What was left behind at the end of Deep Space Nine's two-hour finale was seven seasons worth of the best Trek ever produced, written, and acted. Trek's forgotten middle child was allowed, for once, to stand on center stage and have the spotlight all to itself. Sadly, the reason for that was to say good-bye to television and its millions of loyal fans. What You Leave Behind had many of the elements that made DS9 so special, so different, so great--friendship, humor, flawed characters, and constant change.
The end was very much what I'd come to expect from this show. No warping off into space all together to seek out the next adventure for this bunch. In the end, this crew was split up. Only Bashir and Kira (and Dax if you want to get technical) from the original members of the senior staff remained on the station. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Much happened before the final half hour that issued the core character their respective fates.
The finale began with an assortment of quiet scenes in which characters spent time with their loved ones before gathering on the Defiant to go off to war. On Cardassia, Damar, Garak, and Kira continued their efforts to incite rebellion amongst the Cardassian people. They were successful. Planetary sabotage commenced. Chaos reigned. Dominion headquarters was cut off from their fleet on the front line. The Founder was not amused. She ordered Lakarian City, population two million Cardassian citizens, to be wiped out as a lesson to the population as a whole that rebellion would not be tolerated.
Back in space, the battle between the Dominion and the Federation/Klingon/Romulan Alliance had begun. While some stock footage was supposedly used instead of new shots, the space battle nonetheless was beautifully done. Set against a marvelous musical score, the interchanged interior/exterior shots provided a stark reminder that for each pounding a ship took, the people within those battered hulls were dying. For a war that has mostly thrown out numbers to impress upon us the massive scale of the two-year running conflict, there's nothing like a few added shots of dying Starfleet officers, and others, to force the point home.
The tide of the battle was suddenly turned when long-range communications was restored for the Dominion fleet. News of the
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