Chad Kirchner (00:29)
⁓ that's Julian Bashir. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another ⁓ hopefully fantastic episode of Temporal Investigations. I'm Chad Kushner, your host. And today with me, I have somebody very special. You heard her laugh there a moment ago. She's an automotive journalist and editor at a site that rhymes a lot with ⁓ s-s-slop. Rick? ⁓ I don't, I don't know.

Erin Marquis (00:31)
Hahaha!

Chad Kirchner (00:57)
I don't have anything witty to say there. ⁓ She's a fan fiction aficionado, which we are of course definitely going to get into. ⁓ And probably the most pro Detroit person I know, ⁓ which I think is a good thing. was definitely growing up as like Detroit, yeah, okay. But now like I, as an Ohio boy, I'm still like, yeah, no, I get it. I understand. ⁓ Her favorite track is Deep Space Nine. Just so happens we're talking about it today. And her favorite character is of course,

going to be the subject of today's show, plain simple, the tailor, the spy, the whatever. But it's a long way of saying, Marquis is with us. Hello, Aaron. I'm doing very well. That was a very long-winded intro, but ⁓ we're going to talk about your favorite stuff today. So that's exciting. ⁓ Yeah, sure is.

Erin Marquis (01:38)
Hey Chad, how's it going?

sure is.

Chad Kirchner (01:52)
⁓ We were recording a little bit beforehand, which if you're a Patreon member at the commander level you can listen to. ⁓ But you said you're, we're talking about your first kind of intro to Star Trek and it was an old VHS tape of the undiscovered country. ⁓ And we both talked about how much we loved Christopher Plummer's performance and kind of the over-the-top C3 chewing that comes with like a villain having fun.

And if you look at, you know, Deep Space Nine, know, characters that I think that were played, you know, by people who were having fun. ⁓ Garrick. Yeah, I think Andrew Robinson. There's a lot to unpack with with both him and his character. But if you could summarize in 30 seconds why you love Elam Garrick.

Erin Marquis (02:39)
Sure.

Chad Kirchner (02:48)
How would you do it? Your elevator pitch, if you will.

Erin Marquis (02:50)
Man, so Elam Garrick is a really rare character on Star Trek. He's, everyone's very forthright. Everyone's very, you know, they try and do the right thing in Star Trek. And, you know, that can be pretty boring. I like a guy who's got a little bit of a swerve to him. He's a little bit, you don't really know what his deal is. You have to figure it out. And, you know, Garrick is a guy who, he tries to make sure that his lying skills are always

Chad Kirchner (03:06)
Yes.

Erin Marquis (03:20)
top notch and you have to practice as he reminds us. Excuse me. So ⁓ I mean, he's ⁓ he's he's physically interesting as a Cardassian because all the other Cardassian actors are very tall, very broad, but even among his own people, he's a little bit of a ⁓ sly character and I just think that's great.

Chad Kirchner (03:23)
He does, yes. ⁓

Right. Yeah, he is. ⁓ It's funny, I was looking up the, just to have it up for when we talk here, I have the memory of article of Elam Karak up and occupations and as listed a spy. Sure. Assassin. Yes. Gardener. Yes. ⁓ We learned we learned, you know, he was on on Romulus as a gardener there and

Erin Marquis (04:02)
yeah. Technically.

Chad Kirchner (04:10)
when Odo's dying near the end of the series, spoiler alert for a 30 year old show. We learn that he's a tailor, he's a plain, just a plain simple tailor. There's nothing really more to him. And then his story arc ultimately ends up with him being a rebel where he helps fight for the liberation of Cardassia against the Dominion. And then we learn in...

all the way at the end after all of that, at least in a mirror universe. And just as an FYI to people, I'm marking this episode as explicit, he's in a relationship with Julian Bashir and they're fucking on the regular, at least in the mirror universe.

Erin Marquis (04:55)
Woo.

And boy, our fans thrilled. Finally, after 30 years, what was obvious to both the actors and the writers, but not the executive producer has become canon.

Chad Kirchner (04:59)
and

⁓

internet, the internet just exploded when they saw that episode and like it was, it was so, it was so right. And we are going to talk about, you know, get more into that there, but that was so just like the right way, I think, to close that, that, that story loop and that arc. ⁓ You know, they had to do it in the mirror universe ⁓ or with a mirror character for it to make sense canonically. But ⁓

you read the interviews around it and both, you know, Andrew Robinson and ⁓ Alexandra Siddiqui are both like, yeah, this is how it was supposed to be.

Erin Marquis (05:44)
Oh, well, when Andrew Robinson first saw Alexander Sedig, he literally was like, that's the most beautiful man I've ever seen in my life. don't think he had a choice to play it straight at that point. He was like, damn. and then, know, they hired Alexander. He, he, or not Alexander, Andrew.

⁓ He had always played bad guys like really crazy bad guys, know Dirty Harry and stuff like that and they hired him because his eyes are so expressive It can it can come through the face loaf But and then so now he gets to play this character that is very nuanced Has a lot of sides to him. Yeah, he's got kind of an you like, you know, he's chaotic neutral He's not even evil like really ⁓

Chad Kirchner (06:13)
Yes.

