History Recap / StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS07E08TheSiegeOfAR558

* WasItReallyWorthIt: Sisko is having dark thoughts at the end of the episode, after the line has been held. [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Worf]] tries to cheer him up.
-->'''Worf''': This was a great victory. One worthy of story and song.\\

* CerebusCallBack: The series brings back the Ferengi shrieks we last heard in the second season, only this time, it’s most definitely not PlayedForLaughs, as Nog lets out one of these when he’s shot and loses his leg.

* HumansAreWarriors: An uncommonly negative example. Quark explains to Nog what Hew-mons are like:
-->"Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people - as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts... deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers... put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time... and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces, look at their eyes..."

* HollywoodTactics: Other than the mines, neither side brings any weapons more powerful than rifles. The Dominion don't try to shell the Federation position, and the Federation doesn't emplace anything heavier to cover the single line of approach beyond re-purposing the Dominion's own mines. No one even uses infantry-level heavy weapons. Some of this is justified in that the Federation side is ill-equipped, and the Dominion wants to preserve the communications relay. However, it's par for the course in the way ''Star Trek'' portrays infantry combat.

* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale:
** You'd think by the infrequency of the minefield deaths that there are only a few Houdinis around, but when they're finally revealed, the minefield is ridiculously dense, to the point that you have to wonder how everyone in the garrison wasn't killed within an hour.
** Given that the Dominion war involves a full-scale conflict between numerous nations numbering billions of citizens each, a weekly casualty report of 1,730 would be amazingly small.

Ezri and Kellin manage to decloak the Houdinis, and Sisko decides that they will relocate them to a chokepoint between the two based to kill Jem'Hadar when they come to attack. The defenders buckle down to prepare for an invasion, and everyone is on edge. Bashir plays the [[ChekhovsGun Vic Fontaine music]] to ease the men's nerves. Quark stays with Nog in the infirmary. The defenders hear explosions and screams as the Jem'Hadar stumble into their trap and reveal their impending attack.

The crew split up to help out. Ezri works with Crewman Kellman on finding a way to locate the invisible Dominion mines called "[[Creator/HarryHoudini Houdinis]]" that have been killing off the Federation defenders. Quark is alarmed to find that Nog idolizes the defenders, particularly Reese, as heroes. Quark gripes that the Ferengi way would have been to negotiate a mutually acceptable treaty rather than fight. His fears for his nephew's safety get borne out when Nog gets shot in the leg on a scouting trip. Bashir operates, but Nog loses his leg, and he might not be a candidate for a prosthesis. Nog keeps on a brave face, however, assuring his uncle that he's fine. Quark confronts Sisko for using his men as cannon fodder, but Sisko angrily insists that he does care about his men.

Sisko and company come under immediate fire, but it turns out to be the Starfleet officers there to meet them. After five months on the front lines, they've become jumpy and exhausted. With their captain and commander dead, Lieutenant Larkin is in command. She tells Sisko that they are down to one-third strength and long overdo to be rotated out, but Sisko says they should expect to be there a while longer. His team sets to resupplying the defenders. Bashir treats the [[ShellShockedVeteran shell-shocked]] grunt Vargas, while the battle-hardened Reese dismisses Sisko's help given that he's set to leave soon. But when the ''Defiant'' comes under attack and needs to flee, Sisko decides not to beam away and instead stay to fight alongside the garrison.

* HumansAreWarriors: An uncommonly negative example. Quark explains to Nog what Hew-mons are like beneath the MarySueTopia:

* JerkassHasAPoint: Quark spends the episode insulting the Federation defenders, but he's not terribly wrong about human nature in general, and he's shown to be justifiably concerned about Nog's idealistic attitude toward heroism. * ManlyTears: Vargas sheds them when he tells the story of his comrade, who died bandaging his arm.

repeated Jem'Hadar attacks.

[[caption-width-right:350:This episode is brutal. Not like "long lineup at the DMV" brutal or [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E22ShadesOfGray "who thought a clip show would make a good season finale"]] brutal. We're talking merciless, WarIsHell, people-getting-killed '''brutal.''']]

The ''Defiant'' is set to go on a supply run to planet AR-558, the site of a Dominion communications relay that Starfleet captured. Bashir picks up some music from Vic Fontaine to deliver, while Sisko stews over the latest casualty reports before getting notified that the ''Defiant'' is ready. Onboard, Quark has joined the mission on orders from Grand Nagus Zek to get a Ferengi impression of the war. As he vents to Ezri about his predicament, the ship comes under fire, and Quark rushes to the bridge to witness the ship destroy a Jem'Hadar fighter. Sisko leaves Worf in command as he joins the away team down to the surface.

