Announcing: Deep Space Nine Season 10!

[Enterprise1981]

In any event, it's nice to see a few relatively light-hearted stories with everything that taken place up to The Soul Key. A lot of it is building towards something big in terms the future of the Dominion and how things play out with the Ascendants.

[lvsxy808]

^^^ Exactly. This is only episode 2 out of 22 - gotta have room for things to build up. Which they will.

For those who didn't notice, which it probably most of you, the bit where Sisko talks about explaining alternate realities to the Prophets was my little reference to the Millenium trilogy, which was framed as Sisko doing exactly that for all three books.

[lvsxy808]

Okay then - time for episode 3.

10x03 - Steppin' Out

And here are some extra links to help you visualise...

http://youtu.be/G-hzVnqYA3U
http://youtu.be/jqa5kNNaMlc
http://youtu.be/wVWJashcBKg

Enjoy!

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[Gul Re'jal]

Oh, that was one of those unrelated-to-the-current-plots episode.

I like it. At first I was "ah?" when reading about Vic leaving the holosuite, but then I thought that he had some kind of portable emitter, not unlike the Doctors.

I was put off by Matthias's behaviour, though. She did understand her error in the end, but she treated Vic as a tool, a replicator, completely refusing to accept that he might possess independent thinking. What would she say about Data?

[lvsxy808]

Mostly unrelated, yes, but it forwards the Dax-transferring plot, and some bits and pieces from this will show up later in the season.

I wanted the Vic thing to throw people off at first, to just wonder, "what the hell?" He fake walked off the holosuite at the beginning, and then he real walked off the holosuite at the end. Writing it, I thought to myself, "Hmm, we haven't seen Vic in a while. What should it be about?" Well, make a virtue of it, as they say. The episode is about the fact that we haven't seen Vic in a while.

As for Matthias, I could see it being a controversial point of view. But I think she makes some valid points. She doesn't have the familiarity with the Vic program the rest of the crew do (and the audience), so it took her some time to get there. We have an affection for the character, so we automatically accept him as "real." She doesn't know him. It's like Sisko in "Badda-Bing," where he says, "I see. When were you planning on going back to work?" Even at the end, her apology was more in terms of the good it did for the station's community rather than Vic himself. But I don't think it makes her a bad person per se - she probably just doesn't think of it as much of an issue.

BTW, thanks for still reading and responding. I do appreciate it. I'm planning on speeding up the upload schedule a bit, so you don't have to wait so long between installments, and hopefully things will get a bit more interesting for you.

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[Enterprise1981]

Loved that bit asking "Have we been in Nog's quarters since he made chief engineer?" I would imagine they are his own, but probably smaller than the duplex he shared with Jake.

[Enterprise1981]

Now having read episode 10x03 in its entirety, I have ask now when 10x01 takes place in relation to The Soul Key? The Memory Beta chronology places that novel in early 2377 / early Season 7 of Voyager (not that such a placement is carved in stone).

Interesting that the story ends with Ezri still not having broken the news to Julian. I guess she has till the Destiny trilogy circa 2381.

[lvsxy808]

Enterprise1981 wrote:

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Loved that bit asking "Have we been in Nog's quarters since he made chief engineer?" I would imagine they are his own, but probably smaller than the duplex he shared with Jake.

Yeah, that's what I figured too. When Jake left the station to go work at B'Hala, and Nog got promoted to Chief Engineer, that's when he would have moved quarters.

Enterprise1981 wrote:

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Now having read episode 10x03 in its entirety, I have ask now when 10x01 takes place in relation to The Soul Key? The Memory Beta chronology places that novel in early 2377 / early Season 7 of Voyager (not that such a placement is carved in stone).

Well, see, this is where I decided to complicate matters.

As described in the novels themselves, the stories so far have taken place in little more than a year of "real" time. But when I was adapting the novels into screenplays for seasons 8 and 9, it clearly made up at least 2 seasons worth of television (and that's with cutting stuff out). Since the general rule of thumb on TV was always that 1 season approximately equals 1 year, I decided to go with the idea that the time from Avatar to Soul Key had been two years, not one. 2 seasons equals two years. I never really saw why the stories needed to be crammed in so tight to begin with.

So I'm going by the rule that DS9 season 10 runs parallel with VOY season 8 - that is, after it comes home, with Homecoming and The Farther Shore. Hence the references to Voyager's return, to it being Rebecca's first birthday already (even though she was only born in Unity), to it being two years since Winn went missing, and so on.

So, "Emancipation" picks up immediately after "Ha'mara" (aka, The Soul Key, part 2). But because The Soul Key takes place a year later in my own personal chronology than it does according to Memory Beta, that still makes it level with the post-series VOY-R.

If it helps, I can tell you that this season will also take up one year, and that by the end of it, TNG's A Time to... series will be about to start.

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[Wally]

Well done. My favorite episode so far. Really feels like a well-done 'bottle show' from the series. Appreciate the occasional stand-alone story.

I really love how this series is shaping up and will be following. That gap between 'Soul Key' and 'Rough Beasts of Empire' leaves so much opportunity for story telling.

[lvsxy808]

^^^ Thanks! I agree, so much room to tell stories - part of why I'm doing this.

