In a cave (again with the caves), a pleasant-looking Bajoran monk welcomes guests to a “days of atonement” retreat, and is zapped by a beam of light.
In the infirmary, the very pregnant Kira, griping comically that the herbs she’s been prescribed mean sedatives don’t work, learns that Latha, formerly a violent member of her resistance cell has just been killed by a seeker weapon hidden in a ceremonial candle.
In her bedroom in the O’Brien quarters, Kira receives a message — a highly filtered voice saying “That’s one,” with a picture of the victim.
Odo conveys confidence as he and Sisko discuss how to respond; Kira is frustrated because, though she’s a major in the Bajoran militia, she’s stuck on the station. O’Brien reminds her that she’s “needed here, protecting someone else” (through her surrogate pregnancy).
Kira receives another private message, this time from a very nervous looking civilian woman who worries she may be next.
Dax and Worf, bickering happily on a runabout, swing past Bajor to pick up Kira’s friend Fala, but a gruesome transporter malfunction proves Fala’s suspicions were valid. Kira indirectly gets another message with a a picture of Fala and the voice saying “That’s two.”
As Odo plotsplains his theory that the killer is probably someone who was injured or lost a family member in an attack carried out with help from the people he’s been targeted, an anonymous “That’s three” message comes in, with the picture of yet another person Kira recognizes.
Later in her bedroom, Kira hears noises that sound suspiciously like bit-part guards being knocked out on the other side of the door, but the visitors turn out to be her old friends Furel and Lupaza, former resistance cell comrades whom we met in s3e20 “Shakaar.”, who announce they’ve come to help protect Kira. They’re clearly wildcards who are enjoying causing a little chaos along the way, and their arrival makes us wonder maybe, just maybe, they’re not what they seem.
With help from Dax, Nog identifies the voice from the anonymous messages as Bajoran, and Kira recognizes it as her own. Obviously this killer is deeply interested in her.
Just as I was wondering whether maybe Furel and Lupaza might be masterminding all this, perhaps to give Kira a reason to go back to her resistance way of thinking, we learn there was an explosion in the O’Brien quarters.
Kira’s desperation leads her to punch several guards and she collapses, having injured her placenta. The baby’s fine, and none of the O’Briens were home, but Furel and Lupaza are dead.
Curled up on the infirmary bed, Kira delivers a powerful two-minute monologue about her coming-of-age as a thirteen-year-old resistance fighter. It’s a single long take, with the camera pushing in slowly on her face, and at a dramatic moment tears just pour out of her eyes onto the pillow. (The rest of the episode has some good moments, but doesn’t really do justice to this speech, which happens near the middle of the story.
The next plot twist involves Kira stealing (and deleting) Odo’s list of suspects, which leads her to a remote planet where she plays some psychological chess with a Gollum-like adversary who’s clearly been waiting for her.
The resolution, which comes after Kira talks her captor into giving her a sedative, at first seemed random and nonsensical, but after Bashir reminds us about the anti-sedative side-effects of the herbs Kira has been griping about, I have to admit this episode delivered exactly the “Kira realizes her pregnancy is actually her superpower” premise someone pitched at a writer’s meeting, and that’s probably why it felt so contrived.
Despite the weak ending, I enjoyed the misdirection and the psychological thriller angle. I didn’t care too much for Kira’s poetic closing speech, not after listening to Silaran’s cryptic moralizing.
Not a bad episode, and nothing particularly cringeworthy, but we’ve seen Kira make these kinds of choices before. Overall the drama and the intrigue works together more cohesively in s1e18 “Duet,”, and I’m not sure that seeing Kira go through this sort of thing again while pregnant makes it fresh enough to revisit in an A-plot.
