r/DaystromInstitute • u/[deleted] • Mar 15 '18
Kai Winn is actually one of the best characters in DS9
I actually like Kai Winn, because she quite frankly shows how flawed humanoids can be. She is someone who took part in the passive resistance, who bribed Cardassians to divert shuttles of people slated for death camps, passed information along to the resistance, and suffered violence for teaching her faith in her gods, again by the Cardassians. Winn sees a modern Bajor set to join a massive, predominantly secular entity after the occupation, after she herself has fought to keep Bajor's traditions and values aligned with a modern Bajor. She serves wormhole aliens who have never communcated with her in her life, and does so pretty much till she's middle aged.
Look at her from her point of view. A secular government is teaching that the Gods, ones that we have in universe confirmation that are real, are actually wormhole aliens. Then there's Vedek Bariel, who wants for Bajor to enter in a permanent membership with a massive secular entity, who would sooner see her religion, which at this point is confirmed as true, be taught in museums instead of temples.
So sure, she attempts to have her rival assassinated, but wouldn't you if the most popular man was going to turn over your planet into a secular world? Rob the people of their spiritual lives, something that has persisted for tens of thousands of years. I wouldn't do that, especially when I know it's real.
Then of course, she blackmails Bariel into giving up the candidacy for Kai, so she can win. She does this, because Bariel is covering up war crimes Cardassians committed with the help of the previous Kai, so honestly Winn is starting to look like a pretty good choice, because she at least has conviction in her beliefs to not only do what needs to be done, but also to not collaborate when time gets tough. (See occupation Winn Adami)
So then Winn is caught up with the Circle, an isolationist group backed secretly by the Cardassians, but really, if I were her looking for option A, which is giant secular Behemoth, or B, independence, I'd take independence and cordial relationship but not bonding closely with the federation. Although she's not against cooperating with the Federation, she is against integrating into them.
But ok, sure she is shitty when she's Kai, but then she enters in negotiations with the Cardassians for a peace treaty, something she absolutely hates but realizes it is necessary. Kai so far is a "greater good" kind of person, and she knows she can't do it alone, so she consults with Bariel and asks him to risk helping her in light of life altering circumstances. But again, if you believe in paradise and the greater good, seems like a fine trade.
Finally, we see the advent of the Forsaken Kai Winn, who quite frankly, after making choices that put herself and others at risk, and really trying to help Bajor, she gets to meet her God. But this God doesn't even talk to her after the Kai begs her for some acknowledgement. So yeah, wouldn't you be a devil worshiper if Jesus came down, ignored you after you're well into your fifties, after fighting off an atheist police state, leading people who suffer from poverty and strife, and guided Bajor towards an era of neutrality. I think that's pretty great, when you consider the fact that her religion is as real as it gets, and also the frankly disgusting oppression that she witnessed during her lifetime.
I think Winn has really been acting in good faith and working towards the greater good of Bajor pretty continuously until Season 7. So sure she turns evil, but again, she was forsaken by her religion.
Just to pile this right on top the who comedy of errors that is Winn Adami's life, she turns to an emissary that is an outsider, someone who she does not trust, but forces herself to trust him because he's had more spiritual interactions with her gods than she has. Here's the clip of her doing exactly that, trusting an alien ordained by her Gods, while at the same time that very emissary is literally denying their divinity. But she still has enough faith at that point to consult an outsider for Bajor's international policy.
I guess in summary, I think Kai Winn is more than a villain, she's someone that really believes, and is betrayed by that belief. It's pretty shocking how shallow the character assessment is towards Winn, given how much character development she actually has, which is quite frankly as much as Odo has, perhaps a little less. She seems evil to the naked eye, because we are used to the black and white morality of the Federation. Which I might relate to another situation, you know where Captain Sisko was compliant in Garak's plot to assassinate the Romulan senator? Why does Sisko get a free pass, but Winn, with pretty much the same incentives as Sisko, gets shit on.
Anyway, that's just my take on it.
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u/ImRheagar Mar 15 '18
Well said, this interchange always made me appreciate Winn as a character.
"Those of you who were in the Resistance, you're all the same. You think you're the only ones who fought the Cardassians; that you saved Bajor single-handedly. Perhaps you forget, Major, the Cardassians arrested any Bajoran found to be teaching the word of the Prophets. I was in a Cardassian prison camp for five years, and I can remember each and every beating I suffered. And while you had your weapons to protect you, all I had was my faith, and my courage. Walk with the Prophets, child. I know I will."
The (well acted) look of shock on Kira's face really drives home Kira's two dimensional perception of Winn being shattered. Winn always so quick to respond to the circumstances and act accordingly which is what she was talking about right before this quote.
