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The Way of the Warrior

• Episode aired Oct 2, 1995

Sisko becomes uncomfortable when the Klingons station a task force to help defend against the Dominion. Worf is summoned to find out their true intentions. Sisko becomes uncomfortable when the Klingons station a task force to help defend against the Dominion. Worf is summoned to find out their true intentions. Sisko becomes uncomfortable when the Klingons station a task force to help defend against the Dominion. Worf is summoned to find out their true intentions.

• James L. Conway
• Gene Roddenberry
• Rick Berman
• Michael Piller
• Avery Brooks
• Rene Auberjonois
• Michael Dorn
• 10 User reviews
• 5 Critic reviews

• Captain Benjamin 'Ben' Sisko

• Constable Odo

• Lt. Cmdr. Worf

• Lt. Cmdr. Jadzia Dax

• (credit only)

• Chief Miles O'Brien

• Doctor Julian Bashir

• Major Kira Nerys

• Kasidy Yates
• (as Penny Johnson)

• Weapons Officer
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Trivia Michael Dorn summarizes this episode by saying "the Klingons had finally gone nuts, basically."
• Goofs Several times, Klingonese is spoken and needs to be translated for the Starfleet/Bajoran officers by either Worf or Dax. All Starfleet and Bajoran personnel are equipped with a universal translator in the combadge, which is presumably how they understand most of what the Klingons say. There is no reason that a few simple phrases should go untranslated and require a native/fluid speaker to interpret.

Lt. Commander Worf : Curzon's name is an honored one among my people.

[Curzon was the Dax symbiont's previous host, and was central to peace negotiations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire]

Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax : [in Klingon] Yeah, but I'm a lot better looking than he was.

Lt. Commander Worf : I suppose so. Excuse me.

Major Kira : [after Dax has spoken to Worf in Klingon] What did you say to him?

Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax : It loses something in the translation.

• Alternate versions Originally aired as a double-length two-hour episode, "The Way of the Warrior" was cut into two parts for repeats and syndication. To make room for the credits sequence and a "previously on" segment in the second part, several scenes had to be cut. The DVD release contains the original long version.
• Connections Featured in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: What You Leave Behind (1999)
• Soundtracks Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Main Title (uncredited) Written by Dennis McCarthy Performed by Dennis McCarthy

User reviews 10

• Jun 20, 2020
• October 2, 1995 (United States)
• United States
• Official Site
• Paramount Studios - 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA (Studio)
• Paramount Television
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 33 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine : "The Way Of The Warrior"

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“The Way Of The Warrior” (season 4, episode 1; originally aired 10/2/1995)

In which the Founders are coming, but the Klingons are here…

As always, checking into a new season means adjusting to a show which is almost, but not quite, exactly like the show you left behind. It’s a bit like getting a new car—serves the same purpose in your life, but golly gee, look at all these nifty features. Like Sisko, sporting a shaved head which, combined with his facial hair, makes him look quite the badass. Kira has a new haircut too, and it’s very cute. (She’s still a badass, naturally.) After last season’s scuffle with the Founders, Sisko has set the crew of Deep Space Nine do regular drills, trying to master the tricky art of finding a Changeling who doesn’t want to be found. Everyone looks a bit shinier, a bit older, a bit more tightly wound—but not to the point of neurosis. There’s just an inescapable sense that, the shit having gotten real, everyone accepts that it’s going to continue to be real in the immediate future. This is one of the more nebulous advantages of ongoing continuity: It helps to set a tone so subtle we’re not always sure it’s there. Obviously Sisko and the others need to be on their guard for the rest of this feature-length episode, because the story needs to remind us that tensions are high. But that unease lingers. I caught myself looking at various characters and wondering if they were who they really said they were, and wondering what their motives might be. That concern will linger, I suspect. Nothing can be taken at face value anymore.

When a situation becomes this unstable, it’s not just personal identities that are at risk. Alliances become strained, and where some see danger, others look for opportunity. The Klingon Empire hasn’t been a danger to the Federation for quite some time; when reintroduced back in Star Trek: The Next Generation , relations with the warlike culture that plagued Kirk and Spock on the original series   had finally achieved an uneasy peace. That peace only strengthened over TNG ’s run, as each fresh encounter with the Klingons demonstrated how far a once mighty race had fallen, plagued by infighting, bad decisions, and an inability to move beyond the celebration of violence and conquest which had so long defined them. Most of these appearances centered around Worf, the first Klingon officer in Starfleet, an orphan raised by human parents who spent much of his time on the Enterprise struggling to define his idealized version of Klingon life, and the corruption and pettiness he found back on the home world. Not all these stories worked, but the show’s willingness to treat the Klingons as more than just a fallen enemy did it credit.

The few times Klingons have appeared on the station, DS9 has done its best to continue that trend. Without a Klingon in the main ensemble, though, those stories didn’t happen often; besides, between TOS and TNG , it seemed like all the major Klingon epics had already been told. And yet here we are, with the Founders threatening war on all fronts, while the Cardassians and the Romulans fall back to lick their wounds, and the Federation preaches caution. Shouldn’t someone step up, and do what needs to be done? Sisko is cagey as hell, but surely he can’t be expected to save the universe from the Dominion threat entirely on his own. Surely he’d welcome assistance, especially if it came in the form of the entire Klingon fleet.

“The Way Of The Warrior” is a terrific 90 minutes of television, building to its conclusions slowly but without hesitation, using threats the show has spent the last three seasons carefully establishing to shift the main arc in an unexpected direction. Of all the possible danger our heroes might have faced, Klingons would not have been very high on the list. It’s hard to remember the last time the Klingons have come across as dangerous on a Trek series. I don’t mean on an individual basis; there have been plenty of fierce warriors on both TNG and DS9 . But as a people? The Romulans were scarier in Picard’s era; Sisko had to face off against first the Cardassians, and then the shapechangers. A bunch of drunken buffoons tossing knives and pining for the old days hardly seem like a terrifying foe. Yet the presence of dozens of Klingon ships floating casually around DS9’s pinions isn’t a joke, and regardless of what the fleet’s leader, General Martok, assures Sisko, they aren’t a comfort. Martok says the Klingons have decided to get involved with the Dominion War. That’s great, but now they’re just hanging around the station, harassing the locals and beating on Garak. Or worse, they’re illegally seizing outgoing ships for unwarranted searches, demanding proof that every transport or freighter leaving the quadrant is Founder-free.

Trek races work best when they can hit two levels at once. The first level, the most straightforward and the one which inspires all that fan passion and cosplay and media tie-ins, is as convincing fiction. We don’t need to know the Klingons down to their DNA (although I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has tried to), but the more we believe they are a distinct species from our own, an alien race with its own identity and history, the more we invest in the stories around them. The second level is more nebulous: The Klingons should be a reflection of some aspect of human behavior. The better the writers are able to use a species to show us a sort of twisted mirror version of ourselves, the more resonant these stories become.

You’ve probably noticed that these two levels are at odds with one another: The more obviously a Trek race is a human surrogate (or, worse, a symbol for a specific emotion or weakness), the less convincing the fiction. Balance works best (and I’d argue that it’s generally better to focus more on getting the first level down before worrying too much about the second), which is one of the reasons this whole Dominion story is so fascinating. Sisko and the others are the “normal” ones, largely because they’re distinct individuals. They don’t represent anyone but themselves. But the Cardassian and Romulan attack on the Founder’s homeworld last season was an example of how one natural reaction to a potential threat is to use it to promote our own myth of control and self-reliance. Tain wasn’t just trying to end the war. He was trying to use it as an excuse to regain his lost glory, to deny the weight of time and the arc of circumstance and make himself a king once more. There’s tragedy in that, for all of Tain’s cruelty, and the tragedy means more than just a grey guy with a bumpy forehead overreaching and paying the price.

