SDS9 – S4E13: "Crossfire" (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on June 13, 2024.

Sam and Scott discuss "Crossfire," in which Odo deals with his unrequited affection for Kira and his jealousy over her relationship with the Bajoran First Minister, Shakaar.

Listen for the cameo from the previous host, Angel.

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

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Transcript

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

We are back with Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 4. 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. Today, we are discussing Crossfire.

Crossfire! Crossfire!

Scott, can you recap this episode?

There's nothing I would rather do. So we understand that about once a week, Odo and Kira get together. He makes her a Raktachino. They talk about criminal activity. They really love this time together. They talk about... First Minister Shakar, who's coming to visit, who Kira remembers from her days as a freedom fighter.

Quark interrupts and he's like, you are so loud. Could you stop being so loud? And Odo chides him and later reveals that he's loud on purpose because he lives right above Quark and he sort of takes some joy out in making Quark's life, Quark's life miserable. Kira, Ben, Jadzia, Bashir, and Miles welcome Shakar and his adjutant, Sarish.

So Kira is worried about Shakir's public speaking from knowing him in the past, but they head to the promenade and everyone is ready to see Shakar speak. But while he starts speaking, Odo warns Ben of a potential assassination plot. There's a Cardassian terror group called The True Way,

and he is urging Shakar's friend to change everything and reschedule. And they're like, nope, we're going to be... entered into the Federation. It depends on these talks. We have to do this. Now means now. So Ben is like, all right, we're just going to have to get more security.

And Odo and Worf are like, let's be the best at this. And I'm sure you'd be surprised that Odo and Worf happen to love privacy. Later, Odo and Shakar meet on the way to the Bajoran Temple and Shakar is like, Kira thinks the world of you and yada yada that night at a reception Kira is sort

of like mingling with Shakar and Odo and Shakar is like Kira help me out I don't want to be here and they leave together and this kind of makes Odo uncomfortable and Quark realizes that Odo has the feels for Kira If you've been paying attention to this show or this podcast, Odo has very big feelings for Kira.

And every time he gets close to telling her, he psychs himself out. the next day we have these negotiations and Shakar's having a tough time. And as they walk back, Shakar's frustrated and he feels that the Federation is self-righteous. Me and you, both, brother.

And sort of like, it's like, hi, you know, like I kind of want to be more than friends with Kira. And Odo is just very distracted. He finds this like listening device in the wardroom and it's just like not focused and Shakar nearly kisses Kira, but they see Odo and they stop.

It's really the painfulness of Odo in this episode is well represented. Um, they, so Shakar and Kira plan like a dinner date and, uh, On the Turbolift, Odo is super distracted. This causes a mishap. Comms are down, so maybe there's more to this. And the Turbolift is going fast into oblivion,

and Odo uses his shapeshifting abilities to basically stop the Turbolift and make sure that everything is okay. And... some of the better use of the 90s cgi in this episode turning his arm into like metal hammers so we realize that this is probably the doing of an assassin who's

trying to override the comms and try to kill people especially shakar because they want to stop this it's bad for politics For certain politics, if Bajor were to be part of the Federation, which would be a big thing, and we could talk about the parallels later,

but Bajor becoming part of the Federation is very important to their development and what they're doing, getting over being part of a terrible genocide at the hands of the Cardassians. So this would be huge. So it's clear that there are people that are trying to stop it. And Ben scolds Odo for his lapse of judgment.

And it's like, dude, what is wrong with you? This assassin faked Worf's voice, did all these things, did all this science. Get your head in the game, bro. And he's like, all right, I'm embarrassed. I'm going to take over. I'm going to get this going. Don't worry about me. I'm going to make this okay.

So then he is very embarrassed. Shame and guilt are quite apparent in the life of Odo. So he decides to take over the guard duty outside of Kira's quarters. And she is entertaining Shakar. And this is painful. Because imagine watching the door and trying to protect Shakar. Your best friend, whom you also have,

as far as you can tell, an unrequited crush on, entertains someone else for hours. He waits and he waits and he waits. Odo later goes into Kira's room as Shakara leaves, is filled with empty bottles. they've probably been listening to Portishead and Jammin'. It is clear that there's a vibe.

And Kira is so excited to share this with Odo. And it looks like they're going to date. And so I... I wrestled with using this term, but I think it's important to talk about why tropes are unhealthy. So a previous version of Scott would say that Kira kind of friend zones Odo. However,

I think the term friend zone is problematic and suggests a gaslighting and manipulation in friendship. So I don't use this term anymore, but I'm sure that people do use this term. But I do think it's important to reference it but the thing is that friendships are really beautiful and there's

nothing wrong with being a friend and kira doesn't know that odo has these feelings so she just thinks that she's sharing her joy and delight with a friend which is a completely normal thing to do So she expressly explains that she's so excited and that Odo is her best friend and

the person that she wants to share all of this with. She hugs him and she just assumes that Odo would make fun of her because she believes that Odo believes that love is silly, illogical, not smart. But let me tell you, Odo is hurt. He is so hurt.

