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Season 6 season finale. That one where Jadzia dies and apparently Starfleet doesn't use shields anymore.

The biggest whiff in a Trek season finale since "Shades of Grey".

Durandal_1707 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 11:33 pm The biggest whiff in a Trek season finale since "Shades of Grey".

Nah. Voyager's Unimatrix Zero was worse. Even Voyager Season 4 Hope and Fear was worse too.

Finales are supposed to get you to want to see the next season.

*Sisko back on Earth and having his baseball. Check.

*Jadzia Dax dead. Check.

*Dominion War escalated. Check.

*Kira in command of DS9 in Sisko's absence. Check.

*What the hell Worf is going to do without Jadzia. Check.

*Dukat and the aftermath. Check.

*Dominion's plans. Check.

All of this from what I can remember thinking about that episode and it's aftermath. It wasn't until we saw images of Ezri Dax that we got some idea of what the show was going in it's final season. But when that episode aired there was so much left up in the air.

DS9 is usually at it's worst, when the Pagh-Wraiths or Prophets are treated as actual gods, rather than extradimensional beings, capable of doing some wierd shit. Tears of the Prophets leans into this and it's just *groan* Otherwise, the episode is fine as is. I never held any ill will to Jadzia's death in and of itself, because shit like this happens, particularly when the characters are constantly flung into harms way. It kinda was a whiff of fresh air actually, because for once, the main characters didn't have plot-armor.

To this day, I can not understand why Sisko ever went "native" with this nonsense. He's seen some shit and as a Starfleet officer, should be aware of way more out there shit. He punched Q ffs... That's literally meeting and knocking God out and then turning around, to pray to an animistic spirit that you met after getting zapped by a thingamabob, which qualifies as a glorified walkie-talkie. Like what is wrong with you?!

DS9's Spiritual aspect was always on the backburner even though it was suppose to be a key part of the series and Sisko's character arc

They just never got it to work. especially when they effectively undercut the Wraiths by doing a typical Trek Tech solution to the problem that seemingly just gets forgotten about instead of portraying the Wraiths as something only the Prophets can contend with and keep under control

which is odd since Ds9 loves to present its villains as being a step ahead or above... The dominion always had another plan or Sloan appearing in Bashir's bedroom even though he looked like he died



Hell Trek tends to NOT treat the Godlike aliens lightly -till Voyager-

The Survivors and Where Silence has Lease

The only thing Picard can do is pretty much leave the being be

McAvoy wrote: ↑Fri Aug 30, 2024 12:56 am

Durandal_1707 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 11:33 pm The biggest whiff in a Trek season finale since "Shades of Grey".

Nah. Voyager's Unimatrix Zero was worse. Even Voyager Season 4 Hope and Fear was worse too.

Unimatrix Zero came after Tears of the Prophets. By almost two years, in fact.

And Hope and Fear gets major points for acknowledging the very real consequences of Janeway's bad decision in "Scorpion", so I strongly disagree that it's worse than TotP.

McAvoy wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 9:58 pm Season 6 season finale. That one where Jadzia dies and apparently Starfleet doesn't use shields anymore.

To be fair, the Dominion has established in the past they've been able to penetrate shields. While the acquisition of the Jem'Hadar warship helped nullify that a bit (as we saw with Call to Arms) it's likely the Dominion would have eventually compensated in some way so it's more a give and take on shield effectiveness throughout the war (or just good old fashioned plot armor when necessary).

Linkara wrote: ↑Sat Aug 31, 2024 4:19 pm

McAvoy wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 9:58 pm Season 6 season finale. That one where Jadzia dies and apparently Starfleet doesn't use shields anymore.

To be fair, the Dominion has established in the past they've been able to penetrate shields. While the acquisition of the Jem'Hadar warship helped nullify that a bit (as we saw with Call to Arms) it's likely the Dominion would have eventually compensated in some way so it's more a give and take on shield effectiveness throughout the war (or just good old fashioned plot armor when necessary).

Well DS9 itself was upgraded to withstand Dominion weapons so it is certainly possible that Starfleet figured it out. But maybe it requires a stop at a starbase to fully fit the upgrades. So maybe not every ship has it and it may even be possible that not every ship can take the upgrades like let's say the older ships like the Miranda and Excelsior classes.

Or we could assume the beam weapons on those weapons platforms were just so powerful they overwhelm the shields or something. Or we could just assume the views we were seeing were just the ships with their shields already battered down.

On the other hand we saw the USS Galaxy herself get a direct hit to where the warp core would be located. Definitely created a hole in the shop deep enough to hit the core. So they at least replaced the Galaxy class's tissue paper warp core.

Most of the ships we see die in combat, have been in the fight for more than a few minutes, so it's easy to assume, that their shields were severely weakend already.
Conversely, Cardassian shields are crap. TNG S4/E12 "The Wounded" has the Enterprise being engaged by a Galor-class. When being hit by the Cardassian beam weapons, we don't even get the usual bridge-rattling, while the Galor looses all shield power from a few short bursts of Enterprise's phaser array.

As for the real reason: Shields were not displayed for dramatic effect. It just looks/feels better that way.

Ya know the real question is how the Dominion built so many ship yards to build their fleets in just, what, half a year? I know a large fleet entered Cardassia, but the Dominion are DAMN FAST in building those ship yards.