Just days before the election of Bajor's new Kai, a scandal emerges. Kira is recruited to investigate an incident from the Cardassian occupation, in which a collaborator's intervention led the slaughter of a Bajoran resistance cell. What she learns may change the outcome of the election.
According to staff writer Ira Steven Behr, the team had been working all season toward Bareil becoming the next Kai of Bajor. One story pitch suddenly changed their minds. Gary Holland worked for Paramount, and was in charge of advertising and promotion of Deep Space Nine (for the series' entire seven year run, in fact). He'd had a few brushes over the years with the opportunity to write for television, and was invited in to pitch story ideas to Star Trek. One involved a Bajoran who collaborated with the Cardassians during the Occupation. He was trying to return home, and seemed to be hiding the secret that he had murdered Kira's father. In the end, it would turn out he was covering for his daughter.
According to Behr, this pitched somehow sparked a conversation in the room and a sudden realization: "We don't want Bareil as the Kai." The best way to foster more drama for the show would be to install an adversary, not a friend, as the Bajoran spiritual leader. Holland was offered the chance to flesh out that idea, and then ultimately to write the first draft of the script. According to another staff writer, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, much of Holland's input survived to the final shooting version, "more so than most freelancers."
Among these ideas was the romantic pairing of Kira and Bareil. It was meant to raise the stakes on what would transpire this episode, and does so with mixed results. Nana Visitor's performance is fantastic, as Kira must wrestle with apparent betrayal by the man she's just grown close to. Philip Anglim's performance? Well, it remains hard to know what exactly about Bareil isn't clicking. He's clearly a relaxed and progressive religious figure, but he seems to lack any of the charisma that would suggest he could lead a real movement.
Fortunately, Anglim is just one guest star among several important ones. Camille Saviola returns to play Opaka, albeit only in "Orb vision" form. She was thrilled to learn that her character had had a son and essentially had been a "working mother" while being the spiritual leader of an entire planet. But she also pointed out about the episode's final twist, when Bareil takes the fall to cover for Opaka's actions: "I didn't understand why what I did had to be kept secret, when it was a heroic deed. It was almost like Oskar Schindler: I have sacrificed 40, including my own son, to save 1,200." Hmmm... fair point there.
Louise Fletcher returns as Winn, and is marvelous as always in delivering venomous verbal jousting with an insincere smile. A scene in which she smacks down Kira for failing to show proper respect demonstrates Winn as a credible threat even before her ascension to power. Another scene in which she lobbies Sisko for an endorsement (securing from him a pledge of neutrality) shows her savvy. And in her final scene, when Kira grudgingly greets her as Kai while pointedly maintaining eye contact, Winn glows with triumph. Fletcher twists the knife on our heroes in every scene, making her a delightful villain we want to see more of, because she's so much fun to hate.
It's not just the continuance of an ongoing story here that shows Deep Space Nine is "growing up," it's that they trust that the audience will keep up. There's no "previously on" package at the start of the episode. The episode opens inside an Orb vision, leaving viewers to play catch-up on what's happening. If they haven't watched previous episodes to know who Vedek Bareil is, then they don't even know who they're watching. There's also a lot of trust here that the audience will tune in again next week even when the "bad guy" wins in the end this time, with lasting consequences.
There are also many aspects of this story that remain relevant today. The notion is raised that collaborators did what they did to prevent the Occupation from being even worse. It's an idea we hear a lot today, that people who work for immoral political leaders are doing so to control the leader's worst instincts.
Other observations:
- Quark shows up to give us a sprinkling of comedy in this dark episode. He fills us in on the 285th (and final) Rule of Acquisition: "No good deed ever goes unpunished."
- This episode marks the beginning of Odo's unrequited romantic interest in Kira... and it's all thanks to an acting choice by Rene Auberjonois, in Odo's reaction to Kira confessing her love for Bareil. Gary Holland admitted he was surprised by this moment, and it inspired him in another episode he'd pitch to the show a few seasons later, "Children of Time."
- In "Emissary," Sisko's Orb experience was more like a flashback he could interact with. Here, Bareil's visions are more like the disjointed, non-linear interactions with the Prophets themselves. Is this an inconsistency or an evolution? Perhaps Sisko's interaction with the Orb was different because he's the Emissary? Or because he's human?
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