Garak! Everybody loves this guy! Well, okay, not everybody. But everybody who is a fan of Deep Space Nine
rather than a character in it whose father Garak had executed. And why shouldnāt we love him? Heās charming! Heās mysterious! Heās funny! Heās a murderer who spent most of his adult
life serving a regime of genocidal fascists! And yet, by the end of DS9ās seven-season
run, heās . . . kind of a hero? Maybe? How the hell did that happen? Letās see if we can find out over the course
of this video as we investigate How Deep Space Nine Actually Redeems Garak Kinda painting myself into a corner here with
that title. Iām not asking āDoes Deep Space Nine Actually
Redeem Garak?ā Iām saying it does. Iām taking the position that by the end
of the series, Garak has been redeemed ā at least enough that we should accept him as
one of the good guys. Youāre free to disagree with me that Garak
is ultimately redeemed, of course. Itās just my opinion. But before we get too far into this, letās
remind ourselves of just who Garak is. We meet Garak early in Deep Space Nineās
first season. In the episode āPast Prologueā he introduces
himself to Doctor Bashir at lunch, claiming to be a humble tailor and insisting Bashir
address him not as āMr. Garak,ā but as āplain, simple Garak.ā Since Garak is the only Cardassian still living
on the station, and the details of his past are unknown to anyone but him, the prevailing
opinion is that Garak is a spy, left by the Cardassian government to keep an eye on their
former outpost. Eventually we learn that Garak isnāt a spy,
but he used to be, sort of. He was a high-ranking operative within Cardassiaās
intelligence agency, the Obsidian Order. At some point right before the end of the
Cardassian occupation of Bajor, Garak did . . . something . . . and found himself exiled
from Cardassia. Because of the seriousness of whatever he
did to get exiled, and presumably his former status as an intelligence operative, Garak
feared assassination, and figured Deep Space Nine, which became the property of Bajor and
was administrated by Starfleet following the Cardassian withdrawal, was the safest place
for him. Despite his past and his not-entirely-voluntary
residency on the station, Garak eventually makes friends with some of our heroes, most
notably Dr. Bashir, and earns the cautious respect of many people on DS9. The exact details of Garakās past are never
firmly established, but whatever they are itās safe to say Garak was not a nice guy
and he did some very, very bad things. In fact, Garakās actions when he was with
the Obsidian Order ā hell, his very membership in that organization, and the fact that he
was an active participant in the occupation of Bajor at all ā are so bad that itās
entirely reasonable to me if someone wants to say, you know what, Garak isnāt redeemable. In putting together my argument for why Garak
is ultimately redeemed, Iāve identified four reasons why I think he is redeemable. The first reason is that Garak is remorseful. Like every other aspect of his character,
his feelings about his career with the Obsidian Order are complex. He often projects a sense of pride in the
work he did there. But I think Deep Space Nine gives us just
enough of a peek behind that facade to conclude that Garak is actually pretty haunted by much
of what he did. And nowhere is that more evident than in one
of the first great Garak-centered episodes of the series, a show from Deep Space Nineās
second season titled āThe Wire.ā Bashir and Garak are on their way to lunch,
talking about this Cardassian novel Bashir just read, The Never-Ending Sacrifice, which
is a very on-theme title for this episode. Garak seems a little pricklier than usual,
and he winces from an apparently severe headache, but he insists that heās fine and walks
away. Skipping ahead a little, Bashir finds Garak
carrying on at Quarkās, drunk as a skunk. No, wait, this is Star Trek, it canāt just
be a skunk. Bashir finds Garak at Quarkās, drunk as
an Acamarian hooch skunk. And Bashirās like, āHow ābout you put
down the bottle and we take a little walk over to the infirmary, huh, buddy?ā And Garakās like, āGimme back my booze,
never mind, Iām having a seizure!ā Long story short, it turns out Garak has an
implant in his brain that was put there by the Obsidian Order to help him block out pain
if he were ever captured and tortured by an enemy. But since life as the only Cardassian on a
space station full of Bajorans and Federation types kinda sucks, a couple of years ago Garak
activated the implant and just left it on. Now itās malfunctioning, and his body is
addicted to its painkilling effect, hence the seizures and skull-splitting headaches. Bashirās like, āWell, that sucks. But youāre my patient, so Iām gonna help
