35. Paradise

Summary

While exploring for planets suitable for colonization, Sisko and O'Brien discover a small colony on a planet surrounded by an odd duonetic field. When they beam down, they realize that their tricorders, phasers, and communicators are nonfunctional...the field suppresses all EM activity. The colony is actually a group of Federation citizens who crashed there ten years ago and, realizing they could not escape with no technology whatsoever, form a community and survive living off the land. Ben and Miles are welcomed by the leader, Alixus, who had very definite views about technology and it negative effect on the spirit of man even before the crash. She urges them to forget about being rescued and join their community. At first Ben and Miles are happy to help out and try to get along while still searching for a way to contact the runabout. When they see Alixus' form of punishment...being shut in a small airless box for as much as a day...they begin to have doubts about the Utopia they're supposedly guests of. It becomes clear that Alixus has other motives, especially when she tries to have one of the women seduce Ben into a more accepting frame of mind. When Miles is caught trying to activate his tricorder, Alixus puts Sisko into the box. When he's released she tells him that if he switches his uniform for some native clothing and accepts the colony's way of life, he can have some water...as an answer, he staggers outside and shuts himself back up in the box. Miles discovers the source of the duonetic field...a buried generator that, they learn, Alixus helped invent. He shuts it down and Alixus admits that she brought everyone here on purpose, their crash was no accident. It was part of her experiment to prove her theories about how humans could rediscover their own potential without technology. Rememerbing those who died in setting up the colony, Sisko tells her she'll have to answer for what she's done. A rescue party of Kira and Dax arrive and the two officers, along with Alixus and her son Vinod, beam up...but the rest of the colony decides to stay.

Analysis

So. Two Starfleet officers discover a village where everyone is happy and it's beautiful all the time and things are wonderful. Gee, I wonder if it will turn out to have a dark underside? This is another Trek staple, the paradise-with-a-dark-secret, but this is a moderately successful presentation of it. Alixus has all the qualities of a cult leader. Magnetic, commanding, and capable of swaying just about anyone to her way of thinking with carefully chosen rhetoric and a smile that says "this is for your own good." Her arrogance and self-righteousness come shining through like a Day-Glo t-shirt, but the light of a true zealot is in her eyes and it's easy to see how her fellow colonists fell into step. This story has little to do with either Sisko or O'Brien...it could just as easily have been Dax and Bashir who found the colony and the story wouldn't have changed much...but it does give both some good screen time. I find I have nothing else to say about this episode. Unremarkable, but not objectionable.

Rating: 5.0

Memorable Quote:

"I'm the science officer, it's my job to have a better idea." --Dax

Classic Scene:

Sisko staggering back to the box is a pretty powerful image

. Sexually Slanted Line 'O the Episode:

"It wasn't till I got to the Cardassian fron that I found I had talents I never knew I had." --O'Brien. Oy, don't ask, don't tell.

The O/K Status Report

Last week's episode of "Friends" had more O/K developments than this episode.

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