For anyone who has ever wondered what the seedy and deeply unpleasant underbelly of the so-called future utopia and paradise of the Federation might look like, wonder no more. Deep Space Nine has done its best to show us the warped Lifetime movie version of this future. We're given Worf, who is the very picture of nastiness, controlling behavior, emotional abuse, and childish lashing out. In the other corner, Dax, who, despite being hundreds of years old, can hardly work up the will and self-esteem to do more than vaguely chide her abuser. The story plays out as a redemptive (and barely, at that) fairy tale suited for small children who don't understand that the real world and its problems aren't so simply resolved. Any sane woman with even a modicum of self-esteem would have told Worf to go to hell and given him explicit directions on the quickest route. Instead, Dax plays the role of a battered woman, too insecure and too beaten down by her abuser to take a strong stand against his behavior and treatment of her. When a story somehow becomes even more hysterically unbelievable than the aforementioned Lifetime-style movie, you know you're watching a show hit rock bottom.
I was especially fascinated by the way Worf managed to win Dax's unconditional sympathy back by telling an obvious lie about his childhood, where he learned to be completely controlled and restrained because of a horrifying incident in his past. Mind you, at the beginning of the episode, Dax had been to the infirmary several times just in the last month because of Worf's apparently violent and unrestrained Klingon lovemaking, yet she believes him when he claimed he was too traumatized by a childhood incident to let loose. It was clearly a lie on his part to win her back, another classic abuser trope where the abusive partner tries to gain forgiveness by appealing to his victim's sympathy by seeming to actually be deep and troubled rather than shallow and nasty. I'm sure the writers didn't intend for the story to be a lie, but the evidence is clear.
Just an unpleasant story with unpleasant connotations written by the sort of unpleasant minds who would actually believe a relationship like this could turn out healthy in any way.
I was especially fascinated by the way Worf managed to win Dax's unconditional sympathy back by telling an obvious lie about his childhood, where he learned to be completely controlled and restrained because of a horrifying incident in his past. Mind you, at the beginning of the episode, Dax had been to the infirmary several times just in the last month because of Worf's apparently violent and unrestrained Klingon lovemaking, yet she believes him when he claimed he was too traumatized by a childhood incident to let loose. It was clearly a lie on his part to win her back, another classic abuser trope where the abusive partner tries to gain forgiveness by appealing to his victim's sympathy by seeming to actually be deep and troubled rather than shallow and nasty. I'm sure the writers didn't intend for the story to be a lie, but the evidence is clear.
Just an unpleasant story with unpleasant connotations written by the sort of unpleasant minds who would actually believe a relationship like this could turn out healthy in any way.
