Another post about "in the pale moonlight". Sorry.
Another post about "in the pale moonlight". Sorry.
I’m on my umpteenth rewatch of DS9, and I"m in season 6, when it really gets goood. And, as you are all aware (It’s a fake!).
I often listen to TNG or DS9 or VOY as I know many of us do to fall asleep, but once again, I couldn’t close my eyes for “in the pale moonlight”.
I think it's a work of art on its own, but when you bring in the holier than thou morality of the federation, mixed with the horror of seeing all those names on the casualty lists, it really brings Star Trek to its knees - in, as usual, a major crisis of morality: the needs of the few, or the needs of the many?
That question of doing something bad, something that goes against one's morals, and yet will save thousands of lives of people you care about, is quintessential star trek. For me, this is when ST really gets good (and I’m a TNG zealot).
I think that I have wanted to write this on every re-watch and have never managed to do so because I’m a stupid ass dumb fucking idiot. I’m sure that many ST fans have written volumes on this very famous episode, but regardless, it deserves to be brought up over and over again, and should serve as a reminder of how incredible this episode was. This is the shit that makes ST great.
Sisko was out of options. Garak could open alternative options and Sisko asked Garak for what he needed, even if he didn’t realize it at the time. He was angry when he got what he asked for. And then…
“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. I can live with it.”
Even better, the episode didn’t treat us like children with showing a callback to the beginning of the episode, but I will fall on that sword… From the first scene:
GARAK: It would mean calling in all my favours, Captain. To do what you’re asking would use up every resource I have left on Cardassia. And it may be a very messy, very bloody business. Are you prepared for that?
SISKO: I posted my fourteenth casualty list this morning. I’m already involved in a very messy, very bloody business. And the only way I can see to end it is to bring the Romulans into the war. I am prepared to do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal, but I can’t do it alone. I need help. Now, are you in or out?
GARAK: I’m in.
Just as an aside, my dad died horribly this past xmas after 6 months of cancer gradually destroying him and everything he'd worked so hard for. He was one of the most fit people I knew until that. He grew up skiing and was a junior patroller at 15 in colorado. By the time I was born, he was patrolling as a doctor and took me everywhere he could, and when he couldn't, he just told me to go to the patrol shack and wait. Anyways, I was with him for those last 6 months, but I curled up in a ball and did nothing to try to make his doctors do anything or find alternative treatment options like the Mayo clinic. I just curled up in a ball of fear and anxiety and did nothing. I was just paralyzed. My dad would have gone to the ends of the earth for me, and I didn't even try to save him. I don't know how to live with that.
Sorry for your loss. Unless you were going to work out a cure for cancer on your own, there was nothing you could’ve done, except just be there. My Dad died about four years ago now after he had a massive stroke, he was in hospice for about a week or two. And all I could do the whole time was just sit there and watch my Dad die in front of me. Him physically dying was a release more than anything, mentally though I think he had been gone awhile before that. He had had a previous stroke two years earlier and little by little parts of his personality started dying off. By the time his body died, the person I’d known my whole life had already been gone, he was just a shell. It was like watching him die in slow motion, little by little, day by day.
And how funny is it that there's an episode of Star Trek named after a Batman movie?
I don't think it's entirely fair to say Sisko was out of options, is impossible to predict the future, but he saw an opportunity, he took it, and it paid off. In a parallel universe the Romulans discovered the plot and joined the Dominion.
That said I totally agree with you about it being a great example of what makes Star Trek great. The fact that the episodes that get debated decades later are consistently held up as "the best" by the same fans really says a lot.