This one's device served for Sisko to level up in his Emissary skill set, elevating it to near-messianic levels. If this were Black Books, he would have ingested the Little Book of Calm. Bajor is finally approved for Federation membership, and Sisko crashes the party like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate to tell everyone that this is a Very Bad Idea.
For one, I have a bit of dissonance about the whole "acceptance of faith" thing in this one, regarding the Bajoran relationship with The Prophets. I can see an entity like The Federation wanting to keep "church and state" separate, but when it’s something quantifiable (the Prophets of the Celestial Temple are extra-dimensional aliens living in the local wormhole that exist outside of linear time), should they not only take what they’re getting from Sisko at face value, but actively try to use his relationship with them to get an edge over the competition in diplomacy, war, what have you? I would. Actually now that I say it outloud, Sisko asks for just such a Deus Ex Wormhole early in season six, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Anyway, my point is, that it’s not superstition and magical thinking when you can conduct double-blind, quantifiable experiments on them. -=shrug=-
All in all, it makes Sisko a little more interesting. Also, I’m forced to wonder if he’s got such a close relationship with The Prophets, and they can tell that he has a destiny that they already know about and they can see and are commenting on his future – it brings into question the existence of free will and predestination. If Sisko knew he had a destiny that he absolutely was going to fulfill, would he not feel entirely justified in taking crazy risks because he knew he was going to be OK?
A few danglers in this episode:
- Cassidy Yates returns from Space Jail to a warm welcome. Apparently whatever the Federation locks up people in for committing treason (six months in the spa!) is nowhere near as awful as the Brain Jail that poor Miles O’Brien had to go to last season. She looked positively radiant. The Sisko boys threw her a welcome home party! And she wasn’t even mad at them for sending her to the can! I imagine the Federation pokey to be something like a combination of summer camp, and a continuing adult education boarding school where they teach you new soft-skills to rehabilitate you. Knitting your way back to society.
- Best line of the show, from Worf in response to Quark’s great anticipation of all the root beer he’s going to sell due to increased federation foot traffic, and the profit opportunities he will come by from the loose lips in his establishment: “There is an ancient Klingon proverb that says, ‘You cannot loosen a man's tongue with root beer.’”
- Also Odo as the deadpan snarker who challenges Worf’s adherence to tradition… pointing out that keel-hauling is also a tradition. Nice one, grumpy.
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