1x14 The Storyteller

[6.8/10] The charitable part of me wants to declare “The Storyteller” a meditation on leadership. The tale of O’Brien and Bashir visiting a Bajoran community is a story of what it takes to inspire a people. The tale of Varis Sul, the young girl forced by bloodline to step in and lead her community at a tender age, is one of what it means to be strong in that position. There’s not a lot of thematic connection between the two plots, but taken broadly, you can see each asking questions about how to guide a community and pursue its best interests.

The less charitable part of me wants to declare that the only thing that unites the A-story and B-story of “The Storyteller” is the fact that each is centered on a good idea, and occasionally rises to the occasion, but often loses the good intentions amid shabby execution.

In the main story (I think? They’re pretty evenly balanced), O’Brien is thrust into becoming an accidental spiritual leader for a group of superstitious Bajorans, when their dying priest unexpectedly appoints him as his successor. There’s some decent comedy there. Colm Meaney is a pro at pulling off the grumpy, workaday everyman vibe. So watching him be polite, but grumbling, as the town luminaries offer him gifts and ask him for blessings and otherwise try to make him take a job he doesn’t want is worth a few laughs.

There’s a threat here too. The high priest role isn’t just a ceremonial one. This village is annually terrorized by some strange cloud demon, and it takes the titular Storyteller to fend it off in the town’s annual ceremonies. I was all ready to chalk this up to a holographic illusion perpetuated by the town elders to keep the populace in line, until the cloud beast unleashed some white energy bursts that did really damage to the village gathering place. O’Brien trying to get to the bottom of this, so he doesn’t have to choose between staying here forever or allowing the town to be decimated is a solid mystery and story engine.

Likewise, Varis Sul’s story of being a teenage girl trying to stand tough and negotiate as an equal with grown adults has plenty of potential as well. It has the right combination of the familiar and the nuusual. If I had a nickel for every time a Starfleet captain had to mediate a dispute between two feuding groups, I could buy all the languor in Quark’s special flask. A dispute between two Bajoran tribes over whether their treaty specifying a river border between them is still valid despite the Cardassians diverting the river has good “handles” as a plot. It’s intuitive and even makes for an intriguing legal question.

But the fact that one of the sides to the dispute is led by a teenager lends it a unique wrinkle, because she has a foot in two worlds. On the one hand, she’s a tough as nails negotiator who feels she has to be firm with her Bajoran counterpart, Sisko, and even Quark in order to be taken seriously given her age. On the other, she’s also inclined to pal around with Jake and Nog, and enjoy the camaraderie of folks she can relate to at the same level without having to put on the Serious Leader:tm: act.

The catch is that the young adult shenanigans are very broad. Jake and Nog falling all over themselves to impress a girl is pretty rote, and Deep Space Nine plays it like an excerpt from Revenge of the Nerds or some similar, 1980s “Gotta impress the pretty girls” comedy. Nog’s flusteredness, his territorialness, his minor rivalry with his best friend over a mutual crush, are all solid beats. But “The Storyteller” plays them to the cheap seats, so they lose whatever force they could have. I want to give DS9 some leeway here. I remember appreciating this shtick when I was a little younger than Jake, so maybe this is a sop to the younger set, even if it scans as corny to adult eyes.

There’s even some strong reveals. The twist that Varis Sul was mainly hanging around with the boys to get a read on Commander Sisko shows her as a smart operator and not just a teenager wanting to hang with fawning young gentlemen desperate to impress her. More than that, she has a change of heart, or at least attitude from the experience, in a way that gives Nog the win. When she’s furrowing her brow over the stalemate from the otherside, Nog suggests it could be an opportunity, if she’s willing to trust her instincts.

And look, the epiphany of “If they want something from us, we could get something in return!” isn’t the most earth-shattering insight in the world. But that, coupled with Varis Sul’s backstory, does move the needle. We learn that she’s so steadfast and stubborn because she’s trying to live up to her father’s legacy. He was known as a tough customer, and she’s understandably concerned with what it takes to maintain that image, to gain the same respect, given her age and inexperience. The delivery of everything here is a little silly and over-the-top, as younger actors as wont to be, but the core concept and payoff here work.

The same can’t really be said for O’Brien and Bashir’s superstitious escapade. They eventually find out that the two sides of the local village used to be in conflict, but the high priests used a chip from another magical Bajoran orb to...manifest their fears and mistrust as the cloud demon, and use their unity and communal spirit to repel it each year.

It’s a little out there even for Star Trek, but there’s actually something there. I like the idea that it takes the High Priest retelling their group story every year to generate the energy to cast away this manifestation of discord and hatred. I always find the concept that histories and communities are built on the stories we tell ourselves utterly fascinating. There’s a powerful metaphor in it taking a charismatic leader, reminding the people where they came from and the power they have as a collective, to avert disaster and keep them united.

The problem is, “The Storyteller” doesn’t drop this info until very late in the episode, so there’s basically no time to explore it or what it means. We just jump from the infodump into Chief O’Brien averting assassination attempts, trying to fill the role and failing, only to give way to the High Priest’s apprentice. It all happens so fast that it seems slight, without the depth or examination necessary to make hay of the idea.

There’s some juice to the notion of the apprentice having failed before, and the dying High Priest concocting this whole scenario to give him the confidence in himself and esteem in the eyes of the people to assume the position. But again, it’s all just so drive-by that it’s hard to take too much away from it.

Worse yet, this episode is the start of the unique friendship between Julian and Miles, which will be one of the lasting elements of DS9. The arc here is supposed to be that Chief O’Brien finds Dr. Bashir annoying and so laments the joint mission, only to find common ground after the shared experience. But we never see them growing closer or finding any type of mutual understanding. It’s just: annoyance, followed by story happening, followed by acceptance, without any of the connective tissue necessary to make that progression work. There’s a better version of what “The Storyteller”’s trying to do here out there somewhere, but this fumbles the ball.

It’s a shame, because Star Trek in general, and Deep Space 9, is well positioned to unpack what the stories we tell ourselves as nations, communities, and individuals mean. Who we trust to be our defenders, what we expect from our tough leaders, how we view ourselves versus how we see one another are all rich veins to explore and test the major characters with. “The Storyteller” skims the surface of these ideas, but in the end, feels more like a simple bedtime story than a rich, epic tale.