“This is our world, the world of the Information age”: In the Hands of the Prophets

In his Network Society trilogy, sociologist and Neo-Marxist Manuel Castells argues (among a great deal other things) that the titular concept, referring to the sociocultural, political and socioeconomic restructuring of the world and its methods of production through globalization and information technology, will inevitably, and perhaps ironically, lead to an increase in fundamentalism and violence beget from it. The argument goes that, far from opening up their eyes to a literal new world of possibility, those inclined towards a reactionary fundamentalist movement will, when exposed to new ways of thinking through globalization, instead dig their heels in even further and violently lash out against a perceived threat to their way of life.

Writing in 1998, and again in 2010, Castells seems ahead of his time, and I've often thought he got a beat on the direction the geopolitical climate was going well before it became evident to all of us. Living as we do in an age where it seems the world is poised on the brink of war between various assorted fundamentalist terrorist organisations and equally reactionary state governments, Castells seems downright prescient. And, airing in 1993, so does “In the Hands of the Prophets”: For its season finale, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine seems to have suffered the same fate as so much other science fiction before it, unwittingly predicting the future's worst case scenario through cautious rumination on humanity's worst impulses.

Writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe insists that “In the Hands of the Prophets” isn't so much a condemnation of fundamentalism as much as it is a criticism of people who feel the need to impose their beliefs on others. Wolfe believes that anyone has a right to believe anything, so long as they don't force anyone else to hold to the same beliefs and that this is ultimately the angle he was going for. When I was younger, I found this to be a deeply profound truism, though in retrospect the sentiment seems a bit shallower than would perhaps be desirable...For one thing I find it difficult to see how you can have one critique without the other: Fundamentalism by definition demands that its adherents hold to it without question, and the very reason it's reactionary is specifically because it's convinced it's the one universal truth that everyone needs to be converted to, by force if necessary. A fundamentalism that retreats back into its own insularity to avoid contact with other ways of thought is not the fundamentalism we see manifesting in the world as a result of globalization and the network society, and it's not the fundamentalism of Vedek Winn and her orthodox Bajoran terrorists.

Where I do see in Wolfe's interpretation of his work, and especially in Commander Sisko's position all throughout the episode, is a statement of a kind of anarchist ideal: “My philosophy is that there is room on this station for every philosophy”. Or perhaps “A utopia is a framework for utopias”, if you prefer. This is the most basic form of utopian anarchist thought-The idea that, without statism or any other kind of centralized or structural hierarchy (that is, without someone telling us what to do and what to believe), everyone's personal beliefs would be and should be respected. Commander Sisko, as he has done since the beginning of the series, is also representing globalization (or the equivalent outer space term) and cosmopolitanism here, by stressing how beneficial exposing oneself to other viewpoints and other ways of life can be. This is most explicit in the scene with Jake, and is of course also the central theme in the episode's conflict. And yet so is Vedek Winn, because according to Castells we cannot have globalization and networked societies without also having fundamentalism and fundamentalist violence.

And so “In the Hands of the Prophets” reveals the dark dilemma at the heart of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It is good to voyage and to make connections with people all over the world, and it is good to look for discourse and commonality with all life. However, this is not a process the ego accepts easily. At a spiritual level this is the process by which we discover our birthright as life in the universe, but at a political level this can and does cause short-term trauma and disaster. Just because you have purged the ego and moved beyond it at an individual level does not necessarily mean the reflection in the larger world is always going to be an exact one, and the best you can strive for is to serve as a role model to others struggling with the same process.

It's something Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has always subconsciously been aware of as a reality it will be forced to ultimately confront (indeed, one could argue it was even foreshadowed as early as “The Nagus”, with Ben's warning to Jake that not every viewpoint is going to be compatible with his, mirroring the similar conversation between father and son here), and it's a perfect companion piece to Star Trek: The Next Generation's season finale “Descent”. That episode deals with the rhetoric and trappings of fascism, while “In the Hands of the Prophets” examines the root cause and material consequences of fundamentalism. Both of which are born, of course, from a similar place: A reactionary perceived threat to an imagined conservative utopia. Though the tactics of fragmented cell-based terrorism and jack-booted fascist dictatorships may be superficially very different, intellectual speaking they both share strikingly similar origins. “In the Hands of the Prophets” gives us the charismatic (almost Osama bin Laden-esque in hindsight, though her order was perhaps ironically enough based on Catholicism) Vedek Winn while “Descent” gives us Lore in his final form, crazed fuhrer of the Borg. And recall “Descent” also gives us Admiral Alynna Nechayev, whose own fascist rhetoric belies the Federation's true nature.

Alan Moore says the global mind operates on a spectrum between fascism and anarchy. And now the Star Trek universe, much like the real world, is poised on a precipice where it must decide upon which side it's going to fall.

In terms of its production, “In the Hands of the Prophets” continues Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's recent commitment towards delivering first class dramatic performances. Though perhaps coming up a bit short in comparison with “Duet”, it's trying remarkably and consciously hard and if it comes up short it's only because it has to follow “Duet”. Lousie Fletcher and Philp Anglim are both first rate grabs and commit themselves with wild abandon. Fletcher most famously and iconically, whose multifaceted performance (again, recursive) of a religious zealot whose fire and brimstone condemnation of unbelieving pagan infidels is secretly trying to mask her true, very materialistcially political ambitions to consolidate power. Vedek Winn is already one of the greatest villains in Star Trek history, quite possibly the greatest, and her Machiavellian appeal to reactionary Bajoran evangelicals to further her own influence can be easily read as a metaphor for too many political leaders and movements throughout modern history to mention. yet Anglim's Vedek Bareil must not be overlooked, his dignity and quiet strength of leadership serving as a potent contrast to his own bid for political power.

The first/sixth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has been its creative peak, and its ended on a story that anyone would be fully within their rights to dub the greatest in the entire franchise. But while the show's true purpose at long last revealed to it, so too have the challenges it will have to face on the path towards living up to that potential.

The final battle for the soul of the universe is about to begin.

“We who are without kings”: Duet

There are classics, and then there are classics.

“Duet” needs no introduction. Even those who would be inclined to slag off Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's first season, either on its own merits or due to some rule of thumb about first seasons, readily admit that this is one of the very best episodes in the entire series. Any Star Trek fan worth their salt is going to go one step beyond and will likely posit “Duet” as one of the very best episodes in the *entire Star Trek franchise*. I'm not about to rock the boat on this one, not this time. “Duet” is absolutely superb.

The biggest reason why this episode is so phenomenally successful is that it's completely unafraid to do something that Star Trek in general, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in particular, can do effortlessly well so long as it's given the chance. “Duet” is a bottle show, one of many commissioned at the back end of the season to make up for the ludicrously expensive and overbudget episodes from earlier on in the year (c.f. “Emissary”, “Move Along Home” and “The Storyteller”): No new sets, no major effects shots to speak of and only a couple of guest stars, which is frankly heresy for US television sci-fi at this point in time. And it absolutely doesn't need any effects shots or fancy effects to be one of the most chillingly gripping and powerful things ever. 80% of “Duet” is held together by nothing more then Nana Visitor and Harris Yulin talking to each other, and that is absolutely all this episode needs. Is there any joint performance in Star Trek that's even remotely comparable to the show they put on here? I submit to you there may well not be.

We of course have to single Nana Visitor out here. Two weeks in a row she's gotten some pretty unprecedented showcase episodes for her range, which is is two more than anyone who wasn't named Patrick Stewart or Brent Spiner got at this point in the game six years ago. Nana also got “Progress” and “Past Prologue” to herself earlier on in the year, so things are already looking great for Kira Nerys. That's a great indication of how quickly Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has attained a level of egalitarianism in comparison to Star Trek: The Next Generation: Although there are still a few characters this team struggles with (*ahem* Jadzia Dax), this is still a great sign. Again though, this is no indictment of The Next Generation, but rather a regret that really nobody who's worked on it (*including* this team, who have obviously proven themselves fully capable on this side of the lot) ever got comfortable enough with those characters to afford them the same treatment. But either way, “Duet” is in a class of its own for Visitor: None of her previous showcases are on this level and, while some will come close, none of them really ever will be again. Visitor is captivating, poignant, emotive and human, her power here absolutely unparalleled.

Except, of course, perhaps for Harris Yulin. It should say something that he's as much remembered as an essential component of “Duet”'s success as Nana Visitor is. It takes an incredible actor to stand up to, let alone match, the passion Visitor is pulling from in every single scene, and Yulin completely delivers. This story wouldn't be anywhere near as perfect as it is had he not been able to. In Yulin's Aamin Marritza we see every single facet of imperialist modernity's dehumanizing weight conveyed in the single portrait of a man who feels his culture heavily and painfully on every aspect of his life. And that's the titular duet: Both Kira and Marritza are individuals whose lives have been badly damaged by the forces of modernity. Angry and guilt-ridden, they're both looking for answers and someone to blame, because otherwise they feel helpless and voiceless. And there's that theme of performativity again, because what is Marritza doing if not improvising a performance with Kira through the recursive artifice of the role of Gul Darhe'el? and who is Gul Darhe'el but a man who became something larger than life in two very different ways for two very different groups of people?

And though they necessarily must play a supporting role to Visitor and Yulin, it must be noted how formidable the rest of the cast is, as strong as they've ever been. Avery Brooks and Sidding el Fadil are engaging to watch as they play Commander Sisko and Doctor Bashir progressively piece together the mystery alongside Kira. Brooks even gets to act alongside Mark Alaimo's Gul Dukat, whose intimidating and powerful one-scene wonder relating the funeral of Gul Darhe'el in the capital city of Cardassia Prime is as memorable as anything else in the story. But who stands out to me the most is of course Terry Farrell's Jadzia Dax, sensing Kira's confusion and anger and coming to visit her at the most beautiful spot on the station. This entire scene, where Dax asks Kira “what [she's] looking for”, and Kira confesses to her that she wants Marritza to be Darhe'el so that he can embody the sins of Gallitep, is so beautifully oversignified, so loaded with meaning from beginning to end and such a perfect demonstration of the relationship these two women have with each other. It's yet another in a long line of brilliant scenes for Kira, but for simply being there and offering wisdom, comfort, support and guidance to a friend in pain, it may well be Dax's greatest moment on the series to date.

