#deep space nine the die is cast

[bagheerita]

I reread Julius Caesar after watching IC/TDIC and I have a question: At the beginning of the play you meet a bunch of random citizens on the street, and the most prominent of these is the Cobbler, who has a very Garak-esque "who me? I certainly did not insult you with word play, I'm just innocently doing my job sir" vibe.

In "Improbable Cause" when Sisko calls the Romulans, the woman he talks to literally says, "That would be Mister Garak. A cobbler, I believe" before Sisko corrects her.

...Was that a reference on purpose???

Anyway, the two part episode begins and ends with referencing the play. In his conversation with Bashir, the part that Garak chooses to critique is the fact that Caeser didn't see the betrayal coming (he says: "Supposedly, this man is supposed to be the leader of a great empire, a brilliant military tactician, and yet he can't see what's going on under his own nose." which is like literally my entire critique of tain as a character lmao) Obviously this is important to the plot because Tain is Caeser: the one who doesn't see "Lovok"'s betrayal coming.

But like... I want more. Was there any part of the play that Garak did like? If Tain is Caesar that kind of thematically makes Garak Antony ("When Caesar says, 'Do this' it is perform'd."), but given that he later quotes Cassius, Cassius is the most paranoid and melancholic of the characters, and the assassins claim to be working for the betterment of the state, it seems likely that Garak identifies more with that faction? Though I'm sure he finds the concept of the "republic" quite silly and all of the characters overdramatic, even by his standards. I mean, who even assassinates someone is broad daylight in front of literally hundreds of witnesses? How unprofessional.

Not entirely Shakespeare related but nested within the two-parter, the "The Die Is Cast" also has a smaller bookend in that Garak and Tain's first conversation in the episode is about Doctor Parmak, in the context of who Garak used to be and how good Garak was at his job. (For the purposes of this specific comparison, I like that he tells Tain: "Oh, I learned from the best.")

Their last real interaction in the episode (that Tain is entirely mentally present for anyway) is this exchange:

TAIN: How could this be? What could have happened? GARAK: I'm afraid the fault, dear Tain, is not in our stars but in ourselves. TAIN: What? GARAK: Just something I learned from Doctor Bashir.

So they basically start the episode with Tain saying "do you remember when you used to eat doctors for breakfast?" and end it with Garak saying "I eat lunch with them now."

[skybson]

3x21 - The Die Is Cast

[skymallnine]

DS9 The Die is Cast has such a wild arc because the intro is like “🌸 *sighs* 💐 when shall my husband return from the war” and meanwhile said husband is doing a torture.

[last-of-the-independents]

ANDREW ROBINSON as ELIM GARAK in DEEP SPACE NINE, S3.E21 - The Die Is Cast (1995)

[dangerousconnoisseurdonut]

Hey folks, I'm writing my Vulcan exchange fic and I've gotten to a point where Keiko found out her husband celebrated Julian leaving the station and she is pissed.

I actually see Julian getting along with Keiko, though not to the point he does with Miles or Garak (who is also a bestie of Keiko's since she loves hearing about the plants of Cardassia and hearing about his uncle growing Endosian orchids when it should have been impossible).

So I'm sending out a call for help: please, all fans of Keiko who got unfairly shafted by the show, give me some thoughts on how the two were friends and the things they did. I already have that Keiko would use Julian as a sounding board and he learns he's just meant to sit there and let Keiko vent when Miles does something insensitive, and maybe she saw him reading an article on medicinal plants or he came to her about them and the two just started talking. Please, any little tidbits you can send my way would help the story as I simply can't believe that everyone found Julian intolerable in the first three seasons (this takes place after The Die is cast and The Adversary but before Way of the Warrior).

[lady-lazarus-13]

Letter from Mila - a ficlet

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Category: F/M

Relationship: Mila Garak/Enabran Tain

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply (but look over the tags!!!!)