No, no,

think ultimately he's not. ⁓ And they do explore some of that, like when he does realize that, you know, Abern Tain kinda is still wants to rejoin the obsidian order and, you know, they Odo and him get quote unquote captured by Tain when they try to destroy the Dominion the first time. and this is before we realized that Tain's Garak's father, but like,

Erin Marquis (06:53)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Kirchner (07:00)
throughout the series, Garak is trying to like win the approval of Tain. So he did some pretty crappy things to Odo. I mean, he tortured him to, and that was probably the closest he got to being like truly like evil, evil. But of the people that he assassinates throughout the series, I think that's probably the most like, whoa, you've gone a little too far. Like you're, you're really.

just a bad dude. ⁓ But then he comes back. But he's brought back in through the storytelling of that second episode of that two-parter to where like him and Odo have an understanding after that. And it's the most that we really see about Garrick's backstory until seasons later when, you know, ⁓ Garrick.

almost or when Tain dies when their kid I'm in the dominion Tain dies and

Erin Marquis (07:59)
Mm hmm.

And really, Gary, you know, his manipulativeness and his willingness to do things in the moral gray is where we get one of the best episodes of DS 9, which is in the pale moonlight. And man, the way he plays off of ⁓ Cisco and that is just so it's just beautiful. And like you he's like, you needed a morally gray person. That's why you came to me physically and morally gray. Our boy, Gary.

Chad Kirchner (08:13)
Of course.

Yeah.

Yeah. He's like, why

else would you have come to me? know, and, and, know, I kind of, at some point, I just want to talk about that episode with some, with some folks, because at the end, like when, when Garak is like, well, I had, you know, I was just prepared for in case the forgery and stuff didn't hold up. And I kind of don't know if he actually did. Like, I mean, he obviously admitted that that was his plan all along, but I don't know how optimistic he was that Cisco's plan was going to work.

Erin Marquis (08:30)
Right.

Chad Kirchner (08:57)
⁓ but I don't know. Garrett can live with it. And as, as Cisco tells us repeatedly into the computer screen that he can deal with it.

Erin Marquis (09:08)
And, you know, Garak also like, he has done tons of morally gray stuff. Like back to Andrew Robinson, who, who is developing this character, he kept a diary and was developing all this backstory for a character who only shows up in about 33 episodes. Uh, but he turned that diary into a really good book. I'm talking like really good action, like as a novel, it's good. But as a novel written by a actor.

for his character, it's just amazing. And apparently Andrew Robinson went to the actor who played Damar and he was like, hey, did you ever come up with like a first name for your, for your character so I can put it in the book? He's like, no, I didn't even bother. It's like, that's the two different kinds of actor, you know?

Chad Kirchner (09:53)
Right. Yeah. Could you,

what's the name of that so listeners can.

Erin Marquis (09:58)
The book is called A Stitch in Time and they actually just released an audio version last year read by Andrew Robinson himself. And it's written as a letter to Bashir while Garrick is living in the ruins of Cardassia. And the Cardassia basically looks like Berlin, 1945. And he's totally without hope.

And at some point, Bashir drops him a line and he takes forever to respond. So when he responds, he basically writes his whole life story out for Bashir. ⁓ And it is a fascinating look at ⁓ the character. It takes all these little nuggets that you get throughout the seasons and it expands wildly on them. he's, yes, a gardener on Romulus, but

His father was a gardener in the war memorial and taught him how to do this gardening and they live underneath an Abram Tain because his mother is the housekeeper and he figures out his an Abrams, his real father pretty early on. But it's, it's like the secret that everybody keeps. It's all these secrets on top of secrets. ⁓ And by the, I don't want to ruin the end of the book, but at the end of the book, Eric is, I won't ruin too much, but he's with a doctor.

Chad Kirchner (11:07)
Mm-hmm.

Erin Marquis (11:21)
who is his partner, it's a male doctor he's partnered up with and they're ⁓ building little memorials to just give people something to do. They're like piling up rocks and people are like, it's giving the survivors just something to do. And it's really moving. It's a really, really good book.

Chad Kirchner (11:26)
Right.

And just as a spoiler for

people who haven't seen a 30 year old TV show, last episode of East Face 9, the female shapeshifter orders the, basically the genocide of the Grinnessian people. Some 800 million end up dying. Garrick says one of the lines that I quote quite a bit, which is straight from Shakespeare, our fault, our dear doctor was not in our hearts, or in the stars, in ourselves.

Erin Marquis (11:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chad Kirchner (12:09)
which is not, which is, forget which Shakespeare play it is. ⁓ It's The Merchant of Whatever. ⁓ Yes, The Merchant of Venice. And ⁓ yeah, like just real, we never really see what happens there. There is an episode of Starfleet Academy, which you haven't seen, that addresses kind of what happened to Cisco. ⁓

Erin Marquis (12:16)
Merchant of Venice.

Chad Kirchner (12:32)
But we don't really kind of know what happens to the Cardassian people. We know that there's Cardassians in the 32nd century. ⁓ The president of the Federation ⁓ in discovery, she was half Cardassian, half Bajoran. ⁓ So we know that they survived. ⁓ But in onscreen canon, we don't have a lot of.

Erin Marquis (12:48)
health.

Mm-hmm.

Chad Kirchner (13:00)
of to go by there. ⁓ One other really just great thing that I love about Garrick itself before we talk a little bit more about on-screen canon and the writing stuff and sort of like the ⁓ the the culture around ⁓ specifically fan fiction. We're going to expose all of your fan fiction love there for everybody. ⁓ But I love in that in that two-parter in the two-parter where ⁓

Erin Marquis (13:20)
Woo!

Chad Kirchner (13:29)
Garak goes to get or goes to meet Zane to go to the Gamma Quadrant to destroy the Dominion. ⁓ When he blows up his own shop, which is the look on his face like when Oda's like, you blew up your own shop. and, and, yeah, and, and like the eye like, again, because Andrew is so expressive with his eyes, especially with that Cardassian makeup. ⁓

Erin Marquis (13:43)
You blew up your own shop! Yes, someone finally got him!

