Covenant

DVD, DS9 S7 (Covenant) (2)

Gul Dukat needs a fish-slap to the face. What he actually got was what he'd always wanted: Kira jumping on him, the wrong and unreverend 'Master' of ceremonies, right in front of his whole congregation. What exactly was her plan in this instance? To shock the Bajoran cultists into dropping their suicide pills, or perhaps she hadn't entirely thought it through and was acting on instinct about the best way to drive this madman from his wicked scheme. To me, this episode shows like no other that Kira had gone a little soft from her Resistance days. She wasn't at the siege of AR-558 in the previous episode, so we didn't get to see her in soldier mode, and though we'd seen her face off against Romulan Warbirds at the start of the season, that was from the comfort of a padded Captain's chair - the chance to exercise those rusty terrorist skills was an opportunity she really needed to take. So maybe leaping from the balcony to take down the Cardassian fraud was her way of proving to herself she hadn't lost the old action persona of her youth - it's terribly ironic that the last time she leapt at Dukat was to save his life in the past, in 'Wrongs Darker Than Death Or Night,' in the incident where she learns her Mother was a 'comfort woman' to Occupation overseer Dukat, and they appeared to have affection for each other. Kira often seems to be put in the position of being the one to (try to), save her fellow Bajorans from Dukat - this time it's the fifty cult members, including her old Sunday school teacher, Vedek Fala, and in the past it's been Dukat's own daughter whom she promised to avenge by killing him if he touched a hair on her head. Maybe it wasn't Sisko who should have been Emissary to The Prophets, but Kira!

She does a fine job of recalling her terrorist days to escape her cell - who'd have thought of powering up a heater to overload the door mechanism? But she really needed to show she hadn't completely lost her abilities because of the ignominious way she's so easily taken in and taken down. Granted, Fala was an old friend she trusted (the conversation she has with him where he says her problem is she's too stubborn and she replies his is that he's too trusting, sounded a bit like Emperor Palpatine and Luke Skywalker's exchange: 'your overconfidence is your weakness,' 'and your faith in your friends is yours,' but it turned out she had been too trusting, too), but you'd think she'd have had her hackles rise on instinct at dealing with someone that follows the Pah-Wraiths. Yet he was able to trick her into taking a transponder that whisked her up to three light-years away to Empok Nor. Then, when she seizes her chance to escape, as you'd expect, grabbing a Phaser during 'service,' she quickly realises she's underestimated the situation and Dukat's pull with these people. Even so, you wouldn't have thought she'd be bested so easily by a Bajoran double-fist punch to the back when she was the one holding the gun. I can only assume it was the shock of seeing actual Bajorans standing in the line of fire to protect such an evil man as Dukat that had put her off her stride.

Not only is he evil, but he was personally responsible for everything that happened during the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor, public enemy number one. We've even seen him in a rage before Sisko ('Waltz'), pouring his hatred out and admitting he should have massacred every last one of those Bajorans, yet here he is, set up as the self-styled Emissary of The Pah-Wraiths, preaching their 'love' and 'goodness' against all sense, facts and logic, and they swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. They aren't even the down-and-outs of Bajoran society, but apparently intelligent, rational members of a community: teachers, artists, the skilled (we see a guy welding part of the Promenade with a Bajoran Phaser). They have no excuses but that they feel The Prophets turned their back on Bajor. In what way? The Occupation? Didn't those same Prophets raise up an Emissary to set them free from it through the tool of Starfleet and the Federation? They ignore the facts and choose to concentrate only on the biased and devious twisting of reality that Dukat pronounces in favour of the disfavoured evil entities. His biggest argument is one that is probably the most common reason people choose not to believe in God in our society, aside from apathy: suffering. He says The Prophets allowed the Bajoran people to suffer - it's timely that I've been reading CS Lewis' book, 'The Problem of Pain,' an entire book about just this subject, and one those Bajorans should have read rather than swallowing Dukat's lies.

