TheGodBen Revisits Deep Space Nine

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' started by TheGodBen, Oct 16, 2011.

  1. Seven of Five

    Seven of Five Stupid Sexy Flanders! Premium Member

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    Terrible episode. We're a million miles away from Crossover here. The plot with the cloaking device is dumb, and the use of Ferengi just eye-rolling.

    What bugs me the most is the use of sexuality to show how strange and edgy the mirror universe is. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: just doesn't do it justice really. How forward thinking!

    To think this is the same writing team that brought us Rejoined.
     
  2. Sykonee

    Sykonee Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Gotta agree here. TENC is dumb, but once I accept its shallowness, I just gorge myself on the eye-candy and forget about it later. Still, it's an episode I'd only make time for if I'm doing a dedicated series re-watch (which I probably won't have to do for a while since I'm enjoying it vicariously through Godben's thread and the A.V. Club's retrospective :bolian: ).
     
  3. Deranged Nasat

    Deranged Nasat Vice Admiral Admiral

    Well, we've made it through the final cowpat on the lush green field that is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. On to the final stretch!
     
  4. flemm

    flemm Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Very true. It went so far downhill that it's easy to forget what a great episode Crossover actually is.
     
  5. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    What you say is true, but I can't help thinking of Lyndon Johnson. He pushed through civil rights, expanded social programs, and funded the Apollo Program, but he was still a lout that peed on one of his Secret Service agents just because he could. Neither he nor Zek are people I would particularly want to spend time with. ;)

    Are the AV club reviews back? He took a break at the end of season 2 and I never bothered to check if he restarted.


    Field of Fire (**½)

    Joran Dax is a character that seems to have gotten away from the writers. Originally, he was a reasonably normal guy that developed violent impulses after the joining with the symbiont and killed a doctor who advocated removing the Dax symbiont from him. Such a murder would actually have been in self defence as removing the symbiont would have killed the host, so he wasn't exactly an evil character, just unstable. But then Facets happened, and suddenly Joran was a deranged psychopath that had a random desire to kill people. Avery Brooks' performance in that scene was excellent, but that retcon didn't sit right with me. Now it's revealed that Joran isn't just a psychopath, he's a calculating serial killer that killed two other people. This is very far away from my original understanding of the character of Joran.

    Somebody on the station is murdering random officers, and Ezri is drafted in as a forensic psychologist because she needed yet another episode to stick it to her haters. To help understand the mind of a killer, Ezri performs a magic spell with a cauldron and summons up the third incarnation of Joran Dax. Joran spends the next few days prodding Ezri towards killing some people because he's a bit of a prick, and things go south when Ezri almost stabs a guy with a butter-knife. But in the end Joran plays a key role in solving the case by encouraging Ezri to use racial profiling and illegally spy on a guy that she just doesn't like the look of. Thankfully for Ezri, he was the murderer she was looking for, because if he wasn't then she would have lost her job.

    As a standalone crime story, this episode is okay. The weapon used to commit the murders is ingenious, the perfect assassination device. That being said, the visor that allows you to see into any room on the station seems a bit much, the idea that such technology is available in the future is pretty frightening. Although, it does explain why people don't have TVs in the future, when they want entertainment they just put on their visors and watch what other people on the station are doing. I also liked the revelation that the killer was a Vulcan, it was a neat twist. I don't see any reason why a Vulcan can't go insane like every other race in the galaxy, and when they go insane they become a pretty big threat.
     
  6. heavy lids

    heavy lids Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I'd agree with your rating of Field of Fire. It was a forced "Ezri" episode, but for good reasons. It's usually an episode I'll skip over in season 7, but I've seen every DS9 episode AT LEAST four-five times.
     
  7. heavy lids

    heavy lids Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Thank you, TheGodBen for writing these reviews.
     
  8. Thestral

    Thestral Vice Admiral Admiral

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    That's a good point, yeah. I was thinking more about the Trill in general I guess than Jadzia or Ezri specifically - they were never gonna get Bajoran or Cardassian level development, but a little more of it, or better than the examples we got, would've helped.
     