Chad Kirchner (13:58)
you just like that feels like the one time that he was bested that he was beat like somebody figure out like the actual actual thing. He was almost stunned by it. Like, I think that when he when he pays then his flowers to Odo gives him his flowers for his roses for for figuring it out. Like I think he really means it like, wow, like, holy shit, you figured this out.

Erin Marquis (14:24)
Yeah, there's another great Odo line where, you know, Garrick is, he's, forget what the context is, but Odo says, well, he doesn't know because if he did, he'd be spinning a lie right now.

Chad Kirchner (14:36)
Yes, yes, later.

Yeah, later. Like, it's yeah, it's so good. Odo has him figured out like Odo has him read the rights pretty, pretty early on. Um, but um, what's interesting is they ended up still really having Garret could be I don't want to the foil of Bashir because it's not really a foil, but like, that's the pairing where Odo really got paired with Quark. Um, that's sort of the two characters back and forth. But in that episode, Murray blows up his own shot.

yeah, Garyx and sick bay or in the, infirmary and Bashir, you know, being kind of the, the loving caring doctor that he is to his, his pal. It's like, should really, you know, you should really, ⁓ help us people are trying to kill you. And he's like, well, major Kira, you know, what's her whereabouts and I was just like, Right. ⁓ and everybody leaves and it's just Bashir and Garyx and Garyx is like,

He's like, why does, why is it no one ever believes me when I'm telling the truth? Bashir, have you ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf? No. And Bashir goes on to explain it's, know, young shepherd boy. Eventually, ⁓ he basically cries wolf. Garak says clever lad, charting his determined story. Bashir is like, I'm not finished. The next day the boy does it again and again and again. And eventually on the fourth day, the boy cries out on top of his lungs, but the villagers ignore him and the boy and his flock are gobbled up because the wolf really comes. And Garak's like,

a little graphic for children, wouldn't you say?

Erin Marquis (16:05)
Right, like, Cardassians don't torture

captains in front of their children.

Chad Kirchner (16:10)
Right, but just like the way that he was like a little graphic for children and there's just enough pause Bashir gives or Sidig gives just enough pause for you to think, yeah, actually that is a pretty graphic story. ⁓ But then Bashir's point is, if you lie all the time, nobody's going to believe you even when you're telling the truth. And here's the the genius. Garak is like, are you sure that's the point, doctor? Bashir is like, of course, what else could it be? And Garak, that you should never tell the same lie twice.

Erin Marquis (16:40)
That's great.

Chad Kirchner (16:40)
And

the way he delivers that line, the way he never deliver the same line twice, and the way the camera kind of holds on him, and kind of just a little bit of eye contact from Bashir. Like it's so, it so summarizes ⁓ sort of Garak's nature. Like I really, I really love the way that he plays that character. ⁓

Erin Marquis (17:03)
It

reminds me of some of their literature conversations too, where, you know, Garrick is like, how does Macbeth not see what's going on? This guy's a fucking idiot. Sorry, there's a swearing. But like, how does Macbeth not like, he's supposed to be so smart. And just like they, the way they just pass each other in the night on ⁓ fiction like that all the time, in the totally different ⁓ perspectives.

Chad Kirchner (17:11)
Yes.

Yep.

I Brutus was gonna kill him after the end of the first act and it took three acts for, and then Bashir is like, but that's the tragedy of it. We all see it coming. And he's just like, whatever, ⁓ Which goes, I think, to your point, you saying earlier about how Cardassians kind of look down on kind of everybody else. You learn about all of Cardassian's rich culture and literature and. ⁓

Erin Marquis (17:33)
that's

Mm-hmm sounds like an idiot sounds like an idiot to me and then

The repetitive

epic is the most elegant form of Cardassian literature.

Chad Kirchner (17:59)
Right, like you you

learn this throughout both ⁓ both next gen and Deep Space Nine. ⁓ And they really do think they're the superior race to the galaxy. And I think that's what when Garrick delivers that line at the very end of the series, you know, our fault dear doctor was not in our stars, but in ourselves. Like that was actually saying, you know, the almost like he's like the Kardashians deserve it. They they were too arrogant and they were too

you know, ⁓ full of themselves and they kind of let what happened and of course they didn't deserve to be genocided. ⁓ Nobody does to be clear. ⁓ But that is I think the real good kind of bow tie on like, you know, maybe the Cardassians, you know, should have looked inward instead of outward.

Erin Marquis (18:54)
Right. ⁓ I do want to mention there is a part where Garrick does surprise Odo where he says, you you'd shoot a man in the back. It's the safest way that and that's just encapsulate just it's so Garrick ⁓ in our man Bashir when like, you know, Bashir's play acting at being 007 and Garrick walks in. He's like, what the

Chad Kirchner (19:05)
It's the safest way.

Erin Marquis (19:21)
This isn't how spies live. it's, you know, the Cardassians are a militaristic ⁓ race. would be his, his experience as a spy was probably very rough, you know, very ⁓ meager life, very lonely. And to see Bashir swanning around like with women and money and apartments must've just kind of spun him pretty hard.

Chad Kirchner (19:22)
You

And the way he plays it, he's like, this is ridiculous. And Beshir keeps like, this is fantasy. He's like, maybe you're fantasy. Yeah.

Erin Marquis (19:56)
Right. Now what's

ridiculous is seeing a Cardassian and a turtleneck. Weird, weird choice. Yeah!

Chad Kirchner (20:00)
For a tailor.

or a tailor, which apparently he was pretty good at. So yeah, I'll say he was the greatest tailor in the galaxy. ⁓

Erin Marquis (20:14)
Yeah,

Zee-Elle wasn't very experienced. She lived most of her life in a concert or a work camp. So she doesn't know what she's talking

Chad Kirchner (20:19)
True, true.