The same is true of the Klingon plan. Martok, under the orders of Chancellor Gowron, is keeping secrets from Sisko. The fleet isn’t simply there to offer protection, or even to head off into the Gamma Quadrant to face down the Founders and the Jem’Hadar directly. Instead, they’re using the chaos to launch an assault on Cardassia. The Cardassian government has been recently overthrown by the civilian authority we heard rumbles of last season, and Gowron and his men argue that this revolt is actually a Changeling plot. It’s an assumption which is both somewhat reasonable (it’s hard to put anything past the Founders, really), and also calculated to offer the Klingons the greatest chance for glory possible. The Cardassians and Romulans tried to shortcut a war by attempting a surprise attack with little useful information; the Klingons have decided to exploit that potential war for their own ends, so intent on returning to the old days that they aren’t particularly worried about crossing every “t.” While their plans threaten to destroy the peace treaty they signed with the Federation, and while their attack on Cardassian space leads to the loss of innocent life, the Klingons aren’t exactly the bad guys. Their position is just understandable enough to put them in a gray area; while Gowron and Martok and the rest are overcome by the lust for battle, there’s every chance that they really do believe this is the smartest way to face off against the Dominion. It’s self-serving logic, but it maintains a level of complexity throughout the episode that keeps the action as fascinating as it is intense. The best part? The only changeling to appear in the episode is Odo. (Or so we think.) Just the idea of them is enough to make everyone crazy.

And when you’ve got crazy Klingons, who do you call? I knew Worf would eventually become a regular on the series; I even knew this episode was his first appearance. But it was still a thrill when, 20 minutes or so in, Sisko decides he needs some help, and puts out the call for everybody’s favorite dorky dad. And Worf is a dork, I realized watching this. That may not be quite the right word, given its connotations of ineffectuality and clumsiness; despite the many beatings he took on the Enterprise , Worf can handle himself in a fight, and he gets shit done when he sets his mind to it. But the character, and Michael Dorn’s slightly awkward, perpetually out of place performance, is stuck as the party stiff, the guy in the corner who can’t ever take a joke, and doesn’t have Spock’s ego, or Data’s oblivious curiosity, to fall back on. He’s hopelessly square, devoted to a culture of honor and sacrifice which no longer really exists, treated as a throwback by his Starfleet peers, and viewed at best as suspect—and at worst a traitor—by his own kind. Worf is, in fact, a perfect addition to the DS9 crew, Star Trek ’s version of the Island of Misfit Toys.

Using this as its starting point for the character, Worf’s arc in “The Way Of The Warrior” looks to up the ante, transforming the Klingon orphan’s tentatively accepted outsider status into something more like exile. The episode takes place after the events  Star Trek: Generations , and in their first conversation, Sisko offers his condolences to Worf for the loss of the Enterprise . The crash has left the former security officer adrift, and he’s considering quitting Starfleet. Before that happens, he agrees to investigate just what the hell the Klingons are up to, and the answers he gets aren’t pretty. I’ve already described Gowron’s big plan; the main connection to Worf is that it once again forces him to decide between his honor and his people, a conflict which came up regularly back on TNG . The difference being, here, Worf’s decision to stand with Sisko and refuse to join in on the Cardassian assault makes him an enemy to Gowron, and pretty much the whole Klingon race.

That, on the small scale, is a great example of what sets DS9 apart. TOS never had enough continuity to worry about a status quo, and TNG would tease its status quo, but rarely break it. DS9 , meanwhile, looks at the way things are, shrugs, and starts setting people on fire. The Klingons don’t just plan an attack on Cardassian space, they follow through on those plans, with devastating results; Sisko is forced to attempt a rescue mission to save the Cardassian high council, and has to fight off a trio of Klingon ships; and then, once the council members are safely aboard DS9, Gowron and Martok demand their return before attacking the station directly. Sisko manages to hold out long enough for Starfleet reinforcements to arrive, forcing Gowron to stand down, but that doesn’t make everything better. The Klingons refuse to give up some of the Cardassian settlements they’ve conquered, meaning they’ll continue to be a dangerously unstable, power-hungry presence in the area. Which, as Sisko points out, is just what the Founders want. The victory is a temporary one, which is as it should be. As with the changeling threat lurking just around the corner, having Klingons next door is a great way to make sure no one ever gets too comfortable.

The gutsy storytelling is exhilarating, just as much as the action setpieces. And those setpieces are fantastic, full of the sort of cheer-worthy bravado and terrifying odds that make adventure stories great. Sure, the effects aren’t always amazing, but it doesn’t matter; if TOS could wring suspense out of two guys plotting against each other in separate plywood sets, DS9 can do it just by having Avery Brooks steeple his fingers and contemplate his next move. Maintaining a building momentum throughout, so that the story becomes increasingly more engrossing as it builds to its climax, is one of the hardest parts about making a doubly long episode like this work. But “The Way Of The Warrior” nails it. The crisis develops and builds steam organically, and each fresh confrontation leads to other, bigger fights, until Sisko and his crew are staring down the entire Klingon fleet without blinking. “Right now I’ve got 5,000 photon torpedoes armed and ready to launch,” Sisko calmly tells Gowron, and I’ll admit it: I cheered. It was awesome.

Of course, the hour and a half wouldn’t work if it relied entirely on its thrills to keep things moving. There’s Worf, grudgingly binding himself tighter and tighter to Sisko and the station every step of the way, until finally, it’s either give up on Starfleet completely, or stick in the one place where he’s truly needed. (Adding a new cast member is tricky business this far into a run, even when it’s someone as familiar to fans as Worf; I’ll be curious to see how he’s integrated into the show when it’s not the end of the world, but I will say I think the writers handled the introduction, and his decision to stay, fairly well.) And then there are smaller, more intimate exchanges between characters, like Garak and Odo having breakfast to together—which gives Odo a chance to demonstrate his ability to impersonate a mug of coffee—or Quark finding out Rom used his disruptor for spare parts. The dialogue is great, and none of these scenes, even when they don’t directly impact the plot, come across as wasted or as padding. It sets the scene, and reminds us who we’ll lose if this all goes south.

Or how about that conversation between Garak and Quark about the awfulness of root beer? Garak has just realized that his people’s best chance against the Klingon attack is the Federation; Quark knows the Federation is the only way he can continue to make his living. Neither of them are very happy about this. So Quark offers Garak a taste of root beer:

Garak: It’s vile Quark: I know. It’s so bubbly and cloying and happy. Garak: Just like the Federation. Quark: But you know what’s really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you start to like it. Garak: It’s insidious. Quark: Just like the Federation.

As much as the politics, the battles, Sisko’s genius at out-maneuvering his enemies, Worf’s uncertainty, and the perpetual terror of an enemy who can be anyone or anything, this exchange speaks to DS9 ’s greatness. These two characters are a small part of this story, and the Federation are basically the cavalry that saves the day in the end—but that doesn’t stop Garak and Quark from being right. Just because we’re all on the same side doesn’t mean we have to like it.

Stray observations:

• All that, and I didn’t even mention the reappearance of Kasidy Yates. Things are going well between her and Sisko, and he even saves her from an illegal boarding by some over eager Klingons. They make a good couple.
• We only get a couple Kira and Dax scenes, but I like ’em.
• “In war, there is nothing more honorable than victory.” A very poetical way of saying “The ends justify the means,” or, “Because we say so.”