Sisko and company come under immediate fire, but it turns out to be the Starfleet officers there to meet them. After five months on the front lines, they've become jumpy and exhausted. With their captain and commander dead, Lieutenant Parker is in command. She tells Sisko that they are down to one-third strength and long overdo to be rotated out, but Sisko says they should expect to be there a while longer. His team sets to resupplying the defenders. Bashir treats the shell-shocked grunt Vargas, while the battle-hardened Reese dismisses Sisko's advice given that he's set to leave soon. But when the ''Defiant'' comes under attack, Sisko informs Worf to leave and return later, as he's going to stay for a while.

The crew split up to help out. Ezri works with Kellman on finding a way to locate the invisible Dominion mines called "Houdinis" that have been killing off the Federation defenders. Quark is alarmed to find that Nog idolizes the defenders, particularly Reese, as heroes. Quark gripes that the Ferengi way would have been to negotiate a mutually acceptable treaty rather than fight. His fears for his nephew's safety get borne out when Nog gets shot in the leg on a scouting trip. Bashir operates, but Nog loses his leg, and he might not be a candidate for a replacement. Nog keeps on a brave face, however, assuring his uncle that he's fine. Quark confronts Sisko for using his men as cannon fodder, but Sisko angrily insists that he does care about his men.

Ezri and Kellin manage to decloak the Houdinis, and Sisko decides that they will relocate them to a chokepoint between them and the Dominion base to kill Jem'Hadar when they come to attack. The defenders buckle down to prepare for an invasion, and everyone is on edge. Bashir plays the Vic Fontaine music to ease the men's nerves. Quark stays with Nog in the infirmary. The defenders hear explosions and screams as the Jem'Hadar stumble into their trap and reveal their impending attack.

Reinforcements finally arrive to take the defenders' place. Reese describes the green troops as "kids," but Sisko says that they will grow up face. Back on the station, Sisko receives the latest casualty list of 1,730 names. He grimly tells Kira that every name is a person, and it's important to remember their sacrifice.

* BattleTrophy: Reese keeps a necklace of Ketracel-White tubes hung around his neck. Episode writer Ira Steven Behr called this "about as grisly as we could get on ''Star Trek''".

* [[WhyIsntItAttacking Why Aren't They Attacking?]]: The Jem'Hadar who show up midway through the episode. They turn out to be holograms.

** Behr actually explained that he was pushing for something ''more'' grisly as his necklace of trophies, but the network argued him down to that - what the heck did he originally want? Consider that in prior seasons we saw a Klingon warrior wearing a necklace made of Cardassian ''neck bones'', so it was somehow worse than that?
* BittersweetEnding: Starfleet succeeds in holding the communications array, but almost everyone from the Federation garrison has been killed and Nog has lost his leg.

* DramaticIrony: Quark makes a big speech about how humans, when pushed to their limits, can be every bit as bloodthirsty and violent as any Klingon warrior, with an implicit attitude of being above this sort of thing. Then during the climactic battle, a Jem'Hadar storms the infirmary and Quark guns him down without a second thought, with the realization that his previous speech applied to him just as much.
* DueToTheDead: Sisko still reads the lists of those killed in the war.
** Subverted by Vargas, who describes his dead friend as a loudmouth KnowNothingKnowItAll jerk, though even he believes that one should NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead.
*** Justified, as this incident pretty clearly caused Vargas to suffer from PTSD. He has no idea how to deal with the emotions it brought on.

* HollywoodTactics:
** Other than the mines, neither side brings any weapons more powerful than rifles. The Dominion don't try to shell the Federation position, and the Federation doesn't emplace anything heavier to cover the single line of approach beyond re-purposing the Dominion's own mines. No one even uses infantry-level heavy weapons (for context, one in every four U.S. Marines in [[https://www.battleorder.org/us-marine-platoon-2020?lightbox=dataItem-jvjjhlo3 a typical infantry platoon]] carries a grenade launcher or rocket launcher). Granted, this is ''kind of'' justified with the space above AR-558 being a combat mess (making it hard to get anything really heavy beamed down and in place), and the Dominion wanting to recapture the transmitter as opposed to blowing it up, so they avoid using anything too heavy, but it's still a bit flimsy.
** Additionally, minefields are supposed to make territory ''impassable'', not merely dangerous to walk around in, and yet the Federation takes less than one casualty a day while ''living'' in the minefield and coming under repeated Jem'Hadar attacks.

