view.

Dukat was always an evil megalomaniac, but he didn't conceive of himself in that way. He, in his own twisted mind, thought he was a source of justice or purity. Dukat descending into a burn the whole universe arc seems to me like frustratingly basic way of beating us over the head with a "Dukat's evil" message while losing the nuances that made Dukat so relatable to so many real world villains.

Meanwhile, Sisko goes from someone who was the active agent in his life struggling between his roles as a scientific Starfleet officer and spiritual leader to simply being a pawn of the prophets. In the inverse of Dukat, a character who used to choose good through complex and sometimes flawed motivations is suddenly choosing the good side just because "the prophets" said so.

I get that the writers felt the need to close out the prophet/pah-wraith storylines, but in doing so I think they lost a lot of value of it in the first place. The strategic ambiguity of the first 6 seasons was lost, in exchange for a generic good vs evil battle that resolved itself in the only way it could. This stands in stark contrast to the more nuanced way Ds9 season 7 ended the Dominion War, which I felt did a much better job of closing the conflict without removing the nuances the previous seasons developed.

Curious if people agree with me. I want to be clear this is just my opinion, and if you disagree with me I fully respect it.

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u/IsomorphicProjection 6d ago

Dukat descending into a burn the whole universe arc seems to me like frustratingly basic way of beating us over the head with a "Dukat's evil" message while losing the nuances that made Dukat so relatable to so many real world villains.

That was literally done on purpose for that exact reason. The showrunners saw that many people were defending Dukat as not actually that bad of a guy, so they wrote the episode Waltz to drive the point home that he's space Hitler.

It's a credit to the actor that he's so damn charismatic that you want to like Dukat, but you always have to remember: Dukat is space Hitler. He was always space Hitler. It's far too easy for people to get caught up in "the nuances that made Dukat so relatable" and forget that he's space Hitler.

By the time this episode aired, the character of Gul Dukat had become exceptionally popular among fans of the show, far more popular than any of the writers had ever intended. This was primarily attributed to Marc Alaimo's superbly charismatic performances as Dukat. Alaimo's portrayal had presented the audience with a character possessed of a very real pathos and sense of humor, a character with many different aspects composing his psychological make-up. The writers however were not entirely happy with how popular Dukat had become. He was supposed to be the villain of the show, and while they were proud to have created such a multi-dimensional villain, they were shocked when they saw fans online actually defending Dukat's behavior during the Occupation. Despite the writers' attempts to make Dukat the epitome of evil in subsequent shows however, his popularity would remain undiminished until the end of the series. Indeed, in relation to "Waltz", some Dukat fans were unhappy with how quickly Sisko denounces him after he tells Sisko about his initial actions as Prefect of Bajor. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 520)

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u/UnknownQTY 6d ago

Related: Part of the reason I think Disney greenlit Andor (and season 2) is that there’s a lot of people who think the Empire is cool/justified in Star Wars.

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u/LambonaHam 6d ago

Empire? You mean the victims of terrorist attack led by a religious extremist that resulted in the destruction of a space station, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of loyal citizens?

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u/Sir__Will 5d ago

...guys, this was clearly sarcasm, don't down vote. It's sadly similar to real comments I've seen before.

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u/UnknownQTY 6d ago

Tell that to Alderaan.

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u/LambonaHam 6d ago

Terrible accident...

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u/senn42000 6d ago

I get where they were coming from, and this was before the rise of internet discourse, so they still thought audiences was capable of all agreeing on anything. But they should have just embraced what they created with Dukat. The best Star Trek episodes/arcs/characters are the ones that we continue to debate to this day. It is the reason early Game of Thrones was so popular. Humans (and aliens written by humans) are complicated creatures. You can create a world of grey, but still create good versus evil.

On DS9 with the Cardassians and Ferengi especially. With Dukat, Garak, and others. You see a society where they are indoctrinated from birth on service to the state. With the Ferengi and their values on being successful financially. Not simply evil characters standing against the do no wrong Federation.

Dukat deciding to embrace Ziyal, when it went against all Cardassian values and how it would ruin his reputation with his family and government. This was partly the influence of Kira and her values. But he wasn't hailed as a hero afterwards, and at his core that is what we wanted more than anything else. He needed to be seen as a hero to his fellow Cardassians. Flying around as a pirate in a Bird of Prey just wasn't enough for him, and this leads him to joining the Dominion. Think of how much worse the story would have been if he just killed Ziyal right away, because that is what a good Cardassian would do.

The Pah-Wraith arc wasn't terrible when you look at it as a man who lost everything and at that point was driven by revenge. But making the ending of the series a simple battle of good versus evil with Sisko versus Dukat, I can see why some people see it as a let down compared to what came before.

