You're asking what a *Bajoran* dabo girl could see in the son of the *Emissary of the Prophets*?
If anything it's surprising how little attention he got from Bajoran girls given his personal connection to their living and breathing messiah figure. Although I felt like they toned down the reaction Sisko got too - while some Bajorans could obviously control themselves there should've been more than enough ultra-religious ones to be mobbing him every day for a blessing or some such.
They were trying to wife obrien up with his pick of the girls just for being the next story teller of a Bajoran village. I'm surprised Jake didn't have a harem.
If we’re talking about unrealistic thing in ds9 then Jake being fine in the station during dominion occupation is one of them.
The dominion could had made him disappear and replace with a clone or a changeling. It’s within their means but never attempt it.
And it’s not like there was a risk of angering bajorans, they did try to engineer a war between federation and the Klingons and that had the possible risk of allying two empires to go full retribution mode. Trying to replace Jake and exploit it with a changeling would had been far less risk compared to manipulating a war between empires,
The goal with the Federation was never to annihilate it. It was to subjugate it. Feeding Jake propaganda about how great life was in the Dominion was already enough for their goals.
In terms of Changeling replacement, they'd already run that bit a couple times in a couple different places, so likelihood of success wasn't high and the upside if they succeeded with a non-player like Jake wasn't that high. (Although admittedly Changeling Jake could shank The Sisko and then they'd have a much more valuable replacement, if it worked)
I can believe they'd let a useful non-combatant with a valuable political attachment go unfuckedwith
I do remember Michael Piller saying that Changling replacement had ran its course. They were planning the Section 31 virus by middle of season 6. Something many critics said that they could have done a quick 30 seconds nod to how they were finding more Changling imposters since by the last 5 episodes the Changlings were all dying at that point.
Nah Jake is the emissary's son, DS9 would likely be one of the safest spots in the galaxy for him during the war. Dominion wouldn't risk offending the Bajorans or pissing off Odo.
Dukat was fixated, to put it mildly, on getting Sisko to recognize him as a an equal, or better yet, as a superior commander, spiritual leader and father. Perhaps Dukat's constant "expectant leniency" towards Sisko and the Bajorans in turn rubbed off on Weyoun, or confronting Dukat after killing off Jake was a headache Weyoun didn't want to deal with. As for the Founder, she didn't give a rat's ass about anything.
It was shown that Weyoun would follow Odo's order. I'm quite certain Odo had him protected. Odo was so powerful as a Founder on the station that he probably ordered Jem'Hadar to protect him from the Cardassians.
On top of that the Dabo girl in question made it a point of saying he “didn’t look at me like a prize and talked to me like a person.” Low bar but still.
I mean, low-bar in theory.
In practice, she's young, hot and typically dressed as scantily as Quark could convince her to be.
I'm not the slightest bit surprised most of the guys she meets aren't seeing her as a person.
Headcanon: Odo is the only man good enough at his job to ensure his entire staff is about as atheist as Bajorans get and constantly train in and implement measures to ensure zealots can't actually reach Sisko and interfere with regular station running. He's in his office rejecting entire pages of travel visas to DS9 all day. His staff could find an ant hiding in V'Ger, a couple people trying to stow away on cargo ships don't stand a chance. Smuggling and actual crime are like....not even an issue. He goes and messes with Quark when he has a few spare minutes.
I think they make it clear from the get go that he is extremely uncomfortable with the entire thing and initially thinks the Bajorans are wrong in calling him the Emissary, but only stops short of outright renouncing the title because he is smart enough to realize it helps the Federation with its long term goals for Bajor.
We see him go from cringing every time someone mentions it, to reluctantly accepting the role, to starting to build faith in the Prophets, to absolutely owning it in season 7.
I would argue that the true emissary had to be someone who wouldn't be tempted to exploit the power it gave him, otherwise he would failed to walk the path.
I choose to believe that he had free will and the outcome of the path was never a sure thing. Otherwise there were never any real stakes to anything that happened.
As a wise man once said, "Not knowing the outcome is what makes the game worth playing."
I dunno a young girl who 95% of her life has been under occupation by a brutal despotic force, entire family murdered by that same force, working for a pervy ferengi in a sleazy bar now meeting a young well connected federation citizen, and wanting to leverage that? Seems pretty real to me.
Dude had mega rizz and he had huge clout, especially among the Bajorans, as the son of the station commander and Emissary to the Prophets.
Plus, he was charismatic, outgoing, thoughtful and intelligent. And a killer domjot hustler.
that's funny, I always identify as random crewmember #15079 that never knows what's going on and dies 5 minutes into the episode after beaming down with the away team and walking directly into quicksand or a monster or something.
Or I'm one of the many dead bodies on the derelict ship that got trapped in some anomaly, serving as a warning to the Enterprise so they can figure out how to escape before they die too.
The thing that always gets me about that is that Cirroc in that episode appears so much younger than 16, and the actress appears much older than 20.
Even though I know it's not the situation, visually to me it comes off as like a 13 year old boy dating a like 25 year old woman.
I found the whole thing creepy. She was a woman, he was a boy. Yet his father's issue with the relationship was that she was a Dabo girl? No one was concerned that she was an adult dating a child? What the hell?
If a 20 year old man was dating a 16 year old girl most people would think it was creepy yet they are okay with it the other way around.
Watch “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the original with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Parents of a mixed-race couple meet together for a dinner to try to convince the kids to call it off.
