[8.1/10] I believe in the banality of evil. Saturday morning cartoons (and the occasional blockbuster space movie franchise) teach us to think of malevolent figures cackling and plotting against the forces of good. But the reality is that evil is rarely something that erupts in such direct or colorful terms.
Instead, it’s far more quiet and insidious. It sands you down. It lulls you into a sense of complacency. It conditions you to accept severe injustices because that’s just how things are. It doesn’t burst onto the scene. It creeps into you, steadily and slowly, until you barely realize it’s there at all.
That’s what happens to Kira. The onetime resistance fighter is now the Bajoran liaison to the Dominion. She gets up each morning and smiles in the mirror. She nonchalantly hops onto an elevator full of Cardassians and Jem’Hadar. She walks into Ops and thanks a Cardassian soldier for her coffee, before going about her day. This has become business as usual, to the point that she doesn’t even regard the horror of it anymore.
In a strange way, it puts her in line with the Third Remata’Klan from a Jem’Hadar unit stranded on an abandoned planet in the middle of a dark Nebula. He is, like all the Jem’Hadar, a slave. He is bred to be at the whims of the Founders and the Vorta. And worse yet, when breeding and programming don’t work, there is addiction. He too is a tool of malevolent forces, used to cement their power, and considered somewhere between an expendable resource and a disposable source of spite by those whose orders he must obey.
Both he and Kira are resigned to “the order of things”, to the inviolability of the current situation, to the inexorable inertia of the status quo. Both recognize that things are bad. Both think they’re just doing their jobs. Both believe that it’s not their place, not their time, to change anything. Both get a wake up call. The difference is that only Kira can hear it.
One of Deep Space Nine’s favorite hobby horses in its early years was the “What happened to you, Kira? You used to be cool” episode. Some compatriot from Kira’s past would come out of the woodwork and the show would have the chance to mark her uncomfortable transition from freedom fighter to reluctant part of the establishment. The recurring trope felt a little facile, but also wholesome, as she steadily came to accept that the Federation, and in Sisko, its representative, were Not So Bad:tm: after all.
“Rocks and Shoals” is the dark mirror version of that story. Because now she’s not accepting the well-intentioned Federation “administering” the station on behalf of Bajor. Now she’s a quisling propping up Dominion rule over Terok Nor. She’s batting away Jake’s criticisms of cooperating with the new regime in his guise as a reporter. She’s justifying to herself that her role is to keep Bajor neutral and safe the way Sisko asked. She’s discouraging a Vedek from protesting against the Cardassians lest it result in a crackdown.
And then, the Vedek hangs herself on the promenade in protest.
It is a jaw-dropping moment, one of DS9’s most shocking and heartbreaking. Vedek Yassim believes her religion demands she oppose evil. When told by Kira that any action to thwart or tweak the Cardassians will only harm their cause, she takes the only option made available to her -- taking her own life in the name of standing against such evil. It calls to mind the self-immolating monks who protested the Vietnam War. And it is an undeniable, provocative act that shocks the conscience.
Her act of martyrdom awakens Kira from her agitating slumber, and I love how “Rocks and Shoals” communicates that. Director Michael Vejar repeats the same sequence her part of the episode began with -- a day in the life of Kira Nerys. Only now, everything is different. She can’t look in the mirror with a smile, only disgust. She gazes across Ops at the scaly faces that surround her in quiet horror. There is, in that moment, a new awakening, a sense of “How the hell did I get here?” An epiphany about how circumstance and normalcy allowed the evil to drip drip drip into her heart until she took this state of affairs for granted, unreflectively.
I love that. Her realization mirrors real life moments of recognition, lightning bolts of awareness that suddenly expose what’s been all around us all along. It is a powerful rendition of the epiphany that you are, against all good intentions, a party to evil, and you can’t sit by and tolerate it any longer.
The Third Remata’Klan’s position is comparatively simple. His Vorta is dying. He already feels himself unworthy of becoming First given that he questioned the orders of his leader. He knows the way that the Vorta is using him and his men, but dares not disobey or oppose him. This is the way of things, for good or for ill on this abandoned rock of a planet.
It is, of course, complicated by our heroes being stranded there as well. There’s some good nuts and bolts stakes with that juxtaposition. Dax is injured in an attack, meaning the Starfleet contingent can’t just wait things out. Their comms equipment is busted, so they’re inclined to work with the Vorta who promises them a communicator in exchange for their assistance. And there is the natural tension that emerges from two peoples at war being stranded right next to one another.
The Dominion contingent is led by Keveen, the Vorta, who’s one of the biggest shitheels in Star Trek history. Oh man, I want to just punch the man in the face. He has the smug air of an entitled member of the landed gentry, treating those in his charge as an exhaustible resource and nothing more. The way he’s willing to bargain their lives, treat their well-being as cheap and usable, makes him loathsome in a way that few Star Trek characters achieve.
