#the prophets

[mayhaps-a-blog]

You know, I still don't see why they did all that with Sisko's mother. I don't even want to call her Sarah Sisko because like, did she even want to get married? Have a kid? "Possessed by a Prophet" doesn't seem to leave a lot of room for free will; it definitely doesn't exactly look good for the Prophets and brings up a lot of questions about bodily autonomy that the show just completely fails to engage with.

And it doesn't even make that much sense for the Prophets - they're all about non-linear time and being kind of weird and non-corporeal, conceiving a child just feels so... earthly.

If they felt the need to arrange things, it should have been weirder. More... intangible. Sarah finds the necklace at a street market or something, the seller has no idea where it came from, but picking it up leads her to run into Joseph, who asks her out, and eventually they get married and have a kid, Ben. They can even keep her disappearance - either she dies, traumatically enough Joseph never speaks of her, or she leaves of her own accord, the showrunners either pulling the post-partum depression card or just making her a deadbeat mom (enough with deadbeat dads! let's get some deadbeat moms!).

Leave it questionable. Leave it mysterious! Did the Prophets place the necklace in her path? How and why? What exactly did it do? Who cares! It made Ben possible, through the will of the Prophets. Is that... how they reproduce? Through random acts of kismet? Sure! We love a weird noncorporeal species. They do everything else through acts of fate, why not reproduce that way too?

And leave poor Sarah alone - let her have as much choice in life as anyone does, with people like the Prophets hanging around XD Who needs to go around possessing people when the power of fate is in your hands?

[quarkslobes]

star trek has always handled trauma/mental illness well imo but sisko explaining to the prophets in the first episode that humans live in linear time and can't ever go back... and then the prophets are so confused and show him his wife dying and ask "but you exist here?" that was. that one.... hit

[quasi-normalcy]

Sisko: *the gods speak to him in the form of a loving mother*

Picard: *the gods speak to him in the form of an annoying gay asshole*

[2mo3cm-man]

[lady-lazarus-13]

There is no way Cardassia or another group wouldn't have tried to occupy Bajor again after The Burn happened. The wormhole was such a huge asset when warp disappeared overnight along with a billion ships. Resource scarcity and a large upheaval could have reignited the fascists on Cardassia to try and reclaim their "rightful" place on Bajor.

But then it dawned on me:

What if people a thousand years later are scared to mess with Bajor because of The Sisko?

Can you imagine people so worried the wormhole will suddenly crush them for daring to even think about hurting Bajor that people start creating altars not to the Prophets but to Sisko?

People cooking a version of gumbo to place for Sisko to bless their travel before they depart?

In the line to head in as they idle in space, people singing and praising The Sisko for safe travels?

[chili-mac-and-cheese]

I love the pilot of DS9 because it represents stuck points in a way that still holds up to modern psychological research and methodology.

Imagine for a second that you are Benjamin Sisko. You lost your wife in the battle of Wolf 359 to the Borg, beings of unknown origin who are in some ways beyond your level of comprehension. You've been holding it together while giving your son the best possible childhood, going above and beyond to care for him and help him process his grief. But you're still stuck in the survival mindset from that day.

Now imagine for a second that you're one of the prophets. You have no concept of loss, because you have no concept of linearity or causality. You exist on a higher dimension of being compared to humans, and they are in some ways below your level of comprehension. A nearby planet worships you and your home, a rift in space. A wormhole to another quadrant.

How can these two lives coexist? How can Sisko reconcile his understanding of the universe with nonlinear life forms? How can the prophets learn about causality from a man trapped in his own grief?

In short, he is always at Wolf 359. He hasn't moved on emotionally and the prophets show him this as he explains how linear beings live. Sisko works through his stuck point with the prophets' guidance. At the end of the episode, the prophets appreciate his friendship and refer to him as "The Sisko". Their emissary to Bajor.

[alternatemann]

What if the Prophets were playing the long game in Prophet Motive?

They act like they're convinced by Quark but the thing is, its pointed out in the episode that they know how the game will go, possibly even multiple ways.

Zek is turned back into his old self but he still might remember somewhere in his mind what it was like to be a good person and the perspective he had. Rom as well hears a less avaricious version of Ferengi philosophy, gets experience in a more charitable organisation and though its a joke at the end of the episode, its stated he remembers all of Good!Zek's Rules of Acquisition.

This could have pushed them in the right direction. A year later, Bar Association would see Rom start a union, refuse to back down and quits to work for the station's engineers. Without the push, Rom might have backed down or joined another business. A year afterwards, Rom both played a part in helping Chief O'Brien deal with the Pah Waiths and had the idea for the self replicating mines, if he wasn't on the engineering team, the Pah Wraiths might have killed the Prophets or the Dominion might have come through the wormhole and send ships through unstopped.