SDS9 – S3E24: "Shakaar" (Audio + Transcript) (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on February 15, 2024.

In this episode, Sam and Scott discuss "Shakaar," in which Kira sparks an old flame, O'Brien has a hot streak, and Bajoran farmers have a standoff with the new Bajoran government.

Find seasons 1 and 2 on the Southpaw podcast stream. Find the rest of season 3 on Patreon.

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Transcript

[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]

We are back with Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 3.

If you don't know what SDS9 is, it's Southpaw's complete SDS9 watch-along show where we watch every episode, recap it, and analyze it.

We are your hosts, Scott and me, Sam.

Scott is someone who's watched DS9 more than once, whereas I'm someone who's casually watched some episodes when it first aired, but this is my first time watching each episode in earnest.

One of the cool things is this also gives us different perspectives.

After we watch each episode, we come together and talk about it.

We are discussing episode 24, Shakar.

Scott, can you tell us about this episode?

SCOTT

Yes.

At Deep Space Nine, Miles is killing at darts and he's beating Jake Sisko when Sisko gets a provisional message from the Bajoran government.

And we also see that Kira is praying.

Jake comes to see Kira as she prays for Baral, her ex who passed away.

The first minister of the provisional Bajoran government, Kalem Apron, has died in their sleep, and this is the government that has begun since the Cardassian occupation, for which Deep Space Nine exists.

And they have appointed Kai Wen, who is the religious leader of Bajor, as the provisional minister, and there will be an election.

Odo and Kira talk the stupidities of this and Odo notices that Kira is distracted.

She is only just getting used to Kaiwen as a religious leader and is surprised that she could be potentially a leader of politics for six years and also blames her for Bural's death and does not believe in the mixing of church and state, believes it's a bad idea and that

Kira and makes passive-aggressive notes of Kira's grift and notices that Nguyen has kind of given Braille no credit in the Cardassia piece even though he's like totally

The reason for it, see previous episodes.

And she's trying to turn Rakantha, a barren land, as through science and these sort of like replicators, can be made fertile in six months.

But farmers in another province won't give away the science toys, the replicators,

and that is by Shakar, the leader of Kirasel.

He won't give them away, and Kaiwen asks that Kira get it back, and that Shakar is selfish, and that Kira says that he's selfless.

So she agrees to talk with him, and Winn uses Bural as guilt.

The actress who plays Nguyen is just brilliant in this.

On Bajor, Kira is beyond happy to see Shakar.

And Shakar has basically quit Revolution to be a farmer.

And we know the connections of Revolution and agriculture.

And Shakar needs time to think about giving away the Replicator.

Again, this is the way that people can eat.

At Quark's, Jadzia and Miles are playing darts.

Miles has a hot hand and has won 47 straight games.

And even though he wants to go kayaking on the holodeck holosuites, Quark wants him to continue because it's good for business and people are betting against him and Miles is confident.

On Bajor, Kira, Shakar, some other friends, they swap stories of the Resistance and they don't want to return the Replicator.

Kira urges Shakar to consider the future of Bajor.

Shakaar explains he only had the Replicators for a short time.

SAM

Wait wait, sorry Scott, they're not Replicators, they're Reclamators.

That's a huge difference to how we should understand this episode.

Replicators would completely change the stakes of this episode.

SCOTT

Reclamators, sorry, Reclamators.

So Shakar has only had the Reclamators for a short time, and it's not enough time to give them back the land they need that everyone is desperate for.

The Cardassian occupation has really taken away their ability to make food.

And Kira explains that the Rakantha Project will help, but Shakar insists they need to eat.

Kira suggests that he talk to Winn for a compromise, and although reticent, he agrees as a favor to Kira.

Kira tells Winn, look, Shakar needs six months.

This is not enough for Winn.

Rakanton needs this.

Kira pleads for them all to meet.

Winn says Shakar is stubborn, but again, people are starving.

Kira is sent back to Deep Space Nine.

