Announcing: Deep Space Nine Season 10!

[Enterprise1981]

Again, stated earlier, if a frequently seen character from canon had been "outed", it would be quite a shock. One of the regularly depicted Trek-lit characters, probably so (you could theoretically make Sarina Douglas bi if one interpreted her reference to "people" who had shown romantic interest in her that way). But that's probably countered by the fact that Prynn was briefly "bi-curious", so nothing doing there.

Nice to see a lot of different storylines play out at once. Looks like all the pieces are in place for later encounters with the Ascendants. And Ezri begins her journey towards becoming captain of the Aventine. While Zero Sum Game may have implied that Ezri had transferred to the Aventine from DS9, she did mention seeking a berth on one of the Luna-class ships in one of the novels after Unity, but Sisko replied that one wouldn't be in service for another year.

[lvsxy808]

Enterprise1981 wrote:

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And Ezri begins her journey towards becoming captain of the Aventine. While Zero Sum Game may have implied that Ezri had transferred to the Aventine from DS9, she did mention seeking a berth on one of the Luna-class ships in one of the novels after Unity, but Sisko replied that one wouldn't be in service for another year.

Zero Sum Game may have implied that, but it didn't outright state it, so I used that wiggle room here. It just seemed to me that there's at least three years yet from this point until Destiny, and that's a lot of time to have Dax fannying about on the question of whether to transfer or not. Eventually we'd be like, "Oh just stop talking about it and transfer already!" Likewise, we know that Vesta class vessels aren't even on the drawing board yet, so she can't transfer immediately to the Aventine.

So I needed a middle ground - somewhere else to transfer her to first. Given that conversation in Warpath, the Luna seemed like the perfect choice, and I did specifically say that it was the shakedown cruise - the tryouts, not the full mission.

And of course, we already know what happens to the Luna, don't we...

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[Gul Re'jal]

Whatever you do to write Ezri, you keep very in-character well--she gets on my nerves exactly the same way she does in the show. Consider it a compliment I, for one, won't miss her.

An interesting episode. Glad to see the solution to Odo's anger after Taran'atar's report. While we didn't see what exactly happened, we see how it played out in the end.

Prynn and her interest in ladies...Hmm, while I find nothing wrong with her thinking, I wonder what girl would tell her father about something like that. I wouldn't.

And yay! for Shar coming back; he was one of my favourite characters from the novels. And booo! for Shar "cheating" on his family. It could be an Andorian thing and he doesn't it coming to Prynn as cheating anyone, but I agree with her--it would feel wrong. That funny morality of ours--pinkskins

I'd say it was the best episode so far

[lvsxy808]

Gul Re'jal wrote:

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Whatever you do to write Ezri, you keep very in-character well--she gets on my nerves exactly the same way she does in the show. Consider it a compliment I, for one, won't miss her.

Heh - thanks, i guess!

Prynn and her interest in ladies...Hmm, while I find nothing wrong with her thinking, I wonder what girl would tell her father about something like that. I wouldn't.

I'm fairly sure that's not original to me - she said something similar in Lesser Evil or Unity or one of those. As to saying it to Vaughn, well, it's not supposed to be an issue anymore, and I just wanted to show that Vaughn and Prynn are really getting along well now. And if Prynn can be interested in Shar, then she's already not limiting herself to strictly male partners.

I'd say it was the best episode so far

Thanks!

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[Gul Re'jal]

lvsxy808 wrote:

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As to saying it to Vaughn, well, it's not supposed to be an issue anymore, and I just wanted to show that Vaughn and Prynn are really getting along well now.
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I don't mean the past problems between them. It's just that I don't think their sexuality is a subject that women would discuss with their fathers. Some might--I don't claim it's impossible--but I'd also expect the father to be disturbed by such a conversation.

But maybe it's just me not following the modern world

[Wally]

Really was happy to see Shar back on the 'show'. I was always miffed that he was basically written off after the Andor book and was never really mentioned again.

