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DS9 | 2.03

Just when I think I've found a new home and a new friend, it always seems like I gotta leave.

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was thinking about Julian "Jules Bashir died, you killed him!" Bashir and Elim "I once had a friend named Elim" Garak again and eventually got to thinking that Julian at least has Kukalaka as a tether to his child self, to "Jules." It's like the one facet of his past identity that he really holds on to and how it's kinda sad that Garak doesn't have something like that

And then I got to really thinking about it. Garak's Kukalaka is just the entire concept of Cardassia, isn't it? His dedication and constant praise to Cardassia as this idealized version of his home is the thing that he holds on to from his days as "Elim." I mean you can argue that the persona he puts on with the whole "A spy???? Who, meee????? Noooooo ;)" bit is his tether to his "Elim" identity but those two things are linked. The idea that Garak holds onto the concept of Cardassia the same way someone holds onto their childhood teddybear is just very striking to me. Except he can't literally hold onto it and take comfort in it the same way because. It's a concept. You can't hold a concept. It's not real.

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ID: painting of Julian and Garak in a bed with big fluffy pillows and thick blankets; only their heads peek out of the blankets. They face each other, eyes closed and faces content. Julian's teddy Kukalaka is on the blanket next to him. Below is the original painting, which is similar except with two humans with pale skin.

Garashir illustration based on a piece from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrecs series “In Bed” ! Reference is below! :-)

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So I was reading Siddig's biography on his fan page and it struck me that this guy was a small-gig theatre director in London before he did any acting. And he said he was fully planning to go back to it after any acting gigs because he didn't "trust acting–not for an exotic actor" like him (1990s? So fair). But y'all don't understand how funny this is to me.

Imagine you're desperate stage actor in an equally desperate production with an equally desperate director. You're all working for pennies. It's cool stuff, very free-spirited. But, y'know. Bills. Your director is also stupidly handsome. And apparently he's gone to acting school so it doesn't suprise anyone when he announces that he'll be gone for a few weeks to do a small acting gig. It's chill, the business is tough so good for him. He comes back and fully intends to just continue the pennies-work you've been doing. Then he's like "there's this other gig and the only other person in the running isn't even an actor so I might be cast lmao" and everyone gets a laugh and then he actually gets cast in this miniseries. And you're like 'damn my director is landing some acting on the side, if these huge brown eyes get snatched up we don't have a director anymore' and THEN

this BITCH get's talent-scouted by some dude from some hotshot American production company and everyone has heard of Paramount Television so next thing you know your director is throwing a farewell party with cheap cake and everyone's making jokes about how he'll be earning big bucks for a season or two and he better buy them better cake when he comes back because HE'S ALWAYS PLANNED ON COMING BACK

and for the next six years you watch your director slash mensware seller (he also takes shifts at the local bar) who lived off welfare like all of you did slide into The Star Trek Collective and prance around the screen in a tight little suit with blue shoulder pads. And sign autographs at conventions. There's even a fan magazine.

So what I'm asking is at what point was someone like "we should probably hire a new director"

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simple id: watercolor illustration of Jadzia Dax, Bashir, Benjamin Sisko, Kira Nerys, and Miles O'Brien in their outfits from Past Tense.

Welcome to the twenty first century, Doctor.

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ID: digital drawing on a white background of Garak and Bashir from the shoulders up, standing very close, Julian is smirking down at Garak asking "What do you think?" Garak glares upward, responding "I think it was a ploy, and not a very good one, Julian."

Wee christmas gift for @wanderingwriter87 - a line from their fic ‘a slight complication’ :)

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Knickknacks sold at Quark’s gift shop

Keychains in the shape of the station

Pictures of the wormhole with Sisko’s (forged) signature

Socks patterned with Cardassian voles 

T-shirts that say “I went to DS9 and all I got was this lousy shirt”

Emissary bobble-heads with Sisko’s (forged) signature

Fried tube grubs

Freeze-dried gagh (Worf does NOT approve)

T-shirts that say “I went to DS9 and all I got was a vision from the Prophets”

Culturally insensitive replicas of Bajoran earrings, but with DS9-shaped ornaments

Glittery postcards of the wormhole with Sisko’s (forged) signature

Containers of goop labeled as “Changeling Tears” (it’s just cornstarch and water)

