Star Trek: Deep Space Nine/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alas, Poor Villain: Yes, Weyoun dies several times. But a few of his deaths are very poignant, and very much ARE this trope.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: ... to see Jeffrey Combs given such an awesome and crucial role as Weyoun... oh yes.
  • Angst? What Angst?: Bashir is captured by the Dominion and kept in a hellish prison camp for over a month. When he escapes and gets back to the station, they apparently hand him a clean uniform and put him right back to work, without so much as a mention of counseling or time off. He doesn't seem to mind.
  • Base Breaker: "For the Uniform". Perhaps the biggest example of DS9's Grey and Grey Morality. Those who weren't willing to accept anything less than a shiny, bright, flawless moral paragon in a protagonist wound up going a little overboard in their reaction, while others were quite willing to accept the idea that sometimes dealing with extremists required an extreme reaction.
    • "Wrongs Darker than Death or Night" also qualifies. The episode shows in detail how Kira Nerys' mother was forced into a "comfort woman" situation and ended up accepting it to prevent her husband and children (including 3-year-old Nerys) dying of starvation or worse. There's even a hard-hitting scene where she sobs over everything she's lost, and Nerys realises what it cost her - but a significant chunk of the base seem to accept Dukat's version of events that made it seem like she willingly had an affair with him.
  • Broken Aesop: "Inquisition", the episode that introduces Section 31, has Sisko denouncing the very concept of a secret organization that goes around defending the Federation by violating its laws and principles, which is a fine, expected aesop. So the creative staff really probably should have waited longer than the very next episode to do "In the Pale Moonlight", where Sisko does all of that on his own initiative, no Section 31 nudging needed.
  • Butt Monkey: O'Brien. The writers even had a running joke about it: "O'Brien must suffer."
  • Character Rerailment: During TNG's run, the Klingons were flanderised into an honor obsessed Proud Warrior Race Guy society. Then we got "The Way of the Warrior", which returned the Klingons to their sneaky, deceptive, and cunning TOS selves.
    • This seems more like a case of Misaimed Fandom towards the Next Generation-era Klingons; they make a great noise about how honourable they are (and a lot of fans took this at face value) but watching TNG, it becomes clear that even the "good" Klingons like Gowron are Machiavellian plotters who are only sympathetic because they happen to be allies with The Federation. The only real exception was Worf, and that may be because he was going "by the book" of how Klingons are supposed to behave instead of how they really do.
      • It's arguable that the Klingon were never derailed. The concept is actually played with more then once in TNG. Worf has an idealistic view on the Klingon culture, but at every turn no other Klingon he or anyone has encountered has shared this sense of honor. Picard even calls him out on it in the season finale, stating that his sense of honor will always be his weak point. It usually falls on deaf ear however and few notice that the Klingon were never really depicted as honorable, just Worf is and we spend most of our time with him.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome There are numerous. Particularly with Garak's involvement, who perhaps embodies this trope better than anyone in the entire franchise.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Dukat. This got so bad during the actual run of the series that the writing staff dedicated an entire episode almost exclusively to reminding us why Dukat is a Bad Man, and made him much more generally villainous and sinister in the last two seasons. It only kind of worked, possibly because they over-did it to the point that even sane Dukat fans who liked him as a complex bad guy were disappointed that he became so cartoonish a Card-Carrying Villain, and he still gets this kind of treatment in a lot of fan circles.
    • Dukat's overall arc was a bit more complicated than that. The writers deliberately tried to make him nuanced and even likeable/sympathetic at various points... but if you asked them, they'd all agree that he was still an evil, terrible person. (Nana Visitor point-blank said that if the writers ever did any scenes of Kira forgiving Dukat or becoming romantically involved with them, she'd refuse to do them, because she always played Kira as believing Dukat was the equivalent of Hitler.) They essentially wanted to show someone who was terrible and cruel and evil, but still a person as opposed to a mustache-twirling caricature. But since certain parts of the audience are rather bad at nuance, this backfired, and you got the more brazenly sinister performances in the last seasons.