I do like when they go on their first quote unquote date and when but when yeah, like they they they you know, but she was like, let's go to God's daughter, they should have been like, she is 12. Like that should have been the problem. Ultimately, when they recast her, I think it fits a little bit better. Because they did recast her for at least for the

Erin Marquis (20:25)
how gross. She's like 16 and he's like 45.

Chad Kirchner (20:46)
season six. ⁓ But it is kind of funny that like he takes a phaser with him to that first date. ⁓ Because he's like, well, you're not going to try to kill me or your goal is constat her like she does kind of read him the riot act a little bit like, look, not everything is is is spycraft and deceiving and she's like, Kardashians don't like the cold. It's really cold here.

Erin Marquis (20:54)
You

Yeah,

but I mean, Garak has to operate like that. He has to operate like, especially Goldacot, who has tried to get him murdered a few times. So I don't blame him on that one at all.

Chad Kirchner (21:20)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. When they're fighting, you know, they're fighting the Klingons, the Klingons board in season four, which just leads to that line of shooting in the back, you know. He's, he's telling me before he says about shooting in the back, like, know, there's this, this, this time I saw Dukat, you know, his back turned to me and that's when I just like, you'd shoot a man in the back and like, then after he's like, you know, it's the only way it's like, um.

Erin Marquis (21:30)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Chad Kirchner (21:46)
by end of day we'll all wish that I have done it. you know, truth be told, probably.

Erin Marquis (21:51)
Yeah, yup,

probably should have done that buddy, but you know.

Chad Kirchner (21:55)
Yeah, there

were. Yeah, I actually like Dukat as a villain a lot. ⁓ That's not this show to talk about it, but I really do like that. And, and Garrick, though, really, the internet fell in love with him. And I think that, rightfully so. ⁓ I think he's a great character and a character that we haven't seen in Star Trek before. But I want to talk a little bit more about some of the undertones. I think what works

Why I think Garrick and Bashir ultimately worked was because I don't know if Alexander Siddick had it figured out right away, but he figured it out pretty quick that the undertones of the relationship with Garrick is what's going to make this a compelling storyline. ⁓

Erin Marquis (22:43)
Right.

had to be pretty subtle because Rick Berman was very annoyed by the excitement and fascination Andrew Robinson had about Alexander Siddig. He played it as being quite enchanted with him. I think that's YZL. That's my theory is that YZL came onto the show was like, all right, we got to give Garrick something straight to do because he's...

Chad Kirchner (23:10)
Right.

Erin Marquis (23:11)
mooning over this doctor a little too much. ⁓ And it just didn't take because you can't fake that kind of chemistry. ⁓ And they tried to make Bashir, the cringiest thing about season one is Bashir trying to be a ladies man. It just comes off so gross. ⁓ But he did have this chemistry with Andrew that was very, it was very playful, it's very fun, and it is

flirtatious in a lot of ways.

Chad Kirchner (23:42)
Yeah, like when, when they're first trying to figure out what the first time that Garrick invites him to lunch. And it's supposed to be around like to try and learn more about like, yeah. And right. And it's and it's like, you know, he's trying to play it up like, ⁓ he's gonna try to recruit me into a spy craft, or he's gonna try to do this or whatever. And

Erin Marquis (23:51)
And he's spiraling. He's like, what do I do? He's going to all his little homies. He's like, help me, help me. What should I wear? This green old thing?

Chad Kirchner (24:09)
I forget which character was maybe it was even Cisco. It was like, are you sure it's just not lunch? ⁓ But you're right. The way that he plays it is like, ⁓ my gosh, this person just asked me out. Like, what do I wear? How do I do? What do I need to do? ⁓ And that was the first, think, real kind of natural character relationship. Like I think those two worked so much better than the tried four scene of ⁓ Bashir and-

and Dax. I like how Dax kind of played off some of Bashir's advances, ⁓ but I, it was clear they just didn't have like real chemistry. I think they eventually developed it, ⁓ but right out of the gate, yeah, Acidic and Rabinso were both just like horny for each other. mean,

Not, I don't know if actually they were, but that's definitely how they probably not. But that is how they both played the role and ⁓ horny undertones. Not the first time we've seen this in Star Trek. ⁓

Erin Marquis (25:06)
Probably not.

Yeah, no. ⁓ So it really, it really does remind me of the, the Spurk, ⁓ it's called Spurk, it's Spock and Kirk. ⁓ You know, Kirk is on the bridge getting a back rub and he thinks it's Spock. ⁓ You know, they, ⁓ they go to a planet to fight to get their horniness out. Like it's, there's a lot of, there's under, there's been undertones for a while. Gene Roddenberry ⁓ said he thought of Spurk.

Chad Kirchner (25:39)
the

Erin Marquis (25:47)
of Spock and Kirk as Hephaestus and Alexander the Great. ⁓ They weren't just friends, you know? ⁓ That was an intentional decision. I feel like Rick Berman was, I mean, he's the man of the cat suit era. ⁓ He's the one who told, you know, ⁓ Marina that she couldn't wear regular uniforms. She had to wear the sexy cat. ⁓

know, suit uniform, he's the one who brought on Seven of Nine. And as fun as Seven of Nine is, it became the Seven of Nine show because of the TNA. So like, was an, and you know, the 80s and 90s, very uncomfortable time for queer people in general, it was always going to be subtext. And in some ways, it is more fun because it allowed a lot of people to develop these relationships outside of the official canon.

⁓ And that's where like fan fiction really comes from is from Spock and Kirk. It was born via Amok time. ⁓ And it came about from women in their 30s and 40s typing up stories and then photocopying them at their jobs and distributing zines. It's that old this idea of taking characters that you like and fixing what can't be shown to everybody else.

