Spoilers Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

[Willie the Duck]

When a LGBTQ friend pointed out to me that Garak was 'obviously' attracted to Bashir their interactions hit in a completely different way for me. Even better, from a story perspective, as it gave an explanation to a lot of behaviour.
EDIT - I put obviously in quotes because to me, a straight white male, it just went right over my head.

Such a complicated set of relationships. There's obvious attraction between Julian and Garak, and meanwhile O'Brien is married to Keiko, but Julian and Miles are the true power couple of DS9.

A true bromance for the ages.

{'IMO' of course}
Bashir and O'Brien fit very well as the stereotypical roommates/buddy cops who act like an old married couple and may in some ways be a metaphor for marriage, but aren't really a romantic dynamic (exemplified by The Odd Couple and spoofed by Scrubs).

Bashir and Garak fit* much better as a subtle romance story. Garak is the not-so-closeted gay character, while Bashir vacillates between straight object of desire, closeted, and doesn't-realize-they're-gay** characterization, depending on when in the series we're discussing. I know they (the actors) kinda stumbled into it when they realized that Bashir had no chemistry with Terry Farrell***'s Jadzia Dax but did have it with Garak. Also that as they ratcheted it up, Berman and Behr caught on and told them to tone it down. It's interesting to see them work within the confines of what they could get away with.
*And of course all this is subtextual, done more by the actors than the showrunners, and in no way official (but that works for a gay love story in the 90s). **Another very 90s trope. ***side note: if you can find the footage of Farrell as a gender-swapped The Cat in the aborted American re-make of Red Dwarf's pilot-reshoot, it is well worth your time.

While I love the Bashir/Garak dynamic for its transgressive qualities and the work-within-limits aesthetic, I kinda still the Bashir/O'Brien vibes more. Perhaps because tv and movies so often does male friendships so poorly, or maybe it's just a subtextual gay romance is superseded at this point. Either way, they make a great male buddy pair.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I just finished a full watch of all seasons of DS9 (usually while cooking or washing dishes) and it's an incredibly special show to me. There are a few things that really make the show stand out to me:

1) Character Relationships

This is an obvious one, but the way this show focuses on the relationships between characters, and didn't reset the relationship each week was really astounding. Odo and Quark, Julian and Miles, Julian and Garak, Worf and Dax, Sisko and Dax, Kira and Dax... The list goes on and on. There was an amazing web of relationships between all the characters, and the 20+ episode seasons really helped give them room to grow.

2) The Utopia

Though DS9 is one of the first Star Treks to question the Federation, the spirit of optimism was rarely dampened. Even when the characters were struggling with Section 31, it was clear that these corrupting influences were the bad guys and shouldn't be necessary in the ideal state of the Federation.

I was really blown away by the series of episodes in which Sisko and the others return to Earth to help shore up defenses against the Changelings. There's suspense, surprises, a coup... And it's all solved through talking. It's an amazing continuation of the spirit of Next Generation while also allowing the ideals to mature and be questioned.

3) Connections to the Past

I found it really touching and also refreshing how much the show used real-world conflicts to both inspire and explore the ideals of the Federation. I'm going to avoid politics here, but I'll say I was really struck by some of the ways the show called out the inequalities of our recent past. There's an episode where everyone is teaming up to save Vic Fontaine's holosuite lounge, and when Sisko tells the reasons he doesn't want to participate... Well it's a reminder that this show has both eyes open.


Overall, DS9 has a special place in my heart because the characters are allowed to be human (even if they're not, strictly, human). They're allowed to fail and fight with each other and grow and fall in love, and they never let each other give up that core flame of optimism and hope no matter how grim the Alpha Quadrant can become. It's a lovely show and I'm thankful for it!

 

[Ryujin]

For me, it was the first series to take Roddenberry’s utopian idea seriously because it ditched the ridiculous notion that everyone just got along all the time.

I discovered Prisoners of Gravity on YouTube a few years ago through an interview with various writers on the topic of Utopia. It looked like my kind of show. For some reason the line that stuck out was from Alan Moore. “Utopia, if it’s going to be anything, is going to be a verb rather than a noun. Utopia is not a state that you achieve. Utopia has got to be the journey towards that state. If you ever arrive at that state of perfection, then you’ve reached death and stagnation.”

To me, switching Roddenberry’s utopia from a noun to a verb, as seen in DS9, is exactly why it works so much better than what came before. And because of the cast, crew, writers, stories, etc it works better than most of what came after.

I think that I posted a link to "Prisoners of Gravity", some time back. It was a great show and the interviews they managed to get, for a tiny little Canadian educational TV channel programme, were insane.

Roddenberry's semi-utopia isn't a dumb idea, but you can definitely play with it around the fringes, where other stellar nations intersect. DS9 is a Bajoran station, administered by the Federation, and a meeting place for a large number star empires and independent worlds. It's the Star Trek version of Babylon 5. (Straczynski reportedly pitched the idea to Paramount, first)

 

[Ryujin]

***side note: if you can find the footage of Farrell as a gender-swapped The Cat in the aborted American re-make of Red Dwarf's pilot-reshoot, it is well worth your time.

Wash your mouth out! I've seen both American versions and they should die in a fire. For one, they had no idea what the UK slang they were using actually meant.

