#ds9 and voyager switch

[isagrimorie]

I think Sisko would have a very hard time on Voyager. His mind would go to the Borg long before they even have contact and Wolf 359 trauma would make it harder for him to deal with this. The way Miles was so specifically unhappy to be on DS9, the Cardassian station of all places, with his history.

Also one of the biggest strengths - that Ransom was clearly missing - is Janeway's science background. I think we also see it a bit in Tom, who idolizes the good old days. The exploration of it all. Explore new things without a safety net. When the DS9 crew ventured in the Gamma Quadrant, there was always a way back home. There is lots to talk about right there.

The DS9 character to absolutely thrive on Voyager would be Dax, well, Jadzia Dax specifically. Wise and curious, good combo. But Dax would also feel a new kind of fear, because Trill is so far away, no new host easily reachable. Could this be the end? Fascinating.

Janeway on DS9 would climb up the walls. To be stationary. She would use every chance she gets to get into the Gamma Quadrant. If she would get the whole Emissary storyline as well, I think she would be more open in some ways (so ready to embrace how these unknown aliens perceive time) and rejecting others (dealing with Winn Adami???? oh boy).

Ooh I love this thought experiment!

His mind would go to the Borg long before they even have contact and Wolf 359 trauma would make it harder for him to deal with this.

Honestly, I agree with this, I noted in a previous post that actually, Sisko and Janeway were positioned very well because their postings don’t really interact with their traumas much. The Borg were barely anything on DS9, and Janeway only had to deal with Seska, who was laser-focused on Chakotay.

A good thing… because Seska didn’t really trigger Janeway’s Cardassian triggers ala Miles.

Also one of the biggest strengths - that Ransom was clearly missing - is Janeway’s science background.

If I remember right Ransom doesn’t like direct confrontation. His style is hide and run, from what I remember all he’s ever commanded were small science vessels.

I suspect that Sisko would react to Ransom and his crew almost exactly how Janeway reacted to Ransom.

With even less pushback, because when he did the same thing with Eddington he had little pushback. Dax was even in full support of Sisko’s actions.

The DS9 character to absolutely thrive on Voyager would be Dax, well, Jadzia Dax specifically. Wise and curious, good combo

This is true! I kind of wish there was either a Dax or Garak-like character on Voyager to mix things up as Seven did. Speaking of Seven of Nine… unfortunately, I don’t and can’t see how Seven would survive beyond the first episode on a Sisko-led Voyager.

Unless maybe Dax talks him out of it? Dax would make the case that Seven would be the ‘local knowledge’ as they traverse Borg space.

Sisko would be a lot harder on Seven because of his trauma.

But because of Jake, Sisko always has a clear motive to get back to the Alpha Quadrant. It’s not just for the crew but because of his son. He doesn’t want to miss the life of his son, this would be a more bittersweet ache for Sisko, I feel.

Unless! Jake was with him during the Maquis hunting mission? On the other hand, I don’t see Sisko wanting to put Jake in danger like that, so soon after Wolf 359.

On the other end, I would love to watch Janeway butting heads with Kira Nerys, initially, because I don’t think Janeway has the same trauma as Miles had but also I don’t think she would love interacting with Cardassians either.

And, knowing the DS9 writers, I feel they would play up Janeway’s Cardassian War Record. Garak would know Janeway’s war record and I bet he would enjoy poking at Janeway.

Janeway would indulge Quark but only to a point.

But also, it would be so interesting for Scientist!Janeway to butt up against Bajoran spirituality and religion, especially if the Wormhole aliens pick her to be their Emissary. Sisko was already (initially) uncomfortable with the role, what more Janeway?

Janeway is diplomatic but her faith is in science. I think in this way, Sisko was more open, especially once he warmed up to Bajor and its cultures. I don’t know if I can see Janeway ever comfortable in the Emissary role.

Janeway vs Kai Winn would be fascinating. They’d both tear at each other with sugar-sweet smiles.

Janeway would also be pushed to make the same decisions as Sisko did in In the Pale Moonlight because just like Sisko, she takes every death personally. And the deaths during the Dominion War were constant.

It would be fascinating to see Janeway in the Siege of AR355 though just to see Janeway in another siege war. She already mentioned on Voyager how devastating that was, in her low-key way.

Saving the Cardassian was a moment that won Janeway back her soul, if not for that moment, I honestly feel Janeway would’ve been lost.

Also, I feel Janeway and the Founder would have An Enemy Mine situation instantly. Janeway would also 100% support all of Nerys’s anti-Gul Dukat moves, she’ll hide it but she will low-key condone it.

Sisko was always contemptuous of Dukat but it was never personal, Sisko had to be driven to the moment of hating Dukat. Since, again, his hate would go towards the Borg more. But for Janeway? It’s a skip towards hating Dukat.

We could also see Janeway in a more casual setting more often, maybe even date. I have a feeling even if Janeway stayed in the Alpha Quadrant, Janeway and Mark Johnson wouldn't have stayed together.

[lostyesterday]

I finally finished Enterprise season 1!

Things I liked:

The cast is fun! My favorite characters are still Hoshi and T’Pol, but I really like Travis and Phlox too (although the lack of focus on Travis is tragic). I generally like Trip and Malcolm except when they’re written as being really sexist, ugh.

I’m enjoying the development of Vulcan and Andorian culture so far, although I’m really hoping for more focus on the Andorians in the rest of the show. I think I like the mixed/partially negative depiction of Vulcans from the perspective of humans. It’s interesting.

I think Enterprise is doing a surprisingly good job of being a prequel. It feels like the creators of the show put genuine effort into thinking about how the world of Star Trek would have been a century before TOS. I like the way Enterprise retroactively shows how much human and Vulcan society have changed over time. It’s not as if I love every single retroactive bit of world-building, but even the aspects I don’t like I can generally appreciate and see how there was some thought put into them (unlike some of the other Star Trek prequels tbh, I won’t name names).

The crew movie nights and the other little moments of regular life interspersed throughout episodes are great. Phlox teaching Hoshi his language, Hoshi convincing Travis to sit in the captain’s chair – all these moments go a long way toward making the crew feel like a cohesive group even when there’s not much individual development of anyone except Archer, T’Pol, and Trip.

The way the characters feel less prepared and more uncertain than the crew of any other Trek show because they’re the first and they’re making things up as they go is great too. I think Enterprise nailed that vibe for the first season of the show at least – similarly to how I think Voyager really managed to capture the vibe of being stranded far away from home, giving it a different feeling from any other Star Trek show.

My favorite episodes were The Andorian Incident and Fallen Hero.

Things I didn’t like (under the cut because I don’t want to put negativity straight into the tag):

The sexism. I was prepared for it, but it’s annoying how much (arguably) worse it is compared to the 90’s shows.

It wouldn’t exactly be accurate to say that I dislike Archer because I liked him fine in some episodes, but the fact that he’s definitely my least favorite of the main cast is irritating given that he’s the main character. Whenever T’Pol takes command of Enterprise, I find her so much more fun to watch as the captain than I do Archer.

I wouldn’t say that Enterprise season 1 has a higher proportion of bad episodes compared to the first seasons of Voyager, DS9, and especially TNG, but it does have a higher proportion of boring episodes – episodes that aren’t actively bad but that I just found myself having almost no interest in. This is 90% of the reason I took so long getting through the first season.

I’d also like to specifically complain about all the episodes that made it seem like Travis or Hoshi was going to be a major part before switching them out for Trip or T’Pol or even Malcolm at the last second. I thought the sidelining of the characters of color in Voyager was bad, but it’s even worse in Enterprise so far.

And I’d also like to complain about the episode Shadows of P’Jem which tricked me into thinking Shran would be a major part of it only for him to be in like three scenes. I can’t believe how few episodes he’s in, everyone made it sound like he was a much more major character. :(

I already complained about the Trip pregnancy episode, but I’d also like to complain about the Risa episode which was both bad in the normal ways for a Risa episode and also incredibly transphobic.

