#WOW sounds like SOMEONE likes being a victim. sounds like someone has a persecution complex

[viscerast]

oo hot girls be Remembering tonight

[alands9]

S1E19 In the Hands of the Prophets

“I'm glad to hear her expertise doesn't end with jumja sticks.” Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Really, we're doing a wife jealous of the secretary, er, engineer plot?

Okay, she's trolling. O'Brien probably needs more trolling in his life.

Wow, Deep Space Nine really tackled some of the tougher problems of the 90s. Holocaust denial in the last episode. Creationism in this one. I'm glad those are things that are in the past. 😞

O'Brien's star underling is bajoran. She's going to side with religious extremist, isn't she?

If a confrontation like this was inevitable, Sisko, maybe you should have mentioned it to Keiko O'Brien earlier, so she wouldn't be blindsided by it?

By the Prophets, Kira, really?

To an extent the disagreement appears to be the religious extremists trying to be offended. Which, I suppose, works.

I don't think you needed to grab his ear to know that Sisko didn't believe.

“I cannot be responsible for the consequences.” When someone says that, they are totally freaking responsible for the consequences. It's just a more poetic way of saying “stop hitting yourself.”

I am sure there are a lot of people in that space station who believe exactly what O’Brien is teaching and would be happy to share that with you. If you need to pull your kids from the class because you're not a fan of science, so be it. But threats seem wildly inappropriate.

O'Brien, why are you dragging your assistant around while you look for a lost tool? Surely there's something more productive she could be doing. Or you can send her to look for your lost tool, and you could do something more productive. This does not seem like a two-person job.

The writer and the actress really nailed the sanctimonious seemingly-nice asshole religious type.

I doubt the sactaimoniousasshole would find it an acceptable compromise, but secular religious studies can be a valuable thing to teach. While it would be inappropriate for O'Brien to teach that the Prophets are real, it would be good education to teach her students about the major faith of the planet that owns the station.

(Hell, I suspect a lot of Americans could benefit from learning about other faiths.)

By the Prophets, such a sanctimonious asshole.

She keeps finding ways to be worse!

I suspect she's really irritating me because this is the exact same argument loop I’ve been seeing my entire adult life. (Obviously it's much older, but I wasn't paying attention.)

The episode summary says “A Bajoran woman in religious garb observes Keiko O'Brien's class and calmly objects to Keiko’s secular methods of instruction.” This is a really good example of the flaw in the idea that the calm person must be right. Manipulative assholes are often very good at being calm. People who are toying with somebody else's freedoms find it easy to be calm.

This episodes live blogging may turn into a giant social justice warrior rant. Sorry. It is intrinsically a super political episode.

It is interesting that the season finale is a political episode, with a religious connection, about the connection between the Federation and Bajor. That's kind of neat. I literally have no idea where the show goes over the next six seasons, but they're definitely seems like there's a lot of potential in the relationship between the Federation and Bajor.

Having an ambush “discussion” surrounded by children, with their parents standing in the background, then cloaking her one side of demands in the illusion of compromise. Sanctimonious asshole plays the game well.

All it needs to feel like real life is a pundit weeping that the two sides are both to blame for the schism.

That was a lot of kids. I don't think your class has that many kids.

Wow, okay, O'Brien. Suddenly changing the lesson plan to talk about the persecution of Galileo, that's moving into outright politics and manipulation. I'm not impressed.

“The Prophets were [the bajorans’] only source of hope and courage.” If it's true, that's really sad. If it's not true, Sisko is being space racist.

“But there were no Prophets.” Jake, I'm a freaking atheist, and I disagree with you. Sort of. The facts are not necessarily incompatible with the existence of the Prophets.

It occurs to me that the Kai is not unreachable. She struck me as much more reasonable and open-minded. Why not grab a bunch of bajoran pop through the wormhole and go have a remote conversation with the Kai?