you with this.ā But Garak says to Bashir, āYou need to know
who youāre trying to save.ā And itās at this point that Garak tells
Bashir the first story about why he was exiled. Garak used to be a gul in the mechanized infantry,
he says, and right around the time of the Cardassian withdrawal from Bajor, a group
of Bajorans escaped aboard a Cardassian shuttle. Garakās aide, Elim, boarded the shuttle,
but the shuttleās captain refused to allow him to search it. So Garak had the shuttle destroyed, killing
the escaped Bajorans, and his aide Elim, and 97 other Cardassians, one of whom was the
daughter of a powerful government official. Garak was stripped of his rank and exiled
as punishment. Later in the episode, suffering from much
more severe withdrawal symptoms, Garak tells Bashir another story that contradicts the
first one. The truth, he says, is that he was the protege
of the head of the Obsidian Order, Enabran Tain. And it wasnāt a group of Bajorans that escaped
at the end of the occupation, it was a group of Bajoran children who Garak was supposed
to interrogate and turn over to be executed. But instead, much to the dismay of his pal
Elim, Garak gave them some money and let them go. And thatās actually why he was exiled. Bashir is like, āDonāt feel bad. You did a good thing.ā And Garak is like, āYeah, and look where
it got me: exiled on this space station, surrounded by people who despise me, and all I have to
look forward to is having lunch with you!ā And Bashirās like, āIām not that bad,
am I?ā And Garakās like, āYouāre not nearly
as bad as you were in the first season, but youāre still pretty insufferable. Speaking of which: Iāll kill you!ā Garak has another seizure, and ends up back
in the infirmary. Bashir doesnāt know how else he can help
him, so Garak says āHey, I appreciate you trying, anyway. In fact, I appreciate it so much, Iām gonna
tell you the truth about why I was exiled.ā So Garak gives Bashir yet another version
of the story. This time, Elim wasnāt just his aide, but
his best friend. They were two of the most powerful members
of the Obsidian Order, both proteges of Enabran Tain. After Tain retired, some Bajoran prisoners
were wrongly released, and Garak, knowing Tain could know longer protect him, feared
he would be blamed. So Garak decided to frame Elim. But he was too late; Elim had the same idea,
and framed Garak first. Garak was exiled, and he tells Bashir he deserves
it ā not for the official reasons, which were fabricated, but because he betrayed his
best friend. And now, after everything, he just needs to
know that somebody forgives him, which is why heās telling Bashir this story, which
is definitely 100% the truth, cross-my-heart. Now, the point of this isnāt to figure out
which story is what really happened. As it turns out, none of the stories Garak
tells Bashir in this episode really happened, at least not literally. At the end of the episode, Garak tells Bashir
that everything he told him is true, especially the lies. Thatās not just a clever line to end the
show ā thatās Garak telling Bashir, and us, how we should interpret his conflicting
stories. One of the lies Garak tells Bashir is about
the identity of Elim, his aide in the earlier stories and his best friend in the last story. Toward the end of the episode Bashir goes
to visit Enabran Tain, who informs him that Elim is not Garakās friend. In fact, heās not a separate person at all;
āElimā is Garakās first name. Now look at how āElimā and Garak interact
in the three stories Garak tells. In the first, Garak kills Elim. In the second, Garak acts compassionately
toward the Bajoran children and Elim is appalled. In the third, Garak plots to betray Elim,
but Elim betrays him first. Whatever actually happened, I think itās
safe to say Garak doesnāt really like himself. He feels guilty for things heās done in
his past. But if the stories he tells Bashir in āThe
Wireā are any indication, his guilt isnāt as straightforward as āI did bad things
during the occupation and I wish I hadnāt.ā What other facets of Garak do we see in this
episode? We see that he loves Cardassian culture. In the opening scene, he defends Cardassian
literature to an unimpressed Dr. Bashir. Throughout the series, we see evidence of
Garakās pride in his people and his homeland. It seems genuine, and deeply felt. Garak feels a profound loyalty to Cardassia. He feels a duty to not only protect Cardassia,
but to be the kind of Cardassian heās been told he should be all his life ā by his
culture, by the military, by Enabran Tain. Thatās who he tries to be ā from outward
appearances, thatās who he is. But I donāt think thatās who he truly
wants to be. Thatās the central conflict with which Garak
