SDS9 – S4E26: "Broken Link" (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on September 19, 2024.

Sam and Scott recap the season 4 finale, "Broken Link," and discuss how Garak justifies genocide as self-defense. Space colonizers are taking a page out of the US and Israeli playbook.

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

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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 completionist 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 the Season 4 finale, Broken Link. Scott, can you recap this episode?

I suppose so. Garrick asks to see Odo and introduces Odo to Chapman Arroyo, a Bajoran businesswoman who owns a restaurant, and invites Odo to have dinner. But of course, Odo doesn't eat. She pretty much asks for a date. She's got a nice personality. She's very outgoing to the world. She appears to be pretty. Nice.

Odo doesn't appreciate being set up on a date, though Oroyo seems to like him. Odo is confused by love, and Garak points out, for such a sensitive person, he is not curious of love and whimsy and lust. And Odo does admit that Oroyo is pretty, but his shape starts to destabilize and he passes out.

Bashir obviously does not have data of changelings, but he's able to compare scans of Odo to previous scans of Odo. And Odo is usually a particular mass, science, and density, but they are different this time. There is a fluctuation, and Bashir suggests that Odo stay in the infirmary as he tries to figure out what's going on. Ben,

Worf, Jadzia, and Kira, they watch a message from Chancellor Gowron, who refuses to return Cardassian territories and demands the Federation withdraw from the Arcanist sector, and Jadzia reports that some Federation colonies near the Klingon border are calling for a preemptive strike. War may be inevitable. Kira, who is a surrogate for Miles and Keiko, is having pregnancy sneezes,

which is a Bajoran pregnancy situation. Worf and Jedzia disagree about Odo's disposition, and they're seemingly having a good banter. At the infirmary, Kira comes to see Odo. Odo doesn't feel like company. Kira brings Odo the criminal activity report, and as you remember, Odo is a cop and loves looking at crime stats, so he is appreciative,

but notices that something is off. Odo suspects that the Baslik freighter Captain Rienage is trying to steal a Phalangian diamond, but as he moves to arrest her, he collapses into liquid. Womp womp. In the infirmary, Odo is destabilizing at an alarming rate, and in one week, maybe two, he will become goo forever.

Bashir offers to take Odo to many specialists, but Odo believes only one specialist can help. The Founders. The Changelings. The Leaders of the Dominion. At the Gamma Quadrant, the team will create a beacon and look for the Founders' new homeworld. Kira wants to join, but is told to stay back because she is very pregnant.

Garak asks to come as well on the ship under the ruse that he wants to try to find some intel on missing Cardassian ships. Ben is dubious, but believes that Garak will be useful, that he can confuse Odo and tell him spy stories to keep him distracted and awake.

Quark is hyped for Odo to leave because he jokes he's going to make so much money, but also kind of admits that he cares about Odo. They care about each other. It's so cute. The Defiant leaves for the Gamma. Everyone is vibing. Garak intimates that he was an assassin. Odo is interested.

Miles laments feeling like he's two against one in his house. And they get surrounded by the Deep Space Nine squad in the Gamma Quadrant. Get surrounded by Jem'Hadar fighters. The character that we... call for now the female changeling who's probably the leader of the founders we've

met them before beams on board with some jamadar they've come for odo the female changeling arrives to bring odo to the great link doesn't want to disclose the new location new location but will allow the jamadar Amatagan, to pilot the Defiant and will install a device that will make sure that their destination is masked. In the infirmary,

she heals Odo and admits that the Founders made him sick to compel him to return for judgment. As if you remember, Odo heard a Founder recently. The female changeling points out that no changeling has ever hurt one, and as Odo is the first, he must be judged by the link. They must read his mind.

Also, only the link can fully heal his illness. If he doesn't join, he will die. Garak tries to make talk with the founder about the missing Cardassians, and basically the founder says they are dead. Retribution is coming for the Cardassians. And basically, if you attack the Founders, you are dead.

This makes even Garak at a loss for words. The crew tries to discuss how to help Odo and how to get him help. But Odo insists that he must be judged. He is a cop. How can he not seek justice in the Great Link? Odo intends to accept justice. the judgment of his people.

