In Purgatory’s Shadow #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 14) Garak’s answers a coded message as Dominion forces prepare to attack

Rewatching ST:DS9

Kira helps Odo re-adjust to life as a shape-shifter, obliviously but brutally friendzoning him in the process.

Upon learning that someone on the other side of the wormhole is sending encrypted Cardassian military signals, Sisko calls on Garak.

The enigmatic tailor downplays the event, telling his found family (Dr. Bashir and Ziyal) the communication was nothing special, and then promptly sneaks onboard a runabout, where an armed Bashir happens to be waiting for him.

The message is from Tain, Garak’s former mentor and former leader of the Cardassian secret police. On the theory that it might lead them to prisoners of war, Sisko orders Worf to take Garak to investigate, but to avoid contact with The Dominion at all cost.

“Because this mission depends on stealth, take the Defiant and use the cloaking device,” says Sisko.

Just kidding.

No, Sisko actually sends him in a runabout. You know, one of those expendable ships that always runs into a plot contrivance particle field and maroons a small number of characters on a planet that has caves. (You can see where this episode is going.)

Dax is angry that Worf seems to be calmly preparing for an honorable death in battle, and tries to convince him there are reasons why he should come back alive.

Ziyal, who doesn’t appear that frequently but is living on the station under Kira’s protection, tells Garak she’ll be lost without him. Garak, fully aware she’s sweet on him, calls her feelings “a bit misguided” but promises to return to her. 

Dukat shows up, threatening to throw Garak over a railing, and expresses a sincere interest in his daughter’s welfare.

On the runabout, Garak asks Worf to sponsor his application to Starfleet Academy, citing Nog’s success and the Federation’s inclusive values. After Worf remains unconvinced, Garak admits he was just practicing his skill at lying — and later, he gripes about Earl Grey tea. (The writers are going out of their way to remind us that we’re not watching the cheerful, utopian, and therefore predictable ST:TNG.) 

Dukat unctuously and formally confronts Kira for not preventing Ziyal from falling in love with her father’s enemy. Kira admits that she thinks “their friendship is a mistake,” but that Ziyal is old enough to make her own decisions. 

The runabout finds its way into a stock footage nebula (again with the nebula), and after Worf and Garak chat expositionally about the Dominion War, they are captured and taken to a Dominion internment camp on a space rock.

Sisko sends Kira on the Defiant to answer Worf’s distress call, but Kira returns early, having learned a Dominion fleet is heading for the wormhole. 

Dukat tells Ziyal to pack her things and board a ship that’s leaving for Cardassia. 

In the internment camp, Worf and Garak watch as a Jem’Hadar fights General Martok, who had earlier been replaced by a Changeling, but has been kept alive for two years as a training target.  

In a cell room with several bunks, Tain is dying, but lives long enough to scold Garak for letting himself get caught. 

Kira is shocked that Dukat has been invited to a meeting where Sisko discusses a plan to flabbergast the wormhole’s subspace jimberjams, sealing it shut and thereby preventing the Dominion fleet from passing through. 

In the internment camp, we meet Bashir — the real Bashir — who has been trapped here since before Starfleet updated its uniforms for the ST:First Contact.

This means that the Bashir who has been sitting in on the strategic meetings is a Changeling, whom we see cheerfully delivering a tray of sandwiches to the hard-working Dax and O’Brien. 

Tain has hung on for a few more scenes so that we can watch the real Bashir witnessing the tender moment when Garak calls Tain “Father.”

Back on the station, Sisko gives the order to flabbergast the wormhole’s subspace jimberjams, but the special effects go from cool and whooshy to wonky and clunky because of sabotage (we see a brief cut to the fake Dr. Bashir looking suspiciously pokerfaced instead of surprised), and a huge Dominion fleet arrives.

To Be Continued…