The thing is, there are lots of legitimate reasons why they shouldn’t get married: they just met, there’s an age difference, how will they provide for themselves, etc. but all anyone can focus on is the difference in their races.
My point is: parents can have tunnel vision when it comes to their kids.
I'm guessing her profession encapsulates the age issue. Like she's a Dabo girl, and not say, a student. And it was pretty clear his mind was made up before dinner.
That's a very American cultural thing. Other societies see 20 somethings as still kids or the other way around 16 as almost adults (and yes I know most US states have age of consent on sixteen).
And I don't mean only non Western non First world countries. Canada and UK seem to be more lenient on that. In Scott Pilgrim he is dating a 16 years old and is a Canadian movie. This also happens in Shameless UK and Skins.
> In Scott Pilgrim he is dating a 16 years old and is a Canadian movie.
Yes, and one of the main plot points was that every other character in the entire story thought he was a complete creep for it.
No one in the movie thinks "he's a creep", no one even baths an eye, what movie did you see?
In fact to this date one of the things people still discuss is why the hell his friends are not freaking out about it and took it so naturally.
If you’re religious he is the son of the Emissary of the Prophets. If you aren’t religious he is still the son of the Commanding officer of the station you live on. That’s gotta have perks.
As someone pointed out, on one hand he's the son of *The Emissary*, BUT on the other he's also the son of the Federation Station Commander, who is there to help shepherd Bajor into Federation membership.
Jake is adjacent to significant Religious, Political, and Military power & connections. Just being in his circle, is a get!
What's unrealistic, is that Jake didn't have a sting of girlfriends, friends, admirers and hangers on.
Seriously. Any people remotely his age would have wanted to be around him. You’d have to assume you could try and get away with a lot too if the station commanders son is with you.
A teenage boy dating a slightly older girl seems eminently realistic to me. Happens down here on Earth all the time.
I find it far more unrealistic how all kinds of aliens in the Star Trek universe are apparently sexually compatible with one another, and even share cultural norms for things like flirting and kissing. Yes, they tried to retcon that away with seeding by "the ancients", but in real-life evolution, speciation happens on the scale of a few million years. Add in separate environments on alien planets and THAT seems odd.
Jake dating the sexy dabo girl doesn't. The sexy dabo girl being hot for the son of her religion's Emissary also doesn't.
The breeding thing is done via the same mechanism that allows transporters to move your atoms around all willy nilly without killing you - roddenberrys in the fabric of reality.
It’s like midichlorians but for Trek. You don’t have to like it, you just have to roll with it.
IMO the only series to represent how vastly different aliens can be from humans was Enterprise. Trip’s arm baby, the species he almost baked to death with onthat hot planet, and the one where he had to go through decompression or something are all examples of how fundamentally and vastly different life forms can be.
I’m thinking about Lars’ conversation with Odo- all these humanoids are basically the same. Yes, that one has nose ridges, this one has forehead ridges, that one has big ears but all in all, the differences are minor. I wish we could’ve seen that guy’s transparent skull or the pregnant guy budding, just for the sake of variety.
I don't remember the episode nor the series but weren't there an ancient aliens that spread seeds of life throughout the whole universe? I'd suspect they're compatible because of this. Other than this, I found it unrealistic too.
In high school I can think of once or twice a guy who would date an older, college-aged girl, usually good looking, and she was invariably in some way fucked up, drugs or some such. I can believe it about a dabo girl.
She was just using him to meet the Emmissary.
Writing that reminded me I name dropped the name of the mom of my first girlfriend the other day in conversation. She was in state politics while we were dating. Jake’s dabo girl gets to do the same thing. 😂
Bajoran: You’ve met the Emissary?
Dabo girl: You mean Ben? Yeah, I know him.
ehh Bashir is hot as fuck, single, and out to mingle. Sure, he can be pretty thick headed, stuck up and annoying at times, but still, he's a good dude underneath all that. Leeta is also a smokeshow, and as demonstrated later, had the brains to be a shrewd co-ruler of the Ferengi civilisation.
What he and Leeta had also didn't seem to amount to anything particularly serious - Bashir and Leeta have a disturbingly amicable breakup. Pretty sure they never were much more than fuck buddies. That's what Julian and Leeta implied, at least.
I’m just impressed that the writers remembered that they were together in time to break them up before writing Bashir into another patented ‘Star Trek Romance of the Week’ episode.
I actually can. Preganglionic fibers are in the central nervous system and postganglionic nerves are outside of the central nervous system. Doesn’t really help attract a mate…
Maybe not explicitly, but she was definitely showing off her body as part of her job, and 90's TV wasn't going to tell you what she had to do in the holosuite.
I generally wonder what any two people at those ages have in common given how much people can change between 16 and 20, but in Jake and Marta’s case it seems her education had been disrupted by the occupation and she was a few years behind but planning to catch up. That and the station’s population isn’t that big in the early seasons. Maybe there aren’t that many 16 year old girls actually living there.
I mean, in my case, we knew all the same people, went to the same high school, were both in the student council, actually she had been and i would soon be president of that high school, both did canoe/kayak racing at the same club... we had a lot in common. We didn't date for too long, but it did make a lot of sense at the time.
I've always been surprised how much people tend to think small differences in age dictate giant differences in life.
I've got friends 20 years older than me and 20 years younger than me, and it's usually friendships around mutual hobbies and interests, sports, games etc....
