We Must Speak In regards to the Finest Second in This Week’s Decrease Decks

There’s lots to like in this week’s episode of Decrease Decks. The penultimate episode of the present set the stage for what could possibly be one of many all-time nice conclusions to a Star Trek present, one full of potential throughout the board to ship a rousing rejoinder to numerous what has made the present so good throughout these 5 seasons. However even when the present by some means manages to whiff it proper on the ultimate frontier, I’ll ceaselessly be glad about what this week’s episode gave my queer little coronary heart.

“Fissure Quest” instantly hits you with a boatload of Trek geekery, whether or not it’s truly throughout the storytelling of Decrease Decks itself (the return of Boimler’s transporter duplicate William, who’s now a Part 31 operative captaining his personal starship on a reality-hopping mission to avoid wasting the multiverse!) or throughout the wild cameos it simply drops out of nowhere. William’s crew of multiversal Trek characters features a veritable military of ensigns Harry Kim (plus one lieutenant, all voiced by Voyager‘s Garrett Wang), a model of Curzon Dax from Deep House 9, the place the Dax symbiont had but to be handed on to Jadzia as it will be within the prime Trek timeline, and one other alternate within the type of Enterprise‘s T’Pol (Jolene Blalock making a uncommon return to performing and an excellent rarer return to Star Trek at giant) who obtained her completely satisfied ending with Journey.

However the largest shock for me at the least had been William’s medical officers: an Elim Garak from a actuality the place he joined Starfleet and put these tailoring fingers to surgical procedure work, and a Medical Hologram of Julian Bashir, presumably from a actuality the place the occasions of Deep House 9‘s “Physician Bashir, I Presume” truly performed out effectively. That’s already pleasant sufficient, particularly as each Andrew Robinson and Alexander Siddig return to reprise their respective characters for the primary time on TV in many years. Nevertheless it’s additionally pleasant for the way William introduces them in his log: they’re married. In the end, even when it’s alternate variations of them, there exists a chunk of Star Trek TV that has Garak and Bashir as husbands.

Deep House 9 followers have long-shipped the plain, simple tailor and DS9’s CMO—the chemistry of their relationship on the present was electrical from the second Julian and Garak met, the attract of the thriller in Garak’s previous and Bashir’s all-too-eager curiosity offering prime materials for followers to learn a queer interpretation into. Though Deep House 9 by no means textually went there, even because it brushed up in opposition to the then-perceived-taboo of queer relationships in different areas, there was at all times one thing within the duo that sparked that romantic chemistry. It’s one which each Robinson and Siddig have been desirous to help themselves since Deep House 9 concluded, discussing the connection at fan conventions and the way they’d each, at instances, tried to push their performances as if there was the potential for one thing between the 2 there, even when the textual content would finally by no means go that far. Robinson even went on to jot down several Star Trek novels about Garak, bearing on the character’s queerness—even when not explicitly with Bashir.

Decrease Decks may’ve simply left it at that. “Fissure Quest” definitely has sufficient happening that it may’ve taken the win of calling Garak and Bashir husbands and transferring on with its myriad different issues, however as a substitute it provides the couple house to really be a pair. They get time to work together and be tender with one another. Hell, they arguably get considered one of sweetest emotional arcs of the episode, enjoying with its wider musings on the idea of the multiverse to declaratively underline that no matter what differing realities they arrive from, and wherever they finally settle after their mission is over, their house is inside one another. It’s additionally completely Garak and Bashir in that this conclusion comes after the previous spends a lot of the episode arguing with the latter about whether or not or not they’ll dwell in his universe or Julian’s—as a result of, as Garak lovingly tells his husband within the climax, he’s at all times cherished arguing with him.

It simply makes every thing I’ve seen in these characters since watching DS9 as a queer teen myself truly a part of Star Trek in some small manner, after years of questioning what may’ve been. For all of the curiosity in its personal previous Star Trek has had in its streaming renaissance—from the attract of aesthetic and structural nostalgia in collection like Strange New Worlds, to Picard‘s continuation of The Subsequent Era‘s tales and characters, to Decrease Decks‘ personal nerdy love of what Star Trek is each inside and with out its textual content—the concept of it utilizing that to present queer followers the couple that by no means was (even when it’s not “our” Garak and Bashir) for a quick second was one thing I by no means anticipated, not to mention as Decrease Decks stared down the phaser-tip of its personal finish. There’s lots I’m grateful the present did over its 5 seasons, however no matter the way it involves an finish subsequent week, I’ll at all times be glad it gave a bit of itself to considered one of Deep House 9‘s finest relationships, and did it queer justice it at all times deserved.

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