3x24 Shakaar

[6.1/10] Actions have consequences. It’s one of my favorite features of Deep Space Nine. Even before the show would become more explicitly serialized, you could count on choices made in one episode to have ripple effects down the line. The Terran resistance movement Bashir and Kira started in the show’s first Mirror Universe episode had blossomed by the time of the second. The Federation’s decision to share intel on The Dominion with the Romulans in exchange for the Defiant’s cloaking technology results in it being funneled through the Tal Shiar to the Obsidian Order. Odo’s bond with Kira and his decision not to stay with the Founders has an impact on him both practical and psychological. These events stay with the characters and the world in a way more than they did on Voyager and even The Next Generation.

The biggest problem with “Shakaar” is that it cuts almost entirely against the guiding principle for DS9. Kai Winn becomes the head of not just the Bajoran religious order, but also its civilian government after the death of the current First Minister. Despite their personal animosity, Winn asks Kira to help with a diplomatic matter for the collective good of their people. The mission would mean asking the leader of Kira’s old resistance cell, the eponymous Shakaar, to give up some fancy farming equipment so another region can develop crops for export and help put Bajor on the map.

At first, I thought this was going to be yet another “What happened to you, Kira? You used to be cool” episode. We saw that with the former Bajoran freedom fighter brought on to DS9. We saw it when she had to clear a Bajoran man off of his land as part of a broader political agreement. “Shakaar” seemed cut from the same cloth. Will Kira do the bidding of a leader she despises in the game of supporting the greater good even though it has an individual cost to someone she cares about?

That tack is pretty tired at this point of the show, but frankly, it would have been preferable to what we got instead. After some minor attempts to convince Shakaar to give up the equipment or otherwise broker a meeting between Winn and him, the Bajoran security forces try to arrest him and Kira decides to join the resistance again. There’s no debate. No weighing what it means to support an old friend versus a government in need of stability. No questioning of her loyalties to her new colleagues on the station versus her old colleagues on Bajor. It’s just boom, bam, suddenly she’s ready to fight the powers that be with barely a thought, something deeply unsatisfying after three years of character development.

But I guess it’s still better than the B-story, which makes the term “slight” seem generous. Chief O’Brien is playing darts and is in “the zone”. That's pretty much it. People get excited about his dominance. Quark starts taking bets on the action. Miles injures his shoulder and loses his stride. But there’s nothing really to it.

There’s no broader point or connection to the A-story. If anything, the comic relief subplot detracts from the dramatic tone Deep Space Nine wants to take with Kira’s story here, since the tones don’t really match. And lord knows, her plot could use the real estate of the inessential B-story to develop her big choices here. When O’Brien tweaked his shoulder, the shtick was so over the top that I thought for sure there was some other layer here. Maybe Miles and Julian were working together to extricate the chief from “the zone” because what used to be a fun hobby had turned into a pressure-filled financial endeavor? But no, it’s just a sitcom-esque does of no-stakes zaniness that serves no real purpose.

It’s the same kind of emptiness that affects Kira’s decision to join Shakaar’s efforts to oppose Kai Winn. Love her or hate her (and I definitely tend toward hate), Winn is the leader of the Bajoran Provisional Government. Kira can seemingly give up her post on the stations for weeks at a time, to take up arms against her own government, and Sisko’s apparently like, “Cool. Just let us know when you’re done!” No big deal. Everyone’s fine again. Doesn’t create an international incident or anything!

Likewise, it’s absurd that the solution to Shakaar being on the run from the Bajoran Security Forces is for him to run for office against the person ordering the pursuit. Ask opposition leaders being attacked by real life national strongmen how much running for office protects them. I do appreciate that Shakaar has a heart-to-heart with the leader of the security forces pursuing him and his people, another former resistance leader (none other than John Dorman, at that!), who jointly decide that fighting each other is not even remotely the same as fighting the Cardassians. But it’s a big leap from “I won’t kill or capture your people” to “All is forgiven by the government that wanted you behind bars hours ago.”

There’s the fig leaf that Winn goes along with this due to Kira’s threat to go public with Winn’s military pursuit of a noteworthy resistance leader over some farming equipment. But frankly, it seems surprising that it hadn't been public already, or that Winn wouldn’t find some way to spin things in her favor with propaganda or other Machievellian tricks, since that's very much her game. The wins just come too easy, and there’s no real consequences for anyone to have to deal with from abandoning their posts and their lives to go on the run in defiance of orders from the top.

Making those monumental choices and playing them out -- what it would cost Kira to side with her old allies over her new colleagues, the ripples of having the first officer of DS9 joining a small rebellion, a military alliance asserting power to challenge a religious leader -- could all be fantastic in terms of the storytelling. But making every decision cheap and effectively costless, for a resistance led by Dr. Crusher’s candle ghost no less, hobbles this one before it can get up and running. This isn’t the last we’ll see of Shakaar, but given this inauspicious start, maybe it should have been.