Series: Star Trek: Deep Space 9
Season: 1
Episode: 1 and 2
Episode title: “Emissary”
Original transmission date: January 4 1993
Total seasons (to date if current): 7
Span: 1993 - 1999
Writer(s): Rick Berman, Michael Piller
Director: David Carson
Basic premise: Benjamin Sisko is reassigned to the Federation space station Deep Space 9, and quickly becomes entangled in politics and power as the station suddenly becomes the most important in the quadrant when a stable wormhole is discovered.
Setting(s): Battle of Wolf 359, Deep Space 9, Starfleet Command on Earth, The wormhole (entailing various dream/vision sequences including a beach, a baseball pitch and others)
Themes: Faith, war, reconciliation, travel, destiny, acceptance
Things I liked: The new idea (shut up, Babylon 5 fans including me!) of using a space station, the Cardassians, the idea of a black man in charge, Wolf 359, Odo, lots of things.
Things I didn’t like: Too much religion; I never enjoyed the religious aspect of this show, and though I'll give it its due, for me it made the storylines overly intricate, though of course it does play a huge part in the unfolding story arc later. I didn't like Kira at first. That's a lie. I never liked Kira, right to the end. The scene in the wormhole/celestial temple is stretched out too far, and did they have to bring bloody baseball into it?
Timeline: 24th century
Stardate: ?
Vessel: None; space station
Deep Space 9
Class: n/a
Location: Alpha Quadrant
Mission(s): n/a
Dramatis Personae:
Main:
Commander Benjamin Sisko
Major Kira Nerys, a Bajoran ex-freedom fighter/rebel
Chief Engineer Miles O’Brien
Lieutenant Jadzia Dax, a trill
Doctor Julian Bashir, CMO
Quark, Ferengi owner of a bar and casino
Odo, Head of security, some sort of shapeshifting alien
Supporting:
Kai Opaka, supreme Bajoran spiritual leader
Ancillary:
Admiral Jean-Luc Picard
Locutus of Borg
Gul Dukat
Rom, Quark’s brother
Nog, Rom’s son
Jennifer Sisko, the commander’s late wife
Starring: (Main cast) Avery Brooks, Nana Visitor, Colm Meany, Siddig el Fadil, Terry Farrell, Armin Shimerman, Rene Auberjonois, Cirroc Lofton
With: Camille Saviola, Aron Eisenberg, Max Grodenchik, Marc Alaimo, J.G. Hertzler, Majel Barret (Roddenberry) (RIP)
Guest Star(s):
Patrick Stewart
Synopsis
Beginning as it does with the battle at Wolf 359, if you have not already seen TNG's “The Best of Both Worlds” before embarking on your adventure into this series, it is highly recommended, otherwise the opening scene will confound you. Assuming you're conversant with those episodes though (if not, read no further: you have been warned), we see the battle being directed against the Federation by Locutus of Borg, none other than Captain Jean-Luc Picard in his Borg persona. Starfleet is losing the battle, and will suffer heavy losses before retreating against the marauding invaders, making this a watershed moment in
Trek history. Never before has such a massive fleet been assembled, the very cream of Starfleet, to be brushed aside like insects as the Borg carve their way through the galaxy towards Earth.
The USS
Saratoga is just one of the ships trying to stem the advance of the Borg, but they are as ineffectual as any of the others, and the ship takes a direct hit. Benjamin Sisko, serving aboard the ship, sees his wife, Jennifer, dead, pinned beneath a metal stanchion as the ship goes up in flames and he is forced to leave her there, taking his young son Jake as they escape, moments before the ship tears itself apart. Three years later, he is given command of the Federation space station, Deep Space Nine, which is in orbit around a planet called Bajor. This planet has just emerged from a long war of attrition with the Cardassian Empire, and they have requested a Federation presence in the sector, to discourage their old enemy from returning. The station the Federation are to take control of is an old Cardassian outpost known as
Terak Nor, but Starfleet have renamed it.
