Now before you go and get insulted, I'll try to explain myself a bit better (not that this has ever helped in the past to keep people from getting insulted).
Lately I've been reading a blogger's look at DS9 after he's rewatched it since the first time since it first aired: Link.
Why am I posting something about DS9 in the TnT forum? I have one excerpt in particuliar I'd like to share with you:
It's an axiom of television writing that romance, and specifically romantic pursuit, is interesting, but established relationships, and most especially marriages, are boring. Perhaps because it was generally strongest when telling stories about the conventional and the mundane, on Deep Space Nine the reverse was true. Its romantic plotlines were usually obvious and uninspired (and occasionally offensive), but its depictions of long-term romantic relationships were winning and, yes, romantic.
Dax and Worf come together in the most insipid of ways, and the fifth season episodes that focus on their courtship are tiresome and in some cases ("Let He Who is Without Sin") borderline unwatchable. Once they marry, however, the writing for their relationship achieves a whole new level. If previously there had been a sense that the romance between the two characters was overwhelming its participants, that they were being forced into standard romantic templates whether their personalities suited those templates or not (for instance, the wedding imperiled at the last minute in "You Are Cordially Invited"), the scenes and episodes that focus on them after their marriage truly seem to be about Worf and Dax, and the entity that they create together. The most obvious example is "Change of Heart," which for my money is the most romantic hour Deep Space Nine ever produced. Worf and Dax feel like themselves, and yet there's clearly something more to them, a togetherness which they are only beginning to explore and appreciate. In other episodes--the dinner scene in "Resurrection," the babysitting subplot in "Time's Orphan"--they are comfortable with one another, and that comfort extends to their interactions with others. It's clear that marriage agrees with them and that it makes them happy--which only makes it so much more tragic when Jadzia dies.
There's also Keiko and Miles as far as established relationships being plenty interesting and romantic.
Some of you might still be wondering what this has to do with TnT. The point I'm trying to drive home here is that there have been plenty of past examples where even in Trek, established relationships have been dramatic, romantic, and interesting, despite this prevailant attitude that says either only the pursuit is any interesting (which is why I feel TnT was artificially dragged out in the series and continues to be in the books), or that romance and Trek (or even sci fi as a genre) just don't mix (which I feel is mainly because of how sucky Trek writers tend to be in the pursuit stage in the relationship). As DS9 showed us, this is just plain untrue. Yeah, it means jack and squat to say now that TnT really should've gotten together and been an established item in the beginning of season 4 (in keeping with the direction that had been started in Countdown with Trip's promise to be "all ears" after T'Pol's subtle request for him to do so) rather than being split up in the contrived manner they were in Home and later at the end of the Vulcan arc, or even that they should've been mature about what hapepned in Harbinger, but there's nothing to be done about it. What can I say? I just feel better to have my viewpoint vindicated by someone else outside of the community, even if it isn't about TnT in particular. There's also a small part of me that wishes the authors and editors responsible for producing the new book series would read and heed what I've said here, but I highly doubt it. And no, I don't post this to spoil anyone's enjoyment of the books, I simply want to let it be known that we really could be getting TnT together and it'd probably be better than the angst that continues to artificially force the two of them apart. Yeah, there's something sad in seeing unrequetted love, but it gets old and worn out after a while.
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