DS9 Stories/News: Of Trek and War (1)

Source: http://www.goth.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14138&f=20

This is based on an idea from DarklyInclined, who was wondering how I might rate the rather protracted Dominion War featured in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine versus the one-season Xindi conflict (a subset of the much larger Temporal Cold War) as shown in Star Trek: Enterprise. I thought I’d also open the topic up to other wars in Trek, since those two weren’t quite the only wars shown in all of the series.

This will be a lengthy post. I’ve been working on it for a while now. I tend to write essays instead of simple replies; apologies in advance. Non-Trekkies who don’t really give a shit might want to head for another thread. For those Trekkies not well-versed in the subject matter, I will include links to pertinent data where applicable. Those who do choose read this, please bear with me.

You could make it more fun by taking a shot of your favorite alcoholic beverage anytime I bash Rick Berman & Brannon Braga (two of Trek’s longtime writers/producers, both of whom were blamed for Star Trek’s demise and the early cancellation of Enterprise, if not the near-total downfall of UPN itself) or anytime I mention Ronald D. Moore and Ira Steven Behr (two longtime Trek scribes who later moved on to Battlestar Galactica on SyFy) in a positive light. You’ll be happily plastered by post’s end.

Which did you think was done best: the Dominion War from DS9 or the Xindi conflict from Enterprise (or a different conflict featured in one of the other series, like the Klingon/Federation Cold War from TOS or the brief war against the Klingons in DS9 that served as a prelude to the Dominion War)?

Or, for a much more broad, open-ended question (if it suits you): do you think Star Trek handles a mature subject such as war well or poorly?

Dominion War

If you really don’t care about my lengthy diatribe on the Dominion War vs. the Xindi conflict (maybe because you didn’t live your entire life in your parents’ basement and you actually did have a social life), just skip past this and post your response already. Otherwise, feel free to keep reading.

Eh..?

I’ll open the discussion with my response…

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I think Deep Space Nine handled the Dominion War fairly well. They didn’t just rush into it head-on. The writers gave it a great build-up, slowly tip-toeing into it, mentioning the Dominion here and there throughout Season Two (the Dominion were first mentioned in “Rules of Acquisition“, a Ferengi episode, no less!) before introducing us to their foot soldiers, the genetically-grown Jem’Hadar, in the Season 2 finale. Even after that, the Dominion didn’t quite take center stage yet, opting instead for a Cold War against the Alpha Quadrant powers, during which they covertly started two wars involving the Klingons – a war between the Klingons and the Cardassians (which the Maquis would get involved in) and renewed hostilities between the Klingons and the Federation. After destabilizing the Alpha Quadrant’s major powers, the Dominion finally invaded. Brilliant tactic! By then, the Federation was so shell-shocked from having to deal with wars on all borders (save the Romulan Neutral Zone) that they barely had the resources to fight the Dominion, a nigh-unstoppable force compared to the Federation.

Jem’Hadar

The Dominion seemed militarily superior in all respects: non-stop construction of warships while the Federation was still trying to convert aging exploration vessels into battleships; they could grow Jem’Hadar at an exponential rate (and even tailor-make them for warfare in that part of the galaxy) while Starfleet couldn’t recruit new officers fast enough; the Dominion were united while Starfleet was divided between the pacifists and the war-mongers (usually represented by a shadowy “rogue” group of Starfleet Intelligence called Section 31, a sort of Starfleet “Men in Black” that utilized very dirty tactics like assassinations, cover-ups and even genocide to preserve the Federation; this was the series’ attempt at exploring a darker side of Starfleet that I, for one, appreciated). Good mix of drama, tension and action all around, plus it was an interesting examination of the Federation through darker lenses than we’re used to.

Section 31

While Deep Space Nine’s executive producer, Rick Berman (Roddenberry’s hand-picked successor), wanted the Dominion War to last only three or four episodes tops, DS9′s lead writers – Ira Steven Behr and Ronald D. Moore (themselves chosen by Berman for their outstanding work on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, both of whom would later helm the Battlestar Galactica reboot and create its prequel series Caprica) – conned him into allowing the Dominion War to play out until its “natural” end, which came during the final episode of the series. Say what you will about the Dominion War as a storyline and how it diverges from Roddenberry’s utopian vision of the future or about Deep Space Nine as a series, I think the Dominion War worked successfully (mostly), given its purpose as a method of deconstructing Roddenberry’s notions of the Federation as a utopian society. Ira Steven Behr re-imagined Deep Space Nine as a darker, grittier version of Roddenberry’s vision, and given how the series was written before that (set aboard a Cardassian space station by Michael Pillar – the brain behind some of the best TNG episodes ever, including “The Best of Both Worlds” – who imagined the series as a “frontier town in space” filled with broken individuals, former terrorist “freedom fighters”, orphaned aliens and unscrupulous bartender/merchants), the series worked well as such. The Dominion War, while I admit it was rather protracted (and ultimately weakened the hell out of Season 7, when the writers had to figure out a quick way to end the war in only one season after building the story arc to be a lengthy epic), worked overall as the ultimate test of Roddenberry’s dream.