* JerkassHasAPoint: While Quark proves to be no different from the humans, he's not wrong about how conditions on the battlefield make them more violent and more dangerous.
** He spends the episode warning Nog about how dangerous the battle will be. When the actual shooting starts, Nog loses a leg and would have died while recovering if Quark hadn't been there to save him.
* ManlyTears: Vargas sheds them when he tells the story of his comrade, who died bandaging his arm.

* NewMeat: [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Worf]] has the conn on the ''Defiant'', along with [[BadassNormal Miles O'Brien]]; [[ColonelBadass Kira Nerys]] and [[CowboyCop Odo]] are back home at the station. ([[ActionGirl Jadzia Dax]] is dead.) Sisko beams down with [[EnsignNewbie Nog]], [[NaiveNewcomer Ezri Dax]] and [[TheBartender Quark]] at his side, all of whom are untried in infantry situations. His most battle-tested asset is [[CombatMedic Dr. Bashir]]!
** And then there's the relief troops at the end.
--->'''Reese:''' Children.\\
'''Sisko:''' Not for long.

* PapaWolf: Quark was quick to defend his injured nephew in the quickest and most efficient way possible: By shooting the enemy that was about to attack them.

* PetTheDog: After bringing a wounded Nog back to base, Reese takes a moment to tell Sisko "The kid did alright".

** Psychological effects aside, the Dominion minefield is hilariously ineffective. [[http://stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Battles-2e.html As calculated here]], according to the Federation soldiers, they've lost 107 men in 150 days, which works out to ''less than one casualty a day'', both from the minefield ''and'' repeated Jem'Hadar attacks. Units on long-term deployments in active combat in wars with peer opponents ''wish'' they had casualty rates that low.
** For as vast and far reaching as the Dominion War is when the weekly casualty report comes in at the end of the episode, there are only 1,730 Starfleet casualties listed.[[note]]That would've been a fairly grim casualty report in the comparatively small civil conflicts that dominated much of the [=90s=] contemporary to ''[=DS9=]'' airing, and also would've been a fairly standard report during the Vietnam War for American casualties, dead & wounded (and thus, combined, that would've been the two conflicts the writers had the most hands-on, conscious experience with, doubly so with this episode relying heavily on Vietnam allegory) but it would've been a tiny sampling of even comparatively quiet days during either World War -- and in theory, the Dominion War involves multi-planetary ''empires'' capable of mobilizing armies in the '''hundreds of millions'''.[[/note]]

* ShoutOut: The battle plays out much like the film ''{{Film/Zulu}}''. There's even a scene where Jem'Hadar are expended merely to test the defenses of the camp (of course, these Jem'Hadar were holograms).

* WriterOnBoard: The director of the episode had fought in the Vietnam War, and allowed his own experiences as a soldier to color the atmosphere of the scenes and really brought out the WarIsHell trope to the forefront, far moreso than was typical for ''Trek''.

The ''Defiant'' makes a supply run to planet AR-558, the site of a Dominion communications relay that Starfleet captured. The relay has been under constant siege, with the crew defending it overdue to be relieved by a new crew. Sisko, Bashir, Ezri Dax, Nog and Quark find themselves stuck on the planet and having to help hold the relay against a Jem'hadar batallion, while dealing with deadly Dominion booby-traps.

* SoundtrackDissonance: [[SadBattleMusic Melancholy music plays during the battle]], [[WarIsHell in keeping with the episode's theme]].

* JerkassHasAPoint: While Quark proves to be NotSoDifferent from the humans, he's not wrong about how conditions on the battlefield make them more violent and more dangerous.

* NotSoDifferent: Quark spends a lot of the episode moralizing, but in the end he drops the superior attitude, picks up a phaser, and proves that when push comes to shove he can be just as ruthless as any [[FantasticSlur hew-mon]]. And from the look on his face, he realizes this himself.

* CastingGag: Kellin, the engineer at AR-558, is played by Bill Mumy, who played Will Robinson on ''Series/LostInSpace'', one of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'''s DuelingShows, and Lennier in ''Series/Babylon5'', one of ''[=DS9's=]'' Dueling Shows. One of his conditions for appearing in the episode is that he insisted on playing a human, so he wouldn't have to wear heavy prosthetics like he did for his entire run on ''Babylon 5''.