135. Waltz

Summary

Sisko is aboard the USS Honshu, which is taking him and Gul Dukat to appear before a Federation war crimes grand jury. As Sisko is offering condolences for Ziyal's death and noting Dukat's apparent recovery from his previous mental lapse, the Honshu is attacked and destroyed. He awakens in a cave with Dukat, who managed to save both of them. Sisko is injured, but Dukat is transmitting a distress signal and seems eager to care for Sisko. It soon becomes clear that Dukat is still dangerously unbalanced. He sees nonexistent images of Damar, Weyoun and Kira who ego-stroke, mock and needle him, respectively. He wants to kill Sisko but he's desperate to get Sisko to admit that he secretly respects him. Sisko finds that the transmitter is, in fact, damaged and manages to repair it. Dukat tries to draw Sisko into conversation but Sisko is having none of it...and Dukat's instability is becoming clearer. Finally Dukat becomes violent and beats Sisko after he discovers that Sisko's fixed the transmitter. Dukat tries to justify his actions during the Occupation, becoming so distracted and agitated that Sisko is able to disable him and escape, but as he's boarding the shuttle Dukat tackles him and leaves him there, vowing to kill all Bajorans and Sisko. The Defiant rescues Sisko (on Dukat's signal, ironically), who vows that from now on, "it's him or me."

Analysis

You know, Cardassians were always my favorite villains because they were so duplicitous. You were never sure where they stood..."one may smile and smile and be a villain," that was the Cardassians once upon a time, and Dukat was a prime example. In recent years he's become a garden-variety psychopath bent on worldwide destruction...granted, he's a very *good* psychopath bent on worldwide destruction but he was far more interesting before when he was multifaceted and not all bad. Though I find this episode pretty compelling, always in the back of my head is the thought that this isn't Dukat, or at least it shouldn't be. Such black and white "pure evil" villains are a cop out, they're too easy. DS9 isn't known for taking the easy road out and I'm disappointed that they did it with Dukat. Some of the sequences in the cave are genuinely chilling. I could have done without the neo-Freud manifestations of Dukat's so-called mental illness, though I got a kick out of his Kira-manifestation. The episode also drags in parts, and the time pressure on the Defiant is a contrived device, pure and simple. One never loses sight of the fact that this episode's purpose is purely to set up things to come, and as such its purpose is served...but the moral certainties here are too neat and tidy for my taste.

Rating: 6.5

Memorable Quote:

Dukat: I should have turned that planet into a smoking cinder in space! I should have killed them ALL!
Sisko: [whacks Dukat unconscious] And *that's* why you're not an evil man.

Classic Scene:

Dukat's final descent into self-pitying, megalomanical hysteria just before Sisko belts him one is an interesting comment on how self-perceived benevolence was so easily twisted into hatred. Freaky.

Sexually Slanted Line 'O the Episode:

"You really want to do this? Here? Now?" --Sisko

The O/K Status Report

Nothing worth mentioning.

Special Alerts

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