The most famous twist of Deep Space Nine has a big problem

In the episode “Duet” “” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “” (June 14, 1993), a Cardassian named Marritza (Harris Yulin) stopped at the station to obtain treatment for a rare disease. The disease, however, was never contracted by the inhabitants of a very special Cardassian death camp during their military occupation in Bajor. Tortured and murdered thousands. When Major Kira (Visitor of Nana), once fighting for the Resistance to Bajoran, notes that a Cardassian war criminal is immediately asked for him to be arrested.

Marritza first claims that he was file committed in the mining camp and that he did not witness any of the war atrocities. Kira does not believe it, after having witnessed first -hand horrors. Marritza is also arrogant about her stay there, minimizing the gravity of the military occupation. But there is a twist. After an investigation, Kira notes that the man in the Brick is not the clerk of file Marritza, but the chief of the death camp, a diabolical general named Gul Darhe’el.

Once the truth has been revealed, the attitude of Gul Darhe’el changes. He does not minimize his crimes, but he begins to say that – from his dark fascist point of view – committing a genocide was a perfectly logical action plan. For Darhe’el, there was nothing wrong with the occupation, and he did not hesitate to say Kira’s face. Kira and the public must face the logic of Darhe’el with dark mirror. His crimes were too great to reach justice. Even if it is tortured and killed, the damage is caused.

But there is a second turn in “duo” which distances the public from this darkness, and puts it back in the field of cultural justice. It is a satisfactory end from a writer’s point of view, but it lets the audience win in terms of morality.

For a few moments, however, the public is forced to listen to the logic of Gul Darhe’el. At the time, viewers would have seen its philosophy as parallel to that of a Nazi, although it could be considered as the point of view of any fascist in the modern world and how they think. Darhe’el having it in dark: the Cardassians needed Bajor’s resources to protect their empire, and he saw nothing wrong with looting the planet, especially after the Bajoran government gave them. If the Cardassians could destroy the “scum without spin” on the planet, Darhe’el said: “So much the better”.

Darker, Gul Darhe’el maintains that a war court would not justify anything for the Bajoran people convalescence. The dead, he argues, are still dead. Bajor has been permanently damaged, and there is no way to recover culturally. Put Darehe’el in trial? Judge him guilty and punish him publicly? These things can respond to a sacramental thirst to take revenge, but that does not undo the damage he has caused. And that won’t force him to feel anything like remorse. He was doing a job, and he feels that he did his job very well, a complete stop.

For a few dark moments, “Duet” is in the kingdom of Jonathan Glazer’s film in 2023 “The Zone of Interest”, a terribly impassive drama of the Nazi family who lived right next to the Auschwitz concentration camp. This film represented how easy it was for a Nazi general and his family to ignore the cries of terror and clouds of black smoke that constantly emanated from the camp. They were not compartmentalized. They simply got on. It was a career for them. A job that brought them a beautiful house. They used the ashes of murdered Jews as fertilizer in their garden.

Gul Darhe’el is this Nazi. He has no thought for the humanity of his victims. He only sees a job of which he can be proud. It is a dark episode (and it almost turned out to be different).

“Duet” could have ended there, of course, with Kira realizing that damage to her planet cannot be canceled and that the authors will never face justice. The fact that the victims of generalized genocidal efforts, military occupation, a concerted government pogrom, will never see their authors face a kind of remuneration that could match the horrors they have committed. It would have been a very dark place to put an end to the episode, of course, but it would have forced Kira and the public to face the real horrors of fascism.

But “Duo” fell back at the last minute. He revealed that Gul Harhe’el was actually Marritza as he originally said. It turns out that Marritza was present for the atrocities of the Cardassian war, but was completely horrified by them. He considered that the Bajorans deserved justice, so he suffered cosmetic surgery to look like Gul Darhe’el, and orchestrated a scenario where he could be “apprehended” by the Bajoran people. He was ready to be executed if it was the closure of the Bajorans and forcing the Cardassian government to admit their crimes. Kira, learning the truth, notes that the monster she had spoken was a disguised noble man. She no longer wants him to die, knowing that it would not be a kind of justice.

The second torsion communicates to the “deep” new ”viewers that there is indeed nobility in the world, even in the shadow of the genocide. There are a lot of people, on both sides, who want justice, and that gives us a glimmer of hope. Whatever happens to Marritza (and he meets a sad fate), hope will always exist in the galaxy. Kira finds that the world is slightly more complex.

But giving us, viewers, a drop of hope allows us (at least partially) to ignore the permanent darkness of the fascists. It would have been a much more depressing end to leave us with this feeling of despair, but it would have been much more effective. And, unfortunately, salient. However, “Duet” is one of the best episodes of “Deep Space Nine”, and you can consult the other high -level episodes here.