    • Weyoun, come on. He was programmed by the Founders to be evil...
    • Eddington. A renegade and terrorist with delusions of grandeur, except that much like with Dukat, a fair portion of the audience apparently took his pontificating of his own virtues as gospel.
      • What's remarkable is how much of his fanbase takes Eddington's "I'm Jean Valjean, Sisko is Javert" at face value. Even the most passing examination causes the comparison to fall to pieces. The thing that defines Valjean as a protagonist is that his sin was minor, and that he's willing to risk his own freedom and good fortune to help others; Eddington quite literally committed treason, stole resources that were going to help sick, starving people, and attacks innocents to insure his own escape. What defines Javert is that he doesn't care who he hurts or what he does in his pursuit of Valjean, whereas Sisko is hampered almost entirely in his pursuit of Eddington by the fact that he would rather help others and not kill anyone (even Eddington) if he can help it. In truth Eddington is closer to Javert, but Javert cast in the role of the fugitive, and vice versa for Sisko.
  • Ear Worm: It may be in Klingon, but the fight song from "Soldiers of the Empire" is surprisingly catchy.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Morn. We nearly always saw him sitting silently at the bar having a drink, but his popularity was immense. Lampshaded in one episode where Morn was away from the station on business and Quark installed a hologram of him because people didn't come to the bar as much when Morn was absent. He never speaks on screen. He is frequently described as talking Quark's ear off every chance he gets, we learn that he has troubles with his mother, and an episode dedicated to his seeming death reveals that he practiced Bahtleth with Worf and used to be a successful bank robber. He also has a lovely singing voice.
      • On his way to Parody Sue, it's also revealed in this episode than Dax wanted to start an intimate relationship with him but he wasn't interested. By Dax.
    • Garak.
    • There's also Weyoun, a secondary villain whose great acting and great lines have caused no small amount of gushing even on The Other Tropes Wiki.
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: One could think of several. (Taking characterization and such into account, of course, Your Mileage May Vary.)
    • "For The Uniform": Use terrorist tactics against terrorists if you want to beat them.
    • "Vortex": It's okay to release a known thief and murderer onto an unsuspecting planet as long as he's got a cute teenage daughter.
    • "Storyteller": If passed over for a job that's rightfully yours, attempt to murder your successor.
    • "Cardassians": When settling a custody battle, don't consider the desires of the child, nor the fact that you're sending him to a military dictatorship and away from a peaceful democracy.
    • "The Nagus": Attempt to kill your boss, and he'll give you a promotion.
    • "The Darkness and the Light": It's perfectly okay to kill civilians to get Occupiers Out Of Your Country.
    • "The Begotten": Reconcile with the person who tortured you and participate in doing the same thing to another person, because you couldn't possibly choose to do anything different and it was for your own good anyways.
    • "In Pale Moonlight": Sisko describes how sometimes the end justifies the means, and how political assassinations, lies, and guilt all a small price to pay to win a war.

So... I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all... I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. Garak was right about one thing, a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it.

  • Fan Nickname: Kai Opaka was called "Deep Space Nun" during the first season but was Put on a Bus midway through the season.
  • Fanon: The first names of Dukat, Damar and most other Cardassian characters are not given in the show, but most fans accept the names given in "A Stitch in Time" (written by Garak's actor) as canon.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Vic Fontaine, a holographic lounge singer, was widely hated, largely due to the writers' tendency to devote loads of screen time to him in the middle of a freakin' war. However, "It's Only a Paper Moon," in which Nog retreats into the holodeck after losing his leg in combat, is one of the best episodes of the series.
    • This trope could just as easily have been called Good Ferengi Episode. The comedic episodes centered around the Ferengi characters were generally maligned by the fans, but most can at least agree that the farcical "The Magnificent Ferengi" (featuring no less than Iggy Pop in a guest role!) was an enjoyable caper.
  • Fridge Logic: It's Star Trek, so yeah there's plenty to be found. One notable example includes the episode featuring Worf's brother and its resolution. It basically has both of them completely forget how they handled a very similar situation before (their family standing in disgrace) and ends with Worf arguably crossing the Moral Event Horizon for a really bad solution to a problem that ends up solving itself within a season when the dishonor is lifted (again).
