DS9 5x14-5x17
Discussion is, as always, very welcome, but please don't mention any spoilers, even minor ones, for future developments. Thanks!
5x14, "In Purgatory's Shadow," and 5x15, "By Inferno's Light"
It was really nice to see Garak again--I've been frustrated by the overall lack of him this season.
It literally never occurred to me that Tain might be Garak's father. I think it's partly that their highly-charged relationship read as erotic to me (a fraughtness that is reasonably well explained, however, by Garak's status as an unwanted, unacknowledged child); partly that it's hard to estimate ages under all the Cardassian facial prosthetics, so I assumed Garak was 10-15 years younger than Tain rather than a generation younger; and partly just that I have built-in slash vision (I don't need the goggles). The reveal did make me roll my eyes a bit, because it takes a complex, enigmatic emotional situation and reduces it to something fairly banal. But on the other hand, it makes sense in terms of what we know about Cardassian culture, where family is central. And one thing I did think was quite brilliant was how, after Tain's death, Garak immediately pulls himself together, hides everything he's been feeling, and gets back to business. Of course he and the others were in a dangerous situation, but I suspect that's how Garak copes with his emotions in any case.
One moment that particularly sticks in my memory is Tain telling the story about ickle!Garak and then saying "I was very proud of you that day." That's a poisoned compliment if ever there was. One day, one single day, when Tain was proud of his son, and Garak was five years old at the time. *hugs poor Garak*
Ziyal's crush on Garak is not a storyline that thrills me. Since I can't have what I really want--out queer characters and same-sex romantic/sexual relationships--I tend to feel very strongly about wanting less het. Not every character needs to be forced into a storyline about heterosexual romance, damn it! It would be nice to have some characters left the hell alone so that they're readable as queer. (Yes, I know that any character shown in a relationship with or attracted to a person of the other sex could be bisexual. But that's not much consolation when the canon will never, or virtually never, show same-sex anything. It's not about whether I can write/imagine slash--I can slash any character I please, thanks, regardless of canon--but about canon leaving some room, any room, for queerness.)
Ahem. Having said all that, it seems pretty obvious to me that Garak doesn't return Ziyal's feelings. But I have no confidence in the show leaving things that way. It's not that I dislike Ziyal--especially not after she comforted Quark by saying that with luck the Vorta could be "gluttonous, alcoholic sex maniacs"--but I don't want Garak het. Nor do I want Ziyal's storyline to be all about her feelings for Garak. Even though her crush pisses off Dukat mightily, which is enjoyable.
Returning to general Garak-related stuff: shouldn't Sisko and co. know enough by now that when they sent for Garak to decode the transmission, they would just assume he would lie? They have short memories, I guess. The Best Garak Lie of the Episode Award, though, must go to Garak fooling Worf into believing he wanted to join Starfleet. I also treasure this line, not a lie but a great moment of Garak snark: "I'd like to get my hands on that fellow Earl Grey and tell him a thing or two about tea leaves." It's a fun in-joke that also pleases my inner tea snob, who cringes every time a character other than Picard is shown drinking Earl Grey (as a sign of their sophisticated taste, natch).
Making Garak claustrophic is a bit of an obvious device, but it worked well as a set-up for unexpected Garak heroism. And I loved his little pep-talk monologue to himself, not to mention the endless possibilities for Garak/Bashir hurt/comfort thus created. There was also a nice little shippy moment after the Jem'Hadar announcement that they're freeing the Cardassians, when Garak looks at Bashir for reassurance about what he should do.
The Changeling!Bashir plot was a bit out of nowhere, although that might be the point--it's exceedingly hard to tell when someone's been replaced by a Changeling. It explains Bashir turning up on the runabout and threatening Garak with a gun, which I did find surprising. The substitition means that a number of previous Bashir moments--such as his attending Kira when she gave birth--were not actually Bashir at all. Real!Bashir said he was taken about a month earlier, and since real!Bashir is wearing his old uniform, I presume he was taken prior to 5x10, "Rapture."
And can I just say that Bashir looks exceptionally beautiful when he's scruffy and stubbly?
Dukat's still an ass, only more so. His taking Ziyal's affection for Garak as a betrayal, and then assuming that Kira had deliberately set it up, shows a colossal level of self-absorption. He and Bill Adama from Battlestar Galactica should have a beer together sometime. As for Cardassia becoming a member of the Dominion under Dukat's new government, I have a feeling Dukat will live to regret it.
