#ds9 talk

[fatalism-and-villainy]

One thing I really like and find personally resonant about Julian Bashir is the fact that he's filled with passion and curiosity and enthusiasm but is also a judgmental hater. Responding to the new Defiant with "I hate the carpet." Responding to Jadzia saying "What I want is Worf" with "Why?" It's a pettiness distinct from his righteous anger over genuine injustice and it really speaks to me.

[dandelionbookwyrm]

do you ship… miles/keiko/kira ds9?

I had to think about this one.

One: I absolutely ship Miles & Keiko, and I think adding Kira to their dynamic could be fun. It's just that there isn't a lot of canon to base off what their interactions would be. In theory, I like it, though.

Two: I do enjoy how Miles & Keiko bounce off each other, and the growing respect between Miles & Kira was nice to see. I just wish that there'd been more interactions between Kira & Keiko, particularly given how the three of them lived together for a while. All that potential for slice of life cuteness! I missed that in the later DS9 seasons.

Three: Hmm, honestly I think me being a fence-sitter regarding this ship is an unpopular opinion.

Thanks for asking- sorry for replying a day late!

[thegrabowskis]

*mike voice* this is just like that episode of Star Trek DS9

[fatalism-and-villainy]

There’s a post about how we need more female characters who genuinely care about people but are really bad at caregiving, and honestly that fits Kira Nerys really well. I’m thinking of Starship Down where she’s tasked with looking after Sisko and keeping him conscious when he has a head injury, and she just starts visibly flailing despite making an effort to hold it together. “Listen up…. because there’s going to be a test later” and then trying to keep him alert by droning on about duty rosters because she gets Task-Oriented when things are in dire straits and does not know how to scale things to a more personal level with someone she has a working relationship with.

Like, so much of how she deals with emotionally fraught situations is by getting up and doing something about them (even so far as traveling back in time) or just keeping busy to avoid dwelling on the matter at hand. When her father was dying, her response was to go out and kill some Cardassians about it, and then order another attack upon his death, rather than sit by his bedside. When Bareil died (pre-resurrection via mad scientist noodling) she went right back to work despite Bashir telling her she didn’t have to. It is a trauma mindset from someone who witnessed a lot of death and suffering and had no choice but to pick up and keep moving and keep fighting. And when she has to sit down and really focus on someone else’s vulnerability, it’s very uncomfortable for her. She cares very deeply about the people around her but she’s clumsy about it.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Julian/Ezri is just baffling in general because it is so rich in concept! There’s the fact that they both have medical trauma, but from procedures they either consented to or have reason to feel as if they “should” be grateful for; there’s the fact that Julian was the one who made the call to separate Jadzia from the symbiont and thus has reason to feel indirectly responsible for Ezri being joined, and Ezri in turn has an association between Julian and her memories of Jadzia’s traumatic death; the potential for them both to be driven to know Jadzia better through each other, while never being able to fully grasp who she was and how others perceived her; etc. And yet next to none of this actually comes up in the writing of their relationship. Strong evidence that nobody in the DS9 writers room had the soul of a pervert.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

To elaborate on what I said here - One of the most compelling aspects of Julian Bashir’s character to me is the confluence of power and powerlessness.

It is absolutely significant to Julian Bashir’s character that his mind and body are repeatedly violated. His very conception of his identity revolves around his childhood medical trauma, which was enacted by his parents in order to make him a more suitable son. This is an experience he feels literally made him into a different person. Throughout the run of the show, he also experiences repeated kidnapping, imprisonment, and torture, as well as Section 31 treating him as nothing more than a tool to advance their agenda, and using and exploiting him for their own ends.

However, he also - for the most immediate example - has significant power over others’ bodies and minds through his choice of career. (Not to mention that being a medical officer in Starfleet grants him a limited degree of autonomy within the command structure.) And there is a risk of him abusing that power for his own personal reasons, which is most obviously dramatized in “Chrysalis.”

