Deep Space Nine 4x17 "Accession"

rating: ***

the story: Sisko unexpectedly finds a challenger to the role of the Emissary.

what it's all about: The most revolutionary thing Deep Space Nine ever did was include as one of its central elements the idea of religion as something to be embraced rather than dismissed, as it is in virtually every other corner of Star Trek.  In the first episode ("Emissary"), Sisko finds himself identified as the savior of the Bajoran people, the embodiment of their gods, the Prophets (whom Starfleet refers to as "wormhole aliens," since they reside in the wormhole that sits just to the side of the eponymous station).  He immediately chafes at the idea, and it takes him seven seasons, really, to figure out what it really means.

"Accession" is one of the few episodes to tackle the idea headfirst.  In the third season, he's tasked with determining whether or not a prophecy is true in "Destiny," which is the first time he takes Bajor's faith seriously.  In the fifth season, he gets a sense of the mystical nature of the role during "Rapture."  Yet in "Accession," he's forced to decide whether he personally takes the idea seriously. 

The wormhole spits out a Bajoran poet two hundred years after he disappeared.  Anyone who steps out of the past will affect the present, but this is an extreme case, and it's one of the episodes where we really get a sense of what it means to live in Bajoran culture when the poet-cum-Emissary tries to set back the culture two hundred years, basically to what he used to know.  Seeing Kira humbled is an unusual experience, and probably this is the only time we see it played out, but somehow she is, and it's the mark of her evolution as a character that she no longer fights everything, as she did at the start of the series (Voyager's characters actually had a similar arc, but fans always had a hard time with that). 

Meanwhile, O'Brien is reunited with his wife Keiko, who announces that she's pregnant, but as much as he hated the idea of her leaving last season, he's grown comfortable with the freedom he's had to live the bachelor life again, which is what helped solidify his bond with Bashir (the absence of which was what made "Hippocratic Oath" early in the season so jarring).  "Accession" actually marks the beginning of the rest of the series for O'Brien and Bashir, and even Keiko's new willingness to live peacefully at the station, so it's ironic, and clever storytelling juxtaposition, to watch this unfold as Sisko struggles with whether or not it's okay to walk away from his role as the Emissary.  Whereas "Destiny" had him realize the prophecies aren't always what they seem, here he learns that sometimes the truth is exactly what it always seemed.

It's definitely an episode for the thinkers among the fans, which is to say, the truly dedicated Deep Space Nine fans.  Best easter egg for those fans?  An appearance by the warmest Bajoran presence the series ever had, Kai Opaka, who was written out all the way back in the first season.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - Kind of directly smacks the face of Star Trek tradition.
• series - A necessary story in the overall arc of Deep Space Nine.
• character - If the whole season were a crisis of faith, this is the episode where it's dramatized by Sisko.
• essential - Crucial to a deep understanding of a deep series.

notable guest-stars:
Rosalind Chao (Keiko)
Hana Hatae (Molly)
Camille Saviola (Kai Opaka)

Deep Space Nine 2x24 "The Collaborator"

rating: ***

the story: Kira finds herself caught in the middle of Bajoran politics.

what it's all about: "The Collaborator" is basically the Bajoran edition of the Cardassian-centric "Duet" from the first season, Deep Space Nine's first acknowledged classic.  "Collaborator" is a huge step forward from the awkwardness of the Bajoran trilogy that opened the season, a sign of the increased maturity the series experienced during the course of the second season.  It definitively closes out the original Bajoran narrative that had been embodied by Kai Opaka in the series premiere, "Emissary," who was eventually supplanted by Vedek Bareil and the eventual Kai Winn, who are engaged in bitter politics throughout "Collaborator."  Actually, the episode may best be summed up as a commentary on the nastiness of election cycles.