It plays into one of DS9’s more interesting hobby horses -- the tension between the Jem’Hadar and their masters. There’s a mutual disdain there, played out in multiple episodes, where the Vorta look down on the protectors they barely countenance as sapient beings, and the Jem’Hadar dutifully carry out their order, but look upon the Vorta as masters not worthy of their respect, even if their loyalty is guaranteed.
That’s certainly true of Keveen, who’s willing to sell out his men to save his own skin. He basically orders the Jem’Hadar into a deathtrap, telling Sisko their exact formation so that they can be killed rather than turn feral due to a lack of ketracel white and murder everyone, including him. He effectively orders them into an unfair fight, another sign of the Vorta’s cruelty and disregard.
I love how the episode has Sisko handle it. Despite a debate back and forth (with Garak taking the lethally pragmatic position as usual), Sisko says that they’re at war, and it’s “us or them.” His team is squeamish about wiping out attackers sent to their doom, particularly in service of someone as unctuous as Keveen, but that’s the hand they’ve been dealt.
Except, when push comes to shove, Sisko won’t accept that. I love the fact that Benjamin offers the Third Remata’Klan an alternative, one where they could work together, oppose the Vorta, use the Federation technology to sedate the Jem’Hadar until help arrives. And I love and hate the fact that the Third Remata’Klan is duty-bound to refuse it. He knows that this is a death sentence, but cannot break free from his conditioning or sense that this is how things are. He’ll give his life for that cause, however misguidedly, much as Vedek Yassim did.
It is tragic. One of the greatest choices Deep Space Nine ever made was the decision to turn its fearsome shock troopers into sad and sympathetic figures. The Jem’Hadar are chattel. They have breeding, conditioning, and chemical dependence to keep them in line. Even when they see with open eyes that this is wrong, they’re largely unable to depart from the path. Their masters have won, turning them into compliant slaves the Dominion needs them to be. This is how things are. Even if they want to, even if they know it’s wrong, they can do nothing to stop this.
But Kira can. It should, perhaps, be no grand surprise that Kira could not suppress her freedom fighting ways for too long. And yet, there is something believable in the way she settles into the steady rhythm of a second occupation, only to realize, to her horror, that she’s been perpetuating the very thing that, once upon a time, she fought so hard against. Of course she can stand it no longer once her eyes are open, and a second resistance is in the offing.
It takes an extreme act to provoke that change. Evil is rarely faced head-on, with bright colors and obvious signs. More often it worms its way into our hearts, barely noticed, until we don’t even realize it's there. Then, suddenly, something wakes us up to its insidiousness. For the Third Remata’Klan, it doesn’t matter, all is already, tragically lost in his heart. For Kira, it isn’t too late to change course, to take the risk and do something to oppose evil, like a courageous and committed Vedek did in the halls of the Promenade. And for the rest of us, the jury’s still out.
Wow that's dark. On so many levels. It's hard to uphold your human dignity and integrity in such dire times. If you ever had integrity. This Vorta is one of the most despicable characters in the show and yet he acts absolutely rational. I especially like how the Jem'Hadar are portrayed. In the end, these fierce warriors seemed to be the only ones I feel sorry for. I almost blame the Starfleet officers for their actions even though the Starfleet team acted in self-defense and tried to avoid a bloodshed. But that's nothing the Jem'Hadar were willing to accept. They protected their fealty and ethos and that's the sad consequence. Back on the station, a very similar story unfolds as Kira starts to question whether she's maybe a collaborator instead of the freedom fighter she used to be. Will she keep her integrity?
I wish, they always had that kind of money (and time) to film at such spectacular locations. It's another Californian quarry alright but I'm tired of paper mache caves (ironically there's some of them in this episode too. And I suspect it's the same quarry from the episode where the Cardassian labor camp was or where they conquered the Dominion ship in the first place). The shot with the sinking space ship in the background is great.
It is a great episode about the ethics of warfare and ethics in general.
Review by LeftHandedGuitaristBlockedParent2018-03-19T23:31:24Z
An incredibly serious episode. It's so serious, in fact, that the crew's banter stands out as inauthentic (for example, O'Brien and Nog venting their frustration by saying "damn", and O'Brien telling him to watch his mouth stands out to me as incredibly awkward and jarring, whereas Discovery's controversial use of "fuck" came over as completely natural to me).
This is a powerful and strong episode that deals with the rules of warfare and the respect that can be given to the enemy - and how that can be a mistake. It's also a massive episode for Kira who comes to the realisation that she's collaborating (playing by the wrong rules), and Nana Visitor is simply superb. It feels like a bit of a leap for her character, given how vehemently opposed she was to the Dominion/Cardassian rule in the previous episode, but it's done well.
I don't quite enjoy this one much as the previous episode - the cheesiness of the cave scenes in particular with the injured Dax bug me a bit - but it's hard not to give it a high rating still. Sisko is in full-on leader mode and does an excellent job. I'm also a fan of how well Nog's character has developed by this point, and I'm delighted that Garak is along for all this.
The episode also has one of the best Jem'Hadar characters from the show, and a delightfully slimy Vorta. And I'm impressed that the show re-used its standard quarry location but made it look and feel different to previous episodes.