SDS9 – S5E7: "Let He Who Is Without Sin..." (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on January 26, 2025.

We recap "Let He Who Is Without Sin," where Worf is being a chud, and ask the big question: what do we do with the Worfs in our lives?

SDS9 seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4 can be found wherever you stream Southpaw. Season 5 is only available to paid subscribers.

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Transcript

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

This is Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 5. We are your hosts, Scott and Sam. On this star date, January 26th, 2025, we are discussing, let he who is without sin... Scott, can you tell us about this episode?

Yeah. Norm... Morn, excuse me. I mean, we can talk about how Morn was based off of Norm from Cheers. You see him giving a rose. Odo is talking about the O'Briens, talking about naming their kid Sean, which means swamp and Bajoran.

And we learn that Jadzia has lots of breaks and bends and sprains and marks, as does Worf. As we saw a few episodes ago, they have started a tryst. Their carnal actions are passionate and aggressive. They are going to Risa, a pleasure planner. Worf drinks some prune juice. Worf is excited to have time with Jadzia,

but he is jealous that he saw her hanging out with an ex-lover, Bode, with a translucent brain. Worf is flummoxed and does not want to discuss their sex lives with others. We can talk about this later. Lita, the Davos girl who's been dating Bashir, they want to come too, and Cork decides that he wants to come,

and that is the only way that he will give Lita time off. They are people of leisure, you know? Leta on the runabout pours drinks for everyone but Quark. Quark complains of his quarters that he can't walk around. Worf does a little Ferengi racism.

Quark gives everyone except Worf a harangon, which appears to be some sort of sex totem. And that is for Jamharan, which seems to be a sex magic ritual. Again, none of this is explicitly said, but it is implicit. And Worf is clearly uncomfortable. On Risa, we see everyone is dressed in their cool outfits, except for Worf.

He's still in his Federation thing. Quark is partaking. Jadzia tells Worf to chill out. Although Worf can't get over the fact that it's an illusion. See, Risa is actually a planet that has very bad storms and terrible weather, the opposite of a desirous island. And basically, they use holograms and weather technology to make it this paradise.

But Worf is the dark cloud, but does accept that it is beautiful nonetheless. And then we see Arandis, I believe played by Vanessa Williams, pops in to say what's up to Jadzia. You see, back in the day, Arandis... May have killed Curzon to death with sex. Curzon, you know, who was Jadzia's last body,

was an older man when he visited Risa and death by Jamharan. And Worf's behavior is starting to get to Jadzia. And... She tries to challenge his claim that he's not controlling, so she drinks some isoberry juice. She's mildly allergic, but she doesn't care. It affects her spots,

and she asks him to put on a swimsuit so they can just go for a little swim. In his room, Worf meets Paschal Fullerton, who is the leader of the New Essentialists. They are trying to spark their own sort of political revolution on Risa, but maybe a political de-evolution,

because they are rallying to go against the moral decline of the Federation. Worf has some golden underwear, and he's listening. Worf and Jedzia talk. They talk about literature. Worf is still in his Federation outfit. They go to a massage area. Lita is talking to another dude. Worf does not approve of this.

What's wrong with space polyamory, you know? So they go to the essentialist speech, and it seems that Bashir is doing his Dr. Horny thing, and is also being carnal with another. But Fullerton wants to put a stop to the hedonism. Arandis points out that Fullerton has been doing this for a while. He is a hoot.

No one cares. And Fullerton is very dramatically talking about the importance of chaste and not letting desire get in the way of the looming Dominion attack, which gets to Worf's paranoia. And we see Leta and Bashir kiss. Worf calls out their behavior, is very confused. And Leta and Bashir reveal that they're performing a rite of separation.

It is a custom Bajoran... sort of thing where they hang with other people and hang with them and eventually break up. Worf dismisses this childish practice, and we see Fullerton and the squad start blasting guns, but actually it's not really guns. It was a ruse to show that there's false security.

