the m0vie blog

Covenant is a flawed and fascinating episode.

In its own way, although obviously a much less extreme manner than The Siege of AR-558, this is an episode that could only have been produced on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. This is not simply down to matters of continuity, and how the episode ties into the mythology of the series. More specifically, it is an exploration of religious themes and ideas that is only really possible within the framework of this particular Star Trek spin-off. It is difficult to imagine Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek: Voyager tackling the idea of religious cults so effectively.

Part of this is down to a lingering suspicion that the other Star Trek shows subtly (or not so subtly) consider all religions to be cults. After all, shows like The Return of the Archons, The Apple, For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky, Justice, Who Watches the Watchers? and Devil’s Due left little room for ambiguity. The other Star Trek series seem downright hostile to the idea of religious belief, even if episodes like The Cloud and Sacred Ground might suggest a more open-minded approach to spirituality.

Deep Space Nine has generally been more willing to engage with the idea of religious belief as something that is worthy of exploration and consideration, something that is for an individual to determine on their own terms. Some characters on Deep Space Nine are explicitly atheist, like Jadzia Dax or Odo. Some characters hold strong religious beliefs, like Kira or Nog. Some characters believe in spiritual traditions without ever seeming particularly devote, like Worf. Some characters even evolve over the course of the series, like Sisko.

This willingness to accept multiple facets and forms of religious belief allows Deep Space Nine to construct a story like Covenant. In any other Star Trek series, Covenant would seem like a knee-jerk dismissal of religious faith and organised belief, the tale of how a group of Bajorans were swindled by a charismatic leader with tragic consequences. It would be read as a generic condemnation of religious belief, an endorsement of an atheistic worldview that has developed beyond the need for such superstition.

Instead, Covenant is something more interesting and nuanced than that. It is an episode about a particular kind of belief, about a particular sort of religion. It is an episode about the dangers of a very particular form of worship. It is an episode about the perils of religious cults, but one which understands the distinction between that and other forms of spirituality.

These sorts of fringe religious organisations are arguably of particular interest in the context of American popular history. This is not to suggest that they are a uniquely American phenomenon. There are plenty of organisations from all over the world (and all across history) that would reasonably be described as “cults.” Germany, for example, has a history of actively monitoring these sorts of organisations within its borders, whether their origins are domestic or international. France also keeps an eye on its religious movements.

In the late eighties, a drug smuggling cult operating out of Matamoros participated in human sacrifice, believing that the practice would protect them from both their enemies and from the authorities. In the mid-nineties, the Aum Shinrikyo cult released nerve gas on a crowded subway platform in Tokyo, after a failed attempt to attack targets like two U.S. Naval bases, the Narita airport, the Japanese Diet, the Imperial Palace, and the headquarters of a rival religious group. It could fairly be argued that ISIS is itself an apocalyptic cult.

However, American popular culture has long been fascinated by the prominence of religious cults within the United States, particularly in the context of the second half of the twentieth century, an era that (likely not coincidentally) overlaps with the beginning of the so-called “American century.” For example, these cults tend to pop up in the work of auteur Paul Thomas Anderson, most notably in his Oscar-nominated classic The Master and as a subplot in his Pyncheon adaptation Inherent Vice. Chris Carter would play with the idea in both The X-Files and Millennium.

Most obviously, Scientology was a recurring fixation for American pop culture from the nineties into the new millennium. (Germany identified the organisation as a cult, and many commentators would agree, even if the American classification of the group is somewhat fungible.) Despite the group’s notoriously litigious nature, the organisation has been subjected to countless documentaries and thinly (or not-even-thinly) veiled portrayals in film and television. However, Scientology is far from the only cult to capture the public’s interest.

Peggy Riley argues that the United States’ fascination with cults is down to the strange niche that they hold in the cultural history of the (relatively young) country:

The history of American faith is filled with charismatic leaders, eager to change the world and to destroy it. In a nation founded by religious radicals in search of freedom, we are raised to believe and raised to protect the right to believe at all costs. The faithful pushed their wagons into the empty west, missionaries and prophets spreading the word, building utopian societies with a violent certainty. The Mormon pioneers irrigated and settled an uninhabitable land of salt lakes. Their communal, utopian church would split over the practice of polygamy, which stood in opposition to the government and statehood. The recent raids on the fundamentalist Mormon Yearning for Zion Ranch of Warren Jeffs in Texas reminds us of the history of secret societies, with young women in pioneer dresses, trapped in cycles generations old, of men who must have multiple wives to attain the highest levels of heaven, a tenet of faith revealed by the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Joseph Smith.