    • That's not really the best example, since they dealt with it before by pretending they weren't related (not really an option anymore since everyone knows they are) and technically their family honour wasn't restored, Martok made Worf an honorary member of his own family (although he might have extended the offer to Kurn if Worf had asked nicely).
    • I think the main thrust of the point stands. They had been in dishonor before and gotten out of it. Also, if Worf was able to join another house, then surely Kurn would have had a much easier time of it. After all, it wasn't Kurn's fault.
  • Then you have O'Brien working as an intelligence officer (again) infiltrating the Orion Syndicate, and the station keeps lampshading his genius engineering skills by giving hiccups every 5 seconds or so. And he had a wife and two kids. Was Starfleet Intelligence really desperate enough to send someone that important to a suicide mission like that?
    • It's important to note that the Klingons were engaged in war with the Cardassians at he time. O'Brien's presence could be a Call Back to a fairly forgettable TNG episode, where O'Brien has some backstory revealed that he and his old captain (who is the focal point of that episode) spent a lot of time fighting Cardassians back in a war between the two powers that occurred before the start of TNG.
  • Growing the Beard: Most fans agree that the introduction of the Defiant in season three was a very good step in the right direction. And Worf's introduction in the fourth season happened to coincide with Captain Sisko growing a beard and shaving his head, cementing his unique characterization among Star Trek captains.)
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Mrs. Tandro's request that Jadzia "live a long, fresh and wonderful life" becomes this after the sixth-season finale.
  • Ho Yay: Garak and Bashir. The actor for Garak actually stated he was playing Garak as pansexual in the first episode he appeared in (where he totally came on to Bashir) before complaints made him tone it down. They have lunch together (canonically said to be weekly throughout the years) and have saved each other's lives at least once. They've snarked, given each other gifts, and really sometimes been the only people who can stand the other. Plus Garak wants Bashir to "Take this rod... and eat it." (Actually, it was a data rod.)
    • As can be seen here
    • Alexander Siddig has also remarked that his reaction to Garak and Bashir's first scene together was "Oh, so are we going to be Star Trek's first gay couple? Cool."
    • Also Bashir and O'Brien. There's one episode where Julian spends most of his time trying to get Miles to admit he likes Bashir more than his wife.
      • Later on when Keiko hears about the issue, she scoffs it off as ridiculous... since she takes it for granted that Miles does like Julian better than her.
  • Jerkass Woobie: The Bajorans sometimes fall into this. While the Occupation was an atrocity committed on their people, there are more than a few episodes that demonstrate that the Bajorans were equally ruthless when it came to attacking the Cardassians. Episodes such as "Duet" demonstrate there are still cases of Cardassians being randomly murdered by Bajorans simply because they're Cardassian.
    • "Accession" similarly has a 200 year old Bajoran briefly take up the mantle as Emissary and reinstate the pre-Occupation caste cystem that was employed on Bajor. A Vedek is brutally murdered on the promenade, by another Vedek, simply because his caste wasn't considered pure under the old system.
      • On the other hand, numerous other Bajoran characters do give What the Hell, Hero? speeches when such things occur.
  • Large Ham: Kor; Dukat and Sisko had their moments, but as with most things Ham, Your Mileage May Vary as to what they are.
  • Les Yay: Hinted at in the Mirror Universe episodes. Also in the episode "Rejoined", although that wasn't supposed to be about gender.
    • Well, yes it was. In Rejoined, Dax and another Trill, who had been a married heterosexual couple as hosts in the past, meet again and start a relationship despite it being the Trill equivalent of a homosexual relationship. No one in the future cares that they're both women, but other Trill would be squicked (friendships are allowed to carry over between lives and hosts, it seems, but not romance) so it plays like they're closeted lesbians.
    • Also Nana Visitor was apparently a bit annoyed that the writers decided to run with the idea that Superintendent Kira was bisexual, as she'd intended the Superintendent's attraction to Major Kira to be a sign of extreme narcissism, not liking girls in general.
