DS9 Season 4 Episode 6 Rejoined

Plot

Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) notifies Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) that a group of Trill scientists will be arriving soon at Deep Space Nine to perform experiments related to wormhole physics. The Trill are a species of humanoids, some of whom host a sluglike symbiont implanted into them. The symbionts live far longer than the hosts, and are moved into a new host when the old one dies. Jadzia is the eighth host of the Dax symbiont. Sisko tells Dax that the head scientist is Lenara Kahn (Susanna Thompson), and offers to grant Dax a leave of absence while the Trill scientists are aboard, but she turns it down. Upon Dax and Kahn's first meeting, Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) notices that they are very familiar with each other; Dax tells her that Kahn used to be her wife. Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) later explains to Kira that previous hosts of the Dax and Kahn symbionts were married to each other, but Trill are forbidden from reassociating with partners and lovers of past hosts.
At the welcome party for the visiting scientists, Dax and Kahn warm to one another's company once more. Afterward, they begin to socialize as they work together on Kahn's wormhole experiment aboard USS Defiant. They agree to have dinner, but to also bring Bashir along as a chaperone. At dinner, Bashir is effectively ignored by the two Trills as they reminisce about their past hosts. Later, back on the Defiant, Kahn successfully creates an artificial wormhole and Dax hugs her in celebration. Kahn's brother Bejal (Tim Ryan), who is on the science team, speaks to her separately and highlights his concerns regarding her contact with Dax. Despite this, Kahn goes to Dax's quarters and a discussion between the two leads to a kiss; Kahn leaves before it goes any further.
Dax confides in Sisko that she knows she is in love with her former wife. He reminds her that Trill customs mean that if they resumed their relationship, then they would be exiled from their homeworld and their symbionts would never be joined with a new host, but says that she will have his support either way. Kahn and Dax continue to work on the experiment, but it goes wrong and Defiant is severely damaged. Kahn is injured in the explosion, but Dax rigs a force field across a plasma fire that allows her to reach Kahn, coming to the realization that the relationship is worth exile. After returning to the station, Kahn recuperates from her injuries. She decides against resuming her relationship with Dax, and—with the experiments complete—departs with the science team, leaving Dax heartbroken.

Themes

Writers on Deep Space Nine had previously hinted at a potential same-sex relationship in the first season episode "Dax", when Jadzia Dax says goodbye to Enina Tandro, a former lover of Dax's previous male host, Curzon. The first take of the scene resulted in a situation in which it was unclear whether Dax and Enina were about to kiss. It was decided at the time that it was not appropriate, although the writers had hoped that there would be a time when the viewers would accept such a relationship. This theme was eventually realized in "Rejoined".[12] Allen Kwan has argued that Deep Space Nine is the only series of Star Trek that resists the heteronormativity typical of the franchise at the time, citing both "Rejoined" and the Mirror Universe episodes as examples, even if the presented bisexuality is problematized.[13]
During that 1995/96 television season there had been an increase in the number of homosexual characters appearing in major television series, and so the same-sex kiss in "Rejoined" was reviewed in this context. An article published by the Associated Press suggested that the kiss in Deep Space Nine was not truly a same-sex kiss due to "extenuating circumstances"; namely, one of the characters was an "alien who used to be a man".[14] A similar opinion was offered by Jan Johnson-Smith, author of American Science Fiction TV, who said that the situation was "ambiguous" as, despite presenting a same-sex kiss, the episode was clear that Jadzia was "actually kissing the symbiont who has the memories of the former host, her male lover, not the current female host".[15]
For film studies scholar Jean Bruce, the ambiguity of the kiss is foreshadowed in an early scene revolving around a magic trick. On the one hand, the magic trick produces a "pleasurable surprise", while, on the other, this mirrors the deception necessary, due to Trill norms, in the reacquaintance of the characters. At the same time, the juxtaposition of very different shots serves to "convey physical distance and the desire to bridge it", which mirrors the fact that the Trills' love for one another transcends gender, identity and death. Though the kiss is "informed by the fact that Dax was a man in her past life", once it occurs, it can "never be taken back", and remains the queer image of two women kissing.[16]
Nonetheless, "Rejoined" was still considered controversial because of its subject matter, which depicts two women who engage in a same-sex romantic relationship, and included one of the first[vague] televised lesbian kisses.[3][17] During the course of the episode, no characters register concern about Dax being involved with a woman, only that she was an ex-spouse.[3] David Greven, literary critic and author of Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek, said that "Rejoined" was one of the better-received episodes of Star Trek that dealt with homosexuality as a theme, but that the franchise overall had typically avoided LGBT issues.[18] Bryan Fuller, who also wrote for Deep Space Nine, said that the franchise had usually avoided those story lines because of the paranoia of the studio regarding homosexuality.[19] Dale Palmer, in an essay on gender and sexual politics, suggested that the choice was made to have a female same-sex kiss on screen because a male one would have alienated the main viewer demographic for the series: heterosexual men.[20]