TheGodBen Revisits Deep Space Nine

[Admiral Shran]

Nerys Ghemor wrote:

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I don't think the episode ever properly dealt with the child abuse allegations other than seeming to dismiss the idea of physical injury. There had to be psychological damage because a child his age does not bite unless something is severely wrong, and I am not convinced that Proka wasn't abusive.

That's a good point. The question of abuse seems to get brought up and then immediately dismissed. I've always taken it to be that the man making the allegation may have been working with Dukat, but, of course, there's no evidence for that.

[Nerys Ghemor]

Personally, I assumed that the allegations, while possibly exaggerated in terms of physical abuse, were true. Rugal's biting reaction suggests to me that something very, very bad DID happen, and given that, I think the more unconditionally-loving father would be Pa'Dar. That still doesn't make it right to ship the kid off to Cardassia, but I do think there was something very wrong in the Proka home.

[Admiral Shran]

Well, something is obviously wrong - they're teaching their son to be prejudiced against his own race. I doubt there was ever any physical abuse. I doubt they ever even intended any psychological abuse. But, the unintended consequence of their racism against Cardassians was harm done to the boy they actually did love.

[Nerys Ghemor]

Personally, I'm still not convinced that abuse wasn't intended.

[DonIago]

I'm sorry, but no matter how I was raised (as a Jew), if someone I'd been raised to believe was basically a Nazi laid a hand on me, I might bite them with little provocation as well if I was young enough. Abuse isn't even a factor, unless you consider it abusive to raise people with possibly unfounded ideas about others.

Sisko's actions were perhaps not the best possible outcome, but I think there's something to be said that, for better or worse, Rugal basically had been raised to, if not hate himself because of his race, at least hate others of his race by default, and I don't think that's something that more time on Bajor would help...at least not at the time.

DISCLAIMER - I'm semi-conscious while writing this.

[Nerys Ghemor]

12 seems quite old for biting, which is how old Rugal was at the time. A more "normal" reaction, though not a socially appropriate one, would've been to cuss Garak out. Obviously there's a reason we couldn't have that on TV (ironic considering that biting was a more serious matter than some swear words), but that's why I think there's evidence of serious psychological problems.

And your point about Bajor is why I would've suggested DS9 as an alternate location where they could live. It would still be Bajoran enough that Rugal would find some familiarity in it, but Federation enough that diversity is a value. For all of Keiko's flaws, I know she would not tolerate racist bullying in the classroom, and I think that Starfleet officers would not stand by if an incident occurred in the public areas of the station.

[DonIago]

Given how Cardassia seemed to be running at the time, if Pa'dar had voluntarily moved to DS9 it probably would have raised all sorts of issues for him, and possibly exacerbated the existing problem.

[TheGodBen]

Melora (*½)

What is love? Baby don't hurt me. Don't hurt me no more.



What is love? Is it a deep emotional connection? Is it something spiritual? Is it a biological force intended to facilitate procreation? Is it a reaction to seeing the biggest tits in the world?



What is love? I can't tell you because I don't know, the only emotion I can experience anymore is fanboy rage. But if I wasn't so unfeeling I'd probably tell you that love is the most complex and powerful of all emotions and it can impact our lives in major ways. So I find these romance-of-the-week episodes annoying, they come from nowhere and they go nowhere, at best they are a temporary infatuation. This episode is one of the worst offenders, Melora shows up on DS9, two days later she has dinner and 0.01G sex with Bashir, and suddenly the two of them are in love. I don't buy it, and for once it's not because I'm being cynical, it's because the episode is being cynical and I'm not standing for it. (Edit: Poor choice of words there.)

I suppose the main point of the episode is that disabled people don't want special treatment and that they don't need to be "fixed" to be normal, or something. I'm not going to quibble about that, the episode was written by a disabled guy (well, the first draft was) and I'm sure he knows what he's talking about. The thing is that for a character who doesn't want to be known as the woman in the wheelchair, that's what this episode is, it's about a woman in a wheelchair. She'll be forever remembered as that Star Trek character that was in a wheelchair. The only reason why I can remember her name is that it's also the title of the episode, and I remember the title of the episode because I'm a huge nerd. I suppose that if she had been a recurring character the gimmick would would have faded away and I would remember her as an actual character, like how I think of Geordi as Geordi and not as the blind guy.

There's a b-story about Quark and some guy that wants to murder him that doesn't really work, and it brought us this line from Odo:

ODO: I always say you can tell a man's intentions by the way he walks.

You've never said that before. You'll never say that again. I hate this sort of thing, it's almost as bad as Janeway's comm-badge fiddling.

Anyway, the b-story unnecessarily ties in with the a-story so that we can have some boring suspense, and Melora gets shot but doesn't die because of the magic spells Bashir has been experimenting with on her. I can't be the only one thinking that Dr Bashir has just come up with a technique to create superheroes. I mean, if a human underwent that procedure they'd get super-strength, and they could get shot at point-blank range and still survive. Starfleet should have used the procedure to create super-marines during the war, they would have had the Jem'hadar running in terror.

MELORA: I want to remember all of this.

I hope you do, because Bashir sure wont.

[Deranged Nasat]

Guy-Who-Wants-To-Kill-Quark has, sadly, one of the worst makeup designs in the series. Every time I see him I start thinking I'm a Little Teapot, short and stout...The worst part is that they reuse this strange "handle over the mouth" look for another minor character in season six, who remains the absolute worst alien seen on Trek.

[tomalak301]

I still think to date Melora is the worst of DS9, even worse than Move Along Home. I appreciate what they were trying to do, but it just didn't work.

[Shatnertage]

Given that the A-story was about a woman in a wheelchair, Odo's comment seems particularly insensitive.

And a total non-sequitur.

[Skywalker]

It's no surprise that, when I first tried watching through all of DS9 a little over a year ago, I stopped watching for a while after "Melora."

[tomalak301]

Skywalker wrote:

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It's no surprise that, when I first tried watching through all of DS9 a little over a year ago, I stopped watching for a while after "Melora."

Just curious, what brought you back?

[JWD75]

Melora is one of my least favorite episodes of the series. Only a certain third season episode that also focused on a cringe-worthy romance is worse. Coincidently, that episode's title also started with an M. Romance-of-the-week stories were almost never successful for any of the Star Trek series and were, more often than not, flat out embarrassing.

[Skywalker]

tomalak301 wrote:

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Just curious, what brought you back?

Netflix Instant Streaming. That, and I knew there was much awesomeness to come.

Okay, it wasn't just "Melora" that made me stop watching for a while. I was watching the show via DVD, but I only had the one-disc-out-at-a-time plan, and it was taking too long to watch one disc, mail it back, wait for the next disc to be mailed, watch it, mail it back, etc. So I occupied myself with other stuff while I waited for DS9 to make the jump to streaming.

It was still a terrible episode, though. The disc that ep was on actually ended up sitting in my house for like a month after I watched it before I finally remembered to mail it back.