Next week: Break out the handkerchiefs—it’s time for “The Visitor.” And then Bashir runs into some trouble with “The Hippocratic Oath.” (I’m tempted to just do “The Visitor” as a one shot, given its reputation. Make your opinion known, commentariat!)

How Deep Space Nine's Dominion War Nearly Wrecked Star Trek's Utopia

How deep space nine 's dominion war nearly wrecked star trek 's utopia, over five years of hot and cold conflict, deep space nine charted the deadliest war in star trek 's history—one that pushed the federation to its limit..

Star Trek likes to imagine itself as a franchise that is largely above conflict , but it is defined by it : and how its most idealized heroes in Starfleet and the Federation react to, and become shaped by it. While Trek ’s history is littered with devastating battles , few conflicts hold a mirror to Star Trek quite like the bloodiest of them all— Deep Space Nine ’s Dominion War .

As one of the most legendary moments in the conflict celebrated its anniversary earlier this week—marking the airing of “In the Pale Moonlight” , where Captain Sisko sells his soul to bring the Romulan Star Empire into the war on the Federation’s side—we’re taking a look back at the longest game a Star Trek show ever played in setting up what would become one of its most memorable arcs, and a story that would forever shape its legacy .

Although Federation-aligned and independent powers of the Alpha Quadrant had begun colonizing Gamma Quadrant holdings and engaging in trade with the region’s myriad beings almost as soon as the discovery of the Bajoran wormhole in 2369—the first stable wormhole discovered in the Milky Way Galaxy—it was not Starfleet, the Klingon Empire, the Cardassian Union, or the Romulan Star Empire, nor any of the major military powers of the Alpha Quadrant, that first received intelligence about the Dominion’s existence, but the Ferengi Alliance.

Operating in intelligence secured by the Grand Nagus Zek, the Ferengi successfully entered a trade agreement with a major mercantile faction of the Dominion in the Karemma, in an attempt to secure the Ferengi as a major economic power on the other side of the wormhole. But while their alliance with the Karemma was established, solid intel or interaction with the wider Dominion remained out of reach for the Alpha Quadrant powers beyond intelligence reports from trading Gamma Quadrant species: the Dominion was solidifying its own borders, securing new worlds, and conquering species while lying in wait.

First Contact

Starfleet’s first formal contact with the Dominion set the stage for the scope of the war to come—but open conflict with the Dominion was still several years away. In 2370, after encountering the military arm of the Dominion in the Jem’Hadar, Commander Sisko, Deep Space Nine’s chief Starfleet administrator, and Quark were held hostage as Jem’Hadar forces destroyed multiple Alpha Quadrant colonies as a warning that the Gamma Quadrant was their territory. In an attempt to make a show of force of its own, Starfleet dispatched the Galaxy-Class starship Odyssey as well as several runabout shuttles on an expedition to recover Sisko.

Although Sisko was rescued, the show of force didn’t work. Immediately engaging with Starfleet, the Jem’Hadar’s technology proved more than a match for the Federation’s, with the Odyssey unable to damage the Dominion attack ships. They were no match for the Jem’Hadar’s ruthless tactics either, when the Odyssey was destroyed in a suicide run during the engagement. Sisko and the survivors were left to return to the Alpha Quadrant with a warning: the Federation had no idea what hell it had just unleashed.

A Cold War Begins

The destruction of the Odyssey did not mark the beginning of open conflict, but sparked realizations on both sides of the wormhole— a Dominion invasion of the Alpha Quadrant was not a hypothetical, but an inevitability. The Dominion began establishing simulations for how the various Alpha Quadrant powers would react to a potential Dominion encroachment beyond the Gamma Quadrant. Meanwhile, Starfleet entered production on the first explicitly designed warship in its fleets, the Defiant -class escort, stationing the first of its kind at Deep Space Nine, right at the wormhole’s entrance.

Deep Space Nine itself became the center of Starfleet’s plans for an early military footing. The Federation’s presence on the station was increasingly militarized even beyond the Defiant ’s stationing there, fortifying the station with increased defenses, and the establishment of a series of relays and listening posts on the other side of the wormhole as an advanced warning system. However, beyond the military might of its Jem’Hadar forces, the Dominion had another trick up its sleeve: a quasi-intelligence branch of changeling agents, preparing to infiltrate branches of each Alpha Quadrant power.

The Fall of the Obsidian Order

The Alpha Quadrant’s own intelligence agencies attempted to combat changeling subterfuge with increased security sweeps and detection, but the Dominion pivoted its earliest infiltrations at two intelligence targets in particular: the Romulan Tal Shiar, and the Cardassian Obsidian Order. Spurred by the discovery of a plan by Cardassian intelligence to assault the changeling homeworld, Dominion operatives lured the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar into a joint operation in the Omarion Nebula in 2371—where a massive force of Jem’Hadar ships decimated the Cardassian-Romulan task force.

With the Tal Shiar badly damaged, Romulan planning to the war pivoted to neutrality, staying away from engaging with the other Alpha Quadrant powers. But the destruction of the Obsidian Order crippled Cardassia’s power structure: without the threat of the Order policing dissidence, Cardassia itself was facing a power vacuum prime for the Dominion to capitalize on.

Emboldened by the success at the Battle of the Omarion Nebula, the Dominion moved further into destabilizing the Alpha Quadrant. Infiltrating the upper echelons of Klingon Command under the guise of General Martok, a changeling operative influenced Chancellor Gowron into making public moves to seize Cardassian territories while the Union was distracted by internal conflicts. Drawing condemnation from the Federation, Gowron reacted by shattering a tentative peace between the Empire and the Federation that had lasted for nearly a century by formally pulling out of the Khitomer Accords that had established the Klingon-Federation Alliance.

Given free reign to effectively continue a war of attrition against the Cardassian Union, Gowron’s warmongering provided two advantages to the Dominion: the Klingons badly, badly damaged the Cardassian Union, itself already weakened by the civilian government’s overthrowing of the Cardassian military command’s rule over the world. But the Federation’s distraction by the Klingon powers also gave Dominion agents an opportunity to repeat their successes within Starfleet Command. After a changeling agent bombed a conference in Antwerp, dissident voices in Starfleet Command attempted to stage a coup d’etat—however, it failed after being exposed.

The Dominion’s influence in the Klingon Empire, however, allowed it to attack the Federation even without infiltration from within. The Martok agent convinced Gowron, emboldened by successes against the Cardassians, to begin staking claim on existent Federation territories in late 2372, formally beginning a new Klingon-Federation war.

Invasion and Union

Although a cease-fire in the conflict between the Federation and Klingons was secured relatively quickly after the exposure of the Martok agent, the ensuing chaos—as well as an attempted Borg assault that vastly damaged Starfleet’s military strength in Sector 001—had primed the Alpha Quadrant for the Dominion. Half a year later in 2373, the Dominion reaped the seeds it had sown in years of infiltration and subterfuge. With Cardassia drastically weakened through internal and external strife, a beleaguered Gul Dukat entered negotiations with the Dominion to formally develop an alliance, allowing the Cardassians to stage key territory retrievals on the Klingon front with Dominion backing. Plans by Starfleet to seal the Bajoran wormhole and cut off any threat of a Dominion invasion were thwarted by an agent posing as Dr. Julian Bashir, DS9's Starfleet medical chief, who successfully managed to stablize the wormhole’s integrity even further—allowing the Dominion to regularly transport a steady stream of supplies and military power to Cardassian space.

