SDS9 – S5E19: "Ties of Blood and Water" (Patreon)

This episode was recorded on June 1, 2025.

We recap "Ties of Blood and Water" and discuss end-of-life care and why Leftists honor former soldiers of Empire.

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.]

This is Southpaw Deep Space Nine Season 5. We are your hosts, Scott and Sam. On this stardate, June 1st, 2025... We are discussing ties of blood and water. Ooh.

That is a title, isn't it?

That title said it all. So, Scott, can you tell us about this episode?

Why not? Worf, Jadzia, and Kira are very excited to get the arrival of Takani Gamor, Kira's Cardassian pseudo-father, who you might remember from Second Skin. She wants him to be comfortable and make sure he got the red carpet treatment. Worf and Jadzia not only are impressed with Kira's kindness to a Cardassian,

but also that they notice that Kira has softened a little bit and has a new kindness to her. I disagree. I think Kira has always had a kindness to her, but she's just rough because, you know, she was a freedom fighter and a genocide, and Kira is looking for Gamora's daughter,

but she's been deep covering Bajor for a long time, and it's not looking good. With Dukat now a goal, working with the Dominion, all this stuff is going on, but Gamor has Yarem Fell syndrome, and he is dying. And later on, we will talk a little bit about dying. This is a little bit of a hospice episode.

Bashir confirms the diagnosis. He doesn't have a timeframe, but maybe there's some medication that could help. And despite the poor prognosis, Gamora really wants to be actively medically treated. Kira hopes he can get well enough to help with the Cardassian situation because of, you know, him, him being a Legat, a former Legat, which is, you know,

a big person in the Cardassian hierarchy and has info that might be able to help. Gol Dukat asks to talk to Ben and Dukat makes fun of political titles and honorifics and He particularly finds the word President funny, and he just wants Gammer to come back to Cardassia, making some implications that he's in trouble,

but always using very clever doublespeak. But now that Cardassia is part of the Dominion, they no longer have a treaty, they no longer have extradition. He is owed nothing. Gamora's happy. He holds Miles' baby Kiriyoshi for a bit and feels like a grandpa as Kira gave birth to him in an interesting confluence of events.

And if she was still with Shakar, and it turns out that he keeps tabs on her to make sure that she's okay. And she also admits that She has tabs on him too, just to make sure everyone's doing okay. And that Kira's starting to make a name for herself amongst the Bajoran people and

amongst the Cardassian people for going against Kai Wen and just being an interesting person. They have a mutual respect. Kira tells Gamar that Dukat wants him as Gamar knows more Cardassian secrets than probably anyone. But there is a Cardassian tradition to basically share the deathbed gossip. You know, this is big. They could really use this information.

And then we have a flashback where Kira remembers watching her father get shot in the war. And maybe something's going on there. Bashir informs Kira how to help Gamar, how to give him the medicine he needs, how to take care of him and be there for him as he starts to die.

They are careful and respectful, but he is getting worse. So they start the recordings. We have a little montage, a string, long interviews. Kira's drained but pushes through. And as it happens, her mind just keeps on going to her father, wounded on a bed, just with regret and no medicine to help him. And...

He talks about the Cardassians destroying his garden that he put his heart into, and Kira promises that one day she will also make a garden. They will be warriors in a garden, as we all can hope to be. Back in the present, Gamorf is fading mid-sentence, and Kira ends one of the sessions, and

Ben is really appreciative of the intel and talking to the hero, but she is then called to Gamora's bed. He is actively dying at this point and must hasten the intel. Now, actively dying doesn't mean 30 seconds. It just means that it's happening, and that could take as long as it takes.

