[I don’t understand how people can still hate Kai Winn, or say she was a bad person, when she sacrificed herself to help Sisko stop Dukat and save the Bajorans in the finale.]
She’s a bad person who discovered she had a line she wouldn’t cross and died doing something about it, much like Darth Vader. It doesn’t mean she’s a good person, just that she had limits.
She was entirely service to self and in the end her decision had far less to do with aiding “The Sisko” and everything to do with getting even, out of pure vengeance against Dukat.
Benjamin Sisko was bummed (but still supportive!) when Jake wouldn’t follow in his footsteps as a Starfleet officer. I wonder, though, did he think about his alternate 20th century self, the talented science fiction author who was ground down by racism?
Jake did follow his father’s legacy, it’s just that neither of them knew it at the time.
[I don’t understand how people can still hate Kai Winn, or say she was a bad person, when she sacrificed herself to help Sisko stop Dukat and save the Bajorans in the finale.]
She’s a bad person who discovered she had a line she wouldn’t cross and died doing something about it, much like Darth Vader. It doesn’t mean she’s a good person, just that she had limits.
[Dukat gets a lot of credit for being one of Trek’s most effective and well-acted villains, but I think Winn deserves just as much credit for being a vastly different yet equally deep antagonist. Every condescending word that slithered out of her mouth made my skin crawl, and her utter lack of charisma even in-universe was obviously deliberate. Yet she was still believable as a person and served as an excellent contrast to Dukat’s slimy “charms”. ]
Title: Nerys and the Emissary Fandom: Deep Space Nine Characters: Kira Nerys, Benjamin Sisko Author:beatrice_otter Beta:sixbeforelunch Rating: Gen AN: I was watching the first episode of DS9 for the first time in years, and it struck me how white/colonialist the underlying assumptions are. It’s the Civilized Foreigner Come To Help The Benighted Natives who can find the Temple! The Other Civilized Foreigner checking the historical databases for things the Benighted Natives have known for years is the one who notices the blatantly obvious pattern the Benighted Natives have never figured out and Solves The Mystery! The Civilized Foreigners go off (with no native people!) to find The Mystic Treasure! (At least there is some variety, in that the Civilized Foreigners are a black man and a white woman, instead of white men.) And I asked myself: why the HELL is Kira going along with all of this? Why is she just … letting this happen?
Summary: Nerys had never dreamed of being allowed to see an Orb. And the Kai just gave one to this human, this Commander Sisko?
DS9 characters as described by my mom, who has never seen an episode of Star Trek in her life.
Just what level of “don’t ever fuck with us” is Starfleet? I mean I used to think Jem Hadar and Klingons being these fierce warrior races was something of an Informed Trait when they kept losing in face-to-face fights with mild-mannered Starfleet officers. But then I realized… it’s actually because Starfleet officers are just that tough.
Just how motivated and ambitious you have to be, as someone coming from a post-scarcity society, to sign up for such arduous training and potential danger? I have to wonder kind of people decide to go through years of rigorous education, constant work and travel, and the possibility of a nasty death when they are guaranteed lives without fear or want right on their home planets.
Could it be that Starfleet may, in fact, be a place for malcontents? Not the kind of small-time malcontent that turns to destruction and exploitation, but the kind of malcontent that is stifled on some level by the cushy existence of their home planet (even while being willing to die to protect it) and wants something more. Something out there and anywhere but here.
Such people are dangerous to the preexisting system unless they have an outlet for their energies. Just to name a few headliner captains, leave the James Kirks, the Jean-Luc Picards, the Kathryn Janeways, the Benjamin Siskos, the Philippa Georgious with nothing to do but enjoy life, and chances are they’d get restless. You can see their innate drive in the paths they didn’t take and in alternate universes: Picard has a brother who was perfectly content to run a vineyard at home, living a comfortable rural existence. Picard could have had that or any of a million other career paths, but he still chose the uncertainty of the stars. The 20th-century version of Benjamin Sisko had a burning ambition to write groundbreaking science fiction despite being struck down over and over again by racism. Georgiou was goddamned Emperor in the Mirror Universe, and Burnham and Lorcas wanted her throne. Clearly these are not people who can sit content and let the world be; they shift the very earth they stand on and reach for the stars any way they can.
So what do you do with world-shakers in paradise? You could choose to kill them or lock them up and “reeducate” them, but that goes against the Federation’s ideals. You could let them live free and potentially climb to the top, but they might make too many changes and disrupt the whole comfortable arrangement.
Or, you could give them a way out–infinite ways out, in fact, into space. Their boundless energy would be structured and channeled in morally acceptable directions by the strict rules and directives of Starfleet, and their ambition to be better than others and be judged by their abilities would find expression in rank and promotions.
