SDS9 – S4E6: "Rejoined" (Audio + Transcript) (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on April 16, 2024.

Sam and Scott discuss "Rejoined," where Dax is reunited with Lenara Kahn, the widow of one of the symbiont's former hosts.

SDS9 seasons 1, 2, and 3 can be found wherever you stream Southpaw. Season 4 is only available to paid subscribers.

You can also listen to this episode directly from your favorite podcast player by following these instructions: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-Subscribe-to-your-Audio-RSS-link-on-the-Patreon-app

(Note: Many phone plans come with Paramount+ for free. It can also come with your cable package, credit card, or in a bundle, so make sure to double-check. There are also other ways to watch DS9 that we're sure you internet space explorers can figure out. Otherwise, since Scott does such an excellent job with the play-by-play, you don't have to watch the episodes to enjoy our breakdowns.)

Transcript

[Note: Transcripts are autogenerated and may contain errors.]

We are back with Southpaw Deep Space Nine season four. If you don't know what SDS9 is, it's Southpaw's completest DS9 watch-along show where we watch every episode, recap it, and analyze it. We are your hosts, Scott and Sam. Scott is someone who's watched DS9 more than once,

whereas I'm someone who's casually watched some episodes when it first aired, but this is my first time watching each episode in earnest. One of the cool things about this is that it also gives us different perspectives. After we watch each episode, we come together and talk about it.

Scott gives us the play-by-play along with his insights while I analyze scenes that stuck out for me from a political perspective, philosophical perspective, or a media studies perspective. We are discussing Rejoined. Scott, can you tell us about this episode?

Reunited and it feels so good. At Quark's, Jadzia is doing magic tricks for Quark and Bashir. Tobin was really into stage magic. That's one of the Daxes. And they can't figure out the trick. Ben calls Jadzia to his quarters to have a sit. A Trill scientist team is coming to make artificial wormholes.

Cisco wants Jadzia to know that they're going to be using the Defiant, and the leader of the science team is Leonora Khan. Ben offers Jadzia their three-month vacation if they don't want to be there. There is an intimation that there is a connection between these two, and Jadzia appreciates the thoughtfulness. Worf, Jadzia, and Kira welcome the ship.

Lenara Khan and Jadzia shake hands, and Jadzia says, it's been a long time. Lenara used to be Jadzia's wife. Quark is confused, so Kira and Bashir explain that Dax is and was Leela, Tobin, Emoni, Audred, Tarias, Doran, Curzon, Jadzia. Lenara was married to Tarias as Nalani. making Lunara Jadzia's ex-wife in a way.

Kira wonders why Lunara and Jadzia can't get together, and we learn about reassociation, which is Trills, who were previously partners, partnering up, Having relations, it's a social moray, it's a taboo. Symbionts are expected to let go of their previous relations and connections.

Mind you, Curzon and Ben were best friends, so they bend the rules, but they don't break them. And reassociates in the past have been exiled and sort of pushed out of society, which means that the symbiont would die. Bashir sort of just explains the plot with a bow.

Jadzia is doing her hair, and Ben comes to see her. She is always late. Curzon was late for his 100th birthday party, thrown by Ben. Jadzia is definitely feeling off, and Ben offers her again to not go to the party for the Trill ship, to take a break, to not do all this,

and to not be part of making the galaxy's first artificial wormhole. But she says, no, I'm going to do it. At the party, Worf will be the commander for the Defiant Trip. He's not super hyped and makes a point that Klingon dreams are really... kind of worrisome, but we don't know if it's a joke or not.

Jadzia seems off at the party. Lenara comes to talk to her. They have small talk about Bajoran food. They note that everyone is watching them. They joke like, should I do this? Should I do that? Should I get angry at you? What should we do?

