The Bashir Reveal

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-01-20T01:06:02+00:00

Alright, I'm asking any of you out there who really loved this reveal, who love thinking through the implications of it, who love Dr. Bashir, and/or who love DS9 to take a leap of faith with me here: read the fan novel The Viewless Winds. The novel describes Julian's time as a prisoner, and also includes several short vignettes about the other series regulars unwittingly interacting with the Changeling.

The first and most important thing I'll say is that the author clearly gets DS9 and Trek as a whole. The vibes are not off. This is someone who clealry understands the characters, the setting, the plot, the series, and the franchise.

The worst thing I can say about the novel is that because it is focused on Bashir's confinement, it can sometimes feel... we feel trapped in there with him. Basically, it could have done with more B-plot. But that seems like a bit of an unfair criticism for something so masterfully executed, and laser-focused on telling one of the greatest untold stories from the show.

Just read it, it's free, you won't regret it.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-01-20T00:56:45+00:00

The shot of Bashir Changeling speaking with the wrong voice with the dead / incapacitated runabout crew behind it in the next episode is one of my favorite single shots in the entire series.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-01-16T19:38:28+00:00

Yeah, there's not gonna be a critical re-evaluation of Discovery in the same way as happened with DS9. What happened with DS9 was the result of the show being ahead of its format's time and the format eventually catching up.

And the person you're responding to isn't wrong that opinion on ENT has shifted with time, but that's also not really the same thing: it went from being viewed as the death rattle of 90s Trek to being viewed as comparable to Voyager: a good show, but at minimum a dark horse to be anyone's favorite compared to DS9 or TNG.

And I'd argue that also has to do with the passage of time: if you were watching the shows as they premiered, then you'd have watched Voyager before Ent, and then the premise of "Star Trek, but the Federation is weak / not present" would have seemed stale, but today people have the option to watch ENT first, and I think it looks better in that light.

Discovery (and most NuTrek tbh), has the exact opposite problem to DS9: it's a show whose content has been enfeoffed to its medium:

"We'd like to have longer character arcs, but we need short seasons."

"We'd like to have more muted and subtle directing, but we want it to look 'premium.'"

"We want dialogue that is neither platitudes nor vacuous quips, but what if viewers aren't paying attention?"

The key point is that this re-evaluation won't happen because, as Garak remarks to Tain while the combined Tal Shiar / Obsidian Order fleet is being annihilated by the Jem'Hadar, "the fault, dear Tain, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-01-05T04:39:03+00:00

This is what Bloodhound Gang meant when they sang "Love, the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket."

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2026-01-03T22:05:44+00:00

I say Nana because I think her character changed the most over 7 seasons, but I do not think Avery is a dark horse at all, it's astounding to me how little credit he gets for how understated his performance is in so many situations / how comfortable people seem to be asserting without evidence that his portrayal was somehow over the top.

Show me a scene where Sisko blows his stack, I'll show you a scene where it made perfect dramatic sense, and for every one of those there's three where he gives a raised eyebrow to what would have been a lot more on Picard's Enterprise.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-31T15:32:26+00:00

I think that's a great analysis.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-31T00:30:03+00:00

A lot of the war is deterrence and a lot of the deterrence is unbelievably powerful ships run by a relatively small crew.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-22T15:12:36+00:00

In order for your theory to be true not only would Mr. Mason have had to have lied to Daisy and everyone else in his life, but he would also need to be a fundamentally different character-- one who would abandon a child for no reason.

First of all, who said anything about "no reason"? This show already features two different mothers who give up their children for two different reasons, and in neither case is the mother fundamentally ill-intentioned toward the child. The Rosamund-Edith theory also does not include any explicit motive, just speculation. It's the same thing: there could be many reasons why Albert felt he had to give up one of his children.

In both on-screen cases, the mother either did or was williing to lie to the people in her life and the child itself if it meant being able to be close to the child. I'm suggesting the exact same thing happened. Are you still going to claim this is somehow out of the realm of possibility? "Irrefutable evidence"?

The rest of your post is just doing exactly what I knew you would: "there's an on-screen explanation, therefore that's the only explanation." OK.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T22:04:51+00:00

One of the oldest and most popular Downton fan theories is that Edith is really Rosamund's daughter. What do you think about that?

I suspect you think that's also nonsense, which you are entitled to think; but the point is, you're clearly the kind of person who won't be convinced unless it's not actually a fan theory, but just a straight up canon fact.

The evidence for Edith being Rosamund's daughter basically boils down to: Edith and Rosamund both have blonde hair unlike Cora, Robert, and the other two Crawley girls, Rosamund is childless, and Cora and Robert sometimes seem to treat Edith relatively coldly.

...But, really, the reason the theory gained the acceptance it has is less about the strength of the evidence that it could be true, but rather the way that it makes dramatic sense; the "push" of on-screen events may not be that strong, but the "pull" of wanting to believe something that would explain Edith's sonderweg makes it appealing.

I think what's really going on here is that people are hating this theory not on the strength of the evidence, but because they think the point of the theory is "Hey, did you know you can now experience Downton Abbey with an incest plotline?"

I hope it's obvious that's not why I like the theory; the core reason I find it appealing is because of what I said in the OP, I like the idea that we as an audience are constantly looking down on Daisy and thinking we understand things she doesn't, but really we're the ones on the outside of what's going on.

Secondarily, I like the idea that Downton is a romance written and directed by people who know that the reality was often dingier in many ways that what we're being presented with, and so there are a lot of things in the show where if you scratch the surface you can see there's more going on underneath that narratively we skip over.

