1x20 In the Hands of the Prophets

[8.2/10] It’s probably not fair to judge an episodic television show on the basis of character development. But if you look at the cast of Deep Space Nine at the end of the show’s first season, there’s not much in the way of difference from where we started.

Commander Sisko had his big arc and change of heart in the series premiere. Dax and Bashir are pretty much the same people as when we first met them. O’Brien’s gotten more shading since his days on the Enterprise, but he hasn’t changed all that much. Odo and Quark’s relationship may have evolved a tad here and there, but they are, more or less, the same now as they were in the first episode. We may know more about these characters through spotlight episodes and big events, but those events haven’t really left a mark on our heroes just yet.

The exception, though, is Kira. When we meet her in “Emissary”, she resents the Federation’s presence. She is a Bajoran hardliner, who hates the Cardassians and doubts her planet’s provisional government. She’s still in the mindset of a resistance fighter.

And yet, by the end, she’s a comfortable, maybe even proud member of the DS9 crew. She accepts being a part of the establishment, not those fighting against it, in “Past Prologue” and “Progress”. She starts to heal from her tumultuous past in “Battle Lines”. She begins to let go of her hate for Cardassians in “Duet”. She is, in meaningful ways, the only character who’s dramatically different at the end of the season finale than she was at the end of the season premiere.

But there’s one last divide to cross -- the one that still exists between the Bajorans and the Federation. Up until now, that had been more of a practical or political one. The Bajorans would insist that Sisko turn over a fugitive, or the Provisional Government and Starfleet would get into a turf war over who has jurisdiction in a certain arena, or whose chain of command and hierarchy took precedence would come to the fore.

Here, however, the divide hits on something deeper: cultural and religious differences. A schism starts to form between the Bajorans and the Federation citizens aboard the station over a specific issue: whether Keiko should teach her students about the wormhole and its inhabitants from a scientific perspective, or whether she should include instruction on the gateway being populated by “the Prophets” within a “celestial temple.”

It’s a stand-in for real life debates on the teaching of evolution vs. creationism in American schools. “In the Hands of the Prophets” finds power in mapping that long-running debate onto its own cultural dispute. How kids learn about the world around them, the values and beliefs that are instilled in them, is always a hot-button issue, so it makes sense that this could be a spark plug for debate and dissension among the group’s living on Deep Space Nine.

But at the same time, it highlights a broader divide between the Federation and the Bajorans. Namely, the Bajorans, a religious people, look askance at the secular humanism which permeates the Federation. At some point, the issue stops being about what’s taught in one school, and starts being about whether the Bajorans can trust these godless fools who would drive themselves into darkness, and whether the Federation can trust these backwards zealots who refuse to listen to scientific fact.

It’s a strong angle to take. Up to this point, the religious differences between the local Bajorans and the presiding Federation haven’t really been an issue. Yet, it makes sense that something so core to the worldview of both communities would be a source of disagreement and even strife. It again mirrors similar strife in the real world, with the same recriminations being exchanged by the U.S. political left and right to this day.

Sisko, of course, takes an ecumenical approach to the whole thing. He’s firm in Starfleet’s benevolent and legitimate purposes in being there, but he proclaims the station open to all philosophies. He gets brusque with Kira over riled up Bajoran officers who’ve called in sick to Ops, but chides his own son for criticizing the Bajorans’ religious beliefs, defending how they’re a matter of interpretation and source of strength for that community. His pitch is constantly one of unity, of mutual respect and appreciation, of a collaborative approach to try to bridge the divide between their two peoples, not separate them further.

That would be a lot easier without Vedek Winn, the orthodox and exacting Bajoran Cardinal who dreams of (and plots toward) becoming Pope. I don’t think it’s a grand spoiler to tell you that this isn’t the last we see of Winn, and that Sisko’s never particularly happy to see her. You can see why; she’s his perfect foil.

She leverages her exalted religious status for personal gain, responds to every challenge with a facade of high-minded condescension and false courtesy, and most importantly, she exists to divide the Bajorans and alienate Starfleet, rather than find common ground to bring them together. Louise Fletcher is marvelous in the role, owning Winn’s unctuousness at every turn, even before the depths of her scheme are made known.

Oh yeah, and there’s a murder mystery afoot! An ensign goes missing and eventually turns up dead, and the answer to who killed him has more to do with the cultural tensions aboard the station than anyone thinks. The whodunnit commits one of the cardinal sins for me with Star Trek -- a mystery where the answer is obvious to the audience much sooner than it is to the characters. Somebody died? Gee, I wonder if it’s Neela, the character who technically appeared in prior episodes, but who gets real attention for the first time here, and is an engineer with the knowhow and access to pull something like this off?

And yet, I really like this story, even viewing Neela as the obvious culprit from the jump. For one thing, the episode does a good job of progressing the investigation in interesting ways, unspooling Chief O’brien’s discoveries on the case before he puts everything together. The culprit may seem obvious, but the how and why of what she did isn’t clear, and Miles piecing it together has juice from that alone.

