By The Plaid Adder

Comments: plaidder@mindspring.com

Back in 1992 during the presidential campaign, before Bill Clinton became the quivering mass of equivocation and faithlessness that he is now, I followed the Democratic National Convention avidly. I was glued to the TV set when, during his acceptance speech, he ran through a list of people that the Republicans had been unjustly using as scapegoats for America's problems, and included gays. When he got to that part of the speech, the cameras left the podium and traveled into the audience, where they found the men and women who were carrying pro-gay and lesbian placards and banners. Many of them were crying. At home, I started to get a lump in my throat too. I wrote to a straight friend afterwards, trying to explain why a one-sentence mention in a political speech should have had this kind of emotional impact. It was, as I pointed out, the first time we had seen a major political candidate admit, in public, that we were being unjustly oppressed, and say that this was not a good thing. So it was a step forward. But that still didn't explain the tears, and I couldn't explain them to myself until I ended up writing, "We cried because it was so much more than we're used to getting, but still so much less than we need."

The same thing can be said of "Rejoined," the first episode of any Star Trek series to overtly address homosexual desire. (There are many of us who would argue that Star Trek has been addressing it at the subtextual level for years now, but that's another story for another time.) Along with most of the people I have talked to about the episode, I was absolutely stunned by what a good job they did with it. At the same time, I would argue that the catch in the throat that I and other viewers experienced came partly from the understanding that this is not enough--that if, as we fear, this episode is never followed up, things will be no better than before, and that having seen, for a moment, what Star Trek could be like, would make the subsequent failure to deliver on that promise even more painful.

But first, to address the episode itself: in my opinion, this is not only a shockingly sensible and sensitive treatment of an issue that Piller, Berman et al. have been handling with the skill and precision of a group of rhinos trying to play volleyball, but one of the best episodes Deep Space 9 has put out in a long time, and certainly the best treatment of a crew member's romantic involvement. Because of The Issue, the writers were inspired to depart from the same tired formulas that usually dictate how these romances play out. For one thing, the previous connection made it much more believable that feelings that strong could develop in that short a time period, which is always a problem with single-episode romances. It also made the flirtation/seduction process more interesting because instead of watching the same round of cliched double-entendres and knowing glances that's usually the prelude to two characters falling into each other's beds, we saw two characters deal with one of the most interesting problems of love--what to do with feelings that change and stay the same at the same time--and trying to understand how their old emotions and desires fit into their new personalities. So, unlike many episodes in which the fact that two characters are "in love" is simply offered to the viewer after 5 minutes of cheesy soap-opera dialogue as a fait accompli (I'm thinking particularly of "Non Sequitur," where clealry the writers have decided that we don't need to see why Harry and Libby would care about each other as long as they tell us it's true), we actually got to see how love works.

The other major achievement of this episode was how naturalized the attraction between Dax and Lenara was. Words like "natural" and "normal" are so loaded that I normally don't like to use them in this context, but what I'm trying to say is that for once we saw the camera treating same-sex desire as just as interesting as heterosexual desire--no more and no less. The relationship wasn't sensationalized. Bashir, Kira, and the other regular characters reacted to the rekindling of the flames as if it was a perfectly natural result of their coming into contact again, and seemed to find the fact that they were now both female totally irrelevant and uninteresting. There are problems with this approach, which I will go into later, but first I want to explain how unbelievably liberating it was to see this. If you have never been in a same-sex relationship, it is probably impossible for you to imagine how sick you can eventually become of the fact that love for you is always to some extent a political act. No matter how hard you work to counteract it, the national obsession with sexual orientation means that you are constantly aware that your relationship is seen, by most of the people in this country, as bizarre, abnormal, pathological, or worse, and it becomes impossible to love your partner without dealing somehow with issues of fear, loathing and hatred. For an hour I got to see a universe in which it would be possible to have a relationship without the fact that my partner was also a woman being a huge issue. For those of you who have only dated outside your gender, it is perhaps impossible to understand what a joy that would be. To be able to fall in love without having to reorganize your entire conception of your own identity, without changing your relationships with your family and friends forever, without suddenly becoming the object of hateful rhetoric from the state and the church--this is something that most gays and lesbians have never experienced, and which I do not expect to see happen in my lifetime. What we saw in "Rejoined" is impossible in American society as it now exists. And that's what science fiction is for--to show us alternatives we can't imagine, and to try to push us to realize the changes that seem like fantasy to us now.

As far as The Kiss goes, what I said earlier applies: because they were forced by The Issue to deviate from accepted formulas, that was the best kiss I think I've seen on Star Trek in any incarnation. Instead of the trademark "first we gaze, then we move our heads slowly toward each other, then we tilt, then we connect..." progression, we got a lead-up that used individualized body language to convey the attraction they were both feeling before moving into the kiss, and as a result the kiss seemed much less forced and pro forma than a lot of television and film kisses. It seemed, for once, to convey real passion and real attraction. And that, of course, made it more compelling.

A related beneficial side-effect is that this episode developed one of the show's most sadly neglected female characters. As those who have known me on the net perhaps remember, I have never been a fan of Terry Farrell, and have said many unkind things about her acting ability. I would like to take some of them back now. "Rejoined" proved that when the script is good and the stakes are high, Farrell can actually turn in a good performance. I hope that this will inspire the writers to do more with her character, which is in theory one of the more interesting things the show has going for it. Describing the whole Trill concept to non-Trek watchers, which I have had to do a lot lately as a result of this episode and the publicity it got, I was struck by how interested everyone was in the idea of a character with multiple personalities and gender identities. If the writers and producers can only do something with this, it could really improve the show. (And if we could only get Kira out of that ridiculous femme costume they've forced on her, that would be another plus. But I digress.)

What this proves, as far as I'm concerned, is something I think is true for all literature--the more you depart from standard formulas the better the work gets, and anything that forces you to do that will make your piece better. In this case, the fact that the writers were finally taking on an issue that has scared the fnaa out of the Paramount team for many a moon pushed them to stop relying on their stock devices and really develop these characters and their relationship. "Rejoined" is not just good politics--it's good drama. The two things are not unrelated.

As I said, however, if "Rejoined" is now allowed to stand alone as Paramount's one grand gesture, a lot of the good it did will be undone. The universe I was excited to be a part of for an hour will close up and be forgotten, Dax will revert to the heterosexual woman they have always played her as before, and the viewers and producers alike will start taking the escape routes that this episode leaves open. After all, Dax and Lenara are both aliens. We still don't know for sure whether homosexuality exists still among humans or what the reaction would be. Dax still has the excuse that she used to be male when she was in love with Lenara the first time--an excuse the producers seemed to be leaning on by making Dax more than usually masculine in this episode. (Dax always wore pants, while Lenara was generally in a skirt; Dax rescued Lenara from certain death; Dax took the initiative both in getting together and in proposing that they stay together; and although without checking the tape I can't be sure, I think they changed her hair and makeup to make her face look stronger and less feminine. Even when Dax was skewering Klingons in "Blood Oath" she never looked this butch.) If the issue is allowed to drop, eventually it will be the excuses that become important and not the advances.

As fans, it is our responsibility not to let that happen. Let Paramount know that you want to see more episodes like "Rejoined," not only because they finally admit the existence and recognize the needs of female and queer fans, but because they make the show more interesting and worth watching than it would otherwise be. Those who have always hated the idea that homosexuality could ever become accepted, and for that reason have refused to believe that it could or should be part of the Star Trek vision of the utopian future, will certainly be loud in their wail, and will make a big noise. Drown them out. Let our voice, finally, be the one that Paramount listens to.