Chad Kirchner (27:12)
So just to give the audience a little bit of background for a spoiler of now a 60 year old TV show. 59, 59 because it was season two, but season two opens with Amachtheim and we learn that Spock is very ill and he's very agitated as he's very ill. Nurse Chappell tries to bring him some plomik soup and he

Erin Marquis (27:20)
Yeah.

Chad Kirchner (27:39)
throws it out. Though we learn in Stranger Worlds there's some canonical reasons why he might not have liked the soup. ⁓ I digress. But ⁓ we, this is where we learn about, we learn so much about Vulcans in this episode. Like this episode is the premier Vulcan lore episode where we learn that all Vulcans are jerks. And they are. It's not just a Spock's, one Spock's not a jerk, that's his human side, because all Vulcans are jerks. ⁓ We also learn

Erin Marquis (27:45)
You

Hehehe.

Chad Kirchner (28:09)
about the mating of Vulcans and every seven years Vulcan males go through something called Ponfar and for some reason they either have to bone or they have to fight it out. ⁓ I'm not sure exactly why the fighting out is sufficient to replace boning but ⁓

Erin Marquis (28:35)
Hey, you saw Kirk's titty window, you know exactly why.

Chad Kirchner (28:38)
Fair, fair. And there's so much

like fake like, like, greasy faces and hot sweaty madness. ⁓ But basically, Spock has a wife. ⁓ Though they don't, they don't really see each other much because he's in space. She basically wants another another another man. ⁓ He comes back to mate, she doesn't want to mate with him.

For some reason, there's an alternative that you can fight it out. And Kirk, thinking that he's going to be ⁓ this excellent representation of the Federation to ⁓ the Vulcan leader who's there, I forget her name, ⁓ wants to look real good to the Vulcan high command. And she's like, yeah, you can fight for instead of this other person's champion interface or whatever.

Yeah, you just have to fight to the death. That's one day and then you're like, wait, what? ⁓ Which, which sounds like being a trope in Star Trek, but they fight. ⁓ Thanks to Vulcan not being Earth, ⁓ Kirk kind of fakes his own death and ⁓ Spock is very happy to find that Jim is not dead. ⁓ Very, very happy. Yeah. ⁓

Erin Marquis (29:36)
Thanks.

period.

Chad Kirchner (30:01)
you know, because because Leonard Nimoy had pretty much established at that point that Vulcans don't laugh or, you know, explore a lot of emotion. ⁓ The pilot in the first couple episodes notwithstanding. ⁓ And this is like a real emotional like gym. So that's that's that's basically the episode if for those who haven't seen it, should go watch it if you haven't. But but you see these hot sweaty men fighting back and forth.

Erin Marquis (30:25)
It's classic, classic.

Chad Kirchner (30:30)
in their Star Trek fighting style. ⁓ With the with great music. Yeah. It's so good. And it establishes so much more but but something that maybe I definitely didn't realize when I first saw it was this launched the thousand fanfic zines. ⁓ And I didn't really actually become aware of the fanfic stuff until I got the internet.

Erin Marquis (30:36)
Do do do, yeah.

Chad Kirchner (31:01)
But you're saying it was well before then that people were writing their own interpretations of Kirk and Spock and their relationship.

Erin Marquis (31:12)
Definitely. ⁓ Science fiction has always been a huge ⁓ genre for women. ⁓ Two of my favorite sci-fi writers, Ursula Le Guin and Kay Nunesome, or Jensome, sorry, ⁓ they both started their careers as young women writing Star Trek fan fiction. And they are some of the most brilliant sci-fi writers, ⁓ I think.

⁓ Ursula Le Guin is, you know, very, she's been writing, she was, she's passed now, but she's been writing since the 70s. And, you know, it's something that like science fiction and Star Trek in general too, when Star Trek first came out, it really did appeal to women. ⁓ It's a more egalitarian ⁓ society. You see women on the bridge, you see women doing work outside the home. This is the 60s.

⁓ So women who had jobs would, you know, type it up and distribute it at the Comic Cons. And when the first cons first started. ⁓ it really like fan fiction in connection with Star Trek has a really ⁓ near and dear place for fans of just sci-fi in general and for women in general. And I feel like, you know, people denigrated a lot. There's a lot of really bad stuff out there. ⁓

My Immortal is this notoriously bad self-insert fan fic. It's not even really a fan fic. It's just like, it's written in that style. That just turned 20 years old this weeks or last week. So like it's known as schlocky. But it's really important to a lot of women. I wrote fan fic as a kid. I will fully admit it. I still read it as a comfort thing. I

I love DS9. I want to see more of DS9. DS9 is not, they're not making more of it, but there are people out there doing it for free, for the love of the game. And especially in Star Trek, where you have a million novels, ⁓ to denigrate fan fiction doesn't make any sense. These are people who are so passionate about this show that they are keeping it alive decades after it ended. And that's beautiful to me.

Chad Kirchner (33:14)
They aren't.

Yeah, we went through this really kind of dry period of there being no Star Trek. mean, from the end of Enterprise to the 2009 reboot movie, there was...

Erin Marquis (33:44)
Mm-hmm.

What's really beautiful too,

is that during COVID, Andrew Robinson and Alexander Sidig got together and they read fan scripts as the characters and they were romantic fanfics. So even the actors see the value in these fan works and celebrated them and enjoyed them.

Chad Kirchner (34:02)
Okay.