And Jadzia and Lenara agree to be adults and mature about their connection and just be professional. as we know that some Trill bond with, so just a little, if you don't remember, some people in the Trill race bond with the symbionts that are also in their planet, and the symbionts live way longer than Trill,

and the hosts take on parts of the symbionts' experience. So they're them, but they're also different. Same, same, but different. On the Defiant, the team talks about how to create the wormhole. Miles thinks it'll be okay. As they work on the plan, diagnostics and other sciences are happening,

and Lenora and Jadzia talk about their past life and both acknowledging that they're having trouble with their feelings and both cite being nervous and run diagnostics. You see, on the day Tarius died, Leilani, Lenora, said, don't go. And he got on a ship and he died and is forever sorry.

And Jadzia explains this and Jadzia invites Lenar to have dinner with her and Bashir. Lenar agrees. Bashir doesn't even know they're having dinner. Jadzia begs him to cancel his plans and be her chaperone. Of course, he is super bored because Lenara and Jadzia are thick as thieves and talking about

their past lives and their experiences and basically cashing up because they haven't seen each other in a few lives. Jadzia thinks Curzon would be aghast at Jadzia being a scientist because he was an adventurer. Bashir leaves. He gets called to do something.

Jadzia and Lenara agree that they have more in common in this life than they did in their past. And Lenara gives Jadzia her Klingon earrings because she's like, well, you have more Klingon energy, which is true because Curzon was... was basically considered Klingon by his Klingon homies. You can see this in an episode previous. So there's that.

And they hold hands. Something is happening. And the captain of the ship can see them doing this, the troll space journey. The Defiant makes it to the area where they will initiate the Matrix to make the wormhole. There's talk. There's whispers of the possible controversy of Jadzia and Lenara. They make a wormhole in space.

Jadzia and Lenara hug, and it's weird. The wormhole was open for 23 seconds. It's still a huge success, but they need to make a new wormhole that they can push objects through. The goal is to just be able to make active, working wormholes. Lenara's brother asks her point blank about her behavior. He is worried.

Lenara promises nothing is going on. He may or may not buy this. Lenara comes to Jadzia's quarters. Lenara is upset that her brother thinks something is going on. Jadzia suggests that maybe they stop spending time together. Jadzia and Lenara clearly have feelings for each other and thought they were over each other, but they aren't.

They give in to their desires and kiss passionately, and Lenara leaves in tears. Jadzia is in Ben's quarters. She's worried about everything, and she wants to pursue the reassociation taboo and just say, throw caution to the wind, a very Curzonian thing. Ben expresses that everyone knows the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

Ben reminds Jadzia that if they do this, they will be exiled and die. Jadzia is ready to risk it all. But Ben needs Jadzia to be sure. Ben will have her back if she chooses such. But they need to know it is a rare friendship. A friendship that lasts more than one life.

On the Defiant, they activate the wormhole and the probe goes in the wormhole and it explodes. It creates an energy wave that creates like a weird plasma fire. Jadzia, having a flashback of Tori, goes to save Lenara in the plasma field. Jadzia goes to see Lenara later, who's healing up.

The Defiant will be back up in two weeks. It's an imperfect wormhole, but still a success. And Lenara is scheduled to go to Trill. Jadzia invites her to stay. Jadzia wants it. Lenara points out that she can't be impulsive and she needs more time. She needs to go to Trill and think.

And then she'll come back, she says. Jadzia knows that if she leaves, she'll never come back. She leaves.

I can see myself thinking Trill Society was cool as a kid, but today as an adult and in today's context, not so much. And if you re-listen to our past episodes when it's centered around Trill Society, it's interesting to talk about, but we've also been highly critical and philosophical. And this episode is no different. In the past,

we talked about how the whole Trill Initiative program felt like eugenics and Ivy League schools and neoliberalism. Some of the curators and helpers reminded me of incel programmers, which is very poignant because in this episode, I realized joint Trill are just biological supercomputers. And those were incel programmers. I think, Scott,

you mentioned in the past how joint trail are like superhuman immortals with vast knowledge. So maybe it's because of the context of today where we know more about AI, but they're essentially AI or what we think of what AI could be. The whole no reruns, no going back to past loves is all about accumulating new data.

