Deep Space Nine. Image via Paramount Television

Published Oct 14, 2026, 5:27 PM EDT

Kelcie Mattson is a Senior Features author at Collider. Based in the Midwest, she also contributes Lists, reviews, and television recaps. A lifelong fan of niche sci-fi, high fantasy, Gothic horror, elaborate action, and witty detective fiction, becoming a pop culture devotee was inevitable once the Disney Renaissance, Turner Classic Movies, BBC period dramas, and her local library piqued her imagination.

Rarely seen without a book in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, Kelcie explores media history (especially older, foreign, and independent films) as much as possible. You'll also find her enjoying video games, amateur photography, geeking out over all music genres, admiring birds from her porch, trying to overcome her meager baking skills, and attending fan conventions with her Trekkie family.

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The final episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's fifth season, "Call to Arms," begins the series' esteemed Dominion War arc in magnificent fashion. After multiple seasons of slow-burn escalation, the civilization-conquering Dominion has turned its imperialist eyes toward the Alpha Quadrant. When their attack forces exhaust the titular station's resources, Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) makes a painful but necessary tactical call: evacuate their stronghold, sacrifice it to the Dominion, and declare open war against the invaders.

At this point in the franchise, Star Trek: The Next Generation's season-ending cliffhangers had made a tantalizing practice of shoving their main characters into perilous corners. Buoyed by its sister show's jaw-dropping foundation, "Call to Arms" rewrites the entire game. In a show defined by singular achievements, it's a fearless tour de force that upends almost every presumption about Deep Space Nine's intent.

"Call to Arms" Is 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Biggest Turning Point

Equal parts culmination and catalyst, "Call to Arms" marks the first time a Star Trek property unites numerous serialized plots into one space. The breathtaking storytelling resets Deep Space Nine's premise from a handful of uneasy allies navigating a politically charged location's day-to-day operations to a galactic war drama. From now until the series finale, the pacifist Starfleet participates in a full-scale, protracted conflict, not an isolated hostility resolved within two episodes. Deep Space Nine's subversive nature had always been evident. In one fell swoop, co-writers Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe tear away all sense of narrative safety. Chilling, disorienting, and an exhilarating shock to the system, "Call to Arms" previews the spin-off's capacity for substantial depth and reveals the creative team's robust willingness to take leap-of-faith risks.

Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Survival Quiz Which Sci-Fi World Would You Survive? The Matrix · Mad Max · Blade Runner · Dune · Star Wars

Five universes. Five completely different ways the future went wrong — or sideways, or up in flames. Only one of them is the world your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out which dystopia, galaxy, or desert wasteland you'd actually make it out of alive.

💊The Matrix

🔥Mad Max

🌧️Blade Runner

🏜️Dune

🚀Star Wars

TEST YOUR SURVIVAL →

01

You sense something is deeply wrong with the world around you. What do you do? The first instinct is often the truest one.

APull on every thread until I understand the system — then figure out how to break it. BStop asking questions and start stockpiling — food, fuel, weapons. Questions don't keep you alive. CKeep my head down, observe carefully, and trust no one until I know who's pulling the strings. DStudy the patterns. Every system has a rhythm — learn it, and you learn how to survive it. EFind the people fighting back and join them. You can't fix a broken galaxy alone.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

In a world of scarcity, what resource do you guard most fiercely? What we protect reveals what we believe survival actually requires.

AKnowledge. If you understand the system, you don't need resources — you can generate them. BFuel. Everything else — movement, power, escape — runs on it. CTrust. In a world of fakes and informants, a truly reliable ally is rarer than any commodity. DWater. And after water, information — the two things empires are truly built on. EShips and credits. The galaxy is big — you survive it by being able to move through it freely.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

What kind of threat keeps you up at night? Fear is useful data — if you're honest about what you're actually afraid of.

AThat reality itself is a lie — that everything I experience has been constructed to keep me compliant. BA raid. No warning, no mercy — just the roar of engines and then nothing left. CBeing identified. Once someone with power decides you're a problem, you're already out of time. DBeing outmanoeuvred — losing a political game I didn't even know I was playing. EThe Empire tightening its grip until there's nowhere left to run.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

How do you deal with authority you don't trust? Every dystopia has a power structure. Your approach to it determines everything.

ASubvert it from the inside — learn its rules well enough to weaponise them against it. BIgnore it and stay out of its reach. The further from any power structure, the better. CAppear to comply while doing exactly what I need to do. Visibility is the enemy. DManoeuvre within it carefully. You can't beat a system you refuse to understand. EResist openly when I have to. Some things are worth the risk of being seen.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

Which environment could you actually endure long-term? Survival isn't just tactical — it's physical, psychological, and very much about where you are.

AUnderground bunkers and server rooms — cramped, artificial, but with access to everything that matters. BOpen wasteland — brutal sun, no shelter, constant movement. At least the threat is honest. CA dense, rain-soaked city where you can disappear into the crowd and nobody asks questions. DMerciless desert — extreme heat, no water, and something enormous living beneath the sand. EThe fringe — backwater planets and busy spaceports where the Empire's attention rarely reaches.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

Who do you want in your corner when things fall apart? The company you keep is the clearest signal of who you actually are.

