January Meme: Depiction of work relationships on Merlin and DS9
Prompt courtesy of 
zahrawithaz with whom I share these fandoms, in case someone is curious about the combination.
With DS9, you have the larger variety, but also the headache of the premise that the Federation functions without money, yet interacts with societies that do use money, said interaction includes employing them, and none of the ST shows ever tells us how that works out. For example: when Rom stops working for Quark and starts working for Starfleet, does he get recompense from Starfleet? Does Nog get any once he’s a member of Starfleet? If not, or rather the recompense is having no living expenses (since clothing, food, and living space are all provided), what money is Nog talking about in In the Cards when refusing to lend some to Jake? Old savings? Like I said, it’s a headache.
But leaving this aside. DS9 provides various models of employment relationships: the Ferengi, of course, are a satire on hardcore capitalism, any employer-worker relationship is based on exploitation, and until Rom channels Karl Marx with the most famous line of the Manifesto and founds a union, they have no representation of workers at all. One topic the show dances around is sexual exploitation. The closest it gets is by letting Quark make a crude remark to Leeta when she protests she has assets (“go and display those assets to the customers”), and clearly the Dabo girls (no Dabo boy visible) are meant to encourage the gamblers a la Club Med hosts, but whether or not they’re also expected to provide sexual favours if asked is something the show carefully doesn’t touch. On the one hand, you could say “Sisko would never allow such exploitation on his station”, but on the other, good old Ben’s initial response to hearing Jake is dating a Dabo girl is a bit odd if he thinks of said girl as doing a similar job to a waiter. Also, Ben later learning that Marta the Dabo girl is using the job to make money while she’s studying (unless I misremember? It’s been eons since I watched the episode in question) and feeling humbled is pretty closely modeled on a narrative trope on US tv that involves call girls.
If the Ferengi are one extreme presented, Starfleet is supposed to be the benevolent other, but here you have the problem that it’s also a military organization, i.e. there is a command structure in place that presumably would not be there in an ordinary Federation work relationship. O’Brien is the Chief Engineer, but he’s also an officer, which is why Bashir can pull rank on him in Hippocratic Oath, which he couldn’t if they were simply a civilian engineer and doctor, respectively. So it’s a bit hard to say what the (generally harmonious) relationships within Starfleet bosses and their subordinates say about working relationships in the Federation per se. Note that when O’Brien tells Rom about his ancestor the union man, he is using an example from the past. There is no indication that unions are still around, since presumably the Utopian society of the Federation does not need them anymore. I suppose we have to take this as a given.
In between Ferengi and Starfleet, we have the Bajoran model, which overlaps with both, most prominently in Kira, who is both a Bajoran state employee and Sisko’s subordinate. This occasionally clashes, mostly in the early stage of the show, not least because a) later Kira’s and Sisko’s relationship is a very smooth Captain-First Officer one, and b) Sisko later has accepted his role as the Emissary, which makes him a religious figure of authority to Kira. Anyway, while Kira’s loyalties are primarily to Bajor, she treats her conscious as the ultimate guide (see: Shakaar the episode, in which Kira sides with her old resistance cell friends against the Bajoran government as temporarily embodied by Kai Winn), and other than the start of s2, no Bajoran government tries to replace her. However, the episode Ascension, featuring the other Emissary and the temporary return of the Bajoran Caste system which the Cardassian occupation put an end to, brings up something worth considering, because the Bajorans, including Kira, actually follow the command of the Other Emissary to restore said caste system. So is Kira really putting her own judgment and conscience first in Shakaar, or is she acting out of her dislike of Kai Winn and conviction, based on her dealings with Winn in the past, that Winn is wrong? How much of a theocracy is Bajor? Winn is the highest religious authority (well, competing with the Emissary for that standing), not the head of government, and her attempt to be both is rejected in this episode. But due to the tremendous importance the Bajorans place on religion, it still dominates their life, including their working life; again, see their willingness to give up jobs they’re suited for in favour of jobs they aren’t simply because the old caste system would have demanded it when the Other Emissary tells them the Prophets want them to return to said caste system. The people who work for Vedeks and the Kai (see Vedek Barail being willing to sacrifice himself to maintain the reputation of the late Kai Opaka) certainly venerate them above and beyond anything a normal work relationship would allow. And how much is the fact that Kira and Sisko hardly ever disagree in the later seasons owed to the fact they’ve gotten to know and trust each other, and how much to Kira seeing Sisko as the Emissary? We’ll never know.