Idk what I think about Trip/T’Pol yet (I could go either way depending on how things progress), but at least it isn’t Archer/T’Pol. Every single time the writers tried to force a Moment between them was painful.

Overall opinion: I didn’t hate it! I half expected to hate it, so that’s good. So far, nothing has particularly grabbed me, but it’s significantly better than I expected, I think! I’m hoping season 2 has fewer boring episodes.

[fast-moon]

DS9 Season 5 Thoughts

So, last season ended on... pretty much the same note season 3 ended on, which was that the Changelings had infiltrated positions of power across the galaxy. Let's see if this season they actually do anything about that.

1. Apocalypse Rising: Sisko, O'Brien, and Odo get to cosplay Klingons as they infiltrate the Empire in order to expose Gowron as a Changeling. But it turns out they had the right place, wrong guy.

2. The Ship: Sisko finds a downed Jem'Hadar ship and says "finders keepers", but a Vorta shows up and asks for it back. It takes half the crews of both sides dying before they realize that the Vorta just wanted to retrieve a sick Changeling from the ship, making the entire stand-off pointless.

3. Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places: WTF is this title and WTF did I just watch? Worf wants to make the moves on Quark's Klingon ex-wife, so Dax sexually assaults him to take his mind off it. Meanwhile, O'Brien has to keep removing himself from situations where he could cheat on Keiko with Kira because he totally would if he could.

4. Nor the Battle to the Strong: Good lord, this series was even prescient about putting yourself in dangerous situations for social media clout and then quickly getting in way over your head. At least Jake was able to admit he was a dumbass.

5. The Assignment: Keiko trolls the shit out of O'Brien by pretending to be possessed by a wraith in order to finally get some goddamn respect. That's my interpretation of this episode and I'm sticking with it.

6. Trials and Tribble-ations: lol. To be fair, I did see this specific episode back in the 90's because a friend of mine taped it and insisted I see it, but at least now I have context for who all the DS9 characters are, and it made it even funnier.

7. Let He Who is Without Sin: Dax drags Worf to Pornworld against his will, then calls him "controlling" when she does her own thing without any regard for his feelings. Then she acts all surprised when he sides with the people protesting irresponsible self-indulgence.

8. Things Past: Odo, Sisko, Dax, and Garak get Quantum Leaped into some Bajoran slaves in the past, but it turns out Odo was just having an anxiety attack over a mistake he'd made and dragged everyone else into it.

9. The Ascent: Odo and Quark get jealous of Kira and Dukat having gotten two "mortal enemies go road-tripping" episodes, decide to go on one themselves. Meanwhile, Jake and Nog become roommates, but now ironically it's Jake who's the undisciplined one while Nog is more responsible.

10. Rapture: Everyone gets new uniforms, causing Sisko to see obelisks, make maps out of his mashed potatoes, and go on crazy rants that are enough to deny Bajor entry into the Federation, eventually forcing Bashir to lobotomize him.

11. The Darkness and the Light: Someone who wasn't even part of the Cardassian military manages to covertly murder most of Kira's former resistance members, putting the competence of the actual Cardassian military to shame.

12. The Begotten: Odo's a dad... again, and has to lose the child... again. But at least he got his shapeshifting back from it.

13. For the Uniform: The Maquis start using chemical warfare against Cardassian settlements, so Sisko uses chemical warfare right back at them. And everyone's just... okay with this?

14. In Purgatory's Shadow: The episode opens teasing a Garak/Bashir road-trip, only to bait-and-switch it to a Garak/Worf road trip, only to Uno-reverse-card it back to Garak/Bashir. Also, if Bashir's been replaced by a Changeling since before the uniform switch in episode 10, then which one got frisky on Risa?

15. By Inferno's Light: Dukat gets tired of being the butt-monkey for the past couple seasons and joins the Dominion. Meanwhile, Worf spends the entire episode getting beaten up, as Worf does.

16. Doctor Bashir, I Presume?: One episode after getting the real Bashir back, the Doctor from Voyager shows up to offer to make a new fake Bashir, but then Bashir's parents show up to reveal the real Bashir has been a fake Bashir all along, so they're already all good.

17. A Simple Investigation: Odo gets his cherry popped by a woman who turns out to be a bit of a Changeling herself: in that she's actually a completely different person living under an assumed identity, and also already married.

18. Business as Usual: Quark gets roped in with some weapons dealers and sabotages the deal after learning the weapons would be used for genocide, deciding that financial bankruptcy was better than moral bankruptcy.

19. Ties of Blood and Water: Kira decides to copy Garak from a couple episodes ago and has her Cardassian father figure show up just so he can die in front of her of medical complications.

20. Ferengi Love Songs: Quark goes back to his mother's house to help other Ferengi come out of the closet.

21. Soldiers of the Empire: Worf takes an assignment on a ship with the worst Klingons in the galaxy, and Dax invites herself along because she can't imagine Worf being able to function without her telling him what to do all the time.

22. Children of Time: The crew find a planet inhabited by their descendants, who inform them they they're going to get sent back in time and then have nothing better to do but breed like rabbits. But Future Odo realizes they've already hit their time-travel quota for the season and stops it from happening.

23. Blaze of Glory: Sisko and Eddington go road-tripping to stop some missiles that don't exist, because it was all a ruse to allow Eddington to go down fighting for... basically no reason.

24. Empok Nor: O'Brien and Garak take some gold-shirts with them to go exploring a seemingly abandoned Cardassian station, with predictable results for the gold-shirts. Garak also realizes there hasn't been an outbreak of crazypox for a few seasons and wants to have his go at it.

25. In the Cards: Jake really, really wants a Pokemon card.

26. Call to Arms: The Federation is forced to abandon the station after the Dominion and Cardassians attack, but Sisko swears he'll be back because they're not about to change the title of the series to "Terok Nor".

So, now that we've left on a cliffhanger of the station being abandoned to the Dominion, I'm curious how long into the next season that status is going to remain. Even Picard getting kidnapped by the Borg only lasted until the first episode of the next season. Plus things are going to get pretty cramped if they have too many episodes with only the Defiant set to work with.

Bashir is finally growing on me now that he's abandoned his bravado and womanizing and focusing on being a doctor. He was single-handedly ruining the series for me in the first season due to being such an insufferable creep. But it's also been revealed that he's genetically enhanced, so he's still kind of annoyingly The Special in some way, but at least he doesn't rub it in people's faces.

Dax is also starting to finally develop a personality of her own, which is conceptually a plus, it's just that her newly-developed personality is really annoying. She's basically just a troll and a gossip and doesn't seem to care about how she makes other people feel. She forced herself on Worf, then he entered into a relationship with her out of what seemed like obligation, at which point she's just been incredibly controlling and manipulative of him. Which, maybe that's a Klingon thing and they go for that, but from a human perspective, it's uncomfortable.

Also, I recently learned that Nog's actor was nearly 30 while playing him here. All this time I thought he was, like, 12, but no, he is just the ultimate short king.

Also impressed at Kira's actress being able to fit back into that jumpsuit so soon after having a baby. Hopefully she'll get more episodes next season, since her pregnancy this season limited what the story could do with her.

So with that, onto the next season of Terok Nor Deep Space Nine.

[trillscienceofficer]

Which episode(s) would you most like b7 and/or kiradax to get together in? I'm just curious where in the timeline you would want it to happen :) hope you feel better!