And yet in spite of how singular “Duet” feels, it's something that could only have happened now. This cast, though always civil and friendly, lacked the instant kinship and intimacy of the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast and needed a year or so together to get acquainted with themselves and their roles. Only now could the scenes in “Duet” between Kira, Sisko, Odo and Dax really work on the level they needed to. In the history of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine “Duet” straddles the line between the show's more diffuse identity-mysticism of its first season and the gritter politics of its second and marks the point at which one form begins to turn into the other (and indeed, the changeover is complete in the very next episode). And we needed a show this comfortable with mercurial performativity, associative narrative and pataphor honed through six years of experimentation to be able to arrive at something so structurally flawless and unmatched in its elegance.

As such this is a very liminal and very powerful place to be, and “Duet” embodies the very best of both incarnations. And as a result of coming here, “Duet” is perfect, definitive and defining Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This is the first moment where the show is truly able to be this peerless and this holistically iconic, and also the last. The material process of history is even now making it so this is one solitary moment in time that can never, ever be repeated in this state of being. We have well and truly peaked: In “Duet”, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has quite possibly just given us not just its own finest hour, but that of all of Star Trek itself. A fantasy world brought to life through one set, and a human tragedy of utopianism cast against it as a backdrop. A science fiction television play that, through sheer accident, has transcended itself and its own limitations to become something greater than the sum of its parts was ever designed, intended or meant to be.

Here, in the wilderness, On the Edge of the Final Frontier, something magical has happened. The mission complete, this congress a memory, its intertwined fate and destiny now lies with us, and within us.

“All the world's a stage”: Dramatis Personae

An often overlooked entry from the first season, “Dramatis Personae” was always one of my favourite episodes to think about, even if this time around I found it a little difficult to actually watch. As is increasingly the case, the reason for this is not so much due to the quality of the piece itself as much as the fact it's dealing with televisual storytelling norms that I find myself less and less inclined to watch as I get older.

The title says it all: “Dramatis Personae” is an exploration of performative themes, which on the one hand is nothing new, but on the other this episode is more textually overt about it than most. Writer Joe Menosky's original idea was inspired by his observation that people tend to follow a kind of socially approved (and very, very stock) script whenever major life events happen, and there seem to be a very slight number of scripts generally available. This means that, no matter how different and unique the individual circumstances are, absolutely everyone's story about, for example, falling in love is going to sound exactly the fucking same. Menosky saw this as a kind of voluntary self-imprisonment within a very bad pulp fiction play, and he was interested in exploring what that was like and why it happened. In a Star Trek context, this theme took the form of a telepathic matrix that was transmitted like a a virus.

For my money, this is a genius concept and a perfect fit for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. As a kind of science fiction urban community, the show offers a great setting to explore how this manifests on the level of populations and, even though this episode doesn't end up taking the approach that “Babel” did, dealing with a disease outbreak is a solid plot to throw at a team of scientists and administrators working in a metropolitan environment. The handling of performativity itself “Dramatis Personae” does mark an interesting evolution from the way it's been handled in the past: On Star Trek: The Next Generation, much of the performative facade comes from the cast themselves looking for room to play around with the roles they've been given, although at this stage the show is finally beginning to fully plumb the recesses of its sham theatricality, and this will come to a charged head next season. Here though the performativity is a crucial aspecct of the textual narrative, and that's not actually something we've seen a ton of to date, although, like I said, this is starting to change.

With “Dramatis Personae” Menosky has in a sense penned a kind of spiritual follow-up to “Frame of Mind”, where the extradiegetic themes about being imprisoned in a stock set of narrative tropes become diegetic. The form this takes on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a bit more straightforward and traditional than what Brannon Braga pulled on Star Trek: The Next Generation, with the crew literally being taken over by other characters as opposed to the structure of the narrative reality itself breaking down (which is, interestingly enough, a certain kind of theatrical approach). But this is unsurprising given the fact the Deep Space Nine team blew the surrealism in their Prisoner tribute several weeks back, though that's not to single them in particular out as at this point the key difference between the two creative teams pretty much comes down to “one of them has Brannon Braga and the other one doesn't”. Although in one sense, the more overt exploration of performativity in “Dramatis Personae” serves as a kind of bridge between the more scattershot and chaotic ruminations we got much earlier on in the series and the masterful baroque theatre like “Masks”, “Phantasms” and “Emergence” we're getting next year that “Birthright, Part I” and “Frame of Mind” laid the groundwork for.

What's especially interesting about the approach “Dramatis Personae” takes above and beyond this is the specific type of play the characters are trapped in. Where “Frame of Mind”'s critique was largely metaphorical, this episode's is curiously and very explicitly barbed-The telepathy virus ends up almost destroying the station and killing off the crew by forcing them into conflict. It's a deliberately stock paranoid conspiracy thriller with a lovely side of mad Napoleonic ambition courtesy Avery Brooks (while plainly an actor showcase episode for everyone, it's Brooks who shines the brightest, giving Star Trek fans who weren't familiar with Spenser for Hire or A Man Called Hawk a taste of his true acting range). It's really hard for me to not read this as a nasty indictment of the unsettlingly giddy lip service the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine creative team keeps paying to the Almighty Conflict (read unlikeable antiheroes screaming at each other in squalid 90s grimdark settings). It's a pretty ballsy move that goes a long way towards revealing the show's true feelings about its alleged audience, made even more remarkable due to its proximity to “Descent”.

This may come back to bite Deep Space Nine in the ass at some point in the future, but for now it's another solid example of why I adore this season so much.

Aside from Avery Brooks, there's obviously a lot to love in the performances from the other cast members, although I don't say that without reservation. First of all, this is another implausible “Odo and Quark Save the Day” plot (one wonders at this point, given the way the team often handles them, whether they should just take over from Doctor Bashir and star in their own wacky medical comedy double act sitcom), so that's a bit annoying for me. Colm Meaney is probably the second standout, but Colm Meaney is a fucking genius in everything so that's not really remarkable. And while as good as Nana Visitor and Terry Farrell are, they're actually my biggest complaint with this story. Well, not them so much as Dax and Kira. Giving Jadzia Dax the role of the giggling imperial concubine-cum-Starscream is...upsetting. This may have actually worked had Jadzia been given a lot of opportunities to demonstrate her cool competence and wisdom over the course of the season such that the contrast here would be pack a dramatic weight...but she really hasn't. At least not as much as we would have liked: Most of her best scenes have been due to Farrell's acting, and though she is clever, Jadzia disturbingly tends to be the first one to be affected by plot-based incompetence and incapacitation.

But what's really problematic here is the relationship Dax's character has with Kira's character. The whole interaction between the two of them in Quark's leading to Jadzia's character's defection is just so incredibly icky: Kira *literally* seduces her over to the dark side, and in spite of how astonishingly progressive the show has been on queer issues to date, the heavily implied bisexuality in *this* story is absolutely intended to be of the depraved variety. The only reason Kira's character displays any bisexual urges is because she's evil in the narrative of the telepathy play (while clearly unhinged and crazy bananas, Sisko's character is portrayed as far more of a tragic figure: A great man undone by hubris, madness and betrayal) and Jadzia's character's tacit reciprocation of those selfsame bisexual advances is depicted as a weakness and failing on her part; a fatal flaw that leads to her ultimate downfall.

And it actually makes me really angry, because I see this scene gifed and screencapped out of context all the time on Tumblr, always with fawning admiration from Kira/Dax shippers and some glowing endorsement of how wonderfully and cheekily queer, progressive and feminist Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was. Because in reality, this scene, and the subplot that goes along with it, is literally the exact opposite of all those things. First of all, that's not even Kira and Dax in that scene! So, I mean, if you're looking for shipping evidence for the two of them (and I don't object to that-there is a fair bit of it), that's fucking amateur and weak for starters. If that's seriously the best the femslash shippers can do, I'm *extremely* disappointed. And second of all, within the barest context of the episode it hails from, that scene is revealed literally in seconds to be utterly ugly and repugnant, straightforwardly sexualizing, othering and villifying lesbians and bisexuals for a stock piece of male gaze narrative. And that's actually a gigantic problem for “Dramatis Personae”, as it effectively undermines the point the rest of the episode seems like its trying to make.

And that's a deeply frustarying reality, because the point “Dramatis Personae” is trying to make about conflict is a very important one. It's something that needs to be said, not just on the cusp of the Long 1990s, but even (and especially) today too. I'm writing this essay in an age when fascism and fundamentalist terrorism is on the rise worldwide again, and the one thing that links such movements together, especially in the west, is an incredibly dangerous runaway id complex fostered by a culture of voyeuristic violence. And this is something grimdark media actively perpetuates: Individuals who feel (justly or unjustly) ostracized and persecuted can, through the ego, start to visualize themselves as the tragic antihero protagonist of a dark action movie. And when people enter into that mindset, they oftentimes turn to terrorism out of a desire to go out in a blaze of glory. And then the copycat effect kicks in, and it all happens again somewhere else.

Grimdark has gone beyond simply being rote and adolescent and has turned into a very real threat to world society. This is everything Star Trek is supposed to be the antidote for, and if it's not even willing to keep up its own standards, you have to wonder what hope the rest of us have.

“We never touch but at points”: The Forsaken

So I miscounted a bit when I was planning these entries. Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine do run completely parallel, beginning and ending their seasons roughly the same week. However, when Deep Space Nine premiered in January, 1993, the studio held production on The Next Generation back a few weeks so the new show could air four episodes in a row without any potential competition for attention. I, however, missed that when I was planning my watch schedule and went straight from “Emissary” to “Ship in a Bottle”, thus neglecting the fact that “Past Prologue”, “A Man Alone” and “Babel” all went out before that episode aired.

