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nostalgia-tblr · 4 years

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DS9: In The Hands of the Prophets

This starts out as a Keiko episode, but then she isn't in the second half like at all and it becomes a Sisko episode. That's Keiko's narrative importance all over, alas, but again I wonder if she was meant to be a more prominent character than she ended up being? Someone said they had planned to do more with the kids on the station? Miles is in it a lot, including a stunning bit of heteronormativity where he assumes that a younger woman who calls him "nicer than the others" must fancy him. Which to be fair maybe that was her cover story, idk. Neela is clearly going to be Important, she has way too many lines for a background character. And she's in almost every shot that she could reasonably be in, which is neon light that says "IS THE KILLER!!" but it does tell us it's her about 2/3 of the way through which is late enough to avoid her being stopped easily but early enough that it doesn't feel like a Shocking Reveal That Isn't. Anyway for the first act this is a story about teaching Creationism in Kansas, which apparently The Sisko is all for because depending how you look at it evolution is exactly as legit as an alien making the world in a week. Yeah not too sure about that one. I get that it's going for religious toleration but other than the obvious answer that the kids deserve some religious education (you put a school next to Bajor and don't bother teaching the kids anything about comparative religion what?) the issue is not actually resolved by the end we all just pretend it has somehow gone away. But then it wasn't a real argument, it was all staged by Vedek Winn so she can kill Bareil and become the next Kai. I am very here for people using the Federation as a tool in their own politics, because they do it enough to other people. Cough clearly a space empire cough. Also Winn is amazeballs, she's so passive-aggressive that you want to slap her as soon as she opens her mouth. But she's also openly evil and I have to respect that. Yeah okay I too am fascinated by morally-suspect or indeed evil women of a certain age. It's not a kink, it's an ambition. ANYWAY sometimes I wondered if the writers just forgot about the Occupation, because apparently all Bareil wanted to do was grow flowers, and Bajor looks like a garden centre already. Damn that planet recovered fast. I know this is because all Trek planets look the same but for reals it seems like an oversight. Winn hates Sisko because she doesn't know what a Godless Heathen Human would be the Emissary. Luckily this will all be explained in Season 7. Sort of. But for now it begs a few questions. Firstly the Bajoran religion is very ethnocentric so why would she even expect a non-Bajoran to believe a word of it? It's blatantly Space Judaism, not Space Christianity and the former is not a prosletysing religion and as far as I'm aware they generally don't care what anyone else believes as long as you leave them alone while you're doing it. And Creationism is very much a Protestant thing, as a general rule Jews aren't literalists about their scriptures, are they? And it's Christians who go on and on about blasphemy and heresy, because the way to get three religions in one room is to invite two Christians and ask them a question about Jesus. But then Judaism has never been my religion so I could be wrong on that lot, it's just observations from the outside. Now I wonder if there was fear of the Bible Belt the making of this episode, since it tries to go with "your insane bullshit from an old book is every bit as valid as the overwhelming evidence collected by thousands of scientists over centuries of work, yes." This way they can say they approached the issue and came to a nice conclusion where everyone was happy. But I assume Keiko went right back to teaching facts, especially since nobody likes Vedek/Kai Winn. But I digress. Does Winn want to be the Emissary? I seem to recall later she says the Prophets never spoke to her? So she's bitter that Unassailable Proof has been visited upon an unbeliever/alien and she's tried her very best and never felt her gods guiding her? I like that, it's realistical. I thought she was going to try to kill Sisko but I suppose the literal fear of god would stop her trying that. And Ben Sisko means well or he'd have told her "actually the wormhole aliens had no idea there was a planet there and don't care if you worship them or not" but maybe he saw the future retconning there? I'll give this a 4/5 because it was glaringly obvious who the baddy was, but I like that it started out as one story and ended as another. Also it has Kai Winn in, she is an unspeakable bitch and I love her.

#ds9 #deep space nine #ds9 rewatch

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