In a post-war world, our faiths have turned darker and deadlier. We have grabbed hold of our freedom with both hands. Urbanization has led to isolation, to a rootless people in search of connection, estranged from the families that might have cautioned them or saved them. New cults formed in cities with followers drawn to a range of new gurus, Sun Myung Moon, Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi, “Fathers” Yod and David “Moses” Berg. All have been accused of a range of abuses, sexual, physical, mental, financial. Groups were made through abduction and maintained through brainwashing. New Age communes developed on the fringes, where charismatic men gathered harems and drugs provided the only escape.

Historically and culturally, cults have held a very special place in the American popular consciousness since the end of the Second World War. This is no surprise; they provide an interesting avenue to explore themes of identity and belief.

It should be noted that this interest is particularly focused on the west coast of America, particularly in California. Of course, there are countless examples of American cults outside of Los Angeles; the People’s Temple in Jonestown, the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. However, there have been a lot of iconic and well-known religious movements concentrated in California over the years: Scientology, the Manson family, the Children of God, the Source, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Heaven’s Gate.

In some ways, this might account for the outsized popularity of cults within American pop culture. Given that most of American pop culture is rooted in California, it makes sense that most writers are based in California. With that in mind, it makes sense that these concerns should be reflected in their output. This is not the only time that Star Trek has demonstrated that west coast bias; consider the fixation on gang violence in stories like The Abandoned, Caretaker, Initiations or the New Age sensibilities of Tattoo or Star Trek: Insurrection.

Al Ridenour has argued that there are various cultural and historic reasons why these cults seemed to take root on the western coast:

Historically, ever since the railroads connected the West Coast to the East, it was always the land of opportunity and utopia. A big part of it was the weather and the escapism that weather represented. It’s a natural place where oranges grew—a sort of Eden, basically. It was like that and then with entertainment and Hollywood, that fuelled the whole escapist mentality. Everything worked together to make California and Southern California a haven for cults and movements like that.

It should also be noted that the west coast represents the literal end of the American Dream, the final frontier of Manifest Destiny.

Covenant is very much engaged with the idea of cult belief, but it explores it from the perspective of a character who has religious faith. As such, Covenant does not feel like a knee-jerk rejection of religious belief, but a more nuanced exploration of a particularly dangerous type of faith. As with Once More Unto the Breach, the teaser to Covenant is structured in such a way as to introduce its thematic ideas as early as possible through a seemingly innocuous conversation between several regular characters, including the story’s featured regular.

This is a very small structural detail, but one that demonstrates how technically proficient the writing staff on Deep Space Nine had become at structuring a story like this. It is something that Deep Space Nine just does without drawing attention to it, while Voyager often seems to struggle to set up its themes and ideas in its own disconnected teaser scenes. Covenant is hardly the best constructed episode of the seventh season of Deep Space Nine, built little details like this ensure that it seems much more confident and purposeful than the vast majority of Voyager episodes.

Similarly, Covenant itself serves a very clear and important role in the overall structure of the season. The sixth season of Deep Space Nine often struggled to keep all of its key characters and elements in focus, with major characters like Damar or Weyoun or Garak disappearing from extended stretches in the middle of the season. The audience did not get a chance to spend any time with Martok between You Are Cordially Invited… and Tears of the Prophets, to give one especially egregious example.

The seventh season does a much better job of keeping all of its elements in focus and all of its characters in play. The writers are keenly aware that this is the final season of Deep Space Nine and understand that there is a need to keep track of important threads across the year. Covenant is the first appearance of Dukat since Tears of the Prophets and the first use of the Pah-Wraiths since Shadows and Symbols. There is a sense that Covenant is effectively “checking in” on these two plot elements, aware that they will be of use later on in the season.

Covenant demonstrates just how deftly the Deep Space Nine writing staff have come to understand the workings of continuity. The episode references and builds upon previous episodes, using Empok Nor from Empok Nor and The Magnificent Ferengi, referencing the death of Jadzia and Dukat’s union with the Pah-Wraiths from Tears of the Prophets, and even mentioning the Pah-Wraith cult that appeared on the promenade and attacked Sisko in Image in the Sand. (The episode also invited the user to speculate whether Dukat was involved in that stabbing.)