While they sin, they open themselves to attack by the Jem'Hadar and other people. And Jadzia's like, I'm going to kick your ass. I can get you arrested. You're pulling some stuff on a Starfleet officer. And Fullerton's like, you ain't going to do nothing. Worf continues to be confused and just wants to talk to Jadzia about their

relationship and is very critical of Jadzia's carefree behavior and worries about it reflecting Worf's reputation. We got a little bit of a space slut-shaming, if you will. But Jadzia will not change. Worf will not change. But Worf cares deeply for Jadzia. And Jadzia goes to see her friends who believe that Fullerton just needs a little

love or lust, let's be honest. Jadzia is having a hard time with Worf being so serious. And Amanda sees how Jadzia still has some curse on him and some passion and needs to be distracted with. Lita and Bashir break a bowl to have a civil breakup.

Quark watches as a witness and thinks it's not very cool, thinks it's kind of silly. Lita admits that, to be honest, she's been thinking about breaking up with Bashir for a long time. She has a crush. She thinks this fella named Ron is really charming and cute. What?

Worf walks in on Armandus and Jadzia doing pottery and breaks a hargon in anger. Fullerton starts scheming, and Worf shows up to help. Bashir and Quark talk about how Jadzia is difficult, and Jadzia is still smitten with Worf, but can't find him. And all of a sudden they hear noise. The weather grid is acting up.

You see, Worf has messed up the weather grid. He wants to show that Riza is fake, and the Federation must stop wasting their time and focus on war. The weather is making people sad, and it turns out that in Faranginar, there is so much rain that they have 168 words,

which I think is a play on the Inuit idea that they have so many different words for snow. I forget the exact number, but it's also a name of a Kate Bush album in her later era that's kind of good. The humidity is making the food bad, because as you know, it's not the heat, it's the humidity.

And it turns out that maybe the reasons and the visitors can't deal with adversity. People are going to leave. Worf is going to leave. Fullerton thanks Worf. And then we see that he has a final plan to get the reasons out. Ryzen's, you know... Pronunciation is a form of oppression anyway. Jadzia says this isn't about Ryza,

it's about their relationship, that Jadzia cares more about fun and hedonism at Worf than Worf. Jadzia doesn't understand why Worf has no joie de vivre and seems to subdue his passion. Jadzia says Worf is the weirdest Klingon she's ever met, and Worf says that Jadzia acts like she's a Klingon because she had so many Klingon friends,

but she has no Klingon. And Worf sort of opens up why he's so careful and so guarded. He was raised by humans, as we know, and he's always felt like an outsider, and he's always tried to fit in. When he was a young guy, he was the captain of his school's sports team, and he wanted to win.

And he went for a midair ball that was going against... A boy named Mikkel, and he scored, but he didn't realize that in this act, he had broken the boy's neck in their collision, and the boy died. Worf learned that humans are fragile and decided that he had to hold back and be chased.

Well, not chased, but because he does have a kid, so no one else would get hurt. And he decides that he must be a man of restraint. And he swears he would never hurt Jedzia. And she promises the same, but reminds him that he cannot control her He needs to show trust.

A relationship must be built on it. As this happens, they're interrupted. Fullerton is doing some weather crimes and just wants to create a Puritan federation, and that will be a wake-up call. Worf has learned his lesson, however, and trust is paramount, and people must be allowed to

live the life they want to live and make mistakes and do their thing. And he stops Fullerton. Aaron just asks if they will come back. Worf is confused because he thought he wouldn't be invited back for being such an Eeyore. But she's like, yeah, what up?

Jedzie and Worf watch a sunset and decide to go skinny dipping in the ocean.

This was an interesting episode to watch and think about. And it's interesting as in it's awkward and uncomfortable and makes you really dislike a fan favorite. So I looked up what other people thought and what critics thought, and it's listed as one of the worst DS9 episodes. And we'll get into our feelings about it,

but that's important as context for where we're going next. So for the critics or people who didn't like this episode, what were the main arguments? One was that the episode wanted to be a romantic comedy where a couple is trapped at a resort. And then you got the goofy side character couple there to add more hijinks.

You even brought in Quark. So you brought in all the comedic heavy guns, but it wasn't romantic or funny. The other argument is fans didn't think the writing stayed true to the character of Worf, which to them makes the writing bad because it's inconsistent. However,

I have mentioned in past episodes how Wolf comes off like a Jordan Peterson listening libertarian prepper. Now, when the fans say the writing is inconsistent, there is merit to that. So we'll touch on that too. But let's just stick with this first. The fact that it's not brand new that he has some of this reactionary tendencies.