I promise I will wrap this in a bow later. Some Jem'Hadar ships led by Dukat show up, guns ready, asking for Gamar. Dukat and a new Weyoun, number five, because we saw the other Weyoun die a couple weeks ago. The Vorta use basically clone as a form of strategy,

and you'll find that not all Weyouns are the same. Ducat states Gamor is innocent and is just like, let me just take him home. It's going to be fine. That's not how he talks. He almost talks more like RFK Jr. Let me take him home. Anyways,

Ducat just is saying he's leveraging Takira that he knows where Gamor's daughter Liliana is, but they're not buying it. And also Gamar just thinks that Golducott is a class traitor and a race traitor and just doesn't mess with him in any way. And the new Weyoun, again, he's kind of funny. He's making jokes.

And Kira just doesn't believe that the daughter is alive or there. And then we have another montage and Kira records the stories and she is getting tired. We see Kira Quark's. She is sad, tired, going through her own thing, having caretaker fatigue, and is a little forlorn. Quark brings her a sleepy drink, but with permission, of course,

he doesn't give her a sleepy drink without, you know, because that would be gross. In Kira's quarters, Dukat is there. Yay! And he tries to do some Gul Dukat stuff. Hands her a little computer thingy with Gamora's record and drops that he was part of the Kiesa Monastery Massacre. This is bait. She doesn't want to look.

She hurls a teacup at his face and says she's going to get him one day. But he's pretty satisfied with what he's done. He's got that little Golducott smile and he leaves. And then Kira decides to pick it up and pick up the pad and reads. There's something in there. Because when Kira goes to see Gamar again,

she angrily is helping him, pushing around, and asks about the Chiesa Temple Massacre. That he was responsible. That he was part of doing that. What was he doing there? And he says he was doing his job. Sort of the thing that we talked about in the last episode. And... As he was doing it,

he became sympathetic to the cause and realized that what they were doing was wrong. At Quark's, Weyoun is playing some games. Ben is trying to offer a drink to Dukat. They have a canard. Canard is the Cardassian drink, but he's giving all these reasons as to why he can't drink it.

but Ben points out that that was sent to Gamar and it's filled with a bunch of poison. Dukat says it wasn't him, but I believe it wasn't him. Just how like shaggy wasn't him. And the new fun way drinks it. Cause he's, he's immune to poison. And he's like, nah, this, this is poison.

This is just poison stuff. Kira goes, goes to her temple to pray. She leaves. You can see the frustration on her face. And Odo's there because he heard that she does not want to work with Gamora anymore. She's angry. She's betrayed. She feels that he was different. And Odo reminds her that Gamora was 19.

He was new to the military. One of hundreds there. We don't even know if he did anything while he was there. And to give, give grace, whether she believes that he deserves it or not. And here's like, you know, shouldn't have been there. And I was like, you know, you could have checked the record.

You could have found it. I don't think, I don't think it was a secret file. And she says, maybe she should go back, but. She knows why she doesn't want to. And there's a flashback. Her father dying, begging her to stay. But she joins. She leaves as he's dying to get revenge.

And as she is going through this, Bashir shows up. Gamora has less than an hour. And Bashir... understands why Kira doesn't want to see him, but there's no more work to be done. It's just time for closure. And Bashir says no one deserves to die alone. And there's another flashback.

Kira's father died calling out her name, but Kira wasn't there. She plots revenge and she buries her father and is understandably sad. But as this comes and as she realizes the regret of not being there with her father, who is calling her name, she comes to Gamora and he dies by her side with her sitting on,

basically lying on his chest in a way that many people share their last moments when they can. And Bashir talks about his cause of death, and Kira talks about the exhale of a dying person. How when someone is on their way out, their breath, every breath is heavy, and every breath is, you can tell it's hard.

And, you know, she counted the breaths until he eventually gave up. And as she missed her father's death by an hour, she wanted to not repeat the cycle. And Dugat tries to play this game as he's talking to Ben that Gamor stated that he was Dominion at the end of the life.

It's obvious a lie, and he wants the body. And Ben's like, oh, well, the body's gone. It's being buried next to Kira's father on Bajor. And that's the episode.

This episode was emotionally complex.

Oh, yeah.

