SDS9 – S5E11: "The Darkness and the Light" (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on February 16, 2025.

From "The Darkness and the Light":

None of you belonged on Bajor. It wasn't your world. For fifty years, you r--ed our planet, and you killed our people. You lived on our land, and you took the food out of our mouths, and I don't care whether you held a phaser in your hand or you ironed shirts for a living. You were all guilty, and you were all legitimate targets!

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Transcript

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

This is Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 5. We are your hosts, Scott and Sam. On this Stardate, February 16th, 2025, we are discussing the darkness and the light. Scott, can you tell us about this episode?

So... In an Oreo is a black cookie, and then inside is—no, sorry, wait. In a yin-yang, we have—no, wait, wait, wait, sorry. Six Vedics are conducting a ceremony, Vedics being one of the holy people in the Bajoran religion. And all of a sudden,

one of them is suddenly struck by what seems to be a disruptor blast inside the candle that they're praying to. Odo meets up with Kira, who is talking to Bashir, because Kira is about to give birth to Miles and Keiko's baby. Any point, as you remember last season through Transporter Magic,

I'm sure it had nothing to do with non-visitor being pregnant with the actor who plays Dr. Bashir's child in real life. Nothing to do with it. And then they're trying to have this discussion of biomedicine versus organic medicine, sort of like an East versus West argument, that there are these certain herbs that are really good,

but then there's these other medicines. It's an interesting conversation to be had, especially in this world we live in right now. But Odo is going to talk to Kira because Lotha Mabren the Vedic who was, was blasted to death by a candle was in Kira's cell, you know, resistance group, if you will, back in the rebellion,

as you know, Kira was a resistance fighter fighting against the occupation. She's a freedom fighter. She's, she has blood on her hands. She has killed for her liberation. And she, she's made sad. We go back to the quarters of the O'Briens, and Kira receives a cryptic message.

It's just a picture of Latha and the distorted voice saying, that's one. What? Kira brings this to Ben and Odo. We see that it came through an antenna at the same time as the death. Of course, they could not trace the message, but they believe that it has to do with

the Shakar resistance cell that Kira was part of Odo decides he'll start an investigation even though it might be a Bajoran situation so there's going to be there's going to be investigations and Kira decides to let every of the other living members of her squad know we see Miles talking to Kira at Cork you know

they're just talking about how likely they've been living together right now because of the baby and he noticed that she stayed up all night trying to understand everything she's sort of looks at the irony of a resistance fighter dying in a religious ceremony and is sad that they

can't be in the streets taking names and you know kicking ass for her friends and Miles is like yeah I heard you struggling last night but I didn't know if I should say anything or not. So then Odo informs Kira that there's another message. An untraceable, face-diverted, scrambling thing. And...

Kira goes to talk to who it is and it is someone named Trimpton Falla. Kira won't say who she is but asks to talk in private. Falla says she's being watched and will be killed and asks for sanctuary. She is granted that Worf and Jadzia will take her to Deep Space Nine until everything is figured out.

She says that she's not necessarily a part of the cell but is part of what they did and also seems to have a paranoid street. Worf and Jed Z are on a runabout. They're gallivanting on all the hanging out and gambling they just did. Jed Z gambled a big amount of money, is in debt.

Worf, Jed Z is like, well, can you lend me the money, baby? And Worf is like, no. She's like, well, I'm going to ask Quark. And Worf is like, well, the rules of acquisition, that's going to be messed up. He's like, how do you know about that? And he's like, I know lots of things. And that's that.

And then as the transportation goes, and I've, I've already developed anxiety talking about transportation, talking to you on this show, what transportation really is. Um, it goes terribly. And through a surge and a pattern burst, Fela dies burnt to a crisp from some sort of transporter negligence. Like,

On the runabout, Kira is tired of hearing sorry, tired of all this. From the remains of her friend, she finds her earring, because earrings are very important to the Bajoran culture. Odo believes that this was no accident, that whoever did this understands some sort of transporter science. See, Fallow was an ally.

She cleaned floors during the day and then gave intel at night. She was, I guess you could say, an informant, if you will, but very paranoid. Kira walks through the promenade and is given a receiver from Quark that says, that's two. Odo believes that Kira's work as a resistance fighter is creeping up with her, and because of

He also says because of Fela's job, that left her open for retribution, if anyone were to have found out. It was a dangerous game that they were playing. And somehow Odo's database is hacked, accessed. It flashes a picture of Mubara, who is another member of her resistance squad. And in that same voice says, that's three.

