User Reviews

This could have been an excellent episode. The villain in this is obvious though well played. What's missing is awakening in the victims and truly poetic justice of the bad man, or in this case woman. Some of these people actually stay devoted to this sociopath even when presented with evidence of her sadism and cruelty. Hell even the music becomes downright tender as she justifies her actions. I don't know what the writer adirector was thinking.

When Sisko and Chief O'Brien set off to survey habitable planets near the worn hole it seems like a routine mission. When scans show that there is an inhabited planet they are rather surprised. They beam down to meet the people living there as they can't contact them on the communicators. Once on the surface they have a problem; none of their technology works due to a "duonetic energy field". When they meet the people on the planet they are told the energy field is due to local minerals and that they have been there since they landed ten years ago. The group is led by a woman called Alixus who believes they have a paradise there although it soon becomes clear that she has made the society's rules and strictly enforces them. Any body who transgresses is locked in a hot-box without water. She tries to encourage the two Star Fleet officers to give up their pasts and accept life in her paradise. Back on DS9 Kira and Dax search for the missing officers and are surprised when the runabout is reported flying at warp without personnel on board; as Sisko had left it in orbit this suggests that something has been done to make sure it wasn't found near the colony. When O'Brien is caught trying to find a way to get their communicators to work Alixus has Sisko put in the box. Rather than stopping O'Brien's search for a way to communicate it makes him more determined to find what is the real cause of the technology failure... when he does find it he learns that it was no accident that the colonists got stranded there; Alixus was determined to set up her technology-free utopia even if it meant several colonists dying in the process.

This was a good episode with a good performance from guest star Gail Strickland as Alixus; she managed to play her as somebody believably obsessive in the belief that she was right and everybody else must follow her ideas. The story seemed plausible and the injustice made me angry with Alixus, as I'm sure it was meant to.

Is this where M. Night Shyamalan got his idea for The Village from? Alexis, together with some like minded scientists decide to cut off a village of unknowing colonists from "civilization". OK, this episode uses outsiders to break the spell and M. Night Shyamalan uses a spell breaker from within, but the basic idea is similar. I am not saying Deep Space Nine is original either, but every storyteller takes their seeds from the one before. Nice touch with the kids at the end. The younger generation always feels bound by the actions of their parent's and yearn for something else; something different.

This is an excellent examination of the dynamics of a cult. I loved that it initially seems like nothing more than an ordinary, benign farming community and was gradually revealed to be a very controlled society run by an anti-technology zealot who was willing to let people die for her theories. Alixus is a great character with a very forceful personality. She has brainwashed her followers so thoroughly that none of them openly object to her resorting to torture in placing first Stephen and then Sisko in what O'Brien very accurately describes as a hell box. Alixus' actually quite frightening speech after Joseph defends O'Brien's attempts to contact the runabout to access the medkit and immediately before she puts Sisko in the box very effectively demonstrates both this brainwashing and her zealotry:

"Thank you, Joseph. I knew you would feel that way and I'm glad you said it, so that all of us could see the true danger these two represent. Our very own Joseph defending what he knows is wrong. He knows that if we had spent our energy all these years trying to escape, we'd all be dead today. This is good. This is a test of our convictions, and we will survive."

Another more subtle moment which demonstrates her controlling attitude and her attempt to break Sisko comes when she says, "Oh, will you be able to work your regular shift in the field today?" The use of the word "regular" in particular struck a chord with me. Sisko had only worked one such shift but Alixus' very deliberate choice of that word was meant to serve as a stark reminder that he would be there for the duration and that he would eventually fall under her control. Thankfully, he proved her wrong on both counts.

Rewatching DS9 has given me a new appreciation for Avery Brooks, who has always been my least favourite captain, in his quiet moments as Sisko. However, I still hate his shouty ones, I'm afraid. The scene in which Sisko silently returns to the box is a masterclass of subtle acting on Brooks' part and is easily my favourite Sisko scene so far. It is also an extremely well written scene which says a great deal without dialogue.

