Phil, quite rightly, points out that Kai Winn would probably be highly suspicious of the former emissary taking the new one into the wormhole, then returning and reclaiming his old post, stating the Bajoran had been returned to his own time. Seemingly, the Bajorans only have Sisko's word for it.

But at the end of the episode, Sisko points out new work from the poet that didn't exist before. Kira points out she should know the rest of the poem if the timelines have been reset and Sisko says "the prophets move in mysterious ways".

So maybe the Prophets are allowing the Bajorans (and Kai Winn) to discover new work was forthcoming from poet, so they know he was returned to his proper time.

In the early years of the show none of the Bajorans seemed to care that Sisko was The Emissary, but now he's a really big deal. Too bad no one felt that way during The Homecoming, The Circle, & The Siege, when the Federation & Sisko were ordered to leave Bajor and when some Bajorans would have willingly killed Sisko.

How can sensors detect that the lightship is 300 years old? The ship was not lying around for 300 years, it traveled through time with Akorem and it would not be subjected to the normal processes of aging. (Of course there may be abnormal processes at work. That would explain Kira's statement that Akorem is from 200, not 300, years in the past. However, shouldn't there be similar discrepancies in the runabout Sisko used in Emissary?)

Well, the D'jarra, or caste system, certainly explains why the spoonheads were able to take over Bajor so easily. The Bajoran thinking process had obviously atrophied making them think that if you were born to a family you had to follow that family's career. The idea that someone could only be an artist if they were born in the right family is brain dead beyond belief. One either has that creative streak within them or they don't.

Kira tells Sisko, "It's not our place to question the Emissary.", but she herself had argued with Sisko many times before.

I'm not certain about this, but when Sisko is walking on the promenade just before his Orb Shadow, the camera pans an information kiosk and on the upper right of it is a reflection. Maybe it was a trick of light, but it looked like someone was moving.

When Sisko is talking to Akorem, and challenges his claim to be Emissary, Akorem says he was the first to find the wormhole. Shouldn't Akorem have called it the Celestial Temple?

On page 356 of the DS9 Guide, Phil thinks that Winn might be suspicious of Sisko's claim that the Prophets sent Akorem back in time without first bringing him back to the station for goodbyes. ("So long my friends. I must go now, so that the Sisko can kick me out into space in the Gamma quadrant and claim the Prophets sent me back in time.") Apparently even the Prophets thought that was dumb, so they allowed Akorem to change time and finish his 'unfinished' poem, so to defuse any claims of foul play.

Worf's reaction was great when he heard that Keiko was having another baby.

Given that Akorem was returned to 200 years prior (I think they said about 200 years , so it could be 'give or take' kind of thing) , I wonder if it would be possible for Enterprise to meet him?

Kira said that the Bajoran year from which Akorem hailed, 9174, was over 200 years ago, which means that the the only thing to preclude it is the distance between Earth and Bajor, which would mean that it would be more plausible for such a meeting o take place in Enterprise's later seasons.

Once again the turbolift leaves Ops without anyone telling the thing their destination.

So the Federation doesn't approve of caste systems in its member worlds. Didnt seem to bother them when they admitted planet Ardana (See The Cloudminders TOS), which was a world with floating cities where the wealthy liveed, and the surface where the workers did all the menial tasks, this could be described as a ...er well caste system really!!

Was Ardana explicitly established to be a Federation world?

Also when Kirk and Spock showed up, it appeared that they were unaware of the caste system, which means that perhaps the Federation was too.

Maybe the Federation later changed that policy, perhaps following the events at Ardana?

Kira tells Sisko, "It's not our place to question the Emissary.", but she herself had argued with Sisko many times before.

It took a while before Kira came to think of Sisko as the Emmissary, and she really only argued with Sisko in the beginning.

Kira might recognize Sisko as the Emissary, but that's not going to stop her from arguing with him on how to run the station - ie, stuff that has nothing to do with the Bajoran faith. The separation of Church and State, and all that :-)

I imagine that if Sisko had claimed all his decisions were the will of the Prophets, that Kira would not have argued with him, or would have at least had a struggle of faith before arguing. I guess where the Bajorans are concerned, the Emissary is only the Emissary when he is acting as such, but early on at least, Sisko never claimed to be doing anything on the instruction or will of the Prophets.

NANJAO: The episode never said, but apparently Kai Winn's family was of the religious d'jarra already.

(Because if she had to step down and become a doctor or technician or mime or something... Oof.)

I'm really amazed at how quickly the d'jarras are accepted again. I guess whatever the Emissary says goes, after all.

Well, the episode only depicted a couple of people accepting them (Kira and that murdering Vedek), and of the two, only the latter fully accepted them. Kira was not happy about it.

i{Once again the turbolift leaves Ops without anyone telling the thing their destination. }

This is not a problem, they probably said it after it started, since the only place to go is down. It may even have a preset destination unless it is overriden by the user(again, since it can only go down from Ops)

Regarding Luigi's above comment, the episode also showed several Bajorans in the background frowning about the D'jarras seeming to indicate that they were not thrilled about them.

What other episodes did the turbolift leave Ops without anyone telling the thing their destination?

I said this somewhere else, but it bears repeating here.

This episode exposes the incredible leverage and power a religious icon (the Emissary) has over an entire people. With just one speech Akorem was able to cause upheaval and dislocation on an entire planet as people moved to fulfill his instructions. (In fact I'm only sad the episode didn't have time to show people on Bajor expressing shock and confusion about what their d'jarra was supposed to be and who had to make way for whom and all that.)

It also points up how much trouble Sisko could have avoided in times past by asserting his power as the Emissary, but on the flip side it also shows what a less principled man than Sisko could have done to the Bajoran people.

As Kira said: "Maybe you never realized this, Captain, but we would've tried to do whatever you asked of us when you were Emissary, no matter how difficult it seemed."

Sounds like the Prophets knew what they were about when they picked Sisko. X-D

(That having been said I really wished he HAD bent the rules and all-but directed the Vedek Assembly to make Bareil the Kai. Oh well. :P )

So the Prophets send Akorem back in time, and instead of disappearing for 200+ years, he returns to Bajor and finishes his unfinished poem.

Since Akorem was a well-known historical figure on Bajor- Kira mentions near the beginning of the episode that every schoolchild is familiar with one of his poems- this change should produce significant butterfly effects.

However, in the new timeline, we see no differences at all, other than the existence of the finished poem.

In fact, according to the conversation between Sisko and Kira at the end of the episode, even the episode's events unfolded the same way as before.

In which case, Akorem's emergence from the wormhole in the present, and his claim that he last entered it in the Bajoran year 9174, must have been very confusing, given that in the new timeline it is a historical fact that he was on Bajor after 9174, and that his eventual death was presumably well documented.

If the Prophets knew Akorem was from the past...why send him to the present?

I thought Sisko explained linear time quite well to the Prophets.

By John A. Lang (Johnalang) on Friday, October 21, 2016 - 8:27 pm:
If the Prophets knew Akorem was from the past...why send him to the present?
I thought Sisko explained linear time quite well to the Prophets.

They wanted Sisko to understand the importance of him retaining his position as the Emmisary!