The road not taken
Aug. 22nd, 2018 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI don’t have the time to marathon the entirety of TNG, but individual episodes are another matter, and the other day I watched Ensign Ro, the season 5 episode featuring the Ur- Bajoran, Ro Laren, played by Michelle Forbes. (Who’d been in TNG before in a smaller supporting role in which she nonetheless impressed the producers enough to write a recurring character for her; she’d go on to be one of the ST actors Ron Moore wrote a part in BSG for, Admiral Cain, no less.)
I hadn’t seen the episode in question for many years, and this time around it spawned both DS9 and Discovery related thoughts. DS9 first: this episode introduced the Bajorans along with Ro, and there is definitely the usual early installment weirdness (i.e. stuff that later canon either retconned or ignored, which happens more often than not with introduction eps of both characters and people). That there’s an additional ridge on the face is the most minor element; then there’s the way Ro’s people are referred to as both „the Bajora“ and „the Bajorans“, with „Bajora“ as an alternative name dropped ever after. Ro wears her earring on the „wrong“ ear, which the last season of DS9 declared to be the sign of pagh wraith followers. I hear that the novels took their cue from Ro’s declaration to Picard in this episode that while honoring her people’s culture she doesn’t necessarily share their beliefs, i.e. wearing the earring on the other ear is also a declaration of atheism? Since I’m always on the look out for non-evil Prophet deniers, I’m all for it.
The biggest difference to what DS9 later established, though, may be what this introduction episode says about how the Cardassian occupation went down. (Also about its extent; this episode names a span of 40 years, whereas DS9 later was prone to name it as 60 years. Since the first season of DS9 ran concurrently with the sixth season of TNG, and the Cardassians have just withdrawn from Bajor in the pilot episode of DS9, that’s a considerable gap.) Because Ensign Ro talks about the Bajorans as a diaspora people who live in refugee camps all over the galaxy „kicked off their own planet“ by the Cardassians. Meanwhile, DS9 very early on still mentions refugee camps (but rarely) until even the mentioning is dropped for good, but you definitely get the impression that most of the Bajorans remained on Bajor under Cardassian rule, and that the Cardassians were more interested in exploiting them as slave labourers than in driving them away.
This, in turn, made me wonder whether DS9 would have been a very different show if Michelle Forbes hadn’t turned down the chance to play Ro again as a regular there, which resulted in the creation of Kira Nerys. Now don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t exchange the DS9 we got for anything, Kira is one of the most compelling Trek characters ever, and two interesting female Bajorans with issues are better than one, so I’m glad she did. But Ro Laren’s backstory was so significantly different from what Kira’s became that I can’t see Ro ending up playing basically the same role. For starters, while both Kira and Ro had a traumatic childhood thanks to the Cardassians, Ro then ended up as a refugee, which she hated, and it didn’t result in her joining the resistance, it resulted in her joining Starfleet. „They (the Bajorans) are defeated – I’ll never be“ is not a line you can imagine Kira saying. Even after leaving Starfleet in TNG’s last but one episode, Ro doesn’t go back to a now liberated Bajor, she joins the Maquis instead. Mind you, presumably if Michelle Forbes had accepted the TNG to DS9 transfer, this would not have happened as she’d left earlier, but still, I think it’s safe to say that Ro has issues about being Bajoran, or at the very least mixed feelings about it, and that these feelings are connected not just to those childhood years during the occupation (where she had to witness her father being tortured to death by Cardassians) but also to her years as a homeless refugee and the sense of powerlessness, disconnection and unwantedness. Which, again, is very different from Kira’s years as a resistance-fighter-slash-terrorist, in a horrible situation, yes, but always part of a community and with a sense of purpose (the liberation of Bajor from Cardassian rule) driving her.
