YMMV / Star Trek Deep Space Nine S 02 E 15 Paradise

• Clueless Aesop: Producer Ira Steven Behr noted the hypocrisy of an anti-technology message in Star Trek, a franchise built upon the idea that humanity is better off thanks to technology like warp drive and replicators.
  Star Trek is such a tech show, and making these people antitechnology, it was almost like doing a negative show on Greenpeace.
• Franchise Original Sin: This episode can be seen as a precursor to the "rural simplicity" message from Star Trek: Insurrection that really rankled many of that film's viewers, with Alixus being heavily made out to be a Noble Demon and Well-Intentioned Extremist, and the colonists choosing to maintain their way of life at the end. The major difference is that Alixus is nonetheless shown as the villain, gets called out by Sisko for allowing an untold number of easily-preventable deaths just to uphold the purity of her beliefs, and the colonists' refusal to leave doesn't affect anyone but themselves. By contrast, Insurrection is uncritically positive of the Ba'ku and their way of life, despite the consequences of their refusing to leave their planet and allow its healing radiation to be harvested.
• Moment of Awesome: Sisko voluntarily putting himself back in the heat box rather than take off his uniform and submit to Alixus.
• Moral Event Horizon: Alixus crosses it with the reveal that a citizen was locked in a small metal box, without clothes and probably without food or water, for a full day, as punishment for stealing a candle. Any suspicions about the colony and Alixus vanish in an instant, for it's become clear she is an outright villain.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Believe it or not, director Corey Allen intended for Alixus to be viewed as a more sympathetic Well-Intentioned Extremist and regretted that she came across as villainous (through no fault of the actress).
  "Gail and I worked very hard to make that character reasonable, because her motives were right-thinking. She had created a paradise, and she needed to preserve it through discipline. We set out to let her be the reasonable and caring Human being that she and I agreed she was, but we were swimming upstream. It didn't come out that way. But I think that it's to Gail's credit that in making the effort the character came out with more Human traits."
  • The counterargument is that Alixus forced all of her now-followers to come to her planet against their will and restricted them from using technology based on her own radical philosophy, all done in deception. With no access to their computers, their only source of information and entertainment were Alixus' handwritten screeds; there conspicuously is no other kind of art visible in the episode except what Alixus provides. She manipulates dissent with back-handed compliments disguised as graciousness and anyone who really pushes against her is tortured. By the time O'Brien and Sisko arrive, her control over the colony has reached a point that she treats women as a harem to be used as a reward or honey trap for desired behavior. When this proves ineffective against Sisko, her efforts to control her society turn to outright attempted murder. If Alixus comes off as unsympathetic, it's only because she imprisoned and brainwashed an entire ship of colonists. One hopes that, following the conclusion of the episode, the colony was visited by a team of Starfleet counselors rather than letting Alixus essentially get everything she wanted despite still being brought to justice.