Welcome back to the August countdown of my favorite alien-related moments in fiction, to celebrate the countdown to the release of Splinters, book 1 of The Prospero Chronicles!
(Click the links to read favorite alien related moment #3, #4, and #5, and check outMatt’s list on the same topic on his blog). On these lists, you'll find a lot of sources of inspiration for The Prospero Chronicles, some major, some minor, and some other alien moments simply too cool or classic to pass up.
Splinters will be available September 23rd (my 25th birthday!), and you can already pre-order it...
(Click the links to read favorite alien related moment #3, #4, and #5, and check outMatt’s list on the same topic on his blog). On these lists, you'll find a lot of sources of inspiration for The Prospero Chronicles, some major, some minor, and some other alien moments simply too cool or classic to pass up.
Splinters will be available September 23rd (my 25th birthday!), and you can already pre-order it...
Next up, “Rejoined,” from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
This one's another starcrossed love story, and one that requires a little explanation of the aliens involved to understand it.
If you haven't seen Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Trills are a species who can bond with a symbiotic life form from their planet, which they simply call symbionts. Elite Trills are chosen for joining after rigorous testing. Symbionts share the memories of their hosts, so once a Trill is joined, the new host has the memories of all the past ones.
This one's another starcrossed love story, and one that requires a little explanation of the aliens involved to understand it.
If you haven't seen Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Trills are a species who can bond with a symbiotic life form from their planet, which they simply call symbionts. Elite Trills are chosen for joining after rigorous testing. Symbionts share the memories of their hosts, so once a Trill is joined, the new host has the memories of all the past ones.
Identities can become a little confusing, one reason for all the psychological testing required.
Trills have great reverence for the symbionts and joining. Hosts take their symbiont’s name as their last name, and in return for the extra lifetimes of experience and confidence, they protect the symbionts above all else. A Trill can't survive having a symbiont removed, but they're supposed to do everything they can to make sure the symbiont survives the host's death to be joined to a new one.
Now for the story.
Now for the story.
Jadzia Dax, a joined Trill and main character since the first season, receives the weighty news that a Trill team of scientists is coming to Deep Space Nine, including fellow joined Trill, Lenara Kahn.
Why weighty? Well, one of the previous Dax hosts, Torius, and one of the previous Kahn hosts, Nilani, were married.
So since they can both remember those lifetimes as clearly as if they'd lived them, Lenara is kinda sorta Jadzia's ex wife.
Why weighty? Well, one of the previous Dax hosts, Torius, and one of the previous Kahn hosts, Nilani, were married.
So since they can both remember those lifetimes as clearly as if they'd lived them, Lenara is kinda sorta Jadzia's ex wife.
Which would be awkward enough under the most normal of circumstances.
Oh, it gets much worse.
Dax and Kahn's marriage ended in death, not divorce, when Torius was killed in a shuttle accident. So instead of a messy falling out hanging over them, they have the Trill laws against re-association.
Relationships with spouses of previous hosts are illegal, because Trills believe a joined Trill's responsibility is to participate in giving the symbiont a wide variety of life experiences. Trills who re-associate are banished from the homeworld, and the symbionts are regarded as corrupted and left to die when the hosts do.
Jadzia refuses to go on leave while Lenara is on DS9, saying that they're both adults and can handle the situation as such.
Naturally, they end up working together, and when problems with the project trigger memories of the crash, the feelings of past lifetimes resurface and Jadzia breaks down and apologizes for getting herself killed last time they were together, in a scene I would most definitely include a clip of if I could find one.
Dax and Kahn's marriage ended in death, not divorce, when Torius was killed in a shuttle accident. So instead of a messy falling out hanging over them, they have the Trill laws against re-association.
Relationships with spouses of previous hosts are illegal, because Trills believe a joined Trill's responsibility is to participate in giving the symbiont a wide variety of life experiences. Trills who re-associate are banished from the homeworld, and the symbionts are regarded as corrupted and left to die when the hosts do.
Jadzia refuses to go on leave while Lenara is on DS9, saying that they're both adults and can handle the situation as such.
Naturally, they end up working together, and when problems with the project trigger memories of the crash, the feelings of past lifetimes resurface and Jadzia breaks down and apologizes for getting herself killed last time they were together, in a scene I would most definitely include a clip of if I could find one.
Reburying their old lives wouldn’t be so hard once the heat of the moment is gone, but there's more to it than their old lives. Jadzia and Lenara soon realize that they have more in common and get along better now than Torius and Nilani, with their clashing quirks, ever could.
The other Trills have been watching them agonizingly closely since they met/re-met, and they don't miss the growing closeness between them. After Lenara's brother confronts her about it, she goes to Jadzia to tell her that they shouldn't see each other anymore, and, well...
Jadzia decides (after long, painful deliberation), that she's willing to sacrifice her enviable life and reputation on Trill and even future joining for her symbiont to be with Lenara.
Lenara... isn't. Almost, but not quite. She wants to, but the episode ends with her leaving to go back to Trill "to take some time to think," both of them knowing that she's never coming back.
Lenara... isn't. Almost, but not quite. She wants to, but the episode ends with her leaving to go back to Trill "to take some time to think," both of them knowing that she's never coming back.
In true Trek fashion, the alien drama of "Rejoined" carries pointed, earthly social commentary, but in true DS9 fashion, it doesn't do it in a tidy, safe, cheesy-simple way.
Lenara isn't a Next Generation bland figure of a person with a funny-looking forehead and a one-dimensional caricature of a culture to get in the way when she catches Riker’s eye.
Lenara isn't a Next Generation bland figure of a person with a funny-looking forehead and a one-dimensional caricature of a culture to get in the way when she catches Riker’s eye.
...Like this supposedly genderless lady who gets put on trial and reeducated by her people for wanting him to help her be a woman, in an episode quite a bit more well-intentioned than its execution ends up making it sound.
"Rejoined" lets that passionate forbidden kiss (which, yes, just so happens to be between two same sex actors) speak for itself, and spends the rest of the episode, not on long, heavy handed, abstract speeches about the failings of humanity or the species standing in for us this week, but on Dax and Kahn's very personal romance, including all its alien strangeness that has no parallel to anything human.
We don't hear our familiar cast philosophize about prejudice, we see two well written and acted characters fall in love against their better judgment, despair over their unfortunate situation, and make their choices, all while trying to reconcile multiple lifetimes and identities in ways only Trills have to.
It's a beautiful, relatable yet inherently alien love story, and it's that balance and full use of its concept that puts it on this list.
You can keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!
"Rejoined" lets that passionate forbidden kiss (which, yes, just so happens to be between two same sex actors) speak for itself, and spends the rest of the episode, not on long, heavy handed, abstract speeches about the failings of humanity or the species standing in for us this week, but on Dax and Kahn's very personal romance, including all its alien strangeness that has no parallel to anything human.
We don't hear our familiar cast philosophize about prejudice, we see two well written and acted characters fall in love against their better judgment, despair over their unfortunate situation, and make their choices, all while trying to reconcile multiple lifetimes and identities in ways only Trills have to.
It's a beautiful, relatable yet inherently alien love story, and it's that balance and full use of its concept that puts it on this list.
You can keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!