  • Love to Hate : Weyoun.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Gul Dukat had a certain flair most Star Trek villains lack, at least early on. Garak was a much better example. As stated elsewhere, Cardassians excel at this trope, their culture is based around manipulation with style.
    • Garak's speech to Sisko at the end of In The Pale Moonlight is a beautiful example of the trope. So the plan Sisko thought he'd reluctantly signed up to failed, well that's ok because Garak had another little twist in mind that would involve a few deaths but get the desired result. Then when Sisko works it all out, and beats Garak up in his own shop, Garak unleashes the monologue...

That's why you came to me, isn't it, Captain? Because you knew I could do those things that you weren't capable of doing? Well, it worked. And you'll get what you want: a war between the Romulans and the Dominion. And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant. And all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain.

    • The Founders are nearly an entire race of Magnificent Bastards, lacking perhaps only the charisma that usually goes with the trope. They manipulate politics on a galactic scale and are not afraid to personally take a hand in doing so, disguising themselves as major figures to disrupt other superpowers internally.
  • Mary Sue: Jadzia Dax is about as Special Snowflake as you can get. The only one in Trill history to successfully reapply for symbiosis after being washed out. Recipient of the legacy of one of the most honored and accomplished men in the galaxy. Excels at all of the other characters' specialties (she's as good at combat as Worf, almost as good at medicine as Julian before his Reveal, a great commander like Sisko, as down and dirty as Kira in a pinch, etc.), has a smug know-it-all demeanor, is romantically desired by practically every man she meets... the list goes on and on.
    • In fact, it was perhaps for this reason that Ezri Dax was shown being so uncertain and not immediately great at everything she touched. Unfortunately, the fanbase apparently liked Jadzia as the near-flawless Uberchick, and being given a replacement with flaws outraged them.
  • Memetic Badass: Ben Sisko, who holds the respect of the Maquis, Klingons, Founders and the Jem'Hadar as being a Worthy Opponent and as such, demonstrates he can even make them stand down simply by showing up in some episodes.
    • He also punched Q to the ground.
    • According to SF Debris, if Sisko had been in Star Trek: First Contact, the movie would've only been five minutes long.
      • Well, as the first ep reveals, Sisko did go up against The Borg, and the battle was about 5min long, but...
    • In-universe, Federation engineers:

Vorta: Perhaps you have one of those legendary Starfleet engineers who can turn rocks into replicators?

  • Memetic Mutation: "It's a faaaake!"
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • In the last episode, the Female Changeling orders the entire Cardassian race exterminated, starting with Cardassia Prime. And that's not even the least of it. She goes on to tell the protagonists that not only will she not surrender regardless of the circumstances, she's sure the Dominion will do as much damage as possible before going down. If her species is doomed to die, she's taking the entire quadrant down with her.
    • Dukat's a jerk, and we know he presided over the slaughter of millions of Bajorans, but then in "Waltz," he picks up a metal bar and attacks an injured and helpless man. And nothing he does can any longer surprise us.
  • Narm: "Field of Fire," a seventh season episode, has this in the form of Lieutenant Illario appearing in a nightmare of Ezri's where he is allegedly the killer of the real Illario, and Odo says "I'm sorry, Lieutenant (Dax), there's nothing more annoying than a corpse with a mind of its own."
    • "Sanctuary" is supposed to be a serious examination of the issues surrounding immigration. However, the Skreeans are thoroughly unpleasant in every way... they act like disruptive, confrontational rubes, they have a Straw Feminist style social structure (and of course they're right to since their men are all aggressive Jerkasses), and they're entitled and rude. Though the writers seemed to want the audience to sympathize with the Skreea, it comes off more like Bajor barely avoided a close brush with being infested with 3,000,000 Scrappies, rendering the intended message of the episode ridiculous.
