S01.E13: Battle Lines

[BizBuzz]

Stardate: Unknown - Sisko, Bashir, Kira and Kai Opaka become stranded on a planet ravaged by war where the inhabitants can't die and are unable to leave. (Description via TheTVDB.com)

[Meushell]

An interesting episode. Love he way Opaka just looks at Sisko until he gives in.

 

More importantly though, was her relationship with Kira. At the start of the episode Kira is angry about the Cardassian report underestimation of her work as a freedom fighter. Then she spends time with Opaka, who is probably her greatest hero. Kira probably spent most of the episode feeling judged and unworthy, but she finally got the talk she needed.

 

The rest of the episode doesn't matter so much, except to really give Kira a message. Lol. It was done well though.

[Bryce Lynch]

An interesting episode. Love he way Opaka just looks at Sisko until he gives in.

 

More importantly though, was her relationship with Kira. At the start of the episode Kira is angry about the Cardassian report underestimation of her work as a freedom fighter. Then she spends time with Opaka, who is probably her greatest hero. Kira probably spent most of the episode feeling judged and unworthy, but she finally got the talk she needed.

 

The rest of the episode doesn't matter so much, except to really give Kira a message. Lol. It was done well though.

I agree. The scenes with Kira and Opaka were amazing.  The rest of the episode was ordinary, at best.  I have always felt that the "crew must find a way out of an unusual and dangerous situation" plots were always rather TNGish and often not that great.  The plots that developed the characters and relationships and moved the serial story forward were generally very good to outstanding.

[BizBuzz]

Another character building episode, this time Kira.  A little back story was nice.  The message came across loud and clear that this was something Kira needed to learn and experience.  Good job of the writers.

[Maverick]

It wasn't a bad episode (especially for season 1) but it was pretty heavy handed.  

[iMonrey]

Jonathan Banks!

I hate to say it, but the scene where Kira emoted over the dead body of Kai Opaka was laughably bad. And in retrospect as I watch this from the beginning, I'm not sure the show has done a great job yet of fleshing out what exactly Opaka represents to the Bajoran people. It's sort of implied, but you don't get a real sense of their religion until much later, when Kai Winn takes over. They haven't even really established that Bajorans consider Sisko the "Emissary" at this point, even though that was the name of the pilot episode.

[Maverick]

 Sisko's Emissary status takes a long time to be addressed.  On rewatch, I was really surprised how long it took them to revisit that plot point.  I don't think it's substantially addressed until sometime in season 3. 

 I was really pissed the wrote out the Opaka character so early.  Ultimately I suppose it worked out since it made more sense for an adversary of Sisko to be the head of the Bajoran faith rather than an ally but still I liked the actress and the character and wish she had returned more.

 Yes, Kira's histrionics were quite cringeworthy.  Nana Visitor did a great job with quiet, more subtle portrayals of Kira's internal struggle coming to grips with her past but the more--animated--scenes didn't work as well.

[John Potts]

13 hours ago, Maverick said:

 I was really pissed the wrote out the Opaka character so early.

She actually comes back to Bajor in the novels after the end of the war (though just as a Vedek: she's happy to let Winn' successor as Kai run the church) - I would have been interested in seeing more of her character (just 2 episodes, I think? Compare that to Winn, who had 14 or even Bareil, who had 8).

[readster]

I know they wanted to bring Opaka back, but Michael Piller said they couldn't figure out the right story to bring her in. Hence they left it until as you know, she shows back up in the novels. It was like how they killed off Bareil, while his final arc was so sad, the plan was to put Winn as a main advisory for Sisko and the crew, who viewed the Federation as just as evil as the Cardassians.