DS:9 "What You Leave Behind"

[Sir Will]

I liked the flashbacks and the epilogue stuff for the characters just fine. I didn't think it was too long. I also liked the end of the Tenth Doctor and some thing that went on too long. No, I really like the final episode... except that damn fire cave stuff.

[Darth Wedgius]

I didn't think the end was anticlimactic, FWiW. I saw it as "victory cost this much, and now it's all going to be swept away." Though I didn't think Winn's revelation of "the book!" was really grounded, or Sisko's sudden ability to both move and effectively tackle Dukat as explained. In short, that they had a fire cave scene felt OK to me, but not how it was done.

I would have preferred if Sisko had stumbled past Dukat as he's forced to his knees and, as Dukat is humiliating him, grinned up and said, "Made you look" -- before a phaser blast from Kira behnd him erupts through his chest (Dukat's chest, not Sisko's -- twist endings only go so far). I would have been happier. Kira ending Dukat, Sisko using his brains, and Dukat effectively felled by his own ego. And none of this, "This is something I have to do alone," which is cliché and downright silly.

Then bump him up to commodore and put him in charge of Starfleet operations in the gamma quadrant, because he's been doing commodore- or admiral-level work recently. The prophecy against marrying Kasidy comes true as they spend a year arguing over whether or not to get a dog. She wants a cat. Or just have her ask him about it (the prophecy, not the cat) and have him answer that the prophets never really understood free will and, as far as he's concerned, he and she will make their own destiny. He may or may not be wrong, but, if he is wrong, he's wrong in a very Sisko-ish way.

[GandALF]

Never would have happened, Ron Moore is too in love with exploring how faith and religion are better than reason and science. See his episode about Torres going to Klingon hell for not being a good little zealot, Battlestar Galactica, in which the main villain is atheist Baltar, 17th Precinct, in which the villains are damn dirty scientists and people who believe in reason.

I think the Bajorans were more Pillar's idea in order to generate conflict with the materialistic Roddenberry humans in ways they weren't allowed to on TNG. They're kind of like his non-stupid version of the Ba'ku.

[bronnt]

I liked the flashbacks and the epilogue stuff for the characters just fine. I didn't think it was too long. I also liked the end of the Tenth Doctor and some thing that went on too long. No, I really like the final episode... except that damn fire cave stuff.

I really liked the montage too. The only issue is the very, very obvious absence of Jadzia. I feel that, if you can't include Worf's dead wife in his own montage, whom he married literally on the station, then you shouldn't give Worf a montage. Other than that, I found it beautiful and completely earned.

[bronnt]

But I felt it would have been better without the "Dukat's a Fire Demon" thing. The whole Pai-wraiths subplot just felt so out of place and the way Sisko went is certainly as he lived, but he really did deserve better. I somehow think that Dukat should have been somewhere in the Dominion War; I mean they managed to shove Sloan in a relevant role, so I'm sure a major antagonist could have been used better in the end.

Regarding the Prophets (rant incoming):

Somehow one of the Prophets possessed a human and lived passably as a human for at least a couple of years. There's no way she could have pulled that off and still remained enigmatic and unknowable. So having a Prophet literally serving as Sisko's mother falls flat on its face when you introduce any kind of religious problem into the plot. WHY is it Sisko's destiny to destroy a damn book? It seems that your significant religious figure is of much more use being where he can work with people rather than doing something any idiot in this universe could have done. If it's imperative for this book to be destroyed, they should just freaking say so. They know the future so they could have asked Sisko to work this miracle on an off day. "Hey, I know it's important that you play a baseball game against the Vulcans, but after that, would you mind running down to Bajor and tossing this book into a furnace to prevent a religious war? Thanks."

This isn't described like some magical artifact that can only be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. You took the sense that Sisko was building up to something, and the thing you gave him to do at the end is the most dumb and boring thing. And why was this something he had to do himself? It seems like having a dozen well-armed men there to distract Dukat while someone chucked the book off the ledge might have worked better. Then THIS is the payoff of "yoi will know only sorrow" where he leaves his wife and son behind...as if he'd have been perfectly only with leaving Jake and Cassidy if he hadn't gotten married. The whole religious arc builds up to a pile of garbage.