And again, I'm using these terms for education, not saying I would use those terms. And Odo finds out that Worf has found the true way assassin and he explains how he did it and that he didn't even need to bother Odo because Odo's trained

just do a very good job because Odo is very good at security because he's a cop. And he gets very angry and goes into his quarters and just breaks a bunch of stuff. He just angrily is... just breaking everything. It's very loud. Quark, who lives under him, finds Odo in his wrecked, destroyed quarters in a sad place.

And they have this seemingly beautiful conversation where tough love is or, or, or offered. And Quark urges him to confess his feelings, but unless he, but if he doesn't, he needs to respect that boundary and move forth. And Quark is honestly impressed by Odo. Cause he didn't think that Odo was so passionate about anything and that, um,

But of course, he has to act like he's not emotional. So he's like, I'm doing this just because, you know, when you're slacking and lacking, it affects my money. You see, everyone places bets on Odo catching people because he's so good at it. And Odo's like, aren't we friends? And Cork is like, nope. Psych. I lied.

I'm not your friend. I care about one thing. Money. So later on, at Quark's bar, Odo overhears that Bajor's membership into the Federation is progressing pretty good, and Quark thanks Odo because he's like, dude, you soundproofed your quarters, right? And Odo's like, I would never do this for you.

Odo sees that Kira and Shakar are leaving the holosuite, enjoying each other's time, and... He just quietly goes on with his job being emo Odo.

So this episode for me was less about the political and more about the personal. Of course. Yes. Ultimately, everything is political, but there are Weren't a lot of new observations that we haven't already made and maybe some of the foreshadowing I'm not aware enough yet to even draw any conclusions yet.

But there were lots of personal things about the characters and just personal touches by writers that struck me. Like for one, Odo's character growth and change are foreshadowed by contrasting him with Worf. At first, they're like twins. Both cops, both have disdain for the personal, right?

This episode is so personal, but they both have a disdain for the personal and of humans. They like privacy, but they will get in your business if they need to. This sets us up for the later comparison where rather than similarities, it's more of a stark contrast. Initially, Odo is like a better version of Worf.

He's like Worf, but even more thorough and meticulous. And initially, his need to be meticulous hides to even himself how he's starting to lose focus with his job. Is he following Shakar and paying attention to everything he does because he's just meticulous or because he's also jealous and insecure? Odo doesn't know, and neither do we, initially.

But then it becomes evident that the jealousy, insecurity, and infatuation with Kira take over. Odo has never felt this way before, and he has no manual on him. He can't talk to anyone about it. Or so we think. An unexpected confidant appears in this episode. We'll get to that later.

But Odo is so distracted that Worf has to take over the cop duties. Worf is the proxy for Odo when he's normal. So in this contrast, just beautiful use of contrast, we see how unlike Odo, he's being. Also, this is a reminder that any crew member can become a cop at any point because they're all cops,

in my opinion, just most of the time, procedural cops. Worf, on the other hand, was an explicit cop before. It's just that viewers became more aware of ACAB during the time of DS9 rather than the next generation. Also, DS9 viewers tend to be more lefty than next-gen fans, so they are more apt to call it out.

It's all context. But what interests me is not only the contrast between Worf and Odo as seemingly twins who became good son and bad son to Sisko, but also the contrast of love and duty and love making Odo bad at his job. Love versus duty is always a trope in military and cop shows.

And we talked about the problems of tropes. Going back to Sisko here, His role as the police chief is once again explicit as he dresses down one of his officers for not fulfilling his duties and not making being a cop his top priority. That's supposed to be Odo's life. He's not supposed to have a personal life,

which humans like about him and have been exploiting, that he will have no other life than his job. This also, for me, contrasts with a previous episode where Sisko had to tell Worf that Odo is a better cop than him, and so sit down and relax.

But now Sisko's saying to Odo, I thought you were the better cop! The good cop or good son role has changed. It's great long-term storytelling. And there's even more of these connector scenes that connects to the past. Another nice moment was when Shakar is frustrated with the Federation.

which is nice to see because in this show, the Federation can more openly be the villains. And Odo mentions how the Federation thinks they're open and understanding, but in actuality, they think they're always right. That's the divine right of the West. Western NATO diplomacy. The West is always right. Going back to long-term storytelling,

we have the Odo loves Kira storyline building, and it's been building for a while. But what about the Odo and Quark story? That's been slowly building also. Quark is, in a weird way, Odo's closest friend. When Odo loses it, Quark is the one to comfort him.

But he does it in a way where neither feel awkward about it. It was actually handled well. Because then neither one of them has to be vulnerable. That was not something I was expecting in this episode or expecting period, but I loved it. Odo in this episode was losing Kira, but gaining Quark.