Growing tensions and small border conflicts on the fringes of what was now Dominion-Cardassian territory saw the Federation and Klingons bury the hatchet formally, with the Empire re-entering the Khitomer Accords. But even with one wound patched up, war was now inevitable, and Starfleet launched a plan to mine the space around Deep Space Nine and the Bajoran wormhole, effectively delaying further transport of Dominion materiel into the Alpha Quadrant. A field of self-replicating mines pushed the Dominion into action, sending a message to Captain Sisko and Starfleet at the station: disable the mines, or the Dominion and Cardassians would take Deep Space Nine and do it themselves.

Starfleet made its first humbling gambit: just days later, an overwhelming Cardassian-Dominion force assaulted Deep Space Nine, but not before the mine field was armed—and not before Starfleet withdrew from the station entirely, leaving the Bajoran security forces staged there to welcome Dominion control. In exchange, the distraction caused by the Dominion pressing so much of its Alpha Quadrant forces into action a Deep Space Nine allowed a joint Starfleet-Klingon allied force to invade Cardassian space, destroying a key Dominion shipyard and hampering initial production efforts of Alpha Quadrant-made weaponry.

On stardate 50975.2, the Dominion War turned hot.

A Sacrifice of Angels

Although the sacrifice of Deep Space Nine in exchange for mining the Bajoran wormhole was a key early victory for the Federation-Klingon alliance, it was pretty much the only one in the opening months of the war. Klingon and Starfleet forces were regularly pushed into retreat on all fronts, overwhelmed by the Dominion’s sheer numbers and their superior technology. Morale began to plummet—especially after a devastating battle in the Tyra system all but destroyed Starfleet’s Seventh Fleet, losing nearly a hundred ships and thousands of officers in a single engagement.

But while large scale conflict was going badly for the alliance, small-scale operations and individual skirmishes played to its military strengths. Small task forces managed to infiltrate Dominion space and successfully destroy significant amounts of the Dominion’s supply of Ketracel-White, the drug that sustained the Jem’Hadar as an effective fighting force, creating a supply crisis, while others sabotaged major sensor arrays to stem the flow of Dominion intelligence.

The War Digs In

The Dominion kept pushing, encroaching closer and closer to core Federation worlds like Vulcan and Bolarus. And as efforts back in the Bajoran system to disable the minefield around Deep Space Nine began to bear fruit, Sisko realized the Federation needed a win to steady morale and to avoid what was increasingly looking like a devastatingly swift loss to the Dominion: take back the station where the war had first begun in the first place.

Despite initial resistance from both the Empire and Starfleet Command, Operation Return was put into action in late 2374, securing an overwhelming victory for alliance forces. Although the mine field was ultimately destroyed, Deep Space Nine was retaken, and nearly 3,000 Dominion warships traversing the wormhole were mysteriously vanished away by the entities—believed by the Bajoran people to be their spiritual pantheon, the Prophets—that called it home. Having withdrawn ships from various fronts to defend DS9, Dominion advances on Federation and Klingon space were stalled throughout the Quadrant, and Gul Dukat, broken by the death of his daughter during the attack on DS9, was captured by the alliance, leading to new leadership in the Cardassian wing of the Dominion under Damar.

A Pale Moonlight

The third major battle for Deep Space Nine lead to a slowdown in the overall arc of the Dominion War, as both sides consolidated forces and territories. Formal peace talks even began between the two sides, but eventually stalled out. With direct access to the Gamma Quadrant now barred by the wormhole’s inhabitants, the Dominion ramped up direct production in its Alpha Quadrant holdings, stemming the Ketracel White shortage crisis through a trade agreement for a version of the drug developed by the Son’a. Its strength restored, the Dominion launched a surprise assault that put the Federation on the precipice: distracting alliance forces, an invasion fleet from the Kalandra sector managed to occupy Betazed, the homeworld of a major Federation member, in just 10 hours, successfully repulsing multiple Starfleet attempts to retake the world.

Through Betazed, the Dominion was on the doorstep of the heart of the Federation—attacks on Vulcan, Bolarus, Andor, Tellar, Alpha Centauri, and even Earth were now on the table. Once again on the back foot and with the war ramping up again, the alliance needed a win. As presented in one of the finest hours of all seven seasons of Deep Space Nine , “In the Pale Moonlight,” Captain Sisko, working with the Cardassian tailor Elim Garak, successfully managed to stage a deception for the Romulan Star Empire, assassinating a Senator carrying forged evidence of a Dominion plan to invade Romulan space. The Romulans took the bait, formally entering the war on the side of the Alliance—and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer.

Turning Tides

The opening of the Romulan front gave the Federation opportunity and space to reach out and secure diplomatic ties with smaller besieged powers in the Alpha Quadrant, to gain access to further staging grounds and material support. Bolstered by the significant military power Romulus brought to the table, a clear pathway to the end of the Dominion War was laid out by alliance command: a direct invasion of Cardassia, the heart of the Dominion’s stronghold in the quadrant.

As 2374 came to a close, the Alliance began striking its first major offensives into Cardassian space, taking the highly contested Chin’toka system as well as Kalandra—which would eventually lead to the liberation of Betazed months later. Consolidating the new flashpoints on their fronts, the Klingons successfully managed to launch several deep-strike raids into Cardassian territory, destabilizing military infrastructure even further. Section 31, the secret intelligence wing of Starfleet, also successfully developed and laced the changeling homeworld’s great link with a morphogenic virus, greatly destabilizing their security and ability to conduct sabotage and intelligence gathering operations.

The Dominion, however didn’t go down without a fight. As the Alliance encroached further, Dominion command entered an alliance with the Breen Confederacy—something it had kept secret from its Cardassian allies, promising the Breen several Cardassian systems in exchange for their loyalty. As the Dominion ignored the Cardassian’s requests for support against the Federation and Klingons, fractures began to grow between the two entities. But the Breen’s surprise entry into the war in 2375—by launching an unprecedented shock bombardment on Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco, the first hostile assault on Earth in centuries—as well as the use of powerful new weaponry that allowed them and the Dominion to almost completely eradicate Alliance forces holding Chin’toka to put the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans on the defensive.

A Revolutionary End

Another lull in the war’s grander momentum after the second battle of Chin’toka allowed the Alliance to recover its lost military power and develop a counter to Breen weaponry—but it also gave the increasingly disenfranchised Cardassians a chance to undermine the Dominion from within. Left ignored after the Dominion’s pact with the Breen, Damar staged a rebellion against their former allies—one that, while swiftly put down, managed to put the Dominion and Breen on the back foot, withdrawing from much of their holdings to consolidate power directly around Cardassia.

Although Cardassian dissidence had been largely quelled, however, it wasn’t eradicated—with the Alliance sending operatives to help Damar respark a popular revolution on the world, distracting the Dominion long enough for the Alliance to gather its forces into one final effort, the plan that had been its dream the year prior: the invasion of Cardassia Prime.

The Final Battle

With the local uprising successfully putting Cardassian under a power blackout, Alliance forces entered Cardassian space in late 2375, engaging Dominion, Cardassian, and Breen forces. A Jem’Hadar attempt to quell rebellion on Cardassia, killing millions of civilians in targeted bombings, saw the Cardassian fleet break away from the Dominion and Breen, fracturing their tentative defensive lines and giving the Alliance direct access to the planet.

