While season 1 closed with a look at Bajor's religion, season 2 begins with a dive into its politics. Trek's first three-part tale is a slow burning and thoughtful episode with a lot of moving parts. As with much of early DS9, it's more about intrigue and character rather than explosive storytelling (although that will certainly become a big part of the show too later).
Kira and O'Brien's rescue mission is an enjoyable adventure, and they work surprisingly well together with their various attempts to deceive the Cardassians - O'Brien trying to sell her services is particularly well done and they both play it up perfectly. The POW they resuce, Li Nalas, is a fascinating reluctant hero played very nicely by Twin Peak's Richard Beymer.
What I most appreciate is that there is a sense of DS9 really finding its own identity here and forging ahead with confidence. The father/son moments between Sisko and Jake remain strong and always feel genuine. You could possibly accuse this episode of being a bit flat, but then Frank Langella turns up and is a great mix of charming, smarmy, arrogant and friendly.
The sedate pacing is a far cry from the usual action of TNG (especially when you consider they had just aired the frantic and messy 'Descent' two-parter alongside this), but it allows far more depth to the storytelling. Action junkies will get their fix later, but for now the show's world is being expanded and given life.
Category: action, drama
Kira is acting bold. Kira is posing as a whore. Prisoners look dirty like you would expect prisoners in a prison camp. That's a mature approach. By 90s syndication TV standards and Trek standards that was probably unheard of. DS9 is the only show in the franchise that dared this.
The story is almost a direct continuation of last season's season finale. It's again about Bajoran politics and political instability on Bajor. I like Lil Nalas to start with. A tired and misunderstood hero. Sort of a tragic figure.
The whole episode is also a statement. With its second season DS9 steps into the golden age of television. DS9 embraces serialized story telling. And this episode, first part of three, makes this abundantly clear.
It's this a great episode then? No. It's clearly only the beginning of a longer story. This first episode is well devised. But it's also slow and lacks a dramatic denouement. The highlights are obviously yet to come in the next episodes.
PS: I also like how the episode en passant tells you little stories. Like the story of Jack and his father. Like the story of Quark and his brother. Even if you don't realize this yet, these little stories will lead to some great stories later in the show.
I have this bad habit of expecting "the story of heroes" are lies and this has been true as well.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2022-01-02T19:35:13Z
[8.8/10] To truly believe in something is to fight for it at great risk, in the name of achieving the greater good, even if it comes at a great personal cost. Kira doesn’t know that rescuing a legendary Bajoran resistance will put her out of a job. There’s poetic irony in the fact that the very man she saves is the one who replaces her. But the sting of it gives “Homecoming” pathos, poignance, and a double-meaning. Kira brings Li Nalas home after a decade in a Cardassian prison camp, and she herself is recalled to Bajor after a year about Deep Space Nine.
We’ll have two more episodes to see how she responds to this change, but for the moment, there’s such melancholy glory in Kira succeeding in such a risky mission, finding the fabled hero her people need, only to find that his return leads to her replacement. I am always a fan of stories where the hero gets what they wanted, but with a twist and a cost. This episode more than fits the bill. Given how the final turn here is rooted in Kira’s character and a season’s worth of worldbuilding for the dynamic between the Bajorans, the Cardassians, and the Federation, you cannot help but admire how well the show pulls it off.
It’s a hell of a way to kick off Deep Space Nine’s second season. The episode has everything: a moment in the sun for all the series regulars, a hush-hush mission that skirts the edges of acceptable diplomacy, a dose of solid action in stakes-filled setting, a reflection on the distance between the legendary and the personal, a meaningful glimpse at the vicissitudes of Bajoran politics, a tease of rebellion, and even a touch of how the friction amid these cultural exchanges comes home even for the station’s commander. For a show with a rocky first batch of episodes, the series starts off its second tour of duty with a sure foot and sharp mind.