Which means we have to go back in time a bit for “The Forsaken”. Technically speaking, having just watched “Descent” we should be passed “In the Hands of the Prophets” and into the between season material by now, but I have to make up those four episodes somewhere. But it turned out OK after all because “The Forsaken” is a great episode to kick off a brief Star Trek: The Next Generation hiatus on the site, and I like the narrative this sets up from my writing perspective better anyway. And besides, you all should be used to time travel and temporal mechanics having stuck with this project this long, and there's going to be plenty more where that came from in the not-too-distant-future. Well, I say future. But now I'm getting ahead of myself. Or behind.

You know what? I'm just going to stop now and get into “The Forsaken”.

Of all the Star Trek: The Next Generation characters who have crossed over to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine this season, Lwaxana Troi makes far and away the most sense. It's not like Q, who's really bound up thematically and symbolically with Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise specifically and thus doesn't have much of a point in being here (though I maintain you could have found a way for him to work over here that wasn't “Q-Less”) or Vash who doesn't have much of a point at all. And while you could conceivably see Lursa and B'Etor lurking around the area scrounging up resources for their next nefarious scheme, it takes no leap of the imagination whatsoever to picture Lwaxana here. She may have family and friends on the Enterprise but she's an ambassador herself and has her own life outside of them. In fact, it would be an insult to her character to insinuate she doesn't. Of course she'd be part of a Federation diplomatic delegation to Deep Space 9, the most important port of call in the galaxy.

This is very well portrayed during Lwaxana's introductory scene in the teaser: Although it's not required for viewers to have seen her previous episodes as she's consciously positioned alongside the other members of the ambassadorial delegation, the show does on some level expect us to know who she is and be familiar with how she acts and the kind of stories she appears in. In other words, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is subtly treating Lwaxana as a reoccurring character in spite of the fatc this is her first showing on this side of the lot. Normally this is the sort of thing I'd decry as fanwank, but I actually don't have a problem with it in this case: My argument from the beginning of this season has always been that, in 1993 and 1994, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are really better viewed as not just twinning series, but effectively *the same* series manifesting in two different forms at once. So obviously Star Trek: Deep Space Nine should expect to share a sizable chunk of Star Trek: The Next Generation's audience, who would naturally be well acquainted with Lwaxana Troi from six years of visits to the Enterprise.

(This train of thought isn't always going to work out in Star Trek's favour, and in fact getting careless with it is ultimately what will do the franchise in down the road. But in this specific instance with these two specific shows at this specific point in time, it's simply the natural thing to do.)

Furthermore it's who Lwaxana is as a person, not the iconography she represents or her diegetic connections with any given character, that's central to what “The Forsaken” is about. Much has been made about the relationship that develops between her and Odo here, typically in regards to how it reveals more about his backstory and how that shaped him into the person it became. What's *not* talked about is the role Lwaxana plays in the relationship, what she does here (besides being “nurturing” and “feminine”) and why it's so important. The thing is, this really couldn't be any character *other* than Lwaxana, because, as she actually states in the story, she may be the vivacious and outgoing Lwaxana, but she's still a Troi and she's still a Betazoid. This means she's an empath, remember?

Odo's not quite antisocial, but he's a bit of a loner and a pretty private person-That's not a character flaw, that's just who he is. Part of the reason he finally does click with Lwaxana the way he does (even if you can't always tell from his expressions or his attitude) is that, in spite of what it looks like, she actually really does respect that. She's not the only person who's shown Odo willingness to lend him an ear: Commander Sisko, Major Kira and Quark all do that too, and so would Jadzia Dax if he knew her better. But Lwaxana is the first person extroverted enough to make Odo open up to them, and that her outgoing nature distracts us from her very deep-rooted and palpable sense of compassion and empathy is just all the more fitting. Frankly the only other person would *could* conceivably do this for Odo is Deanna herself, and Deanna has always been more comfortable as a social scientist and a researcher than a therapist anyway (ironically enough, Will Riker has always been the better empath), and when they do eventually meet they'll have a very different sort of relationship.

Letting Lwaxana show up on her own without her relatives and building a story around her individual positionality does wonders for her character, and this is her best outing since “Half a Life”. In fact, it's a better showing for her as a person, her kinship with Odo revealing a stronger, more mature and more nuanced character who seems to have genuinely grown over the past few years. “The Forsaken” is not the unwatchably poor comedy of “Manhunt”, “Ménage à Troi” and “Cost of Living”, nor is it the intensely dark and personal grief of “Dark Page”, but oddly enough it *is* somewhat reminiscent of “Haven”: You could read Majel Barrett as coming in and blessing the show once more in another year of new beginnings, and I think there are far more parallels between this story and the older one than people want to admit: In both cases, Lwaxana shows up and to give a little advice and assistance to get things going on the right track, although this time some of the more overt symbolism is tempered with a more conventionally dramatic sense of characterization. Your mileage may vary on how effective that is, of course.

(And let's not forget that Lwaxana, after all, was one of the first people to describe the nature of this Star Trek universe in terms of animist synchromysticism in that very episode. No wonder she'd find herself on Deep Space 9.)

Lwaxana's touch on the show is easy to miss if you're not looking for it, but it's most definitely there. Every other plot in “The Forsaken” is about empathy and compassion in some form, and that's easy to overlook if the only thing you're focusing on in this story is Odo's character development: Chief O'Brien figures out the only way to work with the program being that's been wreaking havoc with the station's computer system is to respect it as a living thing with wants, needs and desires. Doctor Bashir has to keep his patience with a bunch of obsequious diplomats as they're people too, and those selfsame diplomats have to come down off of their high horses and not treat Julian as subhuman just because he's below their social class. And naturally, it's an emergency that brings about the crucial change: Nothing like a natural disaster to equalize and humble us all.

(That disaster, by the way, may well be a lost memory of mine: Watching Ben and Nerys cut their way through the burning habitat ring set looked *really* familiar to me: I seem to recall vividly watching some kind of scene like that almost twenty-five years ago. The lighting and camera angles in particular struck a very recognisable chord.)

With that in mind, it's sort of interesting to see how “The Forsaken” actually *isn't* the best outing for Deep Space 9's *resident* empath, Jadzia Dax. She's shown to be competent enough during the tech mystery, and I always like to see her getting technobabble lines and being an active particpant in the action. She's better with Miles this time around then she was in “Battle Lines”, but she's still getting some very frustratingly Doctor Who-ish lines. It's almost as if “the young woman” doesn't have “300 years of experience”. However, the climactic scene with Chief O'Brien's decision to build a doghouse comes off well, and it's all due to Terry Farrell. Even though her lines are horrendous, her body language, presence and intonation all sell the moment as one more great Jadzia metafictional precognition moment: She's playing Miles' interlocutor, asking leading questions to get him to figure the problem out on his own, belying her nature as a powerful extradiegetic spirit medium. Amazingly, in a little under a year, Jadzia Dax has done this more often and more effectively than Guinan has in five, and although this scene sadly doesn't quite measure up to the standards of “The Nagus” due to the actual dialog, you can tell this is someone destined for great things.

Since all life is connected, the ripples of love and empathy Lwaxana Troi have brought to Deep Space 9 can only be seen as heartwarming. This is the kind of story it's always nice to see Star Trek tell because it's the kind of story it can be so good at when it puts its heart to it. We can only hope we'll be seeing a lot more stories like this in the years to come and that we never forget the lessons and the wisdom that they contain.

“Everything is alive”: If Wishes Were Horses

The interpretation here seems obvious. So obvious, in fact, it almost feels hard to accept.

Stories have power. That much we have established: “What war hasn't been a war of fiction?” as Alan Moore would say. Our ideas of how the world is are cultivated in the stories we tell about them and guide our actions in a myriad of ways, from the material psychology of the copycat effect to the more intangible power of symbols and synchromysticism. And so it's no great stretch to see, in “If Wishes Were Horses”, our stories take on a very real life of themselves derived from the meaning we imbue them with. One way to look at it is to argue that all our knowledge of the world is in some sense a kind of story-A representative facsimile meant to stand in for experiential perception. Our conscious understanding of others in necessarily incomplete, based as it must be on what we see, what we are allowed to see and how we interpret what we see. Fantasies are narratives we outline ourselves deliberately built out of distortions and exaggerations.

None of this is new for us: We know spirituality goes hand in hand with performativity. Like Alan Moore also said, “there's a certain amount of sham in shamanism”. Some shamanic rituals involve adopting the guise of spirits or the retelling of sacred stories. Magic, in the western sense, is just another form of symbolic language representation of individual experience. The occult is “hidden” specifically because it belongs to a realm we're not consciously aware on an everyday basis. It's also well-trod ground for Star Trek: The obvious point of comparison is “Where No One Has Gone Before”, but Michael Piller said since that was “six years ago on a different show” there was no reason not to do another story that “celebrated imagination”. I agree inasmuch as I believe it's *always* important to tell stories like this.

I'm not convinced Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are different shows.

But going back beyond this particular series, the theme does tend to reoccur; “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” being possibly the other biggest example in Star Trek's history prior to “Where No One Has Gone Before”. This does seem odd territory for science fiction, though: It's the very thing you might think Hard SF, or at least the proponents of Hard SF, would denounce as fantasy at best and “woo” at worst. Mind and consciousness, and thus the experiential, is something traditionally seen as taboo for empiricism. And yet even in the celebrated works of the old masters you see things like “telepathic science”, hinting that perhaps the experience and the observational process aren't as irreconcilable as we might think. Star Trek is not Hard SF, but this only means that it lacks the self-conscious narrow materialist focus that the genre has come to represent in this day and age: It does not mean, and should not mean, that it is anti-science.

Being anti-science is a very different thing, I should add, to being anti-Science, which Star Trek should *always* be, especially as so many of its fans tend to be Scientistic. Despite what certain staffers on the sister show might think, Star Trek is fundamentally not a work of secular humanism, because secular humanism almost demands New Atheism and arch-rationalism, and those are concepts that are patently anathema to Star Trek, especially now. And one way in which it can be pro-science without being pro-Science is through the techniques of anthropology: In spite of the show's rather questionable history of attempting to diegetically engage with the field, it remains an unseen mover in the narrative because Star Trek uniquely privileges empathy, problem solving and utopian conflict resolution.

