My Thesis, But in Space

Odd I always think of Kira as a redhead--and having read plenty of Kira/Dax fic on AO3 I know I’m not alone in this--when Nana Visitor’s hair is actually quite dark for for 3 out of 7 seasons. She’s just a cultural redhead, I guess. Assigned-ginger-at-first-onscreen-appearance-shouting-at-someone. Selective memory is weird. 

Totally got clocked by another Trekkie who spotted my Bajoran earring and the Kira sticker on my purse...first time in the wild. Felt like a snow leopard running into another snow leopard on the edge of my territory. Like you know the DS9 people are out there, because they leave little marks (I’m particularly fond of the “Bell Riots 2024″ campaign sticker on a bin in the park) but you don’t expect to meet one in line at the ice cream shop.

Anyway, solidarity fellow Kira fan, whoever you are. Hope you eventually convince your boyfriend to watch something other than TOS. 

Ok, while I’m on this kick of praising early-season DS9, I would like to humbly nominate this scene for the category of Best in Series. Or at least, like, top ten. Right up there with “So I lied. I cheated...” and “It’s insidious. Like the Federation.” I mean, the Marx Brothers patter? Inspired. Nana Visitor’s delivery? Immaculate. And most importantly, the way it gives every lead but Sisko--who gets his due in the next scene--a two- or three-line spotlight that captures something essential about who they are:

Odo’s commitment to a clear, absolute morality that transcends formal laws (“You have a code.”)

Jadzia’s mix of carefully-cultivated emotional pragmatism (“This is Kira’s decision to make”) and self-protective humor (”Well that’s rather dull”)

Bashir’s determination to be In the Thick of It even when he’s struggling to keep up (“Will someone please explain this conversation to me?”)

O’Brien’s habit of expressing deep feeling through awkward diffidence (“it’s been a pleasure serving with you”)

Quark's performative sleaze (”For you I’d have reduced my catering rates”) and pattern of trying to bond with people by baiting them

And of course the way Kira’s eyes and mouth and shoulders soften, heartbreakingly, in the little breath before she says, “These are my friends.” 

It’s SO GOOD, it’s all so good, and you will never convince me otherwise.

Okay all right since you asked here’s why I think it is not inherently insane to enjoy “Move Along Home”: 

First off, it’s ridiculous. Let’s get that out of the way right now. I happen to like ridiculousness in my Star Trek, so an episode being fundamentally dumb as hell in no way puts me off.

What I DO care about, to an obnoxious degree, is an episode’s politics. Politics in the capacious sense: how is this episode situated within the world of the franchise and within our world, what social narratives is it challenging or reifying, deliberately or inadvertently? And on that front? “Move Along Home” interests me. 

See, a lot of the standard snark about it--even from the showrunners--boils down to “they weren’t in any danger, so what was the point?” And my take is, the fact that they weren’t in any danger is the point. Falow never claims that losing pieces in the game means losing players in real life. That’s entirely Quark’s and Odo’s assumption, based on the ridiculous violence they’ve been subjected to on a regular basis since Starfleet moved in and, I would imagine, the pattern of random, spectacular, gratuitous terror the Cardassians deployed as a display of sovereignty. And we as viewers assume that Quark’s and Odo’s perception is accurate because we, too, regard ridiculous violence as part of the Star Trek status quo. We’ve internalized that narrative, that expectation of tension and release-when-it-all-works-out. So if we’re disappointed when it doesn’t resolve the way we expect it to, that IS, in fact, a point.   

And I think the episode sets this up with the cold open of Sisko fussing over his “official” First Contact ceremony. He’s still early in his command here, and shouldering a level of responsibility Starfleet brass made perfectly clear they never wanted him to have, so the fussing makes sense. And the Wadi prove totally uninterested in what the command staff (and we viewers) of as momentous. We expect “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” and we get “where are the games?” 

Then, too, there’s one of my favorite early-season Kira lines: “I’m a Bajoran administrator. This is NOT what I signed up for!” In substance, it deeply informs the way I read Kira’s character. Even more than Odo and Quark, her life has been shaped by violence--grinding, everyday, inescapable violence--and there’s no thrill in it for her. She’s actually passionate about things like docking schedules, because that’s what Bajoran sovereignty looks like. And I love that. I love it when someone says something fetishistic about her martial prowess and she looks them in the eye and is just like, yes, but I chose to be a bureaucrat (see also: “Return to Grace.”) So I love the way she serves as Sisko’s foil this episode, first in the first-contact scenario, then, later, as they work to get Dax out of the cave.

Anyway, look, I will never suggest that “Move Along Home” is An Good Episode. Yes the premise is wild and yes the dialogue is leaden and yes the main cast chews their way through the incongruously expensive-looking sets like a bunch of beavers with an Adderall habit but. BUT. Season 1′s Good Episodes are good because they unpick assumptions about what the Federation is, and what Star Trek is. And “Move Along Home” is a meaningful contribution to that project, space mullets and all.  

My favorite thing about Kira’s habit of Sitting Weird(TM)--other than the fact that it looks cool and lets her inhabit her body and space in a way women on TV are rarely allowed to--is the way it flows logically from her backstory. I mean, this is somebody who spent the first twenty-six years of her life sitting on the ground. At one point in S7 she even makes a crack about how they never had chairs in the camp’s religious school. So it makes sense that she’d sit in any way that feels comfortable, rather than sticking to the both-feet-on-the-floor Anglo-American chair etiquette most of the Starfleet folks seem to have internalized (well, I guess we see Dax with her boots propped up on the console a few times, too, but Dax is a rebel.)

Anyway, I don’t know if Nana Visitor was thinking about that backstory when she was first working out Kira’s body language, or if she and the writers made the connection later. But it was a great choice either way.

And either way--I cannot stress enough--it looks cool.