DS9 – Accession

Plot – The sting at the end of the cold open is designed to make you sit up and pay attention. A Bajoran light ship has come through the wormhole damaged and its one passenger claims to be the Emissary to the Prophets. What the hell?

I understand the desire to ‘erase’ the Occupation by returning the Bajorans to a caste-based culture but the question is by turning back the clock to a much more primitive way of life are they Bajorans going to suffer a completely different but equal way? Caste based discrimination is against the Federation charter and this is one of the few episodes that actually threatens Sisko’s mission and the very reason they are on the station in the first place.

It’s lovely to have a cameo from Opaka and another trip to the wormhole. It checks in with the foundations of the series, right in the middle of its run. ‘We are of Bajor…’ hints at developments to come.

Character – The character nuggets that are peppered through this episode remind me over and over again why DS9 was the most realistic of the ‘day in the life of…’ series because essentially practically every episode was. These were people who have homes and relationships and work and an even balance between the three. TNG tended to only explore two, VOY often felt like it was no work and all play and ENT was the most funless show imaginable where the characters always feel as though they are chained to a console with a grim look on their faces. TOS mixed work and play to a great degree…and everybody seemed to be at it with somebody but not actually in a relationship with anybody. But that’s the sixties for you.

O’Brien and Bashir have come so far in four years and are at the point now where when Keiko comes home from her work on Bajor that they truly miss one another and hate the thought of destroying their bachelor pad at O’Brien’s place. Men. He takes a moment to react to the fact that he is going to be a father again because he was rather hoping that he and Keiko would have lots of time to make the baby. Honestly, blokes haven’t changed in three centuries. One of the cutest scenes in DS9’s run comes when Worf hears that Keiko is having a baby and stops in his tracks and asks ‘Now?’ as he doesn’t want to run the risk of having to deliver again. He’ll be on vacation on Earth when the times come, mores the pity.

Jane Espenson of Buffy fame deserves huge credit for writing a hugely likeable Keiko, a feat that seems to have passed over every man who has written for her in the past (usually as some dreadful fish wife who is like a noose around O’Brien’s neck). Here Keiko is bubbly, fun, hard at work and willing to share her husband with his new boy toy. Chao seizes the opportunity to play the role with a smile on her face and she is rather lovely to be around. Go figure.

Sisko gets his best character examination since the pilot in this adventure (Homefront/Paradise Lost aside) in Accession and it is a chance right in the middle of the shows run to check in on how he feels being the Emissary (spoiler – it’s a bit of a chore being a religious icon) and has it snatched away from him by what appears to be a more worthy candidate. How the episode is structured is very clever; showing him awkwardly performing a religious ceremony in the pre titles before spending the next fifteen minutes handing over the role to Akoram, followed by ten minutes where he realises what a terrible mistake he has made and a climax in the wormholes where the title is bestowed back upon him by the Prophets (with the reason why this exercise happened in the first place). Then, in the final scene Sisko beams gloriously at the idea of performing his next religious ceremony, having embraced the role. This is a massive step in where Sisko eventually ends up and probably the most defining twist in the road for his character. The crucial moment comes when Sisko feels like he has failed in his mission and regrets giving up his position as the Emissary. It makes him look at the life he has been handed and think about it in a whole new way. That’s not the sort of development characters usually get on Star Trek, certainly not the Captains.

It’s also a terrific episode for Kira, who might have looked as though she was getting the short shrift when Worf was brought into the show but this wasn’t the case at all. It took about half a season for them to figure out what to do with the two characters now he was on board (she is the second in command on the station, he is the second in command on the Defiant) and now it’s time to give her another of those wonderful character studies where Nana Visitor gets to emote her heart out and deliver the complexities that the script is going for. Kira is torn between her old Emissary and her new one, and she works within the caste system but it means a huge change in her life, including resigning from her position on the station. It shows the ultimate conflict that religion can bring; you are asked to work with a specific set of rules and that doesn’t fit the pattern of your life you are told that you don’t have faith. Instead of objecting (she tries but only quietly), Kira accepts her fate because her faith in the Prophets is so secure. It looks like, for the second time in the show, that we are going to lose Kira back to Bajor. Channelling the personal losses that the caste system will bring somebody like Kira is an excellent idea because it shows the impact on a character we care about whilst re-affirming her religious position.
 
