“In The Pale Moon Light” (1998) is one of my favorite episodes because it totally turns the world of Star Trek on its head with an immoral decision that ends up working to the Federation’s advantage.
The whole episode is told through Capt. Benjamin Sisko’s personal log. Sisko explains that, with the Dominion war going badly, the Federation needed to find a way to get the Romulans on its side. The Romulans are neutral at this point, and so Sisko devises a plan with Garak the Cardassian tailor to trick the Romulan’s most ardent Dominion backer to switch to the Federation. The plan goes awry but not before his ship mysteriously explodes. The evidence of the explosion points to the Dominion, and soon the Romulans join the war allied with the Federation. But Capt. Sisko suspects it was Garak and violently confronts him. Garak admits his guilt, but tells Sisko it was a necessary evil to get the Romulans to join the Federation’s fight.
Sisko, in the final moments of the episode, is back to recording in his captain’s log about how blowing up the ship was wrong but how he agrees with Garak’s assessment.
In a break from what we’d usually expect a Star Trek captain to think, Sisko admits he’d do it all over again. What makes the moment particularly great is that he then deletes the log, so nobody will ever really know how things unfolded.
- Mitchell Chang – senior video producer