    • One episode has Sisko performing a sort of ritual the Defiant crew have adopted of sermonizing over burned-out phaser array batteries. It's already a little cheesy and melodramatic, but Brooks's wholehearted performance sells it, on Narm Charm if nothing else. However, when it's Dax's turn to do the ritual later, Farrel... basically just reads the lines, managing to put only the faintest hint of excitement into the words, sending the scene plummeting into just plain Narm.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: In the episode where Ziyal first appeared, Kira and Dukat are camped out on an uninhabited planet looking for survivors of a transport crash. Dukat sits on a rock spike, Kira pulls it out and giggles to herself as he wiggles his butt in the air trying to apply some medical device for a few minutes. Then he starts talking about if he finds his daughter, he's going to kill her. And he's not joking.
  • Pitying Perversion: In the episode Cardassians, the main characters do a creepy case of Pitying Perversion by deciding Rugal's identity for him against his will, and then assisting that he's suffering from Internalized Categorism because the identity they have chosen for him and eventually condemned him to, by giving him away to the stranger Sisko decided deserved him the most - by virtue of being his biological father and the victim of a political conspiracy is one he hates.
    • They didn't decide the boy was Cardassian, his biology did that. And while his adopted parents may well have loved him and been kind people, on Bajor he would always have been an outcast and a pariah. If the ending of the episode "Duet" is any indicator, he probably would not have been very safe there in the long term either.
      • Not to mention that his loving adopted parents didn't really accept that he was Cardassian and love him anyway, they decided that he WASN'T Cardassian to them (imagine the Unfortunate Implications if a white couple adopting a black child made such a comment, or vice versa).
      • Also not to mention that, legally, it was an open-and-shut case. The father didn't abandon his son, his son was taken from him against his will and without his knowledge.
      • "They didn't decide the boy was Cardassian, his biology did that." Which makes the episode Harsher in Hindsight for anybody who happens to be transgender.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Ezri.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Bashir and Nog in the series itself. The Expanded Universe novels do this for Ezri in the eyes of a lot of the fanbase.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Sisko and his officers were placed in a lot of morally grey situations, and unlike previous series the writers weren't always willing to provide them with an easy last minute way to Take a Third Option and still remain morally untouched... sometimes they actually had to take one of those grey options. As a result, some fans who preferred their Starfleet morals in stark black and white have a tendency to portray the crew of DS9 as outright villains, with Sisko bearing most of the brunt of it.
  • The Scrappy: Keiko. Just as snappish and petulant as she ever was on TNG, it only got worse when her career goals and Miles' clashed. During her short tenure as a schoolteacher, she seems to be deliberately trying to offend the religious sensibilities of the Bajorans, making her come off as just as intolerant and stubborn as Kai Wynn (a pretty impressive feat considering Wynn commits a terrorist attack during the episode). For bonus scrappy points, she spends most of the episode seemingly more interested in her own martyrdom than she does in actually teaching (including doing a lesson with the apocryphal "Galileo was persecuted" story).
  • Seasonal Rot: Seasons three and—some say—seven.
  • Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: "The Siege of AR-558", a lot of people didn't want to make the episode but the writers (and most likely the director due to his Vietnam experience) pushed on because they wanted to make an episode showing the horror and the dehumanisation of war.
  • Squick: Quark as a Ferengi female. He even shows his (her?) parts off to a lecherous future business partner and a horrified Brunt. Ugh.
  • Straw Man Has a Point: Quark in the Siege of AR-558. Quark's mercenary and cowardly nature suddenly doesn't seem all that bad compared to the Federations' brutality in the name of idealism. In fact, Quark comes across as the Only Sane Man.
    • The problem with Quark's point (and it's dubious that he's the strawman of the episode, so it's likely also a problem with the episode's point) that causes it to collapse is that he doesn't really offer a better alternative. Quark essentially says "War is bad, we shouldn't have war"... but the Dominion War isn't a fight over territory, or resources, or even ideology. It can't be solved by just giving the Dominion a planet or two and calling it a day. It's a war to not be ruled by fascists that hate and despise your very existence, and the only alternative to war is surrender. And while Quark might like to believe that would be nice and peaceful and wouldn't hurt anybody, the reality is likely to be starkly different.
