Sad to hear about the passing of Peter Allan Fields, arguably our favorite writer throughout all our time with Deep Space Nine. People talk about the first two DS9 seasons being bad, yet one of the best episodes in all of Star Trek showed up right at the end of Season One. “Duet” pulls a lot from the movie “The Man in the Glass Booth,” but we didn’t even mind a cover song at this point. We were so new to podcasting, and we weren’t exactly sure the best way to cover the Holocaust and the banality of evil, but I was happy with how this episode turned out. Weird to think back to the before-times in the front half of 2016 -three years ago that feels like thirty- when things like concentration camps and antisemitism weren’t a given feature of the news cycle. Maybe this episode is worth revisiting! -Wade
Sisko’s space mom doesn’t want him getting married. Kai Winn gets a gentleman caller. Ezri gets a love interest she’s barely talked to in any of her featured episodes. All the plots have romance. Well, bully for that I guess.
It’s the final countdown y’all. Worf gets lost. Sisko gets some land and also engaged. Plus there’s a war on.
They’ve dabbled with serialization, how does DS9 kick off the longest arc any Star Trek had attempted? What approach did the writers take to assembling the story?
What mandates and rules did they have to adhere to?
Julian is contacted by Section 31 to run some spy shenanigans at a conference. We end up discussing more than just this episode, and trying to decipher if DS9 overall is portraying a hard moral philosophy or not.
Odo meets one of his people, and their intimate relationship causes some tension with Kira.
Sex vibes for days.
For all that creators have acknowledged in the DS9 doc and elsewhere that the show could have done better with LGBTQ issues, is this episode an example of exploring those questions? Or more about marginalized identites in general? We may not be the best equipped to talk about it, but we’re gonna try.