Kira Nerys – a Terrorist, Gorgeous Through and Through

[Shada Dukal]

Kira is the only character in DS9 that I can’t decide what to think of. The dutiful Cardassian in me sniffs a terrorist and bristles but still terrorism has never looked sexier and cuter. In fact, I guess this is the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist – freedom fighters are played by cute actors, while terrorists are always unattractive.

What I like about her – I like her directness, her passion for everything she does. I adore her combat spirit, her bluntness in social situations, her inability to grasp anything beyond fighting, her struggle to acquire a more nuanced and layered sensitivity, her efforts to communicate with other people, not that they were successful. I appreciate that, though slowly and haltingly, she managed to become something more than the average hater, and she did not display the victim mentality typical of the Bajorans.

What I don’t like about her is her blind hatred towards the Cardassians as though her grudges could undo the Annexation of Bajor or the backwardness of her people. She took everything personally and did not understand that her world was an arena of geopolitical strategies beyond the grasp or control of the individual. Her black-and-white sense of justice, though suitable for the front line, was totally out of place in more civilized situations. Her revanchism often prevented her from seeing her own politicians and religious figures for what they really were.

She accepted the Federation presence all too easily and never asked why another alien military representative should sit in Dukat’s office and supervise the spiritual matters and defense doctrine of her world. It was inevitable for Bajor to fall under the UFP influence but I expected more opposition and criticism from her. Her open display of religious beliefs caused diplomatic and communicative consternations on several occasions and her respect for Sisko was truly religious, she considered him part of the Bajoran mythology. She never admitted that the Resistance was not a threat for Cardassia and all her efforts to fight and drive off the Cardassians were negligible.

Kira hated collaborators and looked down on every Bajoran who had not been in the Resistance but she was a daughter of a collaborator. She had a deep personal reason to hate Dukat but she joined the Resistance out of teenage rebellion, because she wanted to be viewed as an adult and be part of something big and adventurous. According to Memory Alpha, this happened when she was 12 years old so she did not go to school. Then she became the second-in-command of a space station and constituted the governing elite of the Bajoran society. So much for the learned folks – education is not power, not on Bajor, at least.

She tormented Quark and hated Ferengi, which I find inexcusable – I adore those little, cunning trolls. She acted too precipitately and emotionally, was unapproachable at times, was insensitive to hints and her interpersonal skills needed refinement. Ironically, this behavior somehow befitted her, she was not supposed to be a very sophisticated person.

Still, at the end of the show she was capable of sitting in the same room with Cardassians without wiping them off on the spot, which was a great personal achievement. She was a much better person, more balanced and wiser than the angry terrorist in the first season. Unlike Sisko, whose character arc reached a dramaturgical dead-end, her character acquired a lot of depth and new facets. I wish there were more Bajorans like her but neither their clergy nor their politicians impress me.

[Gul Khold]

I believe she would have been a more well-rounded character had it not been for the bad writing mentioned in other posts.

For instance, if we pretend we did not see the latter seasons yet, it all indicated she was beginning to warm up to Dukat. Not as a friend, but as someone who actually understood his position and perspective. Duet also would have been a great episode to change her views and develop her character. But much like "The Inner Light" was an ignored epiphany for Picard, thanks to the "thou must not undo Roddenberry's vision" mentality of the writers, she slipped quickly back into her hatred, only to then have to quickly (and in rushed writing) come back from it and help the Cardassians when they needed it.

Then there was the need to vilify Dukat which, as side-effect, set her character development back to zero. Another wasted opportunity was for her to rethink her views on Bajoran leadership would be to explore in depth how she would react to Kai Winn's betrayal of her own world.

All in all, I think she was a potentially great character and I still somewhat like her. She was passionate, despite her flaws, and came off as more human than the human characters in the show. Alas, the fan pressure cut her character's wings before she could ascend into something more interesting.

[Shada Dukal]

It would be interesting to have more episodes on her struggle to accept her past, to consider herself a good person despite the things she had done. These aspects were only touched upon but never developed, in fact the writers always played it safely and supported the Bajoran victim playing when things got too morally obscure. They were afraid of letting Kira explore the recent Bajoran history from other angles because they needed her angry and unforgiving. They did not want her to realize that there were no ethical and epistemological absolutes and what the participants in the events call truth depends on the perspective. Kira’s anger management should lead to understanding, she and her people needed to come to terms with what happened to them, what was wrong with their makeup even before the Cardassians, what made Bajor ripe for being taken over, why Starfleet replaced the Cardassians. To understand all is to forgive all, when you know all the details, it gets increasingly difficult to judge.