One of the things that I, I mean, it's very well known that very early on, like, William Shatner just kind of didn't necessarily care for the fans. The whole get a life comment, where Nimoy was much more ⁓ sort of accepting to it. But like the characters that... ⁓

Acting in Star Trek, being a Star Trek character is kind of whatever you want to make of it. There have been guest stars that, or, you know, certain actors that just, you know, it's a paycheck. It's fine. It can be just a paycheck. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that. But the characters, the actors that really want to become part of history in a lot of ways, to really explore the lore and to really, ⁓ to really...

be endearing to the fans is to get into it the way that, you know, Alex and Andrew did during COVID or, you know, the way Nimoy, you know, fostered those relationships and the way that, you know, you see, I mean, fanfic to this day and like being as a respected form of content. mean, content, that's a terrible word. A respected form of like entertainment and enjoyment and a way to express yourself.

And really up until recently, Star Trek hasn't been very representative of its audience and hasn't really been a way for somebody to kind of explore, you know, ⁓ their side of, you know, their experience in the Star Trek. ⁓ You know, a middle-aged white guy, I I'm captain of the Enterprise. that's, I've always had, and I do, I'm drawn to the captain characters, ⁓ you know, but.

That's, but again, I'm a middle-aged white guy. know, so it feels, I've definitely grown to appreciate all of the fandom and the way the people kind of express it. Not that I ever poo-pooed it or anything, but ⁓ yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there I'm completely unaware of.

Erin Marquis (36:28)
Yeah, there was a con where I can't think of the actor who plays Damar, but he and Jeffrey Combs were answering questions and they said, you know, it's kind of a bummer nobody ever wrote a fanfic about us having sex. I swear to God the next day, that was all you could find. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (36:41)
You

Man, you know, is is Jeffery Combs, is he queer coded in Doost

Erin Marquis (37:02)
I don't know, I am such a Vorda fan. just think they are just, because again, they're bad guys who are having a blast at it, who know that they're right, who talk down to you a little bit, but they look so beautiful and they're just so sweet and they're just such bitches. I fucking love the Vorda. I love the Vorda.

Chad Kirchner (37:22)
Well, well, the Vorta like I was reading through some

some script notes on ⁓ on the episode for the ship, which is the one where the Gemma Darkooser crashes on the planet and yeah, Keke gets shot by and ends up dying and because there's a dying founder on the ship ⁓ that the the woman who plays that Vorta won. my god. ⁓ Two, in the script notes for she is she's written to be, you know, competent.

Erin Marquis (37:34)
⁓

Chad Kirchner (37:51)
intelligent but also kind of flirty. Like the the Vorta are designed, they're engineered canonically, I guess, to to be flirty with whoever they're working with because you're trying to you're not really trying to honeypot them per se, but you want to be disarming to them in any way possible. And I feel like Wei-Yun, I mean, Wei-Yun does his job well, I feel like. ⁓

Erin Marquis (38:07)
You're disarming. You're trying to. Right.

Mm-hmm.

Chad Kirchner (38:20)
I don't know if I ever saw him and Damar fucking. ⁓ I don't know if I actually got that vibe, though there is lot of anger and resentment of Weyoon to Damar. Damar really doesn't like Weyoon.

Erin Marquis (38:32)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's always, they're always fun together because they are very snipey at each other. It's very fun. Yeah, I don't, I mean, the reason why there weren't fanfics before they said that was that pairing doesn't really always make sense, I think. ⁓ Whereas, know, Garrick and Bashir, like we were talking earlier about how there's that episode where O'Brien thinks, or O'Brien has a Cardassian come on to him.

Chad Kirchner (38:48)
Right.

Erin Marquis (39:00)
because he's been arguing with this woman all day and that's flirting. And I'm like, how they didn't just smash cut to the repliment with these two yelling at each other about literature. It's like you set up this canon thing and then you just ignore it for these two. What are you doing?

Chad Kirchner (39:01)
Yes.

rights.

Yeah,

and yeah, because it really does catch O'Brien off guard. ⁓ That's not the first time that there's an engineer that's tried to hit on him in that series, but that one was completely out of left field. We were just fighting, and the engineer is just like, well, you're competent, and you're smart, and you fight well. OK. ⁓

Erin Marquis (39:44)
She's like, I mean, I don't want to really talk about you putting a baby in me, but I guess we can go there. And he's like, what the, what, what, what?

Chad Kirchner (39:50)
Yeah, it's

like, like, whoa, turn this bus around. What is going on?

Erin Marquis (39:56)
Right. And like just

a little ways to that Garak just likes to screw with Bashir. I love the, know, there's a data rod in my room. If I don't come back, I want you to take that rod and eat it.

Chad Kirchner (40:08)
And eat it and he's like eat it he's like no I guess Yeah

Erin Marquis (40:11)
And Bashir is so game until he realizes he's being screwed with. He

plays it so well, the eye roll is fantastic.

Chad Kirchner (40:20)
Yeah. Well, it's it's it is kind of almost like, you know, he's he's hanging on his crush's every words. Like, like, like they try to play it's written as, hey, he still believes he's a spy. He's really enamored with the spycraft. And to some extent, maybe he is. But it's also just like, your crush is telling you to do asking you to do something, of course, you're gonna do it.

Erin Marquis (40:44)
And we haven't even talked about my favorite Garrick episode yet, The Wire, which is just, it's Alexander Siddique and Andrew Robinson playing off of each other for 45 minutes. And it's fantastic. It's just the sweeping and speeches, the anger, the Garrick.

We learned so much about Garrick in that episode and there is still so much patience and tenderness from the doctor that, that, you know, Bashir puts his career at risk. puts his life at risk to save Garrick. This guy who we all, I only have lunch with him once, once a week and I barely know him, but it feels like that's the episode where it's like, this changes. There's something more going on here.

Chad Kirchner (41:20)
Yes.