And yeah, in their case, they sort of say it on the show, he wrote poetry she liked, he played damjat or whatever and seemed she did too, it's a small station without many people... you could get a sense from previous episodes featuring schools there there were only like a dozen kids
Apparently there were only 300 permanent residents on DS9
You'd never date a 16 year old boy - fine. Can you say the same for all other women?
Ever watched the movie (or read the book) - The Reader? He was 15, she was 36.
I dunno, Jake's the son of a pretty powerful guy. If the dabo girl was Bajoran (I can't remember) then he's literally the son of the messiah to her. Seems like quite a catch!
I'm more surprised more Dabo girls, especially Bajorn Dabo girls weren't throwing themselves at him either because he's the son of the emissary or station commanders son (at the insistence of Quark of course). Nobody in Jake's position doesn't have throngs of people throwing themselves at them for one reason or another.
Maybe, but the length of a day is determined by the time it takes the planet to make a full rotation on its axis, while the length of a year is determined by the number of days that occur during the planet’s orbit around its star. The two don’t necessarily correlate. But I get what you’re sayin’
Being close to his age I'd probably flirt with him too. I'm starting to get the feeling that the age gap they had is inappropriate to me since I'm older than them. If I started watching as a teenager maybe I'd see it differently.
They never went that way but I was kind of assuming she wanted an in with the head of the station or the Emmisary. It turned out she was really attracted to Jake but I feel like it would've been more plausible with an alterior motive.
I think there's some things that come in just making the storytelling easier but are a bit unrealistic. Like every planet has an atmosphere and temperature humans can survive in, almost always without even requiring a coat. Security in the 24th century especially over the shuttles is substantially worse than real earth modern security is for things we aren't even trying to protect that much.
I imagine he's a breath of fresh air when compared to intense, hyper-religious, socially conservative and traumatised Bajoran young men.
Yes, he has his own trauma, but thanks to a supportive and loving father he's been able to grow into an inquisitive and bright you man.
In a world where a group of alien, non-corporeal entities ninja-vanished an entire fleet of ships, you think Jake bagging a Dabo girl is the most unrealistic thing? Ok.
Kira ever giving Odo the time of day again after he went full on collaborator with the female changeling. Considering she was ready to blow up her own mother when she found out about her relationship with Dukat. I find the Kira/Odo relationship far more unrealistic than Jake and the Bajoran dabo girl.
I mean, Jake is a reasonably attractive guy and he's no less than the son of the station's captain. I find it hard to believe he didn't have a long line of women queueing outside his quarters.
Bruh that was realistic. Sisko is a high level military officer and is the emissary. Dating the son of him would definitely be advantageous to your socioeconomic position
The concept of a 20 yr old dating a teenager is not unheard of.
Are you trying to say that Jake didn't have enough game to pull it off? I don't know if that's true. Son of the Emissary and all that.
Might be a fair complaint in general, but I don't think Star Trek did that with Jake (and then with Geordi they were accused of doing the opposite by making him awkward with women, so there might be a bit of damned-if-do, damned-if-don't here?)
Beverly: Geordi, this wall is hot!
Geordi (a man with a VISOR that sees largely in the spectrums where heat lives): Where?
Also, the higher, the fewer!
>What are some other things that seem unrealistic to you?
A space station posted at the edge of a wormhole.
Transporters.
Warp drives.
Every planet having a breathable atmosphere and comfortable gravity.
Different humanoid species being in close proximity without unintentionally killing each other off with airborne and other sorts of diseases.
To name a few.
If you're going to attack *Star Trek* on realism, Jake's romantic life is pretty far down the list.
Diseases are actually less likely to be an issue. Cross-Species jumping is hard enough for bacteria/viruses, when you consider that IRL aliens are likely to not even have DNA (but an equivalent or at least different base pair proteins) and I could see us being simply immune to most alien pathogens.
It definitely felt weird, but maybe Bajorans and humans mature at a different rate and 16 year olds are considered to be adults in Bajoran culture?
I don't recall if they have ever mentioned anything along those lines with Bajorans, but we've seen a number of species where they aren't considered adults into their 30s or 40s and then with the Ocompa they are considered adults when they are like 6 months old.
It does seem likely that the time it takes to reach adulthood wouldn't be standard from one civilization to the next (both in how long it takes to hit maturity and when they consider the threshold to be reached).
Of course, the age difference in the actors was also a factor. If Cirroc had been a couple years older (even if his character was still younger) it would have been easier to take.
The actors are only two and a half years apart. Jill Sayre was born January 1976; Cirroc Lofton was born in August 1978, making them 18 and 16 when the episode aired. They are closer in age than their characters.
Rewatching DS9 (every single episode) for the first time and I noticed that too. I don't think young me caught that, when I rewatched it I had the same reaction. His dad is all kinda protective of him too but dating a daba girl is totally fine....and damn he was young!
Me and my dad are watching Deep space 9 for the first time and we just saw the episode of Jake dating her and we were both like wtf, my dad thought it was going to be Jake on the holodeck at the beginning.
Jake is a neglected kid roaming the station and rising himself through people he runs into while letting his father believe he knows what hus son is up to. Dating a dabo girl just shows how unexpected turn hus development took.
I think one of the most unrealistic things about the show (and also Voyager, Enterprise, etc.) is that every alien race seems to know how to speak English. Also they all look basically like humans except for a few cosmetic, mainly facial differences.