That's just machine learning. Everything you can think of as far as the dangers of a joint trill are what people say about rogue AI. All the trill rules are about creating the most optimized trill society. It's just Silicon Valley. Alexa can present as female,

but then there's other bot personalities and voices that present as male or old or young or even gender nonconforming. Not just two spirits, a biological supercomputer are infinite spirits. I'm not saying this is the authoritative way to look at joint trill. It's just a way, a very sci-fi way to look at trill.

Like a computer program that can talk to us, we can project whatever we want onto it. Going back to a past episode, trill even defined personhood as data, as just memory. Jadzia Dax, all her different previous lives are just different programs, different data sets, different memories.

Different memories that she could even transfer onto other people at times, like a file. This all goes into my read of Jadzia Dax and this episode. Curzon has such a defined personality, defined data. So do all the other lives within Dax. I can't really define Jazia's personality because whatever I would describe is a very generic science officer.

And whatever makes her unique among the crew would be a description of a joint crew. So she's like a blank terminal that can boot up other personalities at different depths. They even mentioned how she is a little Curzon. In this episode, she wants to be a human rather than a supercomputer,

constantly accumulating new data and new experiences and machine learning. And she's doing this all for the sake of Trill Society, the collective supercomputer, going back to the collective pool. But by the end, she is rebooted back into her role as a supercomputer accumulating new experiences and data. The love story continues. Love, a very human emotion,

pulls away and challenges the whole supercomputer programming and directive of troll society. But even the love story, the seeming act of free will, is still programming. Jazia doesn't know this woman. She never fell in love with this woman. She thinks she's in love. But this is Curzon. This is the prior programming overriding again. Curzon always overrides Jazia.

It's no different from a holodeck program thinking it's really in love with the user. It only thinks so because that's how it's been programmed. So there's also an underlying creepiness to this story the more you think about it. I think this was also the first time there was a same-sex kiss scene on US TV. Scott,

do you remember what the reaction was from viewers or what your reaction was when you first saw this?

I do. And in fact, we were talking about Iris Stephen Bear last episode because Trek fans that are leftists that believe in a free Palestine were dismayed by him signing the letter that condemned Jonathan Glazer for making remarks about the occupation of Gaza in his Oscar speech. There's a documentary.

called What We Left Behind, which is sort of about Deep Space Nine. And they talk about this episode and they admit that one of the points that they missed a little bit that they could have gone further with because the show is heralded and celebrated for all of its forward-thinking ways.

He was like, look, we could have done better with seemingly same-sex romance. I mean, you could argue that the Trill experience gender probably different than humans do. One, they're not human. Two, they live lots of lives. Three, they're computers. Four, it's complicated. So I'm sure they experience things differently. So that scene was applauded.

It was slightly controversial, but it was also at a time where That was starting to become a thing on shows. Obviously, two men didn't kiss on television for way longer, but women kissing on TV was a popular 90s trope. I remember being like, oh, wow, it's really good acting. If you watch it now, you're like,

There's a lot of passion in this episode. It's very sensual, I think this episode is. And I just remember being like, oh, I didn't expect that.

Especially 90s Reed. It might not have even come off that progressive. if we're aware of how so much of the media was for the male gaze. So it could have also been read as being titillating for male fans or to try to draw in male fans and play to whatever straight male fantasy.

Exactly.

Now I gave you the AI read of this episode. This is probably a read of the episode. You'll only hear on the show because we're like that. The other read of this episode is, which is what has probably been mentioned, but still worth talking about,

is this whole Romeo and Juliet story about forbidden love and how that was really a metaphor, to your point, about same-sex relationships. This was the 90s, so this was still taboo. I think it would be more taboo if it was two men because this, like I said, can easily be played as trying to be titillating and sexy,

which we've seen lesbian sex scenes, kiss scenes in movies before and on probably Cinemax. But from the perspective of same-sex relationships and taboo, Now look again at the way people watched and stared at Dax and Lenara, or how people gossiped and talked and spied. It was all allegorical.

