https://archive.org/details/CharacterInsightEp205
Bareil is a prominent figure in the religious community following the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor. Indeed, his fame and popularity was sufficient to make him the leading candidate to take over as kai after Opaka. But his life took a different turn.
In his early life, Bareil grew up under the harsh Cardassian rule like all other Bajorans. He follows the path of a monk in our own society, acting as a gardener in tune with nature at a monastery before devoting his life to the Prophets and becoming the Vedek he serves as during his appearances on DS9.
In his first two appearances, Bareil shows up on DS9 to act a peace mediator following a school bombing and survives an assassination attempt by his primary rival for the role of Kai, Vedek Winn, and then he exposes a plot to overthrow the Bajoran government with the help of Major Kira and Jadzia Dax. He saves Kira's life in this latter mission, clearly becoming a close friend of the DS9 crew as well as the runaway favorite to win the role of Kai. He also becomes romantically involved with Kira, a romance that lasted for the next season or so of the show.
INSERT QUOTE
Bareil - "The Prophets teach us patience"
Sisko - "It appears they also teach you politics."
From the episode In the Hands of the Prophets
However, the show runners realized that having the Kai be so friendly with Deep Space 9 would limit the storytelling that could effectively happen, and as such, another story originally written about a new Bajoran character was reassigned to Bareil in the episode The Collaborator. Bareil is falsely accused of collaborating with the Cardassians to kill some Bajorans, but this was actually a decision by prior Kai Opaka to save many more Bajoran lives. To protect her memory and honor, Bareil takes the blame and thus drops out of the election, leading to Kai Winn, a fun and deep future antagonist to the DS9 crew.
Despite being a rival to Winn, he becomes the new Kai's close adviser and helped her negotiate the Bajoran-Cardassian peace treaty. Near the end of this five month process, he is injured in a plasma explosion and his treatment plans were altered to keep him awake and useful as an adviser in the final steps of treaty negotiation. This leads to irreversible brain damage, and he passes away. We only ever see Bareil again in a mirror image form in the season 6 episode Resurrection, thereby bringing back an old character in a different way much like Sela, who we profiled last week.
Bareil was played by Philip Anglim, and this was his final regular acting role. He also showed up in some obscure 80s movies like The Elephant Man and Haunted Summer. He currently maintains a cattle farm, revisiting his original passion for veterinary sciences.
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