DS9 Stories/News: DS9 Stories/ News: Odo & Kira Relationship Review (10)

“The Abandoned”

Review originally printed in ORACLE

Newsletter July 2011

____________________________________

 

Review written by Mary Shaver

Once the boy has been identified as a Jem’Hadar, Star Fleet is extremely eager to get their hands on him. Sisko announces to the Senior Staff assembled in the wardroom that Star Fleet is sending a ship to DS9 to transfer him to Star Base 201, where he will be turned over to a team of specialists. Odo, standing apart from the rest of the staff who are seated at the table, is already looking troubled. When Sisko details Star Fleet’s plan for the boy, he inquires  in a tone of voice that hints of suspicion, exactly what type of ‘specialists.’ Odo is pretty sure he already knows the answer to his question and Sisko confirms that a group of scientists have been assembled who intend to ‘study’ the boy. Direct and blunt as always, Odo cuts to the chase – “So he’ll be studied  . . . like a laboratory specimen?” Sisko’s weak retort that he will be well-treated earns him a sarcastic “So . . . he’ll be a well-treated specimen.” When Bashir agrees with Odo that the Jem’Hadar is a sentient being and not a biological sample a spirited discussion ensues. Dax argues that while sentient, the Founders might well have removed the Jem’Hadar’s free will, leaving only a genetically programmed killing machine. Kira chimes in and agrees with Dax. He is dangerous and she doesn’t want him on the station.

 

Recognizing what the Jem’Hadar will have to look forward to if Star Fleet takes possession of him, Odo speaks up and volunteers to work with the boy to get the answers everyone is seeking. Odo assures Sisko that the genetically implanted deference the boy shows towards Odo will allow him to keep the boy from harming anyone.

 

A concerned Sikso dismisses the rest of the staff in order to talk to Odo alone. He wants to understand what has motivated Odo to make this offer, but guesses that Odo is seeking to atone for what the Founders have done to the Jem’Hadar.

 

Sisko’s speculation is completely in keeping with Odo’s character. Yes, intellectually Odo knows he is not personally responsible for the reprehensible actions of his people. That doesn’t stop him from feeling an obligation to try and undo the damage they’ve done, at least with this one Jem’Hadar.

 

Add to that the fact that Odo has firsthand knowledge of exactly what it’s like to be a lab specimen. Even now, years after fleeing the clutches of Dr. Mora, Odo continues to harbor a deep and abiding resentment and bitterness over his treatment by the Bajoran scientist. Understandable then that he would be distressed by the probability that this Jem’Hadar will undergo the same sort of treatment and would want to save the boy from that fate.

 

Odo’s impassioned plea to Sisko – to let him find out if the Jem’Hadar will be forever chained by his genetic programming, or if he can grow beyond his nature – is a reflection of Odo’s own recent revelation about himself. Having begun to push back the boundaries in his own life, Odo is uniquely qualified to encourage and assist the Jem’Hadar to do the same.

 

Sisko has reservations, but agrees to Odo’s plan, and assures Odo that he will find a way to delay Star Fleet.

DS9 Stories/News: DS9 Stories/ News: Odo & Kira Relationship Review (8)

 

“The Abandoned”

Review originally printed in ORACLE

Newsletter July 2011

____________________________________

 

Review written by Mary Shaver

ODO:

 

Is that all you can think about?

Killing?  Isn’t there anything else

that you care about?

 

JEM’HADAR TEENAGER:

 

I… I don’t think so.

 

ODO:

 

But there’s so much more to life

than that… there’s so much for you

to discover… to experience…

 

EPISODE OVERVIEW:

 

Odo learns that not everyone can expand beyond the limitations of their natures.

 

EPISODE SUMMARY:

 

An abandoned baby, discovered in some cargo salvage, turns out to be a Jem’Hadar whose genetic engineering accelerates his growth.  Within a day he is an adolescent and Odo agrees to take the teenager under his wing in an effort to help the youngster grow beyond his warrior nature.  