Thank you!! And this is an interesting question because I have very definite thoughts for both relationships

one of my answers is ‘actually, they never do’—the first Trek fic I ever wrote dealt with exact scenario for Kira and Jadzia, and other favorite stories of mine have the same approach. I love it when feelings and attraction are left unfulfilled, living on inside both people for a much longer time because they were never expressed. This is obviously made worse by Jadzia dying and her memories still living on in Ezri. If there ever was a representation of 'what could've been', I think it's every one of the conversations that Kira and Ezri have in season 7. I think a very similar approach could be very juicy for Seven and B'Elanna as well—they live in each other's heads a lot even on the show, and if you interpret their strange rivalry as feelings neither of them can articulate, not even to themselves, and consider where Seven is twenty years later... I think they might still live in each other's heads, as the kind of rapport you'd almost forgotten about but you remember suddenly at 2am and you can't sleep any longer while you ask yourself ‘I still don't know what all that was about’ and ‘I wonder where she is now’ and the idea of meeting her again makes your heartrate spike and cringe at the same time, because what would you even say after so long, and when you weren't able to talk even when you were lost at sea? (I believe @avoicefromthestars is the biggest proponent of this approach for B7)

another answer could be ‘they get together post-canon, reconnecting after years’, which is something I'm now particularly fond of when it comes to B'Elanna and Seven. I hinted at how it could happen on “Best Left” but I definitely want to write a prequel of the fic where the circumstances in which they meet again are the main focus, I already have a plot in mind. I also used to be very fond of this approach with Kira and Ezri but an actual fic about this never really panned out.

finally, if they got together in the shows... I'm very fond of the time-skip between DS9 s3 and s4 for Kira and Jadzia to get together. Like obviously it could happen also at other times during season 4, or even earlier in the show, but to me it makes more sense if it happens after Bareil is gone but before Worf arrives on the station. I think it would be perfect also because after “Facets” Jadzia has confronted a little of her self-doubt as well as, I think, any hesitance she might've had about approaching Kira. Also I think seeing Kira embody Lela Dax might really flip a switch in Jadzia's head, in a ‘it's time to take a leap’ way. After Worf gets on the show though... I now can see them getting together only as a throuple with Worf. Obviously I won't say no to fic/headcanons that take a different route, but that's what I think now.

As for Seven and B'Elanna, pretty much all the fic I wrote for them where they get together on Voyager's timeline is set midway through season 6, for the very simple reason that I believe both 6x02 “Survival Instinct” and 6x03 “Barge of the Dead” represent watershed moments for both of them and their understanding of themselves, and that's also when their rapport thaws rather significantly and without major regressions. It's more difficult to have a precise timeline on Voyager because of the syndicated nature of the show, but I also like the idea of B'Elanna by that point (especially after “Alice”) having had enough of Tom's shenanigans and them splitting up as a consequence. I realize this stretches canon a bit—season 7 definitely contends that Seven hasn't seriously thought about a romantic partner before finding out about a relationship she apparently had with Axum but can't really remember. I am still fond of the season 6 timeline regardless.

[atopfourthwall]

Hasn't nearly every Star Trek production (except maybe Voyager for obvious reasons) had a uniform consistency issue? I vaguely recall one DS9 episode where everyone was wearing the grey uniforms except for one guy who looked he just stepped out of TNG.

That's mainly because Star Trek has never said ON SCREEN what its uniform policy is. The best guess we had when DS9 premiered was that space stations had a different uniform to those on starships (especially in light of Sisko going to earth and switching to a TNG uniform), but then Voyager threw that idea out, same as Generations continually switching between the two uniforms without explanation. And in the case of the episode you're referring to, they probably didn't have it in the budget yet to make admirals' uniforms for the First Contact uniforms (they would later), especially since they JUST spent all that money on the new uniforms for the entire main cast, which required fittings and backups and etc. The policy seems to be one of two things: -Uniform policy is set by whoever is in charge of the ship/outpost and most adhere to whatever is the adopted default uniform of Starfleet. They can decide what uniform design to use for their command. -New uniforms are given a test run in certain areas of Starfleet before mass adoption - there's going to be a new uniform standard but we're testing to make sure they work for interstellar relations/comfort/unforeseen problems with them.

[wikipediette]

I was so scared to get into startrek bc a mix of the fandom and the sheer size of the series makes it really hard getting into the show. And now that I've basically become obsessed with it I still feel like a shitty fan. I haven't watched every episode of the original shows. Hell I haven't even seen 1 episode of the original or ds9, I've watched a smidge of Voyager, a good chunk of next gen, the last season of picard, and all of snw and disco. And there's a lot of ppl who feel you can only really be a fan if you watch the original but like, idk the older ones are more boring to me??? Not saying that they're bad exactly just that they don't really capture my attention the way the newer ones do. But I LOVE strange new worlds and disco (I also really love next gen but I'll talk about that another day lol) and when that damn musical episode came out me and my mom were SO EXCITED (we still sing the songs) and then you go online and i saw literally everyone hating on it?? And I was so confused bc it was such a fun episode! I hate the idea that startrek has to be a super serious show that all about the science, why can't it be fun?? And I've talked about this in depth with my mother but if people WANT startrek to stay alive they need to switch it up. Want younger gens to watch??? MAKE IT MORE FUN!! I feel like snw is such a cool show and if marketed better could be a bigger thing with younger people lol, anyways this is a big ramble but I really love startrek so 🥲

[vivianvixen]

Preface: I'll only be covering the TV shows I've seen at least partically, plus one other thing.

What's With Starfleet's Uniforms and Color?

There seems to be this odd trend in the uniforms on Star Trek to gradually reduce the amount of department-identifying coloring. Exhibit A:

Here's the one from the original and animated series. Good classic look, somehow just the most spaceman-looking getup they ever had in my eyes. Like I look at this and just go "yeah that's a guy who goes around in space." It might be because it reminds me of the Space Lego guys I had as a kid, because I'm entirely too young to have watched the original show as a youngin'. Notice how the shirt is entirely in command gold (actually chartreuse!).

Exhibit B:

Here's the original one they had on The Next Generation. I kinda like this one better than the one they switched to later, dig the piping on the shoulders, and it feels more spacemanny. But I get why they changed to the other one because this one was causing back problems because it was so tight. Same basic design, though. Never quite figured out why they swapped the colors between command and ops, maybe because the movies with Kirk & Co. made red such an iconic uniform color? But most importantly, notice how the shoulders are black, as are the sides and a bit of the tummy? It's still clearly an update on the TOS style, though.

Exhibit C:

This one originally appeared on early seasons of Deep Space Nine, apparently meant to be what they wore on starbases as opposed to starships, though they then also used it on Voyager and graudally phased it in in Generations. I like that it's a more seamless jumpsuit as opposed to the shirt and pants they had in late TNG, again making it somehow more spacemanny (yes that's an important quality). But what's with the almost reversal in the color? Now it's just the shoulders that are in department color!

Exhibit D:

This one was used in the post-Generations TNG movies as well as later seasons of DS9 and you have got to be kidding me! They swapped the colors of the shoulders and the undershirt, so now you can only see the department color around the collar!

Exhibit E:

Continuing in linear time, this is the standard uniform style from Star Trek Online, seen here worn by one Captain Nog. The department color is barely noticable. This is a travesty.

And finally, Exhibit F:

I have nothing bad to say about the uniform from Enterprise. Where the TOS one screams "spaceman," this one says "astronaut." And that's awesome, it's a really nice midpoint between, like, NASA and Starfleet. And look at all those pockets! So handy! I love this one, and while the department color is minimal, at least it's back to the original ones!

[fourthreee]

Saw a post a while back about favourite and least favourite bits of star trek and I wanted to join in. So here's my two cents :

Original Star Trek

Favourite: Spock. Bones. Scotty. Uhura. Kirk. Chapel. Sulu. Chekov. EVERYONE. The sets. The lighting. The camp. The blatant homoeroticism. The do or die for each other crew. That time they found an alien that was just a pomeranian wearing fancy headgear. The fact that every episode is self contained and ends with a little bit where everyone stands around the conn and chats. Leonard Nimoy. Sulu with a sword. Sulu the rest of the time.EVERYONE. This is my favourite trek, and the one I return to over and over again. First trek is best trek.The bell bottom trousers and cuban heel knee high boots. More kinky boots, modern trek, d'ya hear me? More kinky boots.