T-shirts that say “I went to Terok Nor and all I got was aggressively corrected on its new name by a Bajoran Resistance veteran”

Trading cards of the senior staff (Nog secretly collects these)

T-shirts that say “I went to DS9 and all I got was my back blown out by this sexy beast” with a picture of Morn

Baseballs with Sisko’s (real) signature 

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ID: fanart of Nog in his starfleet uniform, leaning back against a wall with a "hang in there!" poster of a cat hanging from a tree branch. Nog is saying, "Oh motivational cat poster, we're really in it now [frowny emoji]"

i like to think rom got him a whole plethora of different motivational animal posters for moral support

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ID: gifset of Julian Bashir and Miles O'Brien in baseball pants and shirts, walking through the promenade chatting.

Julian: What are you eating?

Miles: I'm not eating. I'm chewing.

Julian: Chewing what?

Miles: Gum. It's traditional. I had the replicator make me some.

Julian: They just chewed it?

Miles: No, they infused the gum with flavor.

Julian: What did you infuse it with?

Miles: Scotch. Here, try some.

Julian accepts a piece, pops it in his mouth, and chews thoughtfully. Then says "mmmm" while nodding at Miles; then they continue walking

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine // S07E04: Take Me Out to the Holosuite

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Transcript because everyone deserves to enjoy this

(some ums, cut-off phrases etc. are edited out)

Siddig:

Stories about Andy Robinson. Ahh, god! *crowd laughs* Everyone thought Andy Robinson — the Garak character — and Julian Bashir for years were possibly a homosexual couple. *crowd laughs* And he actively encouraged that! That was actually all right! That was all right. Except it didn't leave much room for Bashir to do any stuff, you know?

But I don't really have many stories about Andy —

Nana Visitor:

You know, you just made me think, "I've gotta bring this bit" —

Siddig:

You got a good story about Andy?

Visitor:

No, I got a clip, an outtake that they sent me from one of the last shows we filmed of me not being able to keep a straight face —

Siddig:

Ohhhh, Andy's speech!

Visitor:

And Andy saying some waaay over-the-top line, saying it in typical Andy fashion. And it was too much for me. We were in the Cardassian hell(?) chamber and you know all of that, and I laughed.

I laughed take after take after take and he kept saying "Come on! Pull it together! Pull it together!"

And it was something like "We'll cut off the worm's head!" and it was like, it was really like —

Siddig (being completely wrong lol):

Ohh yes, I remember this scene! It was the scene where he was explaining how to eat worm!

Visitor:

No no no

Siddig:

Ah *crowd laughs*

Visitor:

About a time in the Cardassian thing, and —

Crowd member:

"Cut off the snake's head and the body will die."

Visitor:

*gleeful* "Cut off the snake's head and the body will die." Thank you very much, that's exactly the saying. In typical Andy, you know, really big — and he was committed to that line, both feet in, and it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard in my life. *crowd laughs*

Siddig:

To add one thing: people had to be really careful working with Andy, you always had to keep him in a good mood. Not because he was naturally an angry man, never! You meet him generally and he's like the sweetest guy you could ever meet. He's like a teddy bear, you push it over.

But once he's in that stuff — he's in literally a wetsuit glued to his body...he gets hotter and hotter. Andy has no heat retention capability whatsoever. *crowd laughs* Two minutes in that suit, he's like, *impressively good Andy impression* Okay, I'm gonna blow......Let's get this over with... *jerking his head back and forth in rage* Cut! Cut! *enraged sounds* *crowd laughs*

Every day, he's like a little powder keg, you gotta be a little careful with Andy; you can ask him about that. I think Wednesday I'm doing something with Andy and I don't know if you're gonna be there but if you are, ask him that. *clenched teeth* "Andy's gonna blow...Andy's gonna blow everybody" — and he did, often.

Visitor:

Oh yeah.

