Not to be an O'Brashir shipper, but how the FUCK else am I supposed to read that scene in Extreme Measures?
Fuck right????
Seriously I’ve never got how despite the extreme an blatant gayism/no homoism, folks don’t see Miles as bi for Bashier. Especially after he straight up told the dude that he “likes” him more than his literal wife.
I keep getting confused about when Keiko is on the station and when she’s away, and sometimes I get a plotbunny and then realise that she’s not even there at that time. When I sat down to look at it, I realised I have way too much knowledge about this, so here it is - all of Keiko’s known movements during Deep Space Nine. I’ve double-checked everything I remembered on Chakoteya and Memory Alpha. I can’t guarantee I haven’t missed something, but if I have, it’s on the level of going away for part of an episode.
I hope this is useful for fic-writing and other endeavours!
1x01 The Emissary Keiko arrives to DS9 along with the Enterprise. She talks about taking Molly and going back to Earth, but then doesn’t.
1x01-2x202 Keiko is on DS9.
2x03 The Siege Keiko and other civilians are evacuated from DS9, and are to the taken to the Korat system. However, the first shuttle with evacuees comes back at the end of the episode, so they may not even have made it to the Korat system before turning away.
2x04 Invasive Procedures Everyone but a skeleton crew is evacuated due to a plasma storm. She is back on the station by the next episode.
2x05-2x22 - On DS9
2x22 The Wire She is away at a hydroponics conference on Rigel Four for more than a week.
2x23-3x03 On DS9.
Two weeks after 3x03 The House of Quark Keiko leaves for the expedition to the Janitza Mountains, taking Molly with her. Miles tells her in 3x03 that the expedition starts in two weeks. It’s unclear how big the gap between 3x03 and 3x04 is, as neither episode has a stardate, so it’s hard to say if she’s gone by 3x04. However, Miles does not appear in 3x04, so we could theorise that he’s helping her get everything ready and follow her down to Bajor (because you know Miles would fuss over that kind of thing).
3x06-3x09 On Bajor.
3x10 Fascination Keiko and Molly come to visit DS9 for the Gratitude Festival, staying for two days.
3x11-4x16 On Bajor. In Fascination she says she will be away two or three months longer. I lean towards this being longer than that. We know Keiko spends one night at DS9, at which point she gets pregnant. This could be the same time as Fascination, but I don’t think so, as they would have had to decide that they were going to try for a baby, and that is not something they talk about in Fascination (as at that point they almost break up). Furthermore, this must have been something that is planned ahead more. From events in s7, we know that Sisko takes a contraceptive shot once a month, and it seems possible or even likely that Miles is on something similar. That means that he has to go off it, and it also explains why he’s surprised she’s pregnant, because she says “I thought it’d take a couple of nights. To be honest, a lot more nights.” (That is partly just that he wants to have sex with his wife, but if he’s just stopped taking contraceptives, that might explain that further.) On top of all this, I have calculated (from when I wrote my Keiko/Kira fic) that Keiko is eight or nine weeks pregnant in Accession. (This was based on chronological markers within the episodes of s4 and counting backwards from Body Parts. Kira is pregnant for five months, so it’d be logical that Keiko is four months gone in Body Parts, and stuff in the episodes between Accession and Body Parts makes a two-month gap likely.)
4x17 Accession The expedition having ended, Keiko is back on the station.
4x17-4x25 On DS9.
4x25 Body Parts Goes to Torad V in the gamma quadrant for three days together with Bashir and Kira.
4x26-5x05 On DS9.
5x05 The Assignment Goes on an expedition to the Five Caves for five days. (Comes back possessed by a pah-wraith - man, she needs to stop going to places with ‘five’ in their name…)
5x06-5x25 On DS9.
Two days before 5x26 Call to Arms Leaves the station to live on Earth together with Molly as the war is heating up.
5x26-6x24 On Earth. Memory Alpha says she is gone almost a year, and often, a series is about a year, but in 6x16 Miles mentions that she has been gone for six months, so it might be shorter. There is no mention that I can find that she was away a full year.
Before 6x24 Time’s Orphan Comes back to DS9. Considering the conversations in the beginning of this episode, it sounds like they have gotten back the day before or so.