Kira begs Shakar to be flexible, but he is arrested by Kai Wynn, but Shakar fights back and Kira fights back.

And Shakar asks Kira to go home to Deep Space Nine and not be involved in this, but she will not.

And basically Wynn puts an APB for Kira and Shakar.

and creates like these militia groups and these authorities that are hunting for the reclamators and arresting resistances and claiming them as basically like terrorists but at the same time so far they've stopped bloodshed but Shakar keeps calling to move up to hill country to sort of have like the high ground

Back on Deep Space Nine, Miles continues this hot streak and then all of a sudden his shoulder tears up and has to go to the infirmary facing forfeit.

He accepts defeat.

His hot hand and hot streak is over.

On DS9, Nguyen meets with Sisko and asks him to stop the beef between the Bajoran Popo and the Rebels.

The Defiance is making her look bad and she has basically created martial law and is using brute force.

is just not doing right.

And she says, hey, can the Federation be like Bajoran's NATO police to get Shakar?

But

This is basically prohibited by Federation law to interfere in these sort of things.

Cisco points out this is creating a civil war and that Nguyen is overreacting.

Nguyen says, through the prophets, she is being challenged to Shakar by any means necessary to stop him.

Even if it means killing Bajorans and instilling fear and breaking law and is willing to take away their initiative to join the Federation if the Federation won't help, she's just like focused in a bad way.

In the mountains, the fight between

You know, the farmer squad and the Bajoran militias is getting rugged, and Shakar's team is ready to fight and stop running.

And Kira and Shakar note that they might have to fight the wind-led militia, but as the standoff begins, Kira recognizes comrades from the resistance, and she doesn't want to fight them.

And both Shakar and Kira realize that they can't do it.

They won't kill Bajorans.

So they go to meet.

And at the meeting, Shakar asks to just leave his people.

A firefight almost ensues, but they cease fire.

And Kira asks them to stop.

None of them want to go from fighting Cardassians to fighting each other.

And then Shakar shows up to the Bajoran embassy to explain he will run for minister against Nguyen.

And he is going to win because this whole thing is bad and people love her.

And Nguyen can stay Kai, you know, the leader of the Bajoran religion, but is highly suggested to leave politics and that she won't win an election.

Back in Quarks, Miles is no longer good at darts right now.

It was good while it lasted.

With his new shoulder, though, kayaking seems feasible, and now Bashir is good with the darts.

Cisco meets with Kira, and they agree that things are good again, and Kira prays.

SAM

So a lot of what you mentioned in the outset of the last episode, family business, comes up again here.

It's actually a nice pairing.

And what you said in the beginning of the last episode was that this is a post-scarcity world, and we have to keep that in mind in this episode and this conversation.

And there's a lot of granular context to discuss here.

In the last episode, we also talked about how the Ferengi don't really care about status, whereas for many in the Star Trek verse, status is important.

And Kai Wen explicitly mentioned how important the status of joining the Federation is for Bajor, how she's doing all this to eventually join the Federation.

And you can't just join.

You have to prepare for it.

And the preparations very closely resembles all the things a company has to do to go IPO.

So IPO means to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ.

And going IPO means a lot of fuckery.

Joining the Federation reminds me a lot of going IPO.

Think about all the fuckery you have to do to become a US ally or to join NATO, which goes back to expecting the Federation to act like NATO.

They're all similar processes because how you do one thing is how you do all things.

For people who follow Liberation Martial Arts, they know that's a key concept within our program.

Getting recognized as one of the quote-unquote big boys means you gotta do things the big boys do.

To get a seat at the table, you gotta do things to get that seat at the table, which reminds me also a lot of Ishka in the last episode.

I know this episode isn't necessarily making this argument, but from a political economy perspective, joining the Federation incentivizes planets to do whatever it takes at all costs to get a seat at the table.

The terms for this in economics is perverse incentives, basically knowingly or unwittingly incentivizing poor behavior.

Scott, since you work in healthcare, and I know this is something you've mentioned a lot before, do you have thoughts about incentives and how that affects care?