It's a very Deep Space Nine story.  Next Generation had a Klingon saga including similar battles, and on a smaller scale, the battles over Worf's personal honor.  But "Collaborator" ratchets up the stakes by pitting two familiar recurring characters against each other, one who had been portrayed as a good guy all long (Bariel) and the other a bad guy (Winn).  Since it's Bajorans, who tend to be about as lively as your average Vulcan, don't expect to be jazzed by the results.  It's cerebral material, and as with the best of Deep Space Nine, explores moral gray areas, so that you're no longer sure whether good guys are so easy to identify.  It's an episode the series desperately needed, not just another Bajoran problem but one that deepened the species and its status as victims of Cardassian oppression for decades.  Suddenly matters aren't quite so simple.

After this one, Winn's role in the series had been solidified, and she finally becomes one of its great characters, villain or otherwise.  That's reason enough to care, right?

criteria analysis:

• franchise - You don't need to care about the rest of the franchise to like this one.
• series - A big one for the perennial Bajoran problem.
• character - It's Winn who wins.
• essential - By revealing just how delightfully nasty she can really be.

notable guest-stars:
Louise Fletcher (Winn)
Philip Anglim (Bareil)
Camille Saviola (Opaka)

Deep Space Nine 1x13 "Battle Lines"

**

This is another episode where if fate had pushed the series in a few different directions, it would be more significant today.  If you must now, this is the final appearance of the one Bajoran everyone could love.

Introduced in the pilot, Kai Opaka was Sisko's window into the mystic world of his new assignment.  She was an instantly soothing personality, and would no doubt have been a welcome presence for the rest of the series.  Instead, SPOILER ALERT, she dies in this episode and is reborn, but stuck on a peculiar planet for the rest of her life.  

In a way, "Battle Lines" is a startlingly mature effort that betrays the innocence that pervades much of the rest of the season, and a clear indication that life truly will be difficult for Sisko and the rest of the residents of the station and surrounding region.  It is also, in a less generous estimation, an incredibly immature move by a young series, in an episode that barely does the character justice.  In that sense, and in many ways, this is a fairly generic Star Trek episode, the judgment of war, but it's a curious crossroads where I want to give "Battle Lines" due credit, but also temper your expectations.  It could have been better, could have been more profound, as the character of Kai Opaka demanded.  Another way to express my disappointment is that one of the show's best recurring characters is killed off thirteen episodes into the series, and to put that into a specific context, this is a series that was almost as much defined by its recurring as by its main characters, specifically how well we got to know them.  We didn't really get to know Opaka.

Oh, and her successor is Kai Winn, an unintentional (at least to her own thinking) villain, basically her mirror opposite.  Some fans grew tired of Bajoran episodes, too much meditation of politics and religion.  I think that Opaka could have struck a better balance than, say, Vedek Bareil, Kira's doomed love for the first three seasons.  She was Deep Space Nine's Guinan (the bartender from Next Generation), an absolutely moral figure in an ambiguous universe.

Well, perhaps all that makes her fate in "Battle Lines" all the more paradoxically appropriate.  Go ahead and decide for yourself.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Camille Saviola

Memory Alpha summary.

Deep Space Nine 1x1/1x2 "Emissary"

****

There are too many things to recommend about the first episode of Deep Space Nine.  It may be the best pilot in franchise history.

Famously envisioned as the series set on something other than a starship, Deep Space Nine is the first Star Trek incarnation to feature the name of its setting in the title, a trend that continued through the next two creations.  DS9 is, of course, a space station, still controversial a setting, as many sci-fi fans believe the idea was stolen from J. Michael Staczynski's Babylon 5, at that time still waiting for an official launch.  Gene Roddenberry had been briefed on the concept before his death in 1991, but this is the first time the Great Bird of the Galaxy had no direct input on a resulting product in the franchise.  It was truly the dawn of the Rick Berman era.

