Look, the core of this episode is great. Strong women. Existential questions. Moral dilemma. Not clear whether historic Dukat is pure evil or whether he has a genuine warm side (nah, he's a pig - don't get fooled). Not sure what contemporary Dukat is trying to achieve here and - if his story is true - why he kept this secret until now and why he showed that much interest in adult Kira. Isn't the latter very creepy? Did he secretly observe her growing up in occupied Bajor? Did he become - in his insane mind - some sort of stepdad to Kira? And if so, why did he reconnect with Kira immediately after the occupation ended? If I'm not mistaken he even showed some sort of sexual attraction to adult Kira. That's creepy AF. And - that's not discussed - does that mean that Ziyal is the child of Kira's mother's successor as a mistress? Or did Dukat have multiple mistresses at the same time?
It's also repetitive, Kira reviews the morality of Bajoran behavior during the occupation. She realizes that too often she judges the book by its cover. The lines between morality/loyalty and betrayal/collaboration can be pretty blurred in dire times. Again, that's Dukat (both Dukats) who makes her think about these issues. We had this before. The episode in which Ziyal was rescued wasn't that different to be honest.
What I really don't like: the orb. It feels like cheating. I mean, they always needed some "magic" to travel into the past or to travel to the mirror universe. That's not physics 101. I get this. But the sudden introduction of an "orb of time" doesn't feel right. If it is that easy ... and how does temporal mechanics work here anyway? I mean, that's always the big elephant in the room whenever Star Trek tells time travel stories. But if that's real time travel (and at one point they discuss that Kira's action in the past might pollute the real timeline), what does that mean? Does that mean that Dukat already knew Dukat from 20 years back when time traveling Kira visited her mother? There are all sorts of questions like this. Plus, when you consider this a possibility, how could Kira dare to plant a bomb in Dukat's room. Didn't she think of the consequences? Does she realize what that means? Or - if that's all a fictional orb experience - does that mean that this story could be totally ahistorical? Too many questions are left open.
5/10 for the emotional morality play. The rest is strange.
Still don't like the Major. period.
Oh yippie, another deluded, self righteous Kira episode... We haven't had one of these in a while...
First off, what a great episode title. I know it's taken from classical literature, but it could be some heavy metal thing and it conjures up some great imagery in the mind.
The episode itself is mostly good, almost great due to its thematic and character work - but I struggle to get over the revelation that Dukat was intimately associated with Kira's mother all these years. In fact, it feels like nothing more than a contrivance; why has Dukat never brought this up or even hinted at it in all the years he's known Kira? They've had a lot of adventures and spent all this time together, and this just comes out of the blue. It's like his character is completely re-written after the events of 'Waltz'.
Add to that the convenience of using of the Orb of Time to magically transport back 30 odd years, and too much of the episode just doesn't ring true.
Still, the episode is quite emotionally powerful and develops Kira even further. She's really one of the most interesting and well rounded characters on the show by this point. I also like that the ending is left somewhat open - Kira isn't completely able to forgive her mother for collaborating but is somewhat able to see the reasons behind it. It doesn't come down definitively on either side and lets the audience makes it's own decisions. No easy answers, a regular theme of DS9.
Also, the Bajoran collaborator Basso - what a slimy bastard! Great performance.
It´s an interesting story twist but if it were true, after all everything Kira saw was an orb experience, I wonder why Dukat sat on that information for so long.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2023-11-20T05:17:17Z
[7.7/10] When Rian Johnson and his creative team were writing The Last Jedi, they had a big task ahead of them. As the middle chapter of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, they wanted something to match the famous “I am your father” moment from The Empire Strikes Back, the single line that upended Luke Skywalker’s world and created an electricity blockbuster cinema has arguably continued chasing ever since. To line up their film with that one, Johnson and company didn’t try to find another familial connection that would be even more mind-blowing, but instead, reportedly asked themselves, “What would be the most devastating answer for our protagonist to hear?”
The approach is smart. The impact of the famous reveal from Episode V came from more than a shocking father-son connection; it came from how it forced Luke Skywalker to reevaluate who he was and what he was fighting against. Focusing on that part of the equation, rather than the latest “father's, brother's, nephew's, cousin's, former roommate"-style twists that have all but consumed genre film and television is what allows you to match that one’s power.
Which is what I appreciate about “Wrongs Darker than Night or Death”. The episode introduces some wild revelations about Kira’s mother, some crazy time travel plots, and an unexpected connection between her past and her present. But more than that, it delivers the most devastating possible news for her.
Kira is a fierce resistance fighter. Her mother was a collaborator. Kira loathes Gul Dukat with everything in her. Her mother loved him. Kira fought in part to honor the memory of her mom who died due to Cardassian oppression. Her mother, it turns out, lived for years after on Cardassian largesse.
What that means to Kira, how it changes her worldview, how she balks at the truth, is worth the narrative and continuity shenanigans it takes to get there.
Only barely though. It’s a little convenient that Kira is able to go back in time to see what the real deal with her mother is, but there’s a precedent for it (albeit in the somewhat winking Original Series tribute episode), and you can chalk it up to the “will of the Prophets.”
