Harris Yulin handed away this week on the age of 87. The Broadway star had a litany of beloved and memorable movie and TV roles to his identify, like a fan-favorite flip in Ghostbusters—however Star Trek followers will endlessly keep in mind him for his unbelievable flip as a traumatized Cardassian workplace clerk in one in all Deep House 9‘s first all-time classics, “Duet”.
Often a sufferer of its personal success within the eyes of Star Trek fandom, Deep House 9‘s exceptional dramatic arcs via its again half exploring the Federation at struggle with the Dominion sometimes signifies that some followers understand its earliest seasons—extra broadly about the sociopolitical tension between the not too long ago liberated Bajoran folks and Starfleet’s presence to information Bajor into potential Federation membership—as a slog to get via earlier than you hit the actual good things. However of a number of early episodes that shine just as brightly as DS9‘s best, “Duet,” the nineteenth episode of season one, completely is the one which shines brightest.
In “Duet” Yulin performs a scrumptious twin function. He’s initially launched because the Cardassian file clerk Aamin Marritza, handled on DS9 for a terminal illness largely contracted by prisoners and staff on the Gallitep focus camp. Instantly recognised by Kira, herself one of many resistance members who helped liberate Gallitep, her interrogation leads her to imagine that the haughty Marritza—who after preliminary makes an attempt at obfuscation, makes no qualms of hiding that he labored on the camp—is definitely an assumed identification of the camp’s notorious commander, Gul Darhe’el. Confronted with Kira’s proof, “Marritza”‘s masks falls, taking full, offended, and insidious credit score for being Darhe’el.
If that was all there was to Yulin’s function in “Duet” it could nonetheless be a exceptional flip. He fills Marritza/Darhe’el with an unbelievable sense of simmering disdain, a person concurrently attempting to shirk his historical past at Gallitep from a livid Kira’s eyes, whereas additionally assured sufficient in his perception to casually, even proudly, embrace an alternate historical past of Gallitep’s atrocities. Yulin’s chemistry having Nana Customer’s Kira as a scene accomplice is electrical, her turmoil between the rightful rage Kira feels as a Bajoran and her duties as an goal officer aboard DS9 crashing in opposition to the Cardassian’s calm assortment. Remoted in Odo’s small holding cells, Darhe’el turns into a specter who lingers over the episode and Kira alike, plaguing her ethical quandary over whether or not or not she ought to assist somebody answerable for heinous atrocities in opposition to her folks.
However the character has an extra layer to him: it’s Darhe’el that’s the assumed persona. Marritza actually did work within the administrative wings of Gallitep, however, like Kira, is sickened to his soul by his complicity within the struggle crimes that occurred there. Dying of his illness anyway, Marritza went via beauty surgical procedure to tackle Darhe’el’s likeness, focused Kira for her connection to the resistance cell that liberated Gallitep, after which selected to sacrifice himself to the Bajoran authorities in an try to get public condemnation for the crimes that Darhe’el dedicated.
Straight away, Yulin’s efficiency switches, the conceitedness and assortment that had outlined his function up so far shattering to disclose a very haunted man beneath many masks. After spending a lot of the episode horrified by him, Marritza turns into instantly and tragically sympathetic, a mirror held up in opposition to Kira as somebody nonetheless damaged by their makes an attempt to course of what they skilled throughout Cardassia’s rule on Bajor. That Yulin is ready to promote that change as convincingly as he had first masked his “true” identification as Darhe’el is exceptional, and it climaxes with an extremely poignant scene the place he breaks down in his cell in entrance of Kira.
“Duet” ends in tragedy regardless. Unable to deliver herself to “assist” Marritza face trial as Darhe’el, Kira has to let the grieving man go—just for him to be murdered on DS9’s promenade by a vengeful Bajoran, who, in contrast to her, couldn’t see previous the grief all of them bore throughout occupation, whether or not it was Bajorans or Cardassians caught in their very own webs of ethical complicity. Deep House 9 would go on to do quite a bit in exploring the ethical nuances behind even the broad, clear-cut horrors of the Cardassian occupation, the Dominion Conflict past it, and their very own real-world parallels: however it was Yulin who helped to first put put a posh and sympathetic face on the Cardassian perspective, and did so with such grace to provide the sequence one in all its greatest hours.
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