It's an episode about hospice, as Scott mentioned, and the constraint of time accelerating reconciliation. Or it doesn't, because even if there's a time limit, you don't actually have to reconcile. You don't even have to accept that time is running out. You can deny it. Which is what Kira did with her real father.

The other moral complexity of this episode is that Gabor is someone Kira has grown close to and sees as a good man. But he was also a soldier. He's like a military vet turned leftist. Yeah. Western leftists appreciate that growth and character arc, but at the same time,

he was also a soldier of empire who has committed crimes against the oppressed and occupied. He was part of the oppression. So Kira has to deal with that. Then there is the moral tension of using something bad for the greater good because even though Gamor was involved with bad,

he knows a lot of stuff and maybe you can use that for good. It wasn't a happy ending. It didn't have moral or emotional clarity. It was complex. I often think about this, about how radicals in the empire love reformed U.S. soldiers who become radicalized.

In fact, many idolize them or uphold them as heroes, and I question where that's coming from. Yes, it's great they thought better of it, but I question why having first served empire makes them more valuable. The U.S. left sees leftist vets as the peak of cool. But we should ask ourselves, how would their former victims feel?

How would Kira feel? We know how we in the imperial core react to it, which is basically how imaginary Cardassian leftists would probably react to Gamor. But what about Bajorans? So through Kira, we get to see a different perspective. the perspective of the other, of the victim, something we ought to think about. So for radicals watching,

this is something I think they often don't think about, but they should. Thinking from the standpoint of the ones who are under the boot of U.S. empire and how they would feel. For them, ACAB isn't U.S. police. That's a very U.S.-centric domestic view. For them, it's U.S. military.

The only reason there is tension at all for Kira with Gamora is because Gamora became a surrogate father. So is blood thicker than water? And also, she doesn't have to accept him as blood. Blood and water is something she gets to decide. So there's another layer there. They see each other as colonized and colonizer.

But at the same time, there is the subtext of seeing each other beyond that as two people who appreciate each other as fellow humans, as not others, but the same, just people. It's messy. Their relationship is messy. Death is messy. Regrets are messy. Emotions are messy. This episode had a lot going on.

It was big and at the same time, intimate. If I were Kira, I don't know how I would feel. So any reaction by her seems justified. Just from the father-child subtext and death, both my parents passed and there's a whole lot left unsaid and unresolved. But there was a whole lot that didn't need to be said either.

I don't treat speech as the holiest of holies like the West does. In a way, spending his dying days and hours and breaths doing a military debriefing was Gamore's penance. He understood all the subtexts as surrogate father, but also as oppressor and oppressed. With my parents, I mostly just sat with them and held space.

And that's it because speaking is too exhausting and would probably make their suffering worse. Imagine the most sick you've ever been. Now multiply that by 100. Now imagine trying to do a three-day job interview that lasted eight hours each day. That's not peace. That's hell. And Kira talked about that too.

Gamora was willing to reduce his quality of life and just struggle and be uncomfortable and endure as penance and to help Kira, but also hopefully have Kira forgive him. not just as a surrogate father, but also as a colonizer. And in the end, at some level, it seemed like she did, though she didn't have to.

And also how much she did, why she did it, we don't need to know. That's personal between those imaginary characters. So Scott, I know you've had some similar experiences. What did you think of this episode and how do you rate it?

Okay, so one thing that I think is very interesting is if you look at the relationship between Kira and Gamora from a Fanonian lens, we really explore colonialism and oppression and that the oppressors are oppressed as well. In that dynamic, and in some ways they can free themselves, in which case he did.

And instead of internalizing the dehumanization, which I think Gul Dukat is definitely guilty of, he did it. So I always like to throw a little praxis in when I can.

So he's like the opposite of Dukat then?

Totally, because he did all this stuff, and he has all this information, and he sees the futility of war. He sees the mistakes. He sees the sin that they cannot undo. in this moment and does not want this to be the defining actions of Cardassia, which is, I think, going to be pretty hard to live down.