Alixus' Luddite views are interesting and a very small part of me thinks that she may be right when she says that humanity has lost something because of its reliance on technology. However, a far greater part of me – about 99% — thinks that those sacrifices were worth it because of the great strides, particularly in the field of medicine, that were made in the 20th Century and have already been made in the 21st. Like everyone else, I have ancestors and other relatives who died young whose deaths could have been avoided just a few decades later. If this episode had not touched upon that issue with Meg and the mention of the other three people who died of the same illness, it would have been a major oversight so I am very glad that it did. Funnily enough, I had two power cuts in the space of three days the week that I watched this episode so I was thinking more about my own reliance on technology that I might have been otherwise.

The ending is nicely ambiguous as it is not clear whether Joseph and the others want to continue the community because they think that hard work is good for the soul or because they have been so thoroughly brainwashed over the course of the last ten years. I loved that Alixus did not realise what she had done was wrong because she was so fanatical in her beliefs that it would not have rung true.

Finally, I did quite like Gail Strickland's performance as Alixus but I was not too enamoured of it. She is certainly charismatic but not as charismatic as I would have liked. I'd have preferred if someone like the always wonderful Tovah Feldshuh had played the role.

This episode has some terrific performances. The woman at the helm of this cult is wonderfully manipulative, and despicable. The sequence of events which slowly introduces more information to the audience is presented in a logical order, and with excellent pacing. The way that the settlement is at first presented as a "Paradise" provides a great contrast to the atrocities that the leader woman is subjecting the inhabitants to. Things such as sensory deprivation, disease, manipulative language use, sexual procurement, all play a role in this woman's master plan. There's a great line by sisko after one of the women attempts to seduce him, "did she send you here to make love to me", and at that moment you realize the true extent of what is happening on this settlement. I don't want to go too in depth but this episode has the shortcomings of the average DS9 episode, which brings it down to a seven. This episode is a little boring, and I think with a better director this episode could have been an 8.

Edit: I also thought the ending was not good, which is why I think this episode is something like a 6.7-6.8.

This is an episode that i now always skip. The main reason is that it is never truly acknowledged just what an evil and deplorable woman Alixus is. Consider what would had to have taken place for that colony to end up on that planet. Firstly she has hatched the plan, then traveled to that planet to install that device that she constructed. She has then returned to the federation in order to lure all those colonists on to the doomed ship which must have always been under her control for her to declare that they "were always coming here", and then deliberately marooned them there. She has then activated her device which not only makes it impossible for them to leave but also gives them the impression that it is futile to even attempt to do so. She doesn't seem to bat an eyelid that a girl dies as a result of being marooned there, evidently views stealing a candle a far more serious act that her heinous plan and actively goes out her way to ensure that Sisko & O'Brien are permanent residents there also by somehow possessing the ability of disposing of their runabout. The most angering parts are at the end, at her sheer audacity at telling the candle thief that he would most likely have been in prison which is ironic since this is exactly where her and her accomplice son are heading, and also the utterly unbelievable reaction from the rest of the colonists when all is revealed, who ultimately decide to stay. It is never pointed out to her that she most likely would have found people in the federation that were willing to participate in her experiment without having to resort to what is ultimately kidnapping. A badly written episode, there are other characters in the star trek franchise that are acknowledged to be evil and yet haven't committed acts of this magnitude.

Gail Strickland (1976's "Bound for Glory") is Alixus, a woman who stopped at nothing, including deception to form a "Perfect Agrarian Society."

To wish to do so is admirable, but the way this women had accomplished this feat rubs against Benjamin Sisko and Miles O'Brien in so many wrong ways that they have to do something about it.

"The Sisko" and O'Brien are out looking for useful planets, they come across the one Alixus had used. There is some kind of low level "duonetic field" that traps them on the surface where their tricorders, iPhones, Droids, iPads, Comm Badges and other Trekgets will not work.

They come across Alixus' "Colony" and it is rather impressive how these people have survived for the last 10 years. But as they stay and begin realizing that they are trapped, the colony begins to take on many negative characteristics-Including one poor guy who had been in a "HotBox" for a couple of days - For Stealing a Candle!

