This has the distinction of being the final "new" DS9 episode I ever saw, as I managed to miss it during its first UK broadcast. I don't think I managed to see it until I got the series on DVD in 2003.
I wasn't missing anything particularly special, though. While the episode does have a compelling story, it's ruined by the fact that the Skrreeans are just incredibly annoying. Even that name is annoying to type. The worst culprit is the late Andrew Koenig as Tumak who is very difficult to enjoy watching and seemingly written to be nothing but an angry pest. Leland Orser is also present, but strangely is not really used at all - I guess this was early in his career.
Another issue is that there is never any proof that Bajor is the planet that the Skrreeans are looking for, and Haneek's reaction is unnecessarily over the top. The alternative they are being offered is better in every way, but some prophecy tells them they need to act like idiots.
But I do quite like the downbeat ending and the fact that Kira's relationship with Haneek is not mended, or even salvageable by the end. It's also interesting to see the universal translator not quite doing its job, and we get another foreboding mention of the Dominion. There's also a great moment for Quark as he defends his nephew, both against the Skrreeans and with Odo.
I do wonder why Bajor didn't allow a small contingent of Skrreeans down as a test of sorts, maybe a couple of thousand to see if they could farm the land and make it work. That would have seemed to be a sensible compromise.
In theory - like in Melora - that's another serious episode with an important topic. In theory, it's also part of the major story arc since it has to do with the Dominion and Bajor. You get an idea that Bajor didn't suddenly turn into a paradise after Cardassians left. And Bajoran's didn't suddenly turn into a benevolent people. This will take time. Only because you were victims in a war doesn't automatically make you sympathetic to the cause of others sharing the same fate. Especially when you're still struggling with the aftermath of an occupation.
But... It's another mediocre episode. These people are just too annoying. Plus, I don't understand the issue. In this franchise, we have encountered countless habitable and yet unpopulated planets in the quadrant. The quadrant is vast and empty. Where's the problem to find a place for them? Is there a law that says, that it must be Bajor? I don't understand why they asked specifically to settle on Bajor. Only because one woman thinks that Bajor is promised to them out something? And if the planet that Sisko proposed isn't suitable they surely could find more alternatives? I mean, I get it: that's the story they want to tell. But I don't buy it. And since most of this is discussed aboard the space station, you don't really learn how this issue is discussed down on Bajor. Thus, this story is strangely disconnected from reality. Why weren't they invited to inspect the supposedly non-arable land for themselves? Why don't we watch the interception of the ship? You will also never hear of them again. This contributes to my feeling that this is a very inconsequential story. Thus, I would not even consider this episode important with regard to the show's main story.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2022-01-27T23:58:16Z
[6.6/10] The moral obligations and practical implications of an influx of refugees is probably too big of an issue to tackle in forty-four minutes. Deep Space Nine tries. It gestures toward the rockier elements of cultural exchange, the push and pull of societal empathy and practical necessity, and the way religious beliefs become tangled up with diplomatic decisions. There are, as in so much of Star Trek, worthwhile ideas at play. But in “Sanctuary”, the series bites off more than it can chew.
A small group of refugees from a people called the Skrreea arrives at the station. Even the Universal Translator has trouble making sense of them at first, but eventually, Kira forms a bond with Haneek, the matriarch of the family, and begins to understand the Skrreea’s plight. They’re fleeing from the oppression of the still-mysterious Dominion, and trying to find a prophesied homeworld. With the ol’ Starfleet promise that they’ll help find a new home to those in need, a call goes out to Haneek’s countrymen to venture, en masse, to DS9 as a waystation on their way to a new place they can call their own.
The smartest thing “Sanctuary” does is make Kira our perspective character through all of this. The other major players factor in, but Kira ends up being Haneek’s confidante, and the familiar face this runs through. We can empathize with the way she wants to help these people but initially struggles to communicate with them. We can approve of the way she encourages Haneek to be a leader to her people, despite being a “humble farmer”, in view of Kira’s own unlikely path from resistance fighter to diplomatic liaison. And we can feel for her when she’s torn between sticking with what she believes is right for her people, and the hurt her government’s decision causes for the Skrreea and the damage it does to her budding friendship with Haneek.
