Deep Space Nine Reviewed! (by a pedant) S2E05: CARDIGANS

28 thoughts on “Deep Space Nine Reviewed! (by a pedant) S2E05: CARDIGANS”

• Today's Thought Experiment: Odo leaves the staff meeting at the start of the episode, presumably to go check on this kid, and is not seen again for the entire rest of the story (save a call to let Sisko know Dukat is here). What was he up to?

• This might be a cop out but I disagree with the race analogy. He could have easily been taught about the redemptive power of the Prophets. It doesn’t follow necessarily that he was taught Cardasians are evil because that is simply their nature; but rather because they don’t follow the teachings of the Prophets. I see it more as a WWII orphan from Germany being taught to hate Nazis with little distinction made that the current cardasians aren’t necessarily the same that did the occupation.

• I'd forgotten how much of a political operative Dukat was, even right near the start of the series. I wonder if his opponent here had something in the reveal of the existence of Ziyal later on?

• I've never really felt comfortable watching this episode, and you've hit dead on the reasons why. Rugel's best interests and wishes take a back seat most of the time to politics and procedure and other people's desires. He was used and abused for the benefit of others most of his life, and didn't even have the tools to begin unravelling all the damage. His Bajoran parents loved him, but hated what he was, denying his species and teaching him to hate Cardassians too so he could be considered One Of The Good Ones. His Cardassian heritage was being shoved away in an orphanage so he could maybe one day be a useful political weapon against his Cardassian father. His fate at the end of the episode is, at best, going to layer more damage on top of old, and it's still probably the best legally available option, short of shipping him off to Betazed or Vulcan for half a lifetime of counselling. It's not easy to see a kid so royally screwed over by no fault of his own.

• This was and is the one time I feel like the self hate is bleeding so hard in this episode that my dance school closed down…. "to soon " self hate is the same I wonder if we would see what happens to them later oh yes you sided with the wrong side and lost there planet now look at us here and now and be smug about your self lol

• I'm so glad you made such a strong statement on the abuse by the Bajoran parents. I have seen so many people gloss over that and say that returning Rugal to his Cardassian father when he didn't want it was the wrong choice, and it infuriates me every time. Yes Rugal's opinion should be taken into consideration, but a lot of abused children don't know that they are being abused at the time, only once they are older and the damage affects their lives and self-worth do they realise what was being done to them.

  Rugal's Cardassian father might be a horrible man or only interested in his career – or he might have genuinely mourned his son and be out his depth upon finding him again. Rugal might have a terrible time fitting in on Cardassia with his Bajoran upbringing, or he might adapt well once he's back with the rest of his Cardassian family. We don't know, but we do know that hating your own species/race while being taught that you were one of the few good ones is wrong. 'Cardassian' is not an ideology that you can accept or reject. If Rugal was anti-occupation, or anti-military, or anti-fascism then I would argue differently but he was anti-Cardassian in all its forms.

• I'm not sure that Abuse is the right word for this situation, but it prompts an interesting discussion:

  Your primary reason for calling it abuse seems to be that not only is Rugal being taught to hate a particular group of people, but that he is one of those people he is taught to hate. But what exactly about him is Cardigan?

  If we are speaking culturally, then the answer is a pretty clear 'nothing'. He remembers nothing of Cardassia, he doesn't think of himself as Cardigan, and neither do his parents. There are no ties to his old homeland to blemish. I myself am an ethnic mutt, yet my national identity is 'American', not any of the European stock from which I have been told I come from; were my parents to denigrate any of those cultures or countries, it would not be construed as denigration against me. Would it be any different for Rugal?

  If we are speaking of how other Bajorans will treat Rugal based on his looks, then while this is clearly a potential problem for integration into the culture, surely the fault lies with those others rather than with Rugal and his parents.

  If we are speaking biologically/genetically, then there is a stronger basis. After all, the Cardigans don't just look different, they are an entirely different species. But if that is the case, then your analogy regarding human racial differences is probably not the best comparison. Perhaps the better analogy would be two women raising their son to hate men due to how they have been treated in the past.