Status: Complete - Chapter 2/2 (1,743 words)

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66324469/chapters/171007795

Summary:

When Tain does not return, Mila prepares for the inevitable. She writes a letter to her son.

--

I got inspired by this Tumblr post by @abigbagofnope. Thank you so much @horrorfilmlesbian (furyofthetimelords) for being my beta and looking this over for me. ❤️❤️❤️

[filmjunky-99]

s t a r t r e k d e e p s p a c e n i n e created by rick berman, michael piller [the die is cast, s3ep21]

'Under normal circumstances, you would pose quite a threat to me.

You could turn yourself into a Vicarian razorback or stretch out your arms and strangle me from across the room.

But not this time.' - garak

[noitsbecky127]

rebecca watches ds9: the die is cast

when we last left off garak was back in tain’s good graces. wonder how long that’ll last

with his normal lunch partner gone, julian has had to resort to discussing literature with miles

miles does not seem interested

live footage of me talking about star trek to normal people

garak come back to ds9 your bf misses you

idk what this technobabble means but it seems worrying

oh that’s a lot of ships

i feel like a strike on the dominion would just be an elaborate suicide attempt

garak has settled back in very nicely and very quickly

i would also confess to a crime if garak stared at me for four hours

interesting that they call each other by their first names! seems like they were pretty close

what is garak planning for dukat

ok garak i will forgive literally anything you do this episode if you have dukat eliminated

(i’m guessing he won’t be able to have dukat eliminated. that fucker is a cockroach)

do NOT have mila killed

i don’t think there’s any kindness in tain’s heart

will this be the episode where we finally find out why garak was exiled

probably not. for all i know it’ll never be revealed

garak is compelled by homosexuality to be bitchy, even when it’s very much not in his best interests

I don’t think Odo’s gonna provide any information on his people

yeah he is not a cooperative captive

idk whether this plan is gonna fail or if they’ll be stopped, but the dominion definitely isn’t going anywhere just yet

odo rescue mission?

odo rescue mission!!!

i love when star trek characters disobey very important orders because their friend is in danger

such a shame they can’t know what that transmission said with all the subspace interference 😔

interesting that eddington’s coming along! i feel like i should be worried about that

actually he’s named and known but not important to the plot. he’s probably here to die

i feel like taking down the dominion isn’t as simple as just bombing the shit out of the founders’ planet

there’s an anti-changeling device???

so much for cloaking!

eddington what the fuck

definitely should have been worried! would’ve preferred it if he was here to die!

no sisko don’t hold miles back i want him to kick eddington’s ass

oh shut up, they all received orders from the admiral too but you know what they did? they disobeyed! because they’re cool! why couldn’t you be cool?

why do star trek captains always expect their engineers to defy time itself? something requiring ten hours simply cannot be done in two

though miles will probably find a way actually, he’s built different

eddington’s word is worth fuck-all i think

guess sisko disagrees!

never questioning the word of anyone in a starfleet uniform is a horrible policy i think

oh christ odo’s locked

this is gonna be horrific

garak you’re lucky julian likes you or idk if i’d be able to forgive you for this one

i can feel kira’s stress through the screen

OH JESUS FUCK ODO????

this is so disturbing to watch

oh wow

guess it’s hard to fully turn your back on your own people, regardless of what they’ve done, especially when you spent so much time as the only one of your kind

having second thoughts about returning to this line of work, garak?

alright the defiant’s cloaked again. hopefully this hasn’t cost them too much time

so if a planetary bombardment doesn’t kill changelings, what does? does anything? how do you win a war against goo?

fym the planet’s deserted? where did they go?

i don’t think you can win against 150 jem’hadar ships

so who spilled the beans to the founders?

not garak quoting shakespeare 💀

yeah take odo and get the fuck out of here

ah. so that’s how the founders knew to evacuate

gotta respect odo for choosing his loyalty to his friends, even as he longs to join the great link

i would recommend just letting tain die. but who knows what goes through garak’s head

and mila did make him promise

tain now is really not the time to be having a conversation

odo has taken matters into his own hands. i love him

garak apologized! that’s a first!