[Wargriffin]

One thing I wish had been brought up in the review of part one - Weyoun visibly hesitates when the Founder tells him to order the massacre of all the Cardassian citizens. Instead of his usual immediate response that the Founder is wise and all that, he asks if she's sure. Some fangirls want to attribute this to moral reticence but given that destroying Lakarian city was his idea, I'm guessing it was more, "Wait, you want me to pull all our ground troops to go massacre civilians right as the Federation is perilously close to making groundfall and we should be preparing for a siege?" It's so sad because you can tell he knows it's the wrong thing strategically, maybe some part of him even knows it's wrong morally, bu he still does it without question because his loyalty to the Founder is so absolute.

The Vorta are such a tragic species.

well when your "god" is literally being the dumbest person in the room you're gonna suffer a logic bomb.

[CareerKnight]

Now look at Section 31. Not a hint of shame at what they were doing and nothing more than lipservice towards this greater good crap; and if it were lipservice from the character, which was examined by the narrative, that would have been okay but it was lip service from the production team. The latter was the unforgivable bit. There was never a sense of real condemnation in the narrative about S31's actions.

Bashir (who was often used as a moral compass in the show) was willing to risk death to end Section 31 forever and the only reason he didn't die in the attempt is O'Brien pulled him out of there. A main character being willing to die to end something is a pretty good indicator of how a show feels about it.

If you'll forgive me for going somewhat off-topic I'm going to wax nostalgic about DS9 overall.

No real nostalgia for me. I didn't really grow up with Trek as much as knowing of it. I had seen a few episodes of TOS (and the ending of both The Thaw and whatever the heck the one with aging backwards aliens from VOY) and all of the Trek movies (mostly the originals up to Generations and then later the rest of the TNG movies). I always intended to give the Trek shows a try but never got around to it... until I stumbled upon SFDebris on YouTube (I can't for the life of me remember how it happened, whether it was just randomly, from Linkara, or from someone I barely watched like Confused Mathew or Red Letter Media). Since then (and with the help of Netflix) I have watch all of TNG (minus most of the first two season cause I don't hate myself) and DS9. I really didn't know much about DS9 before Chuck, mainly just that it had a war and that a lot of people seemed not to like it (I remember reading an old wiki entry about the Dominion War that was written by someone who strongly disagreed with DS9 bringing war to ST cause when had the shows ever gotten anywhere close to that topic before?). Personally I like DS9 a lot though I am not sure how I would rank it compared to TNG, if I do end up ranking it higher it will be on the strength of its characters cause damn this show had a lot of good ones. The finale was both satisfying and a bit of a disappointment for me and like most people that is down to the Pai-wraith stuff. I don't think the Prophet/Pai-wraiths stuff or even Dukat living past Waltz was a mistake, just a failed execution. I feel that critiques of media the former is too often assumed because of the latter (case in point the planet exploration in ME1, the pre assassination investigations in AC1, and someone justifying the failure of the movie The Last Airbender as the show being unadaptable... really). While I agree with a lot of what Chuck said about it in the review, I would attribute a lot of the problems to the Pai-wraiths being horribly undefined. They are just evil because (and not even in an interesting way to contrast against the rest of the grey of the series). If the writers had given them a culture/motivation then their plot would have worked a lot better and given Dukat more to play off of. As I believe someone previously mentioned in another thread, they could have had the Pai-wraiths be more active in the Dominion War and learn about them and what effect they could have on the quadrant by what their presence does to the Dominion. They also could have not gone the cliche good spirits/bad spirits religious route and instead looked at Zoroastrianism and created a duality between the Prophets and Pai-wraiths which would have created a lot more nuances which is often one of DS9's strengths.

[Winter]

For me the best endings are the ones that make you want to go back and re-watch the series all over again. Good examples include, Uncharted 4, Return of the Jedi, Return of the King, Sozin's Comet, Mass Effect 3's Citadel DLC and TNG's All Good Things. A bad ending makes you wonder what was the point of all this? Examples in including Mass Effect 3 before Citadel DLC, Lost, Batman: Arkham Knight and more that I have blocked from my memory and will not be looking up to remind myself why they suck.