  9. Sykonee

    Sykonee Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Up to the middle of S4 now. Check it!

    Edit: If anything, for the latest contribution from Rappin_Jake_Sisko in the comments.
     
  10. flemm

    flemm Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    A little better, maybe, but still pretty shallow for the most part, and then mostly silly in the final arc.

    Rejoined was the one episode where I thought some justice was done to the basic concept, which is pretty amazing, really. It should be a great sci-fi concept because it should allow the writers to explore issues of identity and transhumanism ("storing" memories and so on, though not by technological means in the case of the Trill).

    By comparison, Rene Echevarria especially was able to develop the concept of the changelings in a way that never really happened with the Trill. Increasingly, it's not about Odo disguising himself as a barrel or whatever, but about his struggles with his own identity, individuality, place in the universe, etc.
     
  11. Seven of Five

    Seven of Five Stupid Sexy Flanders! Premium Member

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    :techman:

    Yeah I wasn't thrilled with yet more Ezri, but this episode was a bit better than the last two. It's a solid mystery, and I liked that a Vulcan had been pushed into doing bad things.

    I'm not sure I buy Joran's secret murderous streak either. I preferred him in Equilibrium when he was a bit unstable, but managed to cast doubt over the symbiont selection process.
     
  12. DS9Continuing

    DS9Continuing Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    By the Prophets, that's some good shit.

    The best one by far though, is this thread here, which develops into a Star Trek rap battle between Rappin Jake Sisko and Tumak the Skreean (or 2Mak, as he goes by).

    It might possibly be the best thing ever on the internet (second only to Dramatic Chipmunk).

    .
     
  13. InklingStar

    InklingStar Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I rather like Field of Fire. It actually features some detective work, albeit by the counselor instead of the security officer.

    I wonder if a Star Trek: NCIS would be a ratings winner these days.
     
  14. Deranged Nasat

    Deranged Nasat Vice Admiral Admiral

    :lol:

    That's fantastic.

    I also like the discussion regarding Zek, the rambling Section 31 revisionist historian, and the Minbari cross-over sex ed content.

    EDIT: On the serious side of things, these are fantastic reviews. I'm annoyed I didn't know of them sooner.
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2013
  15. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Thank you for inflating my ego. ;)

    I'll have to make some time to read through the backlog then. They were really good reviews, and what made them better was that Zack was almost entirely unspoiled. He didn't know any of the big twists, such as Odo's origins or Cardassia joining the Dominion, and that was really refreshing.
     
  16. TheGodBen

    TheGodBen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Chimera (****½)

    The Changeling that impersonated Martok somehow miraculously survived, and he cooked up a convoluted revenge plot on Odo. By pretending to be one of the 100 baby Changelings the Founders cruelly sent out into the galaxy, Laas hopes to turn Odo against his humanoid friends and trick him into leaving DS9.

    Or not.

    Chimera is a great episode that explores a great deal of what has gone unsaid on DS9 so far. The most unsettling truth is that the Founders are kinda right, the humanoid races are a bit racist towards them, and their ability to take any form does cause suspicion to be cast towards them. At the same time, Changelings like Laas are smug pricks. They view themselves as higher lifeforms and look down on us as limited beings that are destructive and dangerous. In time, Laas's disturbed form of Changeling pride would lead humanoids to hate his kind, and Laas would set out to kill them in his belief that he's protecting himself. Laas allows us to see the beginning of the Dominion without actually seeing it. Near the end, we get a vision of how it all started.

    For Odo, this is an eye-opening experience. He has always been aware that he's treated as an outsider, Laas just forces him to contemplate it. He has become so accustomed to fitting in with humanoids that he doesn't realise all that he's missing by not shape-shifting all the time. His friends like and trust him, but maybe that's because Odo only relates with them in a humanoid shape. How would the likes of O'Brien or Worf react if Odo decided to have a conversation with them in the shape of a luminescent octopus, or a ball of flame? They may not be opposed to Odo acting in such a way, but it would make them feel weird and understandably uncomfortable, so Odo chooses not to do these things.

