DS:9 "What You Leave Behind"

[Yukaphile]

First off, I want to say that the clip he showed of Downfall threw me out of the experience. I used to love Downfall parodies, laugh at them a lot, but not anymore. Ever since learning about Soviet war crimes that went unpunished, all I can watch when seeing that clip now is a bunch of pretty women who are about to get brutally gang raped, endlessly for days and weeks and months and years on end. Who might get pregnant and have to abort with a coat hanger, get an STD and die off from it, or just kill themselves out of misery. And for those who survived to be thoughtlessly branded as criminals, oppressors, perpetrators against humanity, monsters, murderers, and so on for the next 70 years despite suffering the most brutal inhumanities and worst crimes against women and girls in human history that their attackers got away with and having absolutely no political power themselves and having had their rights rolled back the same as ethnic minorities. It was really thoroughly unpleasant and I wish he had not included that.

Anyway, I guess it's time to share my experience in how I came to DS9. I was born in 1987. I had always grown up with TNG and TOS, and at one time we had a collection of thousands of VHS tapes, many of which included TOS and TNG. One of my earliest memories before my grandmother died in 1996 and my mother divorced my abusive father in the same year was the scene from Best of Both Worlds where the Enterprise flees into the nebula. By the time mid nineties during the time of First Contact, I was a Star Wars and Star Trek fanboy even though all the kids at my school weren't into that, lol. Some of my best memories before turn of century revolved around watching TOS and TNG, particularly around one Halloween when I bought something that resembled one of those "silicon nodules" from The Devil in the Dark. Fast-forward several years, to 2008. We had just gotten back to Minnesota from Chicago, lost practically all our possessions, and it was well into the Bush era, plus I was now a 20-year-old man, so I was a bit more aware of the harsh complexities of life than I was a wide-eyed youth. Around 2008, 2009 or thereabouts, ten years ago, after perusing Memory Alpha for quite a while and reading up on DS9 and the timeline, because something I was huge on back then was reading through wikis to help with my fanfiction, I tried to find a web site that would support it. This was before we knew about Netflix, of course. Then lo and behold, I found a place! Motionempire. I managed to watch all the way through to mid Season 6 just about after the time they had retaken the station. In fact, the last episode I saw before Motionempire was taken down was "Who Mourns for Morn?" I always hated that I'd never got to finish DS9, the same way that months prior, my computer had broken down and once it was fixed, and this was on the outdated Windows XP, I couldn't play KOTOR 2 anymore. Two of my favorite things to do back then were gone. Still, I wrote fanfiction, and I still thought back to much of the Trek series I loved. Then fast forward a couple of years to 2011 or so, and we learned about Netflix! When we got our subscription, I was happy to discover that included among the package was TOS, TNG, and DS9! I was finally able to finish the show, and for good too. It was quite an wild ride, but I was happy to go through it. No regrets.

[Admiral X]

You have a classic case of overthinking things. It's a meme, dude, just leave it at that.

[Yukaphile]

I just want people to stop victim-blaming and perpetrator-praising. Which is what I see a lot from this topic.

[sayla0079]

Looking back after rewatching the finale I have to agree with chuck that besides Sisko there were two (possibly three but the last one is debateable) that had reasons to go after Dukat and should have had a stake in it.

[CharlesPhipps]

First off, I want to say that the clip he showed of Downfall threw me out of the experience. I used to love Downfall parodies, laugh at them a lot, but not anymore.

The Soviet War crimes against the Nazis basically falls under the "War is Hell" business. They were nightmarish, awful, and horrific but they were also the result of people who had been subject to an attempt to exterminate them. I feel similarly about the genocide of white French which followed the Haitian revolution.

[And for those who survived to be thoughtlessly branded as criminals, oppressors, perpetrators against humanity, monsters, murderers, and so on for the next 70 years

...you mean the Nazis? My heart bleeds for the secretaries and typists in Hitler's bunker but...it was Hitler's bunker.

Also, the people the survivors lived among were Germans themselves.

despite suffering the most brutal inhumanities and worst crimes against women and girls in human history that their attackers got away with and having absolutely no political power themselves and having had their rights rolled back the same as ethnic minorities. It was really thoroughly unpleasant and I wish he had not included that.

Yeah, the Soviet Union was awful. Plenty of those people had their own families locked away in Gulags, suffered starvation, and watched continuously by one of the worst governments of all time. You seem very much focused on the sexual crime aspect while ignoring the sheer breadth of destruction all round. It would be decades before millions of people were released from prison camps they were sent to and shared their experiences of having fought to save their nation before being locked up.

The Polish Resistance fought the Nazis tooth and nail right up until the Soviets destroyed them.

Then fast forward a couple of years to 2011 or so, and we learned about Netflix! When we got our subscription, I was happy to discover that included among the package was TOS, TNG, and DS9! I was finally able to finish the show, and for good too. It was quite an wild ride, but I was happy to go through it. No regrets.

A beautiful story. Ultimately, on my end, I found the finale somewhat disappointing because Sisko becoming Space Jesus was fine but Dukat becoming Space Satan felt like a cop out as I never felt we needed Space Demons in DS9.

I feel like Dukat should have ended his career broken, forgotten, irrelevant, and locked away in a cell with the other war criminals of the galaxy for all time.

[sayla0079]

Between Kira, Worf and possibly Ezri i'm surprised Dukat made it to the end of the show alive.

[CharlesPhipps]

Between Kira, Worf and possibly Ezri i'm surprised Dukat made it to the end of the show alive.

Kira killing Dukat would have been interesting.

[Darth Wedgius]

Dukat kind of made it about him vs. Sisko, and Sisko had a big mythic thread through the series, so I didn't at all mind that Sisko killed Dukat. I would have done it differently (someone shoots a hole through Dukat from behind while he's got Sisko on his knees, because Sisko, a Starfleet officer, knows it isn't about himself but about getting the job done, and he knows Dukat is obsessed with him, making for a good distraction), but that's more because I was never 100% comfortable with the mysticism thing in DS9, and I didn't get why Sisko is able to get off his knees and struggle with the book, or why the book burns up in Pah Wraith fire when the Pah Wraiths still needed it.

Kira being the one holding the phaser would have been nice, or Worf. Or O'Brien, who's surely suffered more than the rest of Starfleet put together.

Though being shot from behind might not make for a good climax, it might favor the harder edge DS9 was going for.

[Cassandra]

Dukat was so far removed from the main action in season 7 that any of the main characters killing him in the finale would feel tacked-on at best (i.e. what we got in the show) or like an out-of-character revenge killing at worst.

Kira could never forgive Dukat, but by season 7 she's not the type of character to hunt him down and kill him for crimes against Bajor. She's not that deeply revenge oriented.

Dukat should have been killed or recaptured when his arc ended in Waltz, but if we have to have him all the way to the finale, I'd say either have him die due to one of his own schemes blowing up in his face, or have Garak kill him. Dukat being killed by one of his own schemes (e.g. Kai Winn stabbing him in the back) would be earned because his own self-perceived cleverness would have finally caught up with him. Similarly, Garak killing Dukat wouldn't feel unearned because they have an established hatred and Garak is well established as someone who will kill with minimal provocation.

[Fianna]

Though it would've been hilarious if they somehow finagled it so that Dukat wound up exiled, working as a tailor or some other commoner profession on a space station, just like Garak was.