Sui generis in terms of work relationships: Odo. He is employed by the Cardassians, the Bajorans and indirectly, via the Bajorans, the Federation, apparently to the satisfaction of all three employers when it’s their turn. The one time Starfleet adds another security chief to Odo, it eventually backfires on them since Eddington is a Maquis (and btw has his own views on work relationships in the Federation, making a Borg comparison, no less, based on the idea that the Federation regards it as unthinkable anyone could want to leave or regard it as less than perfect). You could postulate - and this is what Odo claims at the start of the show - that Odo in each case serves the law and the idea of justice, not the changing governments, but given the different nature of these three masters that lofty claim is inevitably called into question. I wish Things Past were a better episode, because it’s the only one in which Odo’s claim that in his initial employment (by the Cardassians), he was always neutral and fair is punctured by showing that of course, his employment by a dictatorship also included serving an unjust sentence. (To briefly add one of my few DS9 pet peeves, the show never addresses something else: Kira’s massive double standard when it comes to Odo as a collaborator of the Cardassians (and as opposed to most other Bajorans in similar positions, Odo could have left at any time) versus, say, her mother spending years as Dukat’s mistress, a fate that had been forced on Meru in a way it hadn’t been on Odo).) Add to this such episodes like Children of Time (older Odo wipes out an entire time line and hundreds of people, all of whom he knew, so Kira survives) and the whole Second Occupation arc, and it’s hard not to agree with the Female Changeling when she suggests Odo’s primary loyalty isn’t to justice. She continues to say it is to order, as with all the Founders, and here one could add “to order, but after personal affection”, because Odo’s primary commitment, based on the show, is to Kira, until the entire existence of the Founders is at stake at least. He likes upholding the law and enjoys said work (with the occasional bad day), independent from the origin of said law. As for his employers: Dukat sees him as useful and treats him accordingly, the Bajorans, minus Kira, distrust him somewhat immediately post Occupation but not after, and Sisko values him.
On to Merlin. Here we are in tv medieval fantasy land, and “employment” primarily means “member of the nobility & servant”. The pilot presents the worst case scenario in the scene where Merlin and Arthur encounter each other for the first time, i.e. Arthur at his worst, humiliating and scaring his previous manservant, so it’s unsurprising Merlin is appalled when he finds out becoming Arthur’s next manservant is what destiny has in store for him. Otoh the show’s version of Guinevere, Gwen, seems to initially live in the best case scenario: her direct employer, Morgana, regards her as a friend and treats her kindly. Merlin and Gwen are two of the three prominent servant characters; the third is Gaius, who as Camelot’s healer lives in some in between status, not directly a servant but not enjoying the same status as a member of the nobility or a free man, either (showcased when Arthur makes him one - in season 4, by way of apology for the Agravaine caused interlude). Gaius’ status is additionally complicated by his long past with the king, Uther, and all the secrets they share. However, if the first season has an episode making it clear that if he has to decide, Gaius puts Merlin’s life above Uther’s, the second season has one making it clear that Uther isn’t willing to protect Gaius from the titular “Witch Hunter”, either, despite the fact that not the Witch Hunter, but Uther is the highest authority of the realm.
In fact, none of our three main servant characters enjoy absolute protection: Gwen’s favored status with Morgana doesn’t help her when she’s accused of magic early in the show, nor does the memory of their relationship protect her later once Morgana has changed loyalties. Merlin becomes devoted to Arthur, and Arthur on various occasions goes to some lengths to protect him, including risking his own life, but Merlin never until the show finale risks finding out whether or not Arthur would have done so in the case of a magical outing, as it were. Conversely, while all three servants do a lot for their employers, they also are clearly shown to have their own minds throughout, keeping secrets and confiding to each other, often more than to their respective employers. Moreover, the fantasy tv medieval code of loyalty is tied to the employer needing to either be or become worthy of respect in order to keep it; if there is no willingness to learn on the part of the employer, the relationship is doomed. Arthur learns from Merlin and Gwen both and becomes a better person through it. (A case could also be made for Gaius in season 4.) Uther never learns from anyone, and is doomed. Morgana feels no loyalty to Gwen after committing herself to Morgause, seeing her as much as a part of the Camelot she rejects as if Gwen were furniture. She also keeps underestimating her. When Gwen, who has figured out the truth about Morgana mid season 3 without Morgana realizing this, reminds her of her, Gwen’s, father’s death at Uther’s hands in the s3 finale, Morgana’s blithe reply, that she had forgotten Uther had hurt Gwen, too, is a reminder of how quickly the episode in which Uther has Gwen’s father killed becomes about the Uther-Morgana relationship, and Morgana’s outrage about how Uther treats her, more than what he’s just done to the late Tom, and to Gwen. It calls into question how mutual the benevolent seeming relationship between Gwen and Morgana ever was, or rather; how much it depended on Morgana seeing Gwen as an sweet and supportive adjunct to herself.
