Garak - Andrew Robinson’s portrayal
- Thread starter Elephant999
- Start date
It's quite remarkable that Garak has only been in about 30-odd episodes.
I believe that it feels as if it were more, is because D.S.9. is unique in making recurring characters feel like main characters in the episodes they are featured in. It's common to speak of D.S.9. for it's high number of recurring characters, but other series had far more, Syakuganno Syana really has such an absurdly higher number of recurring characters, but is seldom praised for it, and that's because they're all fairly minor and the two main leads of that series are the star of every episode.
D.S.9. was bold enough to have episodes like It's Only a Paper Moon that made two recurring characters the star of the show with the regulars mostly in the background — I know of nothing else that was so bold.
Even characters that existed in only one episode would frequently carry said episode.
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I feel as though to some degree that's semantics...if the only thing separating recurring characters from main characters is the contract they signed, then are they really "main" versus "recurring" from a writing perspective?
Like, Jake didn't get a lot to do in the last season of DS9, but he was a main character. Garak may have had more to do, especially in the final arc, but he was recurring, soooo...
Like, Jake didn't get a lot to do in the last season of DS9, but he was a main character. Garak may have had more to do, especially in the final arc, but he was recurring, soooo...
It is often brought up that Jake was featured in only about half episodes of the final season, implying that it was more in prior seasons.
Notāte bene that Jake has been featured in about 10 of the episodes of each season, which was obviously the plan from the start as a child who still had schooling commitment could not have a full time acting profession.
Of course one must be mindful of that he was but 14 years old when starting the series, and made a commitment to spend seven years, half of the life he had up till that point with it.
The difference between recurring and regular is purely a contractual matter that need not translate to screen time.
But by S6, what was interesting about Garak was no longer his past, but his present. And if you can't make your characters interesting for what they're doing now, then you've got bigger problems in your writing than one particular character.
He is one of my favorite characters too...
Garak was too great of a character to not have more interesting things to write about; he had such a presence on the show similar to how Gul Dukat made appearance before he became nurtured for the overblow, 1 dimensional, greatest threat to the galaxy Dominion. Just reading some of the ideas some members had shared about futures of the character proves the stories are limitless to a character like Garak. Just keep to the roots of the character and keep giving some samples of his brilliance in talking through subtext - a fantastic Cardassian trait - on missions or stories to discover with him guiding the way. He's an intriguing character. And never bought that bullshit nugget Ira Behr threw out in that "What you left..." doc that he was gay. I don't buy it at all.
I'm glad you saw it that way, but I never saw Garak was attracted to Bashir in a sexual way on DS9.
I believe you have overinterpreted what was in the documentary. When Behr said, "Of course, Garak was gay," he was not stating that he was a gay character, but that the audience was correct, and the potential for Garak to be played as a gay character should have been followed by the writers.
No he wasnt.
In the book "A Stitch In Time", the garak biography written by Andrew J. Robinson, it is revealed that Garak's fall from grace and being deported to Terok Nor was because he was in love with the wife of a high Cardassian official. Garak had been very much in love with this woman, Palandine during his time in an education facility where the future Cardassian high officials were educatded and could never forget her.
Not that it mattered, but I think Garak is bisexual.
Gentlemen never discuss money, and Garak never talks about honey. 
Of course Garak wasn't and because the fad of retroactive thinking doesn't make it a fact.
The novels are considered non-canonical, but for what it's worth...
While Garak's central love interest in A Stitch in Time is indeed Palandine, he also expresses attraction towards men at a few points in the novel. Specifically, Pythas Lok and Barkan Lokar. Robinson doesn't dwell on it and it's easy to overlook, but it's there. Two examples I was able to find quickly through a scan of my Kindle copy:
Garak's complicated feelings towards Barkan are later directly addressed in Robinson's follow-up story, "The Calling." Beyond that, I think Robinson leaves a lot open to interpretation, including Garak's feelings for Bashir and the nature of his jealousy towards O'Brien, but the above examples are more concrete.
Additionally, in subsequent novels, Garak's relationship with Kelas Parmak is implied to be romantic, though it has yet to be explicitly confirmed.
At any rate, while the novels hardly paint Garak as an LGBT icon and don't exactly offer bold examples of representation, they also don't contradict Robinson's statements about Garak having an "inclusive" sexuality.
Garak's complicated feelings towards Barkan are later directly addressed in Robinson's follow-up story, "The Calling." Beyond that, I think Robinson leaves a lot open to interpretation, including Garak's feelings for Bashir and the nature of his jealousy towards O'Brien, but the above examples are more concrete.
Additionally, in subsequent novels, Garak's relationship with Kelas Parmak is implied to be romantic, though it has yet to be explicitly confirmed.
At any rate, while the novels hardly paint Garak as an LGBT icon and don't exactly offer bold examples of representation, they also don't contradict Robinson's statements about Garak having an "inclusive" sexuality.
Robinson has been publicly discussing how he thinks of Garak as sexually fluid, as well as his initial decision to play Garak as attracted to Bashir, since the mid-90s. Whether that clearly comes across in his performance can be debated, and you can ignore it and don't have to like it, but to say that it's retroactive thinking or a recent narrative that he and Behr pulled out of thin air is demonstrably false.
I base my statement on what's written in "A Stitch In Time" the Garak biography which was written by the actor himself.