Least favourite: When the show reveals how terribly it can abandon everything that makes it good. Of all the episodes, there's about a third I just cannot watch. Times where they fill it full of weird christian metaphor.

TNG

Favourite: Geordie and Data. And Spot. I keep trying to watch this but I've only ever seen A Fistful of Datas. IT was great. And horribly horribly slow. (oh. And one where Picard chases bandits through the ship armed only with a saddle and while dodging a laser car wash. That one was great. Except for when I rewatched this as an adult. When it was horrifying.)

Least favourite: Invented the holodeck which gets used too much later and which always confuses me. Can't watch holodeck episodes without obsessing over how it works. Everything is carpeted and it panics me. Why are there wall to wall carpets in the future. In high traffic areas. Also it was genrerally too slow and difficult to watch. And whil I love Hornblower I have neither a headmaster nor a Naval Captain fetish, so Picard never does it for me.

DS9

Favourites: Everyone. Everyone together. I want Sisko to be my dad. Or my friend. Or my Captain. All of the above. Julian Bashir trans icon. Jadzia Dax trans icon. Everyone is poly and queer. Ferengi episodes. Kira Nerys lesbian energy. Every 36 hours I turn into a liquid. I can swim. The whole Odo marrying Lwxwna episode. Our Man Bashir. He was more than a hero. He was a Union Man. It's written all over his back.

Least favourite : When they switched to serialised I do struggle to keep watching. Taking away Kira's butch haircut and stompy boots. Show never recovered from that. Any time they give Kira a beard. I've never finished the series bc I couldnt face the Julian/parents arc or the Jadzia death/Julian and Ezri thing. When they stopped Andrew Robinson from being on screen with Siddig El Fadil. Any time Dukat got more than a minute airtime. Any executive decision Rick Berman made.

Voyager:

Favourites: Seven of 9. Harry Kim. Janeway. B'elanna. The time they all opereated the French Resistance out of a bar. Stand alone episodes. The time Janeway definitely slept with Amerlia Earhart. The time Janeway ran around in a dirty singlet with a big gun. That episode where they hide the telepaths in the buffers of the transporters to sneak past a moustache twirling villain while Janeway flirts with him like they're both opponent pirate captains with insane homoerotic tension. Ther's coffee in that nebula.

Least favourites: The Doctor. Seven not getting a uniform. Tom Paris any time he's not just Harry Kim's boyfriend. Janeway's inconsistent characterisation. The fact that phages might be a real world last line defence against antibiotic resistance but thanks to voyager it will always terrify me. I've never made it to the end because Tom/B'elanna was too hard to watch and I didn't know how to deal with them actually getting home. Ithink they never should have. Any executiev decision Rick Berman made.

Enterprise:

Favourites: I have seen two episodes and Hoshi Sato has my heart forever. Phlox is great. Tight-wound angry queer british guy can stay too. Travis is great. Theme song is terrible and I love it. It's so incongruent. Sounds like the sort of country song you listen to while committing suicide in the bathtub. Can't stop singing it. The fact that it killed Rick Berman's career.

Least favourite: Everything else. The dog in particular. Why is it there. Why is it soulless. Poor Jolene Blalock. Why are their uniforms so bad. I love a jumpsuit but they didn't colour code them properly! Every executive decision Rick Berman made.

JJ Abrams:

Favourites: Nothing. This is terrible.. If you can't make up you own characters why are you butchering my boys. Go away.

Least Favorites: Trying to remake wrath of Khan (the worst movie with the original cast imo) without even bothering to buiild the relationship that makes us care. Why is he still white? Why are they in a brewery? Why is Pike a hot dad now? He's a wreck of the american masculine heroic ideal who exists as a counterpoint to Kirk. If tumblr wants to make his doomed ass a poor little meow meow fine. JJ Abrams shouldnt put him in his movie. Every exectuive decision they made about women in this movie. Making Sulu gay in massive disrespect to Takei's depiction of him and Takei's own acting skills. Making everyone else straight in the worst possible way. Pretending miniskirts in 2009 meant the same thing as in 1969. Also I stoppped after the first couple because it was starting to feel like i was just doing to make myself mad. Blue orbs. The fact their chracterisation feels like if you'd never seen star trek but a cabbie had explained it you once badly, and the fact that literally WAS WHAT HAPPENED

Oh wait. Leonard Nimoy cameo. only good thing.

Discovery.

Favourites: Wanted to love it. Couldn't see what was going on because it was too dark. Everytime I tried in spite of that I fell in love with many parts of it, then they immediately fucked it over. Michael Burnham? In jail for unfair reasons. Cap. Georgiou? Dead. Burnham should be Captain, and I think she still isn't. I don't know I couldnt see. Etc etc. Apparently it gets better but It's too serialised to start in the middle.

Least Favourites: Too dark. Bad uniforms (Why would you bring back the ENTERPRISE uniforms of all things?) The fact that klingons are now middle eastern coded so that they still align with the zeitgeist of who we're being xenophobic again right now. (OOHscary FIGHTYculture is Russian. No WAIT black. NO middle eastern. yeah) Jason Isaacs. I liike my villains NOT on the crew. Personal preference but it's just not my kind of star trek when it's this dark. Thematically and visually. Why does EVERYONE have to be related to Spock (ok this one dates back to tos and it's annoying if funny there too)

Lower Decks: I don't do this format of cartoons.

Prodigy: Favourite: its a kids show and has those priorities but I had a surprising amount of fun. Usually I don't do animation but this is relatively watchable.Despite feeling like it's also star wars and Indiana Jones and a ton of other types of story all at once, they also captured Star Trek better than any of the other modern ones. Janeway. Og murph. Wesley Crusher cameo. REFERENCE TO OPERATION ANNIHILATE MY BELOVED!

Least Favourites: Janeway being given physiology of a Barbie doll. Murph being turned from a intelligent adult slug with dog energy into a pointless toddler. It would have been kinder to kill him. Desynchronization of voice and face in a way that makes it tiring to watch (I'm just fussy about animation). Janeway in a singlet revival ruined by aforementioned Barbie physique. Give me older fatter buffer Janeway!

SNW:

Too dark to see. Also stop just redoing the original characters. Make your own. For years now I get excited about new Star Trek and it ALWAYS either too dark to see or too animated to see or just about tos characters done badly. At which point I'll just go watch tos. Also remember when Star Trek uniforms actually looked futuristic? Yeah, me too. I know everyone likes this one there's probably a lot of good in it but I can't get into it.

Turn the lights back on and maybe we can talk. And at least Rick Berman isn't involved.

[mr-geargrinder]

Star Trek Rewatch Thoughts

Finished my rewatch of DS9, Voyager, and TNG. I've lost count of how many times I've rewatched TNG and DS9, but this was only my second time going through Voyager, because it just didn't click with me the first time through. Anyways, here's some thoughts.

TNG is fascinating to me because you can see them assembling the show as they go. They change plans pretty drastically, remove and bring back characters, and try to salvage others with a few last minute episodes. That left a permanent mark on the way I think about storytelling.

TNG is a pretty goofy show, but it takes itself seriously and there's a lot to be said about how dedication to the bit and some really charming actors doing their best can totally overshadow cheap sets and silly technobabble... and even when it doesn't, those goofy moments are still very charming too.

I only skipped a handful of episodes and most of them were Troi or Wesley episodes, for obvious reasons. Troi got a lot of bad episodes and Wesley is... Wesley. Someone who kind of embodied all the worst parts of Gene Roddenberry's silly utopian wish fulfillment fantasies. One of the things that I never noticed before was how the last season was filled with so many bad episodes, followed by one of the best series finales ever made.

Voyager was less bad than I remember. I found myself liking certain characters a lot more and hating others much more intensely. Janeway, Tuvok, and Neelix really clicked with me this time. I recall Neelix being hated for being the silly comic relief character, but he's got some depth! He's a sincerely, genuinely good person who is trying his hardest for the people around him and that really resonated with me this time around. Especially his interactions with Tuvok (minus the Tuvix episode).

