And now I finally leave behind...
"What You Leave Behind"
This is it...the last episode of Deep Space Nine. The big finale. The sendoff. The final curtain.
We start with Dax and Bashir doing pillow talk. Neither of them wants to die in the invasion of Cardassia. They both promise not to. O'Brien's going to move to Earth with his wife, but he hasn't told Bashir yet. I laugh a little at him moving to Earth to become an instructor at Starfleet Academy, because it seems like a really high percentage of people on the show become teachers at Starfleet Academy. I guess there's not too much else to do on Earth besides teach.
Back on Cardassia, the Cardassian Liberation Front is still in Garak's mom's basement. And it occurs to me that this might be some kind of swipe at the reputation of Star Trek fans for living in their parents' basements. Except in this case they're actually living Star Trek, not watching it. Or talking about it online.
Some strange stuff here. First, Damar flirting with Garak's mom, a week after his wife died. Yeah, I know he was just being nice to her, but it felt kind of weird. Cardassians talk about how important family is to them, but Damar doesn't seem to be thinking about how he lost his. Second, the Dominion soldiers kill Garak's mom, line up Damar and the rest, and are about to execute them when the Cardassians kill the Jem Hadar. I'm sure they appreciated the rescue, but couldn't they have killed the Jem Hadar before they killed Garak's mom? The way it happened was pretty dramatic, but also pretty cold-hearted.
There's a big space battle, which looks very familiar in parts. Martok wants to drink his barrel of bloodwide and talks about glory.
In the meantime, the Cardassians revolt, and the Founder orders them all killed. This then backfires magnificently, as the Cardassian fleet turns on the other Dominioners and causes them to lose the entire war.
And Winn and Dukat go to Costa Mesa. Well, not exactly. But they use the Book of Kosst Amojan to get to the fire caves. I've been calling it the Book of Costa Mesa. And the exterior of the Fire Caves looks a lot like a
Peter Lik painting to me. Nice. I liked Dukat's crack about how expected, you know, fire. It takes them a really long time to get to the Fire Caves, and at first Winn sacrifices Dukat, but we know it won't be over that easily.
Damar gets killed early in the attack on Dominion headquarters. Because of Kira's joke about the castle, I keep thinking, "Have fun storming the castle!" while they are fighting and dying. Then, they finally make it to the control room, where it's down to the Founder and Weyoun. Weyoun 8, showing the overconfidence that's the bane of all the Weyouns, taunts Garak about what they've done to Cardassia. Instead of giving a long monologue, Garak just shoots him. I had been promised a single, memorable scene between the two of them, and I got it. I'd been thinking that Damar and Weyoun were going to kill each other, though.
Speaking of which, the Federation/Alliance forces now have the Dominion forces cornered (in space?) Odo beams down to reason with the Founder, links with her, and convinces her to surrender. She does, signs a treaty, and will apparently be tried for war crimes. What will they do when she's found guilty? Send her to New Zealand for a few years? I'd suggest turning her over to the Cardassians, but we don't learn what happened to her.
(And Sisko and Ross piss in Martok's bloodwine. Yeah, drinking a toast in the ruins of Cardassia was a little tacky, but then why'd you agree to do it in the first place?)
Then, simultaneous to this, there's a party in Vic's lounge. O'Brien's finally told Bashir about Earth. Worf is going to be the Federation Ambassador to the Klingon Empire, so he still gets to hang out with Martok. Who is also the leader of his house, which would usually be a slight conflict of interest, but who cares as long as Martok has someone to hunt Targs with? Vic sings "The Way You Look Tonight," and things start to get sappy. Like the last episode of the Tenth Doctor sappy. The montages are a bit much, and they're not that well-executed. I've read that they couldn't get Terry Farrell's permission to use her image, and Jadzia is conspicuous by her absence, particularly in Worf's montage. He has no recollection of his wife, but fondly recalls dangling upside down with Ezri. OK.
Sisko's spidey sense tingles, and he knows he's got to head to the Fire Caves. This seems to take him a few seconds. Surely it's been days since the Battle of Cardassia, but Winn and Dukat are still goofing around in that cave, and Sisko appears, as if by magic, with no signs of the long and grueling journey that Winn and Dukat took. They found a transporter that moves at the speed of plot. In a very Star Warsy way, there's a three-way dance between Dukat, Winn, and Sisko. Winn gets eaten by the Pah Wraiths. Sisko and Dukat go tumbling into the Fire Caves.
It turns out that Dukat's imprisoned with the Pah Wraiths forever, and Sisko is with the Prophets in the Celestial Temple. Which the writers thought was the natural, perfect resolution to Deep Space Nine, but I don't. This has probably been said many times before, but it bears repeating. In the first episode, Sisko had two motivations:getting Bajor into the Federation, and taking care of his son Jake. And now, at the end of the series, Bajor isn't in the Federation, and he's abandoned both Jake and his unborn child (and his wife) to live with the Prophets. That makes absolutely no sense to me.
Poor Jake.
Yes, it's implied that he will be back, but when the last image of the show is Jake looking out the window, pining for his father, you're just left with a sense of loss.
And I'm not going to tell people how to cope with the loss of their father, but Jake takes things just a little too placidly here. Remember "The Visitor?" In that episode Jake spent his whole life trying to save his father. Same Jake (different timeline, of course), but this Jake doesn't demand that Nog take him into the wormhole on a runabout, doesn't try to talk to his dad. And Sisko doesn't even appear to him in a vision! Kirk was a pretty bad father in TWoK, but Sisko's giving him a run for his money here.
Odo also decides to go back to the Great Link, and gets there rather quickly. I like the tux for the farewell.
My final thoughts about "What You Leave Behind?" There are a lot of problems with this episode. First of all, there was no way of depicting what the story called for: a massive battle for control of the Alpha Quadrant. You've got four guys in charge of the Alliance, and two people running the Dominion. To do this story right, you'd need a movie budget and a huge cast, to say nothing of the FX.
Second, scenes are just thrown together with complete disregard for the passage of time. The last half-hour, in particular, seemed to combine threads that took place over a few hours with those that would have to take days or even weeks. It's just a mess from that perspective.
Third, the pacing felt off, and it felt like there was some padding. Maybe because the resolution of the war happened relatively early in the episode, but there wasn't the same dramatic tension as "All Good Things." Or, and I realize I may be struck down for saying this, "Endgame." "Endgame" had the exact opposite problem: there's absolutely no follow-up to what happened after Voyager returned.
Finally, Sisko joining the Prophets just doesn't do it for me. He doesn't even try to return to his family, which seems out of character for him. And it looks like there's no new Federation commander of the station, which doesn't make a lot of sense, since in the aftermath of the Dominion War and with the Wormhole open again, you'd expect the station to be very important to the Federation.
So those are my thoughts about the finale. I'll save my thought on the series as a whole for later, if anyone wants to hear them.
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. God, if changeling linking was so powerful Odo would have been a founder from the second episode of season 3. 
