Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - 10 Best Episodes

10. "The Siege of AR-558" (Season 7)

Summary: On a routine supply run to AR-558, the Defiant discovers the Starfleet garrison there has been decimated by endless Jem'Hadar attack, with less than a third of their original number still alive, and morale low. AR-558 is important because a Dominion communications array has been discovered there. If Starfleet engineers can figure out how it works, it means they'll be able to tap into the enemy's entire communications system. When the Defiant is forced to leave, Sisko and a few others elect to stay. A massive Jem'Hadar attack is coming, and they're going to help hold the position until Starfleet can send reinforcements. Why It's Great: The argument made by this episode is a familiar one, but after more than a year of open warfare between most of the Alpha Quadrant powers and the Dominion, it's an argument that needed to be made: war is hell. Up until this episode, the war had been dramatized mostly in terms of ship battles, which never shied away from showing massive casualties. Those casualties, however, were often abstract and impersonal, by virtue of the Defiant being full of characters with their names in the main titles. But the war isn't abstract or impersonal on AR-558. The men and women stationed there have been holding the lifeless rock for months without reinforcements when Sisko and company show up. For them, war is a nasty, dirty business that wears you down, day after day, with no end in sight, and if you let the misery get to you, even if only for a second, you will end up dead €“ but, if you don't, there's no guarantee that you'll live to see tomorrow. The episode ends with Sisko reading the weekly casualty report. He reminds himself that it's not just a list of names €“ every one of them was a person, and it's important to remember that.