    • Another, possibly intentional, example was in an episode where Jake wanted a baseball card for his father. Ferengi, usually used as straw capitalists, are given a bit of a chance to snap one back when Jake goes running to Nog to beg him for cash, while still keeping nose firmly in the air about the Federation's utopian communism.

Jake: (smugly) "The pursuit of material wealth is no longer a driving force."
Nog: "What does that mean, exactly?"
Jake: "Well, it... it means we don't need money!"
Nog: "Then you don't need any of mine."

  • Unfortunate Implications: In his review of "Tears of the Prophets", Confused Matthew notes that after the orbs of the Prophets are put out by Dukat, the Bajorans aren't acting like believers whose faith has been shaken (e.g. Ned Flanders in the The Simpsons episode "Hurricane Neddy"), but like junkies needing their fix.
  • Values Dissonance: The good guys include former terrorists, and who later get heavily involved in terrorism. Yes, this series was made before 9/11.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Two space battles spring to mind: "The Way of the Warrior", which was the last big Trek space battle done with models (and in which Deep Space 9 itself takes a level in badass) and "Sacrifice of Angels", where CGI finally allows an epic battle between six hundred Federation ships and double that number of Dominion and Cardassian ones. Particular mention should go to the moment where we finally see more than one Galaxy-class starship (as in the Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation) go into battle side by side and letting rip with their full complement of weaponry.
    • Hell, they pulled this off as early as the first episode. Where in TNG you would be lucky to see the Enterprise D perform as much as a bank, suddenly we are shown just how vicious Wolf 359 was, with several Federation ships zipping around at high speeds desperately trying to avoid the Borg Cube's fire.
  • Wangst: Sisko gets a lot of it, especially related to his status as Emissary.
  • What Could Have Been: Subcommander Neru in "The Search" was originally going to become a regular cast member, making her the first recurring Romulan protagonist. The creative staff basically decided they just didn't want to bother with fleshing her out and Brother Chucked her after the two-parter, resulting in a massive Plot Hole as to why the Romulans would just let the Defiant cruise around with a cloaking device in blatant violation of the treaty.
    • The Plot Hole isn't too large, given it's explained the Romulans have allowed the provisional use of the cloak, but only in the Gamma Quadrant and the Defiant is the only ship allowed to use it, but the exact specifics of how this was worked out still leaves a hole.
  • The Woobie: O'Brien, who's suffered such indignities as abduction/replacement, arrest and trial, death, arrest and 20 years imprisonment in 20 hours, threatened by his possessed wife, etc. Kira's suffered just as bad, if not worse. And Odo gets his fair share of suffering as well.)
    • The writers even said "O'Brien must suffer" at least once a season because they thought Colm Meaney was great in that kind of story.
    • Dukat also gets this treatment in one episode, at the end of Sacrifice of Angels and the beginning of Waltz. Sisko's log, at the beginning of Waltz puts it into words; He lost an empire, he lost his daughter, and he nearly lost his mind. Whatever his crimes... isn't that enough punishment for one lifetime?. Of course, since it's Dukat.
    • As if dealing with eight lifetimes' worth of memories without one lifetime's training wasn't bad enough, Garak makes Ezri cry by saying she doesn't deserve to be a Dax.
      • And out of universe, Ezri's actress, Nicole de Boer. Brought in to replace a character that was beloved by the audience and an actress that was beloved among the crew. With as little time as was left on the show it would have been almost impossible to win over any audience, not even taking into account that it's the Star Trek audience (who tends to throw a tantrum at any change anyway). She was practically hired to be hated.
  • You Fail Biology Forever: Actually manages to avert the old Trek chestnut of casual inter-species conception, at least once: in the season 6 finale, Jadzia and Worf mention to Bashir that they're planning on having a baby. Bashir looks deflated for two reasons: the first is the realization that Jadzia really is out of his reach forever, but the second is that he realizes that he‍'‍s the one they are going to rely on to get Trill and Klingon genetics to play nice together, which he openly says will be really damn hard and he does not enjoy the prospect of all the extra work.
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