struggles, the two halves of himself pulling in different directions. This is most evident in the second story,
where āGarakā releases the children instead of torturing and executing them, much to the
dismay of āElim.ā When he tells that story to Bashir, he talks
about how cold and hungry he was, how pitiful the children were, and how pointless the whole
thing was. He knew what the right thing to do was, he
knew that carrying out his proper duties as a Cardassian soldier was making him miserable,
so he listened to his conscience and turned the children loose. But that loyalty to the state, that brutal
notion of what a good Cardassian is supposed to do, wasnāt something he could just shake
off, hence āElimāās disgusted reaction to his compassion. Garakās remorse for his past is complicated. Itās complicated by his lingering attachment
to the Cardassian regime he once served, and his guilt over failing to serve that regime
the way it demanded him to; and itās complicated by his inability to own up to what he actually
did in a way that is honest and straightfoward. But that remorse is there, nonetheless. And I think thatās important. The second reason why I think Garak is redeemable
is that he changes. Like everything else about Garak, the changes
he experiences are complicated. He doesnāt undergo a straightforward transition
from bad guy to good guy. But by the end of the series he has definitely
planted his feet on the heroic side of things and begun using his many talents against the
villains rather than in service of them. One of the complications to this is that Garak
was kinda forced to align himself with the good guys due to his circumstances. He didnāt step into the light so much as
flee into it to escape all the monsters in the dark who were trying to kill him. And for a good portion of Deep Space Nineās
seven-season run, Garakās loyalty is reserved mostly for himself. In another season two episode, āProfit and
Loss,ā Garak is promised an end to his exile if he kills a group of dissidents who have
come aboard the station. He seems ready to go through with it until
itās revealed that the offer was a lie and this guy, Gul Toran, was just using Garak
to locate the dissidents. Once he knows thereās nothing in it for
him, Garak kills Toran and lets the dissidents go. The thing is, just because Garak was stuck
on Deep Space Nine, that doesnāt mean he had to start playing for Team Starfleet. Sure, it made his life a lot easier, but he
could have decided to use the friendships he was forming on the station as a means to
undermine Starfleetās presence in Bajoran space and promote the interests of Cardassia,
perhaps in the interest of earning his way back into the governmentās good graces. But he doesnāt do that, even before being
used by Gul Toran in āProfit and Loss.ā And whatever the motivation behind Garakās
change of character, it happens. He changes. One of the first clear indications we get
that Garak is no longer the person he was during the occupation occurs during a story
from Deep Space Nineās third season, presented in two parts as the episodes āImprobable
Causeā and āThe Die Is Cast.ā In the first part, Garak and Odo investigate
a plot to assassinate Garak. Their investigation eventually leads them
to Enabran Tain, who has decided to come out of retirement and has been busy eliminating
his old operatives to take out anyone who might know a little too much from the old
days. When Garak and Odo catch up to Tain, Garak
convinces Tain that he is still loyal to him. The episode ends with Garak accepting an offer
from Tain to end his exile and join him on a mission to destroy the Founders of the Dominion,
shaking hands with the man who is both his former mentor and enemy, saying āIām back.ā The second half of the two-parter is where
things get interesting, for our purposes. With Garak having joined up with Tain, Odo
is confined to quarters aboard Tainās ship. To gain more information about the Founders,
and also to prove his loyalty, Garak is told to torture Odo. Garak is reluctant, but he does as Tain wants,
using a device that prevents Odo from changing his shape, which eventually becomes very painful
for Odo since he has to revert to his natural goopy form to regenerate every sixteen hours. Garak is very upset by Odoās suffering,
and basically starts begging him just to tell him something, anything about the Founders
he didnāt put in his official reports to Starfleet, so Garak can have an excuse to
end the interrogation. Odo cracks, confessing to Garak that even
after learning that his people were the Founders of the Dominion, he still wants to return
to them and join his fellow changelings in the Great Link. Garak turns off the device, allowing Odo to
