Battle Lines

Best part, recognizing Jonathan Banks voice! Typical DS9... crazy aliens, awkward silences, bio mechanical control and gritty sets.

This DS9 story has Commander Sisko, Major Kira, and Dr. Bashir taking one of the shuttlecraft into the wormhole with the Kai of Bajor along for the ride. Camille Saviola playing the Kai feels this is part of her destiny.

The shuttlecraft is downed by some planetary defense systems and Kai Opaka is killed. But then she rises from the dead. Seems like no one has died in scores of years on this planet. Something like the world in Zardoz.

Deep Space 9 is the only Star Trek show where religion has a role. In the explanation of the Bajoran faith is why Kai Opaka does what she does.

This is one of Nana Visitor's best shows, her grief for Opaka is quite real and not staged. Catch this one for her if no other reason.

Oof. Talk about a return to rubbish form after the previous episode's highlight. This week's episode was Battle Lines. Absolute snooze of a plot. A cool sci-fi concept of a prison planet keeping its prisoners alive indefinitely completely wasted. Really basic on-the-nose writing - at one point Bashir hits you over the head with a literal 'we appear to have a moral dilemma'.

Some vaguely mystical nonsense that doesn't get explored with the bajor spirit queen had potential, but just resulted in kira being an absolute sap for the whole episode.

Why are all these gamma quadrant aliens just boring humans?

Bad.

Great idea. Done decently. This is one of the reasons why we watch 1990 TV on Netflix and Amazon prime.

Kai Opaka visits DS9 and goes for a spin in the runabout through the wormhole with Sisko and Kira.

This is a fairly good episode that has some decent character development for Kira and a good use of the Kai. The plot regarding the main characters caught between two warring peoples is an overused concept in Star Trek but done to reasonably good effect here. There are some decent themes about blood feuds and continual cycles of violence that come out very well in the characters behaviour.

There are plenty of good performances from the likes of Nana Visitor, Avery Brooks and Camille Saviola. 80s favourite and Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul star Jonathan Banks also makes a good appearance.

The visuals, effects and costumes are solid, but it's relatively familiar Star Trek designs applied to the humanoids in the gamma quadrant. Considering we're at the other side of the galaxy you'd expect something different.