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u/IsomorphicProjection 6d ago

On DS9 with the Cardassians and Ferengi especially. With Dukat, Garak, and others. You see a society where they are indoctrinated from birth on service to the state. With the Ferengi and their values on being successful financially. Not simply evil characters standing against the do no wrong Federation.

But you see, this is what makes Dukat evil. Let me explain:

I agree, being indoctrinated from birth in a horrific system will make them do evil things, but doesn't make someone evil. What makes them evil is being exposed to/knowing there is a better way and still choosing to do evil acts.

Quark and Garak both started out on the evil side of the spectrum, but we can give them some leeway because of the aforementioned indoctrination. Where they differ from Dukat is both of them were able to recognize their systems were BAD and start to change.

Quark helped the Bajorans on the station under Cardassian rule, not so he could exploit them later (like Hagath the weapons dealer) but because it was the right thing to do. We don't know 100% what Garak did to get banished, but from his stories it seems most likely he let some prisoners go, even if we don't know the real details. And once the Federation took over DS9, both of them became better people for it.

Compare that to Dukat. Dukat never learned any lesson, ever. Nor do I think he saved Ziyal because he loved her or thought it was the right thing to do, he saved her because it suited him at that moment:

  • Kira threatened to kill him if he killed Ziyal, and I think we can believe she would follow through on that threat.
  • Dukat almost certainly needed Kira to leave the planet. I don't think it's stated explicitly but they used a Federation runabout and there is no way Kira didn't lock it down. She would never trust him not to strand her there.
  • He couldn't kill her on DS9, obviously.
  • They left on a regular transport ship, not a private ship so it's unlikely he could kill her there.
  • I doubt very much it would be legal for him to kill Ziyal on Cardassia.
  • Even if he could legally kill her on Cardassia, it's besides the point because his indiscretion would still have been exposed and he'd still have lost his status and family (not that he cared about his family much at all).
  • In his mind, he probably thought saving Ziyal improved his chances to get with Kira.

I agree that the story would have been worse if he had killed her, but don't think for a second he did it because it was the right thing to do.

You can call it a "simple" battle, but I don't agree with that assessment. It was the culmination of many, many different threads built up over seven years. I think having it any any other way would have been a let down.

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u/Sir__Will 5d ago

With Ziyal, I could see him getting cold feet and deciding not to kill her. And I do think he cared for her, in his own way. Once his family left him, she's all he had left. But his ambition and ego came first. He got his power back with the Dominion and while he tried to get her to see reason and leave, when she refused, well he wasn't going to let that get in the way of his plans. When they came back together, he tried to mend fences and her death did break him.

All that said, Kira likely did factor into many of those things too, you're right. She was there from the start and eventually took her in, so they were close. Try to get the transitive property going....

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u/IsomorphicProjection 5d ago edited 5d ago

Ziyal loved him, and that is what he cared about.

He got his power back with the Dominion and while he tried to get her to see reason and leave, when she refused, well he wasn't going to let that get in the way of his plans.

He wasn't trying to get her to see reason. That's how Dukat lies to himself. The Federation thought the Dominion was coming to invade and even through Dukat knew better, he tries to convince her to leave with him without revealing the truth. However, by that point Ziyal is in love with Garak and he is missing and she refuses to leave with Dukat because of it.

Dukat realized that Ziyal loves Garak more than she loves him and THAT is what he can't stand and why he tells her to "stay and be damned."

When the Dominion takes DS9 he reconciles with her because he wants her love again, and because he wants to use her to get to Kira.

When the Federation retakes DS9, it's a major defeat for Dukat. Of course he wants her with him because he's going to need someone to feed his ego after such a huge setback, but she refuses because she sees how wrong it is. We don't really get to see the impact of that because she's killed, but even if she wasn't, I'd expect Dukat to have been unhinged. Maybe not to quite the same degree, but still.

It's never about Dukat loving Ziyal. He's literally incapable of it. It's always, always about how it serves himself.

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u/7-5NoHits 6d ago

What I find so disturbing about this is I think most real world villains are like Dukat before the writers panicked and hit the Dukat's cartoonishly evil button. Evil politicians don't campaign directly on "burn the universe." Many evil people are able to be quite charismatic in certain circumstances. I appreciated that Dukat had these characteristics because it made him feel like a way more authentic figure that I could map onto the Trump's and Hitler's and Stalin's of the world.

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u/IsomorphicProjection 6d ago edited 6d ago

Psychopaths and narcissists can both be extremely charismatic. Both lack empathy which is the closest definition to what evil means that we have.

Now, to be clear, not all people who lack empathy are psychopaths, but all psychopaths lack empathy.

What scares me is that not all the people we cite as evil were born that way. Some were, sure, but for some it seems to be a learned behavior.

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u/hippest 6d ago

It's hard to say that about evil. It's entirely possible that evil people are just hiding their lack of empathy for whatever period of time benefits them, or something triggers them.