Tom Paris ended up being the guy I liked the least because his three traits are "pilot", being a general shithead, and reminding Harry about every single time he messed up romantically in a list, over and over, and none of that really helped them sell him as a roguish hotshot with a heart of gold, or whatever. He's just a shithead.

Skipping episodes helped me to enjoy Voyage a lot more. Almost anything to do with Chakotay was skipped immediately. His bullshit tribal mysticism, literally made up by a con-artist who convinced Hollywood he was a Native American and an expert cultural consultant, did not endear him to me in any way. Robert Beltran did his best to portray the character with dignity and wisdom, but Chakotay just suuuuucks. The inclusion of the Maquis subplot was also a pretty big waste of effort, but the fact that it gets ignored for most of the series makes it easy for me to ignore.

Anything to do with the Kazon got skipped too. They're just lamer, dumber, more irrational Klingons and they have nothing of value to add to any story they're featured in. That also meant skipping a lot of the Seska plot, which was Chakotay heavy anyways, and I don't regret that. Seska was not compelling at all.

Likewise, the Vidiians got skipped without hesitation. Not only do I hate the body horror aspect, but they were an attempt to create a sympathetic monster faction in Trek, but they're just.... irredeemably bad. There's no reason for anyone to allow the Vidiians to keep living. Not because of their disease, but because they are organ stealing monsters who hack random people to bits to extend their lifespans a tiny bit, so they can keep stealing more organs. No thank you. Fuck off. Go away. There's a reason no one talks about you.

DS9 remains my favorite Star Trek. It's got some rough episodes, and it struggles at time between being a planet/anomaly/random-space-threat of the week and a smaller scale, single-location focused kind of story, but the entire cast does a fantastic job of switching between the two without skipping a beat.

I don't think there's a single character on DS9 that I can say I dislike and the few I could complain about are mostly ones who were there for a single episode or just didn't have the benefit of a few more seasons to develop them as much as we got with characters like Jake and Nog. Speaking of which, Jake and Nog are such a perfect example of how you can have kid characters in a trek show and have them work and develop naturally and feel like a natural part of the story.

One of the things that struck me that never occurred to me before is that DS9 is a show that is very, very much about the concept of "home" and all the complex ways the character interpret and grapple with that concept. Quark and Garak have a fantastic scene towards the end of the series where they both commiserate about how their home planets are changing rapidly and how they'll never be able to return to the planets they once knew. It's kinda there in nearly every character and plot and it's really fascinating.

I think the only episodes I skipped were a few of the "It's time to make O'Brien suffer!" episodes, and that one specific episode where they meet that insane lady who forces her anti-technology beliefs on everyone by lying to them and abusing them, and the moral of the story is "actual this is good and she's right!" -- Fuck that episode. I'd rather watch the board game episode.

The last stretch of the Dominion War is a little uneven, but it's still a strong arc overall. Could've maybe done without the Pah-Wraith stuff, and the Ezri and Bashir subplot is a little weak, but those are nitpicks.

Anyways, go watch Star Trek.

[avoicefromthestars]

Sorry if you have been asked before, but how do you make your gifs so sharp when the original source is 480p ??

That's alright! It is done with the help of miss topaz (it was… very on sale when i bought it though)

there are some upscales for both voyager and ds9 floating around online already but they won't get this sharp on their own so lately i've switched to putting those pre-upscaled versions through topaz a second time on the Iris enhancement mode which gets fairly close to real HD results!

[isagrimorie]

I love this scene from Deep Space Nine on ‘From the Uniform’. Inspired from ‘Run Silent Run Deep’, I love how the crew had to manually operate the Defiant to leave DS9. (Although, every time I see Kira and Sisko onboard the Defiant I always go— but who is commanding DS9 without both the CO and second in command??? There’s a reason why Ivanova stays behind while Sheridan goes around gallivanting in his Ranger ship! Who is in command when both commanding officers are gone??).

Since rewatching this moment I’ve always thought we should have seen Janeway and the Voyager crew do the same thing — maybe during Year of Hell when all their systems were shot. I love the way they kind of talk over each other a little bit and verbally convey and call out each order. And then switching between Bridge and a battered Engine room with B’Elanna conducting the chaos like she was born to it, in tandem with Janeway issuing out orders.

But I don’t think Janeway would be able to stay still at that moment, especially if it was during Year of Hell, I image she’d be like in ‘Dragon’s Teeth’ where she goes around the Bridge issuing orders as they’re attacked by the Vaadwaur and their fighters ships? Jets? Anyway, the Dragon’s Teeth ship fight once again shows how quick she is on her feet, tactically.

Janeway does her best work when she’s out manned and out gunned.

[my-jokes-are-my-armour]

...

I don't really know why I suddenly returned to my old series during my vacations, but revisiting some Star Trek series I consumed in my teenager years to late teenager years made me realise something : I always loved the character that was the most unearthly for each series. Spok, Data, Odo, Seven of Nine.

And then I stumbled on that on a reddit thread...

I feel so seen 😅.

I won't go to much for Spok and Data (for the moment at least), but they were almost my first blorblos ever ☺️. I may come to Seven though.

I wanna talk about Odo today and especially in a ace point of view.

Important : this is just a character analysis through my own experience and how i connected not any formal lecture on the subject !

Note : I will switch sometimes between "he" and "it" for Odo. As his specie is basically a fluid with technically no gender at all. He primarily imitated a male person and stayed that way. Has Odo self gendered male in the end ? Maybe. Let say he is gendered that way in the show. That's why I use "he".

A little bit of my trekky journey

The funny part is that I was a real trekky for many many years. My father wanted me to discover the show he liked when he was younger and I became the 2.0 version of him, being obsessed with it ☺️. My parents kindly participated with my passion. They bought me the first parts of the officials Star Trek files. But then they choose to teach me the value of the product they were offering me with work.

I didn't have pocket money except from my grand parents sometimes. So they told me : you do things in the house, we give you a bit of money for it and you can buy your own stuff with it. It was 10Fr for each helpful stuff.

Needless to say, I became very good at washing dishes, cooking and doing the laundry very early 🤣. I needed 70Fr, which is about 10-11€, every two weeks to buy my files and VHS. It became a bit harder when we switched to euros, because 10Fr became 1€ earn for the house chore, and the price of the files grew rapidly... So I never finished that collection. But as you can see I have a solid one lol. They kept the VHS collection as I had no place to store it when I first moved out.

I remember liking a lot this period because I could buy my stuff and then we had a cool moment of bonding together with my parents watching the VHS in the weekend.

The sad part is that is that I never could complete my collection. Too expensive to a point. Saddly, I don't have much about Odo in my files, except for its Starfleet one and worse for Seven of Nine, with nothing at all. But I guess the character was not added yet to the show. I had very few VHS of Voyager at the time.

First impression on Odo and comparison to Data

As many I guess, I wasn't really thrilled at DS9 in the first place, but rewatching it, I found it extremely good now. I had the same feeling with Voyager which I was really appealed to, once Seven was added to the crew.

Those four characters I relate to the most have in common a rejection or a lack of comprehension of human emotions or behaviours. But Odo was different in a way that I can recognise a lot of myself nowadays in terms of development around my own journey discovering my sexuality.

I remember that when I first saw its design I was like. Oh they are trying to make a new Data character.

But no, it is very different. Odo has emotions, strong emotions, and understands them but he cannot fit, because basically it is not humanoid, he is a sentient puddle of goo... It learned to take a humanoid male shape to interact with the most common form of sentient beings around and the equipment of the ships.

If his shape technically makes it difficult to express clear emotions as he is sleek as butter, he can, and does it a lot. So he is not an emotionless or emotional repressed character (although in some aspect yes... 🤔). And through the series, Odo grew on me for its grumpy personality hiding a very sensible and traumatised being.

