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Thursday, June 27, 2013

DS9: Rejoined

One of the odd quirks of the Trill is that because of their peculiar longevity they tend to go around with a lot of emotional baggage from past relationships dragging behind them. In "Rejoined" we get to meet Dax's kind-of-ex-wife, Kahn, who travels around in the gut of this pretty lady:

Her name is Lenara and she's actually a super scientist. 
There's a lot of talk in this episode about how there's a big taboo in Trill culture about not getting back together with your symbiont's old flame (consequences include being excommunicated from Trill and letting the symbiont die with its current host) but because Jadzia is the Riker of this series and thus pretty much constantly ready to give up her entire way of life for a slice of some romantic action, she's all in with Lenara.

This episode doesn't annoy me quite as much as that one where Jadzia falls for that dude from Brigadoon but it still doesn't reach me like I think it's supposed to. Jadzia's teary-eyed pleas don't even strike a chord with Sisko who's forced to lecture her about her own principles.

There was a big deal made when this episode aired that it contained a (what at the time was both super trendy and controversial) lesbian kiss. People wrote into the show to complain. People called, apparently scandalized by two ladies smooching. Apparently they were unaware of Star Trek's long history of social wave-making and its questioning of the status quo. This episode is much like "Plato's Stepchildren" in that it contains a controversial kiss and also that it's not at all about the kiss. "Rejoined" isn't about homosexuality but about Trill culture. No one aboard DS9 is shocked or otherwise wigged out by the fact that Jadzia is having a relationship with a woman. In that way, more than anything else, this episode is extremely, quietly progressive. If not for the kiss, this one probably would've just flown under the radar as a less memorable episode than the ones it sits close to in the season (The Visitor, Little Green Men, The Sword of Kahless) My favorite of part of this episode is actually Jadzia performing magic tricks and completely baffling Quark. Now that's some good stuff:


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