Also happy to see Taran'atar back. Poor guy is going to have to do even more fence mending than in the first place

[lvsxy808]

Gul Re'jal wrote:

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I don't mean the past problems between them. It's just that I don't think their sexuality is a subject that women would discuss with their fathers. Some might--I don't claim it's impossible--but I'd also expect the father to be disturbed by such a conversation.

I'm not a woman, so maybe there's subtleties I'm missing in the potential reactions. But my intention was exactly that it is the kind of thing they're comfortable discussing, because questions of sexual orientation are completely neutral by the 24th century. At least at this conversational level - I'm not talking graphic descriptions, there I'd agree with you that there's some things a parent doesn't need to hear about their child. But I don't think I would be uncomfortable mentioning in passing to my mother that I had once considered sleeping with a girl, had it ever happened. But then everyone's parents are different.

Wally wrote:

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Really was happy to see Shar back on the 'show'. I was always miffed that he was basically written off after the Andor book and was never really mentioned again.

Also happy to see Taran'atar back. Poor guy is going to have to do even more fence mending than in the first place

I realise that both of these contradict the Typhon Pact books - Zero Sum Game states that Taran'atar never returned to the station, and likewise Paths of Disharmony with Shar. But I had story ideas for both of them, and wanted to include them, so I decided to disregard those small details.

Other than that and a couple of other tiny details, I'm trying to stay as close to the established TrekLit material as possible - future as well as past. I'm only disregarding things when I have a very good reason to do so. Like saying in episode one that Admiral Batanides works in Human Resources when she's clearly established in books like Hollow Men as being in Intelligence - a very deliberate change for a specific reason.

In some ways I'm thinking of this as the TV show - Batanides hasn't been seen on TV since "Tapestry," so I'm free to change some details because TV supercedes Lit. Likewise another character I'm introducing later in the season is familiar to readers of the Lit, but wouldn't be to TV viewers, so I'm able to thread in a "surprise" to the viewers even though it's actually nothing of the sort to observant readers.

I might even do annotations eventually.

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[Gul Re'jal]

lvsxy808 wrote:

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But I don't think I would be uncomfortable mentioning in passing to my mother that I had once considered sleeping with a girl, had it ever happened.
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And I wouldn't expect it to be so grating for many mothers. But men and women aren't held to the same standard. Not related to your story at all (and certainly not to Prynn), but I'll give you an example.
How do you call a man who had many women? A stud; he is usually admired for being so good with ladies.
How do you call a woman who had many men?

Some fathers want to believe their little girls are virgins even if their little girls have children

So, when is new episode going to be posted?

[lvsxy808]

I'm going with a two week schedule at the moment.

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[lvsxy808]

Okay, conversation has ground to a halt. Thankfully, it's time for episode 5.

10x05 - "Deep Down"

Enjoy!

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[Enterprise1981]

^ Makes for some good foreshadowing of Zero Sum Game, be it Bashir's nightmares, or Ro becoming second officer-- two steps closer to becoming station CO in that novel.

Also on that note, quite an ominous ending with L'Haan appearing in Taran'atar's dreams.

[Wally]

Really like that it at first LOOKED like a trek story we've seen a hundred times before, but at the end, the twist was something new and entirely unexpected.

One thing I think was lacking was with the number of characters 'on edge', that Phillipa Matthias was not utilized as well. I think that might have been a missed opportunity to make use of that underutilized character

[lvsxy808]

Enterprise1981 wrote:

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^ Makes for some good foreshadowing of Zero Sum Game, be it Bashir's nightmares, or Ro becoming second officer-- two steps closer to becoming station CO in that novel.

Bizarrely, my original idea for this episode involved the Borg.

See, I never thought Bashir properly dealt with his near-death experience on the Kornak homeworld, as depicted in "Wounds." Since "Wounds" was written as a kind of possible proto-Borg origin story, I thought that we could deal with his guilt over that here, and that it would be the Borg who were chasing him down in his nightmares. He might even imagine himself assimilated.

