"It has been my observation that one of the prices of giving people freedom of choice is that sometimes they make the wrong choice."  Odo

As anybody who has been following my DS9 reviews knows (and I apologize for how sporadic they've been), I love Bajoran political episodes.  Thus, I was really eager to take a look at "Shakaar" again.  Nana Visitor (Kira) has a lot to do and she handles it very well.  Louise Fletcher is back as Kai Winn, in all of her smarmy glory!  The episode is tense, gives us a logical step forward in the development of Bajor, and has some wonderful acting.  Even Duncan Regehr isn't annoying (unlike his stint in Star Trek: The Next Generation)!  The only thing that mars this episode is a relatively unfunny and superfluous B plot that gives the rest of the cast something to do.  This episode is a prime example of when *not* to water down your plot just for actors' contractual reasons.

Major Kira is praying for her dead lover, Vedek Bareil, when her revery is interrupted by the arrival of Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks).  It seems the First Minister of the Bajoran government has died.  What's even more surprising, and disheartening, is that Kai Winn has been appointed to the role, and nobody is running against her in next month's elections.  Winn shows up a bit later and asks Kira to intervene in a problem that involves her old Resistance cell leader, Shakaar (Regehr).  Winn asks Kira to convince him to return some soil replicators that are very important to a Bajoran agricultural project.  When Shakaar refuses, Winn sends in the troops and Kira joins him on the run.  Will Bajor erupt into civil war over all this?  What happens when Bajorans who spent their lives fighting Cardassians now have to fight themselves?  Nothing good can come of that.

First, let me get my one major annoyance with this episode out of the way.  The main narrative of this story is interrupted occasionally by a side story where Chief O'Brien (Colm Meaney) is "in the zone" playing darts, where he can't miss.  Quark (Armin Shimmerman) starts taking bets on O'Brien's dart games, before calamity strikes.  What was the point of this?  I'm sure it was an attempt to soften the heavy drama of the Shakaar plot, as well as to give the other actors something to do.  Couldn't they have written a scene at the beginning to involve everybody, thus fulfilling that contract?  This plot was even less dense then the pocket lint in my jeans!  It was unfunny, pointless, and distracting.

That being said, the Kira plot was pure ambrosia from the gods.  There is not a false step in it, from beginning to end.  Visitor is at her best when given a script this juicy, and she comes through marvelously here.  "Shakaar" is another "Kira is now part of the establishment and has to fight her resistance instincts" episode, but it's much more than that.  You can see the conflict on her face as she sympathizes with Shakaar even as she tries to do her duty.  Her happiness when she thinks she's set up a meeting between Shakaar and Kai Winn (Fletcher) is great, and her instinctive reaction when she discovers that Winn lied to her is even better.  Even Regehr isn't annoying, as he so often can be.  You can actually see him as a leader, quiet and intense, willing to do whatever he needs to do for his people.

The climax to the episode and the resolution are wonderful as well.  Some have claimed that this episode is about separation of Church and State, but I don't think so.  None of the characters ever claim that Winn shouldn't be First Minister because she is the Kai.  They say she shouldn't be First Minister because she's a power-hungry b*tch.  Instead, this episode brings us to a crossroads in the development of Bajor.  Winn sends the militia after Shakaar and the people, but popular sentiment is starting to build for Shakaar's position.  Will Bajorans who are now in the military, and who fought in the Resistance for decades against the Cardassians, now turn their guns on their own people?  And the same goes for the Resistance members.  A climactic moment comes when Kira, Shakaar and the rest have to decide if they can shoot their own people as well.  The outcome will determine the way forward for Bajor, and I loved every minute of it.

Now, for some short points:

1) Thank you to the writer, Gordon Dawson, for not being cliched.  In a scene near the beginning, when Odo (Rene Auberjonois) is briefing Kira on something and she is clearly distracted, he doesn't make Odo say something outlandish that Kira doesn't catch in order to demonstrate it.  Instead, we get a nice "Kira, is something wrong?" and a discussion that leads to the quote at the beginning of this review.  Nicely done.

2) It's nice to see Bereil hasn't been forgotten, as this episode actually dovetails nicely with the previous ones regarding the Cardassian treaty.  Bereil's dead, so Winn's free to take all of the credit for it.  When Kira confronts her with this, Winn is at her smarmy best when she declares that Bereil wouldn't have wanted any glory to come of it as he felt it was the will of the Prophets that he do it.  Luckily, he's dead so he can't dispute her publicly.  I loved Winn's dig at the end, where she is "surprised" that Kira didn't know that about him.

3) Speaking of Fletcher, she just shines in this episode. She's calm and collected when she's trying to get Kira or Sisko to do what she wants, but turns hard as nails when they question her or turn her down.  Her scene with Sisko where she asks for Federation security troops to take over for the militia is delicious.  Brooks plays that scene very well too, showing how excellent he is in the quiet, intense scenes where he can't go over the top.

All in all, "Shakaar" is a spectacular story that unfortunately gets interrupted too often with a complete waste of time.  Give this episode a 4.5, but I'm rounding it up to 5 for the all-around excellence of the main story.  Two episodes to go to the end!

*a note for those of you who may watch this on DVD.  I don't know if it was just my set or if it's on all of the boxed sets, but one whole scene is repeated after a "commercial" break in the action.  Annoying, but thankfully the disc didn't freeze or anything like that.



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD