307. In the Hands of the ProphetsFORMULA: Emissary + The Mind's Eye + Rightful Heir
WHY WE LIKE IT: Vedek Winn and the politics of religion.
WHY WE DON'T: Bashir's super-CSI skills. (Really? You can tell all that from a puddle of molten metal?)
REVIEW: A season finale that wraps back to the season premiere while avoiding the standard cliffhanger, In the Hands of the Prophets finally makes mention of Sisko's Emissaryship, and gives us a clue as to why it hasn't really come up (the Bajorans aren't sure of his legitimacy). The episode also gives us a wonderful creation in Louise Fletcher's Vedek Winn, a passive-aggressive ambitious extremist who is far more dangerous than even she appears. Vedek Bareil also appears for the first time as the other Kai candidate, and he's more of a zen master and a progressive than Winn, but ultimately less interesting despite some good background here. Inscrutability has that drawback.
Their introduction and the events leading up to the terrorist bombing of Keiko's school seem to be a Trekkish examination of the creationism vs. evolution debate, complete with Jake as the voice of Reason (in the 18th century sense), but that's turned on its head by Sisko's more balanced approach. He's a community builder, and by necessity a rassembler. He has to bring the two sides together, and effectively, the two sides of himself together as well. DS9 is a metaphor for Sisko's journey. Keiko and Winn are the opposing extremes in the debate. Keiko adamantly atheistic in her approach and Winn fanatically religious. Given the current climate, DS9 may well have been before its time.
The episode goes one better by making Winn's motives self-serving. The cold with which she sends a follower to her death is shocking, and her restrained bitterness at Opaka just that. Winn is as bad as a Cardassian at dissembling. So despite the usual Trek allegory, this is also a story about Bajor, about its relationship to the Federation, and about its politics and faith.
Even the subplot, on the surface about Neela's crush on O'Brien and tangentially about a murder mystery on the station, ties into the main story and is driven by the characters. In the end, there's another weight on Kira's shoulders as her trust is abused, but she does realize they're all in this together. This look into Bajoran affairs has been too long coming, but here, at the end of the first year, it serves as a springboard for what is to come.
LESSON: "Be careful who you share your jumja with." Keiko unwittingly gives us the key to this whole episode.
REWATCHABILITY - High: What DS9 should have been doing all along instead of awkwardly adapting TNG scripts, Hands of the Prophets is a tight thriller with no easy answers and the introduction of one of Trek's most delicious villains.
Comments
It's kind of like what I said yesterday, history has a really bad habit of repeating itself.
Unlike TNG, this episode actually delved into different beliefs without castigating one or the other as necessarily right or wrong. Compare with Picard in "Who Watches the Watchers".