DS9 Stories/News: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Leeta’s Love Life

Source: http://thehathorlegacy.com/star-trek-deep-space-nine-%E2%80%93-leeta%E2%80%99s-love-life/

by Revena on September 14, 2006

I want to continue with my series about the female characters of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (see the previous article, “Jadzia’s Gender,” here) without too much of a gap between articles, but, of course, I’ve been insanely busy for the last few weeks, and haven’t had any time to do the prep work for another article, much less write one.

So I’m gonna cheat a little bit, and write about Leeta (played by Chase Masterson). This is easy, because while I think Leeta is great (there are not many DS9 characters that I wouldn’t describe as great, really), she does get a lot less screen time than most of the other female characters, and what I want to say about her is comparatively easy to express. It goes a little something like this:

Leeta is sexy. She is played by a lovely actress, she is usually dressed in low-cut and/or tight-fitting costumes, and her job is linked to her sexuality – she’s a dabo girl at Quark’s. Leeta is also sexual. In her first appearance on the show (in the third season episode “Explorers”), she flirts quite openly with Dr. Julian Bashir, whom she later dates. The two eventually break up, without acrimony, on Risa, where Leeta is shown enjoying a sensual encounter with another man (“Let He Who is Without Sin”¦” in season five).

Sexuality isn’t the only thing Leeta’s got going for her – she has a strong sense of justice (she becomes quite involved in the formation of the Guild of Restaurant and Casino Employees), she is friendly and seems to have many platonic relationships, and though she can be a bit flighty, she’s no dummy.

But her sexual energy is definitely one of her most marked traits. And even though that’s the case, Leeta winds up with one of the happiest endings on the show by the end of the series. She hasn’t had any traumatic injuries, and her emotional trauma is no worse than that which affects any other character (Leeta loses friends to violence, but so does everyone else on DS9). She’s fallen in love, had that love returned, and gotten married. She gets along well with her new husband’s family. And, in the second-to-last episode of the series, that husband is named Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance. Leeta gets love, health, and a husband who is politically powerful (and, presumably, a comfortable living as well).

How many other sexy, sexual female characters can you think of on television that end up so well? The sexy woman is usually the victim, or at least the recipient of some shaming or punishment from other characters on the show. She needs to be taught a lesson, made to pay, reformed, exposed as the slut she is – or else her sexiness needs to be linked somehow to a violent death or assault, in the constant sexualization of violence that we consumers and producers of Western media are so invested in.

There certainly are other female characters who are as flirty and as sensual as Leeta, and who wind up with happy endings anyway – but not many. As a person who doesn’t believe that there’s anything wrong with healthy expressions of adult sexuality, I’ll take all the Leetas on TV that I can get.

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…

…

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: Birthday Alert – Colm Meaney’s 3 Day Birthday Special

Cont.

Then, there is “Julian & Miles”

The relationship built up on DS9 between O’Brien and Bashir was very important to all of the writers, as well as both actors. According to Ronald D. Moore, after the scene where they sing Jerusalem together in DS9: “Explorers“, all of the staff writers wanted to write scenes involving their friendship.”

Alexander Siddig says, “it’s been said, by even the producers, that O’Brien and Bashir are the only real friendship that’s ever happened on Star Trek. These two really are friends. It’s not like some kind of odd couple scenario, likeSpock and Kirk. It’s a real friendship. These people talk about inane things, and I think that’s been really refreshing.“

Robert Hewitt Wolfe elaborates, “It was just great. There was just great chemistry between the two actors, great chemistry between the two characters. It was brilliant of Michael and Rick to create these two characters as foils for each other. And to then see this relationship develop over the years till they’re best friends, till Miles actually likes Bashir kind of almost better than his wife some days, which is very real, I mean there’s days that everybody, you know, it’s easier to be friends with a friend than with your wife some days.” (Crew Dossier: Miles O’Brien, DS9 Season 5 DVD, Special Features).

Ira Behr goes even further, and cites it as his favorite relationship in all of Star Trek; “The relationship between Bashir and O’Brien is the best relationship, the best friendship, in the history of the franchise. Spock and Kirk were still about the captain and his number one. This is a friendship with two equals, two guys. It’s a wonderful thing to watch how this relationship has grown.” (Crew Dossier: Julian Bashir, DS9 Season 6 DVD, Special Features)

I Like You… A Bit More

This is a fanlisting for the relationship between the Star Trekcharacters, Julian Bashir & Miles O’Brien, one of the best friendships in the entire franchise (so says Ira Behr, and me as well).

http://fan.delectableoomph.com/bob/

More O’Brien and Bashir moments.

O’Brien likes Bashir a little too much, maybe?

Bashir and O’Brien at Worf’s bachelor party

 

DS9 Stories/News: Men I’ve Loved: Benjamin Sisko

Source: http://www.amaya-radjani.com/2011/09/men-ive-loved-benjamin-sisko.html

Command never looked so good

My friend Ankhesen, a devout Trekkie, introduced me to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine earlier this year.  Over the summer, I Netflix’d the entire series; seven years’ worth of episodes and had a mammoth sci-fi/fantasy marathon.  This marathon included the Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits, Thriller & Night Gallery, but more on those shows later.  Anyhoo, I’m a fan of TOS & TNG, but never gave DS9 any thought until Ankh showed me a few episodes.  And I fell madly in love with Captain Benjamin Sisko and bought the entire 7-season series for a great price at Cheqoot.com.

