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SST413: A legend built on a lie. Or is it?

DS9’s second season opens with “The Homecoming,” the first episode of Star Trek’s first real three-parter, and a story that could only exist on Deep Space Nine. Dom Bettinelli, Jimmy Akin, and Fr. Jason Tyler break it all down.

Major Kira learns that Li Nalas, the legendary Bajoran resistance hero, is alive and imprisoned on Cardassia IV. She borrows a runabout, brings Chief O’Brien along for the ride, and pulls off a brazen rescue involving an improvised infiltration ruse that immediately raises questions about their prior experience together. Li Nalas arrives back on DS9 to a hero’s welcome, and almost immediately tries to flee on a freight ship.

His secret: the legend isn’t real. He killed an unarmed, embarrassed Cardassian who was bathing in a stream, and never corrected the story that grew up around it. His friends built a myth; the myth built a movement. Sisko tells him it doesn’t matter. Bajor needs a symbol, not a man. The panel notes the episode’s one missed beat: Sisko is the Emissary, a symbol himself. That parallel never gets drawn out loud.

Meanwhile, the Circle — a Bajoran supremacist group under the slogan “Bajor for the Bajorans” — escalates from graffiti to something uglier. They break into Quark’s bar and brand him on the forehead. The panel reads this clearly: it’s the equivalent of cross-burning, a targeted act meant to drive non-Bajorans out. The Circle vanishes from the series after this three-parter, which the panel considers one of DS9’s more significant missed opportunities.

A quieter moment lands the hardest. Jake’s date cancels because her father won’t allow her to date a human. Sisko walks in, asks about the evening, and Jake tells him. Sisko’s response — “I’m sorry you’ve become a victim of these things. You don’t deserve it. Nobody does” — is delivered with total restraint. The panel notes that Avery Brooks and Cirroc Lofton being Black adds a layer to that scene that white actors couldn’t carry in the same way.

Frank Langella plays Minister Jaro Essa uncredited, a favor to his Star Trek fan kids. Richard Beymer (Tony in West Side Story, Ben Horne in Twin Peaks) plays Li Nalas.

And for the first time in DS9’s run: Morn doesn’t appear.

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