Kira joins Odo, Ezri and Bashir after a visit to the Bajoran shrine. They talk about the subject of the sermon, forgiveness, Odo expresses regret that he is unable to share the sense of faith that is obviously so important to her. Later, Kira is pleasantly surprised by a visit from an old friend, Vedek Fala. He's brought her a gift: a tiny gemstone. When Kira holds it in her hands, it transports her to Empok Nor, the abandoned sister station to DS9. Only it isn't abandoned anymore. She is greeted by several Bajorans, whom Kira recognizes as Pah-wraith cultists, and their leader... Dukat.
Dukat apologizes for kidnapping her and gives her the Pah-wraith sales pitch, claiming that they are the true, benevolent gods of Bajor, and that he is a changed man who only wants to carry out their plan. Kira is not at all receptive to these claims, least of all coming from him. She is especially angry at Fala, who admits that he has been a part of the cult since long before Dukat arrived. He believes fully in their new leader's sincerity, whatever his past crimes, and insists that they do not deserve their reputation for violence and hate. He encourages Kira to learn more during her compulsory stay.
Her first introduction is to Benyan and Mika, a young couple who have been given permission to have a child from Dukat, the first on the station. Benyan tells her bluntly that he doesn't care whether she believes in the cult or not, which impresses her. She gets further proof of the cultists' sincerity when she swipes a phaser and points it at Dukat during a service, prompting the whole congregation to interpose themselves as Bajoran shields.
Still, there are cracks showing in his Cult of Personality. The first appears rather suddenly when Mika goes into labor and gives birth... to a half-Cardassian baby. Dukat's face says it all. He tries to play it off as a miracle from the Pah-wraiths. Most of them buy it, including Fala, but it's clear that Benyan is holding on to some serious doubts. Under pointed questioning from Kira, he admits that Fala would spend a lot of time alone with Dukat, "praying."
In private with Dukat, Mika admits that she's having trouble sticking to Dukat's lie about the baby. Though he acts pious and regretful over his "mistake", he is quick to stick her in the airlock to cover up the truth. Unfortunately for him, Kira and Fala arrive moments later and rescue her before she suffocates. She'll awaken and spill the beans any hour now, so a desperate Dukat plays his final gambit: It's mass suicide time! He announces that the congregation will shed their corporeal forms to join the Pah-wraiths by means of promazine pills: a tool originally used by Obsidian Order agents in the event of capture that would reduce their bodies to nothing but dust.
Kira is convinced by now that Dukat really thinks he's the good guy, but she knows better than to think he's honest about actually committing suicide. During the final ceremony, she tackles him, spilling the tray of promazine pills in the process. The one he was about to swallow gets lost in the pile, which seems to distress him a great deal. When Fala brings Dukat a fresh pill, he suddenly hesitates, prompting Kira to mock him for obviously having been about to swallow a fake pill.
Out of explanations, and with his congregation turning on him, Dukat flees in a rage by activating a transporter. Kira notices too late that Fala has swallowed his own pill. As he collapses into her arms, all he can say before dying is "Faith..." What he meant by that, Kira will never know for certain. The Defiant arrives to rescue Kira and repatriate the cultists, but even seeing Odo again is small relief. Dukat, she knows, is still out there, twisted by his new faith and more dangerous than ever.
This episode contains examples of:
- Agree to Disagree: Fala tries to take this tack with Kira, regarding the fundamental differences in their beliefs. Kira refuses to accept it.Fala: You believe the Prophets are the true gods of Bajor. I believe the Pah-wraiths are. Let's just leave it at that.
Kira: I'd be happy to. There's just one problem: we can't both be right. - Ambiguous Situation:
- Did Vedek Fala take his own life because Dukat's lies broke his faith, or did he do it because he hadn't lost faith and wanted to follow Dukat's command? Kira is still mulling over the question when all is said and done.
- Just before Dukat comes up with his mass suicide scheme, he prays for guidance from the Pah-wraiths. So is the mass suicide scheme something he came up with on his own to cover his ass, or did the Pah-wraiths, for reasons of their own, actually tell him to carry it out? Knowing both Dukat and the Pah-wraiths, either is possible.