One of the earliest, and still arguably the most influential, anthropological constructs was the theory of animism. Animism is a singular term coined to describe a set of spiritual belief systems that are effectively universal throughout humanity: The idea that everything, from people and animals to plants and rocks and water and storms is a spiritual being. In fact, “animism” translates out to “breath” and “spirit”. Indeed, what anthropologists call animism is so universal and taken for granted for almost every indigenous culture that they don't even have a word to describe it themselves: In the act of naming itself the anthropological perspective and positionality must necessarily be highlighted.

One thing that people often misunderstand about animism is that it's not pantheistic or polytheistic, nor does it rest on a premise of Cartesian dualism: It's a far more subtle and holistic approach than any of those. The idea is not that everything has a soul so much as it is that the soul is everything. Everyone and everything is sacred because the universe is sacred and everyone and everything is part of the universe. It's a thin distinction, but an important one, because in doing so animism stresses the interconnectedness of all things. Our greatest actions are therefore in service to sublimating reality instead of transcending it. Enlightenment lies in the knowledge and embrace of this fact rather than an escape from it.

Curiously enough, it's in this way that the apparent schism between spirituality and science is overcome. Science has long struggled with that problem of consciousness. The best reductiveness can do is come up with handewavey comparisons to computational theory that, after a history of constant nervous repetition, start to come across less as actual scientific theories and more like insecure attempts to shut down discourse in the hope the problem will go away if we don't think about it. Perhaps part of the reason Science is so quick to denounce and dismiss any ethnoknown indigenous knowledge about the nature of perception and reality is that it doesn't have any better theories of its own. But what if science has actually got us *closer* to the answer than even it realises?

Physicist Nick Herbert holds to a system of beliefs he calls “holistic physics”, “quantum tantra” and “quantum animism”. Herbert literally wrote the textbook on quantum physics and quantum mechanics in (naturally) the 1980s and his experience in the field led him to believe that the mind and consciousness is an emergent property of the universe itself at the quantum level. Herbert believes that this would explain not just things like wave-particle duality but also the argument in some theoretical camps that quantum mechanics is necessarily mathematically incomplete: Consciousness is literally the missing variable in explaining what happens during quantum jumps. Thought, belief and consciousness creates reality in a very material way. And of course, this is something that it would seem indigenous people around the world and throughout history have known intuitively from time immemorial, even if they didn't explain it in quite those terms. The answers to all our questions about the nature of reality come to us through the joining of science and ancient traditional wisdom. The answer, quite literally, is to remember we're all connected.

There never was any divide in the beginning, but we believed that there was, and thus we found one.

Perhaps the real occult secret may lie within the connection between animism and magic. Traditional shamans and spirit healers learn how to cure diseases and make positive changes by tapping into the experiential knowledge of the spirit world all around them. If this knowledge is occult, and thus hidden, it may only be because there are realms of experience and consciousness inaccessible to humans in normal states of perception: It's well-known that humans can only see, for example, a small percentage of the spectrum of light that exists in the universe, and Nick Herbert theorizes that the limitations of human consciousness can be explained by each one of us being a self-contained quantum system residing within the brain. And yet, because *everything* is a quantum system, that world is all around us and we remain part of it. Once you learn to live by empathy and with respect to the universe around you as life that's as sacred as you are, your perspective shifts.

This is something Star Trek and Star Trek's tradition have always intuitively known, because empathy and shamanic folk magic have always gone hand-in-hand. I know he's on “another show”, but does anyone remember by this point that Geordi can see well beyond the visible light portion of the spectrum? Think of Guinan and Jadzia Dax. Or Deanna Troi. The starship Enterprise was designed with organic curves to demonstrate how human engineering had learned to become one with nature. In narrative we see it in this episode and in “Where No One Has Gone Before” most blatantly, of course: Time, space and thought are all the same. But it's an omnipresent theme in Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, even just this season alone. Think back to “Frame of Mind”, “The Storyteller”, “Birthright, Part I” and “Emissary”. This was the predominant theme in all of those stories. Thinking back to earlier on in the show, we see obviously “Remember Me”, but also “The Inner Light” and, brilliantly, “Transfigurations”. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is in good company amongst its peers in this regard. The Dirty Pair Strike Again is fundamentally about different faiths and cultural knowledge systems clashing over their interpretation of divine nature and what it looks like when that energy gets transformed as its channeled through each one of them, and this is explored in even more intuitive depth in the Classic Anime series in the OVA Series episodes “No Thanks! No Need For a Halloween Party”, “We're Not Afraid of Divine Judgment! It's Like Magic?!” and the movie Dirty Pair: Affair of Nolandia. Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is nothing if not a sprawling treatise on the place of animism and traditional shamanism in a world of modernity, as only a science fiction story could ever do. And even going all the way back to Star Trek: The Animated Series, you see the germs of this idea beginning to take root in certain episodes. Most notably “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” and “Once Upon a Planet”...but also in “The Jihad”.

And it's “The Jihad” that gives us the clearest look at how this translates into utopianism. One of that episode's heroes was named Lara, a hunter and tracker from a group of humans who rejected the expansionism of their ancestral home on Earth and kept their traditional indigenous way of life well into a future out in the stars. Lara and her people didn't just survive in a universe arguably defined by the Federation's extrapolated modernity, but they thrived in it, taking the best aspects of a high-tech society to create a genuinely postmodern and post scarcity society. And “The Jihad” is dripping in animism elsewhere, from its sacred totem imbued with the power and thoughts of its people to a planet that seems alive from the soil to the sky, testing our heroes to see if they can adapt to its challenges. Star Trek is in truth a fundamentally animist sci-fi, and this is what makes it and the tradition it belongs to so utterly unique. It's not Hard SF, and it's not even really fantasy, but rather oral history reinterpreted through the lens and trappings of modernity. It's speculative fiction that, through metaphor and allegory, constantly reminds us of where we came from and where we can go.

Or at least that's how *I* choose to read it. Take it or leave it: Go make your own reality.

But even if this is true of Star Trek and its ilk on the whole, what of its manifestation in “If Wishes Were Horses”? What's special about the way the story is told here, and why is it so important that it happen at the Celestial Temple? Because while this is a truth that permeates the Star Trek universe at every level and can be internalized by anyone, Deep Space 9 is a diegetic metaphor that's constantly present. The station is a liminal space, and the Bajoran Wormhole is the doorway to the Otherworld. And the Otherworld is the domain of the gods and spirits forgotten by the advent of modernity, so reconnecting with them means we reconnect with our own birthright too. Even the fact that this episode is such a strong ensemble show (as Terry Farrell puts it, the first time the cast felt like a family unit that understood and got each other) is eerily prescient. Odo and Quark's brilliant dialog in the teaser that's equal parts naturalistic and poetic in a way that's demonstrative of immense writerly skill, Dax's own empathetic acceptance of Doctor Bashir's fantasy life; her nurturing and reassuring tone spiced up with gentle, good-natured needling. Commander Sisko and Major Kira's introspectiveness. Miles O'Brien The Storyteller. The climax itself. It's all there to remind us that we're all in this together dreaming a collective dream.

That's the dream Buck Bokai wants us to remember. We, like Commander Sisko, want to know more about his people, to reconnect with that dream. But that's the voyage. That's what we're out here for.

“Manifest destiny”: Progress

One of the telltale omens of the looming Long 1990s is a desire to see stories where heroes fail, lose or make bad decisions. I've spent a good amount of time, space and energy looking at the psychology of this, which is curious considering I haven't actually begun looking at the Long 1990s yet (although there is the argument that the groundwork has already been laid by numerous sociocultural factors and a handful of influential works).

This desire to voyeuristically engage with failure is not a guiding principle of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Although future Star Trek creative teams will most assuredly take this as gospel, most of the touted “conflict” of this particular series was designed to hinge around the natural tension that organically emerges when you take a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds and make them live and work in close proximity with one another. You can actually see a number of good examples of the show's approach to this throughout the various subplots in “Progress”: The B-plot is the obvious one, where Nog tries to teach Jake some basic Ferengi philosophy to make an “opportunity” out of a supposed setback. But Nog isn't able to turn a profit on his own, because he's not capable of negotiating with respect to the various positionalities of the parties involved in his transaction (the only thing he can do on his own is subtly manipulate Quark, which is just him working his native Ferengi system of social mores). It takes Jake to come in and help steer the negotiations into a direction that's beneficial for everyone's interests, which provides an interesting echo for the events of their subplot in “The Storyteller” last week.

There's also the obvious anxiety of the Provisional Government's representative in Ops before the A-plot kicks off in earnest, who's not sure he can trust Commander Sisko and Jadzia Dax to oversee the drilling project, and isn't sure what to make of Major Kira working with them. Kira has to be their spokesperson to him, and bridge the gap between the two teams, which subtly foreshadows what she's going to have to do once the story itself gets going (and fails to, but that's getting ahead of things). But the best example is actually the scene where Kira and Dax are in the Runabout en route to Jeraddo: Wonderfully, it's the first glimpse we get of Jadzia's signature libido, as she chats to Nerys about attracting Morn's attention, almost bragging about it. Nerys is repulsed because not only does she not share Jadzia's taste in friends-with-benefits or her promiscuity, but she can't even conceive of how someone could swing that way in the first place. She doesn't think less of Dax, but she's entirely incapable of putting herself in her shoes. Which is Jadzia's entire point: She knows Nerys is too buttoned-up and too immersed in her comfort zone, which is something that comes with youth. Jadzia has the wisdom and empathy that comes with age while maintaining the zeal of youth, and she's trying to open her friend's eyes to that possibility and also get her to loosen up around her.