 

EPISODE ANALYSIS:

 

 

Quark purchases some salvage from a Boslian trader and is surprised to discover a baby of unknown origin hidden in the wreckage. Bashir’s examination of the baby turns up a number of unusual readings, most significantly that the child has an abnormally high metabolic rate. Within hours the baby has grown into a child of 8 or 10 years. Not only is this mysterious child growing at an alarming rate; he also seems to have remarkable cognitive abilities. Without any external stimuli, he has learned language, speech and  has the capacity for reasoning and understanding.  Bashir concludes that this child is the product of genetic engineering that is far advanced beyond anything seen in the Federation. To add to the mystery, the child is missing a key enzyme and without a synthetic substitute, he will die. A culture that is capable of this level of technology surely wouldn’t have overlooked something so basic; it must have been a deliberate omission. Bashir is stymied.

 

“The Abandoned” is the first Odo-centric episode since the devastating events of “The Search.”  Despite whatever internal conflicts he might be experiencing after finding his people and learning that they are the Founders of the Dominion, Odo is soldering on in the humanoid world. And while he finds no common ground with his people as to their philosophy of the universe, Odo did take away some positive things from his encounter with the Great Link, and is beginning to embrace his Changeling heritage.

 

While Dr. Bashir is searching to understand the anatomy of the orphaned child in the Infirmary, Odo, searching for a better understanding of himself, is beginning a journey of self-discovery. The first step in this journey is his decision to move out of the stifling little closet at the back of his Security office that has been his make-shift home since the days of Terek Nor, and take regular crew quarters.

 

We learn this as Kira arrives with a gift for his new quarters – a houseplant. Odo answers the door chime and very deliberately chooses to greet her outside his quarters in the corridor. Unabashedly interested about the configuration of his quarters, Kira at first peers over Odo’s shoulder, trying to get a peek inside the room, and when he closes and locks the door she confesses her curiosity  – and she apparently isn’t alone. According to her, “everyone” is curious to see his quarters. For a painful moment Odo seems to be reliving the sort of curiosity he used to excite while a lab specimen. Kira is blissfully ignorant that her words and actions have caused the Constable some consternation, but Odo quickly recovers and invites Kira in. She looks in wonder at the strange collection of items that populate the room and seem to be scattered everywhere. Somewhat apologetically, Odo explains that he hasn’t finished organizing everything. From his expression Odo appears to be looking for her approval. When he then goes on to clarify the purpose for the objects – to practice and explore his shapeshifting gifts – Odo is acknowledging the next step in his journey. Shapeshifting is no longer something he does simply as part of his job when the need calls for it. His reluctance until now to change shapes arguably has its roots in the things he was forced to do when confined to Mora’s lab and when he was taken out ‘on parade’ for the entertainment of the Cardassians. Meeting his people and learning at the feet of the Female Changeling has altered his thinking and now Odo is beginning to understand what it means to be a shapeshifter. He has discovered that the ability to mimic various shapes, forms, textures and surfaces can be a joyful and pleasurable experience. For a man who has seen so little joy in his life, this has to be something of an epiphany to Odo.

DS9 Stories/News: Boss Chicks: Female Changeling (aka “Gertrude”)

Source: http://www.amaya-radjani.com/2011/11/boss-chicks-female-changeling-aka.html

One of the many races that Deep Space Nine introduced the world to was the Changelings.  Changelings are shapeshifters.  One of the major characters on DS9 is the changeling Odo, the space station’s security chief.  Odo’s pretty badass; if you could change into anything at will, you’d better be a badass.  But having been around humans, Odo has developed some empathy and respect for them, as well as the ability to love.

Odo questioned his origins for many years; as far as he knew he was the only one of his kind.  But in Season 3, he found himself drawn to a rogue planet hidden inside a nebula.  The inhabitants of the planet turned out to be a race of Changelings, in their default liquid form.  The leader of the Changelings was a female.  She had no name, so I took to calling her Gertrude.  Gertrude is played to the T by Salome Jens.  Gertrude tells Odo that their race was once hunted by the “solids” (her term for humanoids) and they sought solace and peace on the rogue planet.  Determined to make sure that never happened again, Gertrude instigated a plan to take over the galaxy.

