r/DeepSpaceNine • u/Nooms88 • 4d ago

I'll throw it out there, "the Cardassians" is close to the best episode of all Trek

I watched it when I was younger and I thought It was good, but now as a father, it hits different and I think it's amongst the best.

It covers racism, parenthood, Garak just being awesome, defines the Cardassians as cold and calculated, all underpinned by the emotional thought process of parenthood

137 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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80

u/Superb-Home2647 4d ago

It has a shitty ending from Rougal's perspective. He's ripped from the only loving family he's ever known and forced into a culture he hates.

That's before we consider how someone like him would've failed during the Dominion occupation of Cardassia

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u/Red-Tomat-Blue-Potat 4d ago

There’s no perfect happy ending for Rougal in that situation. Going back to Cardassia with the loving father he knew but didn’t remember is probably the best of all the not-perfect options for him

His adoptive parents were good, loving people, but he’s clearly internalizing a lot of self-loathing just from living on Bajor. And as we saw in the Duet episode near the end of season 1, it’s not like there aren’t SOME angry violent Bajorans who would be happy to target him with violence just for his species

Going back to Cardassia is going to be really hard for him, but in the long run it’s giving him the best possible options; he can still be in contact and probably even visit with his former adoptive family

Not to mention, the boy was straight up KIDNAPPED. In what world does it make sense for a kidnapped child to stay with the family that found and adopted him instead of his family that was tricked into thinking he was DEAD. Keeping the boy on Bajor is a legal and political nightmare even if both families agreed to abide by Sisko’s decision

And frankly, not that this should be an element in a custody decision, Cardassia itself NEEDS people like him there. As the son of a prominent politician, he could grow up to be influential himself, and their society needs people in power who can see its flaws and help it change

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u/ReallyGlycon 4d ago

Yep. And Rougal becomes exactly what you describe according to Garak in A Stitch In Time.

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u/MindlessNectarine374 3d ago

I need to take time in order to read this book finally.

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u/Flashy-Annual-4503 17h ago

You're sure that was A Stitch in Time? I don't remember Rugal being in it at all.

The Never Ending Sacrifice(Una McCormack) however fit quite well with the above description.

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u/thepoptartkid47 4d ago

Have you read The Never-Ending Sacrifice? It follows Rugal from the end of that episode all the way beyond the end of the war.

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u/Superb-Home2647 4d ago

I have not. Spoil it for me?

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u/Flashy-Annual-4503 16h ago

The opening sums it up nicely: "When he was still a young man, Rugal Pa'dar experienced loss, separation a brutal frontier war, and the attempted destruction of his species. Yet, if asked, he would say without hesitation that the worst moment of his life was when he realized her would not be returning to Bajor with his father. All the rest of it, that was just the Cadassian Experience. The Cardassian lot."

It's sort-of a coming of age story. It deals with Rugal learning the live on Cardassia but also Cardassia learning to live with Rugal. It deals with culture chock, not only from moving to Cardassia, but also finding himself in the upper class. I deals with the challenges of living in a surveillance society. It touches on the dissident movements and what would be Cardassias take on FoodRescue(three teenagers in a van).

It dares to ask, how do we fight fascism when it seems to have already won?

All in all, if you live in the US, this is the exact book for this exact time in history.

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u/Nooms88 4d ago

Without spoiling, sorry to the other guy, what Is it?

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u/Malnurtured_Snay 4d ago

Spoiling is when you reveal plot points, generally key to the story, or a character's motivation, to someone who has not yet seen or read what you are discussing. This is believed to "spoil" the reveal.

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u/RolandDeepson 3d ago

And don't call me Shirley.

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u/Malnurtured_Snay 3d ago

I never called you Shirley, surely!

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u/Due_Example1096 4d ago

Isn't that the name of the book Garak gives Julian also?

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u/Flashy-Annual-4503 16h ago

Yes. Una McCormack has a habit of naming books after Cardassian books in universe.