What all of these scenes have in common is that they're all examples of, believe it or not, utopian conflict resolution. The show sets up a conflict brought upon by the heterogeneous mixture of life aboard Deep Space 9 to be sure, but critically it then proceeds to resolve that conflict by demonstrating examples of how to move beyond that in a mutually amicable and constructive way. Where the Long 90s grimdark stuff falls down is that it neglects the second part of that structure, setting up a conflict (be it brought upon by multiculturalism or angsty manpain or what have you) and then, figuring its job is done and thinking itself quite clever for getting to this point, just leaves the story there and wallows in it. And this is where the rest of “Progress” actually starts to walk kind of a thin line for me: I think it succeeds in what it's trying to do, but just barely, and it's probably one of the more imperfect episodes in this classic back half of the season.

The elephant in the room is of course that this story is setting Kira up for failure because there is absolutely no way any remotely conscious or empathetic reader is going to say the Provisional Government's position is anywhere near defensible. It's putting Kira in the same position Data was forced into in “The Ensigns of Command”, which is to say, that of a stooge for a genocidal imperialist relocation effort disturbingly reminiscent of any number of forced displacement programmes that have wrecked indigenous communities around the world in real life. She's being made to do something that's only a few degrees removed from what the Cardassians did to the Bajorans decades earlier, which is the basis of Mullibok's whole argument. I used to think “Progress” was a classic because of the issues it tackled, even though in hindsight it's rather egregiously similar to “The Ensigns of Command” (although, to be fair to me, this was largely because I barely fucking remembered “The Ensigns of Command” when this was going out), but even so there are a few noteworthy aspects that push this story out ahead of its predecessor in the comparison.

The first of which is simply that the setting of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is far more conducive to doing this kind of story. Bajor has a long history of this kind of thing happening, and it's easier to get invested in something happening to the Bajorans than Random One-Off Forgotten Human Colony #9573. Also, and far more crucially to the success of “Progress”, is that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is fundamentally a show about bureaucratic administrators. The Enterprise is supposed to be an exploration and research vessel, so when they get wheeled in to play pansy for the Federation it feels even more awkward, strangled and wrong than it normally would. But this is exactly the kind of headache the Deep Space 9 crew, tasked with reconstruction and development of an unofficial protectorate, would be expected to have to shoulder. This means “Progress” is really the prototype of a new kind of Star Trek story, one that can look far more closely at what happens when you have a bunch of good, well-meaning people stuck in a fundamentally wrongheaded and dehumanizing system: Commander Sisko and Major Kira fundamentally know Mullibok is right, but the amount of power they each individually have to change the system is limited, and ultimately they're forced to take the least worst action given the circumstances.

The problem with this is that it does trend dangerously close to the “let's watch our heroes screw up because for some reason we think that's what makes for good entertainment” mindset, and truth be known “Progress”, at least to my mind, it not the most elegant execution of this formula. The problem is, ironically enough, that the issue at hand is almost too cut-and-dry: There's no way to reasonably argue that Mullibok is wrong and the Provisional Government are within their rights to forcibly relocate him. There's not enough bureaucratic messiness, and the crew come across as looking more heartless and amoral than I really think they were supposed to. Writer Peter Allan Fields felt a lot of the problem was Brian Keith's performance of Mullibok, who he had envisioned as a far more unsympathetic and manipulative character than Keith played him. But I think that would have just made things worse, as it would have implied that all rural or indigenous people are dangerously backwards and irrational. The reality as I see it is that this problem simply doesn't have enough bureaucratic messiness to be effectively sold as a convincing moral dilemma.

But it does have self-sealing stem bolts. Which is reason enough for “Progress” to earn its iconic status.

“What war hasn't been a war of fiction?”: The Storyteller

One of the big advantages Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has, regardless of whether or not Star Trek fans think it's actually an advantage or not, is, as we have established, its stationary location. But this asset doesn't just apply to the titular space station, it also applies to the nearby planet: After all, the whole point of setting this show so close to Bajor in the first place was to allow for development of one specific planetary society above and beyond what just having a representative as part of our crew would facilitate.

The biggest problem Star Trek has from an ethical anthropological standpoint is its well-known predilection to fall into the “planet of hats” issue. In less netspeak terms, this means Star Trek has an annoying tendency to depict extraterrestrial civilizations as monocultures in service to metaphor and allegory. Star Trek isn't the only sci-fi-fantasy work to have this problem (in fact I'd argue it's effectively endemic to the genre) and I don't even think it's anywhere near the worst perpetrator of it, but it is a problem Star Trek is famous for having. There are a number of reasons for this, most of which have to do with the inherent problems of using people or groups of people as dolled-up metaphor in this way, but the one that's relevant to tonight's discussion is the inescapable fact that a voyaging starship can't stay in one port of call long enough to flesh out any given society to the realistic extent they really deserve. Because in theory this is something Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is primed to alleviate and another huge reason why it's such a necessary second perspective on the Star Trek universe. With our city's proximity to Bajor, there's really no functional narrative reason why it need be depicted in the traditionally shallow and superficial sci-fi-fantasy way.

(Actually I tell a lie for the purposes of argument. Star Trek's biggest problem from an ethical anthropological perspective isn't the planet of hats issue, it's the Prime Directive. But I'm not about to dig up that old chestnut again.)

“The Storyteller” is the first episode to really grapple with the potential this setup offers the show, and it succeeds with flying colours. We get not one, not two, but *three* different representations of Bajoran culture that differ from what's been established thus far across both the A- and B-plots and the story even throws us Kira in specific opportune moments to further the contrast. There's of course the village of the Sirah that Julian and Miles visit, but also the Paqu and Navot delegations that Commander Sisko has been asked to mediate between. In each case, we get to see glimpses of folk belief and cultural norms and attitudes that differ just enough from established dogmatic Prophets theism that it's uniquely memorable: The first Sirah obviously talks a lot about destiny and chosen ones being sent from on high wand whatnot, but it's obvious this is mostly rhetorical bluster and the village has a special set of folk spiritualism all its own based around the Dal'Rok and the telling of the tales that's found nowhere else on Bajor. Meanwhile, the Paqu and Navot come across as practically agnostic, more concerned with immediate (and hyperlocal) material concerns like borders, treaties and trade agreements. A far cry from the priests, monks, refugees and former resistance fighters we've seen so far.

This means “The Storyteller” is kind of the perfect way to follow on from this past week and a half's crop of episodes. Firstly, it's an important continuation of certain thematic strands from “Battle Lines”: Among other things, that episode showed how Star Trek: Deep Space Nine could still do stories involving exploration and voyaging to new places (in the Gamma Quadrant), but while giving that brief its own unique twist. This one gives us the flipside, showing us what being stationed in one place can offer the show by, in one episode, fleshing out Bajor leaps and bounds beyond what was capable before. Secondly however, and more importantly, it makes up for the lazy, lackluster and kiddie pool depth world building of “Rightful Heir”. The Klingons are probably the most egregious example of a monoculture in all of Star Trek, and there's frankly no reason for that to be necessary. Star Trek: The Next Generation has (or *should* have) Worf, a uniquely Klingon diasporan, shaped by Enterprise values. “Rightful Heir” gave us not just Worf, but Gowron's imperial court, Viking Space Opera Jesus *and* a Klingon ice monastery and somehow *still* managed to be possibly the most boring and inept fucking thing all year.

Like other standout episodes before it, such as “A Man Alone” and “The Nagus”, “The Storyteller” is a great showcase for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine capturing snapshots of life across all striations of society. Just about every main character has some level of investment in the plot of the week, and everyone seems to be thinking about its themes in their own way. There's Julian and Miles needing to learn to work together for the first time, setting the stage for their fire-forged odd couple friendship in the second season. That's almost subtly mirrored in the Paqu and Navot needing to find a way to resolve their conflict peacefully, as is Hovath's need to come into his own and take his rightful place as Sirah of his village with Varis Sul's need to find away to prove herself as Tetrarch and defuse the powder keg political situation she inherited from her late father. Everyone has something to do this week (OK, Jadzia gets like a line, but Ben and Kira didn't need her, so it's OK for her to get some time to herself) and Deep Space 9 feels like a busy and cosmopolitan place where something's always going on.

I want to take some real time to single out and praise Varis Sul's story here, because she's always been one of the most memorable parts of this episode to me. And that says a lot in an episode where working man Miles O'Brien becomes The Man Who Would Be King and tries to help a village of Bajorans ward off a monster from fiction by reminding the townsfolk that belief and perception make reality through the medium of oral history and storytelling. And all that stuff is absolutely brilliant, it's every bit as oversignified and I love it every bit as much as you'd expect I would and it's definitely a huge part of the reason “The Storyteller” is one of my all-time favourite episodes: It's something only Star Trek can do and something Star Trek: Deep Space Nine does especially well. But it's the added wrinkle of Sul, and her relationship with Jake, Nog and Benjamin, that really cements this one's classic status because it shows Star Trek: Deep Space Nine not just aiming for and hitting one of its signature targets, but *all* of them.

I didn't always though, because this gets back to the themes about adolescence we talked about in the context of “The Nagus”. When I first saw this episode I thought the B-plot felt tacked on and kind of juvenile and didn't work well with the clever metafictional stuff the Miles/Julian story was doing. But that couldn't be further from the truth: Not only do the A- and B-plots flow effortlessly into one another, the B-plot is doing something terribly important in its own right by continuing the show's examination of the struggles of young people. As always you've got Jake and Nog, who bring with them their own signifiers we've talked about before, but here we also have Varis Sul, a teenager who's not allowed to be a teenager because she's had her adolescence stripped away by the Cardassian occupation. Like so many kids with similar stories in the real world, she's been coerced by imperialistic forces to grow up immediately to take care of her people in the aftermath just so she and they can continue to survive.

