Do you all remember that time Julian Bashir was such a Nice Guy that he literally drove a woman to catatonia?

[jbk405]

I re-watched the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Chrysalis” last night, which features the return of the ‘Jack Pack’, a group of genetically engineered characters with personality disorders that had appeared in an earlier episode. The plot of the episode revolves around the attempt to ‘cure’ Sarina, whose disorder renders her functionally mute and unable to effectively process visual and aural stimuli.

After the procedure is a success and she comes out of her shell (More literally than in most uses of the term), Julian Bashir falls in love with her and (More importantly) what she represents.  He begins to woo her, viewing her as the solution to his lifetime of isolation, as the one woman that he can connect to through shared experiences and who can keep up with him intellectually, and he was able to come in and rescue her like a knight in shining armor.  It’s all so romantic…except it isn’t.  She doesn’t love him back.  Not only does she not love him, because of what she’s been through she’s not even sure if she can love somebody in the fashion that Julian wants.

And that’s it.  There isn’t some subplot throughout the episode of her turning evil because of the procedure, there aren’t any aliens manipulating events behind-the-scenes, she just doesn’t love him.  She’s fond of him, sure, and she’s grateful for what he’s done for her, but that’s where it ends.  She doesn’t want to hurt him, doesn’t want to be ungrateful, but the fact that she doesn’t love him when everything she knows says she ‘should’ love him (He’s handsome, smart, a doctor, and personally saved her from her previous hellish existence) nearly forces her back into her previous cataleptic state.

The episode does not end with Bashir winning her over, and it does not end with a promise that she’ll be back ‘when she’s ready’, it ends with her leaving the station and Bashir recognizing that he can’t pursue her because it is the very fact of his interest that is causing a problem.  He needs to back off not for his sake, but for hers.

This was an entire episode spent deconstructing the Nice Guy phenomenon (years before the Nice Guy phenomenon was even recognized as such), the concept of Affection Obligation, and Compulsive Heterosexuality.  All the reasons that a woman ‘should’ love a man, the lifelong conditioning, and the internalized struggle and conflict and self-doubt and self-hate that come when things don’t fit that mold.

And it didn’t even seem to know it was doing it.