Except one. Gul Darheel probably didn't know enough about a random file clerk to compliment their work. But Marritza couldn't resist getting a little self-complimentary when he mentioned his 'cover identity.'
cardassians did nothing wrong. bajorans are excessively impulsive and violent, they inherently despise authority and will actively find whichever government they find themselves in in order to fight it. cardassia brought law and order, they should've thanked them.
@@regalecusglesne3022 Wow this unsolicited total non-sequitur might be the worst thing I've read in a while, thank you for this (satire? your tone is unclear)
@@regalecusglesne3022 Eh, Bajorans seem to dislike secular government and the Cardassians appear to be atheists. Imagine if someone went to America and told them convert half their Churches into a hospitals and schools. Do you think they would A) Go, yeah! That will help the quality of life in society! or B) HELL NO. Telling someone to do something that might be a good idea by putting a gun to the back of their head doesn't make them want to listen to you. Look at the Middle East. You can't go to a country and force modernization on them. You have to slowly build them up. The Cardassians did the polar opposite. I hate to say it, but the Romans, Persians, Ottomans, and Mongols all did a better job of empire building than the Cardassians. Heck the British did a better job in India. The Cardassians are just really bad at getting the locals on their side. Don't blame the Bajorans, blame the Cardassians for being very bad at winning hearts and minds. They blundered in like the French in Vietnam.
@@regalecusglesne3022 Lol What? No. If you're gonna conquer another people, you cannot use force. That's the real thing the Cardasians did wrong. Where the spoon heads failed, the Federation succeeded. You conquer using culture or economics or probably Bajorian's biggest weakness. Their religion. Sisko being the emissary made Bajor wide open to their conquest. Cardasians could learn a thing or two from Sun Tzu. War damages the spoils of a conquest. Why not win it before any fight starts?
The twist after this hits you like a sack of bricks to the chest. The actor was brilliant. One of the few times my jaw actually dropped and I felt the realization of horror as it instantly became clear what was actually happening.
Brilliant writing and acting, from both Nana Visitor and veteran character actor Harris Yulan. Marritza's guilt and self-loathing traumatized him so deeply - in a sense, it did drive him insane.
I love this line. She thinks she has the moral high ground but she can't argue it at all. In her mind, he is a monster that doesn't regret the things he had to do for war. But in his eyes, she is a hypocrite that can't even stand by her words and actions and declares to "feel bad" for what she did as some sort of excuse. She actually thinks she's a good person because of her denial. While he doesn't deny a single thing and argues he did it for the same reasons as her: for the betterment of his species. Honest. Loyal. True to his word. This is why she can't argue against him, because she would be a hypocrite and he knows this.
@@XFanmarX it's a bit more nuanced than that. He wants to antagonize her, he wants her to hate him as much as possible and appear evil, so he says things that will make him look evil to her. He doesn't actually believe the actions of Cardassia were defensible, he just thinks acting like a man with no regrets makes him easier to hate.
This mans performance is quite possibly the greatest perfomance in all of star trek. Absolute, refined, talent. The man didn't just embrace his role, he became it. and what makes this so good is that unlike the actor who portrayed garik, who had 7 seasons to perfect the character, ths guy did in in one solitary episode. Incredible.
Yup. And he's also being deliberately over-the-top to push Kira's buttons. It's the only way his plan can work: to make her engage with him emotionally, instead of rationally. Because if she starts doing that, she'll start digging into his story and find out the truth. And initially, this tactic works, because Kira can't think about Cardassians in any other way. Once she finds out the truth, all his bluster and deflection don't work any more.
Marritza turns 'Darheel' into an almost cartoonishly evil person that it makes it hard to believe the original was quite like this. The thing is, Darheel probably wasn't QUITE as bombastically evil as this. But that was the point: to make the person he was impersonating so evil that the Bajorans would act on pure emotion. And it would've worked, too, without Odo and Sisko (who lack the emotional factor and thus can think more objectively). Kira, in her state, would have sent this man to his death without a moment's hesitation and never looked back.
Well knowing what we know about Cardassians... I mean they're all pretty extra. Dukat at his most sedate is still more intense than like, a Gowron. The head of the obsidian order, his name escapes me at the moment, he's very much "I am a spymaster." Garak is, well, *Garak.*
@@carminemurray6624 I think there's a lot more fair comparisons to more obscure monsters in history. I don't want to give the name since I only know his story since he was a distant relative of mine. He just hated the inefficiency in the Ustashi camps, they were poorly run and little to no records were being kept. Given his position he was able to enforce better record keeping and implemented a reward system for those that ran the camps to help improve their efficiency. I only have conjecture to go on here, but I imagine he was proud of his work. On the plus side the records that were kept and didn't manage to be destroyed in time at the end of the war ended up being very valuable to the allies who executed many of the people involved, including him.