Nobody's mentioned my "outing" of two established recurring characters. Not that I'm saying it should be controversial in any way, but still, I expected some comment....

<pouts>

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[Enterprise1981]

lvsxy808 wrote:

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Nobody's mentioned my "outing" of two established recurring characters. Not that I'm saying it should be controversial in any way, but still, I expected some comment....

I didn't seem all that surprised that the Dabo boy was gay and I hadn't heard of the other guy, so it wasn't much of surprise to either way.

[Wally]

[QUOTE=Enterprise1981;5162432]

lvsxy808 wrote:

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Nobody's mentioned my "outing" of two established recurring characters. Not that I'm saying it should be controversial in any way, but still, I expected some comment....

I thought it was well handled.

Curiously, the first thing that popped in my head would be that Quark would probably frown on the date in his own establishment. Better to keep the clientele thinking that he's single. Sort of like movie stars back in the day pretending to be single, so their fans could fantasize about them.
Now if either of these characters where from canon, and not strictly trek-lit characters, THEN there probably would be a response

[lvsxy808]

Enterprise1981 wrote:

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I didn't seem all that surprised that the Dabo boy was gay and I hadn't heard of the other guy, so it wasn't much of surprise to either way.

Candlewood was established as one of the engineering staff as far back as the Mission Gamma books. He was the one who Bashir accidentally stabbed in the leg while he was losing his faculties in Cathedral. He was established in Lesser Evil as being a practical joker - he was the one who gave Nog a milkshake which to his horror didn't have tube grubs in it. Prynn suggested at that time that maybe he had a crush on Nog. She could have easily just been joking, but I decided to run with it and make him officially gay.

As for Hetik... hmmm, I can't quite decide if he's full-on gay or not. I feel like it's a bit stereotypical that the big muscly himbo would be gay, but I suppose that's no reason for him not to be. Also take into account that he is a dabo boy, and they are paid to flirt with customers and make them think they're interested. I don't want to call Hetik a prostitute, but it's also established that customers can "win a date with" a dabo person in a contest sometimes (I think that was from Mission Gamma too), and I'm sure that in that circumstance, Hetik has had "dates" with men and women, and Treir has probably had dates with men and women too. So there might not be any more to it than that from Hetik's point of view. Or maybe there is. I haven't really decided. It doesn't play a big role in my plans.

Wally wrote:

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I thought it was well handled.

Thank you. Definitely my intention to make it appear as a non-issue on the page, even if I put a lot of thought into it in my head. I do tend to overthink things.

Curiously, the first thing that popped in my head would be that Quark would probably frown on the date in his own establishment. Better to keep the clientele thinking that he's single. Sort of like movie stars back in the day pretending to be single, so their fans could fantasize about them.

Valid point. I imagine a quick peck on the cheek to keep someone spinning the dabo wheel would be a fairly frequent sight in the bar, but a full-on makeout session is something else. On the other hand, everybody seemed to know Bashir was dating Leeta all that time, and then Leeta married Rom, so...

I kind of played with that a bit when I had Treir complain about the kiss - because he should pretend to be single? because it's two guys? - only to reveal that she's just jealous and wants to get in there herself.

Also makes you wonder what the Ferengi position is on gay men and/or gay employees. We know that they don't want women in the workplace (or at least they didn't), but do they even have a position on LGBTs? Quark seems happy for women to sell their bodies for profit, but would he think it's beneath a man? He rejected the entire idea of a dabo boy at first, but that was just a kneejerk reaction and he soon realised the potential. Did he have to get past socio-sexual issues to do so? We only have the scene in "Rules of Acquisition" to go by, where Quark is kissed by Pel (who he still thinks is a man at the time). He was shocked, probably just because Quark is an established straightie, but he didn't seem to reveal any fundamental homophobia. See what I said about thinking too much?

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[lvsxy808]

Here we go with episode 4.

10x04 - Easy Come, Easy Go

Hope you enjoy.

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[Wally]

[QUOTE=lvsxy808;5162891]

Enterprise1981 wrote:

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gay men and/or gay employees. We know that they don't want women in the workplace (or at least they didn't), but do they even have a position on LGBTs? Quark seems happy for women to sell their bodies for profit, but would he think it's beneath a man? He rejected the entire idea of a dabo boy at first, but that was just a kneejerk reaction and he soon realised the potential. Did he have to get past socio-sexual issues to do so? We only have the scene in "Rules of Acquisition" to go by, where Quark is kissed by Pel (who he still thinks is a man at the time). He was shocked, probably just because Quark is an established straightie, but he didn't seem to reveal any fundamental homophobia. See what I said about thinking too much?

.

Actually, I'd bet the Ferengi position is probably analagous to our present day. There are going to be conservative Ferengi against homosexual relations, and growing number of progressives who are more accepting.
Quark himself, my guess, would probably publicly show distaste against homosexuals since he always wants to show that he exemplifies fundamentalist Ferengi values, rather than the changes his society has gone through brought on by Zek and his own brother. However, through the course of DS9, we know that's just a fascade and all bluster. Inside he's actually somewhat charitable and very open minded, he just does his best not to show it.
At least, that's my take on Ferengis