Star Trek Deep Space Nine Ruminations S4E12: Paradise Lost

[@jmiester25]

When Obrien says “Look what we’ve done here already,” I immediately thought of when the Joker said “Look what I’ve done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets.” That’s terrifying.

[@TheMarcHicks]

This & Way of the Warrior were both major turning points in making this series the best ever.

[@wcoleman99]

i feel this episode laid the foundation for the "In the Pale Moonlight" episode.

[@earlwatt7677]

The best example of the chain of command argument was when Riker challenged Jellico when Picard was hostage to the Cardassians.

[@newfontherock]

"This is Dominion 2." You, sir have won the Internet today. One of your most insightful ruminations to date.

[@UkrainianPaulie]

Episode shows for me how DS9 pushes the envelope countering the "peace, love, joy" Federation eutopia. Age old human nature, power, deceit, fear, trust, corruption etc, still are there in the 24th century.

[@stevemanart]

In some online D&D circles there is a thought experiment/brainstorming question that often pops up. "Is there a satisfying way to use a Paladin as a villain and ensure they do not transgress their oath in doing so?" And I think a situation like Admiral Leyton is how you do it. He will have to perform a repentance, but he didn't do anything truly chaotic or at all touching upon evil. All he did was work with some like minded people were willing to damage some things for the sake of protecting the community.

[@Imerias2]

Interesting thought but I can't really agree, I would think that, if he were a D&D Paladin, Leyton would have broken his oath when he ordered Captain Benteen to destroy the Defiant. Leyton knew there were no shapeshifters on board and was ordering the murder of the Defiant crew to prevent his coup from failing.

[@DIEGhostfish]

I mean, he lies a lot, in a lot of editions that qualifies as fall-worthy.

[@DIEGhostfish]

@@Imerias2 Someone like Leighton but who actually had already succeeded in his possibly necessary coup at the start might work.

[@JanetDax]

"This is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause" - Star Wars

[@bobwill]

Last year, I was volunteering for an organization that was running out of money, and one of the benefits for volunteers was a big dinner, and I joked that they could have saved a lot of money on catering by just stacking pallets of MREs in the corner of the room, and you go over and pick what you want. :)

[@IvyLeather13]

When the camera zooms and Worf says "We fight!" I jumped out of my chair. That delivery was amazing.

[@JS-wp4gs]

one minute they're saying red squad is famous around the academy and looked up to by everyone and the next they're saying that its members are secret, which makes no sense also, they pretty much ignored the fact that there was actually a changeling on earth during the episode. that part of the situation never really went anywhere, in the episode or after it

[@KnightRaymund]

it was all but certain there were changelings on Earth already. I guess they got a count out of it. The point is that they'll step up security, but there's only so much they can realistically do. And that obviously some of their existing measures aren't working. But the point of the episode wasn't to resolve the threat, it was to examine how we respond to that threat. And Layton went too far.

[@pdtraill]

I always thought it was certain members of red squad that caused the outage, like one unit out of say a dozen, so they didn't know if it was Bob's team or Bobina's team that did it- had a list of Red squad members, which was public knowledge, but the actual perpetrators was a secret.

[@Inignot12]

This episode became really real after 9/11 for me. Can still feel a lot of it today.

[@subraxas]

Thanks for all the videos and the work that goes into them, Arch.

[@rmsgrey]

A declaration of martial law leading to a civil war in the middle of a war to determine the fate of the galaxy? Surely no-one would ever attempt to do that in 90s SF television...

[@MissTea_Trekkie]

One of my favorites!!! I do want to say that I think the power outage *if* done by the Dominion could be a sign of we can get you anytime, anywhere. It could strike fear of what could be next.

[@bbbbKeJodddd]

So Leyton has a line about Red Squad not being around for anyone to question them. Do you think the Valiant being sent so far out was to make sure nobody could do so?

[@kaitlyn__L]

Absolutely!

[@grantlloyd9131]

4:45 - Much like how the sinking of R.M.S. Lusitania did in 1915.

[@kylehenderson9489]

I agree with the lack of a recording problem up to a point, even if a recording had been made it still would have been a lowly cadet who can be easily bought off or just discredited vs that of an admiral.

[@Grz349]

21:38 didn’t something similar happen in ancient Athens with their naval buildup before the Greco-Persian war?