And DS9's What You Leave Behind is... okay. Has some great moments but as Chuck pointed out, the bit between Sisko, Dukat, Winn and the Pah-wraith was really anti-climatic and the four minute flashback scene just seemed to on and on. But the rest of it was really great and ended things on a satisfying note. For me its kinda like the ending to the most current arc from the Tomb Raider comics. It has a great final battle and some really great character drama but the last four pages are a real let down given everything Lara and Sam just went through.

I guess it really dances between to the two extremes, it didn't make me wonder what the point of the whole series was so bu at the same time I don't have any real eager to re-watch the series again. I have re-watched it, many times, but not with the same enthusiasms that I do with TNG and TOS.

[Asvarduil]

I feel like:

A) this really was an Odo episode
B) this should have been an Odo episode.

The Sisko fight feels like a video game accoutrement, not a proper part of the story. Kai Wynn killing Dukat was an interesting touch; having a Pah-Wraith empowered Wynn leading the PW cultists, even as the victory over the Dominion is celebrated on DS9, would've been an interesting sequel-hook "the end...OR IS IT!?" moment.

Actually, if you want to get rid of Sisko and resolve all of the Prophets stuff, you could just have the Prophets have one of their visions, where they say, "Hey, remember when we said you'd find no peace on Bajor? Well...this is it. Get in the Defiant, come to the Celestial Temple. We'll take you where you need to go." Even as Starfleet wonders where the hell Sisko went - thus, allowing the station to still fall to Kira's command, doubly legitimate due to her dual commission with Starfleet and the Bajoran Militia, Kira and Odo resolve their romance exactly as was done in the episode we got.

The episode as it is was good. There were parts that were just plain cheesy, though. As to the 'Sisko is a badass' jokes...I have no problem with them. It's just unfortunate that Sisko isn't shown having more moments of overwhelming competence and non-combat chances to be a badass. For instance, a scene of him advising a Starfleet engineer on a ship design based on his lessons learned designing the Defiant class - having Sisko spit out a mixture of time-honored technobabble and real physics would really flesh out some of his backstory.

[BigGangnam]

Copy/pasting my assessment on the ending scene of the second part on another forum, as it seems fitting.

"Oddly enough, I feel this is an ending that could have been easily salvaged. Have Kai Winn be in full Pah Wraith cultist mode, show her preparing to release them onto the universe...and then have Dukat use their power to stop the rituals, kill Winn, and wrest control from the Pah Wraiths of their powers.

He was called the Anti-Emissary, after all, and as he rants he reveals that, where Sisko used his position as Emissary to bolster everyone around him, Dukat will use his position to bolster himself. Having gained control over the Pah Wraiths he shall rise from ruin like a phoenix and exterminate all of the forces that opposed him, all those who looked down upon and broke him. Burn away the Klingons, the Romulans, the Dominion, the Prophets, the Federation, and every single man, woman and child on Bajor, allowing them to live just long enough to scream for HIS mercy. Acknowledge HIS greatness. And once he has erased all of HIS enemies, he shall float down from the heavens upon Cardassia, wreathed in flame like a wrathful deity. The civilian government will be erased, and instating himself as the God King of Cardassia, he shall lead HIS people back to the stars, conquering all of the galaxy...and perhaps even beyond.

And yet...he does not kill Sisko. He makes him bow. He screams at him to acknowledge his power, his glory. Even after all this, he cannot bear Sisko's judgement. He cannot bear the denial of the one man whose respect he could never earn. And as he raves, the power of the Prophets swells in Sisko, and with all his might he batters Dukat, each strike sending shockwaves that destabilizes the rock face, plunging both men into the fire.

Dukat laughs madly, screaming at Sisko to beg him for his help, only to notice that the Book has fallen with them...and Sisko does not burn. As the book burns away, Dukat stares in horror...and in sadness. With one last look, he stares at Sisko, and with the last of his life, acknowledges his superiority, and similarity, echoing the immortal words uttered in Balance of Terror. "You and I are of a kind, Benjamin. In another life, I could have called you friend.""