Rapture

*** (3 stars out of 5)

No, not the song by Blondie! Sisko's visions of religious fervour. He gets a look at a 20,000 year old Bajoran icon painting of the Lost City of B'hala that has been returned from The Looting Museum on Cardassia.

Emissary Sisko, in his spiffy but dour new grey uniform grows obsessed with the puzzle. He's so distracted that he doesn't notice his uniform was replicated wrong, and he's wearing his commbadge in the grey instead of the black.

Quark would like to distract Sisko even further with holosuite games. "I have a wide assortment of Pleasure mazes- and they all come with a surprise in the centre." But the only surprise today is a terrible plasma shock. Quark's holosuites mst be deathtraps now that Rom's not repairing them regularly. Good luck with your ePimping NOW.

The shock sets off Ben's "pagh-tem-fahr", holy prophetic visions. He's going Full Spielberg on his mashed potatoes.

Kasidy is released from six months in Federation jail. (A jail farther away than Garak's was, I guess, since they both got six months and he was sentenced afterward.) Oh, and by the way, Bajor is accepted into the Federation. Sisko's mission on Deep Space Nine is complete!

Sisko and Yates find B'hala. I don't quite understand this, but the city is fossilized or something. (Maybe buried in ash like Pompeii?) Ben begins to have headaches with his visions of the past and future. Among these is a cloud of locusts heading for Cardassia.

Sisko's underlings have VERY different views on the value of his visions. Kira's devout, Dax is skeptical, Bashir wants to do brain surgery, and Worf? Worf defends not the Bajoran religion specifically, but the very concept of faith. "Without [faith], there can be no victory. If the captain's faith is strong, he will prevail."

In pursuit of his answers, Sisko gets Winn's help to view the Orb of Prophecy.  Talk about desperate. Scraping the bottom of the barrel for religious guidance? I'd rather trust the ASStrologer from Eric Idle's 'What About Dick?'

Sisko busts up the signing ceremony to warn that those pesky locusts will destroy Bajor if it is part of the Federation.

Jake has Bashir operate on his father over his objection- it will cure his seizures by stopping the "Rapture". Problem solved, misery restored!