DS9: Doomed To Fail

I'm terribly sorry about the fallback in posts this week. I didn't write the day that I was in the ER and spent yesterday recovering. I did, however, watch lots of DS9. Actually, in the last two days, I watched several episodes of DS9 and three of them were about doomed relationships: Melora, Rules of Acquisition, and Second Sight. If you've not seen these episodes and you don't want them totally ruined for you, skip over this one and come back to it after you've had your heart broken three times in four episodes.

#1: Melora
Melora is an Elaysian from a planet with very low gravity. Because of DS9's comparatively high gravity, she needs the assistance of a wheel chair and/or exo-skeleton to move about the station. Bashir gets the googly eyes over her and even comes up with a series of treatments that allow Melora to function in the high gravity environment. Eventually though, Melora realizes that if she continues the treatments she won't be able to return to her home world for extended periods of time without confusing her neuromuscular system. This makes no sense to me since it seems like once the treatments have effectively become permanent, she ought to be able to function in a low gravity environment just as well as any our astronauts function on the space station but whatever. Dax draws such a charming comparison between Melora and the Little Mermaid that it doesn't bother me.

Wish I could be... part of your world. 

What does bother me is that fact that somehow Bashir has gone his entire life without experiencing low gravity! Dude, you are literally living in a space station! What's going on!? How do they not have rooms that are just designed for low gravity (like Melora's) where you can go fly around all day and do awesome David Bowie covers to beam back to Earth? Anyway, once Melora doesn't want to be Bashir's science project anymore we never see her again.

#2: Rules of Acquisition
Ok, basically we've got a Yentl thing going on here. This Ferengi chick named Pel is fed up with women not being allowed to read or write or wear clothes. She gets herself some sweet, synthetic lobes and heads out into space to make her fortune. Pretty soon she meets Quark and falls in love. Quark doesn't know Pel is a lady but he respects his new pal for his smarts and rare loyalty. See? Just like Yentl. I told you.

Rule of Acquisition #21:
Never place friendship above profit.

Anyway, as much as Quark digs Pel, he can't abide by her break with convention and neither can the Grand Nagus. Things don't end well but Pel makes a pretty clean break and gets on a boat headed for the United States  books passage on an Andorian freighter which will take her into the Gamma Quadrant, where she can lead a life of freedom and dignity as a woman.

#3: Second Sight
Well this one's pretty heartbreaking from the get-go. Basically, Sisko realizes that he almost forgot that it's the fourth anniversary of his wife's death so he takes a somber walk around the station where he meets a beautiful woman named Fenna. They hit it off and he starts forgetting how crazy depressed he is just when she disappears. This happens a few more times and Sisko even wonders if maybe he's starting to lose it. Finally, he and Dax figure out that Fenna is a psychic projection of Nadell, the unhappy wife of a terraforming scientist they're hosting. Once that comes out, we can all gather that Sisko and Fenna (who doesn't even really exist) can't ride off into the wormhole together. Sisko says goodbye to Nadell completely ignorant of the fact that she will go on to have a happy life as the director of Global Dynamics in a little town called Eureka.

Don't cry, Fenna. Eureka is awesome.