Siddig:

*pretending to be Andy "blowing" again*

Visitor:

And when he blows, he blows big-time — but a lot of people did, in the makeup — it gets to you after a while. When I was a Cardassian for twenty hours, I was in this makeup, I started to say to the director — I do not do this, I am professional — I started to pull at it and say "That was it, that was your last take"

This is a clip from a YouTube upload by Mary Knasinski of Sid and Nana in Missouri in 2000. They are asked about working with Andy and Nana recounts an outtake of being unable to stop laughing to get a scene done with Andy that then irritates him because (as Sid says) for Garak he was “in a wetsuit glued to his body” and he can’t stand the heat, thus he wants to get his scenes done as soon as possible so he can get out of costume. Sid then goes on to give THE best impersonation of an angry and irritated Andy that only a best friend can do so wonderfully.

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Something I love about DS9’s framing of Jake Sisko is how he’s consistently positioned as someone worthy of protection, whose survival and flourishing and emotional well-being are of tantamount importance, and whose innocence and vulnerability are precious.

It’s present from all directions in The Visitor. Everybody protectively closes ranks around Jake upon Ben’s disappearance, with those little moments of Dax and Kira and Bashir giving him physical affection and reassurance and Quark going out of his way to be nice to him. Jake’s older self’s protective impulses towards his younger self, as well as his desire to save his father, are the basis for the timeline reset. And then after the spacetime continuum gets wrenched back in line purely to save Jake from the emotional trauma of losing his father, the episode ends with Ben, who’s borne witness to everything and is the only one who remembers it all, continuing that work of shielding Jake from that knowledge.

And then Nor the Battle to the Strong carries on the thread of protectiveness towards Jake, in that case as part of the episode’s deconstruction of military heroism. As he’s marinating in shame over bailing on the mission to retrieve the generator, Bashir apologizes to him and says he was wrong to put Jake in harm’s way in the first place. And then at the end, he wakes up after sealing the cave entranceway and both Bashir and his father are tenderly looking after him, with similar imagery to The Visitor in terms of him being symbolically cradled by the other cast members’ concern for him. He never needs to toughen up or grow out of that need to be rescued - in fact, his fear and panic and feelings of being out of his depth prove to be immensely valuable, as his last conversation with his father emphasizes, because he’s able to bear witness to the experience of the soldiers through his writing.

That comes through in a really interesting way in Valiant as well, with Jake’s emphatic concern for his own survival in the midst of all the culty militaristic weirdness of the Valiant crew:

Nog: You don’t understand, because you’ve never put on one of these uniforms. You don’t know anything about sacrifice, or honor, or duty, or any other things that make up a soldier’s life. I’m part of something larger than myself. All you care about is you.

Jake: That’s right. All I care about is Jake Sisko and whether or not he’s going to be killed by a bunch of delusional fanatics looking for martyrdom.

And I love that exchange not only because it’s a rare articulation of how I would actually feel in a situation like that in a franchise full of characters who are all prepared to sacrifice themselves in the line of duty, but also because in the context of the episode, Jake’s position is actually the heroic one! It’s his sense of self-preservation, and the fact that he hasn’t romanticized the notion of heroic sacrifice, that enables him to see through the dogmatic ideology of the Valiant cadets and recognize how dangerously out of their depth they are. And it’s just a nice articulation of his own worth.

(And of course the Defiant rescues them at the end, because Jake’s grown up now, but he hasn’t outgrown needing his father to save him. And that’s never a shameful thing, but a really beautiful thing, and necessary to the fabric of the show.)

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Literally just choked on my coffee at this caption.

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its the ferengi equivalent of a bow of respect but incredibly rushed because he's trying to save his soon to be ex-wife but still has to be obeisant

OH you're right! I didn't recognize it because it's rushed lol.

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ID: quark in long robes stands in front of a glowing red X, quickly pauses to dip at the knees while bringing his hands up in a lackluster Ferengi respectful greeting, wrists not quite connecting, before he dashes through a doorway towards the foreground

He's like an anime girl to me

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Garak: I call my husband Bambi—he thinks it’s because he’s cute with his big brown eyes. Little does he know, I want someone to shoot his parents with a rifle.

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really fascinated by how betazoid-vulcan diplomacy would work as two supremely different telepathic species. the touch telepaths with an intense culture of repression and secrecy vs the most free wheeling shameless least secretive species in the galaxy that has a tradition of nude weddings. if a vulcan accidentally made skin-to-skin contact with a betazoid it would be the psychic equivalent of a flash bang going off.