I’ve loved the Star Trek franchise since I was a kid. I watched The Original Series on TV growing up and remember going to see Star Trek III: The Search for Spock at the local drive-in when I was a kid. I’ve watched all the new shows with my Paramount+ subscription, but there was one older show that until recently I had never seen all the way through,:Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Binge watching shows with massive season libraries has become a new hobby after watching all 10 seasons of The Blacklist, so I decided to make Deep Space Nine my new temporary obsession. Overall, the show was fantastic, but I have to say, I didn’t love the ending for a couple of different reasons.
Ending Star Trek Is Hard
On the whole, Deep Space Nine’s final episode is solid, which is high praise considering that it isn’t the case for most Star Trek series. The Original Series, of course, was cancelled after only three seasons and never got any sort of official goodbye. Shows like Enterprise had a rough ending that had to be cobbled together due to wrapping before anybody was really ready. Star Trek: Discovery's ending was equally rushed.
Only Star Trek: The Next Generation has ever really stuck the landing when it comes to concluding up a series, while of course also leaving the door open for the story to continue in the movies. Deep Space Nine tries to do something similar, but it has a couple of glaring problems.
Captain Sisko’s Finale Leaves A Lot To Be Desired, And It Was Almost Worse
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's final episode wraps up the two major stories of the show: Captain Sisko’s role as the Emissary of the Bajoran Prophets, and the Dominion War. After the war is officially brought to an end, Sisko ends up on Bajor for a final confrontation with Cardassian Gul Dukat. The two fall off a cliff together in the Bajoran Fire Caves in a "Holmes and Moriarty at Riechenbach Falls" sort of way.
It’s initially believed Sisko has died, but then his wife, Cassidy, has a vision of him, discovering he has been saved by the Prophets. He’s with them and apparently will be for some time, as he has a great deal to learn from them. He promises he will return at some nebulous point in the future. This is what passes for Sisko’s happy ending.
Apparently this ending was changed from the original plan. The first ending saw Sisko remaining with the Prophets forever, essentially becoming one of them. Avery Brooks himself advocated for the change, feeling that, as one of the few Black leading men on television at the time, it would look bad to see him leave his family, including a pregnant wife.
To be sure, the ending we got was better than the one that was originally planned, but either ending honestly feels weak. It feels like an ending that was decided on because nobody could decide if they wanted to go with a dramatic, dark ending or a traditional happy ending. So they settled on something in between, which ends up being incredibly unsatisfying.
A More Definitive Ending For Sisko Would Have been More Satisfying
Sisko dying to save Bajor, while it certainly wouldn’t have been an ending everybody liked, would have at least been an ending that fit with the character of Benjamin Sisko. It also would have fit with Deep Space Nine as a whole, which was certainly the darkest take on Star Trek up to this point.
On the other extreme, there’s always the traditional happy ending. It’s a standard for a reason. Benjamin Sisko says at one point that he plans to retire to Bajor and even buys land to build a house there. A final shot of DS9 that included Sisko sitting on his porch with his family wouldn’t have been the worst thing the show could do. If any Star Trek captain deserved to retire in peace, it's this one.
Either of these endings would have completed the story of Benjamin Sisko. The ending we got does not. It leaves things open in a way that would seem to indicate a plan to do more with the character, but 25 years later, (outside of a comic book of questionable canon), nothing has happened.
But at least Benjamin Sisko got to be part of the finale. The same can’t be said for Jadzia Dax.
Terry Farrell Was Done Dirty By The End Of Deep Space Nine
At the end of Season 6, Terry Farrell, the actress who had played Jadzia Dax, decided to leave Deep Space Nine. The reasons for her departure deserve their own article (i'm making a note of that now), but the short version is that she wanted to shift to more of a recurring role in the final season, and she apparently clashed with a certain Star Trek producer with whom other Star Trek actors have also had issues.
Jadzia Dax died at the end of the penultimate season, and the Dax symbiote was implanted in a new host, introducing Nicole de Boer as Ezri Dax. She had all of Jadzia’s memories, allowing the show to continue some elements of the character, while also introducing new conflicts, specifically with Worf, who had been married to Jadzia.
Unfortunately, Terry Farrell wasn’t there for the end of Deep Space Nine, but the issue with the finale is the way that the show, almost certainly on purpose, erases her when it could have taken but a few seconds to simply acknowledge her contribution.
At the end of the episode, three of the main characters have decided to leave Deep Space Nine: Chief O’Brien (Colm Meany), Odo (Rene Auberjonois) and Worf (Michael Dorn). Each of them is given a brief flashback montage sequence showing different moments of their time in the series. When it comes time for Worf’s montage, it would have been the perfect time to include a shot of Worf and Jadzia together, maybe a moment of their wedding or even Jadzia’s death. Instead, we get a moment of Worf embracing Ezri Dax from only a couple of episodes earlier, and no Jadzia at all.
Terry Farrell’s Jadzia had been a core character for six of the show's seven seasons. Not including her in a way that would have made such perfect sense, and required so little effort, feels like a very intentional slight. Maybe there was bad blood behind the scenes over her decision to leave, but that’s not an excuse.
Deep Space Nine Is Still One Of The Better Star Trek Finales
Issues notwithstanding, Deep Space Nine still has a pretty solid finale and is certainly closer to Next Generation than the mess that was Enterprise. And it leaves itself open to more, making one wonder why, considering Sisko's ambiguous ending, we got three seasons of Picard, but no show about Avery Brooks' character.
I'm glad I watched Deep Space Nine. And if you never have, despite my spoiling the ending if you've read this far, I'd recommend it. I still don’t forgive Quark, though.
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