TheGodBen Revisits Deep Space Nine

[Distorted Humor]

Two decent things - one Bashir/O'Brian

Two - Cute Bajorian teen.

[Lindley]

TheGodBen wrote:

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Hell, I would have torpedoed the village from orbit just to make sure.

Eh, as I recall someone got to it eventually.

[Ln X]

Don't knock The Storyteller. The best bits were Bashir/O'Brien, and the whole Dal'Rok thing was a wee bit interesting. The Dal'Rok was some sort of morality tale, something which Star Trek does a lot of. Stand united against a common enemy, realise that your have more in common than differences and so forth. I mean I know it's in your face like a big cow pat, but it's no different to Shakespeare (isn't that in your face with the overemphasised drama and monologues?)

The weakest bit was that Bajoran teenage girl leader, and the whole thing with Jake and Nog explaining to her how to solve her problems was like being told how 2+2=4. The thing that made this episode average (but enjoyable to watch) was Bashir and O'Brien. In particular O'Brien's dialogue saved the whole episode and his reaction to being 'the storyteller' was what made many bits of the episode funny (or at the very least engaging/riveting). I wouldn't say it's the worst of season 1, but it's more average.

[TheGodBen]

Ln X wrote:

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The Dal'Rok was some sort of morality tale, something which Star Trek does a lot of. Stand united against a common enemy, realise that your have more in common than differences and so forth.

The problem is that it seems to suggest that people need mythical beings in order to be civilised, which is a concept I find highly objectionable. Not to mention the fact that the Sirah created a being that causes physical harm to people. He actually comes across as a bit of a conman, or an extortionist. He creates a monster that threatens to destroy the village and he's the only one that can stop it. He uses this power to give himself a privileged position within the community, a position that involves the townsfolk giving him gifts and his choice of the attractive young women to fulfil his sexual desires.

See, if you think about this episode for a half-second longer than you're supposed to, the scenario is highly questionable. But none of that matters because O'Brien and Bashir don't care, all they want to do is go home.

[Admiral Shran]

TheGodBen wrote:

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Oh, so you were sent by the Emissary. Well, that makes all the difference.

Distorted Humor wrote:

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Two decent things - one Bashir/O'Brian

Two - Cute Bajorian teen.

Yeah, that's about it.

The Storyteller is a bad episode, clearly ripped from the TNG production schedule and transplanted onto DS9. Like TheGodBen said, it has nothing to do with the Bajor we know, even by this point in the series.

Supposedly, this village has been struggling with this monster for decades because they needed a common enemy to fight against in order to unite them. Ummm.... are we forgetting a non-artificial common enemy that this village would have had for those decades? Here's a hint as to what that enemy was.... CARDASSIANS! Why the hell would this village need the Dal'Rok to unite against during the Occupation?!

Now I'm not quite as harsh on the episode as to give it 1/10, mostly because I don't think the Sirah is quite as devious as TheGodBen makes him out to be. I'd probably give it a 3/10. It's definitely not the worst of Season One.

[defiantfan]

O'Brien shows his funny side in "StoryTeller", I like the episode for its tidbit about Odo and the bucket as well.

However, it might be a stretch but I kind of blame this episode on that M. Night movie about the evil creatures the town has to unite against in order to save them from reality. I'm not entirely sure why the concept bothers me.

[Admiral Shran]

^ The Village?

I've never seen that one, but if it's anything like The Storyteller, I might have to pass.

[Nerys Ghemor]

"The Storyteller" was horrendous as an episode--though the Bashir-O'Brien interaction was classic.

I did at least manage to get some mileage out of it for part of the background work of my fanfic, though. Needless to say I did not portray what the Sirah did as a good thing. It was manipulative and in my opinion cruel.

Admiral Shran: The Village is absolutely horrible. That said, the film score is well worth purchasing; the solo violinist is incredibly good.

[Sean_McCormick]

defiantfan, you do realise, that that movie came out 11 years after the episode?

[Shatnertage]

I agree that a people living through a hostile occupation by a bunch of aliens wouldn't really need a boogie monster to get them to play nice with each other. I thought this was a pretty bad episode.

[TheGodBen]

Progress (****)

Since Temis described this thread as educational, I thought I'd give you young whipper-snappers (most of whom are probably older than me) a history lesson:

Evictions play an emotional role in Irish history, particularly during the notorious potato famine when people that were literally starving to death were evicted from their homes. The right for tenant farmers to own their own homes played a big part of the nationalist movement here in the late 19th century. Once Ireland achieved independence, the first major project the Free State undertook was the construction of the Shannon Scheme, a hydroelectric power station that was intended to be large enough to power most of the country. It was one of the largest engineering projects in the world at the time, constructed by Siemens and involving predominantly German engineers, and it was the largest hydroelectric dam anywhere until the Hoover Dam was completed the following decade. Part of the reason why the project was so big was that they couldn't use the the actual river to build the dam on, they created an alternate route parallel to the original river, about 15km long, through rural farmland. There are obvious environmental issues with this, salmon levels in that stretch of the river are still well below what they used to be, but there's also the question of the people that lived along the route of that new water channel. You have to imagine that some people had to be moved from their homes, and I imagine quite a few of them weren't happy about it. I wonder how the police officers and soldiers, some of whom probably served in the IRA during the War of Independence, must have felt when overseeing the eviction process. The homeowners would probably have been compensated monetarily, unlike the evictions of old, but some of the officers must have wondered if this new Irish government were any better than the British one.

I appreciate that people don't read these reviews for boring history lessons, but rather for my