A Bajoran poet who disappeared 200 years previously comes out of the wormhole claiming to be the Emissary.
Plot Summary: An ancient Bajoran lightship emerges from the wormhole carrying a single passenger, a legendary Bajoran poet named ...
A Bajoran poet who disappeared 200 years previously comes out of the wormhole claiming to be the Emissary.
Plot Summary: An ancient Bajoran lightship emerges from the wormhole carrying a single passenger, a legendary Bajoran poet named Akorem Laan who disappeared two centuries earlier. Akorem tells Sisko, who has been having misgivings about his role as Emissary, that he nearly died during a spacefaring accident and was saved when he discovered the Celestial Temple, where the Prophets healed him. He believes he has been sent back to become the Emissary. Believing that this makes more sense than that the Prophets would have chosen an outsider, Sisko relinquishes the title, something most Bajorans including the Kai and Kira accept. Then Akorem announces that Bajorans must return to the caste system, known as D’jarras, which assign each person a specific status and profession. All at once, Bajorans start changing jobs and giving up seats to higher-caste individuals, while Akorem expects Shakaar to be voted out of office and go back to farming. Because the Federation forbids caste-based discrimination, Sisko realizes that Bajor will likely be denied membership and is deeply troubled. He has a delayed orb vision in which a Prophet in the form of Kai Opaka warns him that he does not know his role. When he tells Kira that he feels he has failed Bajor, she tells him that it isn’t his responsibility and adds that she plans to resign to become an artist as her D’jarra dictates. Then Odo summons Sisko, who learns that a monk has been murdered by a Vedek because he refused to resign despite being from an “unclean” caste. Sisko decides that he was wrong to give up the position of Emissary and asks Akorem to travel into the wormhole with him so that the Prophets can explain their will. The two learn that Akorem was rescued and sent into the future to inspire Sisko, the Emissary, to understand his role. They return Akorem to his own era, where he finishes his famous incomplete poem. Sisko returns to the station with a renewed sense that his destiny and that of Bajor are linked.
Analysis: Watching “Accession” reminded me in a visceral way of how very angry I was with the Star Trek franchise in 1996, during DS9′s fourth season and Voyager‘s second. Both shows were undergoing changes to make them more marketable to a wider audience, one consequence of which, I felt, was that the female characters were written much more stereotypically and passively. “Accession” is a perfect example: although in many ways it’s a terrific episode, struggling with the questions of faith and culture that both the original series and Next Gen often treated dismissively if not with contempt, it focuses on two big patriarchal figures, while one major female character is reduced to asking timid questions and the other – the one arguably most directly affected by the events – allows enormous changes to occur in her culture while passively accepting potentially disastrous consequences. To be fair, all of Bajor and not just Kira ends up looking somewhat pathetic, easily pushed around and not yet ready for Federation membership – in retrospect, it would not have been a surprise to learn that the return of Akorem Laan was a plot engineered by the Cardassians or the Dominion to neutralize Bajor as a potential threat – but because Kira is the one we see as an example of how the new Emissary is affecting all Bajorans, she’s the one who seems most weakened by the unfolding of events. Though I didn’t always like it when she leaned on Bareil for spiritual advice, I so wished he’d been alive to talk about Bajoran faith as a growing, evolving institution. I could ask many practical questions, like why didn’t Sisko consult with an orb before doing anything as drastic as stepping down as Emissary, or pragmatic questions, like do you really mean to tell me there was