 

[overgeeked]

I think that I posted a link to "Prisoners of Gravity", some time back. It was a great show and the interviews they managed to get, for a tiny little Canadian educational TV channel programme, were insane.

Yeah. I remembered the gist of the quote and remembered I'd posted about it here, so did a quick search, and found it in your thread. That bit is copy & pasted from there.

Roddenberry's semi-utopia isn't a dumb idea, but you can definitely play with it around the fringes, where other stellar nations intersect. DS9 is a Bajoran station, administered by the Federation, and a meeting place for a large number star empires and independent worlds. It's the Star Trek version of Babylon 5.

The utopia isn't dumb, no. The idea that at some point humans will reach a state of absolute non-confrontation and no interpersonal conflicts of any kind is utterly ridiculous. All the high tech, warp speed, transporters, replicators, forehead aliens that look mostly like us, post-scarcity, fully automatic luxury gay space communism stuff is absolutely believable by comparison.

(Straczynski reportedly pitched the idea to Paramount, first)

JMS absolutely did submit the idea to them first. He's got documentation that proves it. He ultimately decided that suing them wasn't worth the time or trouble. There are so many parallels between the shows it's kinda obvious large elements of DS9 were straight lifted from B5.

 

[MarkB]

{'IMO' of course}
Bashir and O'Brien fit very well as the stereotypical roommates/buddy cops who act like an old married couple and may in some ways be a metaphor for marriage, but aren't really a romantic dynamic (exemplified by The Odd Couple and spoofed by Scrubs).

Bashir and Garak fit* much better as a subtle romance story. Garak is the not-so-closeted gay character, while Bashir vacillates between straight object of desire, closeted, and doesn't-realize-they're-gay** characterization, depending on when in the series we're discussing. I know they (the actors) kinda stumbled into it when they realized that Bashir had no chemistry with Terry Farrell***'s Jadzia Dax but did have it with Garak. Also that as they ratcheted it up, Berman and Behr caught on and told them to tone it down. It's interesting to see them work within the confines of what they could get away with.
*And of course all this is subtextual, done more by the actors than the showrunners, and in no way official (but that works for a gay love story in the 90s). **Another very 90s trope. ***side note: if you can find the footage of Farrell as a gender-swapped The Cat in the aborted American re-make of Red Dwarf's pilot-reshoot, it is well worth your time.

While I love the Bashir/Garak dynamic for its transgressive qualities and the work-within-limits aesthetic, I kinda still the Bashir/O'Brien vibes more. Perhaps because tv and movies so often does male friendships so poorly, or maybe it's just a subtextual gay romance is superseded at this point. Either way, they make a great male buddy pair.

While I agree that Julian and Miles's relationship is definitely bromance rather than romance, they do make it clear that it's a very deep bromance, especially in the "you like me a bit more" scene when they're invading Sloane's mind.

 

[Ryujin]

Yeah. I remembered the gist of the quote and remembered I'd posted about it here, so did a quick search, and found it in your thread. That bit is copy & pasted from there.

The utopia isn't dumb, no. The idea that at some point humans will reach a state of absolute non-confrontation and no interpersonal conflicts of any kind is utterly ridiculous. All the high tech, warp speed, transporters, replicators, forehead aliens that look mostly like us, post-scarcity, fully automatic luxury gay space communism stuff is absolutely believable by comparison.

JMS absolutely did submit the idea to them first. He's got documentation that proves it. He ultimately decided that suing them wasn't worth the time or trouble. There are so many parallels between the shows it's kinda obvious large elements of DS9 were straight lifted from B5.

Remember, we're primarily dealing with elite members of a paramilitary organization. Interpersonal conflicts are frowned upon. The Federation's standards of behaviour would start to crack a bit when dealing with regular citizens and, definitely, when dealing with alien cultures that don't operate by the Federation's standards. That's why DS9 can be so chaotic, while not contradicting the idea of the Federation.

 

[jian]

But there’s also plenty of evidence that the ideas for DS9 precede JMS’ pitch. I like both shows but I greatly prefer DS9, because it takes a utopian setting and shows us how it might actually work realistically and how humans as we know them might learn and change in such a space.

Babylon 5 is darker, more gritty, and not even slightly utopian, and that’s all fine but doesn’t hold much interest for me. And honestly I don’t think the shows are at all similar, apart from the basic setting of “humans and aliens on a space station”.

 

[payn]

My favorite Miles and Bashear episode is the one where the Jem'hadar soldier was immune from white addiction. Julian is trying to find out how and help them. Miles is like eff that and destroys the research. In the shuttle on the wya back to DS9, Miles asks if he wants to play tennis or whatever this week. Bashear is working through it and is like, "na, maybe in a week or two" which O'Brien is fine taking.

 

[payn]

Remember, we're primarily dealing with elite members of a paramilitary organization. Interpersonal conflicts are frowned upon. The Federation's standards of behaviour would start to crack a bit when dealing with regular citizens and, definitely, when dealing with alien cultures that don't operate by the Federation's standards. That's why DS9 can be so chaotic, while not contradicting the idea of the Federation.

The most important bit is they humanized the aliens and their conflicts in DS9. Most stories in previous series were just one dimensional to serve up a weekly story for the exceptional crew to work through.