Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Melora Rewatch

July 19, 2015 3:23 PM - Season 2, Episode 6

Bashir finds himself someone new to moon over, while Quark finds himself on the receiving end of a death threat.
posted by Solomon (12 comments total)

Here begins Bashir's dubious practice of failing to set strong boundaries between his personal life and professional life (here, it's starting an experimental treatment on someone he is dating).

Also, this bit of dialogue seems wildly inconsistent with the way Bashir's father was portrayed in Doctor Bashir, I Presume (as a shiftless loser who kept jumping from job to job, never committing to anything) :

BASHIR: When I was ten, my father was a Federation diplomat on Invernia Two. One day, when we were out on a remote part of the planet, we were hit by a massive ionic storm. While we were waiting it out, we found an Invernian girl about my age who was sick. After the storm cleared, my father went for help, but it was too late. I sat there and watched her die. The next day when he returned, his guide told us that we could have treated her with a simple herb that was growing all around. I could have saved her life.

Is Bashir lying only about his father's job, or is the whole heartfelt story a lie? He has, after all, kept a huge secret from everyone for years. He must be pretty adept at lying by now.

(I know that they hadn't planned the whole genetically engineered thing and Julian's father's role in it until Doctor Bashir, I Presume, but I find it fun to try to knit the continuity together.)

I liked the Klingon chef and was delighted to find out that he was played by the same guy who voiced Bleeding Gums Murphy on The Simpsons.

The plot of the episode seems fairly perfunctory: here's someone who spends a lot of time in low gravity; naturally when she finds herself in peril, she turns off the gravity and saves the day.
posted by creepygirl at 4:16 PM on July 19, 2015

Well, that was pretty awful. Definitely had a 'on a very special episode of DS9' feel to it -- to quote the AV Club recap Characters with disabilities, when they’re presented poorly, tend to go one of two ways: Either they’re of the helpful, friendly, “it’s okay if you feel awkward around me, I’m here to teach you life lessons” variety that I’m sure popped up on a half-dozen episodes of Full House; or else they’re the angry, chip-on-the-shoulder type that picks fights to prove they can “take it.” Melora lands in the latter category.

Bashir was creepy again, the science made no sense. I mean, are we to believe that all humanoid-inhabited planets have the same basic gravity? And wouldn't everyone on space ships & stations have experienced weightlessness on a regular basis? If the anti-gravity was on the fritz or damaged in battle, or having to do exterior repair work, or for medical use (considering we use hyperbaric chambers to treat burn victims, I can imagine there would be times that putting someone in an anti-gravity environment would be therapeutic). Or just having a recreational no-gravity zone for people to goof around in (I was going to say 'fuck around in', but then I realized just 'for people to fuck in' would need to be on the list too. If Quark doesn't have a zero-g option his holodecks I'll eat my hat.)

Thank goodness for Quark and Odo, their scenes were a nice respite from the A-plot.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:32 PM on July 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

"When I was ten, my father was a Federation diplomat on Invernia Two."
...
Is Bashir lying only about his father's job, or is the whole heartfelt story a lie?

Well, considering how much venom Bashir shows toward his father in the Big Reveal episode, I'd retcon that he and his dad were indeed on Invernia Two and that the incident did indeed happen, but that maybe dad's professional reason for being there was something much less respectable than "Federation diplomat." Or, because we never heard of Invernia Two, maybe he WAS a Federation diplomat, just a crummy one; maybe Invernia is enough of a backwater that the Federation didn't take the trouble to vet their diplomat too well. Resource constraints and all that. In fact, this would've been during the war with the Cardassians, right?

But yes, bad episode overall. Probably in the bottom three or four for the series.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:58 AM on July 20, 2015

So, some trivia from Memory Alpha, because I think the journey this episode took from concept to screen is actually more entertaining than what actually aired.

"A character like Melora Pazlar was initially to be Deep Space 9's science officer, because the producers liked the idea of a character who came from a low-gravity environment. However, due to the difficulty and expense of recreating the effect constantly, the character was replaced by the Trill Jadzia Dax. But the concept of doing an individual episode around such a "wheelchair officer" remained on the writers' storyboards. Evan Carlos Somers had become familiar with the concept when serving as a Writers Guild intern during Deep Space Nine's first season. When he was invited back to pitch stories in the second season, Somers was successful in reviving the concept by convincing the producers that he could provide insight into the character, as he himself uses a wheelchair; "I didn't think I should let anyone else write this. I could bring some empathy to the character because I am disabled."

After the story-breaking session, Somers gained some ideas and feedback from the writing staff, before going off to write the script. In particular, he wished to respond to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ethics", in which Worf's spine is damaged, causing paralysis; "That episode had gotten a little under my skin. Even though Worf is an alien and it's just a TV show, everyone knows we're making statements with Star Trek. Messages and values are being broadcast loud and clear. I resented the message in 'Ethics' – that Worf is worthless now that he's disabled and therefore must kill himself. I'm sorry that the portrayal had to exist at all." Furthermore, Somers recalled that it was "unfortunate that anyone would think that way," regarding Worf's decision to kill himself. "I always thought it would be nice to create a disabled character who's accepted for what she is and doesn't have to change," he says. "The best way to do that on Deep Space Nine was to have Bashir find a cure for the disability, and for the character to turn it down. That was the real driving force behind my wanting to do this episode."