6x24-7x26 On DS9.
7x26 What You Leave Behind Moves to Earth with her family.
You ever invite your coworker to watch you give birth just to spite a racist
Okay howmst the fuck has a ship doctor in the far future never handled a birth without the father present? Are sperm donors and gay couples and trans women no longer a thing in the bajillionth century CE?? :/
I while understand the frustration with erasure sometimes it helps to look at things through the cultural context of when something was made. Star Trek the Next Generation was made in 1987, this particular episode I believe aired in 1988 a time when a future where the husband was always present for the birth would have been amazing to many of the people watching the show as men had only been allowed to be present for the birth of their children for 10/15ish years at that point in the US.
Women (and many men) fought for decades with hospitals to even have men allowed in the delivery room during the early stages of labor, which can last for several hours, and hospitals only began to give in to their requests in the 1960s but even then they would be kicked out of the room by hospital staff before the actual birth took place. So many of the couples watching the show would have had to go through labor without having/being allowed to support their spouse regardless of their wishes. Having the child’s father present for the birth only began to happen in the 1970s and 1980s. Which means most people watching this show either went through birth without the support of their spouse, were not allowed to support their spouse during the birth of their child, or their own mother’s went through that during their birth.
A future where the husbands were always present for the birth was still a little crazy to consider in the late 1980s. A good kind of crazy for the people living in that time, it showed a future where the wishes of the couple were finally consistently listened to by medical professionals as a result of the actions of people during their or their parent’s lifetimes. And it does that by also subverting it in allowing Data to step into the role of the father when the father was unknown and/or unwilling/unable to fill that role (I’ll be honest my knowledge of Next Gen is a bit spotty and I have not seen this whole episode, just a piece of it at family Thanksgiving). The woman’s desires as to how she would give birth are listened to and respected, something that still doesn’t happen in many hospitals now and would have been seen as even more revolutionary then. So while it isn’t perfect I think this scene was actually fairly impressive for its time and cultural context and shows a future that many people of that time would have seen as ideal.
I think this kind of contextual understanding and analysis is really important because things that look antiquated now were revolutionary then. I remember reading that the mini skirts in Star Trek TOS were legot just in fashion (about 64’ ish), one of the actresses (the one that played Rand) requested they be in the show and both her and Nichelle Nichols said they didn’t see them as demeaning but liberating in that time and context. Where as NOW it looks like ‘sexy male gaze’ but then it wasn’t.
Miniskirts are comfortable and easy to move in - unlike longer bulkier skirts, which had previously been required for “modesty.” And unlike the approach of “we’ll just put them in pants,” miniskirts made a statement that women crew-members weren’t being treated like men. Miniskirts were a way to say “I can be an attractive woman, wear comfortable clothes, and still look professional and do a serious job.”
The clothing for that message today would be different.
This is also why the bridge crew of TOS may seem “tokenistic” today. When it came out, the Cold War was in full swing and “Soviets” were maligned and hated, Black people could not count on their right to vote being honored, and mixed-race people (like Spock) were called horrible things like “half-breed” and “zebra.” A white man was in charge of the ship, but Gene Roddenberry was fully aware that a chunk of the viewership read him as queer, and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DISCOURAGE THAT READING, at a time when “homosexual activity” was illegal in the United States!
By today’s standards, “one of everything? How tokenistic.” In 1966? “A Black woman, a Russian, a man from multiple cultures, and a man who loves differently, all top of their fields, all working together and finding common ground to learn, grow, and help where they can? What a wonderful future!”
Cecil. She/her. During the day I sit in libraries staring at books. During the night I write queer fanfiction with a historical slant.
Some not-so-random facts: Gay space lizards are the best lizards. Star Trek is my life. I have too many DS9 ships. Classic Who and the Eighth Doctor Adventures make me grin stupidly. Kelas Parmak is the best. I will defend historically accurate portrayals of Alan Turing to the last drop of blood. Likes and asks end up in the name of @apolesens-otheraccount, because Tumblr doesn't have a way of changing which blog is your primary one. Nothing happens over there - this is the one to follow.