So Kira goes back to her quarters and hears a thud and loads up the blicky. She goes outside thinking that it's the resistance killer, but actually it's her friends, Lupaza and Feral. They were part of the Shakar as well, and they're there to do some good old vigilante justice. And

They notice that she's pregnant and are very happy about it. Kira asks them to trust the process and is given Makara herbs for her pregnancy because those are very important to the Bajoran birth ritual. And they're going to stay for a bit. Miles is annoyed. Kiko and Molly are off-planet right now.

Odo tells Ben that Moburo was killed by micro-explosives and that this is not an assassin. This is personal. They decide to take a look at the audios that have all been sending. So Nag and Jedzia are looking. And as you can see, as Nag is coming into his own, Jedzia listens to his insight and trusts his ideas.

And they realize that the words are actually Kira saying all these things. And then we hear that there's a hole breach in O'Brien's quarters. Kira wants to see if her friends are killed, but then falls. And in the infirmary, it's revealed she had a placental hemorrhage, but the baby is fine.

But her friends are dead, but Miles is safe. Kira then recounts the first day she joined the resistance. She was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She was just a kid. She was young and used Moxie to join the resistance and also obliterated a Cardassian.

One day I'll tell the story of how my grandpa joined World War I when he was 13 years old, but that's a whole other story. Lupaza made Kira an earring from the skimmer. of the first day that they were a cell. And that's Kira's earring that she wears to this day.

Realized that a small hunter probe was attached to a freighter that skimmed for the the info and bland. And that's how the whole breach happened. Odo has a list of 25 names, but doesn't want to give them to Kira for obvious fear of repribution.

But then Kira beams to Odo's office and then leaves the station on a runabout. She has the list of suspects. She has erased the log. Ben gets the squad ready to find them. And, um, she rules out a few people on the list and, tracks down a Cardassian doctor, I think, Sylvan Prynne near the DMZ,

and she gets there and is immediately stunned by Prynne, who's probably having some mental health issues and is saying a whole bunch of weird poetic stuff about death and light and fear and dark and got to get the dark out of the light. And Prynne was his servant for a Gull that was attacked by Kira.

And yes, not a doctor. So he was disfigured by a bomb meant for the Gull that he worked for. Prynne was just a servant. He was collateral damage in a bomb blast that killed 12 people. All of the Gull's family crippled or... affected 23 others,

and this was through Fela helping with security and the squad putting a bomb. Kira planted it, and essentially the bomb made a much larger explosion than was necessary because of that. more people were killed and prin is yeah he's he's justifying that he's but he's

admits that he's done the killings and he's basically says that he justifies the careful ways in which he did it and how there's no collateral damage as opposed to what kira did and plans to um cut kira's baby out of her to save it and because he sees her as a civilian killer.

And Kira fires back that the Cardassian occupied Bajor and held them for 50 years, and that to even be a servant for a Cardassian goal makes you guilty. Complicated stuff for a sci-fi TV show, right? So Prynne is getting ready to just take Kira's baby out.

gives her a sedative somehow it doesn't work and kira is able to kick stop and shoot print um in a little bit of foreshadowing that we didn't realize the makara herbs that were given to kira acted almost as a suboxone for the painkiller that was given her so she didn't really feel the power of the sedatives

defiant beams Kira up Kira's messed up over the dark and light and all this stuff

and yeah everyone feels a little dirty so I wanted to start off by quoting this line from Major Kira content warning mention of the our sexual assault word quote none of you belong on Bajor It wasn't your world. For 50 years, you raped our planet and you killed our people.

You lived on our land and you took the food out of our mouths. And I don't care whether you held a phaser in your hand or you ironed shirts for a living. You were all guilty and you were all legitimate targets. End quote.

So this is the pivotal line for me in watching this episode with my eyes and today's eyes, and as someone who opposes U.S. hegemony, Western hegemony, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I looked up some old reviews and also some newer-ish reviews, and they didn't like this episode because according to them,

it seemed to absolve Kira of her crimes. From their perspective, occupied and occupier are equally guilty and culpable. And we know this narrative all too well. This isn't even the main conservative and liberal narrative because conservative and liberal media usually portrays the occupied as the guilty wrongdoers. Equal culpability was a feeling shared among many progressives,

and even radicals, especially early on when Palestinian genocide was accelerating. You heard a lot of, I'm pro-Palestine, but. Where essentially, if we analyze from the perspective of DS9, they will condemn Kira and the resistance as also being guilty. Both sides were wrong. I'm sure there are people who say they're pro-Palestine who still feel this way.