Forced to accept terms of surrender—in exchange for a cure for the morphogenic virus now ravaging the changelings and their homeworld—the Dominion stepped down, and several days later, its leadership signed the Treaty of Bajor on Deep Space Nine, formally bringing an end to the Dominion War. The remaining Dominion forces retreated back into the Gamma Quadrant, and Deep Space Nine’s Bajoran security forces officer, the changeling Odo, returned with them to deliver the morphogenic cure directly to his people’s homeworld.

The Legacy of the Dominion War

Meanwhile, while most perfunctory borders of space occupied by the Alpha Quadrant powers prior to the Dominion’s invasion in 2373 were restored by the Treaty of Bajor, the quadrant had undergone a significant rebalancing of power that would impact interstellar events for decades to come. The near-total destruction of the Cardassian Union created a power vacuum in its former territories, while the Breen, albeit humbled by the Dominion’s retreat, had established its expansionary goals as well as its significant military threat. The aftermath of both its initial war with Cardassia and then as part of the Alliance diminished the Klingon Empire’s own status as a major power in the quadrant for the next decade, as it looked internally to reconsolidate and rebuild—leaving the Romulan Star Empire and the Federation as the defining players in the Alpha Quadrant.

Although the Dominion War had brought with it a sense of uneasy diplomacy that was unprecedented in either faction’s history for centuries, tensions between Romulus and the Federation would renew shortly after—amplified first after the Reman commander Shinzon staged a military coup in 2379, attempting to attack Earth in the process, and then six years later, when a secret sect of the Tal Shiar dedicated to the destruction of synthetic life staged a terrorist attack on the Utopia Planitia shipyards at Mars, largely destroying a Federation taskforce intended to aid with evacuation efforts intended to save the populations of Romulus and Remus before their system’s star went supernova. After the attack the Federation decided to formally halt attempts to help the Romulans and Remans, leading to the near extinction of both sibling species when the Romulan star went supernova in 2387.

Although major conflict on the scale of the Dominion War would not return to the Alpha Quadrant for many years to come, its scars lingered for decades, especially as the Federation and Klingon Empires became the de facto remaining powers by the turn of the 25th century. For now, it remains what we know to be the bloodiest conflict in Star Trek ’s history—one that challenged the very ideals of its entire utopian dream to their very core.

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Published Feb 2, 2023

The Best Klingon Quests From Deep Space Nine, Ranked

Relive the glorious missions Worf and others embarked on.

StarTrek.com / Rob DeHart

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine brought a myriad of adventures to life and explored numerous cultures during its seven-year run. While fans might primarily associate DS9 with Bajorans, Cardassians, Ferengi, and the Dominion, the series presented a magnificent bounty of missions undertaken by bands of Klingons and their allies.

Since our tale will center on escapades spearheaded by small numbers of Klingons, we must, unfortunately, leave out more grandiose exploits, such as the invasion of Cardassia and the assault on Deep Space 9 depicted in “The Way of the Warrior.” Nevertheless, our parameters still leave plenty of glorious Klingon quests for us all to examine.

10. Infiltrating the Empire in “ Apocalypse Rising ”

StarTrek.com

Like any honorable Klingon, we are going to start by slightly bending our own rules. Under the assumption that Chancellor Gowron had been replaced by a Changeling who sought war with the Federation, Worf joined several Klingons to locate the Founder. Okay, those “Klingons” actually happened to be Captain Sisko, Odo, and Chief O’Brien disguised as Klingons.

The cadre managed to bravely make their way into a secure facility… only to realize that Martok was the shapeshifting spy. Once exposed, the Changeling faced down a room full of angry warriors, only to be blasted away by disruptor fire. Despite the mission’s success, the Federation-Klingon War continued to rage on.

9. Rebuilding a House in “ The House of Quark ”

Following the accidental death of her husband Kozak during an argument with Quark, Grilka recruited her advisor Tumek to assist in a marital union with the Ferengi. This move would prevent Kozak’s rival D’Ghor from establishing a claim on his fallen enemy’s lands. Calling upon his accounting skills, Quark determined that D’Ghor had manipulated Kozak’s holdings in a dishonorable attempt to put Kozak in debt and weaken his House.

Of course, financial figures never swayed the High Council, and Quark was inevitably forced to stare down D’Ghor in personal combat. Quark’s way with words finally paid off, as he posited that a fight between him and D’Ghor could never truly be fair. D’Ghor’s decision to try to execute Quark bolstered the Ferengi’s case, resulting in the Chancellor awarding Grilka control of her own House. Quark received Grilka’s heartfelt thanks, as well as an immediate divorce.

8. Making Amends in “ Sons and Daughters ”

Assigned as the lone escort for a dangerous cargo mission to Donatu V, the Klingon vessel Rotarran welcomed a batch of new troops that included Worf’s son, Alexander Rozhenko. Martok encouraged Worf to speak with the boy, but tensions continued to rise as Worf believed Alexander was not fit to serve in the Klingon Defense Force.

A Jem’Hadar attack disrupted the familial troubles, yet the Rotarran emerged victorious under Martok’s command. Alexander even earned his father’s respect when he volunteered to fix a plasma leak during the battle. In the wake of the bloodshed, Worf opted to make peace with Alexander, offered to stand by his decisions, and welcomed him into the House of Martok.

7. Restoring Honor in “ Tacking Into the Wind ”

With Chancellor Gowron wasting Klingon soldiers and ships in reckless offensives intended to position himself above Martok in the eyes of their people, Worf failed to convince the general to challenge the head of the High Council. During a strategy session, Worf confronted Gowron and defeated him in combat, thus earning the right to become chancellor. The Starfleet officer declined the honor, insisting Martok should be the one to rule Qo’noS. Although Worf challenged Gowron alone and without Martok’s blessing, the general accepted the mantle of leadership and can be considered a late addition to Worf’s quest.

6. Besting the Jem’Hadar in “ By Inferno’s Light ”

Imprisoned by the Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant, Worf met the real General Martok who had previously been replaced by a Changeling infiltrator. Along with Dr. Bashir, Garak, two Romulans, and a Breen, the Klingon duo manifested an escape plan.

While Garak worked to send a beam out signal to their abandoned runabout, Worf endured round after round of hand-to-hand bouts against Jem’Hadar soldiers. The former Enterprise-D security chief refused to yield, even when the senior Jem’Hadar repeatedly knocked him down. These trials impressed Martok and forged his initial bond with Worf that carried over into later seasons, and Worf’s heroism also bought enough time for their jailbreak to succeed.

5. Rescuing Warriors in “ Soldiers of the Empire ”

Given command of the I.K.S. Rotarran to search for the Klingon cruiser B’Moth near the Cardassian border, General Martok requested Worf as his first officer. Jadzia Dax accompanied them, soon realizing that the Rotarran ’s lack of victories had fostered a demoralizing atmosphere.

The crew noticed that Martok seemed unwilling to engage the Jem’Hadar, nor would the general risk crossing the border once sensors detected the B’Moth . Worf openly challenged Martok, hoping the fight would reinvigorate the general’s warrior spirit. The plan proved triumphant, and a confident Martok guided the ship as it defeated the Jem’Hadar and rescued the B’Moth ’s survivors. The general appreciated Worf’s actions and invited him to join the House of Martok.

4. Seeking an Artifact in “ The Sword of Kahless ”

When Kor returned to Deep Space 9 , he enlisted Worf and Jadzia Dax to partner with him in his pursuit of the Sword of Kahless, the bat’leth which belonged to the legendary Klingon. The excitement over the mission faded when thieves led by Duras’s son Toral intercepted Kor’s band, as well as Kor and Worf's clash over ownership of the mythical weapon.

