Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night

[Mickey_Rat15]

There are people who think Dukat was being a nice guy in this episode (other than Dukat!)?

All he did was find a hook to make his new sex slave docile and compliant and maybe warm up to him in time. He probably thought he was being gracious and big hearted to take care of his mistress's family, but he has had such delusions of magnanimity towards Bajorans elsewhere.

It does make his come-ons towards Kira throughout the series more skeevy, given the memory skills he demonstrated early on, that Dukat likely knew exactly who Nerys was the throughout the series.

[SuccubusYuri]

Oh and I'm going to say this because ... I didn't see anyone here taking this attitude (thankfully) but I have encountered a lot of fans who think this way so I am going to say this now.

Meru is not a bad person, and Dukat is not some kind of nice guy for taking care of her family. If I were in a situation where I was in charge of taking care of my little second cousins (I'm an only child but I grew up close to my cousins so how I feel about them is how most people feel about their nieces and nephews) during an alien invasion, and they were at risk of starving or dying of any sickness that came along, and then I was separated from them and told I couldn't go back to them anyway, and then this person with power to change it came along and said I could guarantee them food, shelter, and medicine if I just slept with him ... Hell yeah I'd do it. I'd blow every Cardassian in the quadrant to protect those children, and they're not even my own children. Of course she convinces herself she loves him - she's making the best of a bad situation and Dukat's behavior is (again, very creepily) seemingly calculated to induce Stockholm Syndrome, with him deliberately setting himself up as this nice alternative to the other Cardassians, which also subtly reinforces the danger that his target is in. This is not an equal relationship, at all, by any definition.

This is an episode that seems somewhat popular despite all this and I can sort of see why - it is strong technically, with good performances and a tightly plotted script. But damn, did it ever leave a bad taste in my mouth.

What do you guys think? Did you like this one or agree with me it's terrible or something in-between?

I felt that the writers (or, one of them) understood that issue. I THOUGHT that was what that last scene in Dukat's room was about. Kira says her mother was a collaborator and "pfft the Cardassians won't do shit for your family", but we see that IS NOT TRUE. Her family IS being fed, IS being given medicine, Kira herself is said to have gained a few pounds. Does life suck for them? Of course it does. But they will be kept alive and her father probably sent regular updates, at least for a few years, just to prove that yes they were fine. And she starts crying when she sees the message, it's not like she saw it and was like "Oh, yes. that."

So Meru tries to block out the big ugly thing she has to live with by zeroing in on the little pleasures she gets to enjoy. It's a coping mechanism not evil.

I think it comes down to the muddiness of the "Comfort women" title. Half the episode wants it to be an abduction, the other half wants it to be a collaborator, but prisoners are, by definition, NOT collaborators. No more than the Jews working in labor camps are Nazi collaborators. If they WANTED her to be a collaborator, that's fine, but they fucked up. And if they wanted her to be a prisoner, that is also fine, but Kira isn't really called on viewing her as an evil collaborator.

As a side note, I always liked to imagine the bomb Kira plants in Dukat's room is the assassination attempt he references in Waltz, the one where he rounded up a bunch of innocents and had them killed. It at least sorta-solves the snarl of Kira abusing the power of the Orb. From a temporal standpoint, anyway. Yeah it feels like he's been running the joint more than six months

[FakeGeekGirl]

I felt that the writers (or, one of them) understood that issue. I THOUGHT that was what that last scene in Dukat's room was about. Kira says her mother was a collaborator and "pfft the Cardassians won't do shit for your family", but we see that IS NOT TRUE. Her family IS being fed, IS being given medicine, Kira herself is said to have gained a few pounds. Does life suck for them? Of course it does. But they will be kept alive and her father probably sent regular updates, at least for a few years, just to prove that yes they were fine. And she starts crying when she sees the message, it's not like she saw it and was like "Oh, yes. that."

So Meru tries to block out the big ugly thing she has to live with by zeroing in on the little pleasures she gets to enjoy. It's a coping mechanism not evil.

I think it comes down to the muddiness of the "Comfort women" title. Half the episode wants it to be an abduction, the other half wants it to be a collaborator, but prisoners are, by definition, NOT collaborators. No more than the Jews working in labor camps are Nazi collaborators. If they WANTED her to be a collaborator, that's fine, but they fucked up. And if they wanted her to be a prisoner, that is also fine, but Kira isn't really called on viewing her as an evil collaborator.

One of the few parts of Covenant I liked was that they revisited it and Kira did seem to have come around to a more nuanced view of her mother's role in the Occupation. That was good - maybe the writers knew they fumbled it.

The episode could have been improved dramatically by having a scene at the end with Dax or Sisko gently pointing out that Meru really didn't have a choice in the matter.

[FakeGeekGirl]

There are people who think Dukat was being a nice guy in this episode (other than Dukat!)?

