Customer Reviews

Star Trek - Deep Space Nine, Episode 78: Rejoined [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In my opinion, "Rejoined" represents Star Trek at it's finest. I only wish they continued with this storyline with the later episodes of DS9.

"Rejoined" also highlights the career of Susanna Thompson (Lenara). Many people became instant fans of hers immediately after "Rejoined" aired. I'm one of those fans. :)

This is a classic episode which every Star Trek fan should have in their collection. A big round of applause should go to Avery Brooks for his directing and Rene Echevarria for his writing.

..."Rejoined" is at first glance just another boring love story.

It deals with a forbidden relationship between our Trill science officer Jazia Dax and Lenara Kahn, another joined Trill scientist.

The thing that makes this relationship forbidden is the fact that the two of them have been married before. Kind of...

A hundred years earlier when the Dax symbiont was joined to a host named Torias, he (Torias Dax) was married to Leilani Kahn, a person who was half the Kahn symbiont, half a long dead woman.

There's nothing more unholy in the Trill society than a joined Trill 'rejoined' to a family member or a beloved from his/her 'past life'. People who have committed this have been exiled from the Trill homeworld. The result has been the eventual death of both the host and the symbiont, as a new host has been unavailable. And according to the first code of trill morale, the symbiont's life is everything.

It all begins when Lenora Kahn comes to DS9 to commit an experiment in wich an artificial wormhole is being created.

Lenara has an older scientist and his brother watching over her shoulder for the experiment and for her ex-husbands 'new form'.

Eventually, Lenara and Jazia redescover the love Leilani and Torias had. This leads into a powerfull and even beautiful story of forbidden love that contains all the clichés that go along with that same old story, but manages to offer thought-provoking and powerfull scenes. A big credit of this goes to the powerfull performances by Terry Farrel and ----- as Jazia Dax and Lenara Kahn.

"Rejoined" is all about a society's and culture's autonomy over individuals and their lives, and it gives a lot to think about.

Then of cource there's the issue with the motives behind the episode.

"Rejoined" is a very Roddenberrian episode that defends the oppressed, this time sexual minorities, and in that respect "Rejoined" isn't all that succesfull.

The story is extremely figurative, and doesn't make a clear statement. It avoids direct opinion by using the Trill, who have lived several lives both as male and female. That way you could state that bisexuality would be unavoidable for a Trill.

Still, the episode has some successes in that field also. The fact that both Jazia and Lenara are women isn't an issue. At all. On the countrary, when Lenara first comes to the station, Jazia's colleagues speculate on a possible relationship. And before this episode, Jazia's had several relationships with men. This would suggest that Star Trek confirms what sosiologist and psychologist have speculated: that sexuality isn't going to be so one-sided in the future as it becomes less of a tabu.

Nevertheless it would have made a better impact to the show if it had made a clear and unnegotiable statement on the issue. After all, Star Trek is being marketed as an open minded and intellectual show. Well, they still have "Enterprise" and movies, and several Star Trek books have made a clear statement on sexual minorities. And the oppinion of the writers is clearly apparent in "Rejoined", and we get to witness a lesbian kiss that doesn't leave (almost :)) anyone cold...

"Rejoined" is mature and surprisingly unsentimental for a virtually plotless love story episode, containing good characterization, quality drama and exellent acting performances.

Good drama.

This is the worst of the worst. You might want to see just how bad political correctness can get. This show will prove that it can get really bad. If you think the girls in it might at least be interesting you would be wrong. They are very masculine so-called "women".

Jadzia Dax chooses between her feelings and the rules of Trill society when she is reunited with the wife of one of Dax's previous hosts. So must her ex-wfe.

I am a huge fan of Deep Space Nine, and this is one of my favorite episodes. This episode makes you think about all of the implications of the joined Trills. I do not think that this episode has anything to do with homosexualtiy. The fact that Dax and Khan are both currently in female hosts is unimportant. If anything, I think the Star Trek people have been very concervative with the sexual preferences of the Trill. TO my knowledge, the issue of the symbiants genders has never been explained. What if the symbiant was male and the host was female or vice versa? I tend to think of the symbiants as hermaphroditic just because it simplies things. Even then, that means half of your personality was dervied from a creature that can mate with any of its own kind. Then, there would be the effects of the past hosts on your personality. At this point in the series, Dax had been male 4 times and female 4 times. This means that Dax remembers being a man and presumably finding women attractive. Also, both times that a trill has shown an attraction to someone of the same gender on Star Trek, the two were first involved as a heterosexual couple before one (or both) of them changed host(s) and gender. For those homphobics out there, ask yourself this: If you woke up one morning and you were in a body of the opposite gender than when you went to sleep would you love your spouse any less? THAT is the situation Jadzia has finds herself in in this episode. When she fell in love with and married Nilani Khan Dax was a man. Jadzia overcomes her obviously heterosexual orientation (every other relationship she had on DS9 was with a man) because she has a shared history with Khan.

thankfully we get to see her re-grace the trek milieu as the borg queen in voyager's "unimatrix zero" and the great "dark frontier", in which she blows alice krige outta the water, no contest! her perfectness also caught my eye years ago despite smoke, low lighting and a load of romulan makeup in the terrific tng episode "the next phase"! but it's This clever ds9 allegory, with her hyperelegant turn as dax's "ex-wife", in which she shines most flawlessly of all! gee-willickers that trill makeup agrees with her! tarnation! where was she when the series' original casting was taking place? i'd shove terry farrell out the damn airlock in favor of her in a nanobeat ;) she's the best babe trek's had since sharon acker played odona opposite shatner in "the mark of gideon"! vt

The Deep Space Nine episode "Rejoined", in which Jadzia Dax is reunited with the wife of one of her previous hosts (the Trill are a "joined species", you see), is sloppy in it's approach. Essentially, DS9's creators ridicule, through their characters, those who have a problem with homosexuality (this is what this episode is really about, both Trill are women, you see). While it is politically correct for intolerant people to use tolerance as a weapon against those they claim are intolerant (so-called "homophobics", in this case), homosexuality is never even mentioned (it's Trill "traditionalists" who frown on relationships where past hosts are involved) but the message is clear.

All that aside, this episode comes off as nothing more than a story about two hot women who want to "get it on". And in this respect, the episode succeeds. I'm sure twenty-year-old men everywhere will enjoy this wonderfully acted and incredibly sensuous and sexy episode. I know I didn't.

I hate episodes that bow to political correctness and beat the viewer over the head with the message. Classic Trek was better at this sort of thing and it was subtle in it's social and political moral story-telling. Had this episode been more subtle and not so one-sided in it's approach, I would've probably enjoyed it more. As it stands, I didn't like "Rejoined" at all. But that's just my point-of-view. Decide for yourselves.