5x16, "Doctor Bashir, I Presume"
I enjoyed this but I don't actually have a lot to say about it. It could have used a bit more set-up, both in terms of Federation attitudes about genetic engineering (especially since Spock had to be genetically engineered--or did that only become canon with STXI?) and Bashir's sense of self-alienation and shame.
The O'Brien-Bashir friendship was lovely as usual. O'Brien is so in love, and it's cute that he doesn't care who else knows it so long as Bashir doesn't.
I'm afraid I didn't like the Leeta-and-Rom subplot, though. Did it never occur to the writers that perhaps by the whatever-the-hell century the show takes place in, if a woman wants to go out with a man and he's too shy to declare himself, she might, you know, ask him out instead of waiting around and passive-aggressively threatening to move away?
5x17, "A Simple Investigation"
Wow, this episode did everything I was hoping the show wouldn't do if there was ever going to be a canonical Odo romance. I'm oddly impressed.
One major problem is that it was blindingly obvious that Arissa was either going to leave or be killed at the end of the episode. We got to know too much about her too fast, which is a sure sign of a non-recurring character. And because everything happened so fast, I didn't find Odo's feelings for her, or hers for him, either believable or affecting. It is possible in real life to fall in love very quickly--it's happened to me--but generally I don't think it's good storytelling. I also hate damsel-in-distress scenarios, which this was, and I loathe sexual innuendo, which Arissa's dialogue was full of. It's not that I'm a prude; rather the opposite, I think. I prefer that attraction and desire be shown in a more honest, mature way (and I'm fine with flirting, but innuendo is something different). Finally, I hated the weird, masculinist emphasis on sexual skill, the way Odo was so pleased that she didn't know it was his first time, and how he was shown being absurdly sexually confident and aggressive.
I'm trying to get over my more nitpicky objections about how it makes no sense for Odo to have sexual desires/responses that are virtually identical to humanoid ones when nothing about his biology is humanoid. I think I could do it if the show would present me with an emotional arc I could believe in.
Odo's line "Once on my homeworld I had an experience you might consider sexual" seems to confirm my earlier qualms about that scene with the female-embodied Changeling. It was meant to be read as sexual, and that still strikes me as a failure of imagination, an inability to think about what it really might mean to be alien.
So . . . more angst for Odo, yet again. I'm getting a bit tired of it.
And in conclusion: DS9 must be hell to live on, in some ways, since the high level of computerized security surveillance means there's no privacy. If you have an overnight guest, everyone will know the next morning!
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.
5x14, "In Purgatory's Shadow," and 5x15, "By Inferno's Light"
It was really nice to see Garak again--I've been frustrated by the overall lack of him this season.
It literally never occurred to me that Tain might be Garak's father. I think it's partly that their highly-charged relationship read as erotic to me (a fraughtness that is reasonably well explained, however, by Garak's status as an unwanted, unacknowledged child); partly that it's hard to estimate ages under all the Cardassian facial prosthetics, so I assumed Garak was 10-15 years younger than Tain rather than a generation younger; and partly just that I have built-in slash vision (I don't need the goggles). The reveal did make me roll my eyes a bit, because it takes a complex, enigmatic emotional situation and reduces it to something fairly banal. But on the other hand, it makes sense in terms of what we know about Cardassian culture, where family is central. And one thing I did think was quite brilliant was how, after Tain's death, Garak immediately pulls himself together, hides everything he's been feeling, and gets back to business. Of course he and the others were in a dangerous situation, but I suspect that's how Garak copes with his emotions in any case.
One moment that particularly sticks in my memory is Tain telling the story about ickle!Garak and then saying "I was very proud of you that day." That's a poisoned compliment if ever there was. One day, one single day, when Tain was proud of his son, and Garak was five years old at the time. *hugs poor Garak*
Ziyal's crush on Garak is not a storyline that thrills me. Since I can't have what I really want--out queer characters and same-sex romantic/sexual relationships--I tend to feel very strongly about wanting less het. Not every character needs to be forced into a storyline about heterosexual romance, damn it! It would be nice to have some characters left the hell alone so that they're readable as queer. (Yes, I know that any character shown in a relationship with or attracted to a person of the other sex could be bisexual. But that's not much consolation when the canon will never, or virtually never, show same-sex anything. It's not about whether I can write/imagine slash--I can slash any character I please, thanks, regardless of canon--but about canon leaving some room, any room, for queerness.)
Ahem. Having said all that, it seems pretty obvious to me that Garak doesn't return Ziyal's feelings. But I have no confidence in the show leaving things that way. It's not that I dislike Ziyal--especially not after she comforted Quark by saying that with luck the Vorta could be "gluttonous, alcoholic sex maniacs"--but I don't want Garak het. Nor do I want Ziyal's storyline to be all about her feelings for Garak. Even though her crush pisses off Dukat mightily, which is enjoyable.