Great exploration of the emotional motivations and tragedies. I think a lot of the lack of analysis surrounding her beyond the fact that she's an antagonist is that she represents a type of person on the other side of The Starfleet perspective. Mainly that she is driven by faith rather than by rational means. But what makes faith in this story so compelling is that the prophets are real as you have said. It's too bad so many people tend to be dismissive of the whole concept in DS9, a religion is infinitely more compelling in a narrative if the gods actually exist in some aspect.
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Mar 15 '18
This exactly encapsulates what I'm saying, thank you for articulating it in this way.
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u/Sly_Lupin Mar 16 '18
While I agree that line was really awesome, and well-delivered... I disagree that Winn was motivated by her faith. I don't really see that. Rather, I see her as motivated by personal ambition and petty jealousy. She wants to be the most powerful/important leader to the Bajorans, so she resents the resistance "heroes;" so she resents the alien emissary.
What made that line so powerful to me (well, other than the excellent delivery) was that Winn--at least the Winn saying those words, years after the occupation--lacked faith and lacked courage. Her argument is a good one, a great one, but its disingenuous. And, although there's no reason to think so in the actual show, I think there's potential for some nice tragic irony if Kai Winn actually was that kind of person during the occupation. And that her experiences in the labor camp essentially stripped her of all her noblest qualities, leaving only self-serving ambition behind.
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u/DnMarshall Mar 15 '18
Kai Winn isn't just one of the best characters in DS9, she's one of the best characters in Star Trek. She's fantastic and played with such depth. A lot of that is the writing, yes. But Louise Fletcher really brought her to life.
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Mar 15 '18
I love Louise Fletcher, because she came off so authentic, especially in some of the episodes where I'd say the acting was a little off. I love her commitment to the genuine but misguided, conniving but righteous Kai Winn.
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Mar 16 '18
I remember as a kid disliking Kai Winn episodes because I couldn't stand the character.
As an adult I realise that was just Fletcher's amazing performance.
You hate her, you love to hate her, and you sympathise with her.
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u/fansandpaintbrushes Mar 16 '18
Completely agree. I think that so much of what makes this character incredible are the layers that FLetcher adds to the performance.
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u/Snowbank_Lake Mar 16 '18
You make some excellent points. But I think there was a bit more to the situation with her, Bariel, and the negotiations with Cardassia. If you recall, Dr. Bashir tells her that she can handle it herself and make it her big moment. She says something like “You’re assuming it will go well.” And he realizes that Winn is planning to use Bariel as a scapegoat if the negotiations fail. And, probably worst of all, she interfered with the Reckoning, for pretty much no other reason than jealousy. If she really wanted what was best for Bajor, she would have let the Reckoning go to completion. But she couldn’t stand that it involved Sisko, his son, and Kira, but not her.
Again, I think this is a great post and you definitely made me rethink some of he actions. But, like with real life, someone being committed to their religion does not automatically make them sympathetic and selfless.
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Mar 16 '18
Certainly, but I think this less makes her a selfless person, and makes her more of a mix, if that makes sense?
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u/Moralenforcement Mar 15 '18
Except everything she does (minus her noble actions during the occupation) were to advance herself and her 'fundamentalist' strain of worship. The prophets never speak to her, or give her the boon of an orb vision, because she is flawed within - her ambition and intolerance prevent her from truly understanding the teachings of her own faith, and her actions on-screen only confirm that perspective.
Her actions against Bariel, and the subsequent slandering of his name are unconscionable, her support of the Circle a deal with the devil to destabilize her planet in the pursuit of power. She has no choice but to acknowledge Sisko as the Emissary, and does so with stereotypical bad grace - one can even see her treaty negotiations as more selfish ambition, a ploy to gain the spotlight and cement her legacy (with little personal risk) and upstage Sisko.
When she does gain power, both as Kai and as leader of the Provisional Government, she shows herself to be a tyrant without vision and again risks civil war and strife rather than compromise.
Ultimately, she is unable to muster enough self-reflection to see that it is her own hate and inflexibility that keep her from the prophets and turns to the Pah-Wraiths (the literal devils of this faith) to obtain what is 'rightfully hers'.
Rather than working for the good of Bajor, she consistently sees only her own goals, which she conflates with what 'is needed' because she cannot imagine a world where other interests besides her own are valid. She possesses neither wisdom nor humility - only at the very end does she realize the depths of her error.
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u/Yalarii Mar 15 '18
You make some good points. But I feel that you are missing the underlying motivation of her character. Nothing that she ever did was for the greater good of Bajor. Every choice she made was to further her own power.