With today's lens, there's also the trans and non-binary reads and love story. When you think about the ending and how society won't let people love, whether it's because you're the same sex as the person you love or trans or non-binary, the ending hits hard. However,

This sci-fi of what happens when some kind of intelligent being can have infinite lifetimes of knowledge. We're getting a taste of that every day. From ads on our devices and Google searches, already knowing what we are thinking. It knows us better than ourselves because it's already lived our lives countless times.

Our phones listen to us to give us ads, but at the same time, it doesn't need to. And more and more, it doesn't need to because it already knows what we're thinking and what we want. I don't know how often now, more and more, where even without talking to anybody about something, I'm just thinking about something,

something that I need to buy, I get the ad for it. It already knew what I wanted without me ever speaking it into the world. It knows me better than myself. All our devices are joint trill and we're Klingons. And the device is like, yo, I already know you. I already know your people.

I know everything about you. And I know what you're going to think about before you even think about it. But going back to this episode and thinking about the ending now and where she stood, which is a scene I remember in the past where Cisco stood there saying goodbye to people.

If you don't want same experiences, you shouldn't be allowed to have the same friends either. Yes. The contradictions of neoliberalism, Silicon Valley and their promises, and the myth that programmers and programs can ever be free of bias. Scott, I'm sure you didn't know we were headed here, but here we are.

So tell me your thoughts about this episode and about the accumulation of infinite data, whether it's joint trill or our devices and all these new language learning models.

I mean, I have an anxiety attack about AI about once every two weeks. It must be speeding up now more frequently. Yeah, even though I do use it and I think it is a tool and I don't think that we're headed to a Terminator or Matrix future, I think... In fact,

a lot of trends are showing that a lot of people are like, wow, computers are ruining my life. And I think AI has a lot of potential. I... I feel that I'd much rather be around Trill than AI, but I think that maybe things like that will exist one day.

sort of symbionts or ways to transport the soul. But that's deeper than I really want to go to right now. And I plan on reading more literature about basically how we're in the digital Anthropocene. I've been reading Marx in the Anthropocene, and it's really good. But I would rather talk about that

in an episode that makes more sense. I'm sure that people are already writing about how we're basically could be in a digital Anthropocene and how that works and how that exists in our minds. And the idea that, you know, there's a possibility that with AI and nanomachines and other sort of tech,

I'm going to be able to cure my anxiety attacks in like 20 years and all this other stuff. And it's interesting that there's not that much AI in Star Trek tech, or in a lot of future tech, because I don't think that we thought it would go this deep,

or we always thought that AI would lead us to the Matrix or the Terminator.

Well, I think those type of ideas in abstract exist in Star Trek, the ideas that are associated with AI. But instead of the writer's using devices as the ones to play out those ideas. They use alien races to play out those ideas because I think that makes for more compelling writing. Yeah. But let me ask you this.

Have you noticed in the last month or so how much better Google searches have gotten? Because for a while, people were complaining how bad Google searches were. You just get SEO or whatever.

I mean, that's probably because of AI.

Yeah. Well, they had to come out with their own AI and integrate it into their systems because of chat GPT and open AI. So I think a lot of what they're doing is behind the scenes instead of like the bot that you talk to, it's being rolled out onto their platform. I know people who use like enterprise,

Google clouds or whatever, there is some kind of AI already integrated with that now.

It's interesting. I definitely wasn't expecting to go there. I think this is a solid three-star episode. I enjoy trail episodes. Again, a three-star in season four is better than a three-star in season three. It's just I'm ready for some pickup of the story right now, and I don't like seeing Jadzia sad.

Scott, can you tell us about the next episode?

I can. The Jem'Hadar attack.

Until then...