Gul Dukat one of the best villans ever?

[Temis the Vorta]

The whole Pah-Wraith thing could've still happened without Dukat becoming a crazy cultist.

After he escapes in Waltz, he just comes to the conclusion that the Prophets have to go since they're keeping Dominion reinforcements away. He knows that the Feds would stop any attempt at using whatever type of radiation that kills Prophets on them, so he starts researching other ways and comes across the story of the Pah-Wraiths.

He then pretends to become a crazy cultist to gain favor from the Pah-Wraith worshiping Bajorans, leading us to the Bajoran surgery and seducing Winn for his own purposes.

But then Winn poisons him, and the Pah-Wraiths revive him except the "Anti-Emissary" Dukat is nothing but a possessed corpse.

Sounds good. The key to Dukat is, Dukat is never a "true believer" in anyone but himself. He might pretend otherwise if it suits his agenda, but it will never be real.

 

[Ln X]

All in all, I am generally happy with the ending, even while disliking the Pah Wraiths. I think the problem was just that the Pah Wraiths were just thrown in as a dramatic plot device without much important connection. I think they could have done something very similar with the ending and had it be much better just by leaving out the Pah Wraiths.

The big problem (if you're obsessed with the details and aren't swept away by the epicness of it all) was that the Pah Wraiths themselves were never really properly explored. And the whole Fire Caves scene with Sisko/Dukat was rushed. I blame this on WYLB because the first half had a clear structure whereas the second half (and it was good) meandered surprisingly.

It's surprising that happened because TNG and VOY had very clear cut endings. NerysDukat does kinda have a point about the Pah Wraiths waiting around. Unless of course Dukat had to bump off Sisko before the Pah Wraiths could be freed? I'm not sure about that

 

[Supernuke]

I liked the Dukat final arc. I think that it was the natural progression of his character. The pah wraiths didn't bother me any more than all the technobabble did in all of the Trek series. All in all, it was an interesting ending that tied together the whole series, not just the war part.

 

[RoJoHen]

The only thing that really bugged me about Pah-Wraith Dukat was his whole "Now bow to me!" speech in the final episode.

 

[TheLobes]

I think the final Dukat arc makes perfect sense, my problem is that it was only ever really the B story. They were doing both his story and the dominion war story at the same time, the writers really should have found a way to intergrate both stories instead of keeping them totally seperate.

The main flaw in later DS9 is that the stories and characters became too spread out from each other, with so much jostling for attention in the final series. Dukat is the most obvious example of how that effected the show.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

TheLobes: I think you have the best comment here about the whole thing--you explain the production error very well. I don't think the story itself was bad, and have even found it to inspire my fanfic. But I agree it could've been executed better in WYLB.

 

[The Dominion]

They needed to have the Pah Wraiths a functioning part of a bigger arc, probably one about ancient Bajor that could explore the origins of the wormhole and Prophets. I expected something like that to happen for a long while, but they didn't get the time to do it.

It could have made the Pah Wraiths feel important, instead of thrown in for effect.