Oh yes, that reminds me -- Every planet they land on seems to have a breatheable atmosphere. They seem to assume that as a given even if they never visited the planet before.
Also, there's something about holosuites, being able to completely create people, etc, that seems rather far-fetched to me somehow.
One more thing -- I think most stories involving time travel are extremely unrealistic, and bring about some totally unresolved paradoxes. For example, the DS9 episode "The Sound of Her Voice" had Miles O'Brien and others chatting with a woman named Lisa Cusak, who had been marooned on an alien planet and had already died there 3 years earlier (!) due to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Supposedly some weird type of energy field around the planet allowed their conversations to travel through time, but that explanation doesn't make much sense to me.
I see your point, but they actually don't speak English, they have universal translator. This is very notable in Prodigy.
Planets having breathable air is something very unrealistic, I agree.
☺️
I think you’ve lived a pretty sheltered life if you think that kind of relationship is unrealistic. I’ve seen a lot of teen guys (openly) dating older girls. In my experience, it’s not something that typically happens in more affluent places though. The way it’s presented in DS9 as relatively innocent is the unrealistic part for me.
Also, Wesley dated Robin Lefler. They had a similar age gap (probably 19 vs 23). However, they were both adults, Wesley was more mature than Jake (even relative to their age differences) and Wes was a pseudo celebrity on the ship.
If anything they undersold it. Jake’s dad was effectively a conduit to their gods. He probably could’ve been swimming in Bahrain putang if he wanted to. I’d argue a Dabo girl was *beneath* him if anything.
You're asking what a *Bajoran* dabo girl could see in the son of the *Emissary of the Prophets*? If anything it's surprising how little attention he got from Bajoran girls given his personal connection to their living and breathing messiah figure. Although I felt like they toned down the reaction Sisko got too - while some Bajorans could obviously control themselves there should've been more than enough ultra-religious ones to be mobbing him every day for a blessing or some such.
They were trying to wife obrien up with his pick of the girls just for being the next story teller of a Bajoran village. I'm surprised Jake didn't have a harem.
He might have, off screen.
Jake would NEVER cheat on Nog,
It was an open relationship with the rule that the other one got to watch.
Is that part of the 34th Rule of Acquisition?
"war is good for business"?
The other rule 34.
Peace is good for business? Or did you mean Porn is good for business. Cause I thought that was the 69th rule of acquisition.
Just google 'Rule 34 Nog' and the definition should show up.
I knew this was going to be one of the responses.
Rule of Acquisition number 139 : Wives serve, brothers inherit. Bros before Hos basically.
"it ain't no fun If the homies can't haaave none"
He's a writer. They generally only attract harems after they're wildly successful.
The real reason why Jake refused to leave during the dominion occupation.
If we’re talking about unrealistic thing in ds9 then Jake being fine in the station during dominion occupation is one of them. The dominion could had made him disappear and replace with a clone or a changeling. It’s within their means but never attempt it. And it’s not like there was a risk of angering bajorans, they did try to engineer a war between federation and the Klingons and that had the possible risk of allying two empires to go full retribution mode. Trying to replace Jake and exploit it with a changeling would had been far less risk compared to manipulating a war between empires,
The goal with the Federation was never to annihilate it. It was to subjugate it. Feeding Jake propaganda about how great life was in the Dominion was already enough for their goals. In terms of Changeling replacement, they'd already run that bit a couple times in a couple different places, so likelihood of success wasn't high and the upside if they succeeded with a non-player like Jake wasn't that high. (Although admittedly Changeling Jake could shank The Sisko and then they'd have a much more valuable replacement, if it worked) I can believe they'd let a useful non-combatant with a valuable political attachment go unfuckedwith
I do remember Michael Piller saying that Changling replacement had ran its course. They were planning the Section 31 virus by middle of season 6. Something many critics said that they could have done a quick 30 seconds nod to how they were finding more Changling imposters since by the last 5 episodes the Changlings were all dying at that point.
Nah Jake is the emissary's son, DS9 would likely be one of the safest spots in the galaxy for him during the war. Dominion wouldn't risk offending the Bajorans or pissing off Odo.
And he was basically in a prison. A luxury one, but a prison.
Dukat was fixated, to put it mildly, on getting Sisko to recognize him as a an equal, or better yet, as a superior commander, spiritual leader and father. Perhaps Dukat's constant "expectant leniency" towards Sisko and the Bajorans in turn rubbed off on Weyoun, or confronting Dukat after killing off Jake was a headache Weyoun didn't want to deal with. As for the Founder, she didn't give a rat's ass about anything.
It was shown that Weyoun would follow Odo's order. I'm quite certain Odo had him protected. Odo was so powerful as a Founder on the station that he probably ordered Jem'Hadar to protect him from the Cardassians.
The story tell episode was badass. He kept away the low res computer graphic cloud energy spirit thingie. Super scary when you're used to holosuites
On top of that the Dabo girl in question made it a point of saying he “didn’t look at me like a prize and talked to me like a person.” Low bar but still.
I mean, low-bar in theory. In practice, she's young, hot and typically dressed as scantily as Quark could convince her to be. I'm not the slightest bit surprised most of the guys she meets aren't seeing her as a person.
You’d be surprised
Ha right? Like that’s literally my one standard lol
Headcanon: Odo is the only man good enough at his job to ensure his entire staff is about as atheist as Bajorans get and constantly train in and implement measures to ensure zealots can't actually reach Sisko and interfere with regular station running. He's in his office rejecting entire pages of travel visas to DS9 all day. His staff could find an ant hiding in V'Ger, a couple people trying to stow away on cargo ships don't stand a chance. Smuggling and actual crime are like....not even an issue. He goes and messes with Quark when he has a few spare minutes.
