Quodo in Every Episode discussion: "Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night"

[chacusha]

This week we're discussing... episode 6x17 "Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night"!

Episode synopsis: While celebrating what would have been her mother's sixtieth birthday, Kira receives a transmission from a renegade Dukat informing her that her mother had not died when Nerys was young, but rather had left her family in order to be in a romantic relationship with him. Using the Orb of Time, Kira travels back in time, seeking the truth.

What The Boys are up to in this episode: Quark has a brief scene at the beginning where he delivers a bouquet of Bajoran lilies to Kira for her mother's birthday. Odo has a scene where he notices the major is in a bad mood and reluctant to talk about it, so he encourages her to do something about it instead.

One screencap from this episode:


Transcript: http://chakoteya.net/DS9/541.htm

Quodo fics tagged with this episode: None (https://archiveofourown.org/works?work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=Episode%3A+s06e17+Wrongs+Darker+Than+Death+Or+Night&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&commit=Sort+and+Filter&tag_id=Star+Trek%3A+Deep+Space+Nine)

Tell us:
- What did you think about this episode?
- Have you written a fic set during/after this episode?
- Do you know of any other fics set in or that build off this episode that weren't linked above?
- What do you see as the Quodo potential for this episode?

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Event info & rules
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Comments

[chacusha]

Random thoughts:

- I love: (Dax, seeing Quark hand a bouquet to Kira) "Is there something going on between [you and Quark] that I don't know about?" (Kira) "Don't be disgusting." -- The exchange is so them. XD

- It's interesting watching this after "Waltz" and also some other Dukat episodes. I feel like somehow Dukat is the character who has been discussed the most so far in this rewatch. XD

- I feel like we've also watched a lot of episodes where Kira goes to Odo upset and Odo is just like, "I know you're the kind of person who just does the thing, damn the consequences, so just do it." There can't be THAT many episodes featuring a scene like that, but it feels like there's already been quite a few in this rewatch (and there's still at least one more to go ("Past Prologue"), possibly even more than that).

- I do like that Kira in this episode gets some time to know the mother she never got to know. It's so bittersweet getting to be the friend as an adult of the mother you never knew as a child.

- I like a lot of the minor characters in this episode, like the collaborator who manages the comfort women and the jovial Cardassian legate who shows interest in Kira. They're playing such villains, but with gusto -- I enjoy it.

- I feel like this episode is also interesting for occupation-era Terok Nor and what it looked like and how it worked. Like, it's interesting to me that there's a security scan gate thing when entering certain corridors.

- I know people have commented on this odd characterization bit, but it is kind of wild that Kira (and other Bajorans) consider comfort women kidnapped from their families to be collaborators. Like... what?? Maybe it makes sense for people who have worked in the resistance, that basically anything short of actively sabotaging the Cardassian administration is collaboration. But it's still a bit jarring.

- Nevertheless, I like Kira's characterization in this one. Regardless of the specifics related to comfort women, I think it would be hard for her to go from "your mom died tragically when you were young" to "your mom lived a while longer than that with Dukat but we all just lied to you because we didn't want you to know that." And I kind of think it's that feeling of personal betrayal/disappointed expectations that makes her harden her heart to her mother, more so than what her mother actually did or how much of a choice/agency she had in those decisions. Similarly, I kind of think that Kira's last-minute change of heart isn't so much because she loves/feels a connection with her mother or even that Meru made it clear that her husband and her children were still very much in her heart, but mainly about self-acceptance that regardless of how Meru felt about Dukat, Meru's actions did concretely change Nerys's life and led to the life she ended up living, and so Nerys is in some sense personally indebted to her for that, even if she wouldn't have made the same choice herself.

- Overall, I like this episode. It's fun getting more occupation-era content/details; it's another good Kira episode where she has to wrestle with her own black-and-white morality, which is partly a consequence of the occupation; the Orbs of the Prophets continue to be used in wild ways; and Dukat going after Kira Nerys the whole series while he KNOWS she's the daughter of his former paramour is just so over-the-top creepy and awful, it's kinda amazing. 😂


Quodo potential:

- Another hard one... They're both barely in this episode. Maybe Odo sees Quark give Kira the bouquet of flowers and has weird feelings about it. Misunderstandings! Drama! I don't know!