Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
It’s been said before but I’ll say it again: the other thing I love about ‘Trials and Tribble-ations’ as a Jadzia episode is how often her friends react to the things she says before she says them. Sisko sighing wearily a moment before she asks if they can go meet Koloth ‘in his prime’. Sisko rolling his eyes a moment before she quips that McCoy ‘had a surgeon’s hands’. Above all, the way Kira starts grinning a moment before Jadzia drops her terrible ‘I guess you boys from Temporal Investigations are always on time’ punchline. The implication that Kira thinks Dax is so funny she’ll laugh at her worst jokes in advance is–whether or not you’re a ride-or-die Kira/Dax person–unbearably sweet.
I can’t stop thinking about the panel discussion I was at this summer where I learned that the Worf/Dax romance was literally concocted by Michael Dorn and Terry Farrell just cuz they mutually wanted to spend more work hours getting to have fun with their irl bff. and if that ain’t the cutest and most valid reason to throw in a heterosexual romance, I don’t know what is!
Ahsjdkkd that is so cute…and also genius lol like they were literally getting paid to hang out in funny makeup. Good for them
Okay thinking about that one deleted scene from The Wire script where Sisko mentions he and Curzon worked at the Federation Embassy on Romulus and his Romulan friend was arrested by the Tal Shiar (calculations w Sisko’s age put this around 2360), what if they were there at the same time as Garak? Like the Embassies are probably clustered pretty closely together to keep the aliens in a single area so if they were in the same city, there’s a good chance they would cross paths with each other at one time or another.
Curzon Dax fucked Garak
I’ve always thought Jadzia and Garak would make great friends and peak wlw/mlm solidarity but THIS explains why they avoid each other and are almost never on screen together
So like I get that people have this issue with Star Trek taking so long to have a canonically queer principle character, and I get that people kind of take issue with there being a sort of ‘qualifier’ on Jadzia/Lenara as they were husband and wife in their previous lives, but I also feel like a lot of people don’t appreciate how incredible this story was?
The Jadzia/Lenara story revolved around two characters who were forbidden from being together by the taboos and laws of their culture. And it wasn’t just a metaphor - they actually used two women. This is a queer story about two women who aren’t allowed to be together because of their cultural norms. Any signs of affection between them were seen as inherently wrong, risky, dangerous etc. Lenara works under the constant, watchful eye of her brother, who continually makes his opinion about his ~concern~ for her known. And eventually Jadzia has to choose between the woman she loves and the life she wants because she won’t be allowed to have both - if she begins a relationship with this woman, her life as she knows it is over and shew ill be ostracized from her society, never allowed to re-enter it. And every moment of it is believable and full of beautifully painful affection…
In 1995 they shamelessly presented a wlw love story complete with longing, affectionate looks, confessions of love, and kisses. And like Kira Nerys says “I don’t understand how two people who’ve fallen in love and made a life together can be forced to walk away from each other because of a taboo!” Like… they weren’t be subtle about this at all.
As for the “qualifier” that somehow makes it less queer….? These two people carry the memories of a man and woman who used to be married, so I guess a lot of people saw this story as a second-hand het love story, but to me that was a really important part of the story because it presented this wlw relationship as totally equal to a het marriage. Their love is intense, believable, and on par with a male/female relationship.
Also, choosing to see this as somehow a second-hand het love story is, quite bluntly, transphobia.
There are tremendously unsubtle trans implications throughout Dax’s entire character arc, complete with multiple scenes that handle deadnaming and pronouns. For many trans people who grew up with Star Trek, the Trills in general, but especially in DS9 were a revelation. Dax is a character who everyone acknowledges once was a man, and who everyone also acknowledges is now a woman. That’s huge, and it needs to not be erased in the conversation about wlw representation in Star Trek in general.
A woman wanting to be together romantically with another woman is not het, regardless of whether one of them was once a man. That’s true whether the women are real or fictional. End of fucking story.
This episode is a genuine love story between two women, and especially when compared to the first ever episode with a Trill in it - a TNG episode where Beverly falls in love with a Trill and breaks up with them when they take a female host instead of a male one, when she’d previously been able to get over the Trill passing to Riker as an intermediate host and continue the relationship - it’s a revelation.
The fact that its a tragic love story is less than ideal, but for 1995 it’s incredible it was broadcast.