SCOTT

Incentives are everything.

Am I going to do radiation if I'm not going to get better?

Am I going to take this medicine that's going to make me sick if there's only margins, especially if this medicine is maybe not covered by my insurance and costs $60 a piece?

Or like, hey, can I bring you a Subway sandwich to get you to talk to this psych nurse, you know?

Yeah, so incentives is everything.

And that's also the lie of capitalism, that people do things based off incentives.

SAM

The thing about incentives is that even if you're not incentivized to do the right thing or give people proper care, you think about the care that people on Medicaid get versus people on PPO.

You think about unhoused people when they go to the hospital versus people who are rich.

I just look at pregnancies and delivery, and you could pay extra and rent better rooms for recovery.

The Premises of this Episode

Made me think of Eminent Domain where Bajor is just acting like the US.

One of the big boys.

One of the good guys.

The Federation does stuff like this also, enforcing the rules-based order.

I remember this happened with the Federation, with Kira, I think, and was it Season 1?

Again, she was in the same position as Reformer, trying to deal with some quote-unquote unruly Bajorans, trying to take their land or, yeah, it had to do with trying to take their land and she ended up burning the dude's house down.

So, you know, the Federation did this also.

But since this is the future and specifically the space communist future of Star Trek where there is no scarcity and there's replicators, and I talked about this a lot, a lot during season one, the justification of quote-unquote just trying to feed people doesn't have the same muscle it does for us here in the real world and it does today.

Fighting over resources and material conditions isn't the same.

It doesn't mean you can't have conflict, but it would express itself differently.

So because it's more over principles rather than material conditions, it came off to my eyes today more like a libertarian fight than a liberatory fight.

It definitely didn't feel like a metaphor for indigenous resistance.

No.

With that said, that doesn't mean this isn't a fight to be had, even if it is libertarian, if the authority is being oppressive.

Scott, what did you think about the political fight and with it ending on the note of, we'll vote our way out of oppression, which is actually how it ended?

SCOTT

I didn't feel good about it.

SAM

Kai Wen declared martial law.

She wants to control everybody's behavior.

She's kind of like the ultimate top-down school teacher.

It's like, everybody behave and why are you fidgeting in your chair?

Why aren't you praying?

SCOTT

Yeah, she just wants power.

The psychology of Kai Wen will come into play later.

SAM

Another point of this episode was the darts and O'Brien's hot streak.

Have you ever experienced the hot hand in anything?

SCOTT

No.

Like, never in my life.

I mean, I've had some nights in jiu-jitsu where I didn't lose, but I wouldn't call it hot.

And

I had a couple lucky Magic the Gathering nights, but again, it's not something I really relate to.

SAM

What about gambling?

Have you ever gambled and had a hot streak?

SCOTT

I one time went to Atlantic City and made a bunch of money, and I one time went to Atlantic City and lost a bunch of money.

SAM

So it was a wash.

Yeah.

Here's what I'll say, right?

Because we often hear about hot hands or hot streaks when it's brought up, right?

Like the way it's written here, you know, it's almost like something we should all be able to relate to.

But I feel like we've related to it more often, like vicariously by watching

I feel like most people have probably never experienced it.

Here's what I will say, though.

I have definitely experienced the cold streak where I kept fucking up over and over and over.

I kept losing at something over and over and over.

So I will say this.

Not everybody's experienced hot hands, but I feel like most of us have experienced cold hands.

And maybe this goes back to the theme of the whole episode.

Capitalism is built in a way, and not just capitalism, this whole kind of like settler colonial project and the suppressive world order is built in a way where you don't have that many times where you feel a hot hand, but you definitely have a lot of times where you feel penalized or you've like lost a bunch in a row.

You've had cold hands.

SCOTT

Absolutely.

SAM

Now, Scott.

Please tell us about the next episode.

SCOTT

Yes.

Not a lot, but facets will get a little Dax episode.

SAM

Okay.

Until then…