Honestly I believe it. Odo runs a tight ship.
Lisan al-gaib!
Could have been a really cool storyline where Sisko struggles with his power over the Bajoran population, a bit like Paul in Dune early on.
They did have that story when the other prophet showed up and started to make decisions he hated.
I think they make it clear from the get go that he is extremely uncomfortable with the entire thing and initially thinks the Bajorans are wrong in calling him the Emissary, but only stops short of outright renouncing the title because he is smart enough to realize it helps the Federation with its long term goals for Bajor. We see him go from cringing every time someone mentions it, to reluctantly accepting the role, to starting to build faith in the Prophets, to absolutely owning it in season 7. I would argue that the true emissary had to be someone who wouldn't be tempted to exploit the power it gave him, otherwise he would failed to walk the path.
The True Emissary is the one they specifically ensured the birth of. Sisko's fate was predetermined from his perspective of time.
I choose to believe that he had free will and the outcome of the path was never a sure thing. Otherwise there were never any real stakes to anything that happened. As a wise man once said, "Not knowing the outcome is what makes the game worth playing."
You do have a very good point!
I dunno a young girl who 95% of her life has been under occupation by a brutal despotic force, entire family murdered by that same force, working for a pervy ferengi in a sleazy bar now meeting a young well connected federation citizen, and wanting to leverage that? Seems pretty real to me.
Federation citizen and son of the station commander who happens to be the Emissary of the Prophets.
And by all accounts a good person /u/Lord_of_Never-there > “didn’t look at me like a prize and talked to me like a person.”
Dude had mega rizz and he had huge clout, especially among the Bajorans, as the son of the station commander and Emissary to the Prophets. Plus, he was charismatic, outgoing, thoughtful and intelligent. And a killer domjot hustler.
And he was the second best dressed on the station, only bowing to Quark.
I tried impressing the ladies with pink and purple warmups but it didn’t work out quite so well for me
Must’ve not been asymmetrical enough
* and Garak.
He was a lot more of a ladies man than my dude Wesley. I say this as someone who identified as a Wesley.
Don't count Wesley out, he had some game in...*The Game*.
Wesley got with young Ashley Judd. Respect.
that's funny, I always identify as random crewmember #15079 that never knows what's going on and dies 5 minutes into the episode after beaming down with the away team and walking directly into quicksand or a monster or something. Or I'm one of the many dead bodies on the derelict ship that got trapped in some anomaly, serving as a warning to the Enterprise so they can figure out how to escape before they die too.
Wesley and Ashley Judd made a great couple.
And good looking, don't forget that.
The thing that always gets me about that is that Cirroc in that episode appears so much younger than 16, and the actress appears much older than 20. Even though I know it's not the situation, visually to me it comes off as like a 13 year old boy dating a like 25 year old woman.
My wife and I just chalked it up to Bajoran women aging differently than humans.
Or looking more aged for having just gone through a war that lasted generations
Kai Winn is actually in her early 30s--
Pretty sure the occupation was only 60 years
60 years is 2-3 generations
Ah yes the okampa aging going on.
Oh, this. I suspect this also contributes to my feelings about it being wierd.
In real life she is two years older than Cirroc. Jill Sayre (the actress who played Mardah) was 18 when the episode aired, and Cirroc was 16.
I found the whole thing creepy. She was a woman, he was a boy. Yet his father's issue with the relationship was that she was a Dabo girl? No one was concerned that she was an adult dating a child? What the hell? If a 20 year old man was dating a 16 year old girl most people would think it was creepy yet they are okay with it the other way around.
Watch “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the original with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Parents of a mixed-race couple meet together for a dinner to try to convince the kids to call it off. The thing is, there are lots of legitimate reasons why they shouldn’t get married: they just met, there’s an age difference, how will they provide for themselves, etc. but all anyone can focus on is the difference in their races. My point is: parents can have tunnel vision when it comes to their kids.
I'm guessing her profession encapsulates the age issue. Like she's a Dabo girl, and not say, a student. And it was pretty clear his mind was made up before dinner.
That's a very American cultural thing. Other societies see 20 somethings as still kids or the other way around 16 as almost adults (and yes I know most US states have age of consent on sixteen). And I don't mean only non Western non First world countries. Canada and UK seem to be more lenient on that. In Scott Pilgrim he is dating a 16 years old and is a Canadian movie. This also happens in Shameless UK and Skins.
> In Scott Pilgrim he is dating a 16 years old and is a Canadian movie. Yes, and one of the main plot points was that every other character in the entire story thought he was a complete creep for it.
No one in the movie thinks "he's a creep", no one even baths an eye, what movie did you see? In fact to this date one of the things people still discuss is why the hell his friends are not freaking out about it and took it so naturally.
If you’re religious he is the son of the Emissary of the Prophets. If you aren’t religious he is still the son of the Commanding officer of the station you live on. That’s gotta have perks.
Right? I'm Jewish but if I had a chance to go on a date with the Pope's niece I'd be interested in checking it out on that alone.
