5x11 The Darkness and the Light

[7.1/10] I think the corollary to “O’Brien must suffer” is “Kira must reckon with her life as a resistance fighter.” The show’s returned to the idea again and again over the years. And I get why -- it’s a rich vein in the character that’s been there from the jump. Kira struggling with the rough-edges of her past and how they fit with the smooth angles of her present again and again is realistic, since it’s not the type of thing that simply goes away.

But at the same time, there’s only so much juice in that orange. You can only have Kira run into her old Shakar resistance cell buddies and weigh her loyalty to the cause against her duties on the station so many times before it starts to lose impact. Five seasons in, we pretty well know what Kira is about. She’s “borrowed” enough runabouts to demonstrate that. So even her rebellions feel a little predictable, even with the thumb on the scale of her carrying the O’Briens’ baby.

And yet, “The Darkness and the Light” flips the usual dynamic. Because it isn’t about Kira deciding to accept her role as a liaison even if it means giving up some of her rougher methods and street cred from her days as a fighter. It’s not even about her harmonizing her devotion to her old friends with her commitments to her new ones. It is, instead, about how no matter how much Kira has acclimated to and even embraced the structure and the values of the Federation, within her remains the dark heart of a killer that kept her alive for so long, able to be subdued, but never really gone.

That is a cool idea! The problem is that the episode is fine but not terribly compelling until its last seven minutes or so. The plot sees some serial killer steadily picking off members of Kira’s old resistance cell and taunting her with coded messages for each slaying they accomplish. As the bodies start to pile up, and the answers aren’t forthcoming, Kira has to weigh taking matters into her own hands, despite the innocent child in her womb and her own now-somewhat-softer disposition.

The problem is twofold. For one, the mystery itself doesn’t have much in the way of build. And for another, it’s hard to care too much about Kira’s old resistance buddies.

This feels a little like Deep Space Nine doing its best Silence of the Lambs, with a serial killer on the loose. But the slayings aren’t that interesting. One gets killed by a “hunter probe”. The second one’s transporter accident is compellingly gnarly thanks to the production team. (Shades of Sonak from The Motion Picture). More people get killed in remote explosions. Lather, rinse, repeat.

There’s just not much to it. There’s no pattern, no escalation, no sense of us getting closer to uncovering who it is. No cause and effect. No sense that we’re gradually seeing the picture more clearly. We know from the jump the killer is targeting Kira’s old crew, so it’s no surprise when more of them turn up dead. It seems unlikely the show will kill off Kira herself, so there’s not much suspense there either. And finding out details like that the killer used Kira’s own voice on his taunting messages doesn’t add anything to the proceedings. Most of the murders play like the show treading water until the inevitable confrontation.

Likewise, I struggled to care about the members of Kira’s old resistance cell we barely know. I don’t want to blame the writers’ too much for this, because they try. Kira gives us exposition on who the first two victims are, and why their roles were important and meaningful to her. They even bring back Lupaza and Furel, Kira’s old allies whom we met in “Shakaar” a couple seasons ago.

The problem is that there’s an essential disconnect. Yes, these people are meaningful to Kira, and Nana Visitor does her best to sell that. But even for Furel and Lupaza, we’ve hardly seen her interact with them for more than a scene, so it’s tough to convey a visceral sense of dear friends lost in a way that can move the audience. Visitor does her damnedest, with a tear-jerking monologue about her first mission with the two of them, but even the best writerly monologue is no substitute for actually having seen those adventures and caring about the relationships firsthand, because we’re witnessing them rather than hearing about them.

The only thing that gives it any life is the personal tug of war going on inside Kira (and I'm not talking about the baby). I love the idea that she’s pulled in two directions. One is from the old resistance fighter who is loyal to her friends and is drawn to avenge them and stp any more from being killed. The other is the devoted STarfleet officer who has been shown a different way to do things and, not for nothing, is protecting her good friends’ future child. Savvy viewers can guess that eventually Kira will decide to jump into action despite of and because of the circumstances. But still, the inner tension is compelling,, and about the only thing that boosts the otherwise dull mystery. (Save perhaps for Odo, still clearly going above and beyond for Kira, despite his intention from last season to put up an emotional wall between them.)