Performance –I think Ira Behr was looking for somebody a bit more sinister than Libertini to play Akoram but I find the way he plays the role with a serene sense of calm whilst endorsing a caste based culture that forces people to significantly change their lives and builds in an excuse for murder all the more disturbing. He’s a good man who is completely out of time and wants to bring outdated religious morality and structure to a society that has evolved. He feels he is justified in his reforms because that is his norm and that works on his Bajor. But when this introduces social unrest, a class-based culture that denies people rights and blackens the name of good people just because they are born into a particular caste it is clear that his moral judgement is flawed, archaic and unworkable. Libertini plays all of this like he is absolutely in the right and that he has been endorsed by his Gods to ensure that all of this takes place. I believed in him totally as a character.

Great Dialogue – ‘No more ceremonies to attend. No more blessings to give. No more prophecies to fulfil. I’m just a Starfleet Officer again. All I have to worry about are the Klingons, the Dominion and the Maquis. I feel like I’m on vacation.’
‘Want to try for twins?’ ‘I don’t think it works that way.’
‘I want you to have this. It’s an original Kira Nerys. It could be very valuable someday ‘I hear she didn’t make many…’

Best moment – The scene where Odo questions the hypocrisy of a people that yesterday accepting that Sisko was the Emissary and today accepting that it is Akoram. It’s brilliantly written not to condemn, but to show the conflict in Kira. He says her faith has led her to a contradiction and she bites back that if you have faith, those contradictions don’t matter.

The lovely old Priest who has been working alongside Akoram decides to push a man to his death on the Promenade because his caste is unclean. It’s a great moment because until that point he has felt so passive and quite sweet. The way he attempts to justify the murder with the righteousness of his beliefs is quite chilling.

Remember when Sisko and Kira were at each other’s throats in the first couple of episodes of DS9? Now they are holding back tears at the thought of not working with each other anymore. It’s a lovely moment, one that pulls at the heartstrings. ‘I don’t doubt that I could fill your post…but to replace you?’

Keiko gets her best scene in DS9 at the end of this show where she manipulates the bromance of the century into spending time together again. The way it plays out is like a sitcom, which is something DS9 plays into every now and again with pleasing results.

I wish they hadn’t done that – David Libertini brings a quiet menace to Akorem but it turns out that David Warner had initially been asked and accepted the role but his wife talked him out of it because they were on vacation when it was shooting. I’m not going to dismiss what Libertini achieves, but every single story that David Warner is in is instantly better for his presence. He is an Ambassador for quality television acting.

One thing that does bug me about this show is just how gullible the Bajorans can be at times and there is a shortcut visual that they use all the time of groups of Bajorans standing around either booing or cheering to show the mood of the people. They come across as the easiest to manipulate race in the galaxy.

A reason to watch this episode again – Jane Espenson shows how to write a Bajoran episode and keep it light and very likeable. Astonishing that this is an episode that had to fought to be made because reading the script alone (even if Bajoran episodes aren’t sure-fire ratings winners) I can see this is a classy piece of work; brilliantly structured, dramatically told and with character development beaming from every page. Good on the writing team for pushing this one through. Add in the actors who are on fire at this point in the run and you have an attractive piece of work with plenty to chew on. Acession explores its huge weighty ideas with a delightfully light touch and re-enforces both the mission statement of the show, the faith of the First Officer and sends the series lead in a bold new direction. Even the B plot sparkles. Don’t turn away because it is about religion, don’t pass over this one because it is passive rather than aggressive, this is one of DS9’s finest.

***** out of *****