Once Kor, Worf, and Dax realized that returning Kahless’s blade might fracture the Empire, the group decided to beam it into space… leaving the relic to once again be lost among the stars.

3. Clearing a Path to Sto-vo-kor in “ Shadows and Symbols ”

Since Jadzia Dax's death following Gul Dukat’s treachery rather than in a glorious battle, Worf was unsettled by the notion that she had not been granted entry into Sto-vo-kor , the hallowed Klingon afterlife. To remedy this, Worf knew he must win a great battle in Jadzia’s name. Such an opportunity arose when Martok asked him to be his first officer during a dangerous mission to destroy the Dominion shipyards at Monac IV.

Bashir, O’Brien, and Quark elected to go on the voyage with the Klingon crew to honor Jadzia. In a heroic effort, the Klingon vessel dodged Jem’Hadar fighters, flew perilously close to Monac’s star, initiated a solar plasma ejection that eradicated the shipyards, and granted Worf the victory that he hoped would welcome Jadzia into Sto-vo-kor .

2. Wreaking Havoc in “ Once More Unto the Breach ”

Even with his gaze set on leading five Klingon ships on a daring raid behind Dominion lines, Martok still could not let go of the resentment he felt toward Kor for hampering his early career. Worf pressed the issue, so the general eventually authorized the elder Klingon to serve as his third officer. A battle left Martok and Worf incapacitated, but Kor’s aging mind prevented him from acting as a suitable commander.

Pursued by a fleet of Jem’Hadar fighters, the Dahar Master chose to take Worf’s place on a Bird-of-Prey and distract the enemy long enough so that the rest of Martok’s forces could get away. Kor’s skill proved up to the task, prompting Martok to toast the fallen legend and honor his memory.

1. Exacting Vengeance in “ Blood Oath ”

As the godfather to Kang’s son, Curzon Dax took a blood oath to avenge his godson after a marauder known as “The Albino” murdered the firstborn sons of Kang, Koloth, and Kor. When the three Dahar Masters showed up on Deep Space 9 , Jadzia Dax felt a responsibility to uphold the oath made by her previous host.

Dax devised an ingenious strategy to bombard their foe’s compound with tetryon particles to neutralize the energy weapons held by the guards patrolling the surface. In a hand-to-hand melee filled with bat’leths and blood, the quartet overwhelmed their enemies in glorious fashion. Koloth and Kang perished, but not before the latter killed “The Albino.” Thus ended an epic Klingon quest worthy of song and drink. Qapla’!

This article was originally published on March 15, 2021.

Jay Stobie (he/him) is a freelance writer and consultant who has contributed articles to StarTrek.com, Star Trek Explorer, and Star Trek Magazine, as well as to Star Wars Insider and StarWars.com. Jay can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @StobiesGalaxy.

Stay tuned to StarTrek.com for more details! And be sure to follow @StarTrek on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram .

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Screen Rant

Star trek: why worf & klingons caused a ds9 season 4 problem.

Worf and the Klingons helped make DS9 season 4 one of the series' best, but it also wreaked havoc with the writers' original plan for the Dominion.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 4 is renowned as one of the series' best run of episodes, but the addition of Worf (Michael Dorn) and the return of the Klingons as villains forced the original DS9 season 4 plan to change drastically. Worf had just come off seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and appearing in the feature film Star Trek Generations ; producer Rick Berman suggested that DS9 bring in the beloved Klingon as a new cast member to help bolster the show's ratings.

After Ira Steven Behr took over the reins as DS9 's showrunner, he and his writing team created the series' new main antagonists, the Dominion from the Gamma Quadrant. Made up of three main species, the militant Jem'Hadar, the scheming Vorta, and their masters, the Founders, who were changelings and the same species as Odo (Rene Auberjonois), the Dominion was set up to be an even greater threat to Deep Space Nine than the Cardassians. The original plan to end  DS9 season 3 was a "changelings on Earth" cliffhanger but Paramount nixed the idea. Meanwhile, DS9 's ratings had fallen, especially compared to its predecessor, The Next Generation , so Paramount issued a mandate for DS9 to "shake up" the series. They decided to make the Klingons the enemies of the United Federation of Planets once again after the Dominion caused a schism between the two allied galactic powers.

Related: How DS9 Season 4 Saved The Darkest Star Trek Series

The addition of Worf joining the DS9 cast while the Klingons became the new enemy worked and did indeed breathe new excitement into season 4. Worf's presence also encouraged curious TNG fans to sample DS9 and the Klingon created fascinating new interactions with Sisko's crew, especially Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), who would soon fall in love with and eventually marry Worf. DS9 season 4 also featured classic episodes like the Sisko-centric tearjerker "The Visitor" and the Ferengi comedic romp "Little Green Men." However, in order to make room for the Klingons and Worf, the original, Dominion-centric plan for DS9 season 4 had to be pushed way back into season 5, which caused problems for Behr and his writing team.

Ira Behr explained the issues he had with Worf and the Klingons forcing the Dominion to the backburner in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion :

While I like having brought Worf onto the show... I think it had a fairly substantial impact that wasn't all for the good. It took us way off from where we'd intended to go and it was slow going getting back .  It was not the direction we thought the show was going. We thought we were going to get into this whole Dominion thing, and we suddenly had to begin this problem with the Klingons, which I think was exciting for the audience, but took a lot of thought as to how it was all going to link up .

DS9 's creative team didn't get to ramp up the Dominion storyline again until season 5, which required wrapping up the Klingons-as-enemies storyline and putting the warrior race back on the same side as Starfleet so they could fight the villains from the Gamma Quadrant together.

Behr feels that after the Klingons took over  Star Trek:   Deep Space Nine  season 4, the series didn't "regain its equilibrium" again until "the middle of season 5" . And this was after another event dominated his writing team's attention: celebrating Star Trek 's 30th anniversary in 1996 with the crossover episode "Trials and Tribble-ations," an instant classic where Sisko and his crew met Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the Starship Enterprise via time travel. However, Behr did get to do his "changelings on Earth" story in season 4 with the intense two-parter "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost", which reminded Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's fans of the terrifying threat the Dominion posed despite season 4's focus on the Klingons.

Next: Why Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Never Got A Movie (& Why It Still Should)

How Deep Space Nine's Dominion War Nearly Wrecked Star Trek's Utopia

Posted: April 19, 2024 | Last updated: April 19, 2024

First Contact

A Cold War Begins

The Fall of the Obsidian Order

Invasion and Union

A Sacrifice of Angels

The War Digs In

A Pale Moonlight

Turning Tides

A Revolutionary End

The Final Battle

The Legacy of the Dominion War

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IKS Rotarran

• View history

The IKS Rotarran was a Klingon Bird-of-Prey that was in service with the Klingon Defense Force in the late 24th century . The Rotarran served with distinction during the Dominion War , with General Martok using the vessel as his flagship .

