DS9: Looking for par’Mach...
So, on the technical filmmaking side of the equation(the acting, the pacing, etc) this was a good ep, but everything else about it I didn’t like.
To begin with, the whole Cyrano de Bergerac trope is just gross. It’s tricking a woman into having sex with a man, because the man doing the tricking is bitter and resentful of his own inability to approach her, or his previous rejection. And, if the other man’s, the one she’s being seduced for, natural demeanor is so off-putting to her, then won’t he become intolerable to her the minute his romantic note-cribbing ends anyway? It’s just bad, in a moral sense, and folks need to move away from it towards a more self-improvement and consensual version of romantic mentorship stories.
Secondly Worf wouldn’t deceive a non-enemy for any reason other than to hide an injury/weakness or because it was the only beneficial(to the deceived) solution to a difficult situation, let alone someone he admired, let alone someone he was attracted to, let alone for so petty and selfish a reason as to prove he knows how to woo conventional Klingon women because someone questioned if he could. And, even with an enemy, how he’d use deception would be limited; he might disguise himself to get close enough to challenge an enemy, but he’d never attack them without warning or from behind, or from cloak unless the tactical situation dictated that such an advantage was necessary(he’s outnumbered&outgunned, stuff like that). In fact this is part of DS9′s(and 90s Trek’s in general) argument about Worf not being Klingon enough; that his concept of Honor, and how he relates loyalty to it(but that’s a different post), is more “human” than “Klingon”; that, whereas a conventional Klingon’s view of Honor is more interested in outcome(achieving victory) and social-status, Worf’s is more interested in personal moral character and how one acts(ethics)[1].
But anyway, I just found it unbelievable that Worf would pull a Cyrano on Grelka just to help Quark, a person he despises, get laid, and to salve his wounded pride. It’s completely out of character. If they’d wanted to do this storyline they should have presented it in a way that allowed it to be an honorable thing to do from Worf’s perspective. Perhaps if Quark’s interest was genuine rather than just Lust, had been established before hand, and had been a source of bonding for Worf and Quark, and Grelka made her interest in Quark clear to Worf, and she came to him asking him to teach Quark the forms he needed to follow to pursue her without creating problems for her with her House, or with wider Klingon society, then it would have been more believable/acceptable. They also did a really terrible job of tying that all in with Jadzia’s interest in Worf[2], which I kinda feel like they should have tried to parallel in this episode. Like: while Worf is mentoring Quark, Jadzia’s advice to Worf ought to be her trying to mentor Him in wooing Her, or maybe they could have replaced the frankly awful Miles/Kira subplot with Grelka mentoring Jadzia about how to woo Worf(I would have LOVED this and, while a previously established friendship via Quark would also be appreciated, I think Grelka’s the sort that having Jadzia strike up a friendship with her in this ep, for this purpose, wouldn’t feel completely out of character).
Which brings me to the part that I REEEAAALLY hated about this ep. Just to be clear, the handling of Keiko and Visitor’s pregnancies in general is horrible. I’m not going to go into the whole thing because that, also, is Another Post, but it’s just bad, poorly conceived, a crummy concept, and frankly unnecessary given Kira’s relationship with Shakaar, her previous relationship with Bareil, and the undefined process and nature of Bajoran reproduction before these eps[3].
What, specifically, about DS9′s handling of this plot-arc in this episode[4] annoys me, is the Miles/Kira subplot they introduce, all the snide, snickering, puerile commentary written around it coming from the other characters in this ep, and the gross and mean decision to write Keiko as culpable for Miles’s “straying” emotions for, in her obliviousness to their growing attraction, urging them into intimate situations.
Like so many character-beats in this series, this just comes entirely out of left-field. There’s no indication before this episode of any romantic or sexual interests between Miles and Kira, or one-sided from either of them towards the other. Introducing the subplot through Quark and Julian eavesdropping on the O’Briens’ Quarters is just a gross choice. Odo’s sarcastic needling of Kira is particularly galling given his feelings for her, and just ended up coming off as bitterness to me. Julian’s comments to Miles on the topic are also weird and, given how important Miles’s marriage has been to his characterization up to this point, inappropriate, even as teasing from a friend. Not to mention that his previous jealousy about Keiko makes Miles’s interest in Kira particularly skeevy. Then to have Miles and Kira keep Keiko entirely in the dark about it, rather than just explaining that they want some time apart(and, better, why), is both annoying and not terribly in keeping with the whole “24th Century Humanity is less emotionally constipated” concept that Trek is supposed to be partially about.
And it’s all made more annoying by the fact that they could have done something much more interesting and funny by just having Miles/Keiko/Kira be a poly relationship. Like; they could have had the two of them being super stressed out about this issue for most of the episode, then confess it to Keiko, and have her be like, “Well, those feelings don’t HAVE to be a problem, you know, and why didn’t you ask me how I felt about this?”, and the three talk it out, and have a friendly and mutually satisfying fling throughout the pregnancy. Or, they could have started writing a Keiko/Kira arc earlier in the series(maybe from the very beginning; maybe they bond over a mutual interest in plant biology, or they work together on the numerous agricultural reclamation projects Kira’s always being stuck with and that grows into a friendship, and just keeps growing), and have the culmination of it being Keiko wanting to bring Kira into her marriage with Miles, which then leads to Kira’s pregnancy, rather than what they did(I mean, they knew about Visitor’s pregnancy for months before they decided to do this stupid transfer business). Rather than giving us this odious hetero- and mononormative episode, we could have had one funny ep subverting those expectations and tropes, or a whole series of episodes stretching back multiple seasons exploring relationship-forms that were(and are still today) discouraged as a result of cultural hangups.