- Artistic License – Physics: Dukat lures Mika into an airlock, then opens the door to the vacuum of space to depressurize the room. As the air rushes out of the room, Mika is apparently pulled to the door itself like a magnet. She is then shown trying to grasp the door to keep from being blown into space, but there is no reason why she was pulled toward the door instead of toward the opening.
- Believing Their Own Lies: Dukat is so warped that he really believes his own message.
- Blatant Lies: After looking aghast at his own half-Cardassian baby, Dukat smoothly announces that it's a miracle from the Pah-wraiths, something even his own congregation has some trouble buying.
- Broken Pedestal:
- Kira can't believe that Vedek Fala turned his back on the Prophets after preaching the faith in the refugee camps.
- Dukat's flock turns on him when they realize his "suicide pact" only applies to them.
- Call-Back:
- Kira hasn't forgiven Dukat for killing Jadzia.
- Kira mentions the Pah-wraith cultist that tried to kill Sisko.
- Fala reminds Kira of how the Prophets disappeared an entire Dominion fleet as a demonstration of what Sufficiently Advanced Aliens can do.
- Dukat reminds Kira of his relationship with her mother.
- The abandoned station Empok Nor shows up once again.
- Chocolate Baby: Dukat tells his followers that Mika's half-Cardassian baby is a sign from the Pah-wraiths.
- Converting for Love: Odo seriously considers taking up the Bajoran faith with Kira. For her part, Kira only wants him to do it if he'd genuinely get something out of it, and is fine with him remaining secular if he can't bring himself to see the Prophets as gods.
- Creepy Child: During production, the showmakers decided an animatronic baby would be less trouble than a real one. And decided to hire, of all people, the creators of Chucky to make it. The results were predictably creepy, basically Chucky with a Bajoran nose. And a real baby was used in the end.
- Cult Colony: What Dukat has set up on Empok Nor.
- Cyanide Pill: Promazine, the pill that the cultists were going to use. It was developed by the Cardassian Obsidian Order for their agents in the event of capture. Not only does it kill, but it causes the body to crumble to dust not long after, leaving no evidence behind.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Dukat's Pah-wraith cult preaches that the Pah-wraiths are loving beings wrongly cast as villains in a story written by the Prophets. The audience and Kira are well aware that it's a load of bunk.
- Dark Messiah: Dukat has cast himself as an Evil Counterpart to Sisko, calling himself the Emissary of the Pah-wraiths, serving them as Sisko serves the Prophets. Although the cultists are disillusioned with Dukat in the end, Dukat's own faith is unbroken.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The cult was based on the then-recent Heaven's Gate mass suicide, though the circumstances in the episode more resemble Jim Jones.
- Don't Create a Martyr: After a failed attempt to kill Dukat, Kira decides to let him live long enough to be exposed as a fraud.
- Drinking the Kool-Aid: Dukat has the people of Empok Nor following him obediently and unwaveringly, right up until Kira reveals that he planned to trick them all into killing themselves while escaping scot-free. And even then, Vedek Fala still believes so much that he kills himself.
- Driven to Suicide: Vedek Fala willingly swallows his promazine pill even though it's been revealed that Dukat is a fraud.
- Have You Told Anyone Else?: Not only does Mika admit she hasn't told anybody the truth, she also confesses that she doesn't think she can lie to her husband. While standing alone with Dukat in an airlock...
- History Repeats: Dukat's Pah-wraith Cult Colony is his idealized version of the Bajoran Occupation, with him serving as the kindly "master" on a new Terok Nor/Deep Space Nine with a flock of loyal Bajorans who worship him as their Emissary. But, just like the original Occupation, his affair with a married Bajoran woman produces a secret half-Cardassian love child that he attempts to cover up with a murder, which ends up dragging him down, exposing him as a self-obsessed tyrant, and ends with him running away in disgrace.
- Hypocrite:
- Dukat is up to his usual tricks, preaching abstinence despite giving in to his own lust.
- Fala says to Kira "You believe the Prophets are the true gods of Bajor. I believe the Pah-wraiths are. Let's just leave it at that." The only reason they're having this conversation is because he kidnapped her to try to convert her.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Odo raises a disturbing point at the end of the episode: for all they know, Dukat really is following the will of the Pah-Wraiths.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Dukat tries to murder his mistress Mika in an airlock, lest she reveal their affair to her husband and the rest of his flock. When that fails, he convinces his followers to commit mass suicide before she recovers, lest they turn against him.