At the same time, none of these elements intrude on the narrative of Covenant. This is very clearly a single cohesive narrative, a story that can be told and considered on its own terms, with its own thematic concerns. Covenant is more that just a chapter in an unfolding narrative. In fact, Covenant is arguably something of an outlier as far as the overall plot involving Dukat and the Pah-Wraiths works. Instead, Covenant builds on all these preexisting elements to tell a story that is both worth telling in its own right and strengthened by this surrounding context.

In the introductory scene, Kira discusses her faith with the other regular characters. Covenant establishes Kira’s faith as a very benevolent (and even empowering) religious belief. Odo laments that he cannot share Kira’s faith, but she seems perfectly accepting of that. Kira is a believer who has enough self-belief that she does not need Odo to validate her faith. Instead, she simply hopes he might get something worthwhile from faith, if he wants. “Would it bother you if Odo believed in Klingon religion?” Ezri asks. “Not if he got something out of it,” Kira responds.

This idea is reinforced once Kira is taken to Empok Nor. Kira is obviously uneasy with the very idea of the Pah-Wraith cult, given her belief in the Prophets and the fact that she has witnessed their violence in episodes like The Reckoning and Tears of the Prophets. In conversation with Fala, Kira is quite explicit that she could never be convinced to accept the Pah-Wraiths as her gods. “We can’t both be right,” she advises Fala. However, Kira seems more unnerved with how the worshippers express their faith than with the fundamental idea of their religion.

“I’ve always found that when people try to convince others of their beliefs it’s because they’re really just trying to convince themselves,” Kira tells Benyan, while in the middle of a tour of the station with Fala. Kira is comfortable enough with her beliefs that she never feels the need to convince others, that she can accept that other people hold different religious beliefs and that this is not an irreconcilable difference. However, the faith demonstrated by the cult on Empok Nor is different. It is more desperate, more performative, more theatrical.

“We all work very hard for what we have,” Benyan warns Kira. “We don’t need you or anyone else to approve of us.” However, his words ring hollow. Fala and Dukat have very clearly kidnapped Kira in the hope of earning her validation and respect. “Nerys, the Master brought you here because he cares about your spiritual well being,” Fala assures Kira, but his argument is unconvincing. Tellingly, the first thing that he does on meeting her on Empok Nor is to offer her a guided tour. Fala and Dukat clearly aspire to earn Kira’s respect, if not her worship.

The Pah-Wraith cult as featured in Covenant is clearly inspired by Heaven’s Gate. That movement emerged in the mid-seventies, led by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. The group tied together New Age religious beliefs with a mythology built around aliens and unidentified flying objects. The group was a fringe movement, but attracted attention and headlines for the mass suicide of thirty-nine members in April 1997. There are still some members of the organisation, who remain alive and updating the Heaven’s Gate website.

The Heaven’s Gate suicide caught many people by surprise, and left an indelible mark on popular culture. However, it had a particularly strong connection to the Star Trek franchise. Thomas Nichols, the brother of Star Trek actor Nichelle Nichols, was one of those who committed suicide. Reportedly, those committing suicide referred to themselves as “the Heaven’s Gate Away Team” making contact with an alien craft hidden behind a comet; the language was very much in keeping with the Star Trek franchise.

Part of what was so compelling about the Heaven’s Gate suicides was the fact that the cult did not appear to have engaged in the same sorts of brainwashing and intimidation employed by the People’s Temple or Scientology. As Benjamin E. Zeller outlined in Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion:

Clearly the leaders of Heaven’s Gate engaged in acts of religious persuasion. They used adherents’ emotions, preexisting convictions, hopes, and fears to attract them to join the movement and stay within it, though it must be noted that they also encouraged members who seemed to be waffling to leave. This is of course basic advertising, and one finds the same process at work in most religious movements. Heaven’s Gate represents an extreme example because the group’s leaders demanded so much from their followers and offered far more in return. According to the rational choice model of religious social dynamics, this sort of trade-off of high demands and high rewards functions to attract a niche of serious spiritual seekers, just as very costly commercial goods (expensive cars or foods) also attract niche consumers. This also helps explain why Heaven’s Gate remained so small. Members joined not because of some sort of magical psychological or spiritual trick that the leaders conjured, but because they were looking for something and believed that they found it in Heaven’s Gate.