• 1.1 Martok's captaincy of the Rotarran
• 2.1 Duty with the Second Fleet
• 2.2 Duty with the Ninth Fleet
• 3 Crew of the Rotarran
• 4.1 Appearances
• 4.2 References
• 4.3 Background information
• 4.4 External link

Service on the Cardassian border [ ]

During the Klingon-Cardassian War that began in 2372 , the Rotarran spent two years as part of the occupation force patrolling against the Cardassian fleet. ( DS9 : " Soldiers of the Empire ")

In mid- 2373 , the Rotarran was forced to retreat along with the rest of the Klingon fleet when the Cardassian Union joined the Dominion . ( DS9 : " By Inferno's Light ")

Following that event, the Rotarran suffered half a dozen defeats in combat with the Jem'Hadar . Heavy casualties mounted as this continued over a period of seven months. In one instance, a Cardassian ship was trapped between the Rotarran and an asteroid field. The Cardassians' power was failing, they had no other reinforcements nearby, and the Rotarran 's weapons were fully charged. Suddenly, three Jem'Hadar ships appeared out of the asteroid field, and the Rotarran was denied the kill. Because of this and many other similar encounters, the crew came to believe that the Rotarran was a cursed ship, and all aboard were dishonored. ( DS9 : " Soldiers of the Empire ")

Martok's captaincy of the Rotarran [ ]

Martok and Worf on the bridge of the Rotarran

In late-2373, General Martok was assigned command of the Rotarran by the Klingon High Council and dispatched to locate the missing IKS B'Moth . Joining him as his first officer was Lieutenant Commander Worf and Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax as science officer . Both were serving on detached duty from Starfleet at the time.

Plotting course for the last known position of the B'Moth , the Rotarran was forced to circumnavigate the Tong Beak Nebula in order to avoid the Jem'Hadar. Martok's wish to avoid a fight struck a sour chord with his weary crew.

On the way, Martok reviewed his crew's personnel reports, which included remarks such as: "Dishonorable conduct," "lack of respect," "dereliction of duty," "inattention to orders," "unmotivated," and "insufficiently aggressive." This did not go over well with Martok nor Worf, Martok likening the report to a prison record. Together they vowed to restore honor to the Rotarran and make it a ship worthy of the Empire.

Mid-route, the Rotarran detected a Jem'Hadar attack ship on a reconnaissance mission outside of Cardassian space, performing active polaron scans of the sector . Despite the tactical advantage the cloaked and armed Rotarran had over the attack ship, Martok opted to avoid a conflict and continue to pursue their mission of locating the B'Moth . Frustration from this missed opportunity, combined with three barrels of bloodwine , finally made things come to a head on the Rotarran .

Upon reaching the Cardassian border, the B'Moth was discovered 500,000 kellicams inside Cardassian territory. Martok, who had explicit orders from the High Council not to enter Cardassian territory, was unwilling to cross the border to rescue a crew that may or may not be alive at all. This struck a major chord with Martok's crew, which nearly led to mutiny .

Taking on a Jem'Hadar fighter

Moments later, a Jem'Hadar warship entered sensor range, which the Rotarran defeated. Afterward, the Rotarran successfully rescued thirty-five survivors from the B'Moth .

Upon their return, the High Council issued a commendation to the entire crew of the Rotarran . Despite crossing the border against orders, the Council viewed the destruction of a Jem'Hadar ship and the rescue of thirty-five warriors as ample justification for crossing the Cardassian border. ( DS9 : " Soldiers of the Empire ")

Martok continued to maintain the Rotarran as his flagship , and also continued using it for patrolling the Cardassian border. ( DS9 : " Blaze of Glory ")

Prior to the Second Battle of Deep Space 9 , the Rotarran served as a lookout for the incoming Dominion-Cardassian fleet. Upon its return to Deep Space 9 , the Rotarran took up a defensive position near the USS Defiant , which was mining the entrance to the Bajoran wormhole , and engaged several Jem'Hadar warships. Following the battle, Worf was once again assigned to the Rotarran . ( DS9 : " Call to Arms ")

Service during the Dominion War [ ]

Duty with the second fleet [ ].

The Rotarran and Defiant at Starbase 375

Following the Second Battle of Deep Space 9, the Rotarran and the Defiant joined the Second Fleet . After three months of defeat by the Dominion, the Rotarran , with the remains of the Second Fleet, was forced to return back behind Federation lines in early- 2374 . ( DS9 : " Call to Arms ", " A Time to Stand ")

The Rotarran later rescued Captain Benjamin Sisko and his crew from a planet in an uncharted dark matter nebula , and returned them to Starbase 375 . The Rotarran docked at the starbase briefly before rendezvousing with the IKS Vor'nak to receive reinforcements. Although Martok requested fifteen replacements, he only received five from General Tanas .

After the completion of the personnel transfer, Martok received orders to escort a convoy of Klingon Par'tok -type cargo vessels to Donatu V , a two-day journey. En route, Martok conducted battle drills to train the reflexes of his new crew.

Convoy duty

Following the simulation, the crew was recalled to the bridge because the ship's sensors detected a Jem'Hadar attack ship. After a frantic yet fruitless "encounter", it was realized that Bekk Alexander Rozhenko had forgotten to erase the battle simulation program from the sensor display.

The next day the convoy came under attack from two Jem'Hadar attack ships. During the attack, the Rotarran lost internal communications, and experienced a plasma leak on Deck 5 after suffering damage to the primary plasma injector . Ultimately the Rotarran destroyed the two attacking warships, and successfully delivered the convoy to Donatu. ( DS9 : " Sons and Daughters ")

The Rotarran later undertook another mission. Benjamin Sisko spoke to Worf while he was aboard, telling him there had been no news of the Defiant , which was on a mission to destroy a sensor array in the Argolis Cluster . ( DS9 : " Behind the Lines ")

The Rotarran later assisted the Defiant in destroying two Dominion ships. With the Defiant acting like a decoy, two Dominion ships were lured in to attack it. Just as the Dominion ships began their attack, the Rotarran decloaked and immediately destroyed one of the ships. The Defiant simultaneously powered up, and successfully destroyed the second ship. Following their successful ploy, the two ships were recalled to Starbase 375.

Arriving with reinforcements

Following the recall to Starbase 375, Martok and Worf returned to Qo'noS aboard the Rotarran to make a plea to Chancellor Gowron , on behalf of Captain Sisko. It was their intention to convince Gowron that he must commit the Klingon Defense Forces to join the combined Federation fleet in their attempt to retake Deep Space 9. ( DS9 : " Favor the Bold ")

After some convincing, Martok and Worf were able to persuade Gowron to spare some ships for Operation Return . Mid-battle, the Klingon fleet, led by the Rotarran , joined the fray and effectively opened a hole in the Dominion lines. ( DS9 : " Sacrifice of Angels ")

Duty with the Ninth Fleet [ ]

On stardate 51247.5, one week after the Rotarran 's return to Deep Space 9, General Martok was promoted to Supreme Commander of the Ninth Fleet . Despite his promotion and the offer to have quarters aboard the station, Martok chose to keep his flag aboard the Rotarran . He noted that despite the ship's cramped quarters, he would still feel like he was in the war.

By the end of that same week, most of the Rotarran 's crew was transferred to the battle cruiser IKS Ya'Vang , which had taken heavy losses in its previous engagement. ( DS9 : " You Are Cordially Invited ")

In late-2374, Martok lead an attack wing of Klingon warships from aboard the Rotarran during the First Battle of Chin'toka . Although fifteen ships were lost or severely damaged by Jem'Hadar fighters during the initial stages of the battle, the Rotarran made it through unscathed.

