#. lenara kahn

[aenslem]

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (1993–1999) ⤷ Rejoined

[startrekladies]

Doctor Pren would probably have a heart attack. Forget about him, my brother's head would explode.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine│4x05 - Rejoined

[evviejo]

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE // S4E6 Rejoined What do you want to do? Throw myself at her, profess my undying love and my complete disregard for Trill society. A joke Lenara made at the reception. Doesn't sound so funny anymore, does it?

[trillscienceofficer]

from Sci-Fi Universe magazine, October 1996

KISS ME DEADLY: In REJOINED, one of the season's finest episodes, a kiss proved to be more than just a kiss

Maybe it's another sign of format maturity, but the modern Trek era has never seen anything like the controversy that erupted over the airing of DS9's Rejoined, which takes the science fiction story opportunity made possible by Dax's Trill host/symbiont race and twists it into a social comment on sexual orientation Gene Roddenberry would have been proud to call his own.

"Last July," begins Terry Farrell, whose Dax character is at the heart of the story, "Rick Berman called and asked me if I would kiss a woman, and at that point I guess I didn't take it that seriously. I said, 'Yeah, as long as she's beautiful I don't care!'

"And then it spurred me to thinking about it before it actually happened, and I felt bad I had been so flip, because I didn't realize how serious a love story it would be—and how nervous I would be about it, really want to be sure I'm honest and I'm doing the story justice, and I really want people to talk about it and think about it afterward. It really meant a lot to me.

"I think it's really important to love people for who they are, and spiritually it was a great show for me too, because it just reinforces that all of us—whether we want to admit it or not—can really be judgmental at times. That was a really important show to say, to the smallest degree, you've got to remember that people's lives are always so much more complicated than you think they are."

"We had a lot of advance buzz, but we also sat on that show a bit,' adds producer Steve Oster, who recalled the flap in 1969 when Kirk and Uhura made history with television's interracial kiss in Plato's Stepchildren. In fact, the show didn't go looking for attention.

"Because it had a kiss in it, and because of the Roseanne hoopla a few years ago (concerning the high-profile star's on-screen lesbian kiss), our publicity people wanted to have them come over and take pictures of 'the famous kiss scene,' have a news crew like Entertainment Tonight there—and we opted not to do that for a couple of reasons.

"For one thing, because we didn't want to become the Roseanne issue where stations were deciding not to air it, and secondly, to Rick's credit, he did not want to make that what the episode was about. It was not about two characters kissing—it was not about making that a tantalizing factor of the episode."

As directed by Avery Brooks, the episode maintained a remarkably naturalistic feel through the acting of all concerned, including Farrell and guest star Susanna Thompson.

"They chose to play it as real, as we would any other scene with those emotions going on: not 'Okay, a girl is going to kiss a girl,' but it was 'This is someone you were in love with before and you still are,' and that's the arc of the scene. It was not about the kiss," says Oster.

"I think we were trying to be as realistic as possible," Farrell agrees. "Really, the only scene I remember going way out and pulling back was the last scene were I give her the ultimatum—where Avery let me basically go all out and cry my eyes out and then pull me back. So that was the only time I remember going from one extreme to the other, trying a range; otherwise it was pretty natural."

In fact, the scene with Sisko was one of the easiest to play, she revealed, because of the natural affinity she feels tor Brooks, the actor. "He was so supportive of me during the first year of DS9 when it was really difficult for me, he was the only one who reached out and really made me feel comfortable, and tried to help me build my self-confidence and self-esteem in really healthy way," she says. "So I felt like I didn't need to do a lot of homework."

Farrell reveals that, in fact, the hardest scene for her as an actress was the moment in which Dax and Lenara Kahn realize at dinner, without voicing it directly, that they are still in love. Aside from the new situation of seeing Dax giddy like that, Farrell recalled it was the first day of shooting on the episode. "I felt a little uncomfortable and was feeling nervous about the whole thing," she says, "and I remember trying to make her comfortable at the same time."

The chemistry that sparked between Farrell and Thompson—finally out from under the makeup as a Romulan and Tilonian, both on TNG [on The Next Phase and Frame of Mind respectively]—came as no accident, since the producers had taken pains to have Farrell read with those who came in during casting for the role.

"We auditioned and auditioned and auditioned," Oster reports. "We needed to find that chemistry, someone who can play that role as a human being, not as someone who's wondering about kissing another woman. And if someone has delivered for us, we'll bring them back if they've been in makeup before because that can change."

"And," agrees Farrell, "we made sure we had a meeting before we started the show—Susanna and Avery and I—to discuss the show. Usually we don't have time for those kinds of things to happen on our show, but they just made the time. And it really made a difference, I think."

Before the show aired, executive producer Rick Berman said he hoped it would be "received with some controversy."

"I think it does deal metaphorically with homosexuality in the sense of how society puts taboos on certain sexual orientation," Berman said. "It deals with it from both sides, I believe. And I'm sure there are those in the gay community who will probably feel that, again, we haven't gone far enough. But our objective in this story was very specific and very related to the big points that are exhibited in the story—it was never designed to be 'how far can we push this?' It's another step in our attempts to supposedly open stories that deal with a variety of sexual orientation [sic]."

The low-key strategy seemed to have worked: among the affiliates who knew what was coming, Oster reports, none ever dropped the show completely. All ran the episode on first airing—with a parental advisory added by the Atlanta station—and "two or three" others cut the scene out when repeated.

"The studio was very supportive of it; it was one of those things that when Roseanne became the cutting edge and it passed by, it suddenly became not much of an issue."

—Larry Nemecek

"Negative callers couldn't make the leap between seeing this kiss and the famous one between Uhura and Kirk in 1969 as both being a matter of prejudice."

—Producer Steve Oster

[iffnotwinter]

jk jk ... unless?

[ezrisdax-archive]

canon sapphic trek couples for @lovingautumn

bonus:

[righthandedleftturn]

Star Trek a.k.a. GAAAAAAYYYS IN SPAAAAAAAACE.

[axolotl-on-a-string]

Hello doomed star trek yuri nation

[avoicefromthestars]

[carlandrea]

Dax is very dashing male romance hero coded in Rejoined, and it's a very good look on her

[gravelyhumerus]

rejoined

[leohtttbriar]

it's just. what if you were at least eight different people and you met someone who's like twelve people--or three--at the very least more than one--and at first only one of your persons loves only one of theirs but you can't really pick apart the web of everything you both are and it's easy as anything to feel a one-personed feeling as eight and suddenly, or not suddenly, you're altogether-as-one-thing loving another altogether-as-one-thing, two crowds drawn to each other, two many-selves in love with each other, two untangled bundles retangling and weaving about--but you're also both tangled in the rules of engagement which say to never reuse yarn in a new scarf and that you're not allowed to be crowds-in-love because it "reduces", and then you're left alone, eight-personed, untangled, and reduced.

[startrekladies]

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE || Rejoined

[evviejo]

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - S4E6 Rejoined

[orangexmachina]

Rejoined (Deep Space Nine)

Song: I'm Your Man by Mitski

The thing that always gets me about this episode is how tragic and real their connection is. But also just how loving Jadzia's friends are. They are so supportive. In its own way, that's the secondary romance of Rejoined.

[maliwart]

#repostober day 29

I should really draw Jadzia and Lenara again...