Mind you, the Bajoran faith itself can be a bit confusing. Kira, herself the most faithful of Prophet followers, says some things in this episode that make you wonder if any of the writers had experience of personal faith or were just writing what they imagined about it. For example, early on when Fala visits her in her Quarters on DS9 she says that to him, faith is a journey, and that's what she's always loved about him. That suggests that to other Bajorans, perhaps other Vedeks, it isn't! Does that mean they live in a stagnated faith that never changes? There's also her anti-evangelistic stance: "I've always found that when people try to convince others of their beliefs it's because they're really just trying to convince themselves." So does this mean she keeps her faith only to herself and doesn't share it? That's the suggestion, though it was said with a bit of bite, more as a backlash to being kidnapped and forced to witness this cult and Dukat's work in it as if she'll eventually come around to their side. In her defence she's always been quite a private person, especially when it comes to faith. She has a very strong faith, I don't recall her ever doubting The Prophets, and though she's no theologian, her rightness forces her to go up against those that use religion as a political weapon, such as Kai Winn. She's a fierce person and has fierce loyalty, and you can see it runs through and through, not some casual pastime she partakes in because most Bajorans appear to be that way inclined.

There's also the discussion at the beginning where she's just come from Ranjen Telna's sermon about forgiveness and Odo expresses a wish that he was a believer so he could attend service with her. Ezri and Julian are a bit flippant about it, suggesting there are any number of faiths he could take up, as if in a sweetshop deciding what takes his fancy. Odo even wonders if he might develop faith from having an Orb experience, which Kira quickly knocks down, saying faith comes first. To be fair, faith is supposed to be the hope of things not seen, but in a world where The Prophets have sent a physical manifestation of their presence, something that can be seen and experienced, maybe seeking an Orb vision is a reasonable expectation for the unbeliever? Either way, Odo is really just wishing he could share in every part of Kira's life, because she's obviously not going to be giving up the lifelong beliefs that got her through The Occupation. That's a clear difference between her and the Pah-Wraith cultists - they seem to have lost their faith as good Bajorans because of The Occupation, while Kira went through exactly the same experience and it strengthened hers, so it's an entirely personal approach that changes how each person feels about these things. It's striking that the cult has been around so long (we know it was there during The Occupation because Fala joined at the end), especially when you consider the first time one was ever encountered (at least off of Bajor, perhaps some did explore the Fire Caves and that's how the cult began?), was only two years ago when Keiko O'Brien was possessed by one.

I must say I found the episode slightly better than my expectations had allowed. It's an unsettling episode, disturbing for the fact that the Bajoran equivalent of demons are openly worshipped, Dukat prays to them in one scene, and it's rather unpalatable, except that you know good wins out in the end and the wrongs and total prostration of his form to evil that he'd travel further into as the season progressed, was paid in full by the end. But you have to wonder how these ordinary-seeming Bajorans came under the spell so that even when it's clear that Benyan's (sounds a bit like Bunyan, perhaps a 'The Pilgrim's Progress' reference embedded in there?), baby is half Cardassian, they believe Dukat's story that it's a miraculous sign. Everything we'd ever seen or heard of The Pah-Wraiths shows their evil very clearly. Yes, they're devious and deceptive, but even that shows through. Dukat murdered Jadzia when allowing himself to be used as a vessel by one, but he just says that he regrets his former actions and that it was for the good of the Bajoran people that The Pah-Wraiths come into their own. I still don't know what his ultimate aim was for this group. Was he experimenting, was it, as Kira accused, a remake of his Occupation days with him as head of the station with his Bajoran 'family' around him, loving him as the wise and benevolent leader he sees himself as? What was the end goal, were The Pah-Wraiths genuinely in communion with him, or just watching from afar with interest in this idiot mortal's insistence on getting involved in their struggle against their immortal enemies?

They stay entirely silent throughout the episode, the only time we've had any contact with them is when they've taken over a host, such as Keiko, or Jake in 'The Reckoning.' In those cases they were both fighting the evil within, but powerless to resist, while Dukat deliberately went to the trouble of throwing himself open to be used, so perhaps it leaves an evil desire to keep encountering these creatures. It doesn't help that he was already insane, and though he remains calm and serene most of the time (until his followers turn on him and he snarls back at them, showing once again, if airlocking the girl wasn't enough, that he most certainly had not changed from the man we've always known!), he is twisted, lying to everyone. His prayer of remorse for falling to the temptations of the flesh must have been genuine as he makes it alone with no one to see a performance, but he's just as quick to see that he must wipe out this group when his 'purity' is sure to be questioned. One of the best moments is when he tries to kill Mika and I felt for sure she'd be sucked out into space, but as befits a smaller area, the air is whisked out much quicker and Mika's left to suffocate, Kira coming to her rescue in the nick of time. I don't know if I'm remembering this wrong, but I had the impression previously, that to open the outer airlock you pressed the big red round button on the panel, the one with a schematic of the station on it. Maybe I'm misremembering, or it could be that Dukat had to wire the system up differently for this abandoned station.