The bajoran city is a nice matte painting, with some clever tricks to give a little bit of life (sparkling water, the glistening window in the foreground), but if you do a long, complex pan over it, the lack of parallax betrays the whole thing.

Yeah, getting a liberal leader of the nominally same faith to support you never works in the real world. And we're too early in the episode for it to work in the science fiction world.

Sisko, you want to call together the entire bajoran College of Cardinals to argue over a tiny school?

You're planting those plants in gravel? You're either very good or very bad gardener.

To be fair, the Federation does appear to be godless.

If you truly believe that Sisko is the chosen one of your higher power, and you're afraid of him because of that, I question your qualifications to be among the religious leadership.

Based on a tiny scrap of scorched remains, you could tell that the victim was shot with a phaser before he was placed in the space furnace? I assume this part of the script just said “tech tech tech.”

Okay, I'll admit that I'm a bit slow. Obviously O'Brien's star subordinate killed what's his face. That's why she need to get a bunch of screen time, despite doing nothing of particular note.

“Well, you're not like the others.” That sounds never bodes well.

They fight fires with air compressors? If that's breathable air, you just going to make the fire worse. If it's something that will suppress fire, it's probably not breathable air.

A meaningful glance at Kira is one thing, Sisko, but you held that look for way too long. Now it looks like you're addressing her, as opposed to the sanctimonious asshole, or your real audience which is the crowd.

At some point, Sisko, your grand speech turned into your telling the bajorans what they should be feeling. Which kind of makes you a sanctimonious asshole.

The sanctimonious asshole totally lost her cool. Which was her key advantage.

I'm not sure what the terrorist’s intent was. The problem is is that the school is an unremarkable room filled with stock furniture. It's terrible symbol of anything. It's not going to delay anything, since it'll be easily restored. And, seriously, it will just generate sympathy for the school. If the school is Satan, you can easily keep your kids out of it. You've apparently convinced all the bajorans to do so.

All that said, there's way too much episode for this to be the conclusion yet.

O'Brien's star subordinate is in league with sanctimonious asshole? The plot thickens.

Was this some sort of ploy in which the school is just a pawn and things started before the school fight actually publicly happened?

Is this a plot to assassinate the liberal religious leader?

He claims to have received an invitation from Sisko that Sisko doesn't remember giving. Total assassination attempt.

“Perhaps I can help you clean it up.” He said with an expression that suggest there are implicit quotes around the word “help.”

Round and oval displays are just such a terrible idea.

It is the will of the prophets that someone martyr themself. Not me of course, but you.

The files protected by a 7 character alphanumeric password? So, something my phone could break in about 10 minutes?

The liberal religious leader is still alive. I'm a little surprised. I assume their plan was to blow up the ship or something, and that was why they were messing around with the docking bays.

I don't know if I'll ever get used to the tiny little screens in the middle of large decorative panels. It really did not age well.

“Report any anomalous reading.” If you haven't specified that, what would it have reported?

Assuming she can pull it off, it's not a bad power play. She eliminates major political rival and martyrs him in a way likely to encourage support for her extreme views.

It sure sounds stupid when people address to computer with “Computer.” Who would ever do that? Okay, Google, who designed the Deep Space Nine computers?

Yeah, the dead-eyed person in the crowd, always the assassin.

Okay, the part of this plan I don't understand is having a bajoran do it. That just muddies the entire message.

If this was just about killing him so you could take his place, why did you need to bring him to DS9? Especially if you were going to go for such an incredibly obvious method of killing. We've established he spends extended periods alone in the gardens. Do knives not work at your monastery?

“I heard what you said at the school.” It would have been hard not to, seeing as how he was projecting so the entire crowd could hear him, and directly facing you a mere 5 feet away.

So there's just one person active at ops right now? Seems a bit skeletal.

I really like to this episode, but the holes in sanctimonious asshole’s plan are kind of irritating. If they could have set it up to make it at least look like a Federation, non-bajoran agent was responsible, everything else fits into place reasonably well.