Returning to general Garak-related stuff: shouldn't Sisko and co. know enough by now that when they sent for Garak to decode the transmission, they would just assume he would lie? They have short memories, I guess. The Best Garak Lie of the Episode Award, though, must go to Garak fooling Worf into believing he wanted to join Starfleet. I also treasure this line, not a lie but a great moment of Garak snark: "I'd like to get my hands on that fellow Earl Grey and tell him a thing or two about tea leaves." It's a fun in-joke that also pleases my inner tea snob, who cringes every time a character other than Picard is shown drinking Earl Grey (as a sign of their sophisticated taste, natch).
Making Garak claustrophic is a bit of an obvious device, but it worked well as a set-up for unexpected Garak heroism. And I loved his little pep-talk monologue to himself, not to mention the endless possibilities for Garak/Bashir hurt/comfort thus created. There was also a nice little shippy moment after the Jem'Hadar announcement that they're freeing the Cardassians, when Garak looks at Bashir for reassurance about what he should do.
The Changeling!Bashir plot was a bit out of nowhere, although that might be the point--it's exceedingly hard to tell when someone's been replaced by a Changeling. It explains Bashir turning up on the runabout and threatening Garak with a gun, which I did find surprising. The substitition means that a number of previous Bashir moments--such as his attending Kira when she gave birth--were not actually Bashir at all. Real!Bashir said he was taken about a month earlier, and since real!Bashir is wearing his old uniform, I presume he was taken prior to 5x10, "Rapture."
And can I just say that Bashir looks exceptionally beautiful when he's scruffy and stubbly?
Dukat's still an ass, only more so. His taking Ziyal's affection for Garak as a betrayal, and then assuming that Kira had deliberately set it up, shows a colossal level of self-absorption. He and Bill Adama from Battlestar Galactica should have a beer together sometime. As for Cardassia becoming a member of the Dominion under Dukat's new government, I have a feeling Dukat will live to regret it.
5x16, "Doctor Bashir, I Presume"
I enjoyed this but I don't actually have a lot to say about it. It could have used a bit more set-up, both in terms of Federation attitudes about genetic engineering (especially since Spock had to be genetically engineered--or did that only become canon with STXI?) and Bashir's sense of self-alienation and shame.
The O'Brien-Bashir friendship was lovely as usual. O'Brien is so in love, and it's cute that he doesn't care who else knows it so long as Bashir doesn't.
I'm afraid I didn't like the Leeta-and-Rom subplot, though. Did it never occur to the writers that perhaps by the whatever-the-hell century the show takes place in, if a woman wants to go out with a man and he's too shy to declare himself, she might, you know, ask him out instead of waiting around and passive-aggressively threatening to move away?
5x17, "A Simple Investigation"
Wow, this episode did everything I was hoping the show wouldn't do if there was ever going to be a canonical Odo romance. I'm oddly impressed.
One major problem is that it was blindingly obvious that Arissa was either going to leave or be killed at the end of the episode. We got to know too much about her too fast, which is a sure sign of a non-recurring character. And because everything happened so fast, I didn't find Odo's feelings for her, or hers for him, either believable or affecting. It is possible in real life to fall in love very quickly--it's happened to me--but generally I don't think it's good storytelling. I also hate damsel-in-distress scenarios, which this was, and I loathe sexual innuendo, which Arissa's dialogue was full of. It's not that I'm a prude; rather the opposite, I think. I prefer that attraction and desire be shown in a more honest, mature way (and I'm fine with flirting, but innuendo is something different). Finally, I hated the weird, masculinist emphasis on sexual skill, the way Odo was so pleased that she didn't know it was his first time, and how he was shown being absurdly sexually confident and aggressive.
I'm trying to get over my more nitpicky objections about how it makes no sense for Odo to have sexual desires/responses that are virtually identical to humanoid ones when nothing about his biology is humanoid. I think I could do it if the show would present me with an emotional arc I could believe in.
Odo's line "Once on my homeworld I had an experience you might consider sexual" seems to confirm my earlier qualms about that scene with the female-embodied Changeling. It was meant to be read as sexual, and that still strikes me as a failure of imagination, an inability to think about what it really might mean to be alien.
So . . . more angst for Odo, yet again. I'm getting a bit tired of it.
And in conclusion: DS9 must be hell to live on, in some ways, since the high level of computerized security surveillance means there's no privacy. If you have an overnight guest, everyone will know the next morning!
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.