When such a dream – the notion of humankind striving to better itself through peace and cooperation – is threatened by outside forces, what will humanity endure to protect it? The approach to this was very realistic, from the major portions of the story (“Operation Return“, the re-taking of DS9 after it was taken over by the Dominion) to the humdrum day-to-day stuff (Sisko’s grim ritual of posting casualty reports from the war every Friday). Ultimately, the war took a bitter toll on everyone involved, especially Captain Sisko; he would later commit acts that many Trek fans consider cardinal sins against Roddenberry’s lofty ideals – specifically helping a former Cardassian spy murder a Romulan senator in cold blood and blame the Dominion for it in the masterpiece episode “In the Pale Moonlight” – just to bring a quicker resolution to the war by bringing the Romulans into it. By the series’ end, the Federation is saved, and all the major goals of the series – bringing an end to the Cardassian threat and putting Bajor on the fast-track to membership in the Federation – have been met, along with the added bonus of creating a tentative peace between the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans. Additionally, Ira Steven Behr was able to inject a bit of Judaism into the story through the Bajorans and their Emissary (messiah figure), Benjamin Sisko, whose story arc Behr based loosely on Moses.

DS9 Stories/News: Deep Space Nine’s “Rejoined” Analysis – The First Same-Sex Kiss/Relationship In Trek History (1)

Source: http://www.kissingfingertips.com/ds9.html

4.06 / Original air date October 30, 1995

Written by: Ronald D. Moore and René Echevarria

Directed by: Avery Brooks

I’m well aware that by the end of this review I am going to sound like a total geek, but I feel that it’s important to write to fans as well as to people who are new to any particular program or TV Universe, as the case may be. The fact is, you can’t look at any Star Trek series in isolation from the others, as much as the writers and producers of Trek would like to think. The DS9 continuity people must have had weekly fits as they received scripts for new episodes, and if they didn’t, they should have.

An obsessive fan base has been both the greatest asset and the greatest curse for the writers of all four Star Trek spin-off series. We (yeah, I’m going to include myself as an obsessed fan) demand that the writers pay as much attention to continuity in the Star Trek Universe as we do. After all, they get paid to do just that. I know a lot of fans who happily do it for free.

The race known as the Trill has been one of the screwups of the Trek franchise. The problem is, they’re also one of the most interesting races ever invented on Trek. Initially introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the Trill are a race of humanoid-looking creatures that have the ability to join with a long-lived, wormlike symbiotic species to enable their consciousness to continue from host to host over a huge span of time. (Initially they also had lumpy heads, but the spots concept was added for DS9 when producers decided that if you were going to hire gorgeous, ex-model Terry Farrell to play a character, you didn’t then give her a lumpy head.)

…

The idea of the symbiotic relationship is that each host contributes to the life and experiences of the symbiont, while the symbiont brings to the host a wealth of experience and knowledge that would otherwise have died with their previous hosts. Once joined, the host and symbiont blend into a single entity. Twenty four hours after joining, if the symbiont is removed for more than a few hours, the host will die. It is normal for a symbiont to live inside both male and female hosts over the course of its lifetime.

In ST:TNG, joined Trill could not use transporters (it caused trauma to the symbiont), the symbiont could be temporarily placed inside a human host (as it was with Riker), and there were no rules mentioned about the romantic life of the symbiont and who it could or couldn’t be with, especially since the original Trill we met, Odan, chased Beverly Crusher through the span of three different hosts. (Interestingly, Dr Crusher finally rejects Odan when he becomes a woman.) As we know, Jadzia Dax had no problems with transporters. Ezri Dax had to receive the Dax symbiont when Jadzia died because she was the only Trill onboard the ship carrying the symbiont to the Trill homeworld when the symbiont went into distress. Finally, with “Rejoined” we are given the concept of reassociation, which forbids joined Trill from resuming romances that their symbionts had in previous hosts.

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Sound complicated? It is, and overly so, but the Trek writers were most likely looking for a way to spice up Jadzia’s love life and to further explore the Trill, so they came up with the wacky concept for “Rejoined”, and we got an episode that tiptoes Jadzia’s sexuality along the borders between gay and straight. Personally, I think Jadzia counts firmly as bisexual. Maybe even omnisexual, as it was often revealed throughout the series that she wasn’t averse to trying (or sleeping with) anything once.

All this is to say that yes, the episode had holes, big enough to fly the Enterprise through. However, for all the lesbian fans of Jadzia Dax (and I’m sure I’m not the only devotee out there) this episode was also like manna from heaven, because it also contains what I like to refer to as “the kiss”.

The basic plot is this. A Trill science team arrives on DS9 to use the Defiant in their project to attempt to open the first artificially-created wormhole. (Even reviewing Star Trek technobabble is a laborious task.) The team is led by Dr Lenara Khan, a joined Trill. As it happens, when both the Dax and the Khan symbionts were joined to previous hosts (Torias Dax and Nelani Khan) they were husband and wife. Torias died in a shuttle accident leaving Nelani a widow, and this is the first meeting of the two symbionts since the accident. Dax was a man then, but when the two symbionts meet again in the bodies of their new hosts, sparks fly immediately, regardless of what gender the two are now.

Funnily enough, this gender-switch is never really mentioned. It’s like a big, old white elephant sitting in the corner. Instead of dealing with the “gay” issue, the writers turn the whole thing into a social taboo against this concept of reassociation, or getting together with a lover from a past life. The storyline is a metaphor for tolerance and acceptance of alternative sexualities, and not even a subtle one at that. The odd thing is, they could have just played the story straight, I mean gay, and it might have made more sense. Perhaps they thought the concept would play better to conservative Trek audiences wrapped in cotton wool, and considering the backlash that occurred when the episode aired, perhaps they were right.