Anyway, "Emissary" has its roots squarely in the Next Generation "Best of Both Worlds" two-part episode that left a seismic impact on fans.  Benjamin Sisko, serving as first officer of the Saratoga, experiences the Battle of Wolf 359 firsthand, the moment Captain Picard, as semi-assimilated human representative Locutus, leads the Borg in its drive toward Earth and obliterates an entire Starfleet armada along the way.  Sisko's ship is among those lost in the disaster, and while he is able to rescue his young son Jake, he loses his wife Jennifer.  Three years later, he's still brooding over the loss, unable to truly move on, when he's assigned to Deep Space Nine, formerly Terok Nor, a Cardassian station in orbit of Bajor, a planet that has been ravaged for decades and now a protectorate of the Federation, a potential future member, assuming the politics work out.  The Bajorans, however, are just as reluctant about this situation as Sisko, who only wants to resign his post, while the Cardassians try and pretend everything's fine.

Just like, well, Captain Picard, who is the officer assigned to help Sisko make the transition.  Sisko is less than pleased about it.  In fact, he can barely hide his fury.  He blames under no uncertain terms Picard, and can't stand to be in the same room as him.  It's the first time anyone we're supposed to care about has reacted negatively toward Picard, for whom the audience has always had sympathy, possibly because no one we knew had been adversely affected by his experience with the Borg.  Other than, you know, all those ships lost at Wolf 359.

However, Sisko finds himself confronted by Bajor's spiritual leader, Kai Opaka, who says she sees something special in him.  It's probably the first time someone has approached him in three years and see potential in him, and not just a body to be moved around, to occupy space here or there.  Opaka moves him along the path toward discovery of the wormhole, a passage through space that also happens to contain the Prophets, the basis for Bajoran religion.  Except the Prophets are also noncorporeal beings who are interested in rehabilitating Sisko, help him move on from his loss, and move forward, because as Opaka suggested, he has great things to accomplish.  They don't understand the concept of time, or human experience, and while Sisko helps them with that, they help him look beyond these things, too.

It's a profoundly spiritual introduction, and if that had been the only contact with the Prophets, "Emissary" would still be a milestone in franchise lore, the first time a main character is truly challenged to become something greater than they once were, to accept the possibility of their own potential.  In fact, that's what Deep Space Nine is all about, Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future in working order, striving toward perfection, even while everything seems to work against this ambition.  Roddenberry himself liked to believe that humanity would have already reached that point, so all the characters to this point had already come to a basic understanding of themselves and their abilities.

Sisko is surrounded by individuals who have much work to do.  Miles O'Brien, a familiar Next Generation presence but mostly relegated to a transporter operator, suddenly has an entire space station to maintain, and a family to pacify, just like Sisko.  They're mirror images, in many ways.  Major Kira is the angry Bajoran who doesn't believe there's any point to working with Starfleet, but is forced to try.  Jadzia Dax is suddenly a young woman, but the symbiont used to belong to an old man Sisko called friend.  Julian Bashir just earned his medical license, and is looking forward to adventure, naively.  Odo seems most at home, but he's the outsider who doesn't even know who his people are.  Quark is the opportunist who doesn't want this opportunity!

Sisko actually didn't have that much more to do during the first few seasons of the show, so that makes "Emissary" all the more important, setting everything in motion, and it does so in grand fashion.  Seeing that this would be the first time Star Trek stayed in one spot for an extended period of time (seven seasons, in total), it was important to establish that there would be enough interesting things to care about, and if the characters themselves weren't enough, then hopefully the threat of the Cardassians, long established in Next Generation, and the Bajorans, who had suffered under them for many years, and had previously been represented by the popular character Ensign Ro, who was actually supposed to be featured in Deep Space Nine.  Gul Dukat makes his first appearance during "Emissary," and like Sisko would take a long time to develop into the major character he'd become (in fact not even appearing again until the second season).

It is absolutely essential viewing for any Star Trek fan, either as the first episode of Deep Space Nine, or for its profound insights into the human condition.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Marc Alaimo
Aron Eisenberg
Max Grodenchik
Felecia M. Bell
Camille Saviola
J.G. Hertzler
Patrick Stewart

Memory Alpha summary.