The Changing Face of Evil

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The Breen have attacked Earth. Starfleet Headquarters has never been directly attacked, even by the Klingons. In addition, the Chin’toka system is at risk of being lost to the Dominion. Worf and Ezri are getting along, but O’Brien and Bashir are losing their dolls. The Sisko family is arguing about burnt peppers. Dukat has convinced Kai Winn to review the ancient texts of the Pah_Wraiths. Finally, Damar openly rebels against the Dominion by launching an attack on important cloning facilities. “The Changing Face of Evil” features a lot of developments but not all of them are operating at peak performance.

One of the most important story lines in the episode deal with Kai Winn and Dukat. Unfortunately, their narrative is tremendously melodramatic and ill conceived. The wishy-washy nature of the Bajoran religion has been detrimental to the Pah-Wraith story, but Winn suffers similarly. The narrative features two villains of varying effectiveness and the story might be better suited if it had gone in another direction.

On the other hand, the excellent Damar plot continues to thrive. His plot is one of the only “Final Chapter” plot threads to be engaging and exciting. It continues to develop in exciting ways and provides Damar some excellent opportunities to bring Cardassia back into the fold. As the Winn story line fails, the Damar plot line continues to be an example of the show doing some of the close out well.

Additionally, we say good-bye to the USS Defiant! She was a tough little ship.

In this podcast, Wes and Clay lay out their case for the problems with the final arc of DS9. They also focus on the things that are being done well and debate the reasons for the off-kilter feel of the past four episodes. Is “The Changing Face of Evil” the peak of the DS9 final run? Plus! The guys discuss the strife caused by burnt peppers, the overpowered Breen, and the back grounding of so many characters.