revert to his natural form, and covers his face, distraught over what heās done. Garak doesnāt share Odoās confession with
Tain. He says Odo never broke under interrogation,
and thereās nothing more they can learn from him, so they might as well stop torturing
him. And Tain goes, āHow about we just kill him?ā And Garak is like, āOr we could do not-that.ā They arrive at the Foundersā homeworld with
the combined Cardassian-Romulan fleet Tain has assembled to obliterate the Founders,
but a bunch of JemāHadar show up and Garak realizes theyāre screwed. He helps Odo escape, and tries to take Tain
with them, but Tain refuses to leave. Eventually Odo takes matters into his own
hands and knocks Garak unconscious so they can get to their runabout and get off the
ship before itās destroyed. The Defiant shows up in the nick of time to
rescue them, but before that happens, when it looks like theyāre going to be destroyed
by the JemāHadar, Garak turns to Odo and says, āHey, sorry for torturing you back
there.ā And Odo says, āNo worries, I get it. Yeah, you tortured me, which I canāt get
behind, but hey, your people are terrible, my people are terrible, but we both long for
home anyway. Lifeās funny, aināt it? Anyway, weāre good.ā And Garak is like āWow, wasnāt really
expecting that since I just got done torturing you like five minutes ago, but thank you.ā Their actual exchange was a lot more heartfelt
than that; I was just pissing on it for a laugh because Iām lazy and those are easy
jokes to write. What I love about the Garak/Odo story in these
episodes is the sense that weāre getting a glimpse at the same side of Garak he reveals
in the second story he tells Dr. Bashir in āThe Wire.ā This is the Garak who is torn between what
heās been told is his duty and what he knows deep down is the right thing to do. He canāt quite bring himself to do the right
thing ā at least not at first ā but he knows what heās doing is wrong and feels
deep regret. And to be clear, Iām not saying that feeling
regret when you do something wrong makes you a good person. Having a conscience is one thing ā acting
on it is another. The events of āImprobable Causeā and āThe
Die Is Castā donāt turn Garak into a good guy. What they do is demonstrate that, however
he used to be, Garak is no longer capable of being the person he was when he served
in the Obsidian Order. And by explicitly likening Garakās lingering
loyalty to Cardassia to Odoās longing to return to the Great Link, the writers of Deep
Space Nine rehab another crucial aspect of Garakās character. Odo is fully aware that the Founders ā his
fellow Changelings ā are bad news. He sees them for what they are: brutal dictators
who seek to conquer the galaxy. But he still wants to return home. He canāt help it. He doesnāt condone what the Founders are
or what theyāve done, but he canāt just completely detach himself emotionally from
them, because theyāre his people, theyāre his family. By having Odo say to Garak, āI can understand
your desire to return home,ā the writers of DS9 are suggesting that Garakās feelings
for Cardassia are similar to Odoās feelings for the Great Link. Garak doesnāt love the Cardassian military,
or the Cardassian government ā he loves Cardassia, the place he was born, his home. For most of his life heās considered the
Cardassian state to be synonymous with Cardassia itself, and believed that to be loyal to the
latter, one had to be loyal to the former. Thatās what fascist governments do: they
define love of country as obedience to their rule. At the end of āThe Die Is Cast,ā we have
at least some reason to believe that Garak is capable of moving beyond that. Thatās important. But Garakās moral compass remains a little
erratic for most of the rest of the series. Letās not forget that in season fourās
āBroken Link,ā he attempts to gain control of the Defiantās weapons systems so he can
obliterate all life on the Foundersā homeworld, including Odo, Captain Sisko, and Dr. Bashir,
who have beamed down to the planet. Worf catches him and Garak insists that heās
trying to save the Alpha Quadrant from the Dominion, even if it means the death of everyone
aboard the Defiant. He says to Worf, āDonāt tell me you object
to a little genocide in the name of self defense!ā And Worf is like, āMan, Iām a Klingon,
we dream about killing people pretty much all day, and even I think youāre taking
this a little far.ā Letās also not forget one of the best episodes
of this or any Star Trek series, season sixās āIn the Pale Moonlight,ā where Captain
Sisko takes advantage of Garakās particularly unsavory set of skills to convince the Romulans
to declare war on the Dominion. Sisko and Garak are successful, but to obtain
that success Garak murders a petty criminal they hire to forge some data, and blows up
