10 Greatest Star Trek Cliffhanger Episodes

If he's taken his baseball with him, you know sh*t's got real!

The final scene of the last episode of Deep Space Nine's season six is more meditative than your usual cliffhanger. There have been tragic events on the Station, and so Captain Sisko has taken an indefinite leave of absence. As the episode comes to a close, we simply see him cleaning his clams in the alley behind his father's restaurant on Earth.

Don't be fooled by the deceptive simplicity of this cliffhanger, however. This is one of Star Trek's most powerful season finales that upended our expectations and radically altered the landscape for our cast of characters. He'll be in "in a little while," Sisko says to Jake, as we the audience were left wondering just how long a while away from the Station and Starfleet he would be, or if he'd ever return.

Of course, the most shocking and emotional moment in Tears of the Prophets, and the large part of the reason why Sisko left (along with the disappearance of the wormhole and the Bajoran deities), was the brutal death of Jadzia Dax at the hands of Pah-Wraith Dukat.

As difficult as it was to watch Jadzia summarily dispatched from the show, the real-life reasons behind the departure were all the more painful for actress Terry Farrell. When her contract was up for renewal for season seven, Farrell wanted to negotiate fewer episode appearances so she could work on other projects. Producers stubbornly refused and, as Farrell revealed in the documentary What We Left Behind, one producer even told her that "[she] really should sign the next contract because if [she] weren't there on the set, [she'd] be at Kmart". Understandably, this was the "last straw" for Farrell, and she decided to leave.

Along with Sisko, the season six finale also left us in doubt about the future of the Dax symbiont. Fortunately, and salvaging at least something from the Farrell fiasco, neither Dax nor Sisko were gone for long. Season seven quickly reassured us with its strong first outings, and the new Dax – Ezri – was allowed to gel with the crew and fans in her own way.