And so... I want to be very careful about how I talk about certain things because I want to be mindful about talking about what I do for a living, if you know what I'm saying, aside from making music. But what I can say is that I have familiarity with end-of-life care. And In America,

which is a little bit different than Deep Space Nine, there's usually basically three types of hospice treatment, which is home hospice, which can look in many different ways, but that's when you're literally at home and hospice professionals show up as needed and make sure that you're focusing primarily on symptom management and comfort management versus trying to medically

treat things. So as the episode progresses, it goes from trying to medically treat to symptom management. Then there's residential hospice, which is sort of like you know, an assisted living that has hospice. And that's for people that unfortunately might not be able to go home for whatever reason. And then there's inpatient hospice,

which is basically a hospital that serves just people that are at the end of their life. And it's basically like a hospital, but much nicer. Theoretically, usually, there's no rules about visiting. People can eat whatever they want if they're able to eat because this is what it is. And in that world, there's different ideas.

When talking about prognosis, which does happen in this episode, and I'm only saying all this stuff because I think it's important to know because Most of us, many of us, maybe have parents that we have a relationship with or elders we have a relationship with. And I think it's important to remove the veil,

especially in the Western society where we look at this stuff in such a scared way, even though Theoretically, we are born, we live, and then we die. But the third part is so scary sometimes. But in certain cultures where that's, you know, religious people or certain cultures, that's a different issue.

But we have this – there is this idea called minutes to hours – hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months. And I think it's really important in this episode. And again, I don't think they did it on purpose, but basically he's in an inpatient hospice and Bashir is continuing to basically

talk about the prognosis and does it almost in that verbatim way. And what Kira and Gamar are doing is a type of end-of-life therapy. You know what I'm saying? And it's really profound. And for that, I think the episode was really special. And again, without giving away too much, resonated really well with me and showed actually

and talked about it in a way that felt really realistic, especially the talking of the breath. Because when that breath starts happening, and if you are spiritual, and you feel the liminal space open, and people often say they're ready to go home, and If able to talk, the most common phrases are, I'm sorry. I forgive you.

Forgive me. I love you. And that's why I really appreciate you letting me say all of that. Because we do Star Trek with a twist. And I think that's what makes us a little bit different. And because of that, I give this episode five stars. Whoa! Not mythological.

Wait, this episode, is it mythological?

I don't think of it as a big mythology episode. I mean, it is. I'm calling it non-mythology, so I feel comfortable giving it a five, though there's going to be other episodes. There are other fives. But re-watching this put me in a place I was not prepared for.

But I also say I don't think it's going to be a five for everyone. What did you think about the episode, Sam?

Like I started out, that is a complex episode on a lot of levels. And not just plot-wise, right? Because plot, like I said, is like, big because it's talking about this like kind of empire and like oppression and like this big war and genocide and occupation right like you know if you shot that

like a movie that would like be an epic movie right but then this was also kind of like a very intimate like two people in a room kind of movie too right so it did both and then emotionally was complex right we've talked about how gray

DS9 is but the more I watch I think for me the word I would use is complex because like layer to layer is not like gray it is clear but then there's so many layers as a whole then you're just like well man there's like so many things going on it's

really messy you know one of the things I thought about with this episode and something based off of the things you were saying, is not necessarily about DS9 in this episode, but I'll bring it back, is how a lot of entertainment media, movies, TV shows romanticize death. Especially, like, I feel, hospital shows or whatever, right? Like,

every one of them makes it kind of like this romanticized death where, like, you're going to have this, like, epic conversation with somebody and it's going to be all hashed out and whatever, right? You know, something you mentioned, lazy writing. You're just like, okay, we'll just stick with the trope, right?

And I think the trope is also something what people are looking for, right? So in it being romanticized, people, that's what they think is going to happen when someone they know dies. They're going to have this beautiful experience and whatever. And it's like, if you do, great. I'm not saying you can't have that, right?