The episode could have gone the “Rascals” route here and treated Sul the same way Guinan treated Laren, with Jake and Nog giving her back the childhood they felt she was robbed of by showing her the joys of good old fashioned teenage mischief, but it *doesn't*: Instead, while she enjoys their company, Sul hangs around Jake and Nog mostly to get information on Jake's father so she can decide if she can trust him, and she's clearly uncomfortable during Nog's prank with the oatmeal and the bucket (although wonderfully, the show pulls the frankly astonishing feat of redeeming the Ferengi capitalist mindset, as it's those very skills of barter and cost/benefit analysis that help Sul figure out how to work out a compromise that will appease the warring factions). But more importantly, “The Storyteller” never depicts Sul as a tragic figure forced to grow up too soon: She's plainly more mature for her age than Jake and Nog because she has to be, her mind is always on her duties and she has no desire to recapture some idealized fantasy childhood that's been stripped from her. She wants to be a strong leader for her people and knows she's fully capable of it-Indeed the only reason she took such a seemingly “childish” hardline stance is because she felt the Navot would view her as a weak-willed and unsteady girl instead of a leader, which frankly is a not an unwarranted concern for her to have.

(I think my problem with the adolescence stuff is quite simply that it's not a set of themes I really like engaging with. I'm a bit sick to death of ruminations on teenage anxiety, no matter how well done they may be, because of how oversaturated pop culture is with them as a result of pop culture being overwhelmingly directed at adolescents. Once again Star Trek: Deep Space Nine does it exceptionally well, the best I've ever seen it done, but I just can't get invested. I want to read stories by adults, for adults and about adult issues. The entire prank scene is action I flatly did not need to see and the show could have cut straight to Ben and Sul in the office and I would have been perfectly happy. But that's just personal preference.)

And a huge part of why she finds such a close ally in Commander Sisko is that Ben *respects* her for all of that and everything else she stands for. I *adore* both Avery Brooks' performance here and the lines he's given: The contrast between his attitude towards Jake and Nog (and Jake and Nog's bumbling depiction here) and the tone he takes with Sul is night and day: He never once talks down to her, thinks less of her or expresses reservations about her abilities because of her age or her gender. I mean not that Ben talks down to Jake, but he's always aware Jake is still a learning and growing teenager, because he is. That's not patronizing, that's good parenting, but it just serves to highlight how Ben treats Sul as an adult and an absolute equal without reservation, no different than if it had been her father. And even so, at the same time, you still get the feeling Ben feels sorry for this poor girl and all the responsibility that's been hoisted upon her, and that all that Sul tells him about her own father isn't just idle conversation: Ben becomes for Sul a kind of mentor as well as a mediator, and I thought that relationship was handled exceptionally well. I always wanted to see how it could have developed further, with Ben seeing Sul both as a strong local political ally and perhaps the daughter he never had.

(In that regard, one scene I really loved was Sul's question to Ben “Didn't you, in your youth, ever do something stupid to impress a girl”? to which he responds “Perhaps I did”. Of course, we know he did because we saw it happen in “Emissary” with the lemonade on the beach fiasco!)

This is also a good episode to compare the diplomacy styles of Commander Sisko and Captain Picard that will become more of a central theme a year from now. Personally, I don't think either should really be written as diplomats: One's an explorer and the other's an administrator, but they do both have some basic understanding of and skill with diplomacy. But Jean-Luc is written as a skilled diplomat far more often to the point it's become a basic assumption made about his character, and as such one could argue he's a bit more tactful than Ben, who tends to prefer playing hardball to get things done. Or maybe it's more accurate to say Ben is tactful in a different way: After all his mentor was Curzon Dax, and you could conceivably see some of that influence shining through in the way he deftly and respectfully works with Sul here. That's another reason I'd love to have seen the Ben/Sul relationship developed further: I would have loved to see it paralleled (literally mirrored, in fact) with Ben's relationship with Jadzia.

I'm not sure where “The Storyteller” stands in fandom these days, but I don't recall it having a hugely positive reaction back in the day. And it should, because this is a really stellar outing. It's got fascinating things to provoke discussion at every level, one of the most trailblazing and redemptive scripts we've seen yet and a host of memorable performances from just about everyone: Colm Meaney and Siddig el Fadil are obviously standouts, as is Avery Brooks, but Cirroc Loften and Aron Eisenberg are endearing and believable as always and I adore René Auberjonois as basically a grouchy truant officer or campus security officer. And guest star Gina Phillips gives a formidable turn as Varis Sul. The fact that the boldy and openly metafictional implications of the story are what I wound up talking about the least should speak volumes.

“Tracts of sea, sick at heart”: Battle Lines

I tend to go back and forth on “Battle Lines”. I think it's because, on paper, it sounds like an almost paint-by-numbers Star Trek story reminiscent of nothing so much as Original Series episodes like “A Taste of Armageddon”, “Day of the Dove” and their ilk (and indeed, “Day of the Dove” was a primary inspiration for “Battle Lines”). As such, what usually tends to happen is I watch the episode, like it a whole lot, then go a long while without seeing it, forget how much I like it and think “oh, it musn't be that good. It's basically an Original Series episode and I hate it when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine just chases the Original Series”. Then I watch it again and love it.

Writing this essay should finally break that cycle for me, because “Battle Lines” is most assuredly excellent.

Bear in mind I adored “Battle Lines” at the time, and that probably says something. I especially loved the gritty iconography of these ageless, immortal soldiers constantly slaughtering each other in a bombed out desert cave on a godforsaken moon somewhere with Major Kira and Commander Sisko caught in the middle. In hindsight, yes, it's just another Planet Hell shoot, but for me this is among the most memorable uses of that venerable old studio. It's probably because the slightly Mad Max-esque Ennis and Nol-Ennis have a kind of grungy, 1980s post-apocalyptic aesthetic to them that I quite like. We haven't seen much of that in Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine since the aesthetic's glorious peak in the Gatherers of “The Vengeance Factor”, costume designer Bob Blackman seemingly preferring to emphasize a kind of forced frumpiness in his outfits for the chronological 1990s.

It's perhaps not coincidental then that “The Vengeance Factor” was the final episode aired in the chronological 1980s. However that said I find it really interesting, now that I've brought it up, how we seem to be seeing little echoes of “The Vengeance Factor”, or at least the zeitgeist it was a part of, showing up again this season. The Gatherers themselves showed up in “Vortex”, and they were every bit as fantastically 80s as there as they've always been. And in “Battle Lines”, we once again have a story about a ceaseless war stemming from clan conflicts that may have meant something at one time but which are beyond ancient and petty by now. It's very fitting that little signifiers like this start to crop up again in Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine this season, as I consider 1993 and 1994 to be the real last hurrah of the Long 1980s, before the vibe finally gives way to the grimdark and apathy fueled Long 1990s and the climate we're arguably still living in today. It's also perhaps not a coincidence that this season is far and away the best the series has ever been.

“Battle Lines” itself is a good demonstration of this, and a lot of its strength comes from the very thing that, at first glance, comes across as its most Original Series-esque aspect: The rather explicit moral about the futility of war and fighting conveyed through two opposing armies who, thanks to the inability of any of them to die, are literally just fighting because “you're this and I'm not”, in the words of various creative team members. It's such a classic kind of Star Trek morality play trope that you think it has to be derivative of something else, but it actually isn't. It's a simple, almost trite, message (even the names of the combatants almost sound like they should come from a parody of this kind of story: The Ennis and the Nol-Ennis), but damn if it isn't conveyed with startling and sobering effectiveness: I mean, this really is conflict boiled down to its most basic and fundamental roots. “You are one thing and I'm another and this is unacceptable. Ergo, I must kill you”. It frankly doesn't get much more real than that when you get right down to it.

But what sets “Battle Lines” apart in this regard is its strong emphasis on empathy and forgiveness: Where the Original Series was defined by the crew swooping in, issuing proclamations and telling everybody how to do things, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine delivers the story that's the most in keeping with its commitment to healing, rebuilding and rebirth that we've seen so far. First, there's Commander Sisko's empathy with and forgiveness of the prisoners. As he curtly explains to Doctor Bashir in a scene that is as much a showcase for Avery Brooks' range and an air-pounding rejection of the Prime Directive as it is a statement of themes, it doesn't matter what the crimes of the Ennis and Nol-Ennis originally were, they've certainly more than paid for their crimes after centuries living on this hellish and inhumane prison planet. They deserve the opportunity to move beyond the violence and bloodshed that's defined their existence and start new lives.

This is of course brilliantly paralleled with Kai Opaka's subplot with Major Kira. Nerys is not proud of the things she had to do as a member of a guerrilla resistance movement that operated with terrorist tactics, and she doesn't want her hero Opaka to think she's a heartless killer. But what Nerys doesn't fully understand is Opaka's infinite capacity for empathy and forgiveness: She accepts Nerys not in spite of the things she had to do, but because of them and, through her pagh (naturally, the eternal life-force that we all share which binds us all together), helps her come to accept herself too. And this is perfectly played by two absolute masters, Camille Saviola and Nana Visitor, who deliver just grippingly powerful displays of theatrical emotion and drama. It's a scene that's not only pitch-perfect Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, because, as Opaka just about spells out, acceptance of ourselves is the first step towards bettering them and leaving negative energy behind, it's also a wonderful follow-up to “Frame of Mind”, which touched on almost exactly the same sentiment. Once again, the two halves of Star Trek compliment, rather than oppose, one another.

Speaking of Kai Opaka, her exiting the narrative here certainly bears repercussions. For me, this was always the point at which I felt the series left the “Early” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine phase and entered the “Peak” Star Trek: Deep Space Nine phase. Not because Opaka is a poor character or Saviola an underwhelming presence, in fact the contrary; I'll get to mourning her loss here very shortly. But her absence sets in motion what is in many ways the show's definitive story arc: The war of succession in the Vedek assembly for the honour of succeeding Opaka to be the next Kai. A war that starts in earnest at the end of this year, explodes into the forefront to usher in the next and becomes a looming, ever-present question that hangs over the rest of the series. It's a war that forces the Bajorans to confront some deeply-rooted ugliness at the core of their idealized aspirational planet state that brings an unparalleled level of nuance to the setting, and somewhere within these next five months is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's finest hour.