a shuttle carrying a Romulan senator. When Sisko angrily confronts him about this,
Garak reminds him, āYou came to me because you knew I could do those things that you
weren't capable of doing.ā So, I think itās fair to say that Garak
never exactly becomes a paragon of virtue. He remains willing and able to do questionable
or even downright despicable things, but he starts doing them for a good cause ā or
at least a better cause than serving and protecting Cardassian fascism. The third reason I think Garak is redeemable
is that after he shows remorse for the wrong heās done, and changes, he makes amends. When the Dominion War begins, Garak doesnāt
just sit on the sidelines. He jumps in and fights on the side of Starfleet. He joins Sisko and the crew of the Defiant
as they fly a captured JemāHadar ship on a secret mission to destroy a crucial enemy
outpost. Heās a part of Starfleetās operation to
take back Deep Space Nine from Dominion control. At the end of the war, heās right there
with Kira and Damar (well, Damar at first), on Cardassia Prime, leading an uprising against
the Dominion. He even kills the last Weyoun. Of course, Garak wouldnāt be Garak if things
were that simple. While his service to Starfleet against the
Dominion is admirable and definitely helps him to offset the crimes of his past, at least
somewhat, Garak himself isnāt always sure how to feel about it. Garakās rationale for aiding Starfleet in
the war is that he is helping to liberate Cardassia from the Dominion, which by this
point has crossed over into the Alpha Quadrant and made Cardassia its headquarters on this
side of the wormhole. Thatās a hell of an arc, by the way, aināt
it? Garak goes from serving the Cardassian government
during its unjust occupation of Bajor to fighting to liberate Cardassia from being unjustly
occupied by the Dominion? Just wanted to point that out. Also: how are those chickens doing, Cardassia? Did they make it home? How would you characterize their current status
vis-a-vis roosting? Anyway, what I was getting at was, Garak starts
helping Starfleet because he wants to help Cardassia, but when he realizes that the Dominion
intelligence heās been decrypting for Starfleet is just getting more Cardassians killed in
battle, he canāt handle that. In the seventh season episode āAfterimage,ā
Garak begins suffering panic attacks. With help from the just-arrived Ezri Dax,
he realizes that the attacks are being brought on by his guilt over the role heās playing
in helping Starfleet kill Cardassians. Garak ultimately decides to continue helping
Starfleet, because if Cardassia is ever going to be free, the Dominion must be defeated. So now we come to the fourth reason why I
think Garak is redeemable. This is the last reason, and the most important
one, because without this one, Iām not sure any of the other three would be possible. The fourth reason why Garak is redeemable
is that heās fictional. This might seem like an obvious point, but
I submit to you that if Garak were a real person, it would be almost impossible for
him to truly redeem himself after the things he did during the occupation. Garak is an example of Star Trekās equivalent
of the Good Nazi trope. Heās not the best example ā the best example
is Damar, but thatās gonna have to be its own video. The Good Nazi is a character who is a member
of the Nazi party, who fights ā or fought at one time ā on the side of the Nazis (or
the Cardassians, in Garakās case, the Space Nazis), but is actually a hero who ends up
fighting against the Nazis. Sometimes this character experiences a moral
epiphany that opens their eyes to the atrocities all around them and compels them to do something. The Good Nazi is something that I believe
exists almost entirely in fiction. I say āalmostā because we do have a handful
of examples from history of real people who we might categorize as āGood Nazis.ā Oskar Schindler, for example, who went from
exploiting Jews as cheap labor in his factory to employing as many of them as he could to
save them from execution at the death camps. Thereās also Kurt Gerstein, who joined the
Nazi Party in the 1930s, got kicked out for protesting what he saw as its anti-Christian
rhetoric, then got himself reinstated after the start of World War II, joined the SS and
tried ā without much success, unfortunately ā to alert the rest of the world to the
extermination campaign the Nazis were carrying out. Both Schindler and Gerstein would qualify
as āGood Nazis,ā or at least as close to such a thing as you can get. They share certain traits in common with the
fictional character of Garak. They all served a fascist government, they
helped to carry out or at least sought to benefit from a genocidal campaign perpetrated
