Now that part two is up I can say... Well not much about the episode, Chuck pretty much nails everything I was going to say and says it much better. My only differing opinion is that Garak seems more like a post-WW2 German than a post WW1 German citizen. The Cardassian that Damar shot in the back and then said that his Cardassia was gone and never coming back in...whichever episode it was they stole the Breen weapon...he was a post-WW1 German Citizen. The loss of Bajor in Emissary, that I would say was Cardassia's WW1 moment. Where they fooled themselves they were still a power and there was a myth of retaking all that was lost.
Post Dominion War, that was WW2 territory and I like to believe that instead of joining the Federation that Bajor and a penitent Cardassia joined together to create their own type of Union which helped add diversity and counterbalance the Federation's worst tendencies (both in complacency and in unilateralism). Of course then about thirty years on they admitted another member who did nothing but whinge, complain, and try to wreck the thing while being the single biggest beneficiary of wealth, status and power of that Union and who eventually flounced out to live in irrelevance, poverty and destitution thereafter.... But that might be taking current politics a bit too far
Overall I liked DS9. I liked seeing the Federation that could function in times of war as well as in peace and with one off crisis. I liked seeing the ongoing support role too. When I was a little girl there lots of stories in the library and on tv and radio about the crucial role the government (national and local) had in keeping remote communities going and providing relief when needed. Sometimes they were darker stories, the evacuations and end of habitations like on St Kilda and other islands, sometimes about the way they were re-inhabited and kept going, and sometimes about the far off communities on the other side of the globe which needed guarding against pirates and hostile powers. A message would come into a base, and they'd deploy assets as needed. DS9 really spoke to me in that, and Quark often made me think of the comedic side of that too with the Para Handy tales and the Angus Og comic strips in the papers. There was was a lot of DS9 I really liked, and I wanted to like it more than I did. However...
My big complaints of the series, are still fairly minor. My biggest one, which is particularly marked in this episode, is that it is just too dark. I don't mean in tone, I mean it is literally too dark. I have visual impairments these days, which are getting worse, and DS9 with its greys, dull greens and dull bronze palettes, and the chronically low lighting, means that at times the show might as well be on radio. Put a few more light bulbs in, spread some colour around the place. There are complaints I had about TNG and Voyager, but not being able to see what was going on is never going to be one of them. Brightly lit sets, lots of blocks of colour, that is what I need. Sadly it seems a lot of shows are following the too murky to see what is going on route. It is probably the single biggest thing putting me off current tv, well second biggest thing, but I'm not getting into the other here.
The other complaints about DS9? More about how they delivered things rather than the things themselves. Take "In The Pale Moonlight" for example, a great episode and I have no complaints other than the lighting. It explored the dark sides of Gene's vision marvellously, showing the conflicts and the compromises that had to be made in tough times, and at the end, despite all his bravado; Sisko was still ashamed of his actions even if he thought they were right. Now look at Section 31. Not a hint of shame at what they were doing and nothing more than lipservice towards this greater good crap; and if it were lipservice from the character, which was examined by the narrative, that would have been okay but it was lip service from the production team. The latter was the unforgivable bit. There was never a sense of real condemnation in the narrative about S31's actions. And it should have been condemned, that combined with the way some of the episodes exposed the need to continually strive to be better but never actually came out and said that the striving was the important part, well that led to a fanbase that often became very toxic. DS9's biggest flaw was not in the show itself, but what IT left behind in the fans; a message of its okay to be bastards, and a better world is impossible but instead of always striving it is a case of "can't win, don't try, lets indulge our baser natures". That is why TNG, for all its flaws, early preachyness, and Nemesis is the better fandom to be in. That is DS9's biggest failing, because even though it was a great show I never felt able to enjoy the fans. Even Voyager and Enterprise, for all that they are vastly inferior shows, had less toxic fandoms which were more fun to be in.
Oh, and as a PS; the prophets were dumb and Keiko was dead on about them even back in S1. Bunch of alien voodoo setting themselves up as deities. If DS9 had to deconstruct something over the long term it ought to have been that and showing Bajor transitioning from its pre-Cardassian era superstitions and beliefs to putting that bunch of hoohaa behind it. I cordially despise all that claptrap too. Deconstruct the need for religion as a life-crutch, I want to see that.