Mind you, girls & boys, this sorta thing ain’t for the short-sighted or half-assed.  Old Gert was a master manipulator and literally did not give a shit about any other race other than her own.  Gertrude felt that her race was superior above all others and there was an underlying hatred and mistrust of all humanoid cultures.  She founded the Dominion and instigated a bloody, genocidal war across the Alpha & Gamma quadrants, taking over many planetary systems in a serious effort to protect her people at all costs.  The Dominion, ran by the Founders (the Changelings), was a major political power and the sworn enemy of the Federation.  Gertrude coordinated the war efforts which resulted in the deaths of over 800 million people.  She was so completely bad-ass that she negotiated deals with several cultures (Cardassia and Breen, to name a couple), and promptly reneged on them once her objective was met…and they couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

One might ask how it was possible for Getrude to run half of the galaxy on her own?  She didn’t.  The Founders cloned thousands of loyal assistants called Vorta, who in turn cloned millions of warriors called Jem’Hadar, who were literally built to fight.  They ensured the loyalty of the Jem’Hadar by instilling an addiction to ketracel-white (cocaine) in their genetic makeup.  If any race decided to get up to some chicanery and cause problems, Gertrude sent the Jem’Hadar in to literally destroy their entire population.  This kept societies firmly under Dominion rule.

Gertrude was focused on bringing order to the galaxy (meaning other cultures would serve the will of the Founders or face genocide) and it was her justification for the millions of people who died in the war.  She had no regard for life itself, and ordered the execution of many innocent individuals, even children, regardless of whether they were actual participants in the war or bystanders.  Even Vorta & Jem’Hadar, her personal army, selflessly sacrificed themselves and she…did…not…give…a…fuck.  Even when it was clear the Dominion was going to lose the war (thanks to Kira’s terrorist efforts), Gertrude did not order her troops to stand down, but to fight to the last man.  She was comforted knowing that the Dominion War cost the lives of nearly a billion people and the destruction of hundreds of worlds.

Cardassia: Destroyed. By a Boss Chick.

Best lines:

“…because what you can control can’t hurt you.”

“Isn’t it obvious? You may win this war, Commander. But I promise you, by the time it’s over you will have lost so many ships, so many lives, that your victory will taste as bitter as defeat.”

“I would promise the Breen the entire Alpha Quadrant if I thought it would help win this war.”

Earth: Destroyed. By a Boss Chick.

She never once showed remorse and never apologized to anyone for her actions.  I respect the game.  Therefore, she’s a Boss Chick.

DS9 Stories/News: Birthday Alert – Colm Meaney’s 3 Day Birthday Special

Cont.

Julian Bashir/Miles O’Brien

http://ship-manifesto.dreamwidth.org/19822.html

“The relationship between Bashir and O’Brien is the best relationship… the best friendship in the history of the franchise.”
Ira Steven Behr, Season Six dvd set, Crew Dossier: Julian Bashir

In the beginning, Bashir and O’Brien seem to be very different men, but over the course of the series, their friendship builds similarity upon similarity. This relationship is one that deepens moment by moment, a relationship that’s about building up trust and hope, about turning a somewhat faltering beginning into one of the deepest and strongest relationships that we ever get to see on Trek.

A. The Guys:

To know Miles O’Brien, you have to start with basics. He’s a good guy, a family man, someone who couldn’t possibly have any deep, dark secrets. But he’s much more than he seems on first glance (a common theme in DS9). He’s a soldier as well as an engineer. He’s done what he’s had to do, and he’s made himself content with what he has in his life. Miles has been through many dark nights of the soul, but his strength of will and his heart have carried him through it all.

Julian Bashir seems simple in the beginning, too — he’s the brash young doctor with too many brains and not enough sense. But as the years pass, his bravado is shown to be true bravery, and his arrogance to be as much façade as truth. He chose to be a doctor, chose to make saving lives his life’s work. He chose to work not in the heart of the Federation, but on what he thought would be on the outskirts, what he assumed would be an unimportant space station. To help and to hide, those were the twin goals of Julian’s life, and as time passed, they became more and more irreconcilable.

What I love about Bashir and O’Brien is that their closeness grows out of the characters and the story. We’re there for every important step of that relationship. Interestingly, even from the very first, long before they played war games together in the holodecks, their relationship is defined by war — their first exchange is O’Brien asking Bashir if he knows his history of the Border Wars and of the massacre of Selik III. We learn at some point that O’Brien was the ‘hero of Setlik III’, and this may be the moment when Bashir connected that O’Brien to this one and got his hero worship trigger tripped.