Conversely, Kira going from original distrust of all things Starfleet to not just accepting Sisko but venerating him as the Emissary is connected to the great importance her faith has for her. Whereas Ro was Starfleet, left not because she distrusted their goals but because she came to disagree on the policy vis a vis the Cardassians. If the events of Preemptive Strike would not have happened in that hypothetical show where Ro instead of Kira ends up as Sisko’s first officer from the pilot onwards, she’d have never left at all and just been transfered, presumably being acceptable to the provisional Bajoran government due to being Bajoran. My guess is that the early friction between her and Sisko might have hailed from the fact that Ro, having served on the Enterprise with Picard basically as her sponsor, could either inherited Sisko’s Picard issues or conversely could have had issues with Sisko about his attitude towards Picard, had she witnessed it in the pilot.
Anyway, while some of the Kira-centric episodes like Duet would also have worked with Ro as a main character, others – like anything featuring Kai Winn – probably would not without massive rewriting. And thematically, DS9 might have instead of exploring the „our resistance fighters are your terrorists“ trope in its pre 9/11 world the way it did via Kira focused on refugee-returning-to-an-utterly-changed-home issues via Ro – both worth exploring, but it’s definitely not the same story.
On to Discovery: back when Disco’s third episode was shown, it did occur to me, see posted reviews, that Captain Lorca recruiting Michael straight from prison had distinct parallels to Janeway doing the same with Tom Paris in the Voyager pilot. What I hadn’t remembered then is that this is also similar to Ro’s introduction, since Ro, too, is drafted from a prison sentence (for disobeying orders which resulted in the deaths of crewmates) on to the Enterprise, though at first not by Picard but the unhinged Admiral of the week. Mind you, while Riker is a jerk to Ro upon her arrival (and in a hypocritical way, since he never asked Worf to take off his Klingon sash) re: her earring, no one else is; it’s Ro who turns down Troi’s and Crusher’s friendly overture at Ten Forward, as opposed to all guests starring at her with hostility. (And then Guinan in a very Guinan move just invites herself to Ro’s table and the scenish parallels end all together.) But I guess that’s the difference between a Picard- and a Lorca-run ship.
Still, I think I finally have the angle of how to write a Picard pov on having inherited some Michael memories via Sarek. Because Ro would remind him! Not that I currently can write anything, but you know, in principle.
Lastly, have a Ro-centric rather recent fanfiction which describes her reactions during and after Chain of Command:
Sea of Nonbelievers
I hadn’t seen the episode in question for many years, and this time around it spawned both DS9 and Discovery related thoughts. DS9 first: this episode introduced the Bajorans along with Ro, and there is definitely the usual early installment weirdness (i.e. stuff that later canon either retconned or ignored, which happens more often than not with introduction eps of both characters and people). That there’s an additional ridge on the face is the most minor element; then there’s the way Ro’s people are referred to as both „the Bajora“ and „the Bajorans“, with „Bajora“ as an alternative name dropped ever after. Ro wears her earring on the „wrong“ ear, which the last season of DS9 declared to be the sign of pagh wraith followers. I hear that the novels took their cue from Ro’s declaration to Picard in this episode that while honoring her people’s culture she doesn’t necessarily share their beliefs, i.e. wearing the earring on the other ear is also a declaration of atheism? Since I’m always on the look out for non-evil Prophet deniers, I’m all for it.
The biggest difference to what DS9 later established, though, may be what this introduction episode says about how the Cardassian occupation went down. (Also about its extent; this episode names a span of 40 years, whereas DS9 later was prone to name it as 60 years. Since the first season of DS9 ran concurrently with the sixth season of TNG, and the Cardassians have just withdrawn from Bajor in the pilot episode of DS9, that’s a considerable gap.) Because Ensign Ro talks about the Bajorans as a diaspora people who live in refugee camps all over the galaxy „kicked off their own planet“ by the Cardassians. Meanwhile, DS9 very early on still mentions refugee camps (but rarely) until even the mentioning is dropped for good, but you definitely get the impression that most of the Bajorans remained on Bajor under Cardassian rule, and that the Cardassians were more interested in exploiting them as slave labourers than in driving them away.
