So I’m partly posting this because I like DS9 and wouldn’t mind chatting about its episodes once in a while, so I’d love to hear people’s opinions in general about the episode.
My main reason though is to voice a complaint. In this episode, some self-obsessed genius terraformer guy comes to DS9 for his latest project. Sisko starts meeting this woman Fenna, who keeps disappearing. Despite this he falls for her. It turns out that this woman is a psychic projection created by Nidell, the unhappy wife of the terraformer. She can’t leave him because her species mates for life. At the end, the self-obsessed terraformer makes an uncharacteristic sacrifice, killing himself as part of his final crowning achievement, so that Fenna can be free from their unhappy marriage. At the end, Nidell cannot remember the “relationship” she had with Sisko, and she goes to talk to him. She asks what Fenna was like, and Sisko says “she was just like you.”
And to me, this was such a record scratching moment. Like, let’s set aside the fact that Sisko has had all of three conversations with either of them, so he barely knows either of them. Fenna dressed in bright colors with elaborate hairstyles, she talked about the excitement/anticipation of the promenade at night, she suggested impromptu picnics. As far as we can tell, she’s spontaneous, outgoing, curious, and wants to explore. Compare that to Nidell, who dresses in muted colors, with a more reserved hairstyle. She tells Sisko that she plans to return to her home planet for the rest of her life (and she seems quite young). All that suggests a less spontaneous and curious personality, the sort of person who is happy to live in their hometown their whole life. Which is fine, but it seems to me that these two people are nothing alike, except that they look the same.
I get that Fenna is supposed to be a manifestation of Nidell’s subconscious or something. So maybe she secretly wishes to be like Fenna. But that doesn’t make the line work for me. I’m not certain if we’re expected to agree with Sisko, or if we’re supposed to understand that Sisko is only saying this to be nice, since he still has feelings for Fenna and doesn’t want to hurt Nidell. Either way is weird.
Anyway, that’s my complaint. This episode doesn’t go down in the history books as an exciting one, but I sure did enjoy everyone’s exasperated reactions to the terraformer dude.
Would love to hear other people’s thoughts :)
I didnt mind inner light but I guess since that involved him living an entire life in this kinda simulation thing that it wasnt quite shoehorned.
That was a great episode actually, my only complaint was that he didn’t seem to require serious therapy afterwards.
Same with O’Brien’s mental imprisonment episode, though at least they tried to show the psychological damage there. He just managed to get over it at the end of the episode 🫠
My headcanon regarding the federations seemingly impossibly rosey outlook on psychological trauma is that they genuinely have good mental health treatments. That we have the ship’s counselor as a member of bridge crew in TNG is indicative of how important and useful they are.
Between that and psychics existing, the federation is pretty good at dealing with trauma at least in a way that keeps things functional.
In the case of inner light however I suspect the device was designed to have a dreamlike quality to it since it wouldnt be helpful for your knowledge spreading device to cause trauma to whoever it comes into contact with. You remember the important bits and major pieces of historical information but a lot of it kinda fades as just a dream.