by that government, and they all eventually reached a point where they could no longer
support that government and began fighting against it. But Schindler and Gerstein are different from
Garak in important ways, too. Schindler was a member of the Nazi party,
true, and even briefly did some intelligence work for the Nazis, but for the most part
he was a private citizen. Gerstein joined the SS, but he seems to have
done so for the sole purpose of undermining the Nazis and exposing their crimes. Garak, on the other hand, is not depicted
as being a private citizen of Cardassia during the Occupation. Heās a member of the Obsidian Order, the
regimeās brutal intelligence service. And he doesnāt use his position in the Order
to undermine the Cardassian occupation of Bajor ā he loyally serves the Cardassian
state. Garak isnāt just a member of the Order ā heās
one of the most powerful members, the protege (and, as it turns out, the son) of Enabran
Tain himself. If Garak were a real person, and he served
a real fascist government so efficiently and ruthlessly, I donāt think redemption would
be possible for him, no matter how regretful he ultimately became about what he had done,
no matter how useful he became to the other side. His crimes ā the ones we know about, and
the ones we can infer he must have done ā may be impossible to forgive. And I donāt think we do ourselves or the
world any favors by looking for reasons to forgive his crimes, or those of his real-world
counterparts. See, ultimately, Garak is redeemable ā and
redeemed ā because the creators of Deep Space Nine wrote him that way, and Andrew
Robinson, the brilliant actor who portrayed him, played him that way. Heās not Gul Dukat. Unlike Dukat, Garak seems to feel genuine
sorrow for the things heās done. And his love for Cardassia, as problematic
as it is, feels sincere and selfless, not inextricably tangled up with his own ego and
ambition. In fact, Garak hates Dukat. Remember the exchange he has with Odo in the
episode āCall to Arms,ā where heās like, āThere was this one time, when the Klingons
were attacking the station, when Dukat turned his back to me, and I kinda wish I had shot
him when I had the chance.ā And Odo says in disbelief, āYouād shoot
a man in the back?ā And Garak says, āYeah, itās the safest
way. Why would that shock you? Never mind that Iāve already tortured you
by this point ā look at all the other stuff Iāve done. I was a member of the Obsidian Order. I tried to kill everyone on the Foundersā
homeworld. And remember when I killed all those people
and hijacked that school bus full of kids in San Francisco? Iām not a nice guy, Odo. Hey, speaking of San Francisco, you kinda
remind me of somebody . . .ā Did you really think I could get through a
Garak video without making a Scorpio joke? This is who I am! The point is, were there Good Nazis in real
life? Yeah, a few. Were there any who were as important to the
regime or whose hands were as blood-soaked as Garakās? I donāt think so. The fact that Garak is a fictional character
is the very thing that allows us to forgive him, to offer him a second chance, to appreciate
the conflicts and ambiguities that define him, to enjoy his considerable wit and charm
while knowing full well what heās capable of. We can get close to Garak, because he canāt
hurt us. Heās just like the rest of Star Trek: a
fantasy. He lives in our imagination ā the only place
a person like him can ever really be redeemed. And the only place a person can earn a living
in the fashion industry while walking around dressed like that. I know thatās from his first episode and
the costumes got better, but . . . Dude looks like Freddy Krueger wearing a vest made out
of an area rug. That shit would get you kicked off Project
Runway week one! Whoa-ho! Hey! Weāre cool!
Garak is the greatest character in the history of television. Change my mind.
Plain, simple Garak.
Would have been a good video for the people who wrote Georgiou's arc to see.
Back when Star Trek had good writing.
I think Shives really misinterprets the episode "the wire" and the character in general. Garak was not haunted or feeling guilt, he was always being manipulative. Garak's motivation in the end game of DS9 is driven by ultra nationalism, he didn't want Cardassia under the control of a foreign power.
Garak is one of the shades of grey characters where DS9 did the subversion it was good at by making a bad person (garak no doubt tortured and killed many innocent people in his career) just another character. The opposite of how they totally botched Duhkat (space Hitler), they made Garak (space Rohm) so effective reviewers like Shives don't even pick up on what they did and just go with it.