Battle of the Gods

I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for the last few months (terrific game, a must buy), and it had me considering the idea of polytheism. In the world of BG3, everyone acknowledges that multiple gods exist, and usually pray to their preferred deity based on their lifestyle. New gods pop up overnight and long-time ones are extinguished, and the relative power of the deities ebbs and flows so that no one god is ever that much more powerful, or popular, than another.

I’ve also been watching the Star Trek journeys of Court Reacts and Jen Murray as they watch and react to all of the Star Trek series on YouTube (and special shout out to the Popcorn in Bed channel that got me into watching live reactions with their review of Star Trek First Contact!). Both channels are now into Deep Space Nine, and it’s been a real pleasure to rewatch these episodes through someone else’s eyes. It’s made me especially excited for when both channels reach my favorite television arc of all time: the Dominion War.

I didn’t mean for my playthrough of BG3 to combine with me rewatching clips of Mike Johnson’s For Cardassia playlist, but as I watched Weyoun do the bidding of the Founder, it began to look alot like the kind of relationship that many of the party members in BG3 have with their gods. And later, as you reach the end of a particular questline for one of your party members, the Chosen for their god openly admits they want to ally with you only to crush another “upstart” god. Gods fight with each other all the time in BG3. 

And I realized that’s exactly what’s happening in Deep Space Nine: a turf war between local deities, namely the Founders and the Prophets.

One might point to the intra-god warfare of the Prophets versus the Pah Wraiths to make this point, but in fact the pah wraiths were introduced after the Dominion, believe it or not (I know I couldn’t believe it when I looked it up). The first set of antagonistic gods were the Changelings. 

Yes, the Founders are gods by every plausible definition of the concept. They can assume any form like Greek gods, live indefinitely, have created (or at least heavily modified) species that worship them, they rule a vast area, etc. Just like the characters in BG3, Starfleet officers acknowledge their godhood through the eyes of the Vorta and Jem’Hadar, even if they don’t acknowledge it themselves.

The godhood of the Prophets is no less certain, even though we’re not entirely sure that they created the Bajorans per se. Still, they have worshippers, control a wormhole and can see beyond linear time, among other admittedly vague abilities. That makes Captain Benjamin Sisko at least a demigod, since his mother Sarah was a Prophet, a literal goddess inhabiting human form.

Just like the gods of BG3, the gods of DS9 are petty and self-interested, and it’s this quality that proves so distinct in the context of Star Trek. The Prophets have no problem with the Dominion sending thousands of ships into the Alpha Quadrant until it directly threatens the life of one of them literally. If Captain Sisko himself hadn’t entered the wormhole, the Prophets would not have interfered. As they said, “The game must not end,” and they stopped the Dominion specifically to save the life of a Prophet named Sisko. 

The Federation, Klingons and Romulans do not aspire to godhood, and it shows, because they are completely helpless before it. Without the Prophets on their side, the Founder’s army would have swept through the Alpha Quadrant. They had to plead to their local deity for protection, just like a BG3 character. Our heroes are mortal in Star Trek (except Sisko), stuck between forces in the universe far beyond them.

It’s such a fascinating departure from the Star Trek ethos of a techno-charged secular humanism, where good old fashion human technology and ingenuity can solve any problem (except for the ones Q had to solve sometimes, of course). I would argue that the above clip of Captain Picard from “Who Watches the Watcher” is the thesis statement of The Next Generation when it comes to gods. To swing from the outright denunciation of religion to making the next captain a religious figure and literal deity is quite a decision.  I put alot of that on staff writer and executive producer Ron Moore, who continued to explore ideas of godhood and religion on the Battlestar Galactica remake.

Star Trek has done nearly-all powerful beings and species in the past, but none that really qualify as gods in my opinion. It’s not simply a matter of power, but also the desire for praise and worship and the willingness to exchange that for favors. Q doesn’t care at all if he’s liked or not. I doubt that’s true for the Founders, because while worship is a powerful guarantor of obedience, it’s not the only one, and it says something about them that’s the one they chose. 

Deep Space Nine does alot of provocative things to the Star Trek formula, but I think positioning the Federation and everything else we know as not in the same league as the gods they openly reject but then must rely upon before an army of true believers overruns them is the most provocative choice by far. I’m so grateful that I can see these new layers every time I watch it.