runabout may not have shields but luckily they have the strongest protection of all: plot armor

odo and garak acquired!!!

and they’re not getting court-martialed!

i feel like this isn’t the last time a stunt like that will be pulled. there’s still four seasons to go

so odo and garak are friends now? trauma bonding will do that i suppose

[ladyylavenderrr]

Me, very vocally, at my television screen when Enabran Tain threatens to hurt Mila in TDIC

[usstrekart]

Starting today and running for the next two weeks is a special limited time sale in my Threadless shop. I have had many requests to make a lot of my Star Trek episode posters available as prints so I am doing just that! I am starting with some of the most popular and most requested posters from Deep Space Nine for this first run. 

If you want more than a print, each piece is also available on magnets, stickers, shirts and more! You can find the collection at https://doctorheadly.threadless.com/collections/limited-time

For more of my episode-by-episode rewatch that has been the origination of these episode posters visit TrexReExamined on Twitter/X (for full episode live-tweets and episode posters).

[bagheerita]

When Sisko takes the Defiant to the Gamma quadrant against orders to rescue Odo from Garak's "old friend" and Kira's like, "We're getting a message: it's the Admiral calling to remind us he ordered us not to go to the Gamma quadrant." And Sisko's like, "No, you don't know what he said because we didn't get that message because of all the interference." and she just stares for a minute before she's like, "yeah... interference... must have been an ion storm." like the thought had never occurred to her to lie, and I lost it because "sorry can't hear you, going through a tunnel" apparently still works as an Earth excuse in the future 🤣

[spectraspecs-writes]

Parmak mention

[atomiccollectionanchorme]

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Season 3 Episode 21 "The Die Is Cast"

ANDREW ROBINSON as ELIM GARAK, RENE AUBERJONOIS as ODO in DEEP SPACE NINE, S3.E21 - The Die Is Cast (1995)

[hitchell-mope]

I still want Garak to fry in hell.

[foone]

So, Bashir and Garak from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, won't you?

Bashir is the man who has one big secret and it's his entire life, and he has always assumed it will destroy him if it gets out.

Garak is a man made of fractal secrets. The cast-out student (and secret son) of the head of an empire-wide spy agency. He's stolen secrets from every power in the alpha quadrant. His own personal history is nothing but lies, possibly even to himself. He lies so completely it took Bashir visiting GARAK'S DAD to figure out that "Elim" is his first name.

If truth was a river, Bashir's is wide and free-flowing, with a real big meander where it goes kilometers out of its way to avoid a huge rock that we don't ever talk about.

Garak has dammed his river with endless pebbles of lies. There's no truth there, only more lies. This is a man who lies reflexively, who once claimed (in one of the few true things he ever said) that lying is a skill you must practice constantly.

Garak is such a liar I don't think he really understands how to tell the truth. When he was dying from his addictions, instead of admitting the problem he made of stories to try and scare his doctor off, to let him die. When an assassin showed up to kill him, he got the local police involved by attempting to (almost) assassinate himself first. Garak carries a big hammer labeled "lying" and every problem is a juicy nail.

These are not two different people, this is the same person at different scales. Bashir is one big lie in a Star Fleet uniform, Garak is a multitude of tiny lies in a lizard suit and a very fashionable outfit of his own design.

In Ancient Greek Mythology*, humans were single souls split into two bodies, male and female, forever searching for their other half so they can be whole again.

They may have been wrong about the gender and species, but Bashir and Garak are definitely two parts of the same original material. They were chiseled from the same piece of marble, cut from the same cloth, split from the same soul. They deserve to be together, not because they'd be good for each other (dear God, no. They are terrible for each other in many ways!) but because they're incomplete without each other.

* not to be confused with Star Trek, which is Ancient Geek Mythology.