He even crossed the picket line to get a drink at Quark's when Quark's was on strike and fought with O'Brien over it. However, fans like Worf and find him redeemable. And that's important. That's an important part of this conversation. So let's stay with the text, what we just saw,

and say the Worf in this episode is still the same Worf. This is an important thing to consider for us radicals because this speaks to a contentious debate on the left. When you find someone like Worf, a reactionary that you feel like you can get to, that has redeemable qualities,

or let's say maybe it's someone who's sort of reactionary but not fully committed and in a gray area, do you abandon them or do you try to reach them? This debate gets really heated where some go as far as to say if you try to reach people like this, you're a fascist.

Others will argue, if you don't, the right will only grow larger. And how do we ever get anywhere without the collective power of just magnitudes of people? There might even be fans who are normally like, fuck anyone who is remotely reactionary. They don't make me feel safe. Yet, maybe they feel differently if it's Worf.

So what do we do with the Worfs in our lives or Worfs in the world? Luigi was a kind of Worf archetype, a reactionary with his own honor and moral code. But even if you do try to reach people who might normally fall down a Rogan or Peterson rabbit hole,

do you do it by trying to be a lefty Peterson or Rogan, like lefty masculinity and traditionalism? Or do you approach it more with a union mentality where you try to have a message that's not specific for them, but a message that lots of people can relate to? A broad message. I think broad messaging is necessary.

Imagine unions if they only allowed certain politics. You wouldn't even have unions. But if you have a project where you're only trying to reach people like Worf, I do feel like that's a reactionary project. And all the folks that do this end up being misogynists and racists.

The pro-Palestine movement is a large breadth of people, which it needs to be. It can't be any one thing. But because it is such a broad coalition, that upsets a lot of people. So specifically on the left debate over collectivizing with like-minded people only or trying to build power with more people,

including trying to reach and educate the masses, which also includes reactionaries. Scott, what are your thoughts?

So I have so many thoughts, and there are thoughts that I had when I lived in New York that have changed now that I live in Maryland. And there are things where I used to feel in one way that have largely changed again when Living with working-class people, knowing people that aren't just part of fancy cities,

and understanding that we cannot have liberation by only hanging out with people that are exactly the same. Yeah. There was a time where I was like, oh, you like Jordan Peterson? I'm not even going to talk to you. But the thing is, that is a very privileged way to be. Unless you have a lot of

resources and affluence, you can't always cut out every single person in your life that has viewpoints that you disagree with. You might be living in a place where disagreeing with someone could get in the way of your safety, could get in the way of your ability to live.

And I've talked about this on a podcast before, and I talk about this in my life, that again, When you meet people, they're all different types of working-class people, and the way to work is not by pushing them away, but to try to connect as long as there's good faith.

I do believe that people are generally curious and generally want to be good and are sometimes pushed in their environment. There are people even in grad school that would be like, well, white privilege means that white people are bad, right? I'm like, no. No. And I would explain, they'd be like, oh, I understand.

I'm not sure that I agree because my life hasn't been easy. And I'm like, that's true. You know, there are people from Appalachia or parts of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn that have a very hard life, but also are white and have different points of view, you know. I was thinking of this episode from a sex work way,

and even that is a complicated argument in leftist circles. There are some people, well, sex work is intrinsically an exploitation, thus it is a means. And then there are people, at least myself, but you and I talk about this sometimes outside of this podcast, that

But intersectionality is important, and there are more than one way to look at things. And we have to find somewhere that still is willing to... look at things and have discourse and look at the heart of movement that is trying to get in the working class. And again, I don't always go deeply about my feelings about Palestine,

but I think it's pretty clear at the root that where I feel. And yeah, it's not a monolith. And I've had arguments with people talking about what's gone on. And then we try to connect and try to realize that we're all just looking for, hopefully, the liberation

I've been really disappointed in some people on the left that in their goal to try to get the working class have worked with bigots or try to talk to people that I don't think are good faith. I'm not going to go directly in names,

but there was a leftist content creator who I thought could have been maybe a leftist Rogan. I've seen him do interviews with transphobes and talk about how intersectionality is a waste of time and selfish. That's just not where I rock. And also I think fundamentally there can't be a leftist Rogan because of the way leftism goes.

