One Small Scene: “Living on this station is torture for me, Doctor.”

“Living on this station is torture for me Doctor. The temperature is always too cold, the lights always too bright, every Bajoran on the station looks at me with loathing and contempt. So one day I decided I couldn’t live with it anymore, and I took the pain.”

Andrew Robinson’s suggestive smile and deliberate enigmatic air is entirely missing. The only Cardassian within what was a Cardiassian station. A species comparable to Prussians and Germans, with strong art deco aesthetics and arguably Objectivist and absolutist philosophies, In the first episode that delves into a hidden intelligence operation, it also becomes clear how bitter and isolated Garak is on the Federation occupied Deep Space 9. Obviously not a shopkeeper, but who has turned to abusing a military grade anti-torture implant simply to perform in the day-to-day.

“I created a device which allowed me to trigger the implant whenever I wanted. At first I only used it a few minutes a day, but then I began relying on it more and more until finally I just turned it on and never shut it off.”

Delivered as part of a monologue with no benign smile, or joking. And it’s one of the rare things that can be taken entirely at face value. The ironic nature of Garak’s torment is something a connoisseur like Tain, (his spymaster and in actuality his father) surely loved. To be trapped in an abandoned Cardassian station, with the hallmarks of your art overseen by cultural rivals, your people gone, and the majority of inhabitants being Bajorians who would -and do- happily assault you in times of crisis. For an expert interrogator to be tortured mentally, merely in being left to a civilian life while the temperature, lighting, likely even the smells and noise is uncanny and grating wore the man down to years of self-medicated drug addiction, and what’s more, without a soul knowing about it until it broke. It’s an incredibly harsh, complex situation explained in an episode happy to fill the audience with speculation and implication.

“Has it ever occurred to you that I might be getting exactly what I deserve? […] Oh please, Doctor! I’m suffering enough without having to listen to your smug Federation sympathy. And you think that because we have lunch together once a week you know me? You couldn’t even begin to fathom what I am capable of.”

The hissing tension, the spite layered in this insulting character possess weight, reflecting the cracking as much as the stock noises of cracking glass. Through the lies and the stories it’s the need to hate for hate’s sake. It’s not about truth, Garak has none. But the loathing for himself, for failure. And on some level, the inability to understand the doctor before him. Someone he ironically utterly misunderstands, with his own secrets and lies. Garak’s character isn’t as simple as emotion, truth or infiltration, nor is Bashir at the stage where he is an annoying character well written in that he possesses virtues and eventually a developing character that grows beyond being puerile and a grievance for the audience.

Addiction, pain, and dishonour in and of themselves are ripe for emotionally charged scenes and analysis. On Star Trek as well. But this one is worth discussion as the small gem it is for going against form, making people question subjectively depending upon perspective and their feeling at the time. It is dishonour and shame for a character and species most characters and audiences assume has none, it’s a withdrawal scene without being a ‘reefer madness’ metaphor or even a recreational drug at all. Culture shock for the sterile, argumentative and brutal Cardassian hegemony, with the most naïve Starfleet officer of the cast.

And it works because of the dialogue, the acting, and the fact that DS9 was focused on much more, and had the sense to encourage the audience to speculate more. When we see a character in pain what do we see? When a liar gives a confession how do we think, then re-think, and consider what the lies or the backstory reflects about us or himself? How do we feel considering the quips and the guileless smiles of a known rouge crack and the face is of a sneering alien fiend; even beneath that on the re-watch knowing this agonised operative is still controlled and doubtless hardly even knows which lies and truths are his own.

There is only the rambling and venomousness of the patient abusing his doctor, and the doctor too naïve, or dutiful, or loyal to consider any other course but treating him. This scene and ‘The Wire’ took an intriguing character and made him more, it set many arcs, factions and other character introductions into motions, and can be considered one of the high water marks of Robinson’s starting to shine in a role where we see him evolve from an exemplary doctor with naivety issues and a haphazard air mature into an exemplary doctor growing into his nature and dropping his fear of exceptionalism in the face of the war that will cause cynicism and catastrophe for themselves and their cultures both.

Star Trek: Deep Space 9. Season 2: ‘The Wire’. 1993.