[@timriggins70]

I remember this episode was controversial back in the early days of IMDB. The boards were filled with outrage over the Lakota firing on the Defiant and how it was an insult to Gene Roddenberry.

[@redpillfreedom6692]

I didn't know the message boards went back to the mid '90s

[@hereticalramza]

This two parter is great and it made me think about a lot when I watched it. I just imagine what Picard would have done if this had actually been successful. He high-tailed it to Earth at the end of season 1 of TNG because of an alien-led takeover - I doubt he would have sat around putting out brushfires if elements of Starfleet declared martial law on earth and essentially took over from the civilian government. I also imagine he would have ended up having more than the flagship at his disposal, too.

[@1234kalmar]

I should rewatch this series with a more analítical mind set! It'd be perfecct inspiration for my DnD campaign!

[@fredrikcarlstedt393]

Chilling how close the Federation came to a civil war in this episode.

[@thexalon]

Leyton gives away his true intentions at one point: When he describes the Starfleet-run government as "temporary, of course". Because he says that in a sign that no, this was not going to be temporary. After all, even if the Dominion were crushed, maybe there are a few changeling infiltrators still around - you can't prove there aren't - so that "temporary" becomes effectively permanent.

[@arndtdj]

side note: enterprise b model was used because permanent modifications were made to the excelsior model that couldn't be fixed, which is why they couldn't use a normal excelsior.

[@SchneeflockeMonsoon]

Based solely on the way Bashir is leaning next to Word in this episode, I like to think this was when he was replaced by a Changeling. I have no evidence for this, and it probably doesn’t make sense with anything else, but he just looks so creepy.

[@bobwill]

As a teenager, I really fell into the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories. Since then (taking up through 400 level history courses in college) and my own reading, and comparisons of the 2 fleets that could have possibly engaged one another at Pearl Harbor, I think that anyone in the US government was thinking that we should be prepared for the Japanese to do something; but, we didn't think they'd move on Hawaii, and we thought that they would have declared war before the attack. The fact is, the Japanese intended to deliver their declaration of war ahead of the attack (by a few hours) and it was a failure of their embassy to decode their declaration statement in proper time. Interestingly, if we had put the fleet to sea, they would have likely sank in deep water, and been unsalvageable. Most of the ships at Pearl were repaired, and refitted. In fact, several Pearl Harbor battleships were ready for action in time for the surface battles at Guadalcanal; but, they stayed in port, even though their crews were trained and qualified, and the ships had been repaired and modernized. The simple fact is, those old "Standard Battleships" that the US built in the 1910s-1920s were too slow to be of any significant use for the first half of the Pacific war. The carriers, and cruisers could do 32 knots, the brand new battleships that were being built could do 28 knots, the battleships that would be ready in another year and a half could do 32 knots, and the destroyers could do 36 knots. The standard battleships could do 22-24 knots, and burned way more oil than the other ships to do that. To use them would have meant slowing the fleets down to their cruising speed of 10 knots, or breaking the fleet into a slow group and a fast group, in which case, you need to cut your air and submarine defenses between the 2 groups. So, the Pearl Harbor battleships all stayed in port for over a year after their were ready for fighting. Meaning, the attack on Pearl Harbor, ironically, had very little impact on how the US would have fought that war.

[@Edax_Royeaux]

Actually I would argue that knocking out Pearl Harbor had a significant effect on the war. Pearl Harbor was the US's most valuable naval base and having the dockyards occupied much of the war repairing the Pearl Battleships great complicated the US's ability to get into a decisive battle. After the mauling USS South Dakota got in a Battleship duel, she had to travel all the way from Guadalcanal to *New York* for repairs. This greatly impact the aggression the USN was capable of in the opening years of the Pacific War.

[@dirtywashedupsparkle]

As I said in the previous episode, the themes are so pertinent to the pandemic in 2020. The more I think about it, the more difficult this issue is. The way different countries have responded to the virus has shown how unprepared governments are by nature at resolving a threat they are unused to. Peacetime governments in particular govern according to popularity; military governments will take a definitive action and people have to follow them, even if they don't like it. The way populist governments have failed mostly to deal with the virus by getting people to do things has shown up the problems of dealing with a virus, which requires everyone to work together. The flipside is that yes, when that happens society ceases to be what it was. Personally, there is a point when a society has to recognise that they can't keep their way of life and also fight off a threat at the same time, and that choice has to be made. No-one wanted to have to fight in WWII who lost people, but was it necessary, there's good reason to say yes, it had to happen or the society would be conquered. FIghting done, the norm could be re-established. This was an exquisite episode. What failure?