But it's not only Palestine, it's wherever there has been Western colonialism and hegemony. Think about the U.S. childhood game Cowboys and Indians. Who are the good guys and who are the baddies? What about every U.S. police and war media? What about Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan? What about Western coups and genocides in Africa and Latin America and Asia?

what about what the U.S. continues to do to Cuba and the DPRK? This episode was meant to be gray and murky and challenge what's right from wrong. But for me, it wasn't gray at all. Koreans did the same thing Kira did during the Japanese occupation. And the U.S., as weeb as it is, also called

Korean resistance fighters, terrorists. Even right now, liberals and conservatives call campus protesters the T-word. So this was an episode reviewers and maybe even fans didn't like when it came out or they didn't even think to remember. But to me, this episode aged really well. It hits so hard politically, it's basically the Steven Spielberg movie Munich,

except if the Palestinians were the good guys and we were supposed to root for the Palestinians and Assad was Szilard. This line also stuck out for me by Kira. Quote, he wanted to protect the innocent and separate the darkness from the light. But he didn't realize the light only shines in the dark.

And sometimes innocence is just an excuse for the guilty. End quote. So from my perspective, if I were to put it another way, you could only talk about the light when there is darkness. You only care about light when there is darkness. You could only quibble about light and darkness when there is darkness.

The Cardassians brought the darkness. The resistance was trying to shine the light. If there was no occupation, there would be no need for the resistance. Being complicit pretends to be innocence when it's actually still guilt. Scott, what did you think of this episode?

So I felt a lot of ways about it. I will say, I think the reason why this episode was probably difficult for people actually makes me think of the television show Family Guy. You know, you're like, Scott, you don't seem like a guy that watches a lot of Family Guy. I'm not. I'm not.

I've watched maybe one or two episodes, but I know about memes. And there's a meme of how they look at different colors of people, different shades on how they decide how to describe someone, whether they're a victim, whether they're an ally, whether they're a T-word, you know what I'm saying? So...

I think that's where these complicated things happen. So it's hard for someone in a 90s frame, like people with a 90s mind be like, you know, Nat Turner was bad. The slave owner was bad. You know, that's a very, that's very like 90s neoliberal standpoint that a lot of people had.

But then again, in the 90s, you also have like the troubles and you have the IRA. And this is important because you have people in the 90s that look like regular people, but when talked about Ireland would not only defend the actions of the IRA, sometimes applaud it. And with this rap group kneecap that just came out,

people are starting to look at that now again. So these kids that are making very... almost like Beastie Boys-ish dance rap, but like rapping in Irish and like talking about is Ireland, Palestinian solidarity and all this other stuff in the guise of dance music is getting people connected.

And I promise I have a point because people like in New York growing up that would 100% defend what was going on in Ireland If any other population was doing what it was doing, they had a different story for it. And I'm not sure if I've said this on the show before, but I don't mind repeating myself.

Not every single person has listened to every single episode. I was having a conversation with someone recently, and I was like, well, what do you think about John Brown? And they were like, oh, I like John Brown. He was righteous. He had a broadsword and tried to change the world, one of the antecedents to the Civil War.

And I was like, well, was he a T-word? And they were like, no. I was like, are you sure? I was like, are they just that because they did something you agree with? I mean, so words and meaning and stuff matters. And I think everything is open to interpretation.

And I'm not saying he is or he isn't, but words have power. And I think sometimes you think, and that's the reason why I was very deliberate about the words I used for Kira, that she was in a resistance cell, that she killed people, is to show the shades of gray and that people that

Things happen, and war sucks. I'm not defending the acts of fictional characters, but it's interesting where people pick and choose their feelings about the Bajoran characters. Where in this episode, it's very clear that Kira probably did some shit during the occupation to keep her people safe. I like the episode.

How do you rate it? What's the mythology?

I rate it a solid 3.5. It gives a little backstory of Kira's life during the occupation, but then kills a lot of the people that you're introduced to. It's sort of like an episode that gets you from here to there.

Can you tell us about the next episode?

Odo meets a baby goo guy.

Until then...