The death of the leader of Bajor's provisional government leaves a power vacuum into which Kai Winn strides. Acting as both spiritual and political leader of her people, she seeks to reallocate precious resources for the good of all Bajorans. This includes appropriating farming equipment from a small community that happens to be led by Shakaar, a former hero of the Resistance. Winn recruits Kira, who was in Shakaar's Resistance cell, to persuade him to give up the equipment voluntarily. But Shakaar is more persuasive to Kira that she is to him, and resisting illegitimate power is in their blood. Meanwhile, Chief O'Brien is enjoying a hot streak at the dartboard.
When I say that this story had time to simmer until it was just right, I have to make a notable exception for the B plot of O'Brien's lucky run at darts. If that last sentence of my recap felt like it came out of nowhere, rest assured that the story is no more natural in the episode itself. It really shouldn't even be here; the A plot is quite compelling and could easily have been expanded to fill the surprisingly large amount of screen time the B plot takes.
I suppose there is fun in seeing everyone from Sisko to Dax to a snooty Vulcan (played by veteran character actor Sherman Howard) take on an "in the zone" O'Brien. And it's quintessential Quark to try to make a profit on it. But there's no real point to the story; O'Brien is simply hot until he's not. And there are certainly no meaningful stakes to it. Cutting back and forth between it and Kira's story line is jarring every time.
Fortunately, the Kira story itself is quite engaging. And this, apparently, was the part that took time to iron out. Almost a year earlier, a story had been pitched about a museum on Bajor being protested for its waste of valuable resources. It was a debate on the values of culture vs. survival, but wasn't really working to anyone's satisfaction until staff writer Ronald Moore suggested a way to make the conflict more personal for the main characters: by injecting a power-grabbing Kai Winn into the plot. Conveniently, it was also a way for Kira to really confront Winn over her role in the recent death of Bareil.
Winn is deliciously oily in this episode, once again thanks to a wonderful performance by Louise Fletcher. Winn interrupts Kira's mourning prayers, gets in a veiled dig at how little she knew Bareil, and yet still coerces the Major into helping her. Once she's in power, she's impulsive and easily provoked, embracing the role of autocrat. She's not a master plotter, though. She declares martial law (costing her popularity), seriously overplays her hand against Sisko and the Federation, and ultimately gets outflanked politically by Kira and Shakaar. It's an exciting story arc -- sown with perhaps a touch of cautionary warning for real-world politics. (As Odo observes: the price of giving people choice is that they sometimes make the wrong choice.)
The character of Shakaar was envisioned by the writers to be recurring, so they cast a familiar Trek actor, Duncan Regehr (who had, in the previous season, given his all to the laughably hokey role as Dr. Crusher's sexy candle ghost in The Next Generation's "Sub Rosa"). Though Shakaar was also imagined as a potential romantic interest for Kira in the future, it's their friendship and history in the trenches that plays well here. He's smooth under pressure, level-headed, and has pretty good chemistry with a number of characters from the honorable and pious Furel to the uneasy rival Lenaris. He's certainly a more intriguing presence, right out of the gate, than Bareil was.
The episode was the first to be directed by Deep Space Nine's regular Director of Photography, Jonathan West. His eye for camera placement is clear throughout. Winn and Kira's first scene together is a tense confrontation of extreme closeups, even though the characters sit apart on opposite sides of a table. The final showdown between Shakaar's band and the rival Bajoran forces is a well choreographed mix of shots.
The episode also benefits from some fantastic shooting on location in Bronson Canyon. Establishing shots at Shakaar's farm lend a sense of reality to the place. (More scenes were planned there, but it grew too cold to shoot them at night, so they were finished in a studio instead.) The flight and pursuit sequences near the end, filled out with lots of extras, are among the best non-space action on the show to this point. And if the "Star Trek caves" look a little different this episode, well, that's because they actually filmed this time in a real cave!
Other observations:
- Furel's story of why he hasn't obtained a replacement for his arm is a lovely bit of character building. When you promise your gods your life, and they only take your arm, you should consider it a bargain.
- If medicine is so advanced in the future (and Bashir in particular so skilled), why can't O'Brien's chronically weak shoulder be more effectively healed?
- Staff writer Ronald Moore (who did much of the writing here despite Gordon Dawson's official credit) noted that unlike much of the Klingon language on the show, which was crafted more methodically by linguist Marc Okrand, he invented the Bajoran language heard here -- and basically he just made it up to flow lyrically and loosely feel right in the moment.
- Show runner Ira Steven Behr was a bit critical of this episode, feeling that it ended abruptly and would have been stronger had it not been so pressed for time overall. All the more reason to have junked the pointless O'Brien subplot.
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