When a small Bajoran village asks for help, O'Brien pilots the runabout to take Bashir there (reluctantly, as he's not keen on spending time with the doctor). But the threat isn't what either man expects. The village spiritual elder, known as the Sirah, is in failing health. The villagers claim that if he dies, no one will be able to tell "the story" that keeps at bay the Dal'Rok, a monster that storms the village for five nights each year. Learning that the creature is in fact real is only their first surprise; the bigger one comes when, just before he dies, the Sirah names O'Brien as his successor. Meanwhile, aboard the station, Sisko hosts a summit between two feuding Bajoran factions. One of the leaders, a stubborn teenager, forges a friendship with Jake and Nog.
I think that much of what makes this episode look "bad" is how is how unenlightened and backwater it makes the Bajorans appear. Star Trek to this point had had only an occasional relationship with religion, and then only to denounce a religious planet-of-the-week as primitive and uncivilized. On this series, "Emissary" made clear that there was both a basis for Bajoran religion (the Prophets are in fact real entities) and benefits to it (it's a source of emotional strength that got the Bajorans through the occupation by the Cardassians). For religion to be an ongoing part of a Star Trek series, these positives would have to be there. This episode marks a regression. As personified by the Dal'Rok, Bajoran religion is still real and is still said to have a benefit, but now seems more dangerous than beneficial. (If you're village is going to be destroyed by something imaginary, it's time to reconsider.) I think this attitude is there because this core story idea came from a Next Generation pitch leftover from its season one that head writer Michael Piller happened to like.
The backwater depiction of the Bajorans infects the B-story too. Sisko must mediate a dispute between two Bajoran factions over what sounds like a rather small strip of land. In the original, pre-wormhole context of the Federation's plans for Bajor -- to groom the planet for Federation membership -- this kind of squabble makes the Bajorans seem too far from ready to ever have bothered. We're told of nothing significant about this land that would contextualize this as an Israeli/Palestinian or Jerusalem-is-holy-to-many-religions type of conflict. It's just a low stakes fight over "just some land." Weirder still is that one of the two factions is led by a young girl. So now, one more ingredient in the "Bajorans are unevolved" stew is that some of them at least have hereditary leaders, even when that means putting a kid in charge?
Now add to all of that the episode completely ignores its most intriguing aspect. We learn that the Dal'Rok was conjured by the villager's original Sirah (with help from a Bajoran Orb fragment) to unite the village around an outside adversary. If you stop to think about it, this is really some serious nationalist, xenophobic stuff. It's almost literally the "Two Minutes Hate" from 1984, gathering everybody together in one place to shout hatred at their common enemy. Maybe it's the times we're living in now, but I really want to see this episode dig into how you undo a hateful tradition like this. I find it shocking that the episode not only doesn't question it, it ends up perpetuating it in the end.
So now that I've sold this episode as thoroughly awful, how am I going to walk it back and tell you it's maybe not that bad? Well, for starters, what we see here of Bajoran society is so inconsistent with what came before (and what would come later), that it's clearly an aberration. That in and of itself is strange and wonderful for Star Trek, which routinely depicts all non-human cultures as monolithic. For Bajor to figure prominently in the life of the series, it also needs to be diverse, and for all its flaws, "The Storyteller" shows there is diversity in Bajoran culture -- a notion that would be almost immediately picked up on and presented far better at the beginning of season two.
Then there's the Jake and Nog aspect of the B-story. It's broad at times, but it continues in what Deep Space Nine has been doing well so far: letting kids be kids. Jake and Nog still figure into the plot, giving the young leader Varis Sul just the advice she needs to solve her problems, but they get into an adolescent rivalry along the way. There's a lot of great subtext in the story here. Nog really likes this girl, but is too uptight and awkward around her to connect. Jake isn't necessarily interested in her in that way, yet is so smooth around her that Nog gets jealous. So Nog comes up with a prank that in his teen-addled mind, will simultaneously impress the girl with its cleverness and take Jake down a peg by making him look foolish. This leads to the first appearance of Odo's bucket, in the actually-pretty-funny oatmeal gag.
But the best part about the episode, the reason not to excise it from Deep Space Nine canon even if you could, is because this where the friendship between Bashir and O'Brien begins. (It's also where the writers' fondness for torturing O'Brien began in its mildest form, an at-least-annual tradition that would yield some great episodes in the future.) The idea to pair Bashir and O'Brien as friends reportedly came from writer Ira Steven Behr, and couldn't have come at a better time. Bashir was the least developed character at this point, boorish by design, and creepy and misogynist by accident. Having O'Brien, the character we've known longest (since he was on Next Generation), warm to Bashir was a great first step in addressing the problems.
The turn happens without compromising anything of what we've seen about Bashir so far. He's still blissfully unmindful of social decorum, demanding his subordinate call him "Julian" and asking him point blank: "Do I annoy you?" (An impossible question to answer.) But then when O'Brien lands in hot water, Bashir does everything you'd expect a good friend to do: he finds great entertainment in O'Brien's struggles and laughs at his expense, while still being there to support and help when it matters and things get really serious.
Other observations:
- Quark has only a small part in this episode, but it's a satisfying one for anyone who's been put off by his boorish behavior to this point: he gets a drink thrown in his face.
- A few episodes back, I mentioned that Rene Auberjonois realized early on that Odo had a soft spot for children. You see that here, when Odo hassles Jake and Nog multiple times throughout the episode, and is clearly having fun doing it.
- Let's face it, if you could throw a revival like the Sirah, complete with the demon cloud descending from the sky, lightning and wind whipping around, and magical "good feelings" lights saving the day, you'd have followers too. I think the costuming and staging of all this is quite deliberate in evoking serious "Moses in The Ten Commandments" vibes.
- The Sirah checks Bashir first before declaring that O'Brien is his successor. The "common man" O'Brien is clearly the right character to build the story around. But what's the in-universe explanation for the Sirah shoving Bashir aside to pick O'Brien? Does he recognize that Julian is so un-humble that the villagers would never even temporarily embrace him? Or is he a batty old racist who wants the guy with lighter skin?
- Cirroc Lofton hit a major growth spurt in the months just between the pilot episode and this one. And unfortunately, it doesn't look like the costume department did the best job tailoring Jake's outfits to keep up.
- I don't know that it's really as funny as I find it to be, but I love how O'Brien begins his telling of the story: "Once upon a time, there was a Dal'Rok."
- Some Deep Space Nine trivia: this is the first episode in which baseball player Buck Bokai is mentioned by name. (Though you can go all the way back to The Next Generation's "The Big Goodbye" for the first reference to him, "a shortstop for the London Kings.")
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