They get close to the founder world, and Ben and Bashir insist on beaming down to it. When they get there, it is basically this gigantic 90s CGI liquid, and then a small island. When we get there, Odo joins the Great Link, and Ben and Bashir sit on the Little Rock.

And Bashir's like, I'm going to skip a stone. And Ben's like, no, these are people. On the Defiant, Garak decides why not. He's going to try to commit a genocide and destroy the Founder world and is going to use this as an opportunity to end the Dominion threat once and for all.

Sure, everyone on the ship would die. Sure, a whole entire species would die, but a mere few deaths to save the Alpha Quadrant surely is fine in the name of self-defense. Worf, in response, beats up Garak. We see Odo struggling and ends up on the Founder Rock.

He has been judged, and as a judgment, he has been made a solid. He is no longer a changeling. He is who he wants to be. Basically a human with a changeling face. The crew beams up. Bashir checks. It's true. He's a solid. He has blood. For all intents and purposes is a human.

The punishment is to know who he was and what he lost. The Defiant returns to Deep Space Nine, and Odo purchases some clothes and is having trouble adjusting to being hungry for the first time and feeling physical challenges. And as he prepares to escort Garak,

who's going to be confined for six months for trying to do a war crime... Arroyo offers her support, and now that Odo has a more human body, responds more warmly than before. Later, Ben tells Odo to try not to push himself and let himself be and live a little, but Odo is like, this is all I have.

Now that I've lost the connection to the Great Link, all I have is work. We see on the promenade, Gowron has announced that a Klingon task force is going to be deployed to the Arcanus sector, threatening to destroy any Federation presence. And Ben places the station on high alert, orders Kira to notify the Bajoran militia and squad,

and Odo realizes that when he was with the Founders, They kept on trying to hide something from him. And you know what they were hiding, Sam? Gowron is a changeling.

So, right off the bat, although Odo is a cop, He's very different from real-life human cops, at least as we know them in a settler colonial project, because he's actually principled and willingly puts himself under judgment for a crime rather than above judgment. Very non-European.

Now, with the love interest for Odo, she's written very conveniently, like a female prop. Mm-hmm. But I'm going to give the writers the benefit of the doubt that this has a payoff where things are more than what they seem. So since I don't know where it's going, I will hold off on judgment for now.

Now, the previous episode was about community. But in this episode, DS9 reaches into familiar territory, making the ultimate baddie a collectivist society. Even the title Broken Link speaks to that. Just like with the Borg, the ultimate fear is the loss of individualism, which is such an American fear. Collectivism will not have you losing your identity. Just chill.

Also, a culture and society like the changelings wanting intergalactic domination still has yet to make sense to me. Maybe it makes sense to people who have an automatic fear of collectivism or orientalists who have a fear of the mysterious east, which is the gamma quadrant, the mysterious east, or the so-called dark regions.

So it has a lot of those unconscious biases built in. But if you don't have those assumptions, a lot of this is confusing or it doesn't work. Right now, the logic is they're just bad because they're foreigners from a mysterious region and they're collectivists and all look alike. So of course they want world domination.

I know this bias well. Basically, since they're different, but they all look alike to me, they're a threat to me and my way of life. If I put it like that, it sounds like Eastern stereotypes. And if I'm going to go there, the whole losing your individualism is really from the racist tropes that all Asians look alike,

so therefore have no individuality. This plays well into this episode because historians of Orientalism have stated the West has always wanted the annihilation of China for just existing. It's the racist logic of I can't tell you apart. That means you have no individualism. I got to annihilate you before you do that to us.

That was basically Garrick's argument. He said, quote, I'm not talking about war. What I'm proposing is the wiping out of every founder on that planet, obliterating the great link. Come on now, Mr. Worf, you're a Klingon. Don't tell me you'd object to a little genocide in the name of self-defense. Now, to add to that,

we've seen Garrick do racist jokes in the past, and he throws in a little racial profiling in there to add to the genocide talk. So with that whole statement, a lot wrong there, right? As far as the morals. First, you see the two sides of Garrick. He showed concern with Odo at the beginning of the episode,

but won't bat an eye to kill him or kill a whole race. Also, with today's eyes, how do you not think about Israel and Palestine? Genocide is self-defense. Cardassian logic in this case is Israeli logic and U.S. logic. Now, Orientalism is often synonymous with East Asia,

but it actually starts with West Asia or what we now know as the Middle East. And a scholar who wrote the book Orientalism was a Palestinian, Edward Said. Arabs and Muslims as well have been painted as this faceless, collectivist, quote-unquote, horde who must be conquered and destroyed by Western individuals. It's acceptable genocide, and for a year,

we've seen how so-called good people and the West are fine with genocide, so long as the victims are acceptable victims, so long as it's happening to the quote-unquote right people. Because to the West, not all genocide is bad, not all racism is bad, not all white supremacy is bad, and not all colonialism and imperialism are bad.