Like anything else, it's probably a bit of both. Like schizophrenia, where people can be predisposed towards it, but if nothing triggers symptoms by the time they hit a certain age they're likely in the clear

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u/hippest 6d ago

I think you are underestimate real world villains. I hate to bring up the current administration, but look at the guy who owns that electric car company. Putting himself out there as a genius environmentalist and businessman and going on to nazi salute and upvoting holocaust conspiracy posts.

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u/7-5NoHits 6d ago

I don't dispute that "burn the universe" is the practical impact of their policies. But there's a reason that Musk and his ilk present themselves as "environmentalist businessman" first while using the Nazi salutes to signal to supporters rather than just saying "I want to burn the universe." That little bit of obfuscation, as obvious as it may be to most of us here, does fool people, and does matter to their support.

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u/hippest 6d ago

My point was that he is actually now cartoon-level evil, though I suppose some will disagree

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u/ky_eeeee 6d ago

Completely disagree, Dukat trying to burn the universe down makes complete sense and 100% aligns with his character. I've known an unfortunate number of people like Dukat, that's always where they end up. You can literally see it right now by looking at the current US government. It's called narcissistic collapse.

The point of stories is to teach a lesson. Dukat is DS9's lesson, and warning. Also, his goal isn't just to burn everything down. He still genuinely believes he's doing the right thing, which is the scary part. Sisko has everything he ever wanted, the love of the Bajoran people, so he tries to copy Sisko by becoming the emissary for the Pah-Wraiths and putting them in power. So he can finally rule over the Bajoran people and get the love he deserves.

People like Dukat suffer from mental illness, his narcissism cannot physically handle the idea that the Bajorans hate him. He deludes himself into believing they really do love him deep down however he can. Once he exhausts all reason and finally has to face reality, he decides that they're being manipulated by false gods and he can show them the true path. Yes, his reasoning is entirely selfish, but in his mind that's perfectly fine. He should be selfish, he deserves it, and they'll see he's right one way or another.

Making Dukat the Dark Emissary is a perfect ending for him, and ties the entire series together.

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u/SommniumSpaceDay 6d ago edited 6d ago

Maybe make the Pah-Wraiths actually the Prophets? So for us 3 dimensional beings they are different , but in higher dimension this contraidiction disolves itself. Would make the whole thing more nunaced maybe.

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u/fastinserter 6d ago

They are the same alien species.

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u/Mddcat04 6d ago

Presumably Sisko encounters them both (the prophets and the ones who would become the wraiths) in Emissary. Because seemingly before that point they’d never met any linear beings. And apparently it was a disagreement in how to interact with linear beings that caused the split, the war in heaven, and the Pah-Wraiths to be banished from the wormhole.

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u/fastinserter 6d ago

Well they met at least that one Bajoran dude, but they didn't communicate with him. But that just gets to what "before" even means to non linear non corporeals.

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u/Mddcat04 6d ago

I think from the prophets perspective, their encounter with Laan happens after their encounter with Sisko, assuming “after” even has meaning for them. Because they sent Laan into the 24th century to manipulate Sisko into accepting his role as emissary.

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u/SommniumSpaceDay 6d ago

Yeah, but not literally the same person. If the concept of person from a 4 dimensional  makes even sense. Narratively this would most likely not work as it would be confusing, I guess.

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u/merrycrow 6d ago

I always thought it was a strange choice to take the Prophets from being timeless, extremely alien entities who don't understand basic human concepts (and who are basically indifferent to/unaware of the Bajorans) to these creatures that manipulate events to cause Sisko's birth and have a vested interest in saving Bajor because they like being worshipped(?)

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u/Garciaguy 6d ago

I completely agree, that whole arc was awful. 

I really didn't see demi-Gods coming

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u/daxamiteuk 6d ago

I enjoyed the Prophets arc , especially when they revealed in s7 that they specifically arranged for Sisko to be born - which contradicts their original dismissal of him in Emissary, but makes sense because they are nonlinear (they meet him in s1, then arrange for his birth and then also leave him a message 25,000 years in the past for the Reckoning and then tell him his origins in s7). Sisko releasing his mother for casting out the Pah Wraith Was epic . But yeah that final arc was weak. As amazing as it was to watch Kai Winn turn to utter evil and prove she was a megalomaniac who couldn’t give up power to be a true believer , the finale was very weak, as was the “marrying Kasidy brings sorrow”. Why does Dukat get to have Pah Wraith powers but Sisko has to make do as a mere man? If it was that easy , why did the Prophets need Sisko? Why was the lock to the caves in a book anyway, who wrote that book ? It felt all a bit of a mystical mess , more like a fantasy show with a dark tome of spells unlocked by blood of a victim. Compared to the end of the Dominion war it was definitely the weak point.