Before I express my admiration and lust love for the sexy Captain Sisko, I should provide you some context. Deep Space Nine is the best of the Trek shows I’ve seen, and Ankh assures me that it’s the best of the entire lot.  The writing is top notch, as is the acting, directing, editing and set designs.  There are also strong female characters; these women fight, command starships & freighters, govern planets, and act as spies.  One is a former terrorist and another is an intergalactic warlord. The show tackled issues of racism, sexism, faith, religion, slavery and corruption, as well as other hot-button topics.  It’s a very dark show; the series spends nearly five years on an epic war with the Federation and its allies battling a hardcore violent faction known as the Dominion (which is run by a badass changeling chick I call Gertrude).  You see the Federation get their asses kicked on a regular basis; Starfleet vessels are routinely destroyed and people murdered.  The series finale contains a grisly scene in which three men are standing amid a pile of rubble and dead bodies.  DS9 is not idealistic like TOS & TNG; you see real shit happening in this show and there are parallels as well as portents to our own society.

Sisko; seasons 1-3

The only real drawback is the costume/wardrobe department, who should have had their asses kicked from here to Jupiter for the hot fire mess that was DS9’s apparel.  They had a real opportunity to do some really fantastic things with character attire, but failed miserably.  I can only assume that the producers chose to put the money into the writing & directing and left a bare minimum for wardrobe.  There is absolutely no reason for anyone in the 24^th century to look this damn hideous:

…

Jake typically looked like a pack of crayons

I mean, for real.  But I should point out that it was usually the human outfits that were ugly.  They got things right with most of the other races (especially the Klingons).  There was also the ridiculousness of Starfleet officers clearly being off duty and still attired in those hot-ass uniforms. As if!  You see Captain Sisko (who is also an architect and chef) cooking elaborate meals while still wearing his Starfleet uni.  *snorts* I call bullshit.

…

DS9 introduces us to a wonderful cast of characters that include Ferengi, Klingons, Trills, Breen, Romulans, Bajorans, Cardassians, and changelings.   The star of the show, however, is a man named Benjamin Sisko, captain of the space station.  Captain Sisko is portrayed by the excellent actor Avery Brooks.  The show starts with Sisko as a grieving husband and loving father who is duty-bound to take over a raggedy Bajoran space station.  He has a wonderful relationship with his son Jake; there are plenty of hugs, kisses and adventures between them.  It’s rare to see a black man in such a positive role, and I relished every second of it.

Sisko is an honorable, ethical guy who is devoted to his son, dedicated to his career as a Starfleet officer, and is the voice of the Prophets, the Bajoran gods.  He has a commanding presence and is highly respected by everyone he encounters, especially his enemies.  I liked him a lot in Seasons 1-3, but fell in love with him at the start of Season 4.  This is when the war between the Federation & the Dominion heated up and the show’s writers kicked the storytelling into high gear.  It is also when Avery Brooks, who spent the first three seasons with hair on his head and not on his face, decided to go bald and goateed; a look I find intensely attractive.  It gave his character a powerful edge; an extra marvelous oomph! that made me pay close attention every time Sisko was on the screen. Which, for the most part, was nearly all the time.

Sisko; seasons 4-7.

But the captain isn’t perfect; he sacrifices much for peace, including his own happiness and self-respect.  He violates orders, lies, cheats, bribes others, and is an accessory to murder, among other things.  He even becomes a Klingon to accomplish a mission (but this is NOT a bad thing; Klingons are fucking awesome).  But this made Sisko more appealing to me because he’s flawed just like any other person.  It gave him a depth that I haven’t seen in any other Starfleet captain and made DS9 that much better.

Sisko also has some of the best lines in the show.  Here are a few of my favorites:

“So, I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all…I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. Garak was right about one thing: A guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it.”  –In the Pale Moonlight, Season 6

“Brag all you want, but don’t get between me and the bloodwine!”  –Apocalypse Rising, Season 3  (He’s a Klingon in this episode)   

“Haven’t you seen a Klingon before?”

“Kasidy Yates, where are you going?”  –For the Cause, Season 4  (Kasidy is Sisko’s boo)

“It’s not every day that you meet the girl you’re going to marry.” –Emissary, Season 1

“You betrayed your uniform!”  –For the Uniform, Season 5

“He played me all right. And what is my excuse? Is he a Changeling? No! Is he a being with seven lifetimes of experience? No! Is he a wormhole alien? No! He’s just a man, like me – arrgh! And he beat me!” –For the Uniform, Season 5

“Go on! Shoot me!”

“Do you know what the trouble is? The trouble is Earth. On Earth, there is no poverty, no crime, no war. You look out the window of Starfleet Headquarters and you see Paradise. Well, it’s easy to be a saint in Paradise.”  –The Maquis, part 2, Season 3

I could go on, but you get the idea.  Captain Benjamin Sisko is The Man.  More television shows should be bold enough to have characters like him, and write shows with as much depth and realism as Deep Space Nine.  It would certainly be a massive improvement to the dreck that inundates current TV.  Heaven knows I’d start watching it again.

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.

…

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.