Erin Marquis (41:34)
And it's a much warmer relationship than we have seen previously. Especially too because now Garrick isn't high. He was high for the first season and a half, we find out. That glowing smile is not, ⁓ should I explain the wire? ⁓ Sure.

Chad Kirchner (41:45)
Right. Yes.

we probably should just a real

attain that's where we first are introduced to attain. ⁓ it's a season two episode, very close to the end of season two. ⁓ but, ⁓ yeah. ⁓ get even Gary's on drugs to explain.

Erin Marquis (42:11)
Yeah,

so he has ⁓ a device implanted in his brain that he could turn on if he was being tortured that would stimulate the pleasure centers of his brain. And being on DS9 is torture for him. He says, it's too cold, the lights are too bright, everybody hates me here. So I turned it on and never turned it off. And it starts to degrade. He basically has the brain of an addict now, though he has to have that.

endorphin rush and it's not cutting the pain anymore. It's just as normal. ⁓ so Bashir has to go into, you know, across basically enemy lines to find this former head of the only guy who has been able to retire from the obsidian order without getting murdered. That's how powerful and dangerous Tain is. And Bashir goes straight to him and says, give me a way to save Garak. And

Chad Kirchner (42:59)
Yes.

Erin Marquis (43:08)
Tane, great line, Tane's like, funny, I thought you were his friend. You should just let him die. it's, ⁓ I mean, Tane, it's just such a great introduction to Tane, but like, they give them both so many closeups and so many big sweeping moments. And it's just like, everybody's acting their little hearts out. There's even a funny moment in, ⁓ a...

damn it, at the bar. ⁓ I can't remember it right now, like, Quirks! Where Bashir takes the Qanar bottle, puts it behind his back, and Quirk just takes it while he's walking away. And it's just like, even in this very serious episode, there is this moment of levity that everybody's kind of working to like, okay, we have to figure out what's going on with Garrick. ⁓

Chad Kirchner (43:38)
Yeah. Of course.

Thank

Right.

Erin Marquis (44:02)
And then further on in the show when they're, know, the war's going on and they're on the ⁓ defiant and, ⁓ you know, Alexander Siddique has his shirt open, which is always a good episode. ⁓ they have that back and forth of not so boyish anymore. There's just seems like there's so much more subtext going on that they

Chad Kirchner (44:20)
It's like it's my

boy's charm and not such a boy anymore. Yeah. ⁓ You talk about that storyline of Garrick not liking being on the station ⁓ is carried on through to that episode we were talking about earlier when he goes to to entertain you know to go visit teen go to the camera quarter was actually blew up his own shop like

Erin Marquis (44:24)
Yeah, he gives him his daddy card.

No.

Chad Kirchner (44:50)
what was it? was like, you, you looked like you enjoyed, you know, you enjoyed blowing up your own shop and like, because he doesn't, he is the, eventually admits, I think in that episode, at the end of that episode, he's like, it turns out I'm actually a pretty good tailor. I don't like being a tailor, but I'm pretty good at it. ⁓

Erin Marquis (44:56)
Mm-hmm.

And in The Wire, also hear him say, like, while he's having his breakdown, the best part of living on DS9 is the only thing he has to look forward to is lunch with Bashir. That's all he has. And that, you know, that's a big thing to say to someone who's just a friend.

Chad Kirchner (45:21)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah, well, and I, you know, I think that you could, I'm not saying you should, but I think you could just write this off as, well, not write it off, but like explain it as, well, Bashir was really the first person to come to talk to Garrick. ⁓ You know, like there was kind of, or was the other way around, I don't remember, but like one of them extended an olive branch and... ⁓

You know, most everybody else wasn't willing to trust the Cardassian. Like, they didn't necessarily hate him or think he was still a spy, but you know, you're not going to get on a former, on a, you know, on a Bajoran controlled station. You're not going to find a lot of Bajorans that like you.

Erin Marquis (46:08)
There's only so many

nights you can listen to more and talk and talk and talk at Quarks, you know?

Chad Kirchner (46:13)
Right? He just never shuts up.

So, so you could say, I mean, you can definitely kind of hand wave it away as being like, oh, they're just really good friends. like, when you really when you kind of watch it, you're like, well, well, I mean, I mean, you're in you're in such an absolute hell, that you have to abuse this device designed to make you be able to withstand torture. You're in an absolute hell. But the one saving grace is

is Alexander Sinek. mean, I guess I get it. He's an attractive dude. But like, yeah, it's very clear that like that there alone would have probably inspired a lot of fan fiction just from that. Like, because it is it is a love story. I think that's

Erin Marquis (47:02)
And it,

yeah, it's, it's, you know, people like to fill in the gaps. It's, it's fun to say what if, and to express that and share it with other people who also have this passion is, it's really gratifying. ⁓ I'm just grateful that so many people out there have taken it upon themselves in their free time to create more of.

DS9 in a way that maybe not everybody knows about it, but I get to experience it. I think it's fun.

Chad Kirchner (47:37)
Yeah. I know in a previous recording of this, was talking to, when I was talking to Robbie Baldwin, I said, well, I think it was, no, it was with Ben. I said stuff about certain books, like books aren't canonical and stuff. And technically, canon is what you see on screen. But that doesn't, I don't think that that diminishes or.

Erin Marquis (47:55)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Kirchner (48:01)
makes any of this other other stuff any less worthy of being on screen. And I think one of the great things about modern Czech on new Czech is ⁓ one it's way more inclusive, which I think is great. Scants are back, which I also think is great. ⁓ I mean, you have a you have a queer Klingon who wants to be a scientist who wears a scant. ⁓ It's like

Erin Marquis (48:29)
I, that's

great. I've always wondered about the other Klingons, the ones who are thirsting for glory, the norm, the guys who work in the office, the guys who, right. Somebody has to build the ships and you know, they're not out murdering. They're out designing, you know, ⁓ consoles and stuff. So.

