First off, I’m going to get this one out of the way because if you hit play without reading anything further, you might think I’m picking one of the battle sequences from STAR TREK: GENERATIONS. Or maybe you did read this and think I uploaded the wrong cue. Because, yeah, Dennis McCarthy is absolutely lifting whole sections from his cue “Outgunned” in this one.

And you know what? I don’t care.

I don’t care because television composers back in the 90s were under absolutely brutal schedules. I don’t care because, while there are a ton of similarities, this is still different music, performed at a different time, and synced to different scenes. And I don’t care because, under the excellent direction by David Livingston, this is one of, if not the best starship combat sequence in all of Deep Space Nine.

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‘The Die is Cast” is also one of my absolute favorite episodes of the show, not just because of this sequence, but because of how damn big and ballsy it is. And it’s a fantastic showcase for how DS9 absolutely excels at world-building. So many plot threads that have been woven in over the course of the show come together in this two-parter in a way that TNG, for all it’s wonderful qualities, was never really able to do.