To be fair, Duet is one of the very best episodes of DS9. There were some mediocre episodes too. I don't think there was a single great episode of Picard or Discovery that matches the writing quality of the best 50 TNG or DS9 episodes, though.
I had DVR to record all back in the day and ran across all the footage I missed while at work. I loved it. So many back then thought it was boring wished it off the air. Now the same people crapping on it then are loving it today, saying to me as an excuse,.. "DS9, and Voyager were ahead of its time and the 90s weren't ready." No, I think they were too busy watching the Simpsons.
History will be on DS9's side. Fast forward a couple more decades and shows like this will be even more appreciated while stuff like Discovery will be laughed at.
3:36 One of the things I love about DS9 is that Kira and the Bajoran resistance were not portrayed as purely noble freedom fighters, but were accurately described as terrorists as well. Their cause may have been just, the tools they used the only effective ones available to them, but they still committed acts of terrorism. It’s one of those gray areas that DS9 did so well, and one we may never be able to revisit again in a post 9-11 era.
2:55 I love how Kira steps back in shocked disgust. She had known he was a monster, but he really went above and beyond her idea of what a monster was.
“What you call Genocide, I call days work..” Another great line from that great episode and series. Goes straight to the core of the people behind the atrocities of History.
Imagine being so ashamed of what you were complicit in, that you had to offer yourself up as the token to execute... I always found this episode to be incredibly powerful
That's not exactly what's going on here. The cornerstone of all this hinges on how the cardassian legal system works. Basically when you go on trial the courts find out what you're guilty of. His whole goal was to very publicly force cardassia to address the occupation and war crimes on Bajor in a formal legal setting so cardassia can deal with and atone for it's past. The aspect of the cardassian legal system isn't know by the audience until much later when O'Brian gets arrested. The thing that doesn't make sense is that his plan hinges on being identified as Gul Darheel, which is a massive gamble.
@@mikevignola4213 Marritza wouldn't be tried under the Cardassian legal system, but the Bajoran one. Cardassia would never try Gul Darheel for his actions. Marritza wanted a show trial that would be sure to draw Cardassians' attention, where he could publicize the brutality of the occupation that he witnessed. And being identified as Gul Darheel by the Bajorans wouldn't be much of a risk, since he made himself resemble Darheel, openly claimed to be him, and the Bajorans in their desire for revenge wouldn't question that.
Harris Yulin was one hell of an actor! He was great because, like all other great actors, he had you reacting to his role as to who he was portraying, not "an actor playing "such and such" character. I remember when I was a kid, he guest starred on the 70's TV series "S.W.A.T". In that episode, he played a heartbroken, anguished man, who was out to avenge his murdered wife, killing who he thought were the murderers one by one. After he had killed one of them, he came home, held his wife's picture, and whispered; "I got one of them today, Baby. Yes, I did" His character owned a record and phonograph repair store, and one of the S.W.A.T cops, T.J. McQuade, had a lady who was his neighbor visit his shop to repair her phonograph. They become close and romantically involved, until she finds out he is the killer that the PD is looking for. When he tries to use her as hostage to make good his escape when he is cornered by S.W.A.T, he gets shot by them and dies, and of course, the woman he was falling in love with was devastated. I remember my Mom crying at the end of it. That's how great an actor Harris Yulin was.
I like the one were obrien done the 20 years ...I can't remember the name...I'm in the midst if rewatching deep space nine atm! Much love all from Ireland 🇮🇪 🍀
"You can never undo what I've accomplished"...that line is just so chilling. No matter the punishment...the dead will still be dead, the loved ones will still be lost. So horrifying.
@@ryanweible9090 some people are better dead. those that are an on going unredeemable threat are better removed for the safety of all. there is no good reason to keep confirmed mass murderers alive at high cost to society, better to harvest them for parts at least then they are being of use. for the "all lives have value" crowd by not removing them you are in effect saying the killer is worth at least one more person then those the have already killed and harmed.
"...and the verdict was always the same: guilty!" What I like about this particular part of dialogue is how the actor sells it. Harris has a facial expression and eye movement that somehow convey the sort of derangement you might expect of a war criminal. A sort of glee in abusing power is expressed.