The bigger problem is that we’ve never really heard Kira mention her mother before, so while the idea that she’s a big part of Kira’s psychological motivation is plausible, it comes out of nowhere and lacks some emotional resonance. Likewise, the idea that Dukat had a relationship with Meru, which perhaps influences his attraction to Kira, isn’t crazy. We’ve seen his preference for Bajoran women, and he’s perverse enough to go after his former lover’s daughter. But it too seems like something that would have come up before now, or at least had hints in that direction, so for it just to be dropped out of nowhere like this is jarring.
That is both a feature and bug, because it’s jarring for Kira too. However contrived the setup is, however much of a “small universe problem” this creates, Kira denying Dukat’s “confession”, but having to see the truth for herself is a strong setup. We are, the Major, skeptical of Dukat’s claim, and a little shocked when it turns out to be true. So the out-of-the-blue suddenness of it all helps put us in Kira’s shoes.
The Orb of Time also puts us in the shoes of those in the throes of the Cardassian Occupation. As with past flashback episodes, it’s intriguing to get a glimpse of what life for Bajorans, and life on the station looked like before the Federation came into town. The scant rations and infighting among Bajoran refugees, young mothers being indiscriminately torn from their family impressed into service as “comfort women”, the beginnings of the ore refinery and work camps and resistance, all paint a picture of living through the occupation we’ve only seen in snippets before. The grimness and cruelty of it stands out, as do the hard choices Bajorans have to make to survive within that oppressive structure.
The most interesting to me is Basso, the quisling Bajoran who collects the women for Dukat and his officers to abuse, stage-manages them as their judge, jury, and executioner, and seems to have no compunction whatsoever about his role. He represents the kind of collaborator Kira loathes, and it’s not hard to see why.
And yet, it’s also not hard to see why Kira’s mother, Meru, ends up accepting her life as Dukat’s companion. It is a privileged life in a sea of oppression. Dukat cuts a faux-benevolent figure and exudes surface-level gallantry, which buttress rationalizations that he’s “not so bad.” Meru has suffered for years. To her mind, resisting wouldn’t change the system; it would only make things worse for her and her family. The combination of an easy life for her, a better life for her children, and the unmovable oppression she lives under makes this the right choice in her eyes.
But it damns her in Kira’s. All Kira sees is someone who could choose to fight who instead chooses to live in luxury. Kira sees through Dukat’s bullshit and knows the horrors he has inflicted and will inflict in the future; but Mira is wooed and convinced by it. Kira sees someone who she believed to be a martyr, dying for the cause, is instead someone who accepted abandoning her family to sidle up to the enemy. The revelation is enough for Kira to try assassinating her own mom and Dukat all at once.
Nevertheless, at the end of the day, she forebears, because she sees Meru crying at a message from Kira’s father about how much this choice has improved their family’s life and how much he misses her. She recognizes the humanity, the fallibility, the mixed emotions in this supposed betrayer, which complicate Kira’s feelings and her choices.
If there is a traditional Kira story in Deep Space Nine beyond “What happened to you, Nerys? You used to be cool,” it’s Kira entering a situation with a black-and-white mentality and learning that there are shades of gray. That idea is in keeping with the broader themes of the series, which seek out the gray areas in supposed Federation nobility and frontier pragmatism.
So it feels right, then, for the purpose of this revelation to be to give Kira a broader perspective. As we learned back in “Necessary Evil”, if there’s one thing Kira hates more than a Cardassian, it’s a collaborator. The Bajorns who betrayed their own people, who gave aid and comfort to the enemy, are in some ways worse than their oppressors in Kira’s eyes.
This jaunt to the past allows her to see that, as always, things are more complicated than that. Kira being Kira, her mind isn’t completely changed. She’s still aghast at her mother, still not sure if she did the right thing by sparing her, still unwavering in her belief that it was wrong. But she also understands, at some level, that her mother did this partly because a life of misery makes a life of pleasures easy to accept, but also partly because it meant a better life for Kira and her siblings. Being away from them was painful. War and occupation breed sacrifices and compromises, not all of them pretty, to help take care of those you love. That is a bitter truth, for us and for Kira, but it speaks to something true and unfortunately real.
In truth, the famous reveal of Empire Strikes Back is a bit contrived as well. George Lucas hadn't intended it when he wrote A New Hope, and if you look closely, it shows. And yet, the moment remains powerful because it changes everything for Luke. He thought he was fighting evil on behalf of the good, avenging the father who died at a villain’s hands. Instead, the man who’s memory he’s fighting for is the same dastard he’s trying to kill now; his mentor lied to him; and his enemy is the one telling him the truth and reaching for connection. It turns his world upside down, in a way that makes him realize the light side and the dark side are not so black and white.
In a way, despite the title, “Wrongs Darker than Night or Death” does the same for Kira. It takes what and whom she thought she was fighting for and shakes her idea of both to the core. It complicates her feelings for a mother whose connection she still feels, but also affects her thinking on what lies in the heart of a collaborator. In short, it expands her perspective, and deepens her understanding of the other players in this game.
I still don’t love the tacked on backstory and retconned connections. But that idea, that reveal of the worst possible thing, that broader perspective and recognition of the tangles and complications of hearts and minds and grave injustices and impossible choices, is Star Trek and Deep Space Nine to a tee. And it puts them both in very good company.