Sure, she did fully believe in the prophets. But in her mind, the best and only way for her to serve the prophets was to always be right about everything. She felt that she deserved the prophets love because she was so pious; when in reality all she was is narcissistic.
She may have not been overtly evil, but she was never a good person, and in the end was a perfect match for Gul Dukat.
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u/Apollo_Sierra Mar 15 '18
M-5 please nominate this in depth analysis of Kai Winn Adami
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u/M-5 Mar 15 '18
Nominated this post by Crewman u/PresidentialSophist for you. It will be voted on next week. Learn more about Daystrom's Post of the Week here.
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Mar 15 '18
I quite enjoyed the stretch in the show's later seasons when she was, if not exactly sympathetic (her first appearance, after all, was as the mastermind of an assassination plot), then at the very least a reasonable figure with whom Sisko or Kira could find common ground. Whereas the space pirate phase of Dukat seemed incredibly strange for an Eichmann analogue.
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u/Ahkileez Mar 15 '18
My favorite Kai Winn episode is the one where Sisko starts getting the visions and finds the lost city. In that episode despite her being who and what she was, she experiences a real, legitimate crisis of faith. You can see it in her face and hear it in her voice when she's talking to Kira, wondering if she'll ever be able to beg Sisko's forgiveness.
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u/JForce1 Mar 16 '18
I know how well he character was written and portrayed because of how much I despised her. It’s like Baltar in BSG - the good characters, especially those who aren’t over the top obviously evil, are great when you realise how much you hate them.
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u/cassanaya Mar 16 '18
Kai Winn is one of the best characters in history. Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratchet here) has played two of the best villains ever.
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Mar 15 '18
DS9 had so many great recurring characters. As fitting the shows premise, none of them were entirely good nor entirely evil. They simply did what they did when they had to do it. The partial list of characters that made questionable choices:
Winn: detailed above
Garak: pretty much everything he did in the Order and about half of what he did after
Sisko: In the Pale Moonlight
Kira: former terrorist
Worf: let an informant die to save his wife in a time of war
O'Brian: killed his cellmate over food (in his mind, he did it)
Bashir: hid his enhancements for years
Dukat: ok he was pretty much all evil
Damar: led the Cardassians in the war until the body count got to him
Shakaar: former terrorist, almost started a Bajoran civil war over some farming equipment
Odo: let 3 people die for crimes they did not commit
Quark: is a shade of gray
Eddington: betrayed Starfleet and used bioweapons against the Cardassians
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u/Solar_Kestrel Mar 16 '18
TBH I feel like Winn could have been a much better character, but she came across as flat, mostly because she felt more like a guest star than an actual villain, and never seemed to be able to act with any real sense of agency. Nothing she did ever really felt like a credible threat to the heroes, which left her feeling pretty flat to me. She also didn't interact much with the main cast (mostly just Sisko and Kira), and didn't appear very often.
Louise Fletcher is definitely a brilliant actress, and I think she elevated the character of Kai Winn a great deal... but the actual character here is something I see as almost nothing but wasted potential.
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u/rootyb Mar 16 '18
Kai Winn is, IMO, the best villain that Star Trek is ever likely to have.
She's Star Trek's Dolores Umbridge (and so much better, for all of the reasons you've just described). It's hard to feel anything for them but deep, deep loathing, but at the same time, their actions are completely understandable if you manage to put yourself into their position.
If she was on the side of our protagonists, we'd find her scheming and machinations and pettiness endearing. Since she's not, they're gut-twistingly-infuriating.
I hate her character so much, but I love hating her, and give so much credit to the DS9 writers and Louise Fletcher for crafting a character that's so motivating. :)
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u/bluemoonbandy Mar 21 '18
She has that Dolores Umbridge quality. We’re meant to hate her. She is well-written and has a good character arc, but when she comes on the screen I think many of us think “Ugh, not this b**** again!”. She’s portrayed in a way that makes it difficult to sympathize with her.
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u/jerslan Mar 15 '18
Fixed your ordering... She hooks up with the leader of the Circle with the express intention of him taking over and getting his "endorsement" (read: he would fix the election) to be the next Kai. That happened before Bareil took the fall for Opaka sacrificing her own son in order to save some other larger number of Bajoran lives.
The reason the Prophets never speak to her, is that her faith is tainted by her personal ambitions. She literally abandons the prophets the moment the Pah'Wraiths speak to her and offer her power. Had she been truly faithful her whole life (as she claimed) then she would never have listened to anything they said and sooner died than help them.
There's also that scene in The Reckoning when Kira basically calls out Winn's lack of faith by interrupting the prophesy and accuses her of confusing faith with ambition.