It's also a cool moment that foreshadows a later episode where we see what the Cardassian justice system looks like, and it operates on exactly those same principles. The verdict is always the same, guilty!
Consider this for a moment: In a universe filled with laser weapons that can kill or even disintegrate from a distance, the Cardassian soldiers came back covered in blood after committing atrocities. They weren't lining people up in orderly firing squads but killing people in the most primitive and brutal ways possible. This, from a more "superior, advanced, and civilized race" than the Bajorans.
You realize this isn't the actual Gul, but the actual file clerk he claimed to be, surgically altered to look like the Gul and acting as cartoonishly evil as possible on purpose? So... no. You shouldn't take the claim of soldiers coming back "covered in blood" as any more truthful than, say, the ramblings of Mein Kampf on the Jews.
I hear what you're saying, however I don't think your interpretation is accurate. The cardassians were certainly ruthless, and even brutal, but they were not generally hacking people apart. They would have seen it as a waste of their time when a phaser blast would have done exactly the same. I think he was speaking figuratively
"Well we can't have that, Major! I'll have no more secrets between us" Did this guy win an award for this role? God damn, this is possibly my favorite scene in the entire franchise
Indeed! And give a second one to the writers. Yulin didn't win an award for this role, but he got an Emmy later for playing a crime boss. Film critic Jim Emerson said that he should be in every movie ever made, and I agree.
"great acting" - with Kira? Hahahaha there was a scene where she was meant to be angry and hurt, and the whole time the actress was grinning like a special needs kid on uppers.
A master piece of acting and as a viewer it stirred up emotion and if you as a fan did not have a swing in the direction of emotions then you did not truly experience the performance given by the actors.
This surprised me too. I never really watched ds9, only tng and voyager. At first I thought kira and dax only served the purpose of eyecandies of the series, but man, kira really shined in this episode.
@@creatip123 I don't know the male actor by name But it was moving and in this episode we the fans see that all people of a race are not EVIL but just people that are trapped by the choice the government that rule make.
Having lived in Ukraine and endured (briefly) Russia's occupation of the city I lived in, this episode hits a helluva lot different now than it did back when I was a teenage, theoretically asking "is this a Nazis-and-Jews reference or a Chinese-and-Tibetans reference" from a safe distance away.
This episode was a masterclass in acting and writing. Any time I'll ever her someone dismiss this show THIS episode is going to be one of my examples of how it actually Was good.
Knowing the twist at the end, you can tell that he's very intentionally laying it on thick to make sure that Kira buys in as much as possible, to make sure that Bajor buys in as much as possible. But it so easily sounds like the garden-variety justifications of an imperial occupier who views his subjects as beneath contempt, as sub-sentient.
This episode was amazing. It was a Star Trek version of a movie called "The Man in the Glass Booth." The acting was brilliant. The writing was brilliant. The camera work was brilliant. This is what television can be.
This was sort of the Star Trek equivalent of a Holocaust survivor facing down a man claiming to be an SS officer; and who was completely ok with immersing himself into that role as a sadistic monster.
Harris Yulin as Dar'heel, easily one of the most talented actors the Star Trek franchise ever had. Nana Visitor as Kira, easily one of the most well developed characters the Star Trek franchise ever invested in.
In the end, Marritza was somewhat of a rejected messiah for the cardassians, someone who had so much love for their people but so much shame and guilt for their actions that he tried to play pretend as a dead war criminal so he could face a public execution just to force them to confront their own guilt.
He was the truest cardassian patriot, a man who loved his people so much, that despite understanding the totality of their sins, he saw something that could be redeemed
Let’s be clear: this is one of the best screen depictions of a Nazi soldier describing the exhilarating sense of power and righteousness that so many of them got from running concentration camps. It’s chilling to hear the actor here say lines like “My every glance was law, and the verdict was always the same: guilty!” and “What you call genocide, I call a day’s work.” Truly the power of Sci-Fi to act as mirror to examine the history of our world.
@@joshuaplotkin8826 He also wanted Cardassia to have to admit its guilt so it could heal and become a better citizen of the galaxy. Cardassians are deeply emotional about their nation and he couldn't bear to see the stain of his government's actions on his beloved Cardassia, it needed to be atoned for and he was determined to find a way to do it. For Cardassia. All Cardassians seem to love Cardassia very deeply. Even the rebels rebel over the ideals of Cardassia, wanting the nation to live closer to its ideal nature.
Some episodes are good because of the action or story but dialog here is just outstanding. And his breakdown at the end. One of the most powerful scenes in DS9. I've said it before but DS9 showed a different side of Star Trek we never saw.