Upon the fleet's successful defeat of the Cardassian orbital weapon platforms , located around the orbit of Chin'toka , the Rotarran began transporting ground troops to the planet's surface. ( DS9 : " Tears of the Prophets ")

The Rotarran escaping Monac's solar flare

In early- 2375 , Martok re-enlisted Worf to once again serve as his first officer for a dangerous mission, where they intended to use the Rotarran to destroy the Monac shipyard in the name of Worf's late wife, Jadzia Dax. To do this, Chief Miles O'Brien devised a plan that used the Rotarran 's deflector dish to fire an electromagnetic pulse at a magnetic instability near the equator of the Monac sun , to trigger a solar plasma ejection . When the Rotarran reached the system, the ship decloaked and fired the EM pulse at the sun's corona . Their first attempt was unsuccessful, but upon their second attempt, while under fire by the Jem'Hadar, they successfully triggered a solar flare, which destroyed the shipyards . ( DS9 : " Image in the Sand ", " Shadows and Symbols ")

Later that year, the Rotarran 's cloaking device was stolen by Quark and Rom to be delivered to Ezri Tigan , a Trill mercenary in the mirror universe in exchange for the release of Grand Nagus Zek . Rom later installed the cloaking device aboard the Regent's flagship but also conveniently sabotaged it, disabling the ship. ( DS9 : " The Emperor's New Cloak ")

Several weeks later, repairs to the Rotarran , as well as the USS Hornet , were delayed to repair the Romulan warbirds Dividices and the Genorex . ( DS9 : " Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges ")

Near the end of the war, the Rotarran and the IKS Koraga , commanded by Worf, were ambushed by a Dominion patrol near the Badlands . The Koraga was destroyed, but the Rotarran was able to recover six of its starboard escape pods . ( DS9 : " Penumbra ")

Not long after that incident, the Rotarran was involved in a failed attack on a Cardassian world, Avenal VII . Martok himself was seriously injured in the attack. The Rotarran returned to Deep Space 9 three days after the news of the defeat had reached the station. ( DS9 : " Tacking Into the Wind ")

Crew of the Rotarran [ ]

• See : IKS Rotarran personnel

Appendices [ ]

Appearances [ ].

• " Soldiers of the Empire " ( DS9 Season 5 )
• " Call to Arms "
• " A Time to Stand " ( DS9 Season 6 )
• " Sons and Daughters "
• " Behind the Lines " (interior view only)
• " Favor the Bold "
• " Sacrifice of Angels "
• " You Are Cordially Invited "
• " Tears of the Prophets "
• " Shadows and Symbols " ( DS9 Season 7 )
• " The Emperor's New Cloak "
• " Tacking Into the Wind "

References [ ]

• " Blaze of Glory "
• " Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges "
• " Penumbra "

Background information [ ]

According to the script for the "Soldiers of the Empire", [1] "Sons and Daughters", [2] and "Behind the Lines", [3] the pronunciation for Rotarran was "row-TAR-an". Later the pronunciation was changed to "ROW-tar-an" in the scripts for "You Are Cordially Invited" [4] and "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges". [5]

Martok seems to have not used the Rotarran at the Second Battle of Chin'toka , for if he had, it was likely it would have been disabled by the Breen energy dissipaters and destroyed. We know he was present at the battle as his voice was heard over the communications system . ( DS9 : " The Changing Face of Evil ") It is possible he may have commanded another ship, such as the IKS Ch'Tang , which he had also briefly commanded that same year.

It was unclear if Martok continued to use the Rotarran through the end of the war, if it was the vessel he used during the final Battle of Cardassia in DS9 : " What You Leave Behind ", or if he had taken command of the (later unseen) IKS Negh'Var , being that he had since risen to chancellor .

The Rotarran was the most frequently seen Klingon Bird-of-Prey in Star Trek , with thirteen appearances.

The scenes in the Rotarran mess hall in the episode " Sons and Daughters " were filmed on Paramount Stage 18 , with the mess hall and ready room being redresses of the aft and the fore of the bridge set respectively.

The Klingon Bird of Prey Owners' Workshop Manual stated that the Rotarran was classified as a B'rel -class ship. It also says that the ship was launched in 2358 by the House of Gowron and served in the Klingon Civil War . Additionally, Martok used the Rotarran at the Battle of Cardassia, considering the Vor'cha class sluggish and the Negh'var too slow and unwieldy for his tactics (evading rather than absorbing attacks to minimise collateral damage).

The Starships RPG sourcebook gives its registry as IKC-62127.

External link [ ]

• IKS Rotarran at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 1 Abdullah bin al-Hussein

Star Trek Just Quietly Brought Back Deep Space Nine’s Most Underrated Villains

Never turn your back on a Breen.

One of the deadliest alien species in all of Star Trek has never been fully revealed. After an offhand reference in The Next Generation , the Breen appeared in the Deep Space Nine episode “Indiscretion,” encased in suits that felt like they borrowed from Princess Leia’s bounty hunter disguise in Return of the Jedi. The Breen are infamous but seldom seen, a tradition which Star Trek: Discovery is subtly rebooting in Season 5.

Amid an episode about time jumps and flashbacks to the beginning of the series, Discovery quietly snuck the Breen in and positioned them as possibly the most important factor in the fate of Star Trek’s future. Here’s why the Breen matter, and how this comeback could expand on the canon laid down by Deep Space Nine almost three decades ago. Spoilers ahead for Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 4, “Face the Strange.”

Who are the Breen?

A member of the Breen in Deep Space Nine.

The Breen began life as a random, hostile race tossed around in dialogue only. In 1990, in the TNG episode “The Loss,” Data lists alien races who “are not empathically detectable,” including the Breen. In the 1994 film Generations , when Riker and Worf investigate an observatory that’s been raided by people using a “type-three disruptor,” Riker notes only three alien races could be suspects: “Romulan, Breen, and Klingon.”

While TNG was still airing, writer Ira Steven Behr described the Breen as a “running joke” since they never appeared. Although TNG writer Jeri Taylor wanted to reveal the Breen for a storyline in TNG’s sixth season in 1993, it wasn’t until 1996, in DS9 Season 4, that the Breen actually showed up in those iconic helmets. As DS9 went on, the Breen became major players in the Dominion War, and were responsible for attacking Starfleet Headquarters on Earth in 2375, seriously damaging the Golden Gate Bridge in the process.

The Breen are Back in the 32nd Century

Rayner is a member of another deep-cut DS9 species, the Kelleruns.

Mentioned offhand in the Discovery Season 5 debut episode, “Red Directive,” the Breen became a big deal in the time-jump episode “Face the Strange.” After being hit by a temporal weapon called a Time Bug, Burnham and Rayner find themselves jumping to different moments in time aboard the USS Discovery. This takes them to the pivotal moment where Discovery jumped to the future at the end of Season 2, as well as all the way to very early in Season 1, before Burnham gained the trust of the crew.

Burnham and Rayner also end up in 3218, which Rayner notes is “almost 30 years in the future” from their current home timeline. In this future, Discovery’s friendly AI Zora is alone on the ship and tells Burnham and Rayner, “You all died years ago.” Zora then reveals the Breen destroyed the entire Federation.

Zora explains the Breen weaponized the secret Progenitor tech and “launched a devastating attack” on the Federation. Rayner suggests the Breen must have been “Moll and L’ak’s highest bidder,” meaning that in one timeline, the mercenaries Starfleet is so keen to apprehend sold what they found to the Breen.

The future Burnham and Rayner see echoes what actually happened in Deep Space Nine , when the Breen decimated Starfleet and the Federation way back in 2375. While the good guys recovered then, the Federation and Starfleet are on shakier ground in the 32nd century of Discovery post-Season 3.

As of Episode 4, Discovery still hasn’t revealed what the Breen look like under those helmets. But by introducing this doomsday outcome for the Federation, Discovery has made one thing very clear for the rest of Season 5. The Breen are back, and this time, they may truly live up to their deadly reputation.

Star Trek: Discovery streams on Paramount+.

• Science Fiction