Re: nerding/re-nerding

My wife and I have been re-watching Star Trek: Deep Space 9, starting right from the very beginning. I initially imagined I’d cherry-pick episodes until the final three seasons when continuity and quality seemed to finally gel into narrative satisfaction. But to my surprise the early episodes stand up much, much better than I remembered.

Back in the day, the stereotypes seemed painted with a broad brush — Odo and Quark, particularly. The way I recollected it René Auberjonois flat-footed the security constable Odo as recognizably gruff but lovable, while Armin Shimerman played his Ferengi character as recognizably weaselly, cunning, amusing — two very fine actors in gobs of latex, Kabuki-playing for the paycheque while the writers got a better feel for the characters and rounded them out in future seasons.

"Shall I lead the next dance?"

Turns out the relationship between Odo and Quark is, right out of the gate, a nuanced exploration of power dynamics between Law Enforcement and the Ambitious-if-occasionally-criminal Entrepreneur. Current qualms regarding policing and the populace get a sensitive rendering on two very different sides of the fence in the portrait of these two “aliens” — provoking deeper thought than might, say, a cop show exploring the dynamic between a Latino officer pestering a Black street hustler in Baltimore.

And that’s just one hot-button topic that hasn’t grown any cooler in the intervening decades. There’s also colonizer/post-colonized relations, religion/science/secular education tensions, gender and racial dynamics and a host of other fraught subjects explored — humanely, with subtlety!

ST:DS9 is, effectively, something I can enjoy even more than I originally did because of the current cultural moment.

Be that as it may, another new Star Trek now drops: Lower Decks. At NYmag Angelica Jade Bastién wants to love it, but has misgivings. Personally I gave up early on Discovery, haven’t bothered at all with Picard, and hold the forthcoming Strange New Worlds with suspicion earned from franchise mishandling of Discovery. But animation is its own interest with me, so I may yet tune in.

Also: over at MEL Tim Grierson reconsiders “a Star Wars movie you probably don’t remember” — Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In fact I DO remember it — I took my daughter out of school so we could catch an afternoon matinee. I dozed off for a few minutes, as is inevitable in any afternoon, but my daughter loved it. And I loved the TV series that followed. “For (some), Ahsoka and Rex were as important as Han and Leia — or Rey and Kylo Ren.” So far as I am concerned? Ahsoka and Rex is the only realized relationship in the entire franchise.