Watched a video about the Nuremberg trails and at one point they brought in someone who was part of running a concentration camp during WW2. He was like this. He was proud of his work. He saw nothing wrong at all with what he was doing. It was just a day's work.
@@OneTopChap Höss didn't talk like that. And Höss admitted a lot of things that turned out not to be true... but what do you expect. He was beaten with axe handles in his very first interrogation, and who knows what else afterwards. Höss claimed he killed more people in Auschwitz than he even had prisoners. Almost as if he was beaten and tortured into saying things.
What gives us goosebumps up to this day about this speech is to think how many bastards along human History did what Gul Darheel did and took proud at it just as Marritza pretends to take. The good-hearted clerks were impotent to stop them, and still are. The Darheels are out there right now, leading all kinds of murderous forces. Including Western ones. I served as an airman in the end of Brazil's military dictatorship, under officers that had kidnapped and tortured and killed Civilians and resistants, and they scared me to death. Fortunately the worse was already behind us in 1982, for I was an opposition secret sympathizer already when I was drafted.
This scene is why this episode is one my favorites from DS9. It did some great character building for Kira. The acting from Mr. Yulin (Marritza) was great. He had a limited amount of space to work with and managed to make it work so well. The twist at the end came from nowhere. However if you pay attention you can see him breath a sigh of relief after she left might have given it away. Or maybe it's just me.
The writing for Deep Space Nine was magnificent... and the deliverance of most of those lines was just outstanding. I remember reading some years ago that a few of the Deep Space Nine writers also wrote for the newer reimagined Battlestar Galactica series with Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff. Again, equally impressive series. I wish more writing like this was available today - lol. Now, all we've got are silly one-liners in Marvel Movies... lol.
This is absolutely my favorite episode in all of Deep Space Nine. Probably because of the responsibility Meritza assumed when he was guilty of nothing and unable to stop the massacres.
it makes this so much more impressive, to me at least, that this was not only a bottle episode.. it was in season 1. seriously setting the tone early. not many series, particularly in Star Trek come out so strong so early.
Does it turn out he was just some file clerk with PTSD and survivors guilt? That's what REALLY got me about this episode; when he broke down and cried about all the terrible things that were happening all around him that he couldn't do a thing about and Kira actually felt pity for him...
The real Durheel may not have been as bombastic as this but to Maritiza this is the monster he knew, this is the monster he served under and he’s portraying that monster as he was not the mask he pretended to wear too cover what was underneath.
Harris Yulin gave a magnificent performance under a ton of make-up No easy task for an actor who had never done Sci fi before to my knowledge. Also, I don't think he was any spring chicken at this stage of his career.
“And I, Gul Darheel” The acting is fantastic, you get both that he’s trying to convince Kira of the deception through the use of Cardassian arrogance she knows too well.
In my interpretation, Marritza was a true, honorable, and patriotic Cardassian. He believed in his home and his people so much that it sickened him to see what they were doing to innocence. He saw that it was wrong and knew that such barbarism had no place in the great civilization that he believed in. And so he was willing to pretend to be the biggest monster and be executed for crimes that were not his. To bare the weight of Cardassia's guilt and be (pardon my meaning but) a Christ like figure in how he would ,not absolve them, but give them a chance to finally make amends for half a century of evil. While many Cardassians would admonish his sacrifice I feel he would say it was "All for the good of Cardassia."
This is my favorite set of scenes in DS9. This actor is gnawing the scenery but is doing so in just the right way. And the script is brilliant. Everyone is the hero of their own stroy, even when everyone else sees you as the villain.
This is one of the greatest moments in DS9; in fact, I cannot recall ANYTHING on television that hit me as hard as this first scene. The writing and the delivery are magnificent.
say what you want about the Cardassians, but Damar was a riot.. I watched last night his scenes with Weyoun were hilarious. He watched Worf snap Weyoun 7's neck after being disrespectful of Ezri about Bashir in front Worf. Damar burst out laughing then later egs Weyoun 8 to go visit Worf again so he can meet Weyoun 9 lol...
When I was younger it shocked me, wondering how could someone take pride in such horrible things? Watching this now, all I can think now is that (the real) Darheel is absolutely 100% based as fuck.
While grilling Kira about how many Cardassians she killed, I feel that Maritza secretly was upset about her killing his people, all while anguishing on the genocidal role of his government's military.
I've always felt that since Star Trek was presenting humanity as finally having overcome its baser side the Cardassians were a good stand in for how we would really operate.
