Top 20 Episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine #4: Waltz

This episode takes place not long after Sisko and the Federation retook Deep Space Nine from The Dominion and the Cardassians. In the battle for the station, Gul Dukat saw his daughter, Zial, gunned down by a man who was supposed to be his subordinate. Having lost everything, Dukat’s mind snaps and he is reduced to a broken madman. Our episode opens with Sisko as a passenger on board the transport ship taking Dukat to his trial. Dukat’s broken psyche seems to have been healed thanks to months of therapy. However, there’s no time to dwell on that fact as the ship is attacked and subsequently destroyed, Dukat and Sisko’s escape shuttle crash landing on a desolate planet.

Sisko awakens in a cave with Dukat tending to his injuries. Dukat tells him that he has set up a distress beacon but due to the storms on the planet’s surface, it may be some time before they’re rescued. So, to pass the time, Dukat decides to make conversation with Sisko, but is clearly taken aback when Sisko makes it clear that he never considered him a friend. As time goes by, it becomes more and more clear that Dukat never really sent a distress signal and doesn’t intend to leave this planet, at least not until he’s earned Sisko’s respect and makes him see that his way was right all along. As the situation gets more and more uncomfortable, Dukat begins seeing hallucinations of Weyoun, his Dominion ally, Damar, his loyal subordinate as well as the man who killed his daughter, and Major Kira, the former head of the resistance cell who opposed him who has slapped away every hand of friendship he’s offered her. Each of them is as Dukat sees them and they all serve to help him justify his actions both during the Dominion War and the occupation. When Dukat learns that Sisko has been trying to repair the distress beacon, Dukat loses it and beats him with a lead pipe. Finally, the two confront the heart of the issue as Sisko puts Dukat on trial for all his crimes. Dukat desperately tries to justify the acts of evil he committed, claiming that he tried to be a kind ruler, but the Bajorans kept forcing his hand. As the layers continue to be pealed away, Dukat says that the Bajoran people were foolish for not cooperating, because in Dukat’s mind, the fact that the Cardassians were the superior race should have been obvious to them, and finally, as the last layer is stripped away, he loudly declares his hatred for the entire Bajoran race, believing that he should have wiped them all out.

It is my belief that Dukat is the strongest single villain in the entirety of the Star Trek franchise and this episode goes a long way to justify that claim. It is here that we see the true depths of his evil and his madness. By his own twisted logic, Dukat genuinely believed that the occupation was to Bajor’s benefit because he cannot conceive of the fact that anyone would not wish to be conquered by the great Cardassian Empire, and when they resisted, the hatred within Dukat began to grow. Then, along comes Sisko, a Federation soldier no better than him, and yet, the Bajorans immediately welcome him as their Emissary, only adding fuel to Dukat’s fire. Finally, in this episode, after he has lost everything, does all of that pent up resentment finally comes flooding out as Sisko finally gets him to admit his true feelings. Marc Alaimo and Avery Brooks are two very powerful actors and their performances in this episode are equally powerful. They begin as two enemies in a bad spot reluctantly working together to survive, but as time goes by, their animosity for one another slowly builds until finally, it erupts into violence, and what results is an incredible episode.

In this episode, Sisko came face to face with true evil, but next time, we learn that Sisko’s own conscience isn’t exactly clean either.