Comments on: Retro Review: Distant Voices

By: hostile_17

hostile_17 — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Unless you’re George Lucas, you can’t go back and decide to do things.

By: siskokid888

siskokid888 — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:53:00 +0000

OK, heres my Trek nerd nitpick – she says “The Omega Glory” was a TOS “alone on a ship bottle show”. It was, of course, “The Mark of Gideon”
Now I feel better.

By: Enterprise1981

Enterprise1981 — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 19:56:00 +0000

Glad we’re agreement. I had simply hoped to broach the issue in a non-confrontational manner before the usual round of outrage MEG’s take on Garak, followed by the outrage over the outrage. Stay tuned for a Freudian analysis of the opening Bashir and O’Brien scene in “Hippocratic Oath.”

By: AirElephant

AirElephant — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 19:16:00 +0000

Well, that’s not exactly my point, though. I tend to approach this material in an asexual way, meaning that while I can understand the subtext, as well as the desire to portray non-traditional relationships in an open way, I just tend not to apply any sexual overtones to Trek episodes in general. I never once wondered about Garak’s sexuality, nor did I particularly care for Bashir’s decidedly juvenile approach to courtship. It’s just that I was more focused on the heroic nature of the characters, the plot they were trying to service, and the overall development of each character’s backstory.

It’s pretty clear that the Trek writers were intent upon pushing many liberal (or progressive, whichever term one wants to apply) ideas, which is their right. It’s just that I tend to brush off the sexual ones in an attempt to simply enjoy the story and characters as they are presented to me. Perhaps that makes me a shallow thinker, but I tend to prefer episodes where humans try to stretch themselves beyond their basic animal instincts.

By: Enterprise1981

Enterprise1981 — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 19:06:00 +0000

As Andy Robinson said, “He’s not gay, he’s not straight…” He just portrayed the character as alien as possible in terms of how he interacted with the regulars. Similarly, people have pointed out that Craig Ferguson isn’t gay, he’s just being European. He just pretends to be gay in a lot of “Late Late Show” monologues simply because Americans are such prudes.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of the slash genre simply because of the very notion of making any same sex pair of friends, like Kirk and Spock, a gay couple just for the heck of it. On the other hand, I’m amenable to the idea of a Bashir and Garak pairing since certain subtexts made such a notion believable.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:59:00 +0000

Spot on.

By: AirElephant

AirElephant — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:37:00 +0000

I must be dense, but in all the times I’ve watched DS9, Garak’s sexuality has never even entered let alone crossed my mind. Even when I read the passage above, about Garak’s “flirtatious” nature, sexual attraction never wasn’t the first thing I considered. I had always thought that Garak’s interest in Bashir came from amused curiosity. To my mind, while Garak grew to view Bashir as a close friend, it always seemed to me that Garak derived pleasure from leading Bashir on and indulging Bashir’s penchant for covert intrigues. He found it amusing that someone like Bashir could be so obsessed with the glamour of a profession that was, to Garak, anything but glamorous.

I sometimes wonder if I’m just so naive, or perhaps shallow, that I don’t see anything sexual in these actions while so many threads are devoted to ferreting out the Freudian intent behind them.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 11:14:00 +0000

That isn’t really the part that matters. She’s trying to imply that the pretend Garak in Bashir’s MIND is also gay for him, which would mean Bashir is actually gay for Garak, which would mean everyone’s gay for everyone all the time because MEG is obsessed with slash fiction and oh how goddamn ridiculous.

By the way, intent of the artist hasn’t been a major factor in expert critique for a long, long time now. His is just another reading.

By: Enterprise1981

Enterprise1981 — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 21:34:00 +0000

Before the quote miners jump on a certain remark about Garak, Andrew Robinson did, in fact, say he played Garak as bisexual or omnisexual.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Elim_Garak#Background

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_Characters_in_The_Star_Trek_Universe#Other_examples

By: AirElephant

AirElephant — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 16:21:00 +0000

I’ve watched numerous documentaries about the making of TV series, including this one, and from the writers’ commentaries it’s pretty clear that most of the characters are developed over the course of the series. More often than not, a character becomes an amalgam of ideas in the writer’s mind and the personality of the actor that’s chosen to portray them. Bashir was clearly an unformed notion throughout the first season, and even this far in–in season four–they’re still developing facets of his personality and elements of his backstory.

In many cases in Trek, often noted by Michelle in this blog, the characters in DS9 do things that, at least for a particular episode, feel out of character. To me, that’s proof that in many cases the writers focused primarily on telling a story which made it necessary to make adjustments to one or more characters’ personalities in order to service the plot. For example, it’s my belief that the writer of the episode “Doctor Bashir, I presume” wanted to explore what it means to be genetically enhanced in a world where that’s forbidden–a concept that was very popular in the ’90′s when that story was written. While they could have done it with a non-DS9 character, I think the writing staff felt at the time it would be an interesting addition to Bashir’s character. I don’t think that, prior to that time, they had even considered it being part of the character’s arc, due to the lack of any prior mention–or even hint–of it.

Just allow that writers are far from omniscient and, especially in the TV medium where the pursuit of shifting audience allegiance rises to almost fanatical obsession, abrupt changes in characters are almost to be expected.