These episodes are some of the worst of DS9.
Statistical Probabilities firstly fetishes mental illness. It really plays to this TV stereotype of anyone with autism or similar is some savant, quirkl but excellent. I know these people do exist, that things like autism affect people in different ways... but TV makes this super-excellence the norm. That you couldn't have someone genuinely with a mental issue or developmental issue without being funny, or sexy, or quirky... but most of all very very clever.
They don't just make them clever, they make them absurd. Like watching 20 seconds of a person could let them work out their daughter was killed by their best friend etc. eugh.
And if they were so brilliant Starfleet would have them locked in a room analysing every piece of footage and video recording. They'd be milked for every bit of insight they could offer.
Then Chrysalis. I don't know why they felt compelled to bring them back, but they did.. and Bashir gets creepy.
He's always struck me as pretty level headed but this woman is barely saying her first words and he's in there trying to fuck her. He kind of addresses the dodgyness later in the episode and so does she saying she's not sure how to handle it, but it doesn't make it right. And she shouldn't have been put in that position by a senior Stafleet medical officer who was caring for her. She doesn't suddenly become this fully functional adult able to cope with fending off the dodgy doctor.
It's so out of character to me as he's always been decent. And I can't write it off to a simple error in judgement, it's dodgy and exploitative.
I admit my view might be now more influenced by the fact that Hollywood loved Poor Things where adult men fuck a baby in an adult woman's body. And there are shades of it here. Yes she's an adult, but she has not developed normally. She's barely been speaking for five minutes.
A more compelling angle would be one of more fatherlyness, and perhaps she wants to go off and explore the world and he has to let her go as basically he's released her from her confines. That after failing to save Jadzia, failing to save the Jem'hadar and other issues he's finally had a success but sees it wander off. Maybe... I dunno. But not immediately moving in on her basically.
Statistical Probabilities firstly fetishes mental illness. It really plays to this TV stereotype of anyone with autism or similar is some savant, quirkl but excellent. I know these people do exist, that things like autism affect people in different ways... but TV makes this super-excellence the norm. That you couldn't have someone genuinely with a mental issue or developmental issue without being funny, or sexy, or quirky... but most of all very very clever.
They don't just make them clever, they make them absurd. Like watching 20 seconds of a person could let them work out their daughter was killed by their best friend etc. eugh.
And if they were so brilliant Starfleet would have them locked in a room analysing every piece of footage and video recording. They'd be milked for every bit of insight they could offer.
Then Chrysalis. I don't know why they felt compelled to bring them back, but they did.. and Bashir gets creepy.
He's always struck me as pretty level headed but this woman is barely saying her first words and he's in there trying to fuck her. He kind of addresses the dodgyness later in the episode and so does she saying she's not sure how to handle it, but it doesn't make it right. And she shouldn't have been put in that position by a senior Stafleet medical officer who was caring for her. She doesn't suddenly become this fully functional adult able to cope with fending off the dodgy doctor.
It's so out of character to me as he's always been decent. And I can't write it off to a simple error in judgement, it's dodgy and exploitative.
I admit my view might be now more influenced by the fact that Hollywood loved Poor Things where adult men fuck a baby in an adult woman's body. And there are shades of it here. Yes she's an adult, but she has not developed normally. She's barely been speaking for five minutes.
A more compelling angle would be one of more fatherlyness, and perhaps she wants to go off and explore the world and he has to let her go as basically he's released her from her confines. That after failing to save Jadzia, failing to save the Jem'hadar and other issues he's finally had a success but sees it wander off. Maybe... I dunno. But not immediately moving in on her basically.
