{"id":5470,"date":"2016-04-07T13:00:49","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T20:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=5470"},"modified":"2016-03-28T22:07:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T05:07:16","slug":"mark-watches-deep-space-nine-s03e08-meridian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2016\/04\/mark-watches-deep-space-nine-s03e08-meridian\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Deep Space Nine’: S03E08 – Meridian"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the eighth episode of the third season of\u00c2\u00a0Deep Space Nine<\/i>, I tried. I really did. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For stalking, misogyny<\/b>.<\/p>\n

You know, season three has been so good that it was always going to be difficult to go into this episode, which contains a plot that treads incredibly close to what we’ve seen time and time again on\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>. There are two main stories here, so let me split this up based on each of them.<\/p>\n

Meridian<\/b><\/p>\n

I think I’ve criticized the one-episode-romance so many times that I really have to see something special and unique for me to feel like\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0can pull it off. There are elements to the romance between Deral and Jadzia that are sweet and touching, but I’ll always have a problem with end-of-the-world love affairs that transpire over a short amount of time. Perhaps that just makes me different and there’s a way my sexuality\/romantic orientation works that means I’ll never get this. Like, ever. I don’t know how a person can fall in\u00c2\u00a0love<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0with someone else in a few days. I’ve always seen being\u00c2\u00a0in<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0love as a process, something that happens after you get to know another person, after you can spend enough time with them in order to imagine spending a lifetime together. Infatuation works much more like what we see here. How can someone want to give up their career and their corporeal body after\u00c2\u00a0twelve days<\/i>?<\/p>\n

Which isn’t to say that love and romance\u00c2\u00a0doesn’t<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0happen that way, obviously. For some people, it’s a sudden, immediate thing. For others, it never happens. For others, it’s after only knowing a person for a long time and developing a friendship with them. Anyway, I don’t want to list every possible sexual or romantic orientation humanly possible here, but I think that part of what felt so weird about this episode is that it never rely gives us a sense of Jadzia’s romantic characterization. She falls for Deral, which makes sense if all Jadzia needs is a handsome person who is charming. But what is it about Deral that made her fall so completely head-over-heels in love with him? What does Jadzia find attractive about another person?<\/p>\n

We know virtually none of these things. All we see is physical attraction. And then, Jadzia joins people like Captain Kirk or Riker or Picard or any of the past\u00c2\u00a0Star Trek<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0characters who fall in love with someone and aren’t allowed to grow with them because of the format. Even more evil than usual, the writers create a scenario where it is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for Jadzia to be with Deral, despite that they go through all the motions and get her down on to Meridian in those final moments. So the episode ends up feeling drastically uneven. It’s forty minutes of build-up followed by a sixty-second unraveling. Seriously, in about a minute, EVERYTHING IS DESTROYED. And that’s it. We get\u00c2\u00a0maybe<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0another minute to see her grieve before the episode fades to black.<\/p>\n

It’s weird. It’s hard to be invested in a story with an inevitable conclusion, and this one REALLY drove that conclusion home. IT’S SO UPSETTING AND I KNEW IT WOULD HAPPEN. What a tonally weird episode.<\/p>\n

Tiron<\/b><\/p>\n

WOW, MOST HORRIFYING CHARACTER IN A LONG TIME, Y’ALL. Tiron is so relentlessly terrible that I was actually disappointed that more wasn’t done to ruin his day. Or week. OR LIFE. Tiron is entitlement. He’s the kind of guy who not only refuses to take no as an answer, but sees it as a challenge. What he asks of Quark is deplorable, and while I’m glad that Quark didn’t get what he wanted, I still thought that the writers portrayed Tiron’s role as more humorous as it should have been. Again, this episode has got a weird tone spread between both plots, and this is a good example. Tiron made my skin crawl because I’ve been stalked numerous times, and there’s little to joke about when you’ve been the victim of this kind of treatment. After Kira rejects Tiron’s advances, he seeks out another way to possess her. IT’S SO GROSS!<\/p>\n

So\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 why all the humor? Something feels kinda cissexist about the end joke, too, but that’s not really my area to comment on. But Tiron should have been banned from Deep Space Nine for what he did, and Quark is no better for enabling him\u00c2\u00a0and<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0stealing Kira’s personal information to make it happen. When the show treats him like nothing but an errant schoolboy, it’s disappointing. He’s an adult. Surely, he’ll actually be held accountable for his actions at some point, right?<\/p>\n

The video for “Meridian” can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– I am now on Patreon<\/a><\/b>!!! MANY SURPRISES ARE IN STORE FOR YOU IF YOU SUPPORT ME<\/a>.
\n– I\u00c2\u00a0will be at numerous conventions in 2016! Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches will be Death Note<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0Neon Genesis Evangelion<\/em>. On Mark Reads, Diane Duane’s Young Wizards<\/i> series will replace the Emelan books.
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"