What’s more, these two elements of his character are, in fact, intimately intertwined. This is perhaps most apparent in his explanation to Dax as to what motivated him to become a doctor, in a line often cited as one that takes on a new meaning post-augmentation reveal:

BASHIR: They seemed to know everything. It was as if they held the power of life and death in their hands. I used to think that if I didn't behave, they'd make sure I got sick. Then as I got older, I decided that I wanted to know what they knew, be as smart as they were. DAX: And that's why you went to medical school? BASHIR: That's right. And you know what I learned there? That all I really wanted to do was help people. That's what doctors are there for, to help. So there's really no reason to be afraid of them.

Bashir’s motivation to help people is one of his most commonly recognized traits in fandom (and in broader criticism as well). But what he initially identifies as one of his motives in studying medicine is - very explicitly! - about the desire for power, specifically power through knowledge. While I’ve expressed trepidation about retroactively reading some lines from him through the augment reveal, this is a line that I think gains additional significance through the later introduction of the backstory of his experience with medical trauma. But that context doesn’t particularly alter my reading of the line, either, because the character work is still pretty much the same without it: Bashir was afraid of a specific kind of authority figure, and strove to conquer that fear by obtaining that same power and authority and use it in ways in alignment with his own values.

Of course, helping people is also a strong drive for him. But it’s interesting to me that, the way this exchange is structured, he offers that not only as a way of soothing Dax’s medical anxiety but as a corrective to his earlier fear of doctors. (And, if read in relation to the augmentation reveal, he learned that he wanted to help people… in contrast to the doctors who traumatized him. Sharply differentiating himself from those who abuse their power is very important to his self-image as well.) Because his childhood fear that doctors would make him sick as a punishment wasn’t coming from nowhere - doctors really can do that! Having the power to help and heal necessitates also having the power to cause harm. That’s the nature of power from knowledge, and power from institutional access to resources.

That is to say that obtaining power is not only central to Julian Bashir’s character (and obviously wrapped up in his generally being ego-driven and constantly striving for excellence), but that he has an impulse to do so in response to being stripped of power. That impulse is also present in his interactions with Sloan in “Extreme Measures,” in which he takes considerable satisfaction in enacting the exact same form of torture and violation on Sloan that Sloan enacted on him.

This, in my opinion, is an understudied part of his character, and I think that’s at least in part because our cultural model for people who grasp at power as a means of compensating for their own powerlessness often involves those people being villainous or cruel. It’s the image of an abuser from an abusive background, or the school bully who’s powerless in their home life. For a Star Trek example, it’s Gul Madred from “Chain of Command,” the torturer who was once a starving six-year-old boy. It’s less common to recognize that motive in a character who is genuinely heroic and benevolent in their intentions (even though heroism is itself a power fantasy, and one in which Julian Bashir explicitly indulges).

(I think another factor here is that many people do not instinctively model “care” as a manifestation of power - and thus, potential violence. “He’s motivated by caring for people” and “he’s motivated by having power over people’ are not mutually exclusive, and in fact can be one and the same. “Having power over people” is not necessarily a bad thing! But it does require vigilance.)

[fatalism-and-villainy]

You know, for all the complaints I see about Garak being "overrated" in DS9 fandom, I actually feel like I see relatively little discussion of Garak outside of the context of Garashir. Shitposts and silly headcanons, sometimes, but not much in the way of serious and lengthy analysis. I'd actually be very interested in seeing more commentary on Garak through the lens of fascism, imperialism, intelligence work and state-sanctioned torture, queerness and masculinity, etc.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

"Inquisition" is absolutely stellar as an acting showcase for Alexander Siddig. The part where he's braced against the wall of his holding cell before sliding to the floor and the wall is just taking all his weight, the way his defiant demeanor slips and he starts stammering "I don't remember" when the holographic Weyoun confronts him and you can see the cracks showing through, little moments like that. What was most impressive to me, though, was the first time Sloan interrogates him and is still using his Good Cop approach, and Bashir says, "I half suspected that I would be interrogated under a very bright light." It's delivered in a very jovial tone, like he's making friendly rapport, but you can see him clenching his teeth a bit behind his smile, and it's apparent that he's still quite on edge and distrustful and contemptuous towards Sloan. Siddig adds so many subtle touches like that to his performances and it's so captivating.