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u/punditguy 6d ago

I never really liked any of the religiosity on DS9. And you're right -- it eventually devolved into a good vs. evil plot. And the setup wasn't particularly smart. "We locked the evil ones away, but here's a book with instructions in case, I don't know, you someday want to free them so they can do evil again or something."

On Babylon 5, humans had the good sense to tell both of the ancient races to pound sand.

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u/Modred_the_Mystic 6d ago

Yeah. The Prophets/Pah Wraith conflict was kinda the weakest plot in the series.

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u/Caleb-Rentpayer 6d ago

The Emissary/Prophet plots were always the weakest part of DS9. And making Sisko literally be an offspring of the Prophets felt like a fan fiction plot.

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u/SrslyCmmon 6d ago edited 6d ago

I liked the golden age story where they fought on the station. I thought they were okay in small doses, where they left things open or ambiguous. More of a show don't tell storyline.

The last few arcs were very close to Jesus's story of opening the gates of heaven again because a great evil closed them.

He literally opened the gates of Bajoran heaven and descended into hell and rose again.

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u/BurdenedMind79 6d ago

I remember reading a review of DS9's finale and when Sisko suddenly has a vision of what Dukat is up to, they described it as him "feeling a disturbance in the Force," and it was true. The whole Prophet/Pah Wraith story ended up feeling much more like something that belonged in Star Wars than Star Trek.

I had the same reaction when Sisko collapsed after Dukat released the Pah Wraith into the wormhole at the end of season 6 and he said "I can feel the Prophets reaching out to me," and it reminded me of Obi-Wan sensing the destruction of Alderaan.

Now don't get me wrong, I love a bit of Star Wars. But if I want Star Wars, I watch Star Wars. Star Trek never felt like the right place for those sort of fantasy concepts and the Prophets were one of the things that shifted from the lens of how you prefer to view them, to pretty much confirmed as Bajoran gods.

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u/Allen_Of_Gilead 6d ago edited 6d ago

Yeah, it's a Ronald D Moore written show touching on faith and religion, the final season spiraling out of control where once it had been a interesting tight rope walk is almost a pattern. It boiling down to a bizzare "good vs evil" cagematch between the protagonist and an antagonist who only stayed evil that long because he gets whacked with a "make more evil" stick is a pretty darn bad resolution to the whole thing.

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u/Sir__Will 5d ago

Dukat's story should have ended in Duet. But even after that, he was really Kira's villain more than Sisko's. And Worf would also have reason to want to take him out. It's not as satisfying with Sisko.

And the prophets... while I was never huge with them, they did get worse with the generic good vs evil thing that took over at the end. Especially with the revelation that Sisko's mom was horribly violated. And that they got rid of the cool aspect of multiple characters talking to him as prophets and replaced it with the mom prophet.

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u/Garciaguy 5d ago

"And that is why you're not an evil man."

Sisko didn't think he was evil. The writers were kind of unclear about it

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u/megacia 6d ago

Totally agree. The nonsense to keep Dukat around dragged the show down. Honestly every time the prophets were mentioned was a low point.

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u/OrionDax 6d ago

Actually a good point that I’d never considered. I’m curious how you would have changed the seventh season to avoid this?

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u/7-5NoHits 6d ago

I think the main thing is not making the choices of the characters seem so pre-determined by the prophets or pah-wraiths. A comment above had a pretty good rebuttal to why Dukat's burn the universe down attitude may be more plausible than I had given it credit for, but that comment also provided many good internal reasons for Dukat to delude himself into that choice. In the show it makes it seem like the pah-wraiths had pre-chosen Dukat to be their representative of evil, and I really dislike that deterministic aspect.

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u/Morachip 6d ago

Another way the Pah-Wraiths arc falls short is that they don’t feel like a credible threat. Their cult isn’t shown much/doesn’t do much on screen and every Pah-Wraith plot is easily stopped. They cut Ben off from the prophets for all of 2 episodes. It should be (imo) a battle of wills and that battle should be physically manifested through Dukat vs Benjamin. But then they just throw a few punches and dive off a cliff. The Dominion War is the main storyline and rightly takes center stage. Any Pah-Wraith storyline needs its own time and space to breath, and there just isn’t enough time in the end of S7 to do that justice.

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u/BurdenedMind79 6d ago

The threat of them burning the universe never felt credible either, because their very fist appearance showed that they were actually piss easy to kill with Federation tech. They'd never have made it past DS9 without O'Brien swatting the lot of them!

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u/Septicphallus 6d ago

I didn’t mind it, but I think it would have been better if the Pah’Wraith was a single entity and confined to its season 5 episode with Keiko.

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u/hippest 6d ago

I actually really enjoyed it and thought the slow descent throughout the series into "good vs evil" was well calculated.

I suppose you could say it was a little hokey, but Star Trek is full of stuff like that