DS9 - The Collaborator

[CharlesPhipps]

I'm inclined to believe that Bajorans would find the actions to be outrageous and that some would understand but many more would be horrified. To simply put, "A bunch of Resistance fighters were killed by a Bishop collaborating with the Nazis, even to save a village from being destroyed" is awful optics no matter how you slice it. Doubly so with the fact that it got someone they loved killed. It was maybe not the right decision either because there is no right decision there--only shades of evil.

And I'm going to state that it was absolutely stupid of Bariel to do what he did and had horrific consequences for Bajor. Everyone is thinking of the nobility of his sacrifice but what it did was put a power-mad despot in the most powerful role of the planet. Winn inflicts immeasurable damage because Bariel wants to protect his old mentor's legacy whereas I think Opaka never would have cared about that herself.

[Yukaphile]

Bareil was a deeply spiritual man. He had faith in their gods, and thus, he had faith they would guide Winn along the right path. And as "Life Support" proves, he was more or less her right hand. Imagine if he had lived? He could have done so much good for Bajor.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I'm inclined to believe that Bajorans would find the actions to be outrageous and that some would understand but many more would be horrified. To simply put, "A bunch of Resistance fighters were killed by a Bishop collaborating with the Nazis, even to save a village from being destroyed" is awful optics no matter how you slice it. Doubly so with the fact that it got someone they loved killed. It was maybe not the right decision either because there is no right decision there--only shades of evil.

And I'm going to state that it was absolutely stupid of Bariel to do what he did and had horrific consequences for Bajor. Everyone is thinking of the nobility of his sacrifice but what it did was put a power-mad despot in the most powerful role of the planet. Winn inflicts immeasurable damage because Bariel wants to protect his old mentor's legacy whereas I think Opaka never would have cared about that herself.

Hey Chucky thanks for the episode.

[SFDebris]

I'm not sure where the misunderstanding is coming from, but I wasn't saying that Opaka is like Bill Cosby, I was showing how one scandal, if bad enough and shown to be true, can completely destroy a legacy. That's all.

[Yukaphile]

Well, tbf, Bill Cosby's scandal was not the same. It was smaller in scope, sure, but also arguably worse, depending on who you ask. I see this as a necessary evil to stave off unnecessary death. Bill Cosby was just a man acting on his base impulses. Not throwing shade on you, dude, I love your content, I felt it was a good review, but just playing devil's advocate here.

[Deledrius]

I was showing how one scandal, if bad enough and shown to be true, can completely destroy a legacy. That's all.

That's how I took your comment.

[Yukaphile]

Me too.

[bronnt]

Watching this review and thinking about what Opaka did made me want to pose a question. In an episode which Chuck hasn't covered yet, we find out about a famous Bajoran resistance member. We also find out that his reputation was completely and totally overblown and fraudulent, to said Bajoran's own annoyance. But Sisko decides to not reveal the truth in order to keep the legend of this figure alive even after he's gone. Jadzia Dax does a similar thing in another episode, where she (or rather, Curzon) is accused of having killed a famous general on some planet and she doesn't talk about it lest she reveal the truth about this general, etc. What do people think about those sort of actions?

The thing that always bothered me about that Bajoran schmuck (his name was Li Nalas) was that people were talking about campaigns he commanded...but he was just some grunt on the ground. He wasn't a commander or leader at all.

You could picture two analogues for this. Audie Murphy was a famous war hero, right? Heavily decorated, awarded basically every honor the U.S. Army has. So you could write about a guy like him who accidentally did something heroic once, and then people just kept giving him medals for showing up at later fights.

OR, you could writer a story where a guy is a command level officer. Say, if someone like George S. Patton was completely in over his head, and all of the success of the US Third Army is really owed to some underling, maybe the commander of the 9th armored division, that kept Patton in check. That would be plausible.

But nobody thinks that decorated heroes Audie Murphy and Alvin York were genius battlefield commanders. That's the sort of weird confusion that comes in when writers don't bother to think about the mechanics of their story.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Me too.

I think the confusion was in thinking the comment was an assessment of Okapa?

[Yukaphile]

Li Nalas tried telling people the truth, but they wouldn't believe it, to the point he stopped trying.