Joining Sisko there is his new chief of operations, Miles O'Brien, whom we met in TNG previously. As it is the
Enterprise that brings him and the station's doctor, Julian Bashir, to the station, it's not that surprising that we see a guest cameo for Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Sisko however is in no mood to be friendly: this is not a posting he requested and truth to tell, he is thinking of resigning his commission. He has a young son to bring up now, on his own, and a space station does not seem the best of places for him to grow up. He meets his new attache, Major Kira Nerys, who is less than overjoyed to see him. She is a Bajoran, fought against the Cardassians and is not happy to see the Federation, as she sees it, taking the place of the old oppressor. He also meets his chief of security, an alien called Odo, who can shift his shape into any form he wishes, and treats Sisko (and everyone really, bar Kira) with a sort of gruff tolerance. He was also chief of security when the Cardassians occupied this station, a fact that will not sit well with many now that the enemy has been overthrown.
After the nephew of Quark, the Ferengi who was running the local casino and bar but is now preparing to leave in the aftermath of the destruction wrought by the defeated, departing Cardassians, is caught stealing, Sisko offers him a choice. He will release the boy if Quark stays and reopens the casino. He wants someone to make a stand, put down roots and rebuild. Quark, with a tacit assurance of little or no interference from Starfleet in his gaming tables, grudgingly agrees. Odo begins to have a new respect for Sisko. Kira explains that she believes the provisional government set up to rule in the wake of the fall of the Cardassian occupation will itself fail, as factions develop and old scores are reignited. She says the only one who can reunite the planet is the spiritual leader, Kai Opaca, but she has secluded herself away. Just then, the vedek Sisko spoke to soon after his arrival advises him “it is time” and he goes to meet Opaca, who has sent for him. She shows him what she calls “a Tear of the Prophets”, a celestial orb of which she says there are nine, which appeared “mysteriously in the sky over the last ten thousand years.” She opens the casing and a blinding light suffuses him, and he is shown a most amazing vision.
He sees his future wife, Jennifer, now dead three years, as she was when he first met her. The vision does not last long, and when it is over Opaca tells him he has been chosen by the Prophets, her people's gods, to find the Celestial Temple before the Cardassians can. He has no idea what this temple is, but she tells him she cannot reunite her people until the Prophets have been warned. His
pah --- the lifeforce or spiritual energy the Bajorans believe is in all beings --- is strong, and has helped her come to this conclusion. A little nonplussed, Sisko is nevertheless delighted later that night to see the promenade come alive as Quark keeps his end of the bargain and reopens the bar. The next day he greets his medical officer and his new science officer, the latter of whom is an old friend of his. Dax is a Trill, a symbiotic lifeform introduced in TNG which bonds to a host body and can live many hundreds of years. The relationship is totally benign, and neither is in control of the other, but when Sisko knew Dax he was in an old man named Curzon. Now he is in a young, pretty female called Jadzia, and Sisko is amused, still calling him “old man” despite the obvious curves.
The MO, Julian Bashir, is smitten with Jadzia, even though he knows about the Trill inside her, and is like a blushing schoolboy around her, which again affords Sisko and Dax much amusement. Sisko is less amused however when the former Cardassian Prefect of Bajor, and the man in whose office he is now sitting, drops by. Gul Dukat makes it plain that he is not happy to have been ousted, and tries to wring information from the commander about the orb he has seen, but Sisko feigns ignorance. A veiled threat that the station is “far from the protection of the Federation, with poor defences” does nothing to settle Sisko's mood of foreboding, and the two men take an instant dislike to each other, an air of mutual distrust and suspicion descending almost immediately.