But the more I worked on it, the more I realised it didn't really work. It wasn't personal enough, and we'd already established that it wasn't really his fault, so he has no reason to feel guilt over it. So I ended up leaving it with just Ross's dressing down of Bashir in "Emancipation" and the Lense guest shot here.

But you're right that it was Zero Sum Game that gave me the inspiration for the new direction in this story. A logical direction for Bashir's character, and at a suitable time too - after Dax has moved on.

Enterprise1981 wrote:

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Also on that note, quite an ominous ending with L'Haan appearing in Taran'atar's dreams.

Note that while everyone else was blaming Taran'atar for their dreams, nobody noticed that Taran'atar was having dreams of his own...

Wally wrote:

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Really like that it at first LOOKED like a trek story we've seen a hundred times before, but at the end, the twist was something new and entirely unexpected.

Exactly my intention, and I'm glad you caught that. We've had so many episodes where the crew act wacky because of some technobabble excuse affecting them. I wanted to try to deliberately mislead the reader/viewer to think this is more of the same, but then have the twist be that there isn't a technobabble excuse - you're just having bad dreams.

I think Bashir's desperation to find something to blame it on is because he doesn't want to think he's so weak that he would be bothered by nightmares. He associates it with being young and childish - perhaps even with his pre-enhancement days - so he would go to great lengths to deny that about himself.

Which now that I think of it, ties into the Taran'atar storyline. A genetically engineered "super-person" who likes to think he's better than others...

Wally wrote:

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One thing I think was lacking was with the number of characters 'on edge', that Phillipa Matthias was not utilized as well. I think that might have been a missed opportunity to make use of that underutilized character

Yeah, you could be right. It seems counter-intuitive that an episode about dreams wouldn't feature the Counsellor character. But truthfully I just couldn't think of anything specific to do with her, any particular role that she fulfilled in the story that couldn't be given to one of the regular characters.

Like the Nog-Ro scene for example. It could have been Matthias counselling her, but if you put Nog in there, it has more power because he's been there and can relate.

You're also right about the number of characters freaking out. When I envisioned this episode in my head, it involved a lot more characters acting out of whack. A plague of nightmares sweeping the station, and making everyone paranoid and blaming this, that and the other. But when it came to it I couldn't figure out how to actually make that happen on the page. I guess that's something I need to work on.


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[lvsxy808]

Perhaps to try and stimulate some more discussion, I'll talk about an aspect of writing that really hit me in creating this episode more than it has previously - synchronicity. Maybe the other writers among you can relate?

For example, in episode 5 here, I initially mentioned the Kressari in the first scene in the Infirmary, purely as something that Bashir could have forgotten about, to demonstrate his failing mental faculties. I wanted a race we'd seen before on DS9. There was no greater intention to it than that.

It was only once it was already written that I realised what else I could do with it. How Kressari work with flowers, and flowers have been seen to have poisonous effects before (Garak used them on Romulus, for example), and that could be one of the things somebody could choose as a possible culprit for the dreams.

And then it was only after that, that I realised how the Kressari tied in even further through the already established character of Shing-Kur (from Fearful Symmetry and The Soul Key), who worked on messing with Taran'atar's head using dreams. And I could use that as a reason Cenn would distrust him - he was the one who interrogated Shing-Kur.

All of it just fell into place of its own accord, like the plot was writing itself. I love when that happens - when the stuff just works itself out if as it was meant to happen that way. It makes me feel like I'm really on the right track with things.

Does anyone else have a similar experience from their own writing?

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[Gul Re'jal]

Lots of times

I usually have a general plot outlined, but sometimes my characters do things that I had not planned and that surprise me. Sometimes plot turns such a way that I can have some not previously planned changes and details. Sometimes my stories have their own life