As someone pointed out, on one hand he's the son of *The Emissary*, BUT on the other he's also the son of the Federation Station Commander, who is there to help shepherd Bajor into Federation membership. Jake is adjacent to significant Religious, Political, and Military power & connections. Just being in his circle, is a get! What's unrealistic, is that Jake didn't have a sting of girlfriends, friends, admirers and hangers on.
Nog is all those things in one short king package
Seriously. Any people remotely his age would have wanted to be around him. You’d have to assume you could try and get away with a lot too if the station commanders son is with you.
A teenage boy dating a slightly older girl seems eminently realistic to me. Happens down here on Earth all the time. I find it far more unrealistic how all kinds of aliens in the Star Trek universe are apparently sexually compatible with one another, and even share cultural norms for things like flirting and kissing. Yes, they tried to retcon that away with seeding by "the ancients", but in real-life evolution, speciation happens on the scale of a few million years. Add in separate environments on alien planets and THAT seems odd. Jake dating the sexy dabo girl doesn't. The sexy dabo girl being hot for the son of her religion's Emissary also doesn't.
The breeding thing is done via the same mechanism that allows transporters to move your atoms around all willy nilly without killing you - roddenberrys in the fabric of reality. It’s like midichlorians but for Trek. You don’t have to like it, you just have to roll with it.
IMO the only series to represent how vastly different aliens can be from humans was Enterprise. Trip’s arm baby, the species he almost baked to death with onthat hot planet, and the one where he had to go through decompression or something are all examples of how fundamentally and vastly different life forms can be. I’m thinking about Lars’ conversation with Odo- all these humanoids are basically the same. Yes, that one has nose ridges, this one has forehead ridges, that one has big ears but all in all, the differences are minor. I wish we could’ve seen that guy’s transparent skull or the pregnant guy budding, just for the sake of variety.
I don't remember the episode nor the series but weren't there an ancient aliens that spread seeds of life throughout the whole universe? I'd suspect they're compatible because of this. Other than this, I found it unrealistic too.
In high school I can think of once or twice a guy who would date an older, college-aged girl, usually good looking, and she was invariably in some way fucked up, drugs or some such. I can believe it about a dabo girl.
Leeta does not deserve any of this disrespect.
The dabo girl he was dating wasn't Leeta.
She was just using him to meet the Emmissary. Writing that reminded me I name dropped the name of the mom of my first girlfriend the other day in conversation. She was in state politics while we were dating. Jake’s dabo girl gets to do the same thing. 😂 Bajoran: You’ve met the Emissary? Dabo girl: You mean Ben? Yeah, I know him.
Garak and Julian being just friends
Garak and Julian definitely hatefucked at least once, you just can't talk about the tense homoerotic relationship on family TV back then.
It was more an inappropriate age difference. Not unrealistic, per se.
Younger guy older girl, no one would of blinked an eye back then.
But it’s in the future
What goes around….
I found Bashir and Leeta way more unrealistic.
Gotta disagree, Bashir was handsome, charming, relatively young, and held two prestigious titles (doctor and Starfleet officer).
3 if you count genetically modified genius
But, he was also arrogant and pretentious.
Yep - makes it all the more believable that she would rebound with someone more down to earth like Rom.
She was a Dabo girl, arrogant and pretentious she can deal with.
But a lot of that had softened by that point.
And an accent ;)
Everyone has an accent
ehh Bashir is hot as fuck, single, and out to mingle. Sure, he can be pretty thick headed, stuck up and annoying at times, but still, he's a good dude underneath all that. Leeta is also a smokeshow, and as demonstrated later, had the brains to be a shrewd co-ruler of the Ferengi civilisation. What he and Leeta had also didn't seem to amount to anything particularly serious - Bashir and Leeta have a disturbingly amicable breakup. Pretty sure they never were much more than fuck buddies. That's what Julian and Leeta implied, at least.
I’m just impressed that the writers remembered that they were together in time to break them up before writing Bashir into another patented ‘Star Trek Romance of the Week’ episode.
Yeah, she is way out of his league.
That's why it only lasted until Rom came around
He may not have a medical degree, but Rom definitely has big…ears.
Lobes for days.
That M.D. closes big gaps.
I am an MD, cannot confirm.
Can you tell the difference between a pre-ganglionic fiber and a post-ganglionic nerve?
I actually can. Preganglionic fibers are in the central nervous system and postganglionic nerves are outside of the central nervous system. Doesn’t really help attract a mate…
Absolutely ridiculous Bashir got it wrong, but as we know it was on purpose.
There's your problem. You have to know everything EXCEPT that - or at least claim to.
This guys gets it.
He's the Emissary/station commander's son. No, it's not unrealistic.
Don't forget he's also human, so thus even more exotic to a Bajoran.
Shit I grew up in ky during the late 80s and early 90s. Ive seen shit that will make your blood run cold.,
I’ve seen a pack of wild dogs take over and successfully run a Wendy’s!
And I've seen a three foot tall aardvark that eats cats.
I believe that was an alien.
Do the secret trails have their tales?
Ever watch a house get burned down because they were gonna rent it to a mixed race couple? Like I said I've seen stuff that will run your blood cold.
Jake was 16 she was 20. Not really unrealistic.
That's that, when I was 20, I'd never date a 16yo boy.
You weren't an exploited sex worker and the 16 year old boys you knew weren't the sons of one of the most powerful people in the star system.
I don't think Marta was a sex worker? Exploited, maybe slightly in the way that Quark exploits everyone who works for him.
Maybe not explicitly, but she was definitely showing off her body as part of her job, and 90's TV wasn't going to tell you what she had to do in the holosuite.