One thing I always feel was a little wasted was that setting on Empok Nor. The series has a great tradition of showing us darker and creepier versions of DS9, whether it be this, the sister station, listing and abandoned, the Mirror Universe version (soon to be seen again), the days of hot, smoky Terok Nor at the height of its ore production, or dreams and visions, and comas where characters wander the empty corridors and Promenade of their subconscious. This was the third in the Empok Nor trilogy, following the superb entries of 'Empok Nor' and 'The Magnificent Ferengi,' the first a straight-up action horror, the second a comedic proving ground for the Ferengi's ability to stage a rescue. Setting a cult within its bulkheads was therefore a grand idea. But the group is so concerned with showing themselves as perfectly normal (which also makes them look much stupider from the obvious duper of dupes, Dukat, duping them), going about their simple lives, there's no creepiness beyond their desire to find love from such an unlovely source. There are the heat lamps dotted around the place so that it feels pretty homely, like 'DS9' with a power outage, far from the cold, desolate remains of a station long since deserted. I'm sure when the Dominion was using it briefly they removed all the Cardassian soldier remains that had caused so much trouble for O'Brien and his Engineering team in 'Empok Nor,' but I required something of that to give the episode its cruel, empty atmosphere. Otherwise, it's just Pah-Wraith holiday camp for disillusioned Bajorans!

It was good to get back to some Bajoran religion, something that was part of the series' DNA since the beginning, setting things up for it to figure prominently again by the end. I prefer the war stuff, but a final season should allow time for every part of the series that had come before to have one last hurrah and come full circle, providing satisfaction. I'm not sure it ever did that with Bajoran religion, and certainly not the politics, which was entirely overwritten by the war. I also have to say that I didn't see the point of this episode until I read the entry in 'The DS9 Companion,' that vital tome of all knowledge about the series. The point was to move Dukat towards being Sisko's nemesis by the end of the series, something that was right and proper to do, but not well set up (I never really appreciated Dukat and Winn's stuff together). My feeling is that they lost Dukat somewhat - after they'd played games with his sanity, and done that so well, where could they go with him? He'd become an agent of chaos rather than having his own agency, and in an episode where he had such a large following it's disappointing that he's at his least charming and charismatic. It's because he isn't playing to the people, he really believes he's doing what The Pah-Wraiths want. This makes him a much more basic character and far less interesting than he had been. What was needed was 'Waltz,' but with Kira, where Dukat goes up-the-walls-crazy in front of her. Trouble is, that isn't a revelation to her because she knows him too well. It wasn't exactly a revelation to Sisko either, but he didn't know quite how insane his enemy had become and his life depended on indulging the fantasies, whereas here Kira is never playing along, everything is rational and as it appears, so there's no great dramatic moment to build to.

I fully understand and support the writers' desire to have Dukat in an episode, but they had painted themselves into that corner and made it difficult to use him in an organic and satisfying way. Ultimately, the message of the episode is that Dukat is more dangerous than ever, and did we really need an entire episode to come to a conclusion that we already knew very well? It's one of the times when they dropped the ball, or at least fumbled it a bit, and surprising that it was with one of the most important characters when they'd done so well with so many characters, both main cast and recurring. Vedek Fala is almost the more intriguing character because we know from Kira's past experience with him as her religious educator, that he was a good and rational man of faith. The question is really how he fell so low as to follow the enemies of that faith. His end is also the most interesting as he alone of the cult members takes his pill after Dukat's escape, but it's not clear whether he's saying that he still has faith in The Pah-Wraiths and wants to follow their will and 'go to them' by dying, or whether he's consumed with guilt that he went along with these people and followed a liar like Dukat, and doesn't want to face the music. It looked like an impulse and I had the impression he thought he was still doing what was right and wanted to take the out before anyone had a chance to talk him out of it. He was the most misguided of the lot, so it would be in character for him to take that final leap of doom, and it does leave the episode with some kind of resolution that couldn't have been had otherwise.