[@lessonslearned2569]

Went from freedom fighter in B5 to would be dictator in DS9, just because his agent effed up the scheduling.

[@paulscott2037]

So your point at the end touched on in regards to the Lakota vs the Defiant... I am going to make a statement that I know is not widely shared... I don't believe the Defiant is all that powerful. It's fast and manuverable which gives it its biggest advantage and its ablative armour gives it an edge over other Federation ships, but in terms of weaponry and shields, I think an Excelsior is more than enough, keeping in mind the Excelsior has been upgraded to modern specs over and over again. They even say that the Lakota is armed with Quantums. And in the same way the Defiant was holding back, Commander Benteen in her call with Layton pretty much confirms that the Lakota was doing the same. Trying to disable and not destroy the Defiant. If you were to to say get a lucky shot and disable the Defiant's engines and the two were just facing each other down like in a TNG episode, the Lakota could have won.

[@mikep8078]

A problem there is that you can only upgrade so much. There is a point where the hardware has to be simply replaced, as it has reached its design limits. This happens all the time in our present-day militiaries. Some things have to be designed from the ground up to be what they are. I think that the arrangements of the weapons, the phaser impulse type cannon and so on the defiant had to be built in. At any rate, of course they were both pulling their punches, and Worf even says that destroying the other ship was out of the question.

[@badmaninc.536]

Paul Scott i definitely will agree with you on this point. The Excelsior class has the unique distinction of being one of the longest lived ship classes in the Federation alongside classes such as the Miranda and the Oberth... and for good reason. Where the Oberth is a pure science vessel and the Miranda is a small and maneuverable fast destroyer (arguably the precursor to the Defiant) the Excelsior while built with extended exploration in mind was a heavy battle cruiser, in a time where peace with the Klingon Empire was definitely NOT a certainty. In the nearly a century since the class first rolled off the line, it has been tested and proven over and over again as a ship with staying power in a fight. And with refits and upgrades to prolong its lifespan I have to say it’s arguably an even match for newer and more advanced ships of the fleet. After all how much time does it really take to work our all the bugs in say a Galaxy class, to train officers and crew to operate these advanced systems? Whereas the aging Excelsior class is a proven and reliable ship, ton for ton as tough as any other. Fighting Captains like Jellico and others preferred them,and veteran Admirals like the generally loathed Necheyav tended to keep their flags aboard them for a reason. I would go so far as to say their reasoning is the same as Martok’s own for keeping his command aboard the Rotaran... an aging bird of prey instead of a Nheg’var class or a Vor’cha. Because it’s a proven fighting ship. Anyway just my thoughts on this.

[@redpillfreedom6692]

The Defiant took 5 hits before defending itself and was pulling as many punches as the Lakota. The Lakota was still the ship "in worse shape" when the battle was called off, and that's despite the upgrades to the ship.

[@Charlessthill]

Questioning the chain of command is in the chain of command in _ some_ countries and organizations .

[@sludgeentertainment1003]

The changelings should trade places with Otto it could’ve caused a lot of damage and I couldn’t testing them

[@athrunzala6919]

And as the people sit down to eat in Sisko's restaurant a Dominion fleet decloaks and obliterates its targets!

[@bbbbKeJodddd]

Really wish Leyton would have come back. Honestly a lot of the more hawkish rogue Starfleet members would have made the Maquis stories have a lot more weight.

[@LoreReloaded]

Im somewhat convinced the bombing wasn't the dominion... but Layton

[@Lorerunner]

I'm closer to 100% convinced on that one myself. All the Changelings would have to do is literally deliberately get caught here and there, then escape, and nothing else in order to further this plot.

[@ashnackDEblogspot]

Can't we cut the apple in half and say it's changeling Layton's doing? ;) But I feel like the Dominion saw the kind of man Layton was and made a bombing especially to force this man into a civil war or an autocratic government, where both outcomes would serve the Dominion (an autocratic government is easier to co-opt with changelings). The gloating of O'Brien changeling seems to me as a misguided attempt by the changeling to push the Federation further along one of those 2 paths.