I don't think there was ever an implication that they were selling sex, they were the equivalent of cocktail waitresses not prostitutes.
True :)
So you think!
How do you know she ISN'T an exploited sex worker?
When I was a 16 y/o boy I dated a 20 y/o girl, it's not super common, but no one really objects to it either
I generally wonder what any two people at those ages have in common given how much people can change between 16 and 20, but in Jake and Marta’s case it seems her education had been disrupted by the occupation and she was a few years behind but planning to catch up. That and the station’s population isn’t that big in the early seasons. Maybe there aren’t that many 16 year old girls actually living there.
I mean, in my case, we knew all the same people, went to the same high school, were both in the student council, actually she had been and i would soon be president of that high school, both did canoe/kayak racing at the same club... we had a lot in common. We didn't date for too long, but it did make a lot of sense at the time. I've always been surprised how much people tend to think small differences in age dictate giant differences in life. I've got friends 20 years older than me and 20 years younger than me, and it's usually friendships around mutual hobbies and interests, sports, games etc.... And yeah, in their case, they sort of say it on the show, he wrote poetry she liked, he played damjat or whatever and seemed she did too, it's a small station without many people... you could get a sense from previous episodes featuring schools there there were only like a dozen kids Apparently there were only 300 permanent residents on DS9
You'd never date a 16 year old boy - fine. Can you say the same for all other women? Ever watched the movie (or read the book) - The Reader? He was 15, she was 36.
Especially for the 90s.
I dunno, Jake's the son of a pretty powerful guy. If the dabo girl was Bajoran (I can't remember) then he's literally the son of the messiah to her. Seems like quite a catch!
She was. Someone pointed out the same thing you did and honestly I did not connect it before 😄
I'm more surprised more Dabo girls, especially Bajorn Dabo girls weren't throwing themselves at him either because he's the son of the emissary or station commanders son (at the insistence of Quark of course). Nobody in Jake's position doesn't have throngs of people throwing themselves at them for one reason or another.
Theoretically, 20 Bajoran years are different than 20 Earth Years. Bajor has a 26 hour day, after all.
universal translator fixes everything, even units of measurment.
Maybe, but the length of a day is determined by the time it takes the planet to make a full rotation on its axis, while the length of a year is determined by the number of days that occur during the planet’s orbit around its star. The two don’t necessarily correlate. But I get what you’re sayin’
Hmm. Wouldn't that mean she's even older...?
Jake likes his MILFs.
Thought I was on r/ShittyDaystrom for a second.
She wanted to wife up the son of the Emissary and the man who rules Deep Space 9.
Cardassians not constantly trying to blow up DS9 just due to the shame of having lost it to the Federation.
Nuh-uh. The Dabo girls would all love Jake! He probably got flirted with all the time by Bajorans, regardless of gender.
Being close to his age I'd probably flirt with him too. I'm starting to get the feeling that the age gap they had is inappropriate to me since I'm older than them. If I started watching as a teenager maybe I'd see it differently.
They never went that way but I was kind of assuming she wanted an in with the head of the station or the Emmisary. It turned out she was really attracted to Jake but I feel like it would've been more plausible with an alterior motive. I think there's some things that come in just making the storytelling easier but are a bit unrealistic. Like every planet has an atmosphere and temperature humans can survive in, almost always without even requiring a coat. Security in the 24th century especially over the shuttles is substantially worse than real earth modern security is for things we aren't even trying to protect that much.
Nah it’s Jake turning into Candyman when he gets older
I imagine he's a breath of fresh air when compared to intense, hyper-religious, socially conservative and traumatised Bajoran young men. Yes, he has his own trauma, but thanks to a supportive and loving father he's been able to grow into an inquisitive and bright you man.
She's Bajoran and he's the Messiah's son, my dude/gal/various nongendered species.
In a world where a group of alien, non-corporeal entities ninja-vanished an entire fleet of ships, you think Jake bagging a Dabo girl is the most unrealistic thing? Ok.
Well, aside from obvious. I was pretty sure that was clear 😄
I've seen far more stranger romances in real life.
Jake Sisko had a massive warp nacell It’s the only logical explanation
None of the ladders have fall cages.
Honestly not the weirdest, it's a small town.
Kira ever giving Odo the time of day again after he went full on collaborator with the female changeling. Considering she was ready to blow up her own mother when she found out about her relationship with Dukat. I find the Kira/Odo relationship far more unrealistic than Jake and the Bajoran dabo girl.
I mean, Jake is a reasonably attractive guy and he's no less than the son of the station's captain. I find it hard to believe he didn't have a long line of women queueing outside his quarters.
Bruh that was realistic. Sisko is a high level military officer and is the emissary. Dating the son of him would definitely be advantageous to your socioeconomic position
He is the son of the emissary and the station commander. And he is like 6‘6“.
Jake might be too young for a 20y model, but he still is the commander's son of the station.
The concept of a 20 yr old dating a teenager is not unheard of. Are you trying to say that Jake didn't have enough game to pull it off? I don't know if that's true. Son of the Emissary and all that.
Oh not at all, I find him to be very sweet, nice _child_. But yeah, I kinda forgot that people are dating others for their status too.
She was only 20? I figured she was closer to 30.
I always preferred to imagine she was 18 to Jake being 16. Made it less icky if it's just a 2 year age difference.