But I do like Hassan Piker enough, but I don't think he's going to be the leftist Joe Rogan that we want.

Because he's not necessarily even going for the same audience. It's just that his audience is broad enough where it might even attract people like that. Exactly.

Exactly.

And sometimes people make that type of comparison to me, not because they're trying to insult me or something like that. It's just more like they're just trying to explain it simply because of the overlap of martial arts and politics. But it's a very different demographic. It's just the fact that surface level,

we like martial arts and we like talking about politics, but it's more about the approach. Sure. I think that's what it is. It's like if you actually try to be Joe Rogan on the left, then you're approaching it like him. And it's like, that's the problem. But if you have a message that's much more broader,

that might even include some of those people. Well, now we're talking about something different.

And I will say that I have used people like Hassan Piker or Shark Zero or other people like that to synthesize and uncomplicate leftist themes to younger people. And it is effective. And yeah, I think because... This show stems from Southpaw, which is a liberatory mixed martial arts Facebook group. There is this like, oh...

like are you like anti-rogan not particularly it's just that there's not a lot of people who like this sport that aren't reactionary to the point where you got a guy like peyton talbot who isn't particularly revolutionary he just was like andrew tate kind of sucks and which he does yeah and then gets a lot of hate but

But that's MMA. That's not Star Trek. I think this episode opens up a lot of important arguments while being maybe not the greatest episode. And I disagree that this is a bad characterization of Worf.

Okay, okay, great. And that's meaningful because Worf is a character that you like. So this is saying Worf is multitude, so he's not any one thing, right? And some of our best conversations have come from the not so great DS9 episodes because the not so great stuff,

what made them not so great is that they had ambition and they couldn't deliver, right? But the interesting conversations is what the episode tried to do and what the episode brought up. And in listening to what you were talking about with reaching people and movements, I was also thinking about not just like

international movements, but also organizing locally. This is something I've been talking to a lot of organizer friends about, where sometimes we get kind of burned out from kind of an internet scene where it's people from all over. And the point we were kind of making was like, you know,

we've been doing a lot of local organizing and a lot of local stuff. And it's like, you know, maybe those people online. Yeah. Like we're on the same page politically, but that doesn't mean we should get along. And that doesn't mean we don't get burned out from each other. And maybe that's not enough, right?

If we're thinking about the land again and our connection to the land, then like maybe I don't see eye to eye with this person who's local to me, but we know all the same spots. We know all the same streets. We walk the same streets, right? So sometimes there's more kinship,

even though we're not necessarily ideologically the same with somebody who's from my same neighborhood than a leftist who maybe we, you know, If we took a survey, we're very like-minded, but they live somewhere else. And that context, that situates them physically somewhere else. That is important.

We have to always situate ourselves to our region, to our place, to the land. So that gives them a very different positionality and context than me, right? So sometimes... organizing locally, you get along with people better, even though you're not always on the same page ideologically because these people are your neighbors,

whereas those people aren't necessarily your neighbors. So to summarize this, how can you even organize locally if you're resistant to reaching all kinds of people? They're not even all kinds of people. These are your neighbors, right? So you need that type of attitude to organize locally. I think about some of the not even some,

all the environmental justice stuff I know that has happened in California, it's local, but broad based, meaning it was like all kinds of ideologies and none of them were even consistent. People didn't even have consistent political beliefs and they all meshed and rallied behind certain things because they're like, wait,

but this is our neighborhood and you're killing our kids and we all care, right? You look at, you know, whenever there's dirty water, like you think about Flint, Are all those people ideologically the same? No, but they're all being poisoned by the same thing, right?

So even doing things locally requires you to think about collective power base building, power building, right? And reaching all kinds of people because that, especially when it's local, that means it's already dealing with a small amount of people. So you need all hands on deck. And then you think about something bigger, right?

How effective would any anti-war movement be if it only included radicals? or only marginalized radicals, or if the only participants were those of the same sociopolitical identities, you wouldn't have the magnitudes that people saw in the 60s and 70s.

And again, I love that there is heterogeneity in our movements because it allows for interesting conversations and for thoughts that I wouldn't think of. I believe in God. Some leftists are like, that's not cool or that's not something I work with. That's all right. Again, you were just talking about Flint.