And yet as good as those future stories are going to be, the show loses something massive with the departure of Camile Saviola's Kai Opaka. She was a vividly iconic part of “Emissary”, just as much as anyone else was. She was originally intended to be a recurring character and her relationship with Commander Sisko would only have continued to deepen in complexity and nuance. Had she been given the chance, Kai Opaka could have been just as integral a member of the unofficial main cast as Rom, Nog and Garak, and I personally would have loved to see that. Camile Saviola has an uncanny and beguiling mystical presence that hints at hidden depths, and to me that's a more apt fit for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's brand of storytelling than the Machiavellian machinations of Louise Fletcher and Philip Anglim's Vedeks Winn and Bareil, as well handled and interesting as they are. But, the script called for a character who was effectively a redshirt, and the team thought it would be more respectful to the audience to write out a recurring character. And Kai Opaka was the only one they felt they could afford to let go.

As it sets up what is arguably the show's biggest story arc, it's easy to miss how “Battle Lines” is also a subtle proof of concept for another important part of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's formula. One of the biggest criticisms the series would get from fans is that due to its stationary setting, it was thought that this crew wouldn't be able to indulge in the spirit of exploration that was so beloved in older Star Trek works. But “Battle Lines” demonstrates how this is not only possible, it's something that can be given a fresh twist by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's unique perspective. Materialistically speaking, the station has a component of Runabout starships and a nearby wormhole that links them to the other side of the galaxy. It's really not unfeasible to expect they'll be sending scientific research teams over there to see what they can find, and Miles O'Brien even tells Keiko this in the second episode, seemingly anticipating fan grumblings.

(Which reminds me: I quite like the scenes where Miles and Jadzia are hunting for the downed Runabout: There's a potential here for them to be this show's Science Power Couple, much as Geordi and Beverly are on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Unfortunately, this pairing seems destined to get the same amount of exposure, not helped by Jadzia being written as basically a Doctor Who companion uncomfortably often in these scenes.)

But beyond that, in this episode Commander Sisko, Major Kira, Doctor Bashir and Kai Opaka are on what amounts to a spiritual journey through the Celestial Temple, and the Kai even phrases it in terms of finding one's place in the universe and one's own life's work. Even Julian starts talking in terms of unlocking the mysteries of life and death, although he phrases it in the rhetoric of the philosophy of science. This is a reading I graft onto Star Trek: The Next Generation as well of course, or a reading similar to it, but this particular manifestation is an easier fit for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine thanks to its streamlined clarity of focus that jettisons a lot of the militaristic baggage Star Trek as a franchise inherited from Gene Roddenberry and the Original Series. The Enterprise is the voyaging canoe to be sure (even if nobody except me agrees that it is), but Deep Space 9 has that Celestial Temple and seems custom-tailored to tackle these issues from the outset.

It seems curiously reflected in Kai Opaka's own resurrection. Only by listening to the universe will we discover our newfound purpose. Even, and especially, if it's not exactly where we thought we were going to end up.

“Morphology of the amorphous”: Vortex

Odo is a shapeshifter. I know that sounds obvious to any fan of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but I'm not just talking about his plot superpowers here. Rather Odo being a shapeshifter is a diegetic allegory for the role he plays on the series, and clue as to his character's true nature.

Odo got the first spotlight on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine following “Emissary”, and while it was excellent it was more about the setting of the titular space station itself and inviting comparison with Westerns than Odo himself; it's that “Fort Laramie in Space” again (Star Trek certainly does seem fixated on its precious Hollywood Westerns and seems to want to invoke them whenever and wherever possible). While “Vortex” draws upon Westerns to a significant degree as well: The script took its inspiration from the movie The Naked Spur such that Peter Allan Fields hired Sam Rolfe, the writer of that movie and an old mentor of Fields', to handle the teleplay for “Vortex” (Rolfe had previously written “The Vengeance Factor”, which is probably my favourite episode of the third season, and the script even specifies that Ah-Kel and Ro-Kel had at least two of those gloriously 1980s Gatherers as part of their crew!). But there's more to this episode than simple genre romp pastiche, and “Vortex” is the key moment in establishing precisely who Odo is.

At first, it would seem like he's being depicted as the stereotypical mythic lone gunman Western hero, with Odo, Croden and the script all waxing fairly poetically (and melodramatically) about being an outsider and not having a home to go back to. But this is actually obfuscating pomp and circumstance: Odo is projecting his anxieties about belonging onto his search for his origins. He feels out-of-place with Starfleet and the Bajorans alike and is hoping that if he finds “his people”, he'll finally have a place to belong to (true, but not in the way Odo is conceptualizing it here). But what Odo doesn't realise that the majority of his isolation is self-imposed, and that he's too insular and self-conscious to figure out that his home has always been Deep Space 9. He probably knows this deep down, but he's too stubborn to actually accept, admit and vocalize is to himself, much less to anyone else. So when he asks his pendant at the end about where home is, it's every bit as much of a rhetorical philosophical question as it is an inquiry about a physical location. He's not looking for a place to belong as much as he is looking for permission to admit that the place he belongs is where he's spent the better part of a decade dutifully making a living.

And this does beg an interesting question: Can one actually “belong” to a place like Deep Space 9? The station is, after all, ultimately a port city, and port cities on Earth have traditionally been considered deeply liminal places. Miami is a good example: Its history as a tourist destination built by immigrant railroad workers and its location at the extreme southern end of the continental United States (and thus its proximity to Central and South America-Indeed, Miami is often considered more part of them than it is North America, sometimes to the point of becoming their de facto cultural capital city) gives Miami a history of being seen as the kind of place people pass through. People come to visit, or come to work temporarily to send money back home-Not a whole lot of people actually come to Miami and stay forever. And while Miami remains arguably the most dramatic and unique example you can see similar incidences of this in a lot of other major port cities, like immigrant neighbourhoods in New York City.

But let's not forget that there's power in liminality as well as transience and impermanence, and that liminality can in fact be a state of mind or being. Deep Space 9 reminds us of this subtly all the time through its proximity to the Bajoran Wormhole, the Celestial Temple, and through the existence of Jadzia Dax. Everything is always in flux, and yet everything is also eternally now. When cast in that light, Deep Space 9's status as an interstellar port city thus becomes just another macrocosm and symbol of this selfsame liminal power. And here is where Odo fits, because Odo too is a liminal being, an explicit one. As a shapeshifter, he is infinitely adaptable, able to acclimate himself to any form or climate imaginable. He can fashion himself into anything he needs to be to fit any occasion or situation he might find himself in, and as such could theoretically fit in anywhere he wants to. Which ironically means he belongs on Deep Space 9 more than anywhere else because he's a reflection and manifestation of its own liminal power: Just as we all are, Odo is his universe asserting itself within and as a part of him. Odo is a microcosm of Deep Space 9, and Deep Space 9 is a microcosm of the cosmos itself.

But from a strictly characterization perspective, Odo's shapeshifting symbolizes something else. The fact that he could make himself look like anything and pass effortlessly, yet specifically chooses not to, is quite revealing. After all, why did Odo choose to be a humanoid anyway? Why couldn't he have chosen to take the form of, say, an eloquent and well-spoken hyper-evolved cat beast? Odo chooses to make his face look deliberately unfinished not just as a result of his uncertainty about his identity and his place in the universe, but in an attempt to draw attention to it in a kind of performativity: It's a mask that lets audiences know the role he's taken for himself. His very formlessness is another metaphor: Odo isn't comfortable making up his mind about what exactly he wants to be yet, so he remains permanently fluid and mercurial. The challenge for him is coming to embrace this malleability and liminality instead of viewing it as a curse, because more than anything else that is what makes him belong here. Ironically, it's his very formlessness and lack of understanding about his identity that defines and shapes his character.

There's some other great stuff in “Vortex” as well, apart from Odo's character moments. The effects shots of the titular vortex are really well-done (you can hardly tell the background is all stock footage of the Mutara Nebula from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) and I'd count the battle scenes here among the most memorable effects sequences of the first/sixth season. I also quite like Marvin Rush's lighting in this episode: He's always said the Deep Space 9 sets gave him more to work with then the Enterprise ones did, mostly owing to how much room for shadowplay they allowed. Although that said, a lot of that is due to him having more freedom to experiment with creating his own style instead of having to keep a style consistent with his predecessors in the cinematography department (although with respect to Rush, I don't think he ever managed to make the Enterprise look quite as visually captivating and unique as Edward R. Brown did).

Either way, Rush's handle of the Deep Space 9 sets and their potential to provide high contrast is on full display here. One scene that really struck out to me was when Odo confronts Quark under the stairs of the bar demanding to know the full details of his deal with Croden: There's a lot of shadows on the faces of Armin Shimerman and René Auberjonois, and that combined with the general murkiness of the lighting in Quark's Bar really underscores the tension of that scene. This is what my sensory memory of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on television looks like-People huddled in dark corners energetically whispering at each other with mildly pointed aggression and a tangible feeling of tension. This is how I remember the scene that finally sold this side of the Star Trek universe to me: Dax swinging on a horizontal bar while Kira tries to converse with her from stage right.

I haven't found this scene in any of the episodes I've revisited yet, and frankly I'm not sure if I ever want to. Some things, just like Odo's backstory, are better left to the ether of imagination. Better to be guided by memory and live in the present.

“A person who trusts no one cannot be trusted”: The Nagus

There's always been an aspect of duality to the Ferengi. On the one hand, they're meant to be dangerous and threatening capitalists, working as pirates and marauders who use intimidation and strongarming tactics to turn profit at all costs. On the other hand, thanks to their infamous “crazed gerbil” depiction in “The Last Outpost”, there's an undeniable and irreducible silliness to them that at once seems at odds with this intended narrative function.