So she nigh-miraculously picks out the killer from a list of twenty-five names, and he turns out to be a purple-prose speaking ninny spinning painful metaphors about “darkness” and “light” that are too overstylized to pass muster. As a character, Silaran is too silly, with an over-the-top presence and an cartoonish affect that makes it hard to take his dramatically-lit kill room set piece seriously.

Yet, I kind of love what follows. He accuses Kira of being an agent of “darkness”, not because of what side of the war she was on, but because she killed indiscriminately, taking out non-combatants and families to get to her cell’s targets. And in Silaran’s defense, he points out that he goes to great lengths to only kill the guilty, finding elaborate ways to strike only at those who participated in the attack that scarred him and took innocent lives.

And by god, he has a point! The Cardassians have been almost cartoonishly evil antagonists in Star Trek since they appeared in the series. Still, there’s something to be said for a simple cleaner, not a military man, loathing those who attacked him and his fellow civilians to get to a military target, with no regard for who was caught in the crossfire. The framing is nuts, but his perspective is valid.

At the same time, Kira offers a comprehensible rebuke -- that the Cardassians were occupiers and to her, merely stepping onto Bajor was an act of war for people who shouldn’t be there. To her mind, she was fending off invaders, and no Cardassian on her home planet was fully innocent, especially considering the millions of her countrymen who died in the occupation. That doesn’t fully comfort me about the blood on her hands, but it’s plausible as the perspective a former resistance fighter like Kira would have.

The mechanics of what follows are well-set up. The setup and payoff of the killer administering a sedative at Kira’s request, with it established that she’s taking Bajoran herbs that counteract them, is sharp writing. And Kira using Silaran’s own morality against him to set it up is clever on her part.

But it’s also part and parcel with what I take to be the point of the episode -- because it’s also kind of horrifying. After five seasons, we’ve come to see a softer gentler Kira. She’s welcomed Bajor’s admittance to the Federation. She’s become dear friends with the Starfleet officers whom she once viewed as interlopers. She’s fallen in love, more than once. She’s even become a mother, of sorts.

Nevertheless, when the time comes, she still takes out a man with legitimate grievances in cold blood and views herself as fully justified. It’s easy to forget after all that time that Kira was a terrorist, or a freedom fighter, or whatever word you want to use for people who use extreme methods for a cause they believe in. For all she has changed in all that time, the darkness still lurks in Kira. It can be crowded out by the light within her, and by the light she surrounds herself with, but when thrust into those fraught circumstances again, she knows, and we know, it doesn’t go away.

Notable for being Bryan Fuller's first go at writing for Star Trek, I think this is mostly a fine episode. It does seem, however, to be made up more of great moments rather than a cohesive whole. Kira telling Odo about her time in the resistance, and then especially the ending are spectacular scenes. The transporter murder onboard the runabout is surprisingly grisly and the interaction between the main characters feels very genuine through this.

But it has pacing issues, it feels like it takes a long while to really take off. The return of Lupaza and Furel - two characters I never really bought in to, they feel fake - kind of derails things for me, and then just killing them off feels like they never really had any purpose.

Their deaths do propel Kira to doing some very rash things though. The episode brings into light (ha) the truth that Kira Nerys was a terrorist, there's no doubt about that. Since the beginning of the show, there have been numerous attempts to get her to come to terms with the violence she inflicted and make her realise that she may regret past actions, that not all Cardassians are to be hated. Here she is worked up into such a state of grief, fear and rage that she throws everything back into Prin's face and admits gleefully that she killed for a good reason, and no matter who got hurt it was worth it. It feels a bit at odds with what her character has been though these past few years, but it also manages to feel like the real Kira being allowed to say things she's had bottled up. I think it works and it makes for extremely gripping television.

The only thing which didn't ring at all true for me was that she neglects the safety of the baby inside her by rushing off for revenge.