Another thing that probably should be mentioned is the sexual orientation question, i.e. Miles is married and Julian clearly likes the ladies. What’s up with the gayness, yo? To start with the easiest one first, Julian is the most-slashed character in DS9, mostly with Garak, but also with… interesting intra-Trek crossovers. This may be in part because Julian comes across as open to anyone who’ll listen to him talk. That sounded nicer in my head. He clearly has a normality thing, but since there’s no big “Gosh, Gay People, they’re so weird” episode, I’m going to take it as a given that people have grown past the current prejudices. In order to make room for new ones, I’m sure, but still. So, Julian isn’t really a problem.

Miles, on the hand, is married with kid(s) for his entire run on DS9, and leaves DS9 (and Julian, as the show itself presents it) on his wife, Keiko’s, urging. In fact, much of her on-screen time is taken up with how she doesn’t fit and doesn’t really belong on DS9. Eventually, a choice had to be made, and considering the O’Brien character, the choice could not be other than it was — it was to Keiko and his children that his first loyalties must and should lie. Despite the seeming inevitability of his choice, the show itself does, at times, clearly set up a comparison between Julian and Keiko.

Part of the problem is that we rarely get to see the sympathetic side of Keiko — both Miles and Julian are main characters, so the show spends quite a bit more time on them and on their friendship and their growth. And while we often get to see Miles say that he loves Keiko, it’s much rarer to hear Keiko’s side of things — most of time when she’s on the show, it’s because the writers are highlighting a problem or issue, so we see the O’Briens more on the outs than the ins.

And while, at first, Julian and Miles seem at first to be as different as oranges and eggs, over the years, though the banter stays, their closeness grows stronger and stronger. In the end, we can see that they are more alike then they are different, both of them caretakers first, yet fighters, too, when necessary. Each of them willing to fight for something that they believe in, two friends who can stand back to back against the any enemy. I love Bashir and O’Brien for the same reasons that I love most of my fic couples — they tease and fight and stubbornly refuse to admit how much they care while showing their affection by their actions. They have a solid friendship with sparks of possibility. They can trust each other and lean on each other.

B. Subtext:

As you might imagine, seven years gives these guys quite a bit of subtext (and some actual text) to sift through. Because of the volume involved, I’m just going to point out some of the more obvious examples from each season.

Storyteller, a first season episode, is the first time that we get to have Bashir and O’Brien thrown alone together. While O’Brien tries to weasel out of it, Julian is thrilled (I wonder if Julian actually requested that Miles take him, it seems to play that way). Julian is, after all, very honest and open about liking Miles. He likes him from the first episode and goes right on liking him until the last episode.

Julian is so… almost desperate for affection at places in this episode. He asks Miles if he annoys him. In this episode, Julian asks Miles to call him Julian, because he’d ‘simply prefer it’ if Miles would call him by his first name. At the end of the episode, he relents, seeing that Miles isn’t comfortable with it (yet). Julian acts near starved for attention, especially first season, possibly because he feels that he can’t trust any attention that he does get, because it isn’t for the real him. The real him wasn’t good enough. And even now, he’s constantly afraid that even this ‘better’ him isn’t good enough.

Even apart from that, he’s just so fascinated by people within people — he wants to know all about Dax, not just Jadzia. He’s curious about ‘plain, simple’ Garak, the spy-tailor.

And Miles O’Brien, who appears to be ‘just’ an engineer, was also the ‘hero of Setlik III’. He wants to know all about them (as opposed to the women that he dates, wherein he’s all about telling them about him).

 

At the beginning of the episode:
Bashir: “I’m really looking forward to this mission.”
O’Brien: “And why is that?”
Bashir: “Well, I see it as a wonderful opportunity for us to get to know each other.”

On the subject of Bashir’s annoyingness:
Bashir: “The only reason I’m asking is because your opinion means a lot to me and I’m aware I have a tendency to run off at the mouth sometimes.”

In Armageddon Game, in the second season, Julian and Miles are thrown alone together by an ‘accident’. They spend most of the episode with just each other’s company and Julian saves O’Brien’s life. We also see the continuation of Julian sharing his life with Miles when he tells the story of the ballerina Palis, whom he almost chose over Starfleet.

Bashir:From near the end of the episode:

 ”I want you to know, I really appreciated what you said back on T’Lani Three.”
O’Brien: “What did I say?”
Bashir: “That it was an honor serving with me.”
O’Brien: “Oh… right.”
Bashir: “I’d like to return the compliment, Chief — it’s been an honor to serve with you, too.”

