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randomfatechidnads9 was a lot of things to me when i first watched it. i watched it during probably the hardest year of my life so far, 2017, which was the year i took final high school exams (i take study seriously and failure hard. that year was a learning curve).
watching ds9 this year shattered the illusion of the utopian federation that tng had provided me with the year before. when i went back and rewatched episodes like ensign ro and preemptive strike after discovering the atrocities the cardassians committed against them in ds9, i felt that the federation wasn't doing its level best to genuinely help the bajorans, who you find out in ds9 were genuinely suffering horrifically by cardassian hands. you can attribute the discrepancy between the two series as Poor Writing, and that maybe the writers didn't know that there would be a whole star trek series devoted to Cardassians And The Shit They Did And Are Currently Doing, but nevertheless, it's painful to watch. despite jean-luc picard's avid pontificating about the Need To Keep The Peace, i kinda just wanted to punch him in the face and be like, "hun, your libra is showing".
it's kind of why i side with the maquis a lot, too, but that's a whole other post (which is titled: Reasons B'elanna Torres Is The Love of My Life, and The Reasons She's The Love of Yours, Too)
but back to the main point of this post - why i love the bajorans.
kira and ro are two sides of the same coin. kira is this powerhouse of physical and mental strength. she's deeply devout. she wears her earring on the correct ear (sorry, ro). she goes to services at the temple. she also fought in the resistance on bajor.
ro laren is a struggle (and is probably my favourite minor character in the star trek universe, although im loath to call ro laren minor in any way). she was ashamed of her people for a time. she wears her earring on the wrong ear.* she never even believed in the prophets until she suspected herself a borhya in the next phase. where kira is primarily at war with forces outside herself (primarily--i don't want to reduce kira to a stereotype, because she's complex and that would be unfair) ro is at war with herself.
what i loved about ds9 was that we got the opportunity to see a lot of bajorans! but they, at least to me, seemed a bit homogeneous - you don't get the kind of rebel bajoran on ds9 that you get in ro laren, which i think was maybe a missed opportunity. to be fair, i haven't read the books where ro becomes security chief on ds9. i would love to, because there's something to be said for the ability of beta canon to do things alpha canon can't, but i have a bad history with novelisations (see: my black widow forever red review).
shipping them is, unfortunately, rare. which is understandable - inter-series ships are never quite as popular as canon ships - but there's something about their dynamic which i would like to see more of (recommended reading: (space)ships in the night by ericine, one of 5 kiro fics on the ao3). it's part of what i find attractive in kiradax - the faith/reason dichotomy has always been interesting to me as a person of faith, and in an increasingly secular society the interactions between religious people and nonreligious people (especially those in relationships) becomes doubly fascinating. how do you reconcile somebody else's truth with yours? how do you do it when you're the same race, have been through the same horrors, and come out of it different people? by the end of ds9, kira becomes a bit softer - she finds love, she's easier with her smiles, there's less for her to be angry about. by the end of tng, ro defects from starfleet and joins the maquis. she hasn't quite abandoned the criminal role that she had been handed.
maybe that says something about being in an open federation environment, not just a starship, how that changes a person. maybe close contact with the bajorans gave the starfleet officers a bit more perspective, which in turn gave their bajoran counterparts a bit more trust in them. a starship or starfleet advanced tactical training (where ro was before she returns to the enterprise in preemptive strike) is much more insular, and maybe is more conducive to ro, as a bajoran, resenting starfleet.
i feel like there's a lot to unpack here. i haven't discussed everything, because i'm not that smart and i think i've written a lot, but the bottom line is: i love ro and kira, i love their characters, i love their complexity, and thanks for coming to my tedtalk.
*yes - many people involved in tos were jewish/religious, however the federation of tng is a secular environment. worf was allowed to wear his klingon sash even though it wasn't regulation uniform, whereas ro was forced to remove her earring despite it being a religious symbol
watching ds9 this year shattered the illusion of the utopian federation that tng had provided me with the year before. when i went back and rewatched episodes like ensign ro and preemptive strike after discovering the atrocities the cardassians committed against them in ds9, i felt that the federation wasn't doing its level best to genuinely help the bajorans, who you find out in ds9 were genuinely suffering horrifically by cardassian hands. you can attribute the discrepancy between the two series as Poor Writing, and that maybe the writers didn't know that there would be a whole star trek series devoted to Cardassians And The Shit They Did And Are Currently Doing, but nevertheless, it's painful to watch. despite jean-luc picard's avid pontificating about the Need To Keep The Peace, i kinda just wanted to punch him in the face and be like, "hun, your libra is showing".
it's kind of why i side with the maquis a lot, too, but that's a whole other post (which is titled: Reasons B'elanna Torres Is The Love of My Life, and The Reasons She's The Love of Yours, Too)
but back to the main point of this post - why i love the bajorans.
kira and ro are two sides of the same coin. kira is this powerhouse of physical and mental strength. she's deeply devout. she wears her earring on the correct ear (sorry, ro). she goes to services at the temple. she also fought in the resistance on bajor.
ro laren is a struggle (and is probably my favourite minor character in the star trek universe, although im loath to call ro laren minor in any way). she was ashamed of her people for a time. she wears her earring on the wrong ear.* she never even believed in the prophets until she suspected herself a borhya in the next phase. where kira is primarily at war with forces outside herself (primarily--i don't want to reduce kira to a stereotype, because she's complex and that would be unfair) ro is at war with herself.
what i loved about ds9 was that we got the opportunity to see a lot of bajorans! but they, at least to me, seemed a bit homogeneous - you don't get the kind of rebel bajoran on ds9 that you get in ro laren, which i think was maybe a missed opportunity. to be fair, i haven't read the books where ro becomes security chief on ds9. i would love to, because there's something to be said for the ability of beta canon to do things alpha canon can't, but i have a bad history with novelisations (see: my black widow forever red review).
shipping them is, unfortunately, rare. which is understandable - inter-series ships are never quite as popular as canon ships - but there's something about their dynamic which i would like to see more of (recommended reading: (space)ships in the night by ericine, one of 5 kiro fics on the ao3). it's part of what i find attractive in kiradax - the faith/reason dichotomy has always been interesting to me as a person of faith, and in an increasingly secular society the interactions between religious people and nonreligious people (especially those in relationships) becomes doubly fascinating. how do you reconcile somebody else's truth with yours? how do you do it when you're the same race, have been through the same horrors, and come out of it different people? by the end of ds9, kira becomes a bit softer - she finds love, she's easier with her smiles, there's less for her to be angry about. by the end of tng, ro defects from starfleet and joins the maquis. she hasn't quite abandoned the criminal role that she had been handed.
maybe that says something about being in an open federation environment, not just a starship, how that changes a person. maybe close contact with the bajorans gave the starfleet officers a bit more perspective, which in turn gave their bajoran counterparts a bit more trust in them. a starship or starfleet advanced tactical training (where ro was before she returns to the enterprise in preemptive strike) is much more insular, and maybe is more conducive to ro, as a bajoran, resenting starfleet.
i feel like there's a lot to unpack here. i haven't discussed everything, because i'm not that smart and i think i've written a lot, but the bottom line is: i love ro and kira, i love their characters, i love their complexity, and thanks for coming to my tedtalk.
*yes - many people involved in tos were jewish/religious, however the federation of tng is a secular environment. worf was allowed to wear his klingon sash even though it wasn't regulation uniform, whereas ro was forced to remove her earring despite it being a religious symbol
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