Weekend Trek “Ties Of Blood And Water”

Oh cool!  Jeffrey Combs is back as Weyoun!  Sure, the Weyoun I saw before was a snivelly guy that got what he deserved at the business end of a Jem’Haddar weapon, but you can’t keep a good Combs down.  Besides, this new Weyoun is a hedonist, and that seems like he might be more fun.

You know, until the next Weyoun comes along.

However, this episode isn’t about Weyoun.  It’s about Kira.  There was an episode I wrote up about a little more than a year ago…

Cripes, have I been covering Deep Space Nine that long?

Anyway, that one was a good episode that made me wonder what would happen have happened had this show been less episodic as making Kira an undercover Cardassian seemed like an interesting twist.  But it was just for the episode, a trick to get Cardassian opposition leader Tekeny Ghemor in a position where his political enemies could ruin him or murder him or something.  Truthfully, there’s not much difference between the two in Cardassian politics.  Regardless, now that Dukat has taken over the Cardassian government on behalf of the Dominion, Kira figures kindly old Cardassian Ghemor would make a great leader of a Cardassian government in exile.  Ghemor doesn’t really disagree.  One small problem:  he’s dying of an incurable illness that strikes down Cardassians.  Since he sees Kira as a daughter, and since his own daughter that was a deep cover agent never returned, he wants to perform an old Cardassian ritual for the dying where he tells all his secrets to a single loved one.  He’s selected Kira.

That is such a Cardassian thing.

And, about that time, Gul Dukat shows up with a new Weyoun to get Ghemor back to Cardassia.  Ghemor doesn’t want to go, and a lot of what he tells Kira is good intelligence, but the thing is, this episode isn’t really about what Ghemor knows.  It’s about how Kira deals with death.

Short answer:  not well.

Apparently, as seen in flashback back to her time in the Resistance, Kira didn’t sit with her own father when he was dying after a Cardassian attack.  Instead, she went off to get back at the Cardassians who did it to her dad and missed his death.  In the past, she didn’t seem to react much to missing that death.

Apparently, it affected her more than she let on.  Dukat’s giving her a report of Ghemor’s military record, how he was present for a massacre at a Bajoran monastery, is enough to make her leave the old man to die alone.

Now, it is worth noting Dukat, though he never says as much, wants Ghemor back in Cardassia as a bit of propaganda.  So…does that mean a lot of Cardassians aren’t taking being subservient to the Dominion all that well?

Regardless, hearing the old man was involved in the monastery attack did make it sound like he was the officer in charge and Kira just learned about it, but no, that’s not it.  Odo stops by to drop some truth bombs:  Kira could have checked that report at any time and didn’t need Dukat to drop it off.  Ghemor was 19 and just a footsoldier.  He maybe didn’t even fire a shot.  Yeah, he was there, but that’s about all anyone can say, and the man clearly regrets that time.  I’ve seen Kira react warmly to Cardassians whose past involvement with the Occupation led them to regret their actions or if they didn’t do much back then.  What Ghemor did at the monastery is not the issue.   This all comes down to Kira’s feelings about watching her father die, or not doing so as the case may be.

But she does go back because, well, Star Trek in this era probably won’t a member of the main cast be that callous.  It’s not even about the secrets anymore.  It’s just keeping an old man company as he passes on.  Kira can do that.  She’ll even bury him on Bajor, a way of showing forgiveness and denying Dukat that propaganda win he wanted oh-so-badly.

He’s really got some problems back on Cardassia, doesn’t he?  He probably deserves ’em.