I suppose she could make a great counterpart for Dukat because of her duality towards him – publically, he was the symbol of the Occupation but still an awfully compelling and challenging person who she would enjoy to have around under other circumstances. They both were trying to resolve their past, they both had something personal at stake so I guess the real conflict was between Kira and Dukat, not between Dukat and Sisko. Kira’s disagreement with Dukat could be kept boiling and they could have a perfect love-hate relationship, laced with tension and dark humor. A love affair would be a highly implausible development but a volatile mixture of nagging, banter, and grudging admittance of unpleasant facts would be interesting to watch.

I don’t think that the events in “Duet” could change Kira’s prejudices that quickly. Actually, these prejudices never disappeared completely, they simply lost their sharp edges and were displaced by more urgent necessities.

She was 26 in the first season, 2369, and had spent the last 14 years of her life planting bombs, killing, ambushing, hiding, and running. She had no peacetime abilities and interests – her anger and denial of the status quo defined her as a person. I don’t think that it was logical for her to warm to the Cardassians only a year after the Cardassian withdrawal simply because one Cardassian impressed her. She reminds me of a child-soldier, it took her years to reintegrate, to fill in the gaps in her personality, the chunks of life she had missed, the range of emotions she had never experienced.
I guess she simply channeled her hatred into everyday routines but she never fully blended into civilian life, she never had a normal relationship (Bareil was too weak for her, Shakaar – a cheap womanizer, and Odo – too alien), she never exhibited an inclination for other activities apart from military strategy and organization.

You know the Vasquez-always-dies trope. Kira shows what happens when a female kickass does not die in the name of a noble cause and I find her personal flaws and biases a convincing part of the character.

[Gul Khold]

I think my main problem is I cannot figure if it is the writers that want to make a breakthrough with Kira, but got limited by the fandom pressure/suits afraid of said pressure or the opposite. Like they began to make a breakthrough, but then themselves went "wait, the fans are liking it, but it strays from Gene Roddenberry's vision - let's change it back".

[Shada Dukal]

Well, Ira Steven Behr hypothesized once that “when the western died, science fiction filled the gap”. In this sense, Kira is an alien projection of the Native American fighting at the frontier.

This is what I found on Memory Alpha:

“When Brandon Tartikoff first approached Rick Berman in 1991 about doing a new Star Trek show, he stated that he wanted it to have a classic western format; specifically, a man and his son arrive at a frontier town on the edge of known civilization. Berman brought this concept to Michael Piller, and together they set about creating a western in space. As Robert Hewitt Wolfe explains, "We had the country doctor, and we had the barkeeper, and we had the sheriff and we had the mayor, we had it all, it was all there. We had the common man, Miles O'Brien, the Native American, Kira."

So Kira is a “good” Indian who scalps only bad settlers (Cardassians) and her tribe lives in peace and harmony with the good settlers (the Federation). They all come to take your land but some are more tolerable than others, and give you more shiny beads, it makes sense.

I guess the writers always had to walk the thin line between introducing something new and satisfying the expectations of the Trek audience that does not warm easily to new formats and approaches, they are quite conservative and always bray about someone violating Roddenberry’s vision.

However, the actress herself, Nana Visitor, was in-character all the time, she ate, breathed and slept KIra Nerys so at some point she even admitted she had a nightmare where the Cardassians were chasing her down the corridors of Terok Nor.

Later she took part in the vilifying campaign against the character of Dukat – each writer or producer felt obliged to tell the fans what exactly they were supposed to think about Dukat after the “Waltz” episode.

This is her opinion on Dukat:

“Several actors have made comments about Dukat. Nana Visitor said, "This was a character who was the worst people we have had on Earth, this is who this man was." (Hidden File 02, DS9 Season 6 DVD special features) She stated about Marc Alaimo's transformations into the role, "When he's on the set, he is Dukat. He's already in makeup and I can't see him as anything else." (The Official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine, Vol. 16, p. 47)”

Whether I agree with her is not important, everyone is entitled to their views, but this demonstrates how emotionally involved Nana Visitor was when playing the part of Kira Nerys. So the volatile combination of talent, personal dedication and occasional independent thinking gave us the character of Kira Nerys.

[Gul Khold]

That actually was pretty interesting to learn. Still, I bet even you can wonder where the plot would have gone had they avoid a few steerings.

[Gazomg]

always disliked her