This, in turn, made me wonder whether DS9 would have been a very different show if Michelle Forbes hadn’t turned down the chance to play Ro again as a regular there, which resulted in the creation of Kira Nerys. Now don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t exchange the DS9 we got for anything, Kira is one of the most compelling Trek characters ever, and two interesting female Bajorans with issues are better than one, so I’m glad she did. But Ro Laren’s backstory was so significantly different from what Kira’s became that I can’t see Ro ending up playing basically the same role. For starters, while both Kira and Ro had a traumatic childhood thanks to the Cardassians, Ro then ended up as a refugee, which she hated, and it didn’t result in her joining the resistance, it resulted in her joining Starfleet. „They (the Bajorans) are defeated – I’ll never be“ is not a line you can imagine Kira saying. Even after leaving Starfleet in TNG’s last but one episode, Ro doesn’t go back to a now liberated Bajor, she joins the Maquis instead. Mind you, presumably if Michelle Forbes had accepted the TNG to DS9 transfer, this would not have happened as she’d left earlier, but still, I think it’s safe to say that Ro has issues about being Bajoran, or at the very least mixed feelings about it, and that these feelings are connected not just to those childhood years during the occupation (where she had to witness her father being tortured to death by Cardassians) but also to her years as a homeless refugee and the sense of powerlessness, disconnection and unwantedness. Which, again, is very different from Kira’s years as a resistance-fighter-slash-terrorist, in a horrible situation, yes, but always part of a community and with a sense of purpose (the liberation of Bajor from Cardassian rule) driving her.
Conversely, Kira going from original distrust of all things Starfleet to not just accepting Sisko but venerating him as the Emissary is connected to the great importance her faith has for her. Whereas Ro was Starfleet, left not because she distrusted their goals but because she came to disagree on the policy vis a vis the Cardassians. If the events of Preemptive Strike would not have happened in that hypothetical show where Ro instead of Kira ends up as Sisko’s first officer from the pilot onwards, she’d have never left at all and just been transfered, presumably being acceptable to the provisional Bajoran government due to being Bajoran. My guess is that the early friction between her and Sisko might have hailed from the fact that Ro, having served on the Enterprise with Picard basically as her sponsor, could either inherited Sisko’s Picard issues or conversely could have had issues with Sisko about his attitude towards Picard, had she witnessed it in the pilot.
Anyway, while some of the Kira-centric episodes like Duet would also have worked with Ro as a main character, others – like anything featuring Kai Winn – probably would not without massive rewriting. And thematically, DS9 might have instead of exploring the „our resistance fighters are your terrorists“ trope in its pre 9/11 world the way it did via Kira focused on refugee-returning-to-an-utterly-changed-home issues via Ro – both worth exploring, but it’s definitely not the same story.
On to Discovery: back when Disco’s third episode was shown, it did occur to me, see posted reviews, that Captain Lorca recruiting Michael straight from prison had distinct parallels to Janeway doing the same with Tom Paris in the Voyager pilot. What I hadn’t remembered then is that this is also similar to Ro’s introduction, since Ro, too, is drafted from a prison sentence (for disobeying orders which resulted in the deaths of crewmates) on to the Enterprise, though at first not by Picard but the unhinged Admiral of the week. Mind you, while Riker is a jerk to Ro upon her arrival (and in a hypocritical way, since he never asked Worf to take off his Klingon sash) re: her earring, no one else is; it’s Ro who turns down Troi’s and Crusher’s friendly overture at Ten Forward, as opposed to all guests starring at her with hostility. (And then Guinan in a very Guinan move just invites herself to Ro’s table and the scenish parallels end all together.) But I guess that’s the difference between a Picard- and a Lorca-run ship.
Still, I think I finally have the angle of how to write a Picard pov on having inherited some Michael memories via Sarek. Because Ro would remind him! Not that I currently can write anything, but you know, in principle.
Lastly, have a Ro-centric rather recent fanfiction which describes her reactions during and after Chain of Command:
Sea of Nonbelievers
no subject
Date: 2018-08-24 11:44 am (UTC)Many of the fic recs I read are yours.
Ah well, explains why I couldn't find it/!