It’s an impressively well-built season premiere. Having already established the dynamics of the characters and the setting, “Homecoming” can easily get up and running. We know Quark’s connections to the underworld, so him coming into possession of the earring of a prisoner-of-war makes sense. Past episodes have established Kira’s admiration for her people’s resistance fighters and the sense that her people need a unifying figure (see: Kai Opaka), so her desire to break protocol and go into Cardassian space to rescue Li makes sense, particularly in the shadow of a splinter group of activists who are vandalizing the station and taking aim at the Bajoran Provisional Government.
Sisko’s conflicted stance of trying to hold onto unity and decorum while also supporting his Bajoran first officer gives his dilemma over, and inevitable granting of, Kira’s request for a runabout gives it an import. O’Brien’s history with the Cardassians, and past pronouncements about the poor state of their prisoners, explains why he’d volunteer to go along on the Major’s mission. And the preestablished dynamic between Bajor, Cardassia, and the Federation, creates instant political and potentially military stakes if things go wrong, even beyond the immediate threat to Kira and O’Brien.
In short, “Homecoming” plays like a well-oiled machine, deftly setting up personal rationales with why everyone chooses to undertake (or allow) this risky quest, while situating it in the broader context of the station and the diplomatic web it sits within. The nuts and bolts of the rescue are exciting, between the Niners’ ruse to get in and the thrilling escape with moral questions over which prisoners to take and which to leave behind. With future Star Trek showrunners Ira Steven Behr and Jeri Taylor behind the pen, this is as sound, and smartly-built episode of DS9 as you’re likely to find.
What puts it over the top, though, is the way Kira’s success in her chancy mission does not lead to pure victory, but instead, more complications. Some of those hit home for her. The Cardassians, ever crafty, apologize rather than retaliate, making her suspicious rather than reassured. Minister Jaro (Frank f’n Langella!) thanks her as a private citizen for rescuing this folk hero, but warns her as representative of the government that she’s on thin ice. And as I mentioned at the jump, for all the mission’s success, both in convincing her commander that it was worth the risk and in achieving its objective, it may very well cost Kira her commission.
But the biggest complication of all comes in the form of Li Nalas himself. It turns out his great deeds were highly exaggerated, that his grand triumph was an accident followed by puffery, and she’s more ashamed and embarrassed of his stature among his people than proud and ready-to-lead. Deep Space Nine already gave us a taste of the asymmetry between what a person can mean as a symbol for a movement versus who they were in truth in “Dax”. But “Homecoming” deepens those ideas, gives them even more form, by situating them within the broader context of the conflict between the Bajorans and the Cardassians, and how such mythmaking has inspired Li and Kira’s people, and could again.
It takes Sisko talking Li into accepting the role, rather than spurning an exalted place he feels he doesn’t deserve. It turns a laurel into an act of service, with the Commander explaining how as a legend, he can do more good at a time of need, even Li doesn’t feel he’s earned such a place in Bajoran society. The pull to heal, to unify, is particularly acute amid a rash of Bajoran Xenophobia, which is driven home for Sisko when a Bajoran father refuses to let his daughter date Jake, a proscription riddled with subtext given the color of their skin. Sisko understands, after a year holding together this fragile coalition, how much a unifying figure whom everyone admires could strengthen the Bajorans’ bonds, both within and without.
So he succeeds. Kira succeeds. Li returns and accepts his mantle as an honored hero of his people. But the catch is that he’s appointed the new liaison to the Federation and stationed aboard DS9. A reluctant, lucky nobody relents and becomes the inspirational figure his people need after the valiant efforts of two people who now see their own bond broken.
Kira believes in a better future for her people with a leader to bring them together. Sisko believes in a stronger Bajor and greater relations with the interstellar community. But achieving it may sever the partnership affirmed with such conviction in the first season finale, when the things they believe in, the wins they achieve together, come with such a personal cost. That is the poetry of Deep Space Nine, and an encouraging start to the second year of its mission.