However as I have previously argued, I feel these two interpretations are not necessarily mutually exclusive; there's a great deal to be said, after all, about a group of antagonists who at once embody ruthless capitalist values and blatantly misogynistic attitudes (many of which are at least taken for granted and accepted as “the way things are” in modernity, thus becoming hegemonic, or, in the absolute worst case scenarios, idealized and triumphed) and are also seen as a completely harmless laughingstock by the Star Trek universe. I still believe “The Last Outpost” walks this line fairly well, gerbils notwithstanding, but subsequent Ferengi stories have had a rougher time trying to maintain that careful balance. Too often we've been expected to see them as genuinely menacing and ignore their kind of inherent silliness, which is kind of a hard swallow given the aformentioned gerbil jumping (though there was a Michael Jan Friedman story from the third season that actually managed to pull it off in my opinion). Or, the opposite problem: Writers will portray the Ferengi as a total joke and not taken seriously whatsoever. In stories like “Ménage à Troi”, “The Price”, “The Perfect Mate” and “Rascals” the Ferengi's clownshoes quotient is dialed up to such a degree they become so grating to the point of becoming absolutely unwatchable.

By the first/sixth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and our first regular Ferengi character in Quark, the show has been sort of forced to develop some more nuance with them, although it hasn't been entirely smooth sailing either. After a good show in “Emissary” and a few assorted memorable moments in other episodes (most notably Quark's subplot in “The Passenger”), for as much good as we've gotten there's also been a lot of bad. As fun as Quark and Odo are to see bicker, when they get overexposed to the point of hijacking the show, such as in the insufferable “Odo and Quark Save the Day” of “Babel”, things become less fun. And then there's the utterly obnoxious grovelling Quark is made to do in last week's stupefyingly awful “Move Along Home”.

With “The Nagus” though we now have an entire episode pretty much dedicated toward exploring Ferengi culture in ways we haven't really gotten the chance to see until now, and thankfully the show more or less manages to pull it off and make it seem somewhat respectable (well, as respectable as the Ferengi can ever get I suppose). There are a few parts that grate on me, but most of them are actually from the B-plot and I chalk that mostly up to personal taste. In spite of this episode's origins as effectively a pastiche of The Godfather (yet another slavish reference to old Hollywood-There's even a scene nicked from the Francis Ford Coppola film shot for shot), I found the Ferengi summit Grand Nagus Zek calls in Quark's bar to be delightfully reminiscent of, say, some self-important CEO indulging himself during an annual sales figures meeting for some giant investment firm as the board of directors goads him on with false sincerity through clenched teeth. It's completely hilarious for one, but it's also genius satire that's the perfect extension of who the Ferengi were supposed to be in “The Last Outpost”: This is exactly the way I would imagine Ferengi foreign policy operates, and their prominent purple and gold lamé aesthetic just further invites the art deco and Manhattan comparisons for me. I also just love how the Ferengi are a society organised around a monolithic corporation comprised of sociopaths, sexists, cutthroats and robber-barons: Just like in real life!

Telling a story about these kinds of themes and exaggerating them beyond infinity also makes it easier for us to take note of the striations that develop in this kind of hierarchical authoritarian system. To put it bluntly, the shit rolls downhill: Krax is forever subservient to his father the Nagus Zek to the point several characters point out how he's always living in his father's shadow. It's his resentment of this, along with his own personal ambition (and youthful hotheadedness), that leads him to spring the assassination plot with Rom, who himself is constantly getting dumped on by his older brother Quark. But even Quark isn't on the top of the dogpile himself, as he and the rest of the Ferengi delegates are still lower on the ladder than Zek, though Quark's strength and stubbornness is shown through him being one of the few Ferengi representatives less than thrilled about having to prostrate himself before the Nagus. And yet at the same time, this also shows Quark to be cut of a slightly different cloth than his kinsmen: He speaks of things like honour, loyalty, dignity and cooperation, concepts that would assuredly be alien, if not anathema, to other Ferengi. He's the most charismatic, upstanding and likable one of the lot, in a kind of grizzled antiheroic way. Which only makes sense, as he's one of us. He lives on Deep Space 9. This bears significance to the rest of the plot threads here and is worth returning to a bit later on.

And at the lowest of the low here is, predictably, Nog. As the child and therefore the youngest, he is also the one who bears all of the vitriol and weight from three generations of his elders taking out their frustrations on and power tripping through him. Just as is the case throughout modernity, children are the most powerless of all, denied the freedoms and liberties of their adult relatives to the point they're effectively indentured servants. And the fundamental unfairness and inequality of his society is something Nog is just now starting to realise and chafe against, as adolescents in modernity have done for as long as modernity has existed. But unlike his father, who chose to play the game to win for himself (and fail miserably at it), Nog is starting to realise that maybe there's another, better path for him to go. Regardless of your feelings on this epiphany coming to him through a whitewashed and idealized version of the Western educational system (I have plenty, believe me), the fact of the matter is it still comes through a form of cultural diffusion. Nog's eyes are opened and his horizons are broadened through interacting with people from other positionalities and knowledge-spheres.

Which is actually a theme that resonates at multiple levels throughout “The Nagus”, reinforcing a major tenet of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's utopianism. The “opportunity”, a Zek puts it, is the wormhole. And not just the wormhole, but specifically Deep Space 9 and its proximity to it. People from all different societies and experiential spheres mingle here, resulting in a net positive for everyone. For Zek it's an opportunity to line his pockets. It is for Quark too, but it's something a bit more than that as well: Take notice of how he's the only one who doesn't raise an objection to Nog attending the O'Briens' school over dinner, and how he mentions in passing that he's always wanted to see the wormhole-Not because of where it takes him physically, but merely because of it itself. Because of his permanent presence on Deep Space 9, Quark is beginning to embody its ideals of empathy and self-growth just like his fellow residents.

This is all still a tentative process, mind, just as it is for everyone. And it's therefore wonderfully appropriate how trust, or lack thereof, is a major theme of this episode as well. Chief O'Brien doesn't trust Nog and express his concern about his relationship with Jake to Commander Sisko. The Ferengi famously distrust on principle: None of the delegates trust each other, though Quark does trust Rom and Krax (even though he shouldn't) but doesn't trust Gral, Commander Sisko, Odo and Doctor Bashir (even though he should). And meanwhile, Ben himself isn't entirely convinced he can trust Jake anymore, and likewise Jake distrusts his father enough not to tell him about his entirely benign plans to teach Nog how to read and engage in amateur business ventures with him.

But what's critical here is how the show handles this: Never once do we get the impression this is being done simply to wallow in negative emotions for the audience to voyeuristically partake in, because in each case it's an individual, unique manifestation of utopianism: Quark's decision to “keep things in the family” instead of putting faith in Sisko, Odo and Bashir almost gets him in serious trouble, and the Nog's dilemma over continuing to attend school is framed as really being about the benefits of exposing oneself to other cultures and other ways of thinking instead of remaining isolated in an insular comfort zone of fundamentalism. Even the Ben and Jake story has undercurrents of this, albeit far more subtle ones: What their impasse boils down to is essentially a failure to communicate. Jake is projecting his experiences seeing Nog's frustration with Rom onto his relationship with his own father.

Ben isn't outright forbidding Jake and Nog to see each other out of a basal xenophobia, actually the contrary: He's championing Jake on his enthusiasm to go out and meet new people who are different from him, he's just cautioning his son that part and parcel of everyone having different beliefs is that not everyone's beliefs are compatible and not everyone is going to necessarily like him. The problem is Jake doesn't fully understand what Ben is trying to tell him because, well, Jake is a teenager. One of the things that makes adolescence rough is that constant exposure to new and unfamiliar experiences can be overwhelming to the point of not being entirely sure what to believe anymore. In those circumstances, some teenagers have a tendency to cloister themselves up because they're not entirely comfortable with their experiences and beliefs, have a hard time expressing themselves and aren't always sure who to trust, and that's what Jake's going through here. That doesn't make him wrong, it just means he's a regular kid. It's a damn sight more accurate and realistic a depiction of adolescence than any kid's show or young adult fiction I've ever read, and it's a great call to address it as part of a larger story where trust (and learning to trust) is such an important theme elsewhere.

This also leads to yet another brilliant Jadzia Dax moment. The scene where she basically invites herself into Ben and Jake's quarters for dinner is classic Jadzia, and throughout she demonstrates an absolutely uncanny sense of perceptiveness and empathy. Because of course adolescence is just as hard on parents: We're all just people trying to do the best we can, and there's no playbook telling us exactly how to fill these kind of roles. So this scene is about Ben not being entirely sure how he should act as a dad-Jadzia senses this and, displaying the same preternatural awareness of the narrative she showed in “The Passenger”, guides him into a position to act that's beneficial to both him and Jake employing some abjectly brilliant double reverse psychology. She says if Jake were her son, she'd be the strict (authoritarian) parent, find him and demand he come back to eat his dinner.

But of course she says she's not the type to be a mother or a father (and she really isn't) and has pretty much failed as a parent each time she's tried: She knows it's not the right thing to do, but she also knows a lot of parents think it is the right thing to do (after all, she's been in that position before herself), and she plays on Ben's desire to Do the Right Thing to get him into a place where the rift can be healed. Again, we never explicitly get to see Dax figure out what Jake and Nog are really doing, but we can pretty easily infer that she has and is popping by with that in mind to help smooth things over a bit, just because she's Jadzia and incredibly perceptive and this is the sort of thing she does all the time. I'll bet she knew perfectly well Ben had been waiting on Jake for dinner for a half hour and came by *specifically because* of that. It's a moment that's deeply reminiscent of early Guinan scenes because, just like Guinan, Jadzia plainly does not mean what her words would superficially indicate she means. She's playing an interlocutor to help move the plot along to a more positive place, and it's all in Terry Farrell's inflections and body language, something she's every bit as good at as Whoopi Goldberg.

“The Nagus” is another terrific example of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine doing what it does best. The broad-strokes comedic tone works to obfuscate some storytelling that's far more intricate than the brief might lead to to believe. It's another fantastic use of the ensemble where every major character has a subplot centred around the themes of the week; themes that are a subset and microcosm of the show's larger set of themes and ideals it looks at each and every week. If there's parts that wore on me a bit, it's honestly only because I'm overly familiar with some of the teenage beats and have long since grown beyond tired with them (although I stress this is hands-down the best I have ever seen them examined) and the Ferengi always walk a thin line between endearing and unwatchable for me. But they certainly keep the balance here, and it all adds up to yet another stellar week On the Edge of the Final Frontier.