Been too long since I saw the episode. Skimming the transcript, this is the quote I remembered:
It never occurred to me. This is what I am. Did you ever tell me that you are only a single being? Of course not. That was normal to you.
And since Beverly gives no real pushback to that, I kind of assumed that was a fair justification: that the Trill as they existed in this episode simply hasn’t had enough contact with other humanoids to know they were different.
But skimming the rest of the transcript, you’re right. Odan doesn’t correct anyone who refers to his previous work as that of his father. He clearly understands this difference and purposefully hides it.
Feel like that makes the episode less interesting. And especially worse retrospectively if we apply the obvious trans metaphor…
one of the defining attributes of startrek is inconsistency… in some cases, they didn’t even try, but it is hard to be consistent across multiple different shows even if you do try. and in this case it also did not help this was introduction of the concept (of trills as joint species) and all the lore we now take for granted was created later in ds9.
Been too long since I saw the episode. Skimming the transcript, this is the quote I remembered:
And since Beverly gives no real pushback to that, I kind of assumed that was a fair justification: that the Trill as they existed in this episode simply hasn’t had enough contact with other humanoids to know they were different.
But skimming the rest of the transcript, you’re right. Odan doesn’t correct anyone who refers to his previous work as that of his father. He clearly understands this difference and purposefully hides it.
Feel like that makes the episode less interesting. And especially worse retrospectively if we apply the obvious trans metaphor…
one of the defining attributes of startrek is inconsistency… in some cases, they didn’t even try, but it is hard to be consistent across multiple different shows even if you do try. and in this case it also did not help this was introduction of the concept (of trills as joint species) and all the lore we now take for granted was created later in ds9.