There is a common ground between Odo and Data in the fact that they are "unique" creature of there kind evolving around people and trying the best they can to be a part of the community. They have a similar arc or steps of development : strange to others, link with some people, explore emotions, try to mimick what they don't understand, link with more, acceptation, deep frienships to even love experiences, sacrifice. But they have opposite feedbacks and starting points.

Data don't feel per se and even with the integration of the emotion ship he has a lot to learn. But he is ready for all experiences, to learn to feel, and explore humanity.

Odo doesn't need to learn emotions, he already feels. But he begins his life among humanoids with abuses. Everything that he has learned to become more "human" comes from pain. So even if he tries to fit, he is extremely shielded and tries to prevent other to see how vulnerable he feels in reality, to escape the inevitable pain if he is not what people expect. Also, Odo can connect with people only if he makes the constent effort to be something he is not.

They are both children learning, but one of them is beginning his journey with strong traumas. So each of their step towards fulfilment is hard but not for the same reasons.

Also Odo has a big journey about love and discovering what he needs and how different his experience is. He doesn't understand sexual attraction and mating. And the traumas make it even harder for him to figure out how it works for him. He needs a lot of guidance that he cannot always accept or precise rules to know how to function as expected in certain situations. He tends to toss aside violently (verbally) those who cannot give him that when he feels cornered.

I think there can be a lot of readings for this character for many people but, in my case, looking back at him now, I find that this strange position Odo had in a community, I subconsciously felt it on the sexuality part of myself. I couldn't connect with anyone, even my friends on the subject... I was the alien. I tried a lot, I mimicked but it failed and it made me sad, until I understood how it worked for me.

Which leads me to my next point.

Love stories and unearthlyness

Of all my blorbos in Star Trek, I feel like Odo is the most unearthly and in the same time the most relatable for me.

For my three other blorblos, I never been really interested in their love stories or sexuality - I was attracted for other things in them - but I appreciated that "love" was not much part of their main journey or that they discussed more about the general feeling than making out with other characters. But for Odo... dear lord! I dived head first in his loved stories because it was speaking to me. He has several love stories and some are central to his character. But in many aspects of this part I was finding myself in his struggles.

He had feelings for others, he could clearly fall in love sometimes, but couldn't experience it like everyone. He had some pationate kisses and some intimate moments here and there, but the love moments I connect the most were when he shared what he is with some characters, in a non flesh way, if I can say so.

If I could make some conclusions directly, I would say that Odo begins as a hetero asexual, sex repulsed, to demisexual after he discovers how to connect with people and he creates a deep emotional link with some of them. He even discovers that, even with members of his own race which have the perfect form to union for him, he doesn't feel anything because the emotional link is not there. And to discover that, he goes from mimicking and mimicking again and again, failing over and over until he muddles his way out of it, finding fulfilment and finally can love the way he needs.

The fact that he isn't humanoid, even solid, is central to him. He states so many times and tries to formulate in many ways that what we can see is not what he is.

For a long time he rejects parts of humanoid's interactions that involve feelings. He freezes most of the time when being hugged. And avoid people with those kind of behaviours.

Me in my corner 🥲👋. Not to this extend but the inconfort is real.

In a way those scenes have a comic aspect but for those who can relate to him, even little, this isn't as funny.

For him, a big part of these reactions comes from the fact that in his experience, what he doesn't understand and doesn't know how to react to, means pain. This is how he was taught in the first place. Also, he is so different in nature that his needs on the subject are totally unreachable. So he has to learn to find the middle ground to live his experience in a group of people that technically cannot match.

For the most part, he is pushed by his friends to open up to the experience of bounding first and then making out, which became the hardest part.

Through his interactions, he becomes more and more aware of how to express love and he shares with some people that way, but he discovers also he is so different than his love isn't understood. Misunderstood for what his feelings are, in nature for him to the others, and misunderstood for what he can feel sharing the physical love with his partners.

I was so heartbroken by some of those moments as the link is created but the difference is too big to make the link hold. And I was so rewarded in others when he is accepted as he is.

The main emotional links

- Quark frienship.

Odo develops some friendships and interesting connections along the way, but the strongest for me is with Quark.

Basically this is the bromance involving one grumpy and closed character, and another that is very loud and annoying to the grumpy one. They are opposite. Odo is order. Quark is chaos.

They have a love/hate relationship with a lot of humour resulting of their interactions but they read each other is many occasions and sometimes it becomes emotional.

I won't get over that face Quark make when Odo (fusionned with someone else's personality) freely expresses his affection for him ☺️. I could ship them all day.

- Garak friendship

Garak is a very strong character with many layers. Odo and him link for good through a very tough experience, as Garak needs to torture him at some point.

In a lot of aspect that illustrates what Odo went through to become a valid humanoid form. But this time we can connect as he is not a suffering in silence puddle but a visible hurting humanoid.

But Garak and Odo link because they mirror themselves, through pride, loyalty and betrayal. Through the pain they feel, hidden inside, and their sense of belonging, or should I say not belonging...

The pain Odo is enduring turns back on Garak and makes a difference for his future moral choices. Also Garak will keep Odo secret he learnt from the torture. The secret that makes then alike. They are homesick because they are desperately lonely. They are the enemy of the community they try to fit in because their species are.

From that comes a strange friendship rooted in suspicion but understanding.

And by the end, even Garak wanna help Odo finding his way through his love experiences.

- His love story with Lwaxana

This one is rewarding and heartbreaking to me. Lwaxana is a Betazoid with a huge libido. She crushes on Odo who tries to avoid her at all coast as she tends to cornering him into a physical interactions and a need for mating that doesn't suit him at all.

But she is the first to show him he can be loved as he is. We discover with her that he is ashamed to be different. That he doesn't want people to see him in his natural form (liquid) even when overdoing staying in a solid form is painful to him.

But stuck in an elevator with Lwaxana he refuses to return to his natural state in front of her, even if he reach his limit. She teaches him that she also is more than what people sees, and offers him a safe place to be what he is.

Much later, they develop some bounds as she is trying to escape her husband who wanna take the baby she carries as soon as she gives birth. At first he is guarded, but Lwaxana finds her way to share some soft moments with him, in a way he didn't know he was capable of. She needs confort, he doesn't know how to give her. Cornered, he find a way.

That moment unlock some other moments where she participates in his own way of bounding as a shape-shifter. They are on common ground, with no sexual things in the middle and they are happy together.

He offers to marry her to counteract in a legal way the fact that her current husband has a property right on the child she carries. And during the ceremony, this is the first time he expresses his love for her.

First he tries mimicking what is excepted of him, telling that she is intelleigent and beautiful. But the husband, present to the ceremony to stop it, sees through it and Odo finally tells the way he feels. Even his friends that know him for years are embarrassed to discover on this occasion how lonely he was feeling all this time and that they don't know him that much, whereas this woman who he met so little changed his life for the better.

This love is sincere but as an empathe she understands than Odo does not love her the way she needs. Odo would be fine with her company, sharing moments like they did before. But she needs more than he can offer her.

He loves her. But she is in love with him. And he learns that is different and not sufficient. Also she spotted his true repressed feelings for Kira, who I would speak about after. So she breaks with him.

She did it in the most gentle way she could, but I had this experience, without knowing that I was actually asexual and it hurts a lot. I tried. I made some tough choices for me, just to be rejected without explanation (or one that I couldn't understand fully on the moment). The real explanation was that I couldn't give the man what he needed. But he never realised how much efforts I put in this relationship and it broke me in the end. So this is what I see there.

- The love of his life, Kira

Kira is a very strong character that can be harsh to others, because of her own harmful past. She is passionate and all fire sometimes. She is very loving and tender on the other side.

The development of this story is more classical, with two people loving each other but don't express their feelings, waiting for the other to make the first step to no end.

There are misunderstandings and errors made on both side, they struggle, living their life away from each other, having other experiences, but then true love wins (almost).

This is the kind of love he is ready to betray for. This is the kind of love she is ready to let go for his happiness.

