The Dismal and Depressing End to Deep Space Nine

/!\ SPOILERS WARNING

Don't read on, If you haven't watched Deep Space Nine (DS9), or haven't finished watching it...


Here goes...


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I admit, it's been a long time since I had watched DS9 -- probably at least 15 years ago. Long enough that I hardly remembered any of it. So it was time to watch it a second time. I started about a year ago, and we just finished the whole series last night.

I didn't remember the end being so dismal and depressing! In fact, I vaguely thought Kira was going to be allowed to become a shape-shifter and join her love Odo in the Great Link. Nothing of the sort.

Let's review the outcomes for the cast of DS9 - and you tell me, does this seem depressing to you?!

• The great leader and protagonist of the entire show, Captain Benjamin Sisko, dies in the end.
• Newlywed Kasidy Yates Sisko is left alone as pregnant widow by the death of her husband.
• Jake Sisko is left deserted to roam the station as an orphan... (His mother died in the beginning of the series, and now his father has died at the end.)
• Odo deserts the Federation, defects to join [and cure] the enemy Founders; and in doing so, dumps his love Kira Nerys.
• Kira, abandoned by Odo, and pushed into command by the death of Sisko, now has to run the station alone.
• Miles O'Brien, still just an enlisted man (no officer promotion in the whole series?!) takes some teaching job at Starfleet on Earth, and in doing so abandons his best friend of many years, the doctor;
• Dr Julian Bashir remains to toil on at his same post indefinitely, and friendless now that Miles and Garak have both left... At least he has some nascent relationship with the perpetually confused Ezri Dax¿
• Jadzia Dax? Oh yeah, she was killed off last season.
• Quark - teased that he was going to become Grand Nagus of Ferenginar, gets usurped by his younger brother Rom.
• Worf leaves the station, abdicates his Starfleet comission, and becomes a bureaucrat on the Klingon home world.
• The Great Klingon Warrior, General Martok, gets to live the rest of his days as a politician on Qo'noS...
• Gowron, Chancellor of the Klingon High Council, is killed by Worf.
• Garak, finally makes it home to his beloved Cardassia - from where he has been exiled from for the entire series - only to be devastated by the near genocide of his entire race by the Dominion. Everyone he knew and loved is dead, his home is gone, the culture he knew is gone, and he's not even appointed to lead his people (so far as we know).
• The newly-heroic rebel leader, Leggett Damar, dies just inches away from regaining his former position as leader of his Cardassian people.
• Kai Winn is incenerated - burned alive by Dukat.
• Gul Dukat is killed by Sisko's kamikaze suicide plunge to death, and is forever damned to exist as a spirit with the Pah-wraiths of the Bajoran Fire Caves for eternity.
• Weyoun9, the last of his clones, also dies (killed by Garak).
• The Female Shapeshifter, Founder and leader of the Dominion, is forced to surrender. Tried and convicted as a galactic war criminal.


Seem pretty dark and dismal to me... I don't remember thinking that the last time I watched this...