  Perhaps I'm missing something in this analysis? But in any case, the situation is an ugly one regardless of whether or not Abuse is the best descriptor for what Rugal's parents have been doing.

• Had to stop by 13:52 to absolutely applaud you sir, I've watched your channel for a very long time and am a HUGE fan but this entry solidifies my belief in this episodes message and your incredible way of breaking down the real situation here, fan for life thankyou for everything you said in the post review ❤️

• The boy would be best off with adoptive human parents if the human parents of Worf are an average example.

• '…to bring them all home…to Cardassia.'

  I think you mean 'to Cardiginia'…

• It's something that no one would bat an eye at after voyager had a borg drone on board and TNG had a Klingon (the idea of diversifying the cast by having an alien from an enemy species as a regular)
  What DS9 did differently was keep Garak as obscure instead of being loyal like 7of9 and Worf.

• i don't see your reasoning behind the privacy issue? not saying i disagree, just that i'd like more clarity – what did bashir do that violated patient privacy? authorities are always notified in case of assault, and the meeting he spoke in was not public. he also didn't give specifics about the nature of the bite or any other medical information such as garak's level of pain,, how deep the bite was, etc. he gave only information that was pertinent to the crime.

• I love your videos and have been watching all of them. One thing you frequently bring up is incongruities within medical departments and officers and such when compared to modern rules about confidentiality, continuity of care, and general medical ethics such as informed consent. These things change over time, they've changed over the course of the past fifty years, and there is no reason to believe that standards would not have been altered in the future. Many of our current laws stem out of concerns over fraud and billing, for example, but this is probably less of a concern in the 24th century. There have definitely been many medical ethics episodes throughout Trek. I generally like those for the reflection on modern concerns, like good Trek does. Nevertheless, I do think that some of the modern concerns that inform modern standards won't necessarily be considered that important in the future.

• perhaps we could conclude that no more harm has been done in the world than by people who thought they were doing the right thing?

• DS9 take on Suddenly Human lucky the O'Brien must suffered didn't until later on the second season.

• I think I may have gotten the whole "Rugal as an Honorary Bajoran" thing on some implicit level the few times I've watched this episode, but I think it helps to have it put this directly all the same.

  Also, I don't envy Space Dog at all, having to come up with an apology for biting some dude's man bits. Can't be an easy task.

• "This is all far more complicated than it looks on the surface", is the working premise of this series, isn't it?

• Honestly watching this on my own I admittedly let my own cultural pain of being a Jewish man push me too far into siding with the Bajoran parents. The Bajorans have always felt very Ashkenazi Jewish to me, and it can cloud my judgement.

  I still feel that both Keiko and Sisko royally messed up here. Keiko replicating Cardigan food for them felt very pushy and like she was adding to Rugal feeling like he was being pulled away from a place he felt comfy. As you pointed out he might need to be pulled a bit away but I found her choice very disruptive to his mental health at that time and it felt like it could have caused a meltdown or at the very least damaged the trust he had for them, as he could feel railroaded.

  As far as the final choice, sending him to Cardassia right away is a terrible plan. It would be simple to set up a neutral meeting spot for visitation and counciling, administered by the Federation.

• Can you imagine the political fallout if we found another war "orphan" of a high-ranking Cardigan, only this one is half Bajoran?

• Russet Konami?

• I notice te computer interface involves an eye piece, reminds me of dominion tech later.

• I quite love O'Brian in this episode. He's probably not going to be everyone's go to as Garek usually steals she show and he's awesome in this one too. And Dukat is always fun. Plus Bashir interrupting Sisko's conversation was great. But I love how you can't really blame O'Brian for how he feels given his past, touched on in the TNG episode the Wounded. And I think his wife is unnecessarily harsh to him, common for her unfortunately, however he's also wrong to judge an entire species and seems to realize that while talking to the lad. That's the kind of stuff missing from modern trek and tv in general. Show both sides as valid or at least understandable and possibly let the one who's in the wrong realize his error without being told. Love it.