Kira is the one Odo wants to connect the proper way for this to work and all his struggles in other love relationships prepares him for that and in the same way prevent that from happening for a long time.

They learn each other progressively but the guarded nature of Odo is an obstacle. In the end, she is the one he finally opens up to everything that he is, even if the experience may not suit a humanoid form. It happens when Kira realises that Odo doesn't think she can love him the way he really is.

I love deeply that moment when he takes a pure energy form and envelopes her and she responds with wonderment and joy.

Kira proves her love for him several times, especially in the way she knows him and respects how he is. She is the one to understand the best his pride and need to keep some things hidden. She puts words on it when he can't so other wouldn't hurt him trying to make him react in a way they consider better.

They are two hurt people who learn the shape of the other through love.

Unfortunately like most of pure love stories, it is doomed. He has to return to his people to save the entire species so... they won't live together happy ever after. But we learn at some point that his love for her never faltered, even centuries later.

I love those kind of story with pure feelings and emotions ☺️.

From nothing to something

They had unearthly creature before in Star Trek, but when they were not machines, they were almost exclusively humanoid for evident reason of human playing them 😅. I liked the different society point of views making points for our own. But to me, Odo is the first really unearthly main character. Because he is technically not relatable in his true form.

How should I connect emotionally with a puddle ?

And for a very long time, in the show this is the underlying issue Odo has with everyone but for the reversed reason. He is puddle, how could he connect with solids ?

The thing is that Odo is seen through the filter of those who are the norm. And we meet him when he has a stable apparent relationship with others. We learn the underlying struggles and pains he experiences, discovering the differences. And those differences are relatable because we can question ours.

The thing is that we don't see for a long time that he hurts to be different as he appears rejecting or snobing humanoids. Attack is the best defense...

And as I said before, this comes from how he learned to adapt.

His very existence is "nothing" and he has to grow from that in a very traumatising way.

He learns very late that his own people abandoned him to be found by humanoids as an experiment to connect with us. But if he was aware of himself, he wasn't aware of anything else. Changelings are not meant to be alone. They live in total fusion in a sort of sea of them.

So from the start, he is fucked up. And those who found him didn't understand it was a sentient creature for a long time. They experiment on him as it was a inert matter. He exists but has no properties that we can attribute to a living organism.

He was found and labeled as "unknown sample / nothing" in cardassian (Odo'itil - in short Odo). He was one of its kind in a world of entities that couldn't understand him and that he couldn't understand either. So basically he experienced torture until he found a way to communicate, through changing form and mimick. But yet again the experiments continued until it was proven to be sentient.

Odo has a lot of resentment from that period.

Ironically, he was not a good shape-shifter, that why his face looks the way it is. And his face is a pale copie of the face of the man who experimented on him, this harmful "father". Also he kept the name Odo as designation. Nothing.

His relation with his "father" is very conflicted. The first time they met after Odo went away from his lab, it triggers a very powerful unconscious emotional response. And his father recognise the extend of the harm he did to him, and he never was aware causing it. He finally found a way to bound with this man, recognising that his father loves him and is hurt from the cold separation. Odo doesn't forgive totally but he opens a door to a future collaboration.

I like the evolution of his psychology around it and through his name also. He explains that at first when people called him Odo, he was hearing "nothing". So for him, people considered him to be nothing. And when he made some real friends, he finally came over that pejorarive meaning around his existence, he began to hear a name.

He achieved to become something out of nothing.

The desire to link and the demisexuality

Odo doesn't know much about himself except that he is. Though he has a need to link with other that comes from his own nature. He doesn't know where it leads.

His first links are made in the most humanoid way possible. He doesn't want to be weird. He is mimicking some things to share moments with others, like drinking or eating. He doesn't need to and cannot really absorb things. But he does it anyway and find some fulfilment to simply be with them, talk and share.

The Changellings (his species) don't like solids forms of life and abhor connecting with them. They are almost repulsed by the idea of binding physically with a solid, because their link (fusion) is much more. But the links Odo makes aren't physical ones.

While he doesn't know the existence of his own species, Odo has the same internal repulsion over everything that imply physical link, so especially everything around sexuality, because to him the way it is done by humanoids is uncanny. It lacks something but he doesn't know what exactly. But he knows that what is the most strange to him is realated to the love feeling. For him what he observes from people in love isn't what he experiences and all physical attraction is weird and disgusting.

He often verbally states in a very crude way that he doesn't understand the need humanoids have to mate and they biological needs for pleasure. Also their rituals to link for love is the most abstract thing to him. He acknowledges the feeling, not what can accompany it.

But he does develop feelings for others and some attraction. He is even attracted to female humanoids in general. He doesn't want to make out but he can experience a kind of pull and curiosity. But as soon as he has to interact and he recognises attraction from the other part, he bails. He has to be forced into something to begin to understand bits of it.

He continues to live the experiences about linking with others the same way he was taught to interact with people in the first place. Meaning, escape from pain to find where it doesn't hurt. And it is painful to see him to go through that for love too. He naturally tries to avoid pain where he thinks it is and ends up in being forced into a situation extremely inconfortable for him, struggling to find the best way to find a new balance in his emotions and in sensations in which he finds no pleasure.

When he meets Lwaxana, she is the most disruptive and invasive person ever. He doesn't have any feelings for her and she is forcing her way through him to get that response out of him. But she is the first to see what is the problem and offer a solution that his not harmful to him. She is the first whose love reaches him. And he began to love her in his own ways. This is not enough of course...

When he meets his people, he experiences the first fusion of his life and the experience is the definition of what he needs. But... soon he realises that even if this is the equivalent of his biological needs, he doesn't feel for it at all. Later, after some other steps in his journey to discover love, he tries to share with a Changelling what he has learned and the experience is unconclusive for both of them. The Changelling doesn't feel anything for the act as a solid. Neither does Odo, even if he is sure he made it right. The Changelling tries to force the idea that their natural way of linking is the best for him and he has to abandon his humanoid habits. But still he doesn't feel that way. Like yes, this is the most rewarding thing except there are no feelings.

At some point, because he choses humanoids over his own kind, killing a Changelling that was harmful to his friends, he is punished by his people and rejected. They made him human, keeping his imperfect face as a reminder to how bad he was even as what he was supposed to be. So he has to live like what they consider a poor and disgusting life. Odo has to learn a lot of things back but in the same time, he experiences for the first time some simple pleasures he couldn't grasp before. When he can finally revert to his natural form, he uses this experience to connect better with others has he understands now a bit more about their needs.

Odo is the one that has to make the extra steps in every direction. Steps toward humanoids who can learn to accept him and care for him but without fully understanding what he is and ignoring a lot of time is personal needs. Steps toward Changellings who can understands what he is and can offer him to fulfil a lot of his needs but won't understand some of them that are vital to him, like the need to be loved and to love, something that he developed staying with humanoids and that they consider a defect.

To both side, on the aspect of love he is incomplete.

The Changellings are purely asexual and sex repulsed, if I had to make a comparison. They are experiencing things completely detached from love in all its forms. In their norms, he has to remove the idea that this feeling is necessary to his existence. They try to cure him from that, educating him to the way his species do things. But to him their way to link is incomplete for his personal development.

On the other hands, to him, the humanoids are sexual beings with a lot of needs he can't grab. To their norms he is just not trying hard enough to get what he wants. They see his need for love, they recognise that he can feel, but the answer is often the same and not very helpful in the form that that is take. Try again. They don't acknowledge that pain and fear on this subject are two overwhelming obstacles for him and that they pushes are, more often than not, harmful. But with them, he develops those feelings, painful steps after another, finding the shape they have.

He cannot find fulfilment in both of the worlds he knows, until Kira.

Well, to be fair, he has an experience with someone else, with whom he falls in love. He has sex with her and discovers he can find pleasure in it. In the demisexual way. And that's the key for him.

But that person has to leave him behind. And as I explained before, his own experience of life made that kind of thing very harmful to him. That is a step that pushes him backwards for quite some times.