AA tight crew of believers who've seen behind the curtain and have nothing left to lose. BOne or two people I'd trust with my life. Any more than that and someone talks. CNobody, ideally. Alliances are liabilities. I work alone unless I have no choice. DA community bound by shared hardship and mutual survival — people who need each other to last. EA ragtag team with wildly different skills and total commitment when it counts.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

Where do you draw the line — if you draw one at all? Every survivor eventually faces a moment that tests what they're actually made of.

AI won't harm the innocent — even the ones who'd report me without hesitation. BI do what I have to to protect the people I've chosen. Everything else is negotiable. CThe line shifts depending on who's asking and what's at stake. DI draw a long-term line — nothing that compromises my people's future, even if it'd help now. ESome lines, once crossed, can't be uncrossed. I know which ones they are.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

What would actually make survival worth it? Staying alive is one thing. Having a reason to is another.

AWaking others up — dismantling the illusion so no one else has to live inside it. BFinding somewhere — or someone — worth protecting. A reason to keep moving. CAnswers. Understanding what I am, what any of this means, before time runs out. DLegacy — shaping the future in a way that outlasts me by generations. EFreedom — for myself, for others, for every world still living under someone else's boot.

REVEAL MY WORLD →

Your Fate Has Been Calculated You'd Survive In…

Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.

The Matrix

You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You're a systems thinker who can't help but notice the seams in things.

  • You're drawn to understanding how the system works before figuring out how to break it.
  • You'd find the Resistance, or it would find you — your instinct for spotting constructed realities is the machines' worst nightmare.
  • You function best when you have access to information and the freedom to act on it.
  • The Matrix built an airtight prison. You'd be the one probing the walls for the door.

Mad Max

The wasteland doesn't reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That's you.

  • You don't need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon.
  • You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it — and you're good at all three.
  • You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider.
  • In the wasteland, that distinction is everything.

Blade Runner

You'd survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.

  • You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer.
  • In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional.
  • You're not a hero. But you're not lost, either.
  • In Blade Runner's world, that distinction is everything.

Dune

Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.

  • Patience, discipline, and political awareness are your core strengths — and on Arrakis, they're survival tools.
  • You understand that the long game matters more than any single victory.
  • Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You'd learn its logic and earn its respect.
  • In time, you wouldn't just survive Arrakis — you'd begin to reshape it.

Star Wars

The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn't have it any other way.

  • You find meaning in being part of something larger than yourself — a cause, a crew, a rebellion.
  • You'd gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire's grip can be broken.
  • You fight — not because you have to, but because standing aside isn't something you're capable of.
  • In Star Wars, that willingness is what makes all the difference.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

They do so with immaculate construction and tremendous artistic flair, to boot. "Call to Arms" showcases operatic gravitas, emotional intimacy, nail-biting space battles, and images that remain seared into viewers' minds. Who can forget Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo) striding into the station he formally ruled, as smug as the cat who knew it was only a matter of time before he devoured the canary and the cream? Or Sisko's countermove — leaving his baseball, an object infused with pre-existing symbolism, as a direct reminder to his from-day-one nemesis that their chess match is far from finished?

Most thrilling are the episode's closing companion shots. As Sisko sits aboard the Defiant's bridge, his expression as unwaveringly dangerous as a steel trap, an armada of Federation and Klingon combat ships surrounds his vessel. Sisko's rebellion is severely outgunned, but they're prepared to hold the line until their enemy burns. In lieu of that outcome, they'll make the Dominion's conquest as difficult as possible. Despite knowing these characters are executing a multistep plan, the status quo seems irreparable. Some things never recover. At best, they heal wrong.

"Call to Arms" Illustrates Why 'Deep Space Nine' Is a Sci-Fi Masterpiece

Beyond the show's refusal to take the safe and easy route, this finale's ambitions soar thanks to the elegant character beats spaced throughout and the performers exquisitely underplaying the material. At its heart, "Call to Arms" sketches an allegorical portrait of a community bracing for the horrors of war. A looming shadow accompanies the definitive end of an assured time and the uncertainty of the imminent next. Crisis illuminates what matters most, and "Call to Arms" leaves no relationship stone unturned. Each fleeting interaction between friends, family, antagonistic friends, and budding lovers reinforces the camaraderie and unexpected home these lost, broken outsiders have formed — a living reminder of why these characters choose to fight, and an essential building block of Trek's ethos.

These delicate moments also set the table for Season 6 and 7's largest swings. Sisko swiftly discovers his defining qualities as a compassionate commander and avowed protector aren't assets during wartime, where agonizing ethical decisions are as common as breathing. Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor), a woman intimately familiar with moral dilemmas, once again organizes a covert rebellion against oppressors old and new while publicly pretending to submit to the Dominion's occupation. The isolated Odo (René Auberjonois) discovers long-awaited answers about his species, except the Changelings' philosophy forfeits any claim they have to being his people; he'll bestow that honor upon his friends. Every consequence "Call to Arms" kickstarts is explored to its fullest and bleakest breadth, and the Star Trek landscape hasn't been the same since.