Star Trek fan Sophia wrote a stirring tribute to the importance of Kira Nerys in science fiction and on television that every Nana Visitor fan should read:
And that gift of Nana’s for a controlled performance of wild, complicated, sometimes self-contradicting emotion is what makes Kira Nerys as important as she is.
And Kira Nerys is important because she breaks the mold in which Ro Laren is stuck. Kira Nerys is a Tough Girl who shoots first and asks questions later, who’s all instinct, all impulse, and who is also entirely, availably emotional. And that part of her, the part of her that’s all feeling, is seen by the other characters and by the frame of the show as her strength. ‘Her presence,’ as Terry Farrell put it, ‘is her strength.’ You just do not see that on TV, that combination of toughness with feeling. (The sole other example I can think of is late-series Gabrielle of Xena: Warrior Princess.)