The thing I relate the most in this experience is when he asks the woman if he did good as it was his first sexual experience ever. She replies that she couldn't tell it was. And he is happy to have satisfy her needs and feel pleasure too. But for me, the way it is said is a lot like, I hope I did everything right as a solid demands it, so I won't be punished. Well I had this experiences too. Trying to match expectation and being punished for not doing good enough...

And what kills me is that Odo does good. He makes real progress and is about to maybe have a positive experience from it. And in the end he is punished by the events themselves, not that he didn't anything wrong on the thing, but he did wrong to have even tried...

So his first real step forward in his journey is rewarded with pain shortly after. Something he will struggle to overcome to try new experiences and many are pushing him. So you can guess the reaction...

But from this experience he has to learn that, for him, love is possible only if a strong emotional connection is made. He will need some more time to assimilate this.

And of course, in the end, Kira is the one that checks all the points.

After that he will try to overcome his problems to express his feelings and fear to lose the only one with whom failing would be too painful. And, once again, because he always experience the things the same way, it is cornered that he makes the final step.

In the end, he has to leave her but their separation, even if bittersweet, is tender, full of understanding and love.

Final word

I hope that I wasn't too boring with this long analysis for a character that is not in the fandom of this blog.

Odo is a complexe character, and quite gray. Yeah he did bad things too. I made this analysis through the specter of my reading of his sexuality mostly and my own experience pov. But this is a character interesting in many other aspects. He keeps a lot inside and when things come out we aren't really prepared.

I don't want to go specially far in the fandom online. I don't know what is the state of it really, and I stopped in the middle of Entreprise show as I didn't connect with the characters. I don't know either if you would like to learn more on my blorblos from the past. Those from Star Trek but I have some others. I inaugurate the tag "blorblo from the attic" for the occasion lol.

Have a nice day, and I leave you on a Odo Quark smiling to each other moment ☺️.

Additional image ressources [x] [x] and [x]

[thegeminisage]

ABSOLUTELY NO SPOILERS ON THIS POST.

future star trek stuff i am looking forward to:

THE BORG!!!! i'm so close. nobody tell me ANYTHING

seven of nine bc firstly the borg and secondly i'm gay

janeway because she voices my favorite dragno age character and i hope if they make a woman a captain they will be less sexist

that one vulcan lady. t'pol? and her very Some Guy of a human not-boyfriend. i'm going to be frothing at the mouth about those guys i can tell already

picard looks cool. once i start liking tng i bet i'll like it a lot

whatever movie the first contact is in

spock in tng

spock in the two tos movies we have left

just all of ds9 everyone says it's fan damn tastic like i can't fucking wait

the UMMM one time travel ep i have heard about...do NOT leave hints on this post bc cathy doesn't know yet...sounds so fucking good and funny

meeting spock's siblings bc i KNOW he has them. idk which shows and movies they're all on but i'll get there eventually

short treks sounds neat

future star trek stuff i am dreading:

strange new worlds. it looks like a cw show (derogatory) and i don't want to look at paul wesley ever again i have tvd trauma

having to rewatch into darkness because i also don't want to look at benedict cumberb*tch i never watched sherlock but i still have sherlock trauma

the um movie. the movie where. you know what nevermind

i know what happens to t'pol's boyfriend and i'm dreading that and also i've heard that the entire show she's on (enterprise?) is a fucking exercise in frustration. so i am sure not looking forward to that

lower decks would be fine bc i feel like it's just a references salad but the art style is so fucking ugly i truly might just skip the whole thing. it looks like family guy (derogatory) and south park (derogatory) had a really ugly baby

discovery has jason isaacs in it and i also don't want to look at him because i have oa trauma.

having to coordinate voyager and ds9 episode watches because i think the two shows aired at the same time and i am going STRICTLY by release date. so switching back and forth between those is gonna be <3 a nightmare. i think some of the later trek shows did this too...

not being able to watch anything else for the next two years. rip.

[nerdgatehobbit]

I did like how Q starts out in the TNG Starfleet uniform variant, later switching over to the DS9 one.  Honestly, I do wonder what could have been if Q had become a reoccurring character here rather than on Voyager.  Then again, the DS9 senior cast weren’t willing to put up with his antics at all, and so it makes sense that Q would leave to find a group more willing to tolerate him.

On the other hand, I don’t think Q held a grudge about being punched, if he’s so willing to be in Sisko’s personal bubble afterwards.  Sisko, however, remains disgruntled.

[geoffreytoday]

As a Star Trek fan, I've always been kind of ambivalent about DS9.

I remember when it was on its way. There was a lot of hype, which in retrospect is interesting to think about in a pre-internet era. Back in the day when our sources for sci-fi entertainment news were things like Entertainment Tonight, or magazines like Starlog. No social media, no websites, just a half-hour "news" show that was mostly a vehicle for industry puff pieces, and... I've gotten off track, I apologize.

I was a huge TNG nerd, and I could not wait to have another Trek series. This lead to, I think, the first incident which potentially soured my experience with DS9. Through no fault of the show mind you.

Coming up on the premier of DS9, the Home Shopping Network (is that still a thing? I haven't had cable for like 26 years. If it's not still a thing, for those not in the know, it was a tv channel dedicated to showcasing shit you could buy from home. With the advent of online shopping, I can imagine it might no longer exist) featured the show's writing bible. I was so excited about that. What a thing to have! I managed to convince my mom, and she purchased it. What arrived was a small packet of badly xeroxed, barely legible pages, stapled together. The disappointment was huge, and in fact my mom returned it and got a refund.

It was certainly unfair of me to hold that experience against the show, but I was barely 14 at the time.

DS9 did not immediately grab me. Politics were not a thing I was interested in, or much enjoyed. Religion even less so. The changeling effects which had been much discussed leading up to the series premier were underwhelming and kinda embarrassing. At 14, it was just not the Trek show for me. I gave it a few episodes, and then abandoned it for the comfort and familiarity of TNG.

Round about, I think either the season 3 or 4 premier, I gave it another shot. TNG was gone now, and Voyager failed even harder than DS9 had at grabbing my attention. The commercials were exciting. Worf was coming to the series, and supposedly the peace treaty between the Klingons and the Federation was going to end. I was sold.

That lasted all of two episodes before the Klingons and the Federation were pals again. I felt manipulated. I was annoyed that they had pulled the ol' bait and switch on me. I had given DS9 another chance, and it had played me for a sucker. Regardless of whether that was the intent, or how the rest of the season played out, I was miffed enough that I was done.

In the decades since, I've come around. I no longer think poorly of DS9. In fact, I've reached a point where I am actively interested in giving the entire series another chance. The problem is, I am still afflicted by an inability to watch shows alone. It's gotten marginally better, but it's still something of a struggle for me (I legitimately wish I knew how it got so bad, as it didn't used to be a thing for me)

I need a DS9 pal. Someone who would actually be interested in hanging out on a regular basis to watch through the series. Unfortunately, my social circle is practically non existent these days. I see people socially once or twice a month if I'm lucky, which I'm usually not, and honestly, the majority of that is an rpg game that I run, which while I love it and it's super fun, is not the same as having a simple one on one hang out.

Am I talking too much? I'm talking too much.

[undyinglantern]

tagged by @gojoexmachina thank uuuuuu 💕💕💕

last song: dự báo thời tiết hôm nay mưa by grey d

currently watching: switching between the x files, star trek ds9/voyager, and lost depending on the day and mood :)

currently reading: i've been trying to read a game of thrones for the past 6 months but every chapter changes perspective in character which throws me off and breaks my immersion, so i've only gotten half way through the book and am probably gonna give up on it 😭😭😭

current obsession: none atm _(:3/ the closest thing is watching this yt channel that recreates food from genshin in painstaking detail (i made their "sunset berry tea" and it was actually pretty good)

tagging: no one specific but if you see this and want to do it consider yourself tagged