Blogging DS9, S1E12: "Battle Lines"

S1E12: "Battle Lines"
Or Tu-Opaka Shakur

"In the eyes of the Prophets, we are all children."
-Kai Opaka

One of the richest parts of DS9 is its willingness to address religion, a subject only sparsely touched by its predecessors. "Battle Lines," while lacking in most other ways, at least advances the moral conflicts of the Bajorans as they keep their faith in a politically tumultuous time.

The episode itself is pretty weak in terms of plot (there is no B-arc), and even the big reveal that the moon's living dead were doomed to remain isn't all that surprising or gut-wrenching. But the redeeming moments come in the interactions between Kira and Opaka. Kira is as deep a character as the show offers, and nowhere is her baggage more obvious than in the presence of her religious idol.

Kira, the devout freedom fighter, comes to realize the peace that came with the end of the Cardassian Occupation is completely foreign to her. Opaka tells Kira to face her violent nature head-on and learn how to channel it. The writing is fairly grounded and worthy of praise, and the acting is adequate to not distract from the topics the writers isolated. Nana Visitor's dramatic change from a proud fighter to a sobbing child at the Kai's feet is a little over-the-top.

It's hard for me to effectively determine whether the Kai's gravity is effectively expressed given my extended knowledge of the series. In reviewing these posts, it seems to me that 12 episodes into the series, the Kai should have been developed a little more before she is essentially killed off. Odo and others make a point of telling us how important Opaka is to the Bajorans, but being shown rather than told would have been far more effective. Without giving away too much, the Kaiship is an extremely important position to the development of DS9 in its first few seasons, and focus on Opaka's succession almost retrospectively begs for a little more on the series' first Kai.

As for the Starfleeters? Ouch. O'Brien and Dax's turn as scientific one-uppers was a snoozer. As always, they threw around pseudo-science and came up with some frontier innovation to save the day. But you already knew that would happen. Sisko and Bashir clumsily plodded around in a war zone, though maybe there is some buried humor in both of their efforts ultimately failing. On this particular moon, they were hardly Picard and Dr. Crusher.

As for some other thoughts:

• The exit from the runabout made me chuckle. So somehow Opaka was knocked out cold, but the other three were almost unharmed. And even though Kira was wounded, she was still in good enough shape to lift the Kai out of the ship. 
• Many fictional problem-solvers use the innocuous-comment-as-inspiration crutch, including Gregory House and Sherlock Holmes. But Colm Meaney may have set a record, as he was barely halfway through "needle in a haystack" before he was into the physics of his solution to find the downed runabout. Look, I'm not asking for my shows to mirror everyday life. But could we only use this trick when it's clever or interesting and can the actor at least sell the moments of inspiration between thinking of the offhand comment and final genius?

2 bars of gold-pressed latinum out of 5