An unknown assassin is killing off members of Kira's former Resistance cell one by one, and taunting her with with cryptic messages. She's determined to find out who is responsible and exact revenge... even now, near the end of her surrogate pregnancy.
This episode actually began outside the writing staff, with writer Bryan Fuller. This was the beginning of his association with Star Trek, which would soon see him on the Voyager staff, and much later creating Discovery. This was well before he created Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, or American Gods. He was a fan with an agent, whose submission of an Agatha Christie-style "And Then There Were None" tale started the whole ball rolling. He sold his idea once he responded to the DS9 staff's big note: give us a reason why this Cardassian killer doesn't go after Kira herself. (Her pregnancy and the killer's moral code became that reason.)
Fuller didn't write the script itself; that fell to staff writer Ronald D. Moore. But in many ways, the episode feels like a predecessor of one part of Fuller's later career in particular: his TV series Hannibal. There's murder as a major plot element. A poetic villain with a cultivated moral code. And shocking violence, quite graphic for the time it was made (the transporter death being one of the most gruesome things ever depicted on the series).
There's also a fair amount of visual panache put on it by director Michael Vejar. This was the first time he'd worked on Star Trek since the first season of The Next Generation, but he would work for them a bunch after this, on more than two dozen episodes of Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. He earned that steady work here with a sweeping camera move that lifts up into an unusual overhead angle, long single takes of Nana Visitor delivering two powerful monologues, and stark use of lighting to underscore the themes of the episode title in Kira's confrontation with Silaran Prin.
It's those monologues that are the high points of the episode. Nana Visitor is exceptional in detailing her gratitude for the brave friend who fed information to her Resistance cell, helping the audience invest in a character we really never get to meet. She's better still when she recounts her first mission with the Resistance, and the fear and uncertainty of that experience. It's the counter to what Silaran Prin implies later, that she's a cold-blooded killer with no regard for what she did.
There's a nice emotional arc to the episode as Kira's friends are taken out. The first death is at a bit of a remove, a stylized scene set in the Star Trek caves. The second death shocks us, first with its gore and then with Kira's impassioned speech. Later come the deaths of Furel and Lupaza, and even though we've seen the characters only once before, their loss is really felt.
What's crazy, though, is that we never see Shakaar, the leader of Kira's cell. They barely even talk about him. He's the First Minister of Bajor, might plausibly be an assassination target in light of the pattern here, and no one informs him? Not even to secure the investigative resources he must have available? Ronald D. Moore says that once again, the character was excluded for budgetary reasons. But if you ask me, the fact that the writers didn't even feel it necessary to use him in this story makes it pretty plain that they weren't interested in using him any more, period.
I feel like the ending gets away just a bit. Prin goes through some rather elaborate mental gymnastics to explain why Shakaar is not responsible (and thus not in this episode). And while it's great that Kira rescues herself, not needing the Defiant to come to her rescue, it's a bit silly that some Macguffin about herbs she's been taking for her pregnancy is how she accomplishes it. It's great that Kira doesn't back down against Silaran Prin and apologize for her actions during the war; it was war, and she is not sorry for the things she did. But it's a bit silly that she ends up adopting Prin's poetic manner of speech when "explaining" what happened to her friends.
There's no "B story" to this episode, though other characters get nice little moments sprinkled throughout. Worf ribs Dax about how she got hustled at tongo, and even quotes one of the Rules of Acquisition. (He can learn other cultures!) Nog wields his Ferengi hearing like a superpower to help Kira crack the threatening messages sent by the killer. Odo tries to assure Kira he's on the case, though she's compelled to take matters into her own hands. Mostly, though, this episode is all Kira, all the time. And fortunately, Nana Visitor is good enough that they can do that.
Other observations:
- Early on, Kira talks about how violent one of her Resistance friends used to be, until he found the Prophets and became a Vedek. It does sound like an earnest change, to hear Kira tell it. Still, I feel a bit oogy at the suggestion of someone cloaking violence in religion. It's a grey area worth exploring, though not the focus of this episode.
- The final shot of the episode is a very unusual angle from underneath the Defiant. Effects producer Gary Hutzel didn't set out to make it that way: "I was planning on just doing a standard fly-by for that shot when we ran into some technical problems with the motion control rig. The pan/tilt wasn't operating properly; it was locked off at a downward angle as the camera drove past the ship. I looked at it and said, 'Fine. Sold. We'll shoot that.' It became the shot -- and it looked good. Thank goodness for technical problems."
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