[DS9] Season 4, Episode 17: Accession

Rating: 2 

There’s a pretty interesting conundrum presented in this episode, but it perhaps could have been handled with a  little more nuance. A man from the past who has a legitimate claim to being the Emissary tries to introduce an essentially cataclysmic societal shift. The Bajorians basically go along with it, I guess to illustrate how much power the Emissary wields. It seems like a missed opportunity to explore how a system of belief changes over time, and what people of that tradition do when confronted with how much their culture has evolved. While the transition isn’t easy, it seems like all the Bajorans are at least trying to go along with it.

Read more at Memory Alpha

Notes:

Keiko comes home and is pregnant.

A guy comes through the wormhole and he was in there for 200 years. He says he’s the emissary!

Sisko’s cool with that. He wasn’t feelin’ the emissary business anyway.

The new emissary really misses the old caste system, so he wants to bring it back. I’m starting to think this guy might not be so great…

Sisko has a dream.

Kira resigns because she needs to become an artist to fit into her caste.

One of the emissary’s buddies killed a guy who wouldn’t accept his role in the caste system.

Sisko’s had enough of this new emissary’s backwards ways, so they drive to the wormhole to ask the prophets which of them is cooler.

And the say it’s the Sisko, duh.

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