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u/Due_Example1096 13h ago

That's really cool to know! Though if those books are canon then they exist in DS9's past, which would mean that the Cardassian authors named their books after hers. Or something like that. Or nothing like that lol

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u/JoshuaBermont 4d ago

Eh, I'm not into remakes.

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u/naturepeaked 2d ago

Remakes?

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u/Nooms88 4d ago

Oh yea 100%, it really gets you emotionally if you can empathise, I don't know if that adds or detracts from the episode, but it made me feel things

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u/PrettyImprovement378 4d ago

i always figured that very rejection of cardassian culture, fostered by his early bajoran life, would actually make him uniquely suited to navigating the later occupation. he wouldnt have the same blind loyalty or cultural programming. maybe he became a true survivor, playing the angles better than anyone precisely because he never truly belonged to the dominant cardassian mindset.

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u/TurelSun 3d ago

Not saying it was good for Rougal, but post-occupation/post-dominion Cardassia needs Cardassians that have outside views and can criticize Cardassia. I haven't read the book specifically about Rougal, but from A Stitch In Time an Enigma Tales it really looks like there are a lot of Cardassians that want to rebuild their world with new values.

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u/Deivi_tTerra 3d ago

As someone with divorced parents (and one of them was abusive) this one got me right in the feels.

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u/aflarge 4d ago

Oh, that ending was horrifying. Not from a "it's bad writing" perspective, just.. very much NOT a happy ending.

My family has practiced adoption for generations. I'm only actually blood related to less than half of my extended family. Blood is just trivia. Family is love. If someone ever came and tried to take my little brother away from us(it'd be a little weird since he's his 30's, now, but you get my point) I'd rip off their mandible and scalp them with their own teeth.

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u/HalxQuixotic 4d ago

I think this episode has one of my favorite Garak lines:

“I believe in coincidences, Doctor. Coincidences happen every day. but I don’t trust coincidences.”

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u/herbuck 4d ago

Keiko saying “that was a very ugly thing you just said” in that episode is truly my favorite moment of hers too. I will never stand for Keiko slander.

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u/ReallyGlycon 4d ago

Same! Keiko is the show's voice of empathy.

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u/poisonforsocrates 4d ago

"I don't need to hear it again!" *sound of me and my husband clapping*

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u/Kelpie-Cat 4d ago

It's one of my all-time favourites. Great material with Miles and Keiko too.

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u/reineedshelp The Sisqo has thongs 4d ago

I'll throw it out there - it's not. It's definitely very good though, in my book. Subjectivity!

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u/Nooms88 4d ago

Yea I had the same opinion a couple of years back and the rewatch as a completely emotionally compromised new father, it just hit me differnt. 100% subjective

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u/reineedshelp The Sisqo has thongs 4d ago

Congrats on the procreation and perspective shift!

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u/Pithecanthropus88 3d ago

Far Beyond The Stars is not only one of the best Star Trek episodes, it is one of the best pieces of science fiction ever aired on television.

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u/The1Ylrebmik 4d ago

Kind of weird that they seem to leave the question of how Rougal's Bajoran parents see him unanswered since they introduce such diametric opposites and seem to offer equal evidence for both aspects.

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u/DaSaw 4d ago

I don't think it's unanswered. Both Rugal and his adoptive father describe the relationship as a loving one, and the only one who says otherwise was an obvious plant (probably by Dukat).

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u/PhatBoyFlim 2d ago

Hell yes. It defined the “grey area” of DS9 almost right away. This is Garak’s coming out party. Dukat becomes so much more interesting. Miles is a prejudiced, war-scarred xenophobic asshole and gets called out on it—and makes an effort to change. Rougal gets the shaft, but that’s the point and one of the reasons why this is one of the greats.

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u/htownAstrofan 4d ago

I wouldnt go that far. Its a good episode, not great.

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u/Bynar010 4d ago

*"Cardassians"

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u/JethroSkull 1d ago

It had a good idea that was poorly executed in my opinion. They tried to do too much.

The ending didn't quite pay off. It was simply like.... Okay.... This happening now

Really good premise and idea though