All he did was find a hook to make his new sex slave docile and compliant and maybe warm up to him in time. He probably thought he was being gracious and big hearted to take care of his mistress's family, but he has had such delusions of magnanimity towards Bajorans elsewhere.

It does make his come-ons towards Kira throughout the series more skeevy, given the memory skills he demonstrated early on, that Dukat likely knew exactly who Nerys was the throughout the series.

I think it's less that people think Dukat is being a genuine nice guy and more they really hate Meru. Oh my God. People hate Meru so much.

[StrangeDevice]

I think it's less that people think Dukat is being a genuine nice guy and more they really hate Meru. Oh my God. People hate Meru so much.

There might be an element of protagonist-centric morality going on with that. This and "The Darkness and the Light" was two stories that made me really uncomfortable about Nerys's fanaticism, which is some really good writing because she doesn't slip automatically into villainy because of her views. The confrontation in "The Darkness and the Light" is one of those positions where maybe the murderer has more of a point than the hero does ("You were all guilty and you were all legitimate targets!").

It's still far from black-and-white, but Kira had enough doubt as to her own mother's integrity that she went back to see whether Dukat had been telling the truth with little external prompting. I think that's the point where you can see how much the Occupation twisted her morality. Not even her own mother trying to protect her family was completely exempt from her hate. However, you can see it as another stepping stone in her character arc. A progression that eventually culminates in her turning around and helping the Cardassians with their own fight against the Dominion. By the time of "When it Rains...", she's able to take Garak's slight about a "rag-tag band of terrorists" with some humour. It's an ugly place to leave off "Wrongs", but she appears to have grown quite a great deal since then.

[MafiaKirby]

I think the problem is they WANTED to have a "Morally gray Bajorans" story. And you know, there were plenty of those, but you can do another.

And they wanted to have one where the question is "What would Kira do if she found out that her mother was a collaborator, and she was only able to survive and get as far as she did because of that? How would she feel if she found out she had benefitted from someone working with the Cardassians?"

Now, obviously, if her mother had been reporting on their neighbors or whatever, they knew THAT wouldn't fly. Kira would never allow that. It wouldn't be grey to her. Now maybe that would be an interesting story too, if she'd benefitted from something outright bad, but they wanted it to be something where her mother wasn't out there shooting people.

Problem is, they botched it. They made Kira's mother be sexually involved with Dukat, and the problem is that... That's not collaborating. That's giving a guy a blowjob. And unless Kira's mother was somehow so good at blowjobs that she changed his life, or Dukat was so debilitated by arousal that he NEEDED that, then... So what?

Now, if, say, she'd worked as... I don't know, a translator, or a speechwriter... Someone in a passive role, who would still be doing something to HELP the Cardassians, but not something that someone else wouldn't be doing... Then there might be some grey-ness. If your mother was forced into sexual slavery, even if she convinced herself she liked it - Hell even if she was vain and petty and really WAS taken by all those baubles - That doesn't mean she did anything to aid the oppressors. Now, if Kira Meru had done something minor, but helpful, instead of sex, that would be a much more interesting story, and the episode's attitude towards her would seem a lot less weird.

[FakeGeekGirl]

Now, if, say, she'd worked as... I don't know, a translator, or a speechwriter... Someone in a passive role, who would still be doing something to HELP the Cardassians, but not something that someone else wouldn't be doing... Then there might be some grey-ness. If your mother was forced into sexual slavery, even if she convinced herself she liked it - Hell even if she was vain and petty and really WAS taken by all those baubles - That doesn't mean she did anything to aid the oppressors. Now, if Kira Meru had done something minor, but helpful, instead of sex, that would be a much more interesting story, and the episode's attitude towards her would seem a lot less weird.

That would have nicely sidestepped like eighty percent of my objections to the episode. And been more interesting.

[SuccubusYuri]

Yeah but that's starting to sound like giving a woman something dangerously close to professional competence. This franchise can only be SO progressive!

[Meushell]

This episode was highly disturbing, and it made the Bajorans as a whole look bad. We saw earlier how they felt about collaborators, which was natural. Now we learn that they probably shunned/hated women for being raped. Meru was "lucky" (for lack of a better word) that she caught the attention of the high ranking Cardassian who could tell others to leave her alone and who wanted to earn her "love." Other women would have been treated very differently. That's not to dismiss Meru's pain.

Now, if, say, she'd worked as... I don't know, a translator, or a speechwriter... Someone in a passive role, who would still be doing something to HELP the Cardassians, but not something that someone else wouldn't be doing... Then there might be some grey-ness. If your mother was forced into sexual slavery, even if she convinced herself she liked it - Hell even if she was vain and petty and really WAS taken by all those baubles - That doesn't mean she did anything to aid the oppressors. Now, if Kira Meru had done something minor, but helpful, instead of sex, that would be a much more interesting story, and the episode's attitude towards her would seem a lot less weird.

This would have been a much better episode.