It would seem a more 'DS9' option to have seen all the people kill themselves, maybe Kira is able to stop Benyan from feeding the pill to the baby, but everyone else dies except for the midwife and Mika in the Infirmary, then Kira would have to explain what had happened to the distraught girl and it would have made for a more challenging and shocking conclusion, with even more reason to think worse of Dukat. I wrongly thought the group didn't know they were committing suicide and it was all arranged to get rid of them rather than their willing participation, so the matter of fact way they went along with it was the most chilling part of the story. Even then, maybe because of the warm hues of the lighting, the locale never seems unfriendly and nasty, and even though it could be seen as a hellish glow, I'd have preferred the cold blue lighting and deep, dark shadows Empok Nor should be exhibiting in line with its nature. It's good that we get some reminders of recent and past events, such as Kira's Mother's past with Dukat, his murder of Jadzia, and the stabbing of Sisko by a Pah-Wraith follower at the start of the season - Dukat claims the boy was acting on his own, not representing the cult, but almost everything he says is a lie, he is 'DS9's devil, so there's far from any guarantee that was so. The only reason for believing this would be that he wants to hurt Sisko and has the ambition to kill him with his own hands, I suspect. Then again, we don't know that there's only this one branch of the cult: as Fala says, it's been running since long before Dukat came, so he might have been part of another group.

The gentle ribbing of Odo (except he doesn't have ribs), and socialising between Kira and her friends serves to make her kidnapping more shocking following that. 'Star Trek Into Darkness' was famed for its complete and utter disregard for the rules of the Trek Universe, including sharp turns within a warp field, but standing out most was the ability to beam from Earth to Qo'noS and the resultant logic that means starships are essentially no longer necessary if you can do that (sure, there's the need to explore and not just pop to planets, but you get the idea it undercuts sense as well as drama), even if the beaming technology came from future Spock and had apparently been created by an ancient Scotty (introduced in the first Kelvin film), but this episode did long-distance beaming many years before, so why do we accept this and rail at the other? Simply because this is, 1) alien technology - the Dominion invented it, some great power from the Gamma Quadrant, and since we've already heard this season that they can detect cloaked ships, or could for a brief period of time, never to be mentioned again, who knows what they're capable of, 2) it's not quite the same to have a range of three light-years as it is to go from Earth to Qo'noS, and 3) they needed to place a transponder on the transportee as the only way to beam so far. What interested me more was its possibilities as a weapon: if you could fire transponders at people in positions of power, say Sisko, then you'd be able to instantly capture him! We'd even see that exact tactic used to brilliant effect in 'Insurrection' in development at the time, maybe an idea thrown in from this episode? Might be too much of a stretch as I don't know how far along the film was when this was written, although the episode itself aired only a couple of weeks before the release of the film, so maybe not as much of a stretch as Earth to Qo'noS?

Another little nugget, pertinent for our modern times of technology being at the heart of stripping away privacy and the right to it, is the intriguing notion that there was a record of Kira having a visitor, they could track that, but not who that visitor was. We know that people can be pinpointed by their combadge (used to wily effect whenever someone wants to appear to be somewhere they aren't), but presumably the technology could have the capability to track everyone at all times, but doesn't. This suggests to me that Federation society doesn't allow people to be tracked, thereby preserving their rights despite the usefulness of being able to search out a particular person at any given time. Starfleet officers give up this right by wearing a combadge, but the general public, not serving, can still be aboard a Federation facility without being tracked. It would be useful to know that a suspected criminal had come aboard (that's what they pay Odo for… if they pay him), no doubt they could even take it to the genetic level and tailor it to individuals like that, but they choose not to (though I'm sure Odo's extreme need for surveillance makes him wish the Federation didn't operate in this manner). Just a little aside in dialogue can say so much about the attitudes and mores of this optimistic future society. But amidst all that optimism Kira's words still have the ring of truth when she replies to Fala's acceptance of how he 'believes the Pah-Wraiths are the true gods of Bajor, she believes The Prophets are, let's leave it at that,' by saying the only problem with that worldview is we can't both be right: and as shown, the Pah-Wraiths lead to destruction.

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