One of the greatest living American photographers is Latoya Ruby Frazier has been following Flint and the water crisis and made incredible photos. And she also did these incredible photos celebrating community health workers in Baltimore during COVID. And there's an exhibit in the Baltimore Museum of Art celebrating community health workers in Baltimore,

putting people in museums that might not necessarily be there. I don't even know her politics, but they seem to be a little bit different, but she's fighting the fight. So we got to know the difference between our opponents and our enemies and our colleagues and our friends and our family.

So I didn't think this episode was good, but it did make me think about how Worf is the type of person who exists in the world. And so do you let Pascal Fullerton reach him or do you try to reach Worf instead? The other thing about Fullerton is that his rhetoric and fear mongering is also identical,

not just to right wing culty figures, but just general Americanism and U.S. foreign policy and just Democratic Party values. Put this guy in front of a podium and say he's a parody of Jordan Peterson, you'd believe it. Say he's a parody of a right-wing politician, you'd believe it.

Say a presidential candidate from the Democratic Party, and you'd also believe it. What's scary about Fullerton is not that he's a far-right figure. It's that the stuff he says, I hear radicals say all the time because a big segment of Western radicals, a lot of what they do is prepping and fear-mongering over foreign invaders and foreign assets.

They talk about ACAB, but their main ideology is not fear of the U.S., but fear of other countries. You especially see that now as they lose it over Red Note. Fullerton is that unconscious Western hegemony that many Westerners, including some radicals, never unlearn or think about or even think to question.

Fear of the non-Western other is just a general fact to them rather than a bias. So what's scary to me is there is a universality to Fullerton's message in the West that exists across the political spectrum. And that's been the other debate. One side says don't repeat U.S. state propaganda unless you're a U.S. asset.

The other side says not repeating it makes you suspicious and likely a foreign asset. However, the two risks are not even remotely close as far as potential harm. If you live in the U.S., it won't be some foreign country using your information to send you to prison or foreign assets coming to your door. It'll be the U.S.

How did so many American radicals come to fear other countries when they've only been harmed by this one? Do you not trust your own lived experience? Just thinking about it from an odds perspective, what is more likely to harm you? How is this not obvious? And it's not obvious because of indoctrination,

which is perpetuated even by so-called good people. When you're indoctrinated, you don't think to question. It's just base reality. So we talked about the Worf archetype. But what's scary to me is the Fullerton archetype. He could be anybody. Yes, I probably initially was written for representing some kind of maybe religious conservative. But man,

especially the last few years, stuff you heard Kamala Harris say, stuff you've heard Biden say. stuff you've heard radicals saying about like, oh, you're working for this foreign country or how they're reacting to red note and stuff. They all sound like Fullerton. So not a great episode, but then I don't hate it either.

I appreciate that I watched this. I haven't processed all of this episode because it's not about the episode itself, but it brings up a lot of like things that ring true to me about just experiences I'm having now in real life. So Scott,

tell me what did you think of this episode your rating mythology and so forth so

mythology is like whatever um i think it's it's one of those weird things where i think it's an interesting episode because of the conversations you have from it and showing the complexities of wharf that we don't always see because usually we like wharf is like the gruff curmudgeon with

a heart of gold but here you see like he's jealous and he's not sex positive and he's judgmental and wants to control things and thinks that desire is bad and you know You have Fullerton, who, yeah, comes off a little bit neoliberal, respectability, tone policing kind of thing, where there's this idea of controlling bodies,

which is whack to me. But finding out that Lita has a crush on Rom is really endearing. Again, the growth of Rom in the show is really cool. But I'm going to give it a three. But I really enjoy it. But yeah, it's not like a great episode.

But I like it because re-watching Star Trek through the leftist lens, this is one of the longer episodes we've done in a little while. And it's like a throwaway episode.

But our episode is not throwaway. And I do want to mention what you said about ROMs. the character building and that kind of building of a potential love interest story, that didn't come out of nowhere. This isn't the first time that they've mentioned this. So they've been kind of hinting and building toward this for a while.

So they've been really like slow building and consistently building Rom and his story arc. But Scott, can you tell us about the next episode?

Time travel.

Until then...