- Never My Fault: Dukat continues to trot out his position that he was a good prefect of Bajor and that he protected Bajorans from the worst of the Occupation and that he is actually a good man. Also, when Kira points out a Pah-wraith cultist attempted to kill Sisko, he claims to have had nothing to do with it.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Dukat has Kira kidnapped in the hope that he could win her over. This means kidnapping the one person who can (and does) blow the whistle on his evil plans.
- No OSHA Compliance: Mika is inside an airlock chamber when Dukat presses a button to open the door to the vacuum of space, depressurizing the chamber to try to kill Mika. Mika apparently has no way to prevent this from inside the airlock, and it would be easily possible for the station to have a life-form sensor that could detect the risk and require more steps to be taken to open the outer door. This trope is possibly justified, since they are on a Cardassian space station and it has been established in the series that Cardassian standards of occupational safety don't live up to Human sensibilities, although this is not mentioned in this particular episode.
- Noble Bigot: Played With. Fala says to Kira "You believe the Prophets are the true gods of Bajor. I believe the Pah-wraiths are. Let's just leave it at that." to which Kira responds "I'd be happy to. There's just one problem: we can't both be right." Without context, this line could easily have made Kira look like an intolerant zealot. However, since the Prophets and Pah-wraiths are Sufficiently Advanced Aliens and the Pah-wraiths being evil is a demonstrable fact, Kira comes across as the Only Sane Man among a group of Flat Earth Atheists.
- Oh, Crap!: Dukat, when Kira knocks his fake suicide pill to the ground amid many real ones. It's one of the few times in the series where he comes close to genuinely losing his cool.
- One-Liner, Name... One-Liner: When Kira asks Vedek Fala why he swallowed the promazine pill that Dukat gave him, even though Dukat was a fraud:"Faith...Nerys...faith."
- Pet the Dog: Dukat tells Kira that he contacted DS9 to pick her up after his cult commits suicide. The episode ends with the Defiant bringing Kira and the cultists back to DS9, so at least Dukat was honest about that.
- Riddle for the Ages: Kira wonders what Fala meant when he said that faith was the reason he killed himself. Did he have faith that he was doing what he was supposed to, or was it that his faith betrayed him?
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: As Dukat's plans go belly-up right before his eyes, he beams off the station in a huff.
- Sinister Minister: "Master" Dukat, leader of his own band of Pah-wraith cultists.
- Symbolism: The Dutch Angle at which Empok Nor is always shot, first established in its namesake episode to show how "off" it is from Deep Space Nine (as well as its derelict nature), is even more symbolic here. Not only does it underscore the parallels between Dukat and Sisko (two Emissaries with their own Prophets and space stations) as well as recreating his past leadership of Terok Nor, it reflects how off-kilter Kira feels throughout the episode—finding out her old religion teacher from the camps has converted to the Pah-wraiths, fighting to show her fellow Bajorans they should stay true to the Prophets, all while they're being misled by Dukat in a Dark Messiah role, claiming he's changed and only wants the good of Bajor. Even at the end, when she isn't sure why Fala killed himself, or whether Dukat is a true believer or even an actual vessel of the Pah-wraiths, it's safe to say Kira's world was turned upside-down.
- Villain Has a Point: Dukat questions Kira on why the Prophets never intervened to stop the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. And while Kira can't offer any answer past "They always have a plan for us", he is correct in saying if they'd wanted to, the Prophets had the power and means to stop Cardassian atrocities within weeks if they had chosen to act.
- Wham Shot: The Reveal that Gul Dukat is the Master of the Pah-wraith cult.
- What You Are in the Dark: Before the climax, we get a scene of Dukat kneeling alone in prayer, begging the Pah-wraiths for a sign and for them to forgive his failings, letting the audience know that what Kira realises is true: Dukat, whatever else he might be, is a genuine believer in the Pah-wraiths.
- Written by the Winners: Dukat says this of the Bajoran texts that favor the Prophets over the Pah-wraiths.
