Why was the last episode of DS9 so incredibly awful?

Exactly. Drama is first and foremost about people, not places, things, events, ideas, or politics. The human element is the most important aspect.

Kor

 

Agreed with Bad Thoughts and Kor. Breaking Bad's pilot episode was about a guy trying to pay for health care. The finale caused far, far more pain, ruin, and anguish than the kind that he was trying to prevent in the first place. And it's a classic finale.

 

I understand your angle where creating the show is concerned. But once the story was written and the scenes filmed, it created the situation. That situation being Bajor requested Starfleet's help for sustainability after the Cardassian occupation, and that said sustainability would make them ready for entry into the Federation. In the pilot episode when Sisko meets Picard; Sisko states it sounds like they aren't ready for entry yet in which Picard responds that his job is to do everything short of violating the prime directive to ensure they are ready for entry...it's the entire backdrop of the show...regardless him becoming the emissary, the Dominion, or the Klingons.

It was exciting to see all of these hurdles presented as it created great drama in asking the question how are they gonna get this humble little world on the map with out being destroyed? The best hurdle was Starfleet wanting Bajor to become a member in year 5, and Sisko preventing it due to his visions. It was an exciting way to give the audience a reason for Starfleet to still be there...Then when war breaks out, we find that these visions actually protected Bajor through the non-aggression pact with the Dominion. Great writing!! But for some reason past season 6 the focus became winning the war and not Bajor's inclusion.

 

That's comparing apples to oranges...

 

I totally agree with you though, Breaking Bad had a wonderful, possibly the best, finale...

 

Well, the pilot episode presented DS9 as more of a direct spin-off of TNG than a standalone series. By the time it had reached its seventh season, it very much stood on its own two legs. What made DS9 unique from TNG, and why it grew out of being merely a spin-off was the focus on Sisko's balancing act of trying to find a place where he and his son could move forward with their lives, while at the same time trying to deal with being a central figure in an entire species' theology - a position he never asked for, nor sought out.

 

What the Bajorans wanted was protection. It was Starfleet, via Picard, wanted membership. At the start of the episode, Bajor's only figure of political import, was not willing to give support automatically to the Federation's presence.

Because Sisko did not fulfill Picard's wishes, the finale is a failure? Arguably, there were ready for admission in Season 5: the Federation Council offered membership.

Even if we grant that the purpose of the series was to show how a planet joins the Federation (which would be a great exaggeration), the details are still allowed to change as stories evolve. If they had thrown out a big ceremony at the end of WYLB, the whole affair would have rung hollow and perfunctory. Indeed, it might have been rivaled by Riker's LARPing in TATW as one of the worst writing decisions.

 

Picard was giving Sisko his orders, and runabouts...It wasn't Picard's wishes, it was Sisko's orders, "His Job"...that Picard was a proponent for their admission is icing on the cake.

The Provisional Government wanted Starfleet and the Federation, factions and old cells whom were not in charge questioned Starfleet's presence as in their minds it could develop into the same thing that happened with the Cardassians. Why not? They just fought so hard to get one group outta there to only have another one show up, once again great writing.

The purpose was not to show how planets end up in the Federation, but to show how THIS planet becomes a Federation member. This was to occur through the help of a man, whom happens to stumble into the situation of being ideological leader and having to balance that with his obligations of father and captain at the same time. Fantastic premise...

I'll leave Enterprise out of this...

Yeah, when considering the beginning...the finale was kind of a failure...

 

Agreed...

 

But Sisko became so much more than just a boring dad. He was a station commander, ship's captain, war general, religious leader, and a god, all at the same time! Who cares about Bajor anymore. Sisko, or should I say "The Disk" is going to be the most legendary historical figure of the century!

 

The last episode seemed a bit rushed to me. So much so the film no longer felt like a war but more like a social club with some tense conversations.

This lead to the Hollywood approach of trying to solve absolutely every loose end in a very short space of time. We're meant to believe Julian Bashir and Ezri Dax are a stable relationship even though we only saw that develop one episode ago. We're suddenly told people are leaving, going elsewhere, because, I believe, the show wanted to finish the crew in such a way as they wouldn't be forced back if some producer decides he can make a little more dosh out of it.

I don't seriously think they should have killed Jedzia. Episodes with her in grounded the show there was something about her which seemed like you couldn't indulge ideas that were too off the wall with her on screen (her discussions with Ben for instance made the show seem more real). I found Ezri immature and boring. Her overly quick familiarity with the other characters especially Sisko seemed disingenuous. Sisko seems to me like someone you would have to get to know for a while before he warms to you.

Section 31 taken down in one episode was a bit stupid as well. Slone would have not fallen into Bashirs trap that easily... Seriously? With all his espionage training he does not consider that Julian might be setting him up? He is trapped by a FORCE FIELD? Why has he not prepared for these eventualities?

The whole thing with Dukat was a symptom of these problems. He had reached peak evil at the end of season 6 he did not need to go any further.

 

Interesting, as I wouldn't have thought this as the main premise... even though it's a story arc that exists. As I see it, it's the story of a Starfleet Captain managing an alien space station in a highly chaotic location, with key ongoing conflicts ranging from unhappy alien visitors to all out multi-quadrant war! And he survives. His son is only one facet of this, albeit an important one. I think Jake's development was very nicely balanced. Not too much or too little on the Jake stories.

