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The least disliked episode of DS9 - Season Five

Soldiers of the Empire isn't terrible, but it's just kind of there.

The Ship
...Nor the Battle to the Strong
Things Past
The Ascent
Rapture
For the Uniform
In Purgatory's Shadow
By Inferno's Light
Doctor Bashir, I Presume?
Business as Usual
Blaze of Glory
In the Cards
Call to Arms
 
Oh, you were talking about that. I thought you were disputing "THE SHIP" being the 100th episode.

Yes, several early episodes of season 5 were expensive. "TRIALS AND TRIBBLE-ATIONS" was the most, but given it was the 30th Anniversary episode, I think they were able to pull a few more purse strings.
The initial budget was $3 million, about twice the average, yet the episode went well above that by all accounts. Behr has called it the most expensive hour of television ever--a euphemism, of course, but I'm sure he is still saying that it was easily DS9 's most expensive hour by a long shot. The Ship and Not the Battle had some location shootings, but were light on FX by comparison.
 
For the Uniform, Sisko becomes a war criminal and risks the life of many maquis just so that he can catch Eddington. I hated that, it's not even questionable what he did, he flat out orders the poisoning on an entire planets atmosphere.


The Ship
...Nor the Battle to the Strong
Things Past
The Ascent
Rapture
In Purgatory's Shadow
By Inferno's Light
Doctor Bashir, I Presume?
Business as Usual
Blaze of Glory
In the Cards
Call to Arms
 
For the Uniform, Sisko becomes a war criminal and risks the life of many maquis just so that he can catch Eddington. I hated that, it's not even questionable what he did, he flat out orders the poisoning on an entire planets atmosphere.

Also, BIGGEST CONTINUITY ERROR EVER! They make such a big deal about their "new" holo-communicator, when this technology has been in common use for 100 years. ;)
 
Oh, I thought the biggest error was the way people keep accusing Sisko of basically poisoning the planet when all we know for certain is that it becomes toxic to humans. After all, the Cardassians end up moving there at the end of the episode...

Moving right along...I don't presume Doctor Bashir...the central conceit of the episode might have worked if it had been built up over time and with foreknowledge, but just dropping it in here seems pretty out of the blue, even if it does set up some interesting things to come.

The Ship
...Nor the Battle to the Strong
Things Past
The Ascent
Rapture
In Purgatory's Shadow
By Inferno's Light
Business as Usual
Blaze of Glory
In the Cards
Call to Arms
 
I'm removing Rapture. Some good stuff, and I like episodes that deal with Sisko's role as the Emissary, but couldn't they have given him a jacket that fit correctly? (We're getting to the point where I've got to nitpick to get rid of episodes I enjoy).

The Ship
...Nor the Battle to the Strong
Things Past
The Ascent
In Purgatory's Shadow
By Inferno's Light
Business as Usual
Blaze of Glory
In the Cards
Call to Arms
 
Torn between "Nor The Battle" and "Things Past." Both have stories strong enough that the episodes are good, but both are marred by muddy execution that holds them back from being as great as they could be.

I think I'll kick Nor The Battle. It has just one over-written monologue about the horrors of war too many.

The Ship
Things Past
The Ascent
In Purgatory's Shadow
By Inferno's Light
Business as Usual
Blaze of Glory
In the Cards
Call to Arms
 
Will eliminate Things Past. Not a bad episode, but I'm not a big fan of the metaphor dream where you can actually die to sort through personal issues as a storytelling technique. I see it as a way of writers relieving themselves of the need for story coherence or concerns about world or consequences.

The Ship
The Ascent
In Purgatory's Shadow
By Inferno's Light
Business as Usual
Blaze of Glory
In the Cards
Call to Arms
 
"BLAZE OF GLORY" is getting shot down. Between this and "FOR THE UNIFORM", I find this the weaker of them. And since someone took out the former, I have to get rid of the latter.

The Ship
The Ascent
In Purgatory's Shadow
By Inferno's Light
Business as Usual
In the Cards
Call to Arms
 
I'll deal out In The Cards. A nice enough character piece, just not quite on the same level as the other stories here.

The Ship
The Ascent
In Purgatory's Shadow
By Inferno's Light
Business as Usual
Call to Arms
 
I'm taking out By Inferno's Light. It made the Jem Hadar look incompetent by letting the prisoners escape so easily. The runabout is just parked ready to go? People can crawl from their cell to some tech stuff, they don't even have reenforced walls? And then the tiny runabout isn't even intercepted by dominion ships? It was all a bit too convenient.


The Ship
The Ascent
In Purgatory's Shadow
Business as Usual
Call to Arms
 
I'll take out Business as Usual. It's one of the best uses of Quark, but the others left are better.

The Ship
The Ascent
In Purgatory's Shadow
Business as Usual
Call to Arms
 
Going to have to vote out The Ship. The Ascent is one of my favourites, and the other two are just so much better for me to eliminate ahead of this one.

The Ascent
In Purgatory's Shadow
Call to Arms
 
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Call To Arms suffers from trying to wrap up too much in one episode, which is why I never liked the season finales/openers as much as the other episodes.

The Ascent
In Purgatory's Shadow
 
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