At the same time, it progresses nicely in parallel with the broader story of the communal schism between Starfleet officers and Bajorans on the station. It’s harder for O’Brien to do his job when his wife’s role on the station is being questioned and even threatened, when he’s being refused service from Bajoran vendors on the ship, and when fellow officers like Kira seem loath to believe that a Bajoran might have been involved.

But the most striking part is the personal angle. He’s friendly with Neela, to the point that Keiko has a (not unfounded, it turns out) fear that Neela might be feeling too friendly back. Their big scene together has a charge to it, on multiple levels.

Neela’s statement that Miles is, effectively, “one of the good ones” because he doesn’t “put on airs” like other Starfleet officers is fascinating. It ties into Miles’ non-com, enlisted man background and working class vibe, and highlights a certain perceived elitism that divides the Federation and Bajor in the same way it divides the United States and many other countries. It’s interesting because Miles sniffs out what Neela’s hinting at and delicately rebuffs it, adding a personal element to this whole thing. And it’s especially compelling to see Neela try to make a move, explicate some of her philosophy, knowing (or at least suspecting) what she’s done, why, and her plan to escape.

It turns out the murder mystery and cutural tensions have a common cause. Winn ginned up a communal fervor over the educational/irreligious fault line between Bajor and the Federation to try to lure her competing (and favored) candidate for Kai, Vederk Bareil to the station as a peacemaker. She’d enlisted Neela to assassinate him, and the cloak and dagger that led to the poor ensign’s death was him being at the wrong place at the wrong time when Neela was messing with the station’s system to ensure she had an escape route.

In truth, it’s a little byzantine. Like a lot of conspiracies on television, a lot has to go right for Vedek Winn in order for her plan to work, in a way that might strain credulity. But it’s well within acceptable storytelling tolerances and willing suspension of disbelief, and Winn’s own supercilious, hypocritical attitude helps sell the cravenness of her actions, which helps you to buy it. There’s something so evil about her callous plot to kill a rival, one who’s a moderate and self-proclaimed friend to Sisko, and drive a wedge between two peoples simply to advance your own prospects.

It doesn’t work, of course (which helps make the scheme not seem too easy). O’Brien sniffs out Neela’s escape route, which forces Winn to convince her to accept a suicide mission in lieu of the original plan. And more to the point, Miles figures out who the culprit is and what she’s done just in time to warn Sisko, who dives to save Bareil from the attack. It’s an exciting moment of television, aided with the tenseness of the slowmotion approach, and the stakes given the terrorist attack that already destoryed the school and the roiling inter-community tensions already tearing the station in twain.

It’s a powerful gesture on Sisko’s part, one that cements the argument he made to Winn earlier in the episode. The members of the Federation are not devils. They are human beings (so to speak), just like Bajorans. Over the past seven months, they’ve worked together to build something, on the Station and for Bajor. The Bajoran officers and their Starfleet counterparts have seen the humanity in one another. They’ve recognized that whatever their cultural differences, they have enough in common to build on, to be partners on, to make a better world together.

It doesn’t get through to Winn, but it does get through to Kira. Let me be frank. Kira kind of sucks here. She supports a zealot for Kai. She implicitly supports the Bajoran officers striking thanks to her rhetoric. And she basically puts the blame on the Federation for all that’s happening. But it also makes sense given where she’s coming from, her own desire to believe, her sense of being less than a year removed from being a ramshackle resistance force to now becoming a full-fledged nation again, and part of the interstellar community.

Those cultural differences aren't going to go away, not at the end of the season or by the end of the series. But Kira comes to an epiphany here, one built on the strength of all the gradual development she’s had over the course of the show’s first season. She may have fantastic arguments with Sisko sometimes, but despite him being part of the Federation, he’s a good man, someone she can work with, someone with whom she can do real good for Bajor. And conversely, the people who share her culture and beliefs may not always have Bajor’s best interests in mind.

In essence, they become partners, not just thrown-together colleagues forced to make nice. And they represent a broader hope for Bajor and the Federation, that they too can become partners, bridge their differences, and help both peoples in the process.

The first season of Deep Space Nine is hit or miss, at best. It doesn’t sink into awfulness nearly as often as the first season of TNG did (or, hot take, the first season of TOS), but for a returning fan, it’s clear the show hadn't found its voice yet. Despite that, it starts strong; it finishes strong, and in between, it has the occasional outing that can rival anything else in Star Trek.

But it’s strongest achievement may very well be the journey that Kira takes over the course of these twenty episodes. So much of the show is rooted in the cultural exchange of Starfleet and Bajor, of humans and Cardassian, of the Alpha Quadrant and the Gamma Quadrant. It delves into the thorny political issues of occupiers being replaced with guardians, and the unease that instills in locals who fought for their independence. No character represents all of these ideas, all of these tensions, and ultimately, all of the shared understanding forged despite them than Kira, the show’s most complicated player, and the signature character of its first year on the air.