These are, of course, the same individuals who would die to protect the Federation when it is threatened by a race of fierce warriors, a mechanical collective, or vast theocratic empire. The same people who would have felt stifled in civilian life and could have threatened the whole system become its fiercest defenders. It’s a brilliant system, really, that meets everyone’s interests and turns a society’s potential threats into its greatest assets.
I don’t think it’s any wonder, looking at these incredibly trained and driven people who can take down Klingons in single combat and engineer their way out of alternate timelines, that non-Federation worlds–and maybe more than a few Federation ones–hover somewhere between suspicious and outright terrified of the Federation’s intentions. Starfleet is one of the major reasons one can make a case for the Federation being a “soft” empire, and I can see why peoples ranging from the Ferengi to the Klingons are so suspicious of them. Because you do not ever fuck with Starfleet.
Um? This is the woman who was confirmed, over and over again, to have put her ambitions ahead of the good of others, of Bajor, or indeed the universe. She also ummm tried to assassinate her opponent (Bareil)? Which would make anyone a villain? But that’s not close to all of it, you even brought up the pah wraiths yourself–i.e. her last arc in the show, where she was going to burn Bajor down and kill the Prophets because they liked Sisko better than her. I’m not sure what Berman meant by violation, certainly Dukat raped her by deception and no one deserves that. Here’s some news, though: suffering a wrong does not in itself make you a good person.
@kyberfox The salt of Dukat stans in response to his story is a major reason to love DS9 as a show, if not the fandom. But eeewwww in addition to presiding over genocide (like that’s not enough) Dukat is a sexual predator and a serial rapist and he has stans, wow. I don’t think his history of rape was as blatant in the earlier seasons though it was certainly implied, but even then he was creepy as hell pursuing Kira. Terrible as Winn is, I’d be hard-pressed to say she’s worse than Dukat and felt awful at how she was tricked by him. And that’s another long rant on how misogynistic the show was toward women who dared to enjoy sex.
@seguun Well, maybe. He certainly had flashier material, more expected material for a bad guy/protagonist’s rival. On the other hand, Winn’s brand of evil is more understated and also more… prosaic? I’d call her more corrupt than Dukat’s brand of out-and-out evil. Hers was a more nuanced look at corruption, not like Dukat’s which comes about more rarely through a perfect storm of power, policy, and personality–the sort of evil that doesn’t happen unless there is a severe power disparity, unless there is a decision to use that disparity for destructive exploitation, and unless there are (and there always are) abusive personalities to carry out that exploitation.
Winn’s brand of evil, or corruption, on the other hand, can happen in a broader range of situations. In fact, Dukat was at his most Winn-like when he turned internally toward Cardassia, as a self-serving politician, than when he was dealing externally with Bajor as a past colonial overlord. Like Winn, Dukat resisted foreign occupation, then supported/led a civilian government. These are positives as far as they go, but we also know that both Winn and Dukat were ultimately serving themselves. I can think of a lot of politicians who would be Dukats if given the chance, but in most situations they have to settle for being Winns. Dukat himself was more like Winn in Cardassia between withdrawal from Bajor and the Dominion takeover.
I think the banality of corruption is one reason some don’t see Winn as a villain and thought Dukat was being redeemed–because these characters were in the normal work of politics, whether in operating government domestically or fighting against foreign threats. The thing is, of course, they were using the workings of government to lift themselves up and serve their own ends at the expense of their peoples. Dukat again does the more obviously evil thing by giving Cardassia to the Dominion, but Winn, too, chose her advancement over the good of others and of Bajor throughout the show.
Their parallels are shown in their relationships with Sisko, too. Dukat may have hated and opposed Sisko openly while Winn was in a position where she had to give lip service to and be friendly with Sisko as the Emissary, but it’s clear from early on that she hates Sisko and thinks she deserves the love and reverence he gets.
It’s deeply fitting and satisfying then, that despite their differences, and indeed their enmity, Dukat and Winn end up at the same place at the end of Season 7–serving the pah-wraiths and destroying Bajor. One is an open racist and unrepentent genocidaire while the other is the spiritual leader of Bajor sworn to defend the world and its faith, yet they reach the same conclusion: Bajor, and the Prophets, deserve to be destroyed for not exalting and appreciating them enough. Dukat’s evil and Winn’s corruption may have taken different forms, but they were both equally destructive in the end and, indeed, Winn’s role was more crucial than Dukat’s.
Winn’s real final arc begins not when she is cruelly deceived and violated by the pah-wraiths and Dukat, but when she learns of the deception and responds to it. Rather than look back on her life and her faith and withdraw to make some much-needed changes in her life and heal from the spiritual and emotional trauma of what she was put through, she yet again decided power was more important and made the ultimate, fatal choice.
Winn’s story was different than Dukat’s, certainly, but in many ways I thought it was a more universal story with greater subtlety and nuance. I think together they made for a more rounded look at the nature of evil in politics.
L.J.'s Obsessions 