Chad Kirchner (48:33)
Yeah!

Yeah, somebody has to be a pencil pusher, right?

Right. Now maybe

they don't make the greatest doctors. Martok said that in that same episode where Bashir's shirt's a little torn.

Erin Marquis (48:55)
They got two Gorgons, I don't need great doctors.

Chad Kirchner (48:57)
Yeah,

they've got and we learn also that they have four testicles. So two penises, four testicles. ⁓ You do you have to have a redundant redundant system. But I think to bow tie that is that ⁓ you have people in the writers rooms of these shows who are fans growing up who were reading the fan fiction and the books and all of this other content. ⁓

Erin Marquis (49:03)
You gotta have backups.

Chad Kirchner (49:26)
know, Tonya Newsome, amongst, I mean, there's other great writers in that writers room, including some Star Trek authors. ⁓ But like, she has such a deep understanding of Star Trek and its lore, well beyond just what we saw on TV. And now you're seeing that come into the quote unquote official canon, because it's all being written, all being written in. ⁓

it's all being explored and stuff like that so you're not so you end up with Bashir and or Bashir and ⁓ Garak in a relationship you know lower next episode where yeah. Now's yeah I think you've seen a lot of that in Starfleet Academy and stuff too I think the the wire episode and I think is a really good way to

Erin Marquis (50:00)
because that's she knows that's what the fans want and she gave it to us God bless her ⁓

Chad Kirchner (50:16)
kind of close up our discussion for right now anyways of Deep Space Nine and Garrick. At the end of the wire, again for people who haven't watched it, you should go watch it, it's really good, but Garrick is basically he has to, or he's telling all of these stories about ⁓ his life before Deep Space Nine and things like that. at the end, after he's cured, it's basically the end of the episode. ⁓ Well, not cured, but he's, you know.

clean. Bashir asks him, he's like, of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren't? My doc, my dear doctor, they're all true. And Bashir is like, even the lies, especially the lies.

Erin Marquis (51:03)
highly, highly memed moment. And honestly, if you want to know the truth, at least Alexander Sedig's version, read A Stitch in Time. It's a fantastic book.

Chad Kirchner (51:11)
Yep.

Link will be in the show notes. ⁓ If people want to, guess, I guess, Aaron, are you working on anything cool you want to talk about? Is there anything fun you'd like to share? Any cause any? We'll talk about Jalopnik in a second, anything you want to kind of pimp beyond that's anything you're excited to read anything you want to, you know,

Erin Marquis (51:35)
You know what? Not at the moment. I am working on stuff that's personal, but I don't really have anything to pimp necessarily.

Chad Kirchner (51:44)
So, that's because she spends all of her waking hours at the blog factory. about cars. ⁓ She kind of runs the newsroom there at Jalopnik. Keeps the ship together, holds the tight ship. ⁓

Erin Marquis (52:01)
Well,

as tight as I can with that crew, but yeah, been at Jalopnik for quite a while and very proud of it. And people should come in and read us up if they like cars.

Chad Kirchner (52:04)
⁓

Yeah, I have been telling people that like, hey, you know, this isn't a car podcast. don't ever want it to necessarily be one. ⁓ No, God. But a lot of my friends work in the industry. And it turns out I think one of the great things about, again, getting to meet people like you through the course of doing all of this is there's a lot of Star Trek fans that are also in the business, which ⁓

Erin Marquis (52:20)
Dear God, no.

Chad Kirchner (52:36)
No disrespect to people who are into watches, like most of the people it seems like are into cars and watches. I'm like, how about cars and Star Trek? That's kind of cool. That kind of works for me.

Erin Marquis (52:47)
Yeah, we're thick out here. If you like cars, you like Star Trek, you like trains. What I'm saying is we're a neurotypical people and we find our own, you

Chad Kirchner (52:53)
We are, and

⁓ Erin has written about Star Trek on Jalopnik. So it's always worth checking that out. ⁓ And she does still owe me an article on Jalopnik about Avery Brooks doing IBM commercials in the 2000s. ⁓ Where are flying cars? Where, where, where? that's so good.

Erin Marquis (53:12)
my god, you're right.

Chad Kirchner (53:20)
Thank you. ⁓ I guess I should say I'm also an automotive journalist. do some work at Jalopnik. Aaron puts up with me, thank goodness. I've also been recently in Ars Technica doing about talking about some stuff, but like, you don't really care about that. What you should do though is if you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, you should. ⁓ The best thing you can do right now, if you do like it maybe want to see it succeed, I hope you do, ⁓ is to share it with a friend.

more listeners the better. If you want to go maybe a step beyond that, leaving a review on iTunes on Apple podcasts is a great way to kind of help juice that algorithm a little bit. And if you really, really, really like it, and want to throw some money at it, patreon.com slash Starbets80 is our little Patreon where we get some fun little benefits. But again, no obligations on any of that stuff. Just, I want you to listen and enjoy it. ⁓ Because it's fun to talk about Star Trek. ⁓

Aaron, thanks for joining me and talking about Star Trek.

Erin Marquis (54:21)
I am always happy to talk about Star Trek, it is my favorite, and I hope I can come back and do some more Star Trek talk.

Chad Kirchner (54:28)
We will absolutely do that. ⁓ But until then, I downloaded this while we were chatting. Hold on.

⁓ that's not the part of it. Yeah, here we go.

such great fight music. Anyways, I'll see you all next time.

Erin Marquis (54:46)
Sexy, sexy stuff.

Later.