Actually before I move on to the next one, DS9 has really made a point about how easy and horribly difficult it is to compromise oneself over the last several episodes.
- O’Brien goes undercover for Starfleet, meets, befriends, and then betrays a man he likes to his death, even though O’Brien tries his best to get this guy not to put himself in harm’s way. He abandons his orders & his duty to Starfleet to do the “right” thing, and even though the mission still works out, he’s made some betrayals of his own.
- Worf gives up hope of completing the mission, even though he could still see it through, to save Jadzia instead. He gives up the defector, the intel, and quite possibly any chance at command to save one person’s life over thousands, because he personally cares too much for that one person. His mission doesn’t succeed because he allowed himself to follow a code other than his uniform; he has to live with that. For a man who’s defined himself for so long by his sense of honor and duty, it must be difficult to discover that his priorities can change so totally from what they once were.
- Kira’s mother was a comfort woman to Dukat. That in itself is hardly a betrayal, especially when she was forced at gunpoint from her home; what kills Kira is that her mother was able to find what small happiness she could within that life, that she didn’t fight and kick and scream until she was killed. She hated it and grieved for the family she left behind and looked for peace at the same time, and when she died it was in a comfortable Cardassian hospital on Dukat’s dime.
- Bashir is accused of being a Dominion spy. It’s not clear until the very end that he isn’t; when even the viewer can’t quite decide if they can trust a man who’s proven trustworthy over six seasons, it becomes so, so easy to believe that it is that easy, that betrayal can sneak up on you without you even knowing it, and all it would take is one little moment of weary resignation on Bashir’s part to condemn himself completely. And honorable Starfleet has their own Obsidian Order lurking in the shadows after all. Of course they do.
- Sisko slowly, decision by decision, yields every ideal that’s governed his life and his career, and finds he’s okay with that. Garak has always been a bastion of ambiguous morality; and yet it’s his plan to achieve the end results exactly the way Sisko wants, with Sisko’s knowledge and Starfleet’s official, sanctioned approval of deception and treachery and bribery. The only thing he does without their knowledge is arrange two accidents, but when the paragons of the galaxy have slid so far down that muddy road already, is it really that much of a stretch?
And yet, the thing I like best about all these episodes is that DS9 doesn’t make that decision for us. They don’t shove morality down our throats and say no, this is too much, Worf should have let Jadzia die, Kira’s mother should have thrown herself out the airlock, Sisko should have let Romulus stay out of the war and allowed whatever deaths would have happened to happen, duty above all, righteousness above all. Sometimes people compromise who they are for reasons that are small and huge and petty and potentially devastating to innocent people. That happens. And sometimes all we can do is to figure out how to live with ourselves afterwards.
(via tinsnip)