[@bbbbKeJodddd]

It was Tuvok

[@Edax_Royeaux]

Actually the US public was in favor of war prior to Pearl Harbor with polls showing a majority in favor of it and an atmosphere existed that war with Japan was becoming inevitable. 62% percent of the American public believed that defeating Germany was more important than staying out of the war by November of 1941. Granted Pearl Harbor changed opinion so that 97% of Americans said they approved of Congress formally declaring war on Japan, but I would still argue the American public had swung around to favoring war nearing the end of 1941. I would recommend you read the December 8 1941 issue of LIFE magazine (which was written and printed before the Pearl Harbor attack) which shows just how invested the US media had become in the readiness of US military and of the expectation of an attack on the Philippines and along with detailed articles about the Japanese and their Emperor. I find the magazine to be a very interesting time capsule to the American mindset right before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

[@Eelco_de_Boer]

Always wondered how to look at o'Briens awkward over-acting. It's bad, but also effective. Perhaps, since Changelings do seem to have an individual character, this one was a bit of a drama-queen :-)

[@eflinneflinn]

Susan Gibney!

[@steakman1989]

I have been rewatching DS9 alongside of these Ruminations, and I have been looking forward to "Homefront/Paradise Lost". These episodes really highlight what makes DS9 distinct from TOS and the rest of the TNG-ENT era of Star Trek, and disrupts the setting in a way akin to In the Pale Moonlight. Roddenberry would not have approved of these episodes, and that is fantastic. I disagree with your assessment that Layton was not a villain or evil. I will concede that he might launch his coup (and let's be clear, this is a coup) with good intentions and without malice, but he is still a military officer taking power away from the democratically elected government of the Federation and Earth and putting it in the hands of the military. Irrespective of the rational, that is still evil and makes him a villain. He is sympathetic certainly, but he is still a villain. Likewise I do not think this episode is neutral towards freedom versus security, it falls squarely on the side of freedom because it warns of the dangers of temporary abridgement of freedom. I also find this idea of "temporary" interesting, and worth discussing. Adm Layton says his coup would be temporary, and that the prior screening processes would be temporary. But temporary always has a way to become permanent. In many ways "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost", though they predate 2001, they serve as a better 9/11 allegory than ENT season 3 which was a deliberate 9/11 allegory. A disaster happens, a government decides to militarize and implement new security measures. Starfleet's measures are labeled as temporary, and various government measures, especially the US, airport security increases and other security measures were labeled as temporary. it is almost 20 years from 9/11, and those temporary measures are not only still present, but have increased. These episodes, similar to "The Drumhead" warn that once freedoms are denied, even temporarily, it becomes easier justify taking additional freedoms. Once a temporary measure is in place for a while, it becomes normal. And this is what makes Adm Layton so dangerous and a villain. Even if his coup starts a civil war, once he and Starfleet are allowed to stay in power for a period, it is harder to justify returning to the status quo because it is normal.

[@stevencoardvenice]

Dominion was causing coups across the whole quadrant

[@mr51406]

Indeed one of the best Trek episodes ever. Very profound issues. 🌟 Ira Steven Behr says in the Shuttlepod podcast that he is very interested in the Spanish Civil War. That must have been an inspiration. ¡No pasarán! indeed. Neither the Founders nor the fascists. Often the Federation is conflated to mean Starfleet or Earth. If one doesn’t discourage this, then you get people like Leighton. It’s ridiculous that Vulcan, Trill or Betazed would have allowed his dictatorship to continue. Leighton is an original type of vilain in Trek: one of us. Meek but leading a powerful clique. Just like Franco. Very dangerous. Ironically he wants to impose the very same type of “order” the Founders want and he says he is fighting against. These authoritarians never define “order.” For whose profit? It’s usually the general’s clique. The whole “we must destroy it to save it” mentality is just an excuse for grabbing power and then finding another excuse to never give it back. Courageous of the creators to show that Earth isn’t Roddenberry’s paradise. Starfleet should not be a military as it has obviously become. I would have hated going to the Academy. Or else I hope there’s a “blue collective” opposing the “red squad” clique. The show reminds us that freedom and democracy are ongoing processes, not static.