Gwen makes the final step from servant to Queen at the end of season 4, and in a season that showed how precarious her previous in between status was (as Arthur’s intended wife, she was no longer a servant but also not yet someone with her own status to protect her, so that Arthur after the Undead Lancelot plot could banish her), it’s significant we don’t see her wedding to signal the change, we see her coronation. It’s the most radical change in social status anyone goes through on the show. (Her brother Elyan becoming a knight a season earlier also is a big change, but since Elyan never worked as a servant in Camelot before and doesn’t become a ruler, not of the same radical dimension.) Season 5 shows Gwen not just as an ornamental queen but a co-ruler, and despite a deeply superfluous interlude in which she’s brainwashed, the season and the show ends on a very satisfying note as far as Gwen’s arc is concerned: Arthur makes her his successor, and the implication certainly is that she will create the Camelot of legend. Mind you: with Gwen’s change of status also comes a loss. Even before the brainwashed interlude, she and Merlin aren’t sharing scenes of confidences with each other anymore (which was still the case in s4); their relationship has become formalized, he calls her “my lady”. An early episode juxtaposes Gwen with a servant girl who is in some ways not unlike her former self, aand who she nonetheless has to judge as Queen. And she does. The gap between servants and rulers isn’t presented as unsurmountable, but it is presented as existent even if the ruler is a former servant.
The other days
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1138050.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
zahrawithaz with whom I share these fandoms, in case someone is curious about the combination.
With DS9, you have the larger variety, but also the headache of the premise that the Federation functions without money, yet interacts with societies that do use money, said interaction includes employing them, and none of the ST shows ever tells us how that works out. For example: when Rom stops working for Quark and starts working for Starfleet, does he get recompense from Starfleet? Does Nog get any once he’s a member of Starfleet? If not, or rather the recompense is having no living expenses (since clothing, food, and living space are all provided), what money is Nog talking about in In the Cards when refusing to lend some to Jake? Old savings? Like I said, it’s a headache.
But leaving this aside. DS9 provides various models of employment relationships: the Ferengi, of course, are a satire on hardcore capitalism, any employer-worker relationship is based on exploitation, and until Rom channels Karl Marx with the most famous line of the Manifesto and founds a union, they have no representation of workers at all. One topic the show dances around is sexual exploitation. The closest it gets is by letting Quark make a crude remark to Leeta when she protests she has assets (“go and display those assets to the customers”), and clearly the Dabo girls (no Dabo boy visible) are meant to encourage the gamblers a la Club Med hosts, but whether or not they’re also expected to provide sexual favours if asked is something the show carefully doesn’t touch. On the one hand, you could say “Sisko would never allow such exploitation on his station”, but on the other, good old Ben’s initial response to hearing Jake is dating a Dabo girl is a bit odd if he thinks of said girl as doing a similar job to a waiter. Also, Ben later learning that Marta the Dabo girl is using the job to make money while she’s studying (unless I misremember? It’s been eons since I watched the episode in question) and feeling humbled is pretty closely modeled on a narrative trope on US tv that involves call girls.
If the Ferengi are one extreme presented, Starfleet is supposed to be the benevolent other, but here you have the problem that it’s also a military organization, i.e. there is a command structure in place that presumably would not be there in an ordinary Federation work relationship. O’Brien is the Chief Engineer, but he’s also an officer, which is why Bashir can pull rank on him in Hippocratic Oath, which he couldn’t if they were simply a civilian engineer and doctor, respectively. So it’s a bit hard to say what the (generally harmonious) relationships within Starfleet bosses and their subordinates say about working relationships in the Federation per se. Note that when O’Brien tells Rom about his ancestor the union man, he is using an example from the past. There is no indication that unions are still around, since presumably the Utopian society of the Federation does not need them anymore. I suppose we have to take this as a given.