Dax has been researching possible locations for this so-called “Celestial Temple”, and they now have an area they need to check out, a locus for all the sightings and navigational errors that lead them to believe this may be the place they're looking for. With Odo managing to disable the Cardassian ship berthed at the station they are free to launch unchallenged, and head off in one of the small “Runabout”-class shuttles to explore. What they find, against all logic, is the first stable wormhole known to exist, and more, within that wormhole, a planet! Or an asteroid. Both see something different when, again against all logic, they find they land on ... something. Sisko sees a desolate, windswept, storm-lashed planetoid, while Dax see a vision of a beautiful garden; trees, flowers, rolling hills, blues sky and sun. Then they both see it: an orb, floating in the air. It shoots energy beams at them, and Dax is transported back to the station. When she relates what has happened, Major Kira realises the enormous strategic importance of the wormhole and comes to perhaps an odd decision: Deep Space Nine must be moved, somehow, to the mouth of the new wormhole, so that the Bajorans (and the Federation) can lay claim to it before the Cardassians do.
Sisko however remains behind and seems to have another vision, in which he contacts the aliens inside the wormhole, and finds that they have no conception whatever of time. For them, there is no “now”, “later”, “soon”, no “past” and no “future”: everything happens to them at the same moment. They test him, calling him adversarial, violent (sound familiar?) but he wins them over and they agree to anoint him as their emissary. They also bring him face-to-face with his own guilt and pain, and allow him to say goodbye properly to Jennifer. Meanwhile, Gul Dukat has not been idle in wake of the appearance of the wormhole and sets course for it, despite the warnings of Kira and Odo. Just as his ship enters it it collapses, and soon three Cardassian warships arrive in search of Dukat. Dismissing this story of a wormhole they can neither see nor detect, they surround the station, believing that the Bajorans have somehow destroyed their ship. They demand the total surrender of the space station, but Kira and O'Brien manage to make it look as if they are well armed and would not be an easy target. Nevertheless, mindful of the approach of the
Enterprise, less than a day away, Jasad orders the attack.
As the station begins to sustain heavy damage, and after holding out as long as she can Kira prepares to surrender, the wormhole suddenly reappears. Jasad is dumbfounded, the moreso as the
Rio Grande comes through, towing Dukat's stricken ship! The attack is of course broken off and Sisko returns to Deep Space Nine. With the wormhole now a major attraction, both for commerce, tourists and scientific research, to say nothing of the strategic importance it has suddenly acquired in a military sense, Bajor is on the map in a way it never was before. The wormhole aliens, or Prophets as the Bajorans refer to them, have agreed to allow safe access for all through the wormhole, affording a quick and easy passage to the Gamma Quadrant, seventy thousand light-years away. His initial doubts about the post now vanished, and knowing he is where he is supposed to be, Sisko asks Picard to rescind his request for replacement, and takes his place at the helm of what will be one of the most exciting and challenging posts in Starfleet.
Houston, we have a problem!
I find it odd, unlikely in the extreme that the Cardassians are allowed back on the station off which they were ejected but two weeks ago. Admittedly, there is a reason for their visit and it is no coincidence that they wait until the
Enterprise has left before approaching, but the ease with which Sisko allows them to “enjoy the facilities” is unsettling. It's like the SS coming back into Auschwitz after it's been liberated, or Al Quadea perhaps walking up to Ground Zero. Is there no tension here, no hostility? It's a Bajoran station after all; surely the locals are upset about this? But nobody seems to say anything, even raise an eyebrow. They're just accepted back. Granted, they're big heavy military types and nobody would want to mess with them, but you would think Sisko might have raised some objections, yet he doesn't. Odd, I feel.
Also, how is it that this wormhole has existed for approximately ten thousand years and yet Sisko and Dax are the first ones to ever locate it? Surely that's too massive a coincidence to ignore? Ten millennia: think about that. All right, man has only had space travel at this point for maybe two hundred years or less, but what about all the alien races passing through this sector? Did the Cardassians, in surely many supply runs to or even attacks on Bajor, never stumble across this? Is that in any way believable, that it's just been here, all this time, waiting for Sisko to discover it?