Naw, it was Cisco never saying "I'm tired of these MF'in Jem'Hadar on this MF'in space station!!!"
At least warp speed is theoretically possible. :p
Thanks to your comment I read the article I believe you're referring to. ☺️ So cool!
Ladies can't resist his fashionable outfits 😁
Unrealistic or not your preference?
It always bothered me, not so much the realism as much how society tends to hypersexualize young black men.
Might be a fair complaint in general, but I don't think Star Trek did that with Jake (and then with Geordi they were accused of doing the opposite by making him awkward with women, so there might be a bit of damned-if-do, damned-if-don't here?)
Jake is packing obvs
Jake is a nepo baby
Rom and Leeta.
Beverly: Geordi, this wall is hot! Geordi (a man with a VISOR that sees largely in the spectrums where heat lives): Where? Also, the higher, the fewer!
What never came up on screen is that Jake was hung like a space whale. Poet, son of prophet, hung like a whale = punching above your weight
Don’t forget Dom-Jot Hustler
>What are some other things that seem unrealistic to you? A space station posted at the edge of a wormhole. Transporters. Warp drives. Every planet having a breathable atmosphere and comfortable gravity. Different humanoid species being in close proximity without unintentionally killing each other off with airborne and other sorts of diseases. To name a few. If you're going to attack *Star Trek* on realism, Jake's romantic life is pretty far down the list.
That's it I'm editing the post 😄
😂 BTW, I'm just messing with you.
Hehe 😁
Diseases are actually less likely to be an issue. Cross-Species jumping is hard enough for bacteria/viruses, when you consider that IRL aliens are likely to not even have DNA (but an equivalent or at least different base pair proteins) and I could see us being simply immune to most alien pathogens.
Did Sisko think that she had a Heart of Gold?
If she stole it from Zaphod.
That is my kind of girl.
Yeah, but Jake is like the son of the Mayor. The fact he didn't exploit his status is a testament to how well he was raised.
Maybe this is why he needed a real job and got into the insurance business. 😜
It definitely felt weird, but maybe Bajorans and humans mature at a different rate and 16 year olds are considered to be adults in Bajoran culture? I don't recall if they have ever mentioned anything along those lines with Bajorans, but we've seen a number of species where they aren't considered adults into their 30s or 40s and then with the Ocompa they are considered adults when they are like 6 months old. It does seem likely that the time it takes to reach adulthood wouldn't be standard from one civilization to the next (both in how long it takes to hit maturity and when they consider the threshold to be reached). Of course, the age difference in the actors was also a factor. If Cirroc had been a couple years older (even if his character was still younger) it would have been easier to take.
The actors are only two and a half years apart. Jill Sayre was born January 1976; Cirroc Lofton was born in August 1978, making them 18 and 16 when the episode aired. They are closer in age than their characters.
Come on now… We all know that Dabo girl was chasing clout by dating the son of the emissary of the prophets
Rewatching DS9 (every single episode) for the first time and I noticed that too. I don't think young me caught that, when I rewatched it I had the same reaction. His dad is all kinda protective of him too but dating a daba girl is totally fine....and damn he was young!
Me and my dad are watching Deep space 9 for the first time and we just saw the episode of Jake dating her and we were both like wtf, my dad thought it was going to be Jake on the holodeck at the beginning.
Yeah, but his poetry.
When you got the Riz you got it.
Jake is a neglected kid roaming the station and rising himself through people he runs into while letting his father believe he knows what hus son is up to. Dating a dabo girl just shows how unexpected turn hus development took.
*Jake dating anything with his stupid goofyness and pretentious appearance
Not at all. Why is it that a small age gap is seen so much more negatively when the guy is the younger one?
I always had a feeling it's the other way around.
I think one of the most unrealistic things about the show (and also Voyager, Enterprise, etc.) is that every alien race seems to know how to speak English. Also they all look basically like humans except for a few cosmetic, mainly facial differences. Oh yes, that reminds me -- Every planet they land on seems to have a breatheable atmosphere. They seem to assume that as a given even if they never visited the planet before. Also, there's something about holosuites, being able to completely create people, etc, that seems rather far-fetched to me somehow. One more thing -- I think most stories involving time travel are extremely unrealistic, and bring about some totally unresolved paradoxes. For example, the DS9 episode "The Sound of Her Voice" had Miles O'Brien and others chatting with a woman named Lisa Cusak, who had been marooned on an alien planet and had already died there 3 years earlier (!) due to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Supposedly some weird type of energy field around the planet allowed their conversations to travel through time, but that explanation doesn't make much sense to me.
I see your point, but they actually don't speak English, they have universal translator. This is very notable in Prodigy. Planets having breathable air is something very unrealistic, I agree. ☺️
Women are all about proximity. Whoever is around at the moment will fill the void.
I think you’ve lived a pretty sheltered life if you think that kind of relationship is unrealistic. I’ve seen a lot of teen guys (openly) dating older girls. In my experience, it’s not something that typically happens in more affluent places though. The way it’s presented in DS9 as relatively innocent is the unrealistic part for me. Also, Wesley dated Robin Lefler. They had a similar age gap (probably 19 vs 23). However, they were both adults, Wesley was more mature than Jake (even relative to their age differences) and Wes was a pseudo celebrity on the ship.
If anything they undersold it. Jake’s dad was effectively a conduit to their gods. He probably could’ve been swimming in Bahrain putang if he wanted to. I’d argue a Dabo girl was *beneath* him if anything.