• the blurred head has me 😂😂

• I might have to take issue with the point about the adopted the Bajoran adoptive parents being subtly abusive. The Bajorans were the colonised and oppressed party, so the proper analogy would be a white child being adopted by black or Native American parents. And this isn't a minor point, because power dynamics are an essential part of racism.

  It's even noted in the episode: The Bajoran father says he merely told Roogal the truth about what the Cardassians did, which seems entirely plausible. Hating any group as a category is wrong, of course, but it generally requires a lot of lies and cherry picking to get someone to dislike an oppressed group, while just knowing about actual history of oppression is usually more than enough to get them to hate the oppressors.

  (A similar point applies to cultural erasure. Cardassian culture isn't being erased here — it still exists. Nor did the Bajorans choose the separate Roogal from his people. All the decisions that led to him being in an orphanage on Bajor were taken by the Cardassians, because they were ones in power.)

  None of which is to say that the Bajoran adoptive parents are entirely free from blame, of course. They have done some harm to Roogal. But I want to underline that "both sides are to blame" is strongly affected by the power dynamics in play.

  (Also, I don't want this to seem like I'm having a go at you or anything. It's just, y'know, the usual bias of criticism.The one thing I have a problem with leads to me rambling on for several paragraphs, while the far more numerous bits that I enjoy and find insightful just lead to me silently nodding along.)

• You had me laughing a bit commenting about the weirdly headed alien, but when you showed the pixelated forehead, I laughed out loud. Genius.

• Even in a modern civilian context, doctor patient confidentiality is not absolute. In many civilized countries doctors are required to report injuries such as gunshot wounds and signs of physical abuse in children.

  Given that The Federation has a very low violence society, I would not be surprised if medical practitioners (both in and out of starfleet) are trained to report any sign of (non holodeck related) assault to their local authorities as a public safety concern. I don't recall the exact dialogue of the scene, but it is also possible that Bashir had picked up on the potential implication of psychological abuse implied by a Cardigan repeating anti-Cardigan rhetoric and committing a Cardigan-on-Cardigan hate crime.

  It is also possible the Plain Simple Garak consented to his boy toy sharing the details with the senior staff while off screen, because he knew it would trigger an investigation that he cold insert himself into.

• I strongly disagree with your conclusion about Rugal’s parents.

  Your analogy conflates the colonizer’s hatred for the colonized with the colonized’s hatred of the colonizers. This is not like a black boy being raised in a white family and being taught to hate other black people. This is more like a white boy being raised in a black family and taught factual information about the history of racism.

  This was not like a child being removed from their community by a hostile foreign power like the US and Canadian governments did to indigenous populations, because it was the Cardigans who removed him from his father, not the Bajorans. There was no Bajoran power systematically disrupting Cardigan families, but there were Bajoran resources expended in the care for abandoned children of both peoples.

  This is not like a neurodivergent child being forced to mask, because after all seven seasons of DS9, we never saw any reason to believe that Cardigans and Bajorans have any biological differences in cognition. In fact, come season 7 (spoilers ahead), we see a strong parallel between the two when it comes to resistance to an occupying force.

  Rugal was adopted by a loving family in a wartorn land, then ripped away from them and sent to live with strangers against his explicit wishes.

• Dammit. I'm going to have to rewatch this one to see if I agree with your conclusion about whether the Bajoran adoptive parents publicly expressed thoughts towards Cardassians (in the sense of the collective polity of Cardassia – of which Rugal is not a member) wasn't differentiated enough from their publicly expressed thoughts towards Cardassians (in the sense of the species of characters referred to as Cardassians or Spoonheads – of which Rugal is a member).

  I don't know if the nod towards "honourary whites" was a reference to apartheid. I assume it was, and it was clever.

  Unintentional abuse is abuse, and that has to be assessed through the perspective of the troubled orphan who views himself as damaged. But not all self-loathing is necessarily the result of cultural abuse, and I suspect the line between being honest with an orphan about what their biological parents were up to on Bajor/ causing them psychological damage is a fine one.

  Damn you for making me consider these important, nuanced questions about the human condition and the nature of abuse.

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