This puts Sisko directly at odds with Alixus, and he stands up against her benign-appearing tyranny the only way he knows how: By being "Stubborn Sisko." Miles however, becomes a bit more innovative and his "Jack-of-all- Trades" characteristics come out to the forefront in different ways then we had seen previously.

Alixus at first tries to tie Sisko to the colony by sending Julia Nickson ("Cassandra") to entrap him with sex. This may have worked with a lesser man, but this is "The Sisko" we are talking about. So when that doesn't work, Alixus heavy-hands Sisko.

Ms. Strickland was the perfect actress to cast in the role of Alixus, we immediately hate her guts. But she is always so NICE... And since all of the written material that was on their original ship which crashed was stored on PADDS and other electric iPhones, the only written material that survived was Alixus own writings, which mysteriously had all been hand written on old-fashioned Pen and Paper.

In a way, she was using Technology to build a technology-less colony, which was cheating: Eventually Miles uncovers a BIG secret about Alixus and reveals it to all concerned.

But in fact, the citizens of Alixus Colony, would rather stay on their planet. They have all found their "Core Identities" despite Alixus' deceptive methods.

Maybe they let her go back when she was let out of Jail, after the upcoming "Dominion War."

Mostly I liked this Episode because it had O'Brien solving a tech problem with NO Tech at all, other than stuff he had gleaned from the natural surroundings. A great DS9 "Planet-Based" Episode.

1- VIEWERS CHECK THIS OUT.........................

*DANG PLOT HOLES. VERY ANNOYING AAARRRGGG!

At the very beginning of the episode O'Brien and Sisko are out in the Gamma Quadrant on a mission for Starfleet looking for M class planets with the possibility of colonization. O'Brien tells Sisko that sensors are picking up human lifeforms on a planet close to their location. What follows are two logical fallacies which set the stage for the entire episode:

A: Sisko and O'Brien beam onto the planet knowing there are strange sensor readings. They beam down leaving their runabout completely unmanned. When they get to the planet, Sisko is disturbed by the sensor readings and immediately suggests they beam back onto the runabout. As he tries to contact the craft those weird sensor readings also prohibit him and O'Brien from contacting their computer -which means they can't beam back onto their only lifeline in space.

B-What about the freaking Prime Directive? Why are some Star Trek movies and episodes almost cult-like in their worship of the PD yet in this episode Sisko and O'Brien beam down in full contemporary (25th century) garb and equipment knowing only they are about to encounter a humanoid population and not knowing, at all, where this population is in societal evolution or human progression???

Why is it that Star Trek series can be so progressive and in pop culture - almost an icon of forward thinking but can't, sometimes, get plot holes out of their way fast enough?

*I CAN'T HELP IT, THE SIMILARITIES ARE UNCANNY!

The actor who plays Joseph (Steve Vinovich) and the actress who plays Alixus (Gail Strickland) remind me of The Skipper from Gilligan's Island and Hillary Clinton from my political nightmares, respectfully. The way Joseph talks I expect him to say, "What do you think little buddy?" at any second. The way Alixus talks I expect her to be condescending and pretentious with whomever she is speaking to.

*SISKO IS NO CAPTAIN KIRK......... At 21:14 Sisko does what Captain Kirk NEVER would have done: Resist the charms of an attractive lady (Cassandra played by Julie Nickson) who was coming onto him. Lol.

2- Final Reflective Analysis and Final Grade: *Interesting episode. How easily people are misled and taken advantage of is one take-away from this story. Down through history there have been those who are usually type A personalities who are strong willed and have passionate beliefs. Sometimes those beliefs are wrong, societally not accepted or border on the insane. Yet if the person has a strong enough personality and strength of will, they can usually find a vulnerable person or two they can overcome. The end of this episode shows how good people can be deceived and sometimes even when the deception is uncovered the vulnerable will go along with the deception as a new reality. This is a sad fact of human nature. Alixus has abused for so long that the abused individuals actually end up finding solace in the perimeters of consistency the abuse created.

