3x15 Destiny

[7.3/10] Odo’s not wrong when he says that all of us humanoids have agendas. I’d call them biases instead, but there’s parts of the way we look at the world, the quirks of our experiences and what we want and believe dfeep down, that affect how we interpret things, whether we know it or not.

And one of mine is that I think prophecies and fortune-telling are nonsense. Their “predictions” tend to be vague and untestable enough that they provide no actual guidance and anything can be smushed into the boxes they set out by someone motivated enough. Nevermind the fact that they’re based on hooey to begin with. Another is that I think of Star Trek as a franchise rightfully devoted to the rigor of science, one concerned with sober-minded, intellectual problem-solving and enlightened thinking, rather than one given to superstition or pseudo-scientific junk.

Which is a long way to say “Destiny”, with its focus on the prophecy of a Bajoran Nostradamus and message that the scientists should spend more time countenancing the spiritual, wasn’t my cup of tea, for reasons that aren’t really the episode’s fault. The script is soundly plotted. There’s social and political intrigue in the Federation and the Cardassians working together in an official capacity to try to create a subspace relay to the Gamma Quadrant. There’s stakes in the way of a random comet that threatens to destabilize the wormhole. And there’s a solid decision point for Commander Sisko in whether to go forward with the plan to establish the relay station or heed the warning of a rogue Vedek whose predictions seem to be coming true.

But this sort of story just doesn't appeal to me, especially from Star Trek. The notion of an ancient prophecy that directs the lives of Starfleet officers feels off-brand. And as someone who disclaims them in real life, it’s hard for me to take the notion of prophecy seriously, especially when it’s the animating concept of the episode. To the episode’s credit, it does put viewers like me in the shoes of a skeptic like Commander Sisko, but it leads to a disconnect when Benjamin starts taking the predictions more seriously himself.

Here’s the thing, though. While writing off prophecies in the real world is prudent, in the Star Trek universe, there are plenty of demigods, aliens with incredible powers, and time travelers for that matter. In that context, prophecy is no more ridiculous than warp drive or the Q Continuum. Kira herself points out that, whether they’re prophets or mere “wormhole aliens”, Sisko has firsthand knowledge that they operate and exist in a different temporal plane than our heroes do, so it’s not implausible that they could have foreseen the future and shared those details with those fortunate enough to hear them.

More to the point, while 1990s Trek tended to take a secular humanist bent, one of the laudable things about Deep Space Nine is that it engages with religious beliefs in a committed and interesting way. It may be unusual for the franchise, but not for this show. While Kira’s had regular internal conflicts over her resistance past and establishment present, it’s much rarer for her to have problems resolving her religious beliefs and her duties as a first officer. So I like “Destiny” exploring that, particularly with the dichotomy of Sisko as both her commanding officer and her people’s emissary, even if it feels somewhat disconnected from how Kira’s been used before, and they seem to drop the issue between them roughly halfway through the episode.
But prophecy aside, the episode is a good chance to broaden the show’s ecosystem a bit. It’s nice to meet a Bajoran religious leader considered too out there, to the point of being defrocked. It’s nice meeting some comparatively cosmopolitan Cardassian scientists, who don’t buy into military dogma, dislike their government’s restrictions and home cuisine, and resent and even expose the presence of the Obsidian Order. The Cardassians are arguably the main antagonists of the series to date, but also the main object of the show’s goal to humanize and show that each species, and each individual contains multitudes.

We see it in the cultural exchange between Chief O’Brien and Gilora, one of the Cardassian scientists. The two of them butting heads over Miles’ Starfleet standard adjustments to the Cardassian-built station is an organic and amusing development. Gilora looking down on O’Brien’s work because of her sexism pulls the classic Star Trek trick of exposing the ridiculousness of a position by flipping it from its usual posture, and creates a nice arc when she comes to respect his contributions. And the way she mistakes his outward annoyance with flirting, since that’s the norm on Cardassia, is a little broad but nicely illustrates the bumps in the road when two cultures work together.

The rest of the episode proceeds well enough. The twist that things are going wrong with the relay station not because of fate, but because the third Cardassian “scientist” is actually an Obsidian Order operative trying to sabotage the project and the fragile peace it represents, is a good one. The creative efforts to stop the wild comet from disrupting the wormhole lead to an inventive and exciting plan to guide it through the interstellar bridge via a shuttle pop trapping it in a subspace bubble.

And even when things start going wrong in way that align eerily with the prophecy, I appreciate that Sisko takes the same approach Picard did when encountering time loops or glimpses of the Enterprise’s destruction in the future -- not letting him or his crew second guess themselves, since for all they know, it’s that second guessing that leads to the bad end.

Yet, I’m mixed on the double-fake out of the ending, where it seems like the terrible misfortune the prophesying Vedek warned of was merely the product of run-of-the-mill sabotage, but their success ends up fitting neatly within the prophecy, putting the words the Vedek shared in a new, more positive light. It’s clever writing to have the prediction come true, but not in the way our heroes expected. But it also suggests that there’s merit in these vague prophecies that shouldn’t be fully discounted even by those immersed in critical thinking, which leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, given my own biases.

Still, one interpretation of the episode is that the prophecy itself doesn’t really matter. If it’s fate, there’s no avoiding it anyway, and the language used is so vague that even a Bajoran religious leader steeped in interpretation gets it wrong. So whether or not you’re the emissary, all you can do is make the choices you think are best and follow what guides you personally as well as you can. Maybe those decisions will reflect your own agenda, but if your destiny is sealed anyway, and depends on those choices, then hopefully they’ll still bring you closer toward the light.