Like in the episode for the cause, there was a warning about the allure of wanting to be a part of something greater. In this episode, Odo felt that. He felt the allure of the great link, even though it's painted as evil. Even in radical storytelling,

the Western biases of the writers and the audience they write for still shows. Also, there's the bias of Western individualism is good, actually, which we're reminded of through Odo. Odo becoming an individual rather than shapeless and faceless is the worst punishment the changelings can think of. which is like a right-wing talking point.

They hate American individualism, and therefore, they hate us. But who is they? The capital O Other, which is a fixture in American storytelling, which you can also look up. The CIA's influence on writing and storytelling and art. There actually was a push against collectivist stories and realism.

This episode is the bookend of the previous episode of the odd couple of Cork and Odo, and they're both dying of illnesses and how they both show care in their own ways. However, these two episodes have two different messages about community. And then in this episode with Garrick, he really is a serial killer or mass murderer.

Last episode, he was presented as funny. In this one, he was scary. But for attempted genocide and attempted killing of the crew, including Odo, who he showed concern for, he gets a slap on the wrist. Of course. But a slap on the wrist is more than what Israel has gotten. More than what the U.S. has gotten.

What the West has gotten. No one talks about this or not enough, but look at some of the anti-Muslim cultural genocide happening in France. The West doesn't indict the West in its media, so we don't know shit. So not even the lack of a slap on the wrist, there's often a lack of acknowledgement.

Or instead, it's often straight gaslighting. They're telling you some other bullshit. They're telling you about somebody else. I also thought about the episode for the cause and what Eddington said of the Cardassians joining the Federation. Since Garrick and Cardassia are allies or members of NATO, slap on the wrist for you.

This is, of course, fictitious because in reality, there's not even a slap. But this is also why I said in a previous episode, changing our thoughts about justice away from the punitive is hard because you want punitive around long enough for the people that hurt you to get their comeuppance.

Since this episode was a season finale, the expectations are higher. So Scott, with that relative scale in mind, What did you think of this episode?

So this is the second best season finale we've had thus far. But it's still pretty great because it sets up some stakes. Like Odo is now a solid. The Dominion has taken over the Klingons. There's going to be a war. The setup is really delicious. And therefore, we're really getting good.

So while I'm still really only going to give this episode four stars. As a finale. As an episode, it's fine. But really what it does is it sets us up for season five. And we can just tell from the setup that season five is going to be way different because there's a real threat of war.

And Gowron, who already is kind of a problematic dude, being a changeling is not good for business.

When the episode ended, I was like, Battlestar Galactica exists in the shadow of DS9. Anyways, we talked about that before. But I'm feeling a little bit more and more ripped off every time I watch a new DS9 episode.

Ronald D. Moore is the architect of a lot that you like about Deep Space Nine and everything you like about Battlestar Galactica. It's okay. Wait till we do our sequel show about Babylon 5. And you're like, what? We'll see if I ever have the energy to do an episode-by-episode podcast again.

But Babylon 5 is... That's going to be the next one that people go hokum over.

So are you saying with that show, it stands alone as in it doesn't seem like any of the other shows?

Babylon 5... exists starting with a similar premise to Deep Space Nine and is argued that both of them came from similar ideas. There's a lot of controversy surrounding who took which idea from who. It is a space station sort of situation. However, the conceit of Babylon 5 is capitalism Which changes everything.

Okay. So it's almost like similar roots, but then it was an alternative spin. So if you want to see another version of how this show could have played out, then there's Babylon 5. Scott, can you tell us about the next episode and a little bit about the next season?

So I didn't do a whole preparation because I figured we would be like, stay tuned for next season. All right.

Until then...