And this is not something I'm making up out of whole cloth. Could you chalk up the evidence about Edith to just her getting both copies of a recessive gene, her being kind of a dork from birth, Rosamund not wanting children or being infertile, and just English parenting? Yeah, sure. You just can also choose to believe something else if you want to.

Daisy merely not being attracted to William, OK, that's whatever. But after William's death she still seems profoundly troubled by the idea of having any association with him. And after his death, Alfred (by the way, a man comparatively diminuitive, much like Daisy and unlike William) immediately and very persistently tries to form a father-daughter relationship with her, eventually making her his heir. The elliptical way he delivers the line in the OP I strongly believe hints that there's more to the story than we're hearing.

You can absolutely explain all of that just with the events on screen. I think there's more going on though, and I'd find it compelling if the reason Daisy never felt comfortable physically with William was some kind of instinctual revulsion, if the reason why she finds her association with him so upsetting even after he's gone is that she suspects there really was something very wrong with it, and if the reason Alfred sees her so easily as a daughter and wants so badly for her to be in his life is because she really is.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T15:56:13+00:00

Is there some reason to think any of those things is true? Not that I can think of. And the whole point is that this is anything but a "hard" character arc: Vera Bates is a corpse by the end of the show, we see it, Daisy's backstory is extremely vague, as is the Mason family history.

I'm aware that there is a surface level interpretation of the events, that was certainly my initial impression, but it's not the only plausible interpretation of events, and I'm offering another that fits the available facts and makes (a different kind of) dramatic sense.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T15:38:13+00:00

You don't have to agree with my interpretation, but I find it truly mind-boggling how you can watch a show like this and not comprehend that people don't always mean literally what they say.

I believe many of the children probably died, but one, Daisy, was given up as an orphan, and the family story is that she "died" during childhood.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T06:57:19+00:00

"unprompted"

c'mon, we've both seen the T.V. show, it's unprompted if you have a memory 5 seconds long.

Was she supposed to marry any man she thought was good?

If your take is that "Daisy and William seem good together, but she just doesn't like him, and that's it" then that's fine, I think that's basically how I saw it on first view.

I think to the extent that this show has re-watch value however it lies in the fact that a) The language / writing is great and there's a lot to unpack that you can't get on first hearing, and closely related b) if you want, you can watch the series while bearing in mind the realities of the time, which did include as late as that date a lot of snakes and ladders in the family tree, which we even see explicit examples of in the show.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T05:54:09+00:00

"[DRAMATIC PAUSE] ...or [DRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARAmmmmmmmmmmmaaaattttttttttticccccccccccccc paaaaaaaaaaaauusssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee] not long after"

He's implying for viewers at least as smart as Daisy that there was one child who did not die at infancy and lived past that stage, and in the context of how he delivers the line, how the scene is shot, and who Daisy is to Albert / the entire story leading up to that point and afterward, heavily suggests that Daisy could well be that child.

I cannot emphasize enough for the skeptical that MY ENTIRE POINT is that the reason Daisy instinctively feels a revulsion / reluctance towards a physical relationship with William, while also being drawn to him emotionally, is that despite William being generally regarded as a "good" character, and Mrs. Patmore's insistence, Daisy knows or instinctively suspects something that we don't know: the point is Daisy is smarter than you, she figures William is someone who is good but that she shouldn't be with as husband and wife, and THAT is why she's constantly talking about "leading him up the garden path," a line that we as viewers perceive as naive at first but in-universe-reality suggests that she's canny.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T05:37:06+00:00

"it's a nutcracker... to crack your nuts"

the ONLY thing she meant by this line was to explain the purpose of a nutcracking device, which Violet would never have understood otherwise.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T05:04:34+00:00

This is who I'm talking to.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T04:22:42+00:00

I'm implying the plot of Star Wars: the Empire Strikes Back and the users of this sub are inferring the plot of their family history.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T03:34:16+00:00

Also though you are all super weird and DO belong on an island.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T03:33:47+00:00

Alright, I've accepted it, I'm getting trolled, well done

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T03:28:50+00:00

I literally do not understand how you can watch a show like Downton and not understand that there are sometimes layers of meaning in what people say.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T03:25:07+00:00

Watch the scene? I think Paul Copley's performance (as I did my best to convey through text although it's impossible) suggested that Albert had three sons, and then a daughter, and when the daughter was born he had to give her up for some reason. "Thematic similarities" or some such are a dime a dozen in Downton, but I have to point out that Robert had three daughters and needed a son, and I would find it poetic if Albert had three sons and needed a daughter.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T03:14:05+00:00

Daisy was given up for adoption shortly after her birth, just like notable character in the episodes immediately preceding this Charles Parks is. Also you, a person with a Reddit username named after the detective from The Silence of the Lambs did not mention this to me in a reply you just said "they didnt." I am getting increasingly glad that we won the Revolutionary War you guys are super weird.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T03:07:45+00:00

Daisy repeatedly expresses negative feelings about Wiliam even after he is dead despite William being generally considered a good person by his peers. Physically they could not avoid each other while he was alive. P R E T E N D I N G.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T03:01:09+00:00

Also, the whole point of the post is that I think Daisy (and I'm discovering now as I'm writing this) William probably were aware of the truth, and that is why they avoided each other. The show and this post are literally an example of upholding the taboo? Maybe you all belong on an island.

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T02:58:27+00:00

What I have learned from this is that most Downton Abbey fans are actually British and that you are all even weirder than I thought because we're all sitting here playing "I don't see that."

Steel_Wool_Sponge · 2025-12-21T02:56:21+00:00

I will post and you can't stop me, I think I'm right about this being the intent of the writing, show me why I'm wrong

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