First of all, let me just start out with saying there's no one way for people to die. And I think that's part of my problem with that trope is like it's one size fits all. You think it's all going to be like that, right? And people really do believe it's going to be like that.

Like when they go through it, they have that kind of weird expectation. And sometimes people have these beautiful experiences, right? And then sometimes people don't. And on top of that, they can't. those kind of romanticized views assumes the person will be crystal clear or come

to an even higher level of clarity when they could be on all kinds of drugs to make them feel less suffering. And that doesn't necessarily bode for the most clarity. Think about, I don't know, taking Benadryl or something, how good of a conversation you're going to have on Benadryl.

Now think about that on something much, much, much stronger at an exponential level. you know, if they're on chemotherapy to all kinds of other things. It's so unstable, right? Right. Yeah. It's not a fixed situation. It's unstable. It's unpredictable. So that's like the thing I want to say is like,

I'm not saying people can't ever have those situations, but I think sometimes people go into it or think about it like they will. And then they kind of try to force it to become that. And then that just makes things worse, right? Just let it be whatever it's going to be. I know that's how I approached that.

deaths in my own family they didn't all occur at once but one of my sisters died then my dad died and then my mom died actually in that time frame also my dog died that was like the last dog i had i was like no more deaths but anyway they were all

different and i approached them all differently and just like kind of just just gotta let it be so i had kind of all those kind of thoughts and to tie this back to ds9 This wasn't that trope. right no to your point even though there was therapeutic aspects of it it was just

so long right he really wanted to get all of this out so he was also like just physically suffering and she saw that and she was like man I wish maybe she should just sleep but you know we got to go through this thing you know and she's like

getting tired too a healthy person is also getting tired so it did not romanticize it at all right and so I appreciated that this episode did that and also like appreciated the like the things that both people had to say like he was talking about it like this

kind of cultural ritual and therapy and so it was also shown as that but at the same time it's also an interrogation for the Starfleet military and so there's that aspect of it you know and she feels kind of icky about the situation too because Like it is that, but it's also something else, right?

And it's also like using that as also an excuse in a way to be like Gamora in his death is like, Kira, I want you to do this and I want you to not to feel bad about it because it's actually kind of like this ritual thing. So don't feel bad about it.

And it's like, it's almost like a way to make her feel less bad about it, right? So man, it had a lot of subtext. And so I was like, this must be like a canonical, like really important thing. And in some ways, because it's not canonical or as important in that way in mythology, man,

it frees people up, frees the writers up and the actors up to kind of do a self-contained exploration of whatever the theme is without having to explore a part of a five-part episode story arc or something, right? So in some ways, it's harder to do a good episode when it's just like an episode of the week.

But in some ways, it also frees you up to do a good episode if you have the right material and you're inspired in the right way.

Absolutely. But it should be understood that every season has a different level. I think this is the first episode I've given five stars, but I'm not sure.

That's how I remember it.

This five stars is not equal to five stars that I'm going to give in season six. Wow. I mean, there's some heaters. There's some heaters, man. This is where we are. It's all... It's all dope. I mean, there are bad episodes. There are. And I've already sort of talked about them a little bit.

But this episode hit me in a way that I really didn't expect. And I don't think I even watched it on my last rewatch.

And I just want to also point out, this episode two continues on this theme. of parents and children right so season five has been interesting because that's something i don't think people have picked up on but like season five really is the season of all these different stories that you could have about parents and kids

exploring like abusive parents to like the type of parents who like have such high expectations of you to like eugenics to you know like negligent parents or like abandoning children or like not accepting them as your own, all these different themes. And we've also had themes of good parents, surrogate parents, all these themes.

And then this one was about when parents die. So it's interesting that they took that one theme and delivered so many different episodes about that. So that's been interesting to watch. There's ways to enjoy each episode, but also... something for me enjoying the season has been all these different versions of parent and child stories.

For real. Yeah.

All right. Can you tell us about the next episode?

Quirk got his groove back.

Oh. Yeah. Until then...