There’s basically two big questions at the heart of “Sanctuary”: what moral benefits and cultural friction occurs when you welcome those in need, and what happens when their solution to that need means joining you?
The first part is well-intentioned, but broad. Odo complains about people running on the promenade. Dr. Bashir is taken aback by the Skrreea’s women-led society where men are discussed in patronizing terms. Kira blanches a bit at how Haneek seems to have multiple concubines. But when it comes to adjusting to an unknown people with different practices arriving, the bits tend to be low-stakes or minor, and the Starfleet officers’ response is commensurate with that.
Instead, the episode pawns off the xenophobia on Quark and Nog, which frankly feels like a cop out. It’s Nog who gets into contretemps with Haneek’s son over his smell. It’s Quark who complains about them leaving flakes around the station and never buying anything. The show essentially outsources any major friction and objection to the series’ default unenlightened characters, which makes it a lot easier to just point and go “That’s bad” rather than reckoning with the way even well-intentioned folks can suddenly find themselves with a case of NIMBYism and prejudices when helping those in need requires their personal sacrifice and accommodation. The point here is good, but the illustration of it soon becomes too easy.
Still, maybe the answer to both complaints is the bigger conflict in all of this -- Haneek and the Skrreea eventually decide that their fabled homeworld is actually Bajor, and ask to be resettled in an uninhabited continent there. That’s unacceptable to the Bajoran government and, more importantly, unacceptable to Kira.
I appreciate the moral gray area of that. We get some dull interludes with a Bajoran musician, but they serve a purpose -- to show that the Bajorans and the Skrreea are kindred spirits. They both know what it’s like to be refugees, to have a diaspora, to be oppressed by bigger forces. The musician empathizes with the plight of these wanderers.
But it’s still not enough, or at least, not enough for Bajor to let the Skrreea become their neighbors. There’s valid reasons for it: insufficient resources, questionable success in an inhospitable region, obligations to render aid if things go south. It’s all the more reasonable to reject the Skrreea’s request because the Federation’s found a strong alternative planet, one that would suit the Skrreea in every respect but for the fact that they’ve decided Bajor is the fabled homeland their religion promised, not this other, perfectly viable option.
You don’t have to go too far to see real life examples of peoples offered alternative places to settle and keeping their sights on a different locale that aligns with their ancestral and religious beliefs. Who and what the Bajorans stand-in for shifts on an episode-to-episode basis, but there’s something powerful in Haneek declaring that her people are farmers who can make anywhere bloom, and in her recriminations toward the Bajorans, Kira especially, that they’ve become the thing they fought so hard against.
I wish the episode spent more time plumbing the depths of that conflict instead of sidetracking things with cartoonish “fish out of water” interludes with the Skrreea before the translator kicks in, and bog standard “They’re different from us, which means they can’t be trusted” friction between the refugees and the Ferengis aboard DS9. We’re supposed to find it tragic when Haneek’s son dies in a foolish attempt to get to Bajor, but we barely know the kid outside of caricatured scuffles with Nog and Quark, and the dispute between the Skrreea and the Bajorans over the relocation decision hasn’t had enough time to breathe.
It would be a while before Deep Space Nine would embrace full serialization, and it’s a shame for stories like this one. If you could take time to show the gradual building of tension between the refugees and the DS9 regulars, more deliberation and debate among the Bajorans and the Skrreea as to the fate of their two peoples, and greater space for the friendship between Kira and Haneek to develop, you could really do something with this premise.
But as is, “Sanctuary” is a greatest hits of the cultural clashes and moral conundrums that come with resettlement. There’s an admirable ambiguity to it all, the sense in which an “enlightened society” will only go so far when it comes to looking out for others when they have their own concerns, and where both sides have their fair self-justifications and grievances. So much of it, though, is surface level and broad, without the depth and realness that could come from devoting more time to such knotty, ethically complex issues.