But the long-term storytelling I liked the most was the elevator scene. In a past episode, Odo was trapped in the elevator with Ambassador Troi. That was another time Infatuation distracted Odo. But it was aimed the other way, Troy to Odo, and Odo was trying to be professional.

But that's also when it was revealed Odo loved Kira and Troy recognized she was the odd person out. This time in the elevator, it was flipped. Odo was the infatuated one and the odd one out, which sounds a lot like Odo. Odo and odd. Odo and odd one. Intentional or not, it's poetic.

And he's trapped in the elevator with the woman he loves and her new lover. And he has to save their lives. Talk about tension. The story wasn't complicated, but the storytelling and directing really made this episode haunting, at least for me. It had an indie movie vibe to it.

And the way it ended where we're just going to have to sit with it with no resolution because that's just how it is sometimes. And Odo has to go on with his job and everybody has to just go on with their lives. And this episode also felt like another Casablanca homage episode.

But rather than the ex-lover and the political leader leaving together at the end, they stay and Odo has to still uphold his duty as Quark watches and keeps his mouth shut. We're still in the middle of the movie. There's more episodes left.

So now I need to know what Scott thought of this episode and how he rates it. But also if anything that happened in this episode mattered or it was just a throwaway episode.

So this is difficult. So it does matter because basically up until I think an episode or two ago in our recap, There's a lot less Monster of the Week episodes. And so everything will have some sort of connection later. So Kira is one of our main characters.

So Kira's love life is going to be important to the story. And anything that advances the so far unrequited love of Odo and Kira is going to be important. But the reason why I rate this episode high is not because of its place in mythology, because in that way, it's not that important.

In the development of Odo as a three-dimensional character, this is a real turning point. Be that as it may, I give this episode four out of five. Again, because of the friend zone trope, I'm frustrated by some of the 90s writings and parlance used in this story and the

way that they try to frame Kira sharing her joy and newfound enjoyment of someone as a sort of betrayal when It's not. Telling your friend that you met someone is not a betrayal. It's sharing your life with somebody. It is on you to let somebody know that you have feelings for them.

Otherwise, their behavior is not on them. So Odo had the responsibility to tell Kira how he felt. Otherwise, he doesn't have a right to feel betrayed by somebody living their fucking life. And I think we're finally getting to a place where we understand that friend zoning is a kind of manipulative whack thing to do,

which is why I brought it up earlier. In the discussion of the episode, I meditated on whether I should bring it up or not because I didn't want to just use it willy-nilly. I didn't want to just be like, and Kira friendzones Odo.

Because I will admit that if we had done this episode 10 years ago, I probably would have said that. I would have been like, and then Kira does an epic friendzoning. But again, I just don't like that language anymore. And I think the beauty of language is its ability to grow.

Whenever I run to someone that corrects someone's pronunciation when they understood what they said, I'm like, dude, pronunciation is a form of oppression. If you understood what someone said, why challenge them? I don't even get mad when people spell the word too incorrectly. I know what they're trying to say. But that's just the beauty of language.

It's growing. So nothing is ever perfect. There's probably things that we're saying today that 20 years from now might be problematic. But we're working on growing knowledge.

We as the speakers must also grow with the language.

Correct. So... I was like, I'm going to use this term, but I'm going to not use active voice because I think that it's just an unfair sort of trope. Because friend zoning is actually kind of manipulative. So I'm not saying Odo is being manipulative in this particular instance because I do think Odo is manipulative.

because of his behavior as a security person. But in this context, he really owed it to Kira to trust her with the information that he had feelings for her. So this episode actually takes on a lot of meaning nearly 30 years later on why it's important to express yourself to others and not

be upset for people's response to information they don't know.

That's interesting to me what you said that as far as mythology is important, but like not super important because this episode felt heavy. It felt like it had weight to it. And it shows you don't always have to do something that's canonical to like the plot or the story or the myth to make something important right here.

the character can also change and that can also have weight. We can learn more insights about people and that also has weight, right? And I think that's, and you could also have all these complexities that you just mentioned that also has weight, right?

And so I think it was a nice episode where it showed an episode can have weight in different ways than just like things that a review on paper cannot capture. Absolutely. And to the point about the way this told the story, right? It is very one-sided. Everything is from Odo's perspective.

We're supposed to empathize with Odo, not so much some of the other characters. So in that way, then, like Kira, we're not so much like empathizing with her. We're more taking Odo's side, right? So this episode, the storytelling definitely takes a side.

Mm-hmm. And it takes the side of childishness. Odo is a child here.

Yeah. We found that out when he met the other changelings and realized, oh, as far as their lifespan, he's still a child. And we saw that with how immature he's acting.

Right. And you are responsible for your actions, bro.

Mm-hmm. I think we felt that, right? Yeah. We felt how confused he was. It seemed like he was more mad at himself. He was trying to process, but he didn't know how to process. Yep. Scott, can you tell us about the next episode?

Kira and Ducat have to work together again.

Another Kira entanglement episode.

Yeah. It seems like these happen a lot now.

Until then...