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.
ds9 fans blaming rick berman for all the misogyny & homophobia in ds9 is getting a little old tbh like i have no doubt he played a significant part in the misogyny & homophobia but it wasn’t JUST him. he didn’t do that all by himself. especially not on ds9 which he was less involved in after the first few seasons cause he was working on voyager & the tng movies. a tv show isn’t made by 1 person and it takes a culture of misogyny & homophobia among the writers, producers, etc to have that be very present onscreen. blaming it all on berman is easy and fun but it’s not an accurate picture of what actually happened. the misogyny & homophobia in ds9 come from a lot of sources, and berman is a significant one, but he’s not the only one
The best dynamic for a group of characters: every single one of them is the weirdest person you will ever meet, but in wildly different ways. Every time you think you’ve identified “the normal one” they casually reveal that they don’t think birds exist, or they fistfight grizzly bears on the weekends, or they collect human skulls, and you realize again that none of these people are remotely normal.
Badda Bing Badda Bang is almost perfect. All it needs is 1. Garak is there. He distracts Frankie Eyes with the perfect mixture of Gay Seduction and suggesting better ways for the mob to operate 2. Kira is personally guarding Vic and beats up several guys 3. Julian and Ezri switch places. He keeps the outfit though.
One of the peak comedy things about DS9 is that everyone literally knows EVERYTHING about each other.
“The O’Brien’s are fighting again!”
“Oh! Odo probably had sex with that woman, let’s hang around and gossip about it” (which everyone will be in on, including the Captain. Picard would have rather SHOOT himself than gossip on the bridge but Sisko is always like “spill the tea plz.”)
“Julian has a James Bond fetish. Also- its common knowledge that his lunch parter is a former assassin and spy. Don’t worry- now they just have the world’s bitchiest book club together.”
Quark will come strolling up and be like “wow, crazy that the *super top secret thing* is happening now.” And when the other characters are like how did you know that?? He’s like “this place is a walking gossip factor.”
It’s just such an excellent and underrated dynamic of having the characters literally stand around and gossip about each other. Excellent.
‘Tis the season to remind the Trek fandom that these 1994 Hallmark XMas ornaments
were used by DS9’s FX team for the season 4 opener.
So I think it’s fair to consider this episode as a Christmas episode. And TNG’s series finale could be considered as such too given that writers Ron Moore and Brannon Braga seemed to have borrowed heavily from A Christmas Carol with Picard experiencing past, present, and future with Q doing duty for all the different ghosts.