Additionally, Somers wanted to create a love interest for Bashir, which was partly down to Siddig El Fadil joking more than once, "When am I going to get a girlfriend?" Somers comments, "The producers had always thought the wheelchair officer would be a man, but I always thought of her as a woman. 'Zero-gravity sex with Bashir' was a prime element to the story in my mind. I also liked the idea that by falling in love with someone who isn't disabled, and having this cure presented to her concomitant to a growing love affair, maybe Melora is doing it for him. How can she turn this cure down? He loves her and he would never want to do anything wrong for her. But she didn't really think it out. In fact, she was surviving, and functioning very well, prior to her arrival on the station. Now, she's faced with a difficult assignment, but when she leaves, things are going to be OK again. She doesn't have to be cured, and she doesn't have to do it to please Bashir".

When Somers turned in his original draft, it wasn't received well by the writing staff. Somers blames a decision he made while writing it; "I had previously committed to another project that started two weeks before, and I needed another week for it. I thought that since I turned out "Battle Lines" in a week-and-a-half, I could do 'Melora' in a week-and-a-half. That decision wasn't the best one to make." Ira Behr then called Somers to inform him that a rewrite wouldn't take place. However, Steven Baum did decide to take a shot at it, but the producers still weren't satisfied. Michael Piller and James Crocker then worked on a third version of the script. In doing so, Piller believed the original story, that was fleshed out in the breaking session, was flawed and very difficult to write, though he did attempt to stick to the basic concept, as Somers recalls; "He told me I turned in a competent, workman-like draft, but occasionally my problem was that I wasn't giving him the character depth needed. But Michael still commended me and said he stayed very true to my story in his rewrite."

Changes made from the original draft include:
The scene where Melora meets Sisko for the first time – the commander originally came down the steps from his office to greet Melora, who didn't have the benefit of the servo-mechanisms to help her walk. Of the change, Somers comments, "I wanted her to roll up to the steps in her wheelchair, and they would have their meeting elsewhere. That would be a realistic situation. I can't just turn on a servo system and climb stairs; if I have to meet or greet someone who's upstairs, they have to come down to me. I really wanted that scene left in because it would have heightened the station's inaccessibility. What is it like for Melora to be unable to access all areas of the station? Piller did hit those beats in his rewrite, but he did it differently. He had her trip over the raised doorways and complain about the station design."
Melora's chair was initially to have utilized the anti-grav technology that has been a part of Star Trek since The Original Series and the chair from TNG: "Too Short a Season" was to be pulled out of storage and remodeled. However, the chair had originally been designed with the larger set of the USS Enterprise-D in mind and it was quickly realized that it would not be practical in the relatively small Deep Space Nine corridor sets. As a result, the line about Cardassian technology being incompatible with Federation anti-grav technology was added to the script and a simplified 21st century wheelchair was used instead.
Somers experienced many of the same problems that Melora had, on set. During Somers' tenure working at Deep Space Nine, he had worked in an older office building that was initially rampless and had what Somers described as "one of the world's smallest elevators." These experiences further inspired the chair's design. As Somers explains, "So Bashir has to replicate a much simpler wheelchair for her and she encounters all the problems that I did whenever I went down to the DS9 set to snoop around."

Director Winrich Kolbe recounts the difficulties of filming Melora's wheelchair on set; "Obviously there are a lot of thresholds on the station that had to be removed. We put ramps in the set, and it was a pain in the neck, because it's not easy to maneuver a wheelchair even under prime conditions. But going up ramps and making left turns and right turns in these corridors, well...[sighs]"

Writer Evan Carlos Somers, who wrote the original script, believed some of the changes made in rewrites were largely stereotypical, something he had wanted to avoid; "I resist the idea that a disabled person can't just integrate into the environment [....] I liked the idea that the regulars, for a brief moment, would be the problem by misinterpreting Melora's needs and falling over themselves to help. They didn't have to come out looking dumb and awkward; I would never have written it that way. But in the beginning I wanted them to be more of the problem than Melora, and she would react to them. Unfortunately, it was reversed into classic stereotype."

posted by zarq at 9:11 AM on July 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

This episode is so frustrating on a number of levels. Does the Federation not have guidelines for disability access already in place? I get that they can medically alleviate the affects of so many disabilities that this may have become unnecessary, but it makes the future seem very unfriendly to folks with disabilities!

Also relevant to Bashir's later-revealed backstory: I think it's mentioned that before his genetic modification he had a below-average IQ, maybe even a slight intellectual disability. That would add some depth to his actions in this episode, if they had actually planned his backstory from the beginning.