In the context of a mass suicide, this was deeply unsettling. Why would thirty-nine people kill themselves if they were not being coerced or brainwashed or blackmailed? How could people really believe in something like this to an extent that they would take their own lives on such an obviously ridiculous premise?

Covenant explores these themes and ideas, most notably at the climax of the episode when Dukat tries to cover for his own indiscretions by convincing his fellow cult members to commit suicide. He distributes pills, arguing that the Pah-Wraiths want their followers to ascend. “We have proven ourselves worthy of the Pah-Wraiths,” Dukat assures his followers, “and they are calling us home. This is the means of our deliverance.” It is not quite an alien ship hiding behind a comet, but it is almost.

Of course, unlike Marshall Applewhite, Dukat has no plans of committing suicide with his followers. There are certainly historical precedents; Ilya Sidorov was arrested for presiding over a suicide and self-harm cult, while cult leader Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo was suspected of faking his own death to avoid the authorities. This is very much in keeping with what Deep Space Nine has already established about Dukat as a character. Covenant allows for a short scene of Dukat praying to establish that his faith is genuine, but even that faith cannot overcome Dukat’s naked self-interest.

However, even after Kira exposes Dukat as a charlatan, and even after most of the community turns against him, Fala still commits suicide. His action is left somewhat ambiguous and open-ended, as suicide often is. When Kira demands to know why Fala would commit suicide, even knowing that Dukat was a fraud, he simply responds, “Faith.” Kira confesses to Odo, “I keep going over what he said when he died and I don’t know if he was trying to tell me if he never lost his faith or that he felt betrayed by it.”

Covenant leaves enough wriggle-room either way, but it also suggests a third possibility. Was Fala so desperate to believe that he would commit suicide in order to validate that belief? Was his suicide simply an affirmation (to himself as much as to Kira) that he still had faith? Covenant suggests that these sorts of cults thrive on the performance of faith, whether through the gigantic painting that Benyan is working on, the one-on-one prayer sessions with Dukat, the entire attempt by Dukat and Fala to convince Kira of the validity of their faith.

Indeed, it is tempting to read Dukat’s private prayer to the Pah-Wraiths as that sort of performance of faith, a clear attempt to convince himself of the validity of his faith. “I failed you,” he admits, which is no small admission for a man of Dukat’s ego. “Forgive my weakness. Forgive me for letting temptation obscure the path you’ve laid out for me.” He begs, “Tell me what to do. Please. Please.” Naturally, what Dukat decides that the Pah-Wraiths have asked him to do saves both his reputation and his life. Convenient, that.

This is consistent with Dukat’s character. Ego and insecurity have always been Dukat’s primary weaknesses. Dukat is very good at presenting himself as something resembling a decent person, even if his behaviour repeatedly falls short. After all, his decision to spare Ziyal’s life in Indiscretion is very much intended as a gesture to earn Kira’s respect. Dukat is convinced that he loves Ziyal, to the point that he was driven mad by her death (in combination with his loss of the station) in Sacrifice of Angels, but he is perfectly willing to sacrifice her as a pawn in By Inferno’s Light.

Indeed, the decision to cast Dukat as a cult leader makes a certain amount of sense, and not just building off his alliance with Kosst Amojan in Tears of the Prophets. Dukat has always had a unique view of the way in which the universe works, has always believed that he deserved the appreciation of those under his boot, and always imagined himself as an equal to Benjamin Sisko. All of these elements combine in such a way as to make “Pah-Wraith Cult Leader” a much more logical character development than “Pulp Space Pirate” was in Return to Grace.

It should be noted that while the cult that Dukat founds is explicitly religious, a cult of personality tends to develop around high-profile political leaders with authoritarian leanings. Josef Stalin is a great example of a dictator who cultivated a cult of personality around himself. Alfredo Stroessner feigned a humble attitude, but structured Paraguayan society so as to advance his followers. Even deposed dictators like Saddam Hussein maintained a cult of personality after their government had been toppled and they had been reduced to flotsam of history.

These cults are not unique to foreign dictatorships, and can develop even in the most unlikely of places. Cult survivor Teddy Hose has likened Donald Trump to the leaders of religious cults like Sun Myung Moon:

Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: belief, covenant, cults, deep space nine, faith, gul dukat, milton, religion, star trek, star trek: deep space nine, Television, the pah-wraiths |