DS9 Stories/News: Learning to Love Star Trek, Part 47: “Dax”

Source: http://scifiblock.com/features/blog/learning-to-love-star-trek-part-47-dax.htm

By Robert Ring, Tue, 11/30/2010 – 08:08

“Learning to Love Star Trek” is a weekly blog series by Sci-Fi Block Editor in Chief Robert Ring, begun January 1, 2010. In this series of blog posts, Robert is endeavoring to determine whether he can make a Star Trek fan out of himself through an exposure to a combination of episodes from Star Trek the Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation (Update: TNG has now been replaced with Deep Space Nine). Click here to read his introduction to the experiment.

Okay, we’re back to the good with “Dax.” This isn’t a great episode, but it’s pretty interesting, and it’s a lot better than the three that come before it. “Dax” focuses on the two halves of Jadzia Dax — Jadzia the human and Dax the symbiont living inside of her. While it feels more like a disguised explanation of who/what Jadzia, Dax, and Jadzia Dax are than a story-based episode, “Dax” is engaging enough to satisfy.

“Dax” starts off with a group of Klaesrons attempting to abduct Dax. The Deep Space Nine crew pulls them back in via tractor beam just in time, though, and we learn that they are not actually kidnapping her. They are taking her into their custody to be tried and executed for the murder of a war hero. It’s not Jadzia who did it, though; it’s the symbiont’s former host, Curzon. Sisko, who was close friends with Curzon Dax, naturally does not want to let her go. So, they have an informal trial on DS9. At the center of the trial is the attempt to determine who Jadzia Dax is. Is she purely Jadzia, playing host to a passive life form? Obviously not. Is she Dax, exercising complete control over the host, Jadzia? Maybe. Or is she a combination of the two, a new entity comprised of the minds of both individual organisms. Ding ding ding!

All the episode has going for it, really, is this search for the true identity of Jadzia Dax. If she’s Dax, the logic goes, she needs to go with the Klaesrons and be punished for her crimes. If she’s not only Dax, or if she’s a new combination of both minds, either half or all of her is innocent of the crime and thus doesn’t deserve to be punished. There’s a lot of back-and-forth between Sisko, who is essentially defending Jadzia, and Klaesron, who wants to arrest her. It is for the most part fun hearing them argue about who/what Jadzia is/isn’t, based on her current personality and the memories and traits she retains from the symbiont’s former hosts. It is this sort of questioning that ultimately leads us to ask what makes anyone who they are, not just symbiotic amalgams. In the end, we discover that when a symbiont bonds with a new host, even though it retains all its older memories, it becomes a new entity, melding its mind with the host for the duration of their life together.

I’m just sayin’, I’m really glad human heads didn’t evolve this way.

What may be even more interesting than the identity questioning here is Sisko’s overall response to the matter. He basically makes it clear that he wants to keep Jadzia from being arrested no matter what. Even if past legal cases of the same nature offer the precedent that current host/symbiont entities should be held responsible for a symbiont’s past actions, Sisko says that he has to figure out a way for her to be deemed innocent. Does Sisko’s loyalty to his friends outweigh his obligation to uphold justice? I don’t know yet, but the question hadn’t crossed my mind until this episode.

I’m disappointed in the way the episode ends, however. After all the debating, testifying, and expert opinion, we find out that Curzon Dax was never responsible for the crime in the first place. This was Deep Space Nine’s chance to allow its characters to come to a possibly controversial decision regarding the nature of symbiont/host identity, but they squeezed their way out of it. The worst part is that I’m not even sure why. The conclusion that everyone except the Klaestrons was definitely leaning toward would have meant that Jadzia Dax shouldn’t be held responsible for the events, so whatever the consequences, they would have been minor. By allowing Curzon Dax to have been innocent, though, the episode avoids carrying any moral consequence at all. Just to be safe next time, the Federation should probably come up with some laws regarding these things. I wonder why they hadn’t already.

So, an upswing in quality, but not an enormous upswing. “Dax” primarily works as a way to tell everyone just what and who Jadzia Dax is. It has some aesthetic merits, but it’s mainly exposition. I can deal with that. It’s nothing I’d probably care to go back and watch again, though.