I think what I would actually have liked to see more of...would be marriage. The family life. Something much more serious than just screwing around. I think that's why I never liked the Worf-Jadzia pairing because frankly, he got it and she didn't.
And frankly, it seems (at least to my limited memory) that the O'Brien relationship was the only one that really was traditional, where we had no evidence of either of them sleeping around before they married. (Though that relationship found other ways to be dysfunctional, owing to what I think wasn't exactly a good characterization of Keiko...)
Yes, having some nontraditional stuff for drama makes sense--but you'd think marriage was dead in the Trekiverse, or at least seriously diminished in meaning.
I didn't care for the Worf/Jadzia thing either... but part of that is that I can't imagine having my ribs and skull fractured every time... just... no.
I don't think marriage was dead, in addition to Worf/Jadzia we had Keiko/Miles (which I liked- they were opposites, they needed each other), Sisko twice- with Jennifer and later Kasidy, Rom/Leeta, some Bajoran weddings. I can't think of any more DS9 ones, but there are even more married people in the books. I don't think marriage is dead at all, but I find that its like today- there are tons of married people. I have friends that have been married over 50 years. People's marriages can last, and they do. But we never hear about the people who make it work, we hear only about the people who aren't married, or whose marriages fail for various reasons.
Yes, having some nontraditional stuff for drama makes sense--but you'd think marriage was dead in the Trekiverse, or at least seriously diminished in meaning.
I know it's not canon, but didn't GR in the novelisation of TMP say that marriages in the future only lasted five years, and they weren't based on love but experimentation towards personal enlightenment? Now I've never been married, but I found that to be vaguely insulting. Love isn't a primitive emotion that needs to be discarded in order to achieve enlightenment, love itself can be a way to achieve enlightenment.
Yes, I'm young and idealistic.
I also don't believe love needs to be discarded, and if it did, I'd rather have love than "enlightenment" and unhappiness.
But if it was GR's novelization, then it may have had a lot of his "personal" belief in it, perhaps? If IMDB is correct:
He had many lovers and was sometimes overt about it. He and [Majel] had been lovers for years when he decided it was time to marry her ... they chose to have a Shinto-Buddhist wedding on 6 August 1969. They regarded this as their real wedding, but his divorce was not yet final and they made it legal with a civil ceremony on 29 December 1969.
Now, he was married to Rexroat from '42 to Dec. 27, 1969. So I personally am not surprised that he would have marriages lasting 5 years, and only for experimentation at that in
his universe. But its not something I can see the writers sticking to as Trek kept going. If other species in the ST universe are going to consider any sort of marriage-like arrangement/monogamy, I think it would be with the intent to stay together, as I think most people want when they enter a marriage, or at least until their children are grown. But that may be biased from reading the Andor WoDS9 story...
But I think there are DS9 precedents- Klingons married and seemed to try to stay together (Unless its Quark.
), the Cardassians seem to look down on adultery, even if it happens. Dukat's wife left him and took the kids, his mother disowned him when he brought home Ziyal...
More explosions? Check. More hand-to-hand combat? Check. Angry Sisko? Check. Do you suppose this person was happy by the time the show finished?
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