Welcome to Close Reads! In this series, Leah Schnelbach and their guests dig into the tiny, weird moments of pop culture—from books to theme songs to viral internet hits—that have burrowed into our minds, found rent-stabilized apartments, started community gardens, and refused to be forced out by corporate interests. This time out, Chana Porter pulls a chair up to the table and praises Odo’s attempts at cooking on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
I fantasize about the food culture of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine more than any other invented universe. I long to try a sip of spring wine, or experience the spicy tang of hasperat. And my kingdom for a raktajino! The extra-strong Klingon coffee is mentioned briefly in other series, but no one seems to drink it as much as the senior officers on DS9. Double sweet, double strong, your replicator or mine?
Maybe it’s the blending of recognizable Earth food cultures with alien civilizations on the promenade that gives DS9 such bustling, vibrant warmth?
I don’t think it’s surprising that, as my second novel comes out, I’ve begun to rewatch DS9 before bed. I like to joke that maybe because I’m a triple cancer, I’m obsessed with the series where they live on a space station instead of darting around the galaxy. For me, it’s far more cozy (and complicated) to stay put. And God knows I love to stay home. My second novel, The Thick and The Lean, posits a world where sexual pleasure is mundane and public but food pleasure is highly taboo. Like DS9, it also explores land rights and colonization, along with Big Agriculture and body politics. The world of The Thick and The Lean is a distorted mirror to our own, with the hope that it, in some small way, this reflection helps us see ourselves more clearly—but it’s also deeply personal, drawn from my own experiences with disordered eating. It feels more exposing than anything I’ve published before.
On the station, the connections over food, drink, and Klingon opera aren’t limited to public establishments. Captain Sisko is an avid home cook, and he loves to feed his senior officers. (Somebody get me Benjamin Sisko’s astrological chart—another cancer? Benjamin, I, too, love a dinner party.) And through these little slices of life, where the crew gets to just simply be together as chosen family, we get gems like Odo stirring.
Take this simple scene, the opening for Season 3 Episode 4 “Equilibrium”. The episode opens with the camera following Jake, looking pleased as punch, as he carries a beautiful platter of what appears to be crudités to Kira and Julian. He’s helping Captain Dad aka Sisko prepare a dinner party for the senior officers. Kira, in civilian clothes, is waiting with pleasant expectation, looking even happier than Jake. (Emotional sidebar: it’s these little moments with Kira that just wreck me. Kira, who spent her whole life under Cardassian occupation, is delighted to have her boss cook her dinner.) Julian is also happy to be there, playing a bit of the petulant teenager but he manages to make it charming—yuck, beets!
As Sisko realizes he must flip his catfish, Odo, who has been studying the cooking with his normal intensity, takes over stirring the soufflé. Jadzia, in uniform, comes in from a long day in the upper pylons—boy is she tired! But she’s been looking forward to this dinner all day. Real “Honey I’m home” vibes from our favorite Old Man in the body of a young woman. (It sounds to my untrained ear like she’s been doing O’Brien’s job. Maybe O’Brien’s been cloned or his wife has been taken over by a malevolent spirit or some other unique horror, or maybe he’s just on vacation?) We see Jadzia embracing other food traditions and glimpsing at perhaps part of why she could never be more than just Julian’s friend. He’s too young for her by several lifetimes.
As he mentions in this scene (and many others), Sisko learned to cook from his father’s restaurant in New Orleans. He serves a pretty traditional meal here—blackened catfish, creamed spinach, sautéed beets, Jake announces with pride. Captain Sisko reveals a tiny bit of his ethos about the importance of cooking with grown food, instead of eating replicated ingredients. (We assume the beets are from Bajor? Or a greenhouse on the station?) In other episodes, he states this preference clearly, but here he tells us in actions, not words. By cooking this meal, Sisko is connecting his crew with his family lineage. He cooks because he cares.
So, in under two minutes, we get: proud Jake with the platter, Captain Dad’s pepper shaker dance, teenage Julian, Honey I’m Home Dax, and happy Kira. How soft Kira is in this scene! How far we’ve come from Season 1.
And nothing delights Kira more than Odo’s stirring.
Odo is here to learn. “Just because I don’t need food, Commander, doesn’t mean I’m not interested in its preparation.” I can imagine him later, in the privacy of the security office, turning into a beet, to see what it feels like, before attempting a Tarkalean hawk, then settling finally into a puddle of what looks like oatmeal to rest in his bucket.
Odo stirs with his head as much as his arms. How strange it must be, to have a body. Like Sisko, he understands that food is more than nourishment. For solids, it’s culture, it’s history, it’s also community and connection. It’s the past meeting the future. It can even be love. It will take until season 6 for Kira to realize that she’s in love with Odo, but I wholeheartedly agree—he looks very cute while stirring.
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The Thick and the Lean
Chana Porter (she/they) is a novelist, playwright, teacher, MacDowell fellow, and cofounder of The Octavia Project, a STEM and writing program for girls, trans, and nonbinary youth that uses speculative fiction to envision greater possibilities for our world. She lives in Los Angeles, California, and is also the author of The Seep, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her new novel The Thick and The Lean comes out from Saga Press April 18th.
