Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did just about everything right. It certainly helped set up modern Star Trek as it exists in Discovery and Picard, and even before that it was used as the definitive example of everything Voyager and Enterprise didn’t do well enough. In short, it was a series of immense depth, not just in terms of serialization or an arc that could be traced from first to last episode, but giving every element as thorough a spotlight as possible.
And every element had some kind of resolution. Even if Armin Shimerman was a little disappointed that Quark was still merely a bartender at a space station at the edge of the final frontier, despite everything he experienced across seven seasons, exactly where he’d begun, there was no longer any real doubt about whether or not he was a good guy (even if Odo wouldn’t admit it). You can pick anything at all from the series and trace the course of its evolution, or illumination.
Anything but the Jem’Hadar.
The Jem’Hadar were introduced as being of considerable importance, in the final episode of the second season. The episode’s name is even “The Jem’Hadar.” They were the face of the Dominion we were allowed to see as such right from the start, its fierce foot soldiers whose battleships could take out the same class of Starfleet ship as Picard’s Enterprise. In the episode, of course, is a Vorta, subsequently revealed as representing the voice of the Dominion and later embodied quite ably by a series of Weyoun clones (who of course are given their own moment, too, in “Treachery, Faith and the Great River”).
It isn’t until the third season that the Jem’Hadar are individualized, “The Anandoned,” the first of a small collection of Jem’Hadar we get to meet and...and never see again. We meet others in “Hippocratic Oath,” “To the Deathl (both in the fourth season), and “Rocks in Shoals” (part of the opening war suite of the sixth season), which is the last time the series makes a real effort with them. Technically there’s also “One Little Ship” (later that season), but you would have to be pretty generous to include it.
And nothing in the final, seventh season.
Now, I get that there was a lot to accomplish that season, being, again, the final one. The final ten episode war suite makes room for a second set of anonymous antagonists, the Breen (often referenced previously, never seen, turn out to be fully encased in armor), who of course also don’t receive a single distinct representative.
In their significant appearances, the Jem’Hadar were consistently presented as inherently capable of so much more, that they weren’t just strung-out junkies genetically modified to be the grunts of the Founders. And teased, every time, to be more than ready to be so.
To put this in perspective, the series also famously featured the Ferengi, who even in Deep Space Nine were considered a joke, despite every effort the series made to change this perception, so that every spotlight was “a Ferengi episode” (an insult). By the end, the Ferengi had made considerable strides to move past their misogynistic and greedy ways, with Quark’s brother Rom rejecting every traditional notion and somehow becoming Grand Nagus (leader) in the process.
There’s no equivalent arc for the Jem’Hadar. There isn’t an arc at all. Each individual spotlight effectively restates the same thing, that they’re not as bad as they seem, and that given a real chance they could be so much more.
And they were simply never given that chance. That’s six out of seven seasons where they were part of the storytelling, and it never happened.
That’s possibly the most glaring oversight and shortcoming of the whole series.
It’s like “Balance of Terror” somehow concluding the Romulan commander was just a villain after all.
When people debate whether Deep Space Nine followed the basic tenets of the franchise, they are actively choosing to either support or ignore what anyone who actually watched it would be able to tell you, that it absolutely did. And in fact, probably did better than any Star Trek series or film before or since.
Which makes this exception all the more glaring. This was a series that went out of its way to make its point, to hit its spots, which got away with it in large part because the studio heads weren’t really paying attention, being far more concerned about how Next Generation ended (and entered the world of film) and Voyager began. That left the writers with a tremendous amount of leeway. Even when the studio strongly suggested to make the proceedings look more familiar (add Worf, the Klingons in general, in the fourth season), the writers used it as an opportunity to restate how dire the Dominion threat really was.
Which, again, included the Jem’Hadar. Theoretically. Or just keep them as muscle. Never let them get their victory. Even at the end of the series, the characters are more concerned about what the Breen might get if the Dominion wins than if the Jem’Hadar stay loyal. Because, well, losing them would absolutely cripple the Dominion. The Breen were opportunists. The Cardassians were clearly only after their own interests. And the Vorta were no fighters. Take away the Jem’Hadar?
Strangely, in another series this would have been a no-brainer. Picard realizes, in Next Generation’s “I, Borg,” that if you separate a drone from the hive mind, you have potential for considerable mischief, at the very least, among the collective itself. In Enterprise, Archer works furiously to turn Xindi scientist Degra into an ally during its third season (“Stratagem”). And of course “Balance of Terror” itself. Even Voyager knew this during the midst of its Kazon arc when Chakotay befriends a young warrior in “Initiations.”
And nowhere were the stakes higher or fraught with greater potential than Deep Space Nine and the Jem’Hadar.
Well, I guess they couldn’t win them all.
