Tears of The Prophets

**** (4 stars out of 5)

Admiral Ross presents Captain Sisko with the Christopher Pike medal of valour. Not the Christopher Pike medal for creepy young adult fiction. Different Pike.

Perhaps the medal is Starfleet's way of buttering Sisko up for the bad news: they'd like him to organize the joint UFP/Klingon/Romulan attack on the Dominion installations in the Chin'toka system. And if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could he stop being Bajor's religious leader?  It's freaking all the secular humanists out.

But no amount of visually stunning space battles won in the spirit of interstellar co-operation and slightly morally compromised freedom and democracy will make up for the loss of a single life-long friend. Need I add... SPOILERS?

In the enemy camp, drunk Damar and uptight Weyoun are making s'mores when Dukat barges in, raving like a madman. Well, I should say EXACTLY like. He's going to war against Bajor's gods. (Hey, it worked for the Klingons.) And like the Santa of religious artifact looters, Dukat's bearing gifts. Watch out for Bajoran nesting dolls: unlike the Russian kind they have free demons inside. Sisko's nemesis gets a Pah-Wraith as the prize at the bottom.

And while the fleet is off on their big push, the Wraith rides in cold-blooded comfort into church to wreck a Celestial Orb. This carries the outcast wormhole-dwellers back to the roost. Before you can say 'cliffhanger' the Temple of the Prophets is hanging up a "Closed for Jihad" sign.

And there's a new spotted angel in Klingon Heaven.

"Tears of The Prophets" is still terribly exciting. Action and drama. Faith and despair. Victories that taste like failure. Complex storylines paying off in flames and big boom-ba-ba-blam-Michael Bay 'Splosions! This is where the big bucks go, and I dare you to stop now. The final season is going to be amaze-balls!

Waltz

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Sane enough to stand trial on Starbase 625, Dukat is heading there with prosecution witness Captain Sisko. We will never know what the Federation would have decided to do with the Lizard Hitler who made the hover-trains run on time. Eternal POW? Treatment on Elba II or Tantalus V or wherever folks whose cerebellums have sprung leaks end up these days?

I can think of a few million Bajorans who wouldn't mind very hard if the authorities offered him an all-expenses paid trip into a nice warm star. Still, the true secret of the universe is that no one gets everything they want. The crew of starship Honshu for example: mostly died while Dukat and Sisko survive and wind up stranded together on a jolly holiday in a miserable cave.

The Cardassian delivers nourishing soup and savage beatings to his injured foe. Dukat needs the captain to acknowledge his mercy and compassion to the planet Bajor. O.K., so he hates the very sight of them but he improved their world, didn't he? Digging huge holes in it? Watering the soil with the blood of millions? And improving the gene pool by fathering his bastards?

Isn't it unfair to call him an evil monster whose choices cost him his daughter's life? Isn't it really Kira's fault? And Weyoun's? And Damar's? At least those are the ghosts he sees and talks to whenever Sisko isn't offering the right answers to his one-sided conversation.

Watching conversations about and including torture, cruelty, misery and madness are not really my cup of meat. Give me a meaningless meandering lightsaber duel any day of the week! That blathered, "Waltz" is well performed and very eerie, so your experience may vary.