Customer Reviews

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 20: In the Hands of the Prophets [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"In the Hands of the Prophets" is DS9's 1st Season Finale. For those who enjoy DS9's complex plotting and attention to political issues regarding Bajor, this is for you. The show centers around the mysterious death of an ensign and the issue of religious teachings in school enviroments. The show tackles the issue with skill, and manages to link it to the murder investagation in a nice way. This show also marks Kai Winn's first appearance on the series (at this time, Winn is a Vedek), and (I believe) this is also Vedek Bariel's first show. Everyone delievers stand-out performances in a script that really has some relevance to modern times and to the characters. In a nutshell: this is a keeper.

Well, I suppose that's not very mature, but neither is Vedek Winn. Since Kai Opaka's isolation on a desolate planet in the episode "Emissary," there are murmurings across Bajor on who will be the next Kai, the spiritual leader of the people. Vedek Bareil and Vedek Winn are considered to be in a dead heat to be the next Kai. Bareil is young and handsome. Winn (Louise Fletcher) suffered under the Cardassian occupation and helped to unify the people.

She is respectful to Sisko in that she knows many Bajorans believe him to be the Emissary to the Prophets, but he disgusts her. Her whole life, she has sought the Prophets, but they have never spoken to her. Sisko, however, is not even a Bajoran, yet was deemed Emissary after discovering the wormhole - aka The Celestial Temple of the Prophets. Winn is revulsed that the person the Prophets had an audience with doesn't even refer to them as the Prophets but rather the wormhole aliens.

Keiko O'Brien has graduated from Botanist on the Enterprise to school teacher on DS9 and covers many subjects in the small, multi-species classroom - math, science, literature, etc. Kai Winn drops in on a class while Keiko teaches the class about the wormhole. Winn interrupts and belittles Keiko for not teaching that the wormhole is the celestial temple. Keiko is not Bajoran and while she respects their beliefs, she doesn't share them and sticks to a strict secular cirriculum.

Winn is on the war path. She has a condenscending smile and patronizing tone as she behaves as though she's all lovey dovey, but there are poison fangs and a forked tongue behind that smile.

Chief O'Brien has a young Bajoran assistant named Neela that he really likes. She's a quick study and an efficient engineer. Before he can say anything, she's already done what he was about to ask her to do. She confides in him that he's the only person from the Federation to not put on airs with her and treat her with a mutual respect.

There are protests on the station as an Orthodox group visits to investigate the teachings on the station. Kira takes Winn's side, but it's the last time she ever will. Sh believes that there should be two schools, one for Bajoran children and one for everyone else. It seems reasonable enough, but this tends to ruffle feathers. How will Bajorans and the Federation ever see eye to eye if so many things are kept separate. This sends the erroneous message that the Bajorans can't keep their religious beliefs AND be friends of the Federation. Whatever.

A catastrophic explosion in the school sets a completely different tone to the protests. Either one lone nut or organized thugs have committed this act of terrorism and Sisko immediately suspects Winn is involved.

The explosion lures Bareil onto the station in an effort to make peace and to calm the masses, but when an unlikely assassin tries to kill Bareil, more of Winn's sinister plot unravels and Kira is mortified that Winn's politics have superceded her love for Bajor. Power and recognition are all that she now seeks, since she has never had an audience with the prophets. There is intrigue and betrayal - an exciting and important episode that sets the stage for dozens of future episodes.

This is the season-finale, the Borg are busy, the Romulan's are proably playing with their cloaking device and the Dominion haven't even been invented, so instead we get a political story that explores the issues of religion vs. science and Bajor finding a new leader. In hindsight this was an intricate story for DS9 but should've been placed earlier in the first series with the Jem'hadar being introduced as quickly as possibly. Three episodes were to follow that opened season two with an explosion! A good build-up episode but nothing else...

IN THE HANDS OF THE PROPHETS is a solid story featuring power grabs, political intrigue and backstabbing. It's an episode where some people are not quite what they seem, which is often a tired technique, but one that is executed rather well here.

The episode opens with what seems like a standard Star Trek parallel with real-life events. Keiko O'Brien is teaching her students a little bit about local geography; in particular, she's describing the solar system's resident wormhole using scientific terms. This is a problem for the local Bajoran religious leader, who promptly pulls all the Bajoran children out of the classroom and refuses to let them return until O'Brien begins painting the physical phenomena using religious terminology. This, however, is only the beginning of the story. Sisko must try to negotiate the situation as it slowly snowballs into something much larger, potentially affecting all of Bajor.

There's a beautiful sequence near the end that is only partially ruined by the inclusion of a clichéd shot of a slow motion, leaping Sisko yelling "Noooooooo!" Overall, I quite liked this episode, although it does go a tiny bit overboard on the pretentiousness. The plot is carefully crafted, and trying to figure out the loyalties of the secondary characters is indeed a fun game. A good, strong episode to round out Deep Space Nine's first season.

As soon as Louise Fletcher shows up (did she play Nurse Ratchitt?) with her whispering and her hamfisted calls to boycott classes that don't explicitly reference the prophets, this show is a groan-inducing hamfisted "issues" episode that Star Trek writers seem to love and everyone else kind of puts up with (usually with a shrug of "well at least there's no talk of him being white and the left side of his face and black on the right side). You would think that the episode would ease up when the story focuses away from these silly debates that are so obviously RELIGION vs. SCIENCE (ones that only seem to interest Orson Scott Card anyhow) but then it dovetails into an idiotic plot that ensures that Fletcher will be around to whisper and act all self-righteous in future episodes, it becomes practically unforgivable.

The only thing good I can say about this episode is that I didn't see it the first time around so I couldn't lose all faith in this show from the outset.