[@Edax_Royeaux]

26:10 Also as I progress through this rumination, I begin to think you don't understand what an Autocracy is. The Dominion is most certainly not an Autocracy because their power structure is not consolidated into the hands of a single person. It can be better described as a Theocratic Oligarchy. So I would have to highly disagree with your assertion the Admiral Leyton wishes to make a Dominion too, since Leyton shows no indication of wanting to be worshiped as a God, or shows any desire to subjugate other races or to stratify the Federation. Leyton wants to establish a Military Junta which is very unlike the Dominion as the Founders are not military nor are they military minded. Just because you curtail freedoms does not make you the Dominion, otherwise with such loose definitions you could call the Ferengi Trade Alliance the Dominion because they curtail freedoms.

[@jacklnu1614]

Couldn't the Defiant have stopped and tried to talk to the Lakota instead of ignoring their order and moving onward to Earth? They could have tried dialogue more.

[@trek75181]

People in the military are only required to follow lawful orders.

[@williamcody1849]

That is easy to say; but upon reflection it doesn't hold up, and is something civilians can hold soldiers to only after the war is over... Seriously, what are you going to do? If you are a soldier and you are given an order you feel is unlawful? Go AWOL?

[@DIEGhostfish]

Ehh the Lakota has mass and volume if she's getting constant powerplant upgrades ande cutting in line for the best weapons upgrades I can see it winning.

[@EnvisionerWill]

Leighton hoping all of the Federation would just decide to "be cool with" his takeover strikes me as the kind of mentality Roddenberry would have had about all the more questionable aspects of his concept of a Perfect future human society. "What do you mean people think the planet from 'Justice' is a horrible place? It's nothing but beautiful people who wear no clothing and have sex all the time, there's no conceivable reason why anyone would ever not love living there!" That kind of a mindset - "right is right, only an idiot would mistake it for wrong". Kind of the way I tend to think too, actually. (And I don't disagree with Roddenberry anywhere near as much as you do - I kind of like "Justice".)

[@williamcody1849]

I am kinda like O'Brien, I like rations. Maybe I just like O'Brien so much that I like rations just because he likes them.

[@williamcody1849]

Ultimately Sisko disagrees with the plan, the strategy; not the principle. Its an issue that has been building up since TNG, when a small paramilitary group seizes control of Risa to make a political statement.

[@NapoleChan]

I'm having a hard time understanding those peoples outlook about their issues with this two parter episode. I can never understand any sentence that has DS9 and "flop" together in any way. Well except when someone says something like "Compared to DS9, STD is a giant floppy sopping mess". Anything besides that exception just doesn't make a single bit of sense to me.

[@Jokie155]

I can't forgive this episode for the blood test. "How did you fake the test?" "Does it matter?" "I suppose not." Yes, it does fucking matter. You do not get to lampshade and then handwave away the most absolutely crucial part of the plan to get Sisko out of the picture. That is so unfathomably dickish and unacceptable in writing, it is a literal, genuine case of insulting the audience's intelligence. (And yes I know that gets thrown around so much these days, but in this particular case I feel it's valid). I cannot believe it isn't called out way more, because that is such a blatant deus ex machina of incredible proportions for creating a problem that didn't even need to exist until that point. Find another way that doesn't resort to flat out narrative CHEATING. But like I said, it's the dismissal of it afterwards that infuriates me more than anything, because at least leaving it vague and unspoken would be slightly less stupid a move.

[@oldhatAN]

It wasn't. That conspiracy theory was thoroughly debunked a long time ago.

[@muadeeb]

"Interesting" is not how I would describe a federation civil war. Fantastically horrible.

[@williamcody1849]

Its because they don't follow the prime directive... I would kinda like a situation where the humans exert more influence over the federation. To hell with the Vulcans! That race is just a Jewish fantasy anyway...

[@williamcody1849]

We were on the wrong side of WW2.

[@TranslatedAssumption]

FDR's administration should have never baited the Japanese into attacking. FDR cared more about rescuing his failed presidency by getting the US into WW2 than the blood that would be on his hands for having done so.

[@michaelgorz2337]

iv'e herd that ther'e mris that are good, but the fenminists desagree.

[@roystonsbailey]

Written pre-9/11.. poignant stuff