I always enjoy the Quark and Odo Show but I was frustrated that Odo let that trader get killed/hurt. I expected him to have been posing as a piece of furniture in Quark's, or to have been observing the situation somehow. Kind of crappy security work.
posted by chaiminda at 2:09 PM on July 20, 2015

Not fond of this episode at all, for many of the reasons stated above. Of course the Federation is going to have some sort of medical intervention to mitigate the effects of higher gravity, but it would have been more interesting to explore whether or not Ensign Pazlar would even want such intervention in the first place (rather than the whole "Little Mermaid" scenario they came up with). Also, Julian was super manipulative during the whole procedure.

(Also, Jadzia must be getting real tired of being taken hostage)


Odo and Quark had some fun moments.

"You people sell pieces of yourselves after you die, don't you?"

"Yes."

"I'll buy one."


The Klingon chef was terrific though, and should have been in more episodes.


And how dare that low-grav hussy get between Bashir and Garak.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:58 PM on July 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

At this point how many times has Bashir managed to not date/moon over/paw at women he’s treating? Yeesh..
posted by sacchan at 3:01 AM on November 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

After the story-breaking session, Somers gained some ideas and feedback from the writing staff, before going off to write the script. In particular, he wished to respond to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ethics", in which Worf's spine is damaged, causing paralysis; "That episode had gotten a little under my skin. Even though Worf is an alien and it's just a TV show, everyone knows we're making statements with Star Trek. Messages and values are being broadcast loud and clear. I resented the message in 'Ethics' – that Worf is worthless now that he's disabled and therefore must kill himself. I'm sorry that the portrayal had to exist at all." Furthermore, Somers recalled that it was "unfortunate that anyone would think that way," regarding Worf's decision to kill himself. "I always thought it would be nice to create a disabled character who's accepted for what she is and doesn't have to change," he says. "The best way to do that on Deep Space Nine was to have Bashir find a cure for the disability, and for the character to turn it down. That was the real driving force behind my wanting to do this episode."

Man, Somers understood "Ethics" very differently from how I did. I saw that episode a couple weeks ago and really liked it, for the most part. I've never used a wheelchair but one of my friends is a pretty recent amputee whose been going through a lot of physical therapy, so I'm not totally insensitive to these portrayals either. And I feel like "Ethics" generally manages to thread a very tricky needle.

1.) It needs to be about assisted suicide, but we all know that they're not going to kill Worf off at the end, and also that even in the early nineties, Trek's audience was probably going to have a pretty sympathetic view towards it.

2.) Worf is the only one who feels like his paralysis means the end of his life as he knows it. Picard is super open-minded and pluralistic in his thinking surrounding the whole thing (even frustratingly so, which is a nice change of pace for TNG) but Riker, Crusher, and Alexander are all super-opposed to this line of thinking. The audience doesn't need to be told that Worf can still live a fulfilling life, but characters make that argument over and over anyway.

3.) The episode ends not on a note of "hooray! Worf's controversial treatment worked!" but rather on Beverly slamming the doctor who led the surgery, for considering her career (and thus risking Worf's life) instead of convincing him to accept his disability.

I know we're not discussing "Ethics" here but it's fascinating to me how different Somers' and my readings of it were.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:54 PM on May 12, 2020

My complaint last night while watching this was that she's awfully frickin' lippy for an _Ensign_. Write her in as a Lieutenant or a something not just out of the academy and I can accept her pushback more, but "well, Commander Sisko has requested that I, the station's science officer, join you on your survey" being met with "nuts to Sisko! I can do it myself!" from an Ensign? Chee.
posted by Kyol at 8:25 AM on June 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

I sort of figured that the big reason she wants to go alone on the shuttle is because then she can set it to her own gravity levels. Would have been nice if that was clarified.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:20 AM on October 1, 2022

This is definitely the worst episode of the series so far. I camethis close to turning it off.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:20 PM on November 16, 2023

When i saw what and who the episode was about, I suppose was braced for it to be worse. Still, very far from good. I'll also echo that the Klingon chef should have been a regular. That guy rules.

On some level Farscape just broke Star Trek aliens for me. Like... a wheel chair? With regular-ass wheels? I don't think we've ever seen Federation technology use wheels before, they have enough force fields and anti-grav to just float cargo around the Enterprise on little platforms. I can't fathom that bulkhead steps would actually represent a practical problem for them.

Further, like... do you think they spent any time discussing what an alien from a very low gravity environment would look like? They definitely wouldn't be another humanoid with forehead ridges. They'd probably be a jellyfish or something. That'd be rad! Make the Doctor Bashir have to set up accommodations for a scientist who is a dolphin! Make them cart around in a big tank of their own atmosphere like a Guild Navigator. That'd let them have the conversation they want about practical obstacles, accommodation, and giving/accepting help without completely forgetting that they're writing a sci-fi show.

Like I know there's time constraints, and practical effects get expensive, but still. Maybe Melora is a gastropod and we learn that Bashir has been into Dax cause he's got a thing for hyper-intelligent slugs, rather than for Jadzias. He'd still be kind of a creep but at least that'd be fun.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:31 PM on December 3, 2023 [1 favorite]