Final Grade: B-

I am re-watching all of Deep Space Nine and I remembered having a relatively strong negative feeling about this episode from my first watch-through, but I couldn't place why. I thought maybe this would be one of those grin-and-bear-it episodes but no, my emotional memory was actually stemming from the antagonist of this episode, a conniving and manipulative cult leader who tortures and lets die her own people in order to achieve her goals. Given her capture and anti-technology views, it makes sense that she was only a one-off antagonist, but really, change a few variables, and this actress with this character could have challenged Kai Winn as Deep Space Nine's recurring "love to hate them" villainous zealot.

This episode also demonstrates satisfying badassery from Captain Sisko as he stands firm against Alixus and her torture. The only weak points for me are the scene with Dax and Kira roping in the runaway roundabout (it felt contrived), and I would have liked a little more explanation for how Alixus was able to access the runabout and send it away. Other than that, I found the story gripping, with strong emotional beats tied to rebellion against injustice, man's search for community, and the morality of sacrifice to meet an ideal.

There's some good stuff here - a good premise, a very hateable villain and a chance to see Sisko in new situations.

Unfortunately, it's made difficult to watch due to the terribly written dialogue: Exposition that sounds like a twelve year old wrote it; character choices that are inconsistent with what we know about them (Jadzia's dialogue is very unusual in a distracting way); and an awful monologue at the end where the villain seems to anticipate the outcome and does a complete 180. Then one guy speaks for all her test subjects and spells out the exact choice that lies ahead of them. It's deeply flawed and blandly expositional in a way that lets the entire premise down.

I like this one.

Trek always seems to be ahead of the curve in terms of the subject matter it tackles. The main subject in this one is Fanaticism and it is a subject that can be viewed commonly in our society in the year 2020. The key to episode is Alixus performance that I find to be infuriating yet I also find her sympathetic in how broken she is as a human being.

Cause it was so disgusting to watch... I had to share my contempt about that contemptable character.

In a way it was annoyingly well directed and well acted to represent the reality version of cults and their "leader". I wish there was more of a justice part though. Like some other reviews say already, I think I won't ever watch this episode again.

I think the writer needs to look a bit more into how the human mind works before writing stupid drivel like this. If this was to work and be a tiny bit believable, then it should have revolved around a religion not a dictatorship. She even write her own propaganda my god. When you find out you've been lied to, held captive, tortured and people you knew could have been saved, but weren't because one person wanted to live a certain way. You wouldn't just except it and carry on living that way, just be happy about it. Sorry but no. You would feel angry, betrayed, disappointed, saddened. You wouldn't be happy and humbled, sorry but no. Offer a poor man a million and he will take it without a second thought. Offer a working man a life of luxury, relaxation, comfort and he will take it.

This episode is outstanding of showing what people who seek power and prestige are like. People who want more and more government are an arrogant bunch like the leader of this group portrays. They often want good things for the people, but they are still more concerned with their own glory and control. Again, this episode did an excellent job of explaining and describing corrupt people.

It was annoying, from the beginning, but the ending is what makes it a complete pile of garbage (not my first word choice).

It seems to just be a bunch of stranded people, who are all weak-minded, spineless and complacent, so they just fall in line like happy little morons and do whatever this Alixus woman tells them to do. This is hard to believe but we wouldn't have a story without it so okay. The torture as discipline thing again is pretty hard to believe, that all those people would just willingly allow themselves to be abused without fighting back, and everyone just goes along with it. But again, it's part of the story.

Then we get to the end, and find out Alixus, with the support of her neanderthal son, planned the whole thing. She created whatever it was that cut off all technology then kidnapped all these people and brought them to her chosen planet as part of her experiment, lying to them all while becoming a Dictator.

Was her long speech about how wonderful their lives have become, blah, blah, blah actually supposed to make us feel sympathy? Like she was actually trying to do something noble and good? If I had been one of those people, I'm afraid I would have applied a rock to the side of that woman's head and jumped at the chance to get out of there. But no, they all just decide to stay there because they're sooooooooo happy.

It made me want to vomit.

Simple concept of a no technology society, but with an interesting twist, and a dark undertone.

Alexis is excellently played, but the moments that stand out:

1. Sisco's shake of his head to Miles.

2. The children left staring at the box at the end, contemplating their future....?