In between Ferengi and Starfleet, we have the Bajoran model, which overlaps with both, most prominently in Kira, who is both a Bajoran state employee and Sisko’s subordinate. This occasionally clashes, mostly in the early stage of the show, not least because a) later Kira’s and Sisko’s relationship is a very smooth Captain-First Officer one, and b) Sisko later has accepted his role as the Emissary, which makes him a religious figure of authority to Kira. Anyway, while Kira’s loyalties are primarily to Bajor, she treats her conscious as the ultimate guide (see: Shakaar the episode, in which Kira sides with her old resistance cell friends against the Bajoran government as temporarily embodied by Kai Winn), and other than the start of s2, no Bajoran government tries to replace her. However, the episode Ascension, featuring the other Emissary and the temporary return of the Bajoran Caste system which the Cardassian occupation put an end to, brings up something worth considering, because the Bajorans, including Kira, actually follow the command of the Other Emissary to restore said caste system. So is Kira really putting her own judgment and conscience first in Shakaar, or is she acting out of her dislike of Kai Winn and conviction, based on her dealings with Winn in the past, that Winn is wrong? How much of a theocracy is Bajor? Winn is the highest religious authority (well, competing with the Emissary for that standing), not the head of government, and her attempt to be both is rejected in this episode. But due to the tremendous importance the Bajorans place on religion, it still dominates their life, including their working life; again, see their willingness to give up jobs they’re suited for in favour of jobs they aren’t simply because the old caste system would have demanded it when the Other Emissary tells them the Prophets want them to return to said caste system. The people who work for Vedeks and the Kai (see Vedek Barail being willing to sacrifice himself to maintain the reputation of the late Kai Opaka) certainly venerate them above and beyond anything a normal work relationship would allow. And how much is the fact that Kira and Sisko hardly ever disagree in the later seasons owed to the fact they’ve gotten to know and trust each other, and how much to Kira seeing Sisko as the Emissary? We’ll never know.
Sui generis in terms of work relationships: Odo. He is employed by the Cardassians, the Bajorans and indirectly, via the Bajorans, the Federation, apparently to the satisfaction of all three employers when it’s their turn. The one time Starfleet adds another security chief to Odo, it eventually backfires on them since Eddington is a Maquis (and btw has his own views on work relationships in the Federation, making a Borg comparison, no less, based on the idea that the Federation regards it as unthinkable anyone could want to leave or regard it as less than perfect). You could postulate - and this is what Odo claims at the start of the show - that Odo in each case serves the law and the idea of justice, not the changing governments, but given the different nature of these three masters that lofty claim is inevitably called into question. I wish Things Past were a better episode, because it’s the only one in which Odo’s claim that in his initial employment (by the Cardassians), he was always neutral and fair is punctured by showing that of course, his employment by a dictatorship also included serving an unjust sentence. (To briefly add one of my few DS9 pet peeves, the show never addresses something else: Kira’s massive double standard when it comes to Odo as a collaborator of the Cardassians (and as opposed to most other Bajorans in similar positions, Odo could have left at any time) versus, say, her mother spending years as Dukat’s mistress, a fate that had been forced on Meru in a way it hadn’t been on Odo).) Add to this such episodes like Children of Time (older Odo wipes out an entire time line and hundreds of people, all of whom he knew, so Kira survives) and the whole Second Occupation arc, and it’s hard not to agree with the Female Changeling when she suggests Odo’s primary loyalty isn’t to justice. She continues to say it is to order, as with all the Founders, and here one could add “to order, but after personal affection”, because Odo’s primary commitment, based on the show, is to Kira, until the entire existence of the Founders is at stake at least. He likes upholding the law and enjoys said work (with the occasional bad day), independent from the origin of said law. As for his employers: Dukat sees him as useful and treats him accordingly, the Bajorans, minus Kira, distrust him somewhat immediately post Occupation but not after, and Sisko values him.