 

I was kind of thinking of a more broad theme for the entire series. Sort of like how if you take a step back and look at the entirety of The Next Generation, it is essentially a seven year of Humanity with Q as the judge.

 

Yeah that seems to be the theme of TNG-humanity being worthy or not.

 

You're right about Sloan being caught too easily. I see at as him underestimating Bashir, but surely he has contingency plans in place 24/7. Are we to assume he travelled there alone? Maybe S31 finally figured out the subspace transporter, or reverse engineered an Iconian gateway.

S31 wasn't "taken down" though. They just lost an agent, and their plans for the dominion were brought to naught. Since the war was resolved anyway, I don't think they'll hold a grudge.

Yeah, I much prefer season 1-3 Dukat over season 7 Dukat.

 

My point being is that a finale for any show doesn't have to solve the problems set forth by the pilot. A finale rather should be much more about completing the personal journeys of the cast. And, the thing is, completing a journey doesn't necessarily mean that you got to your goal, too. That's what DS9 and Breaking Bad did, among other shows. Characters are more of a priority because characters are what make the narrative, *especially* for a serialized show.

If Breaking Bad doesn't work for you as an analogy, I'd posit All Good Things. Major test, cosmic consequences, just another day on the Enterprise. Q is on the verge of saying that the past seven years were all for naught, despite the central theme of exploring strange new worlds and new civilizations. Rather, what Q was addressing, and what Picard realized, wasn't physical exploration that Trek is known for and what was put forward in Encounter at Farpoint, but exploration of self and the ability to consider the impossible -- not quite Trek in the literal sense, but only Picard, arguably Trek's greatest and most idealistic explorer, could have solved that riddle. Q had to come back from the perspective of the pilot to lay down the idea that our heroes misinterpreted or failed the premise of the pilot, and that the answer lied in Picard's own personal growth. In Breaking Bad, the meth isn't really the problem, even though it's a terrible drug with a hellish addiction. Rather, the real problem is Walt's inner conflict of love of family vs. thirst for power and respect. The kind of guy who would resort to making meth isn't going to be a good guy, and that's carried through to the end.

In my mind, Bajor is a bit analogous to, say, the Philippines. The Spanish and other countries like Japan conquered and subjugated it, like the Cardassians. The US helped free it like the Federation and assumed that one day the Philippines would like to join them and put up a military outpost, like DS9. Other countries would love to have the Philippines under their rule; the US for years waffled and debated about having the Philippines as a US territory like Guam. Eventually though, and after a lengthy war, the Philippines opted not to join the US, but to exercise its sovereign right to independence and cultural identity. The US honored that but pledged to offer its protection and support when needed, like Starfleet, with the outpost still there. If this were fiction, one would think that the series finale would have the Philippines on the way to US statehood, but historically and truthfully, its series finale had the underdog civilization pushing back against colonizer and supporter* alike to stand on its own. Bajor, over the course of seven seasons, had thought very much about the Federation, but to themselves they earned the right to push their own. To their credit, the Federation honored that -- it wasn't seven years of work down the drain, but seven years of work helping a planet come to its own after so much destruction. That in itself is a fitting finale. If a finale is supposed to see the completion or next steps of its major characters, I'd posit that the finale treated Bajor itself as a character, too, ready to explore the next chapter of its life just as much as O'Brien, Odo, Worf, and Jake. Bajor's goal -- whether it's full independence or joining the Federation -- is less important than Bajor's story built up and its willingness to see its next steps through.

On the flip side, I wasn't so satisfied with Endgame precisely because while it ended the journeys for, say, Janeway, Paris, and Torres, it tried to resolve things that were created virtually yesterday for Chakotay and Seven. And "These are the Voyages" wasn't really about the NX-01 crew, it was about Riker doing cosplay to solve his problem, which is much smaller than the drama in birthing the Federation. Remove the TNG framing device altogether, use that extra time to build up everyone's end story, and you'd have at least a decent episode, because then you have the emphasis brought back to the crew we had come to know over the past 4 years.

(*with a shit ton of political caveats, but that's an essay for later)

 

I immediately pictured Bashir and Ezri in bed, and then Worf saying "It was...very stimulating" to Troy...when I read that.

 

Oh Worf, you targ you

 

I often thought of the Bajor- Cardassian link as the Irish and the UK. Watching it from the beginning Kira is VERY VERY Irish/ IRA type, or a romanticised version of same. The Americans were funding the IRA which is why we've recently seen Bill Clinton coming to that psychopath McGuiness's funeral. Bush offered to cut funding to the IRA if Blair went to war with him (not from the internet I had a contact in politics) which is why the IRA collapsed after 9/11.

The Cardassian mindset and society is slightly like the English empire, with it's respect for Monarchy and authority etc.

After a while however the Cardassians had to become increasingly fictionalised so this comparison started to fall apart.

There are also other comparisons I'd personally make that I believe were in there but are more coincidental. Such as the Dominion being a bit like the middle east with the Jem Hadar being Muslim soldiers and their suicide runs etc. Hillary Clinton = Kai Winn etc. There is a similar sense of both projecting themselves as moral human beings.

And the Romulans were always the Russians from day 1! The war was a slight re- write of World War 2.