Star Trek Has Literal Demons: Pah-Wraiths Explained
by Witney Seibold · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
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Welcome to Trekspertise, a series where we break down the technology, history, details, and decisions that make the Star Trek universe so complex — and so fun.
"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" is a pretty complicated series. By the end of the show, it expanded its cast to include somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 main characters, and the show was full of wars, shifting alliances, a planetary reconstruction, and the shaky provisional government thereon. The titular space station is located right next to a stable wormhole that reached clear into the Gamma Quadrant (which is quite far from the Alpha Quadrant), from whence a full-bore alien invasion force would eventually spill.
To make matters even more complicated, that wormhole happens to be the home of a species of noncorporeal aliens that don't experience time in a linear fashion. The Bajorans on the nearby planet feel these aliens are deities called the Prophets, and the wormhole is a holy place they call the Celestial Temple. Because Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) is the first to make contact with these aliens, he becomes a Messianic figure called the Emissary. The wormhole aliens recur throughout the series, and occasionally induce visions in the show's many corporeal characters.
The complications don't stop there, dear reader. The Prophets have enemies called Pah-wraiths, the literal demons of the "Star Trek" world. These are beings that are seemingly made of pure evil that can possess human bodies and force them to be evil, too.
Pah-wraiths are also noncorporeal creatures that, according to Bajoran religious mythology, once lived in the Celestial Temple with the Prophets, but were kicked out for reasons that are never canonically explained.
Pah-wraiths push the bounds of what Star Trek can be
A "pah" is a Bajoran word for, essentially, one's soul. A Pah-wraith, then, would be a ghostly disembodied spirit.
Pah-wraiths admittedly didn't play a huge part on "Deep Space Nine," and weren't introduced into the series until the episode "The Assignment" in the show's fifth season. In that episode, Keiko O'Brien (Rosalind Chao) visits the Fire Caves of Bajor and returns with some sort of ghostly entity possessing her body. The entity then holds Keiko's body hostage, claiming it can stop her heart or kill her at any time if Keiko's husband, Chief O'Brien (Colm Meaney), doesn't make a series of alterations to Deep Space Nine. Working with the Ferengi engineer Rom (Max Grodénchik), O'Brien figures out that the entity possessing Keiko is a Pah-wraith, a demon from Bajoran mythology, and it aims to use DS9 to blow up the wormhole and kill the Prophets therein.
Many Trekkies aren't big fans of the Pah-wraiths, as they push the ordinarily science-facing "Star Trek" into the realm of straight-up demon magic. One can find wordy threads on Reddit with titles like "How the Pah-wraiths ruined DS9."
That genre blending was also present in the episode "The Reckoning," wherein Sisko breaks open an ancient tablet and releases the spirits of one Prophet and one Pah-wraith onto the station. The Prophet takes possession of Major Kira (Nana Visitor), and the wraith takes possession of Sisko's son Jake (Cirroc Lofton). The two entities end up having a magical-blast "shootout" during the episode's climax.
By that point, the show has definitely strayed from the reconstruction politics present at the beginning of the series.
Demonic entities appear on another Star Trek show as well
Pah-wraiths emerge on the series periodically thereafter. In the episode "Tears of the Prophets," the evil Cardassian military leader Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo) cracks open a crystal that has a Pah-wraith imprisoned inside of it, and the wraith takes possession of his body. One can tell if someone is possessed by their enlarged red irises, and under the wraith's influence, Dukat can fire energy blasts like one of the X-Men. It's the possessed Dukat who slays series regular Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), a ridiculous way to dispatch a beloved character on a long-running series. It's one of the saddest deaths on "Star Trek."
The remainder of the series sporadically incorporates a cult of Pah-wraith worshippers, and the series finale features Kai Winn (Louise Fletcher), essentially the Bajoran Pope, making a blood sacrifice to the Pah-wraiths. While the idea of a corrupt Bajoran theocracy succumbing to space-Satanism seems like an intriguing wrinkle, it's a little too far-fetched, even for a series like "Deep Space Nine."
Eventually, the idea of demonic forces returned to "Star Trek" on key episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." In the episode "Through the Lens of Time," the crew of the USS Enterprise are introduced to the Vezda, a new villainous species of noncorporeal demons that could take possession of the crew. Once possessed, the hosts become kind of evil. But "Strange New Worlds" is generally more whimsical and playful than any of the Trek shows that came before it, so evil demons are less out-of-place on a series like that than on "Deep Space Nine."
It's wild to think that in the diplomatic, wholly secular, technological utopia of "Star Trek," there are still literal demons floating around.