On to Merlin. Here we are in tv medieval fantasy land, and “employment” primarily means “member of the nobility & servant”. The pilot presents the worst case scenario in the scene where Merlin and Arthur encounter each other for the first time, i.e. Arthur at his worst, humiliating and scaring his previous manservant, so it’s unsurprising Merlin is appalled when he finds out becoming Arthur’s next manservant is what destiny has in store for him. Otoh the show’s version of Guinevere, Gwen, seems to initially live in the best case scenario: her direct employer, Morgana, regards her as a friend and treats her kindly. Merlin and Gwen are two of the three prominent servant characters; the third is Gaius, who as Camelot’s healer lives in some in between status, not directly a servant but not enjoying the same status as a member of the nobility or a free man, either (showcased when Arthur makes him one - in season 4, by way of apology for the Agravaine caused interlude). Gaius’ status is additionally complicated by his long past with the king, Uther, and all the secrets they share. However, if the first season has an episode making it clear that if he has to decide, Gaius puts Merlin’s life above Uther’s, the second season has one making it clear that Uther isn’t willing to protect Gaius from the titular “Witch Hunter”, either, despite the fact that not the Witch Hunter, but Uther is the highest authority of the realm.
In fact, none of our three main servant characters enjoy absolute protection: Gwen’s favored status with Morgana doesn’t help her when she’s accused of magic early in the show, nor does the memory of their relationship protect her later once Morgana has changed loyalties. Merlin becomes devoted to Arthur, and Arthur on various occasions goes to some lengths to protect him, including risking his own life, but Merlin never until the show finale risks finding out whether or not Arthur would have done so in the case of a magical outing, as it were. Conversely, while all three servants do a lot for their employers, they also are clearly shown to have their own minds throughout, keeping secrets and confiding to each other, often more than to their respective employers. Moreover, the fantasy tv medieval code of loyalty is tied to the employer needing to either be or become worthy of respect in order to keep it; if there is no willingness to learn on the part of the employer, the relationship is doomed. Arthur learns from Merlin and Gwen both and becomes a better person through it. (A case could also be made for Gaius in season 4.) Uther never learns from anyone, and is doomed. Morgana feels no loyalty to Gwen after committing herself to Morgause, seeing her as much as a part of the Camelot she rejects as if Gwen were furniture. She also keeps underestimating her. When Gwen, who has figured out the truth about Morgana mid season 3 without Morgana realizing this, reminds her of her, Gwen’s, father’s death at Uther’s hands in the s3 finale, Morgana’s blithe reply, that she had forgotten Uther had hurt Gwen, too, is a reminder of how quickly the episode in which Uther has Gwen’s father killed becomes about the Uther-Morgana relationship, and Morgana’s outrage about how Uther treats her, more than what he’s just done to the late Tom, and to Gwen. It calls into question how mutual the benevolent seeming relationship between Gwen and Morgana ever was, or rather; how much it depended on Morgana seeing Gwen as an sweet and supportive adjunct to herself.
Gwen makes the final step from servant to Queen at the end of season 4, and in a season that showed how precarious her previous in between status was (as Arthur’s intended wife, she was no longer a servant but also not yet someone with her own status to protect her, so that Arthur after the Undead Lancelot plot could banish her), it’s significant we don’t see her wedding to signal the change, we see her coronation. It’s the most radical change in social status anyone goes through on the show. (Her brother Elyan becoming a knight a season earlier also is a big change, but since Elyan never worked as a servant in Camelot before and doesn’t become a ruler, not of the same radical dimension.) Season 5 shows Gwen not just as an ornamental queen but a co-ruler, and despite a deeply superfluous interlude in which she’s brainwashed, the season and the show ends on a very satisfying note as far as Gwen’s arc is concerned: Arthur makes her his successor, and the implication certainly is that she will create the Camelot of legend. Mind you: with Gwen’s change of status also comes a loss. Even before the brainwashed interlude, she and Merlin aren’t sharing scenes of confidences with each other anymore (which was still the case in s4); their relationship has become formalized, he calls her “my lady”. An early episode juxtaposes Gwen with a servant girl who is in some ways not unlike her former self, aand who she nonetheless has to judge as Queen. And she does. The gap between servants and rulers isn’t presented as unsurmountable, but it is presented as existent even if the ruler is a former servant.
The other days
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1138050.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.