Had the old man always been so pedantic and tiresome? All of this rehashing of old times, talking of the so-called glory days, left him cold.
You know, the few times I've watched this ep on YouTube, when it comes to the part where Garak and Tain are sitting and sipping kanar, I fast-forwarded. It just seemed out of place in the context of the episode. At first I thought that maybe Andy and Paul had been asked to chew up some scenery and they were sort of ad-libbing the dialogue to a degree. Then I thought maybe the point of it was to see Tain casually talking about eliminating Mila. We don't know at that point what Mila is to Garak, but we do know that Mila begged Garak to help Tain and that Tain has to know that Garak obtained his information from Mila. So for Tain to want to kill the one person, other than Garak, who gives a shit about him was cold, and I thought perhaps that was why that very awkward and stilted conversation between them had been written.
But the above from your story makes more sense to me than any of those explanations. I could see this conversation as the point in which Garak understood that whatever he and Tain had had was long over. Tain had changed - and not for the better. And I think it's possible that during the course of this conversation, Garak started formulating an exit plan for himself and Odo.
Oh, there was so much in that terrible moment of intimacy that followed, words exchanged that he could understand and relate to, a man apart from his people, from his natural state of existence, isolated and longing within the depths of his being to return. Garak deactivated the device and turned away to give him privacy, only to sink into his chair with his head in his hands once Odo was insensate liquid.
To this day, that scene remains one of my favorite in all of Trekdom. Andy and Rene were masterful. When Garak resorted to begging Odo to give him anything, I knew then that Garak had been broken in a way that he probably had not been, say, circa Second Skin. The way you describe his emotions as he realizes just HOW he has changed was spot on. He knows there's no going back now, and the idea that he understands this and STILL wants to save Tain was heartbreaking.
The aftermath was painful. It just ... was. It was extremely hard to read. In this, actually, you've done something that very few DS9 writers have been able to do for me personally - you suspended my belief. I know that Tain is alive because I know what happens beyond this episode. You also know what Tain's fate truly is. But you wrote Garak completely bereft as if Tain really been destroyed in the massacre rather than having been taken prisoner and cooling his heels in a Dominion prison camp. My heart ached for him, even when he attacked Julian. He was in such a fragile state - dealing with the aftermath of having tortured Odo, seeing his father's dream go up in literal flames, and now lashing out at the one person who loves him above all. The self-loathing Garak feels at the end tugged at me more than Julian's real physical distress. In a way, that makes me feel a bit guilty, but I think it can be excused a bit since "we," the outside readers/watchers know what happened on that warbird and Julian does not.
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Date: 2010-01-07 06:35 pm (UTC)You know, the few times I've watched this ep on YouTube, when it comes to the part where Garak and Tain are sitting and sipping kanar, I fast-forwarded. It just seemed out of place in the context of the episode. At first I thought that maybe Andy and Paul had been asked to chew up some scenery and they were sort of ad-libbing the dialogue to a degree. Then I thought maybe the point of it was to see Tain casually talking about eliminating Mila. We don't know at that point what Mila is to Garak, but we do know that Mila begged Garak to help Tain and that Tain has to know that Garak obtained his information from Mila. So for Tain to want to kill the one person, other than Garak, who gives a shit about him was cold, and I thought perhaps that was why that very awkward and stilted conversation between them had been written.
But the above from your story makes more sense to me than any of those explanations. I could see this conversation as the point in which Garak understood that whatever he and Tain had had was long over. Tain had changed - and not for the better. And I think it's possible that during the course of this conversation, Garak started formulating an exit plan for himself and Odo.
Oh, there was so much in that terrible moment of intimacy that followed, words exchanged that he could understand and relate to, a man apart from his people, from his natural state of existence, isolated and longing within the depths of his being to return. Garak deactivated the device and turned away to give him privacy, only to sink into his chair with his head in his hands once Odo was insensate liquid.
To this day, that scene remains one of my favorite in all of Trekdom. Andy and Rene were masterful. When Garak resorted to begging Odo to give him anything, I knew then that Garak had been broken in a way that he probably had not been, say, circa Second Skin. The way you describe his emotions as he realizes just HOW he has changed was spot on. He knows there's no going back now, and the idea that he understands this and STILL wants to save Tain was heartbreaking.
The aftermath was painful. It just ... was. It was extremely hard to read. In this, actually, you've done something that very few DS9 writers have been able to do for me personally - you suspended my belief. I know that Tain is alive because I know what happens beyond this episode. You also know what Tain's fate truly is. But you wrote Garak completely bereft as if Tain really been destroyed in the massacre rather than having been taken prisoner and cooling his heels in a Dominion prison camp. My heart ached for him, even when he attacked Julian. He was in such a fragile state - dealing with the aftermath of having tortured Odo, seeing his father's dream go up in literal flames, and now lashing out at the one person who loves him above all. The self-loathing Garak feels at the end tugged at me more than Julian's real physical distress. In a way, that makes me feel a bit guilty, but I think it can be excused a bit since "we," the outside readers/watchers know what happened on that warbird and Julian does not.