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Old May 9 2013, 10:54 AM   #110
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Re: The Orb - a new DS9 podcast

Lots to talk about there.

As I've said, I'm not religious myself, so if this were happening in the real world, I would side with "aliens."

But for the purposes of the story, my perspective - and I think part of the point - is that there is no need to choose one over the other. The two don't need to be contradictory or mutually exclusive. It's all just a matter of definition. If the Bajorans believe they are gods, then to them, they are. It doesn't make them gods to the Federation. The two views are compatible because they apply to different people.

You showed your own biases (meant in a non-confrontational sense) when you described why you question their godhood - because they are not omniscient and don't appear to have created the entire universe. So what? That's a very 21-st century Western concept of godliness. To you those are required aspects of being considered a god, but maybe they're not required for Bajorans to consider the Prophets to be gods. Just because they don't fit those two qualifications doesn't make them not divine if that's what the Bajorans believe them to be.

The Bajorans even know - objectively and scientifically - that the Prophets are a sapient race of extra-terrestrial origin who live in another space-time continuum that is accessible via an event horizon in the Denorios Belt. That still doesn't make them not gods to them. It's all just a matter of how you define divinity.

I personally always liked what seemed to be the original idea of the show - that while the Bajorans had built an entire religion and culture around the belief that the Prophets cared about them and had a plan for them, for the Prophets themselves it was all coincidental and pretty much unintentional. Up until "Emissary," they appeared not to even realise that they might have had any effect on anyone. They knew that corporeal entities existed but didn't appear to consider them worth contacting or even counting as intelligent life.

It was only after that, when we get to the "We are of Bajor" point, that it seems that the writers did intend the Prophets to be voluntarily and intentionally involved with Bajor in some way. I think the first version is perhaps more interesting conceptually, but the second version is probably easier to tell stories around.


Read Deep Space Nine, Season 10
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