    This is where my love of counting things comes in handy, because we can actually chart Odo's decline as a shape-shifter through the seasons.

    Season 1: 6
    Season 2: 6
    Season 3: 3
    Season 4: 13
    Season 5: 3
    Season 6: 2
    Season 7 (so far): 1

    As you can see, other than the random spike in shape-shifting in season 4 (which is inflated due to Odo taking part in Changeling drills), Odo's shape-shifting has been declining throughout the seasons. He has only changed shape on screen once this season, and that was a joke about his umpire outfit. (Also note that one of the shape-shifting occurrences in season 6 was when he "wore" a tux, and two of the occurrences in season 5 were jokes about his sexual anatomy and the appearance of Old Odo in Children of Time.) Odo doesn't shape-shift much publicly any more. The real reason for this probably has something to do with shape-shifting being Odo's gimmick back in the early seasons and as he developed as a character the writers didn't need to rely on it any more, but Laas' claims do make a compelling case in-universe.

    Anyway, the rest of this episode is about love and how it conquers all, especially the city of Troy. See, Kira loves Odo so much that she decides to let him go. That's not really my style of love, I come from the clingy if-you-leave-me-I'll-make-your-life-a-living-hell school of romance, but I appreciate the sentiment. Odo is so moved by this gesture that he realises not all humanoids are bad and that Kira is one person that he can truly be himself with. In a final romantic moment, Odo attempts to reveal his true nature to Kira, but he ends up smothering her with toxic fumes that make her imagine a magnificent light-show.

    Form of... pure love: 35
     
  17. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I love the tone you adopted for this review. :)
     
  18. Worf'sParmach

    Worf'sParmach Commander Red Shirt

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    I never noticed it before, but you're right, Odo doesn't do much shape-shifting as the show goes on. I bet it was a budget thing that just eneded up fitting his character arc, as he got more comfortable with this group of solids, he no longer felt the need to or felt comfortable changing shape. But as Laas point out, he's missing out.

    (Side note: as a physics teacher, Odo's constant violation of the Law of Conservation of Mass has always bugged me)

    As I watched that episode I kept thinking, "Why does this guy seem to familiar. It wasn't until years later, and Memory Alpha, that I figured it out.

    :guffaw: I'm with you on that one.
     
  19. apenpaap

    apenpaap Commodore Commodore

    For some reason I found this episode really poor when I first watched it. Then when I rewatched it a few months ago I wondered how drunk I'd been the first time around. I did think O'Brien's "Well, it's not us who can change our shape at will" thing as a reply to Laas claiming solids were untrustworthy (I think), was a little out of the blue, and Quark rambling about genetics was a little unlike him. (It would be more like him to talk about stuff he sees in his bar, but these lines were actually from Sisko in the original version of the script, were the ending was instead basically Sisko saying: "Yep, we're all racist bastards." and Odo going "Oh well, you're honest about it so I'll stick around." )
     
  20. flemm

    flemm Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    LoL :)

    This is one of DS9's best imo. It's unusual in that a lot of DS9's finest hours go against the grain of Trek's main themes of embracing difference, cooperation between species, and a sort of optimistic vision of humanity's ability to overcome prejudice, and so on.

    This episode, on the other hand, is 100% Trek in that regard, but it does it in a way that is very simple, understated, and ultimately more profound than Trek usually is when it tries to do this type of thing.

    It also manages to do it via what is basically a love story, something Trek is historically bad at.

    If I were Echevarria, I think I would be very proud of it.

    It also has a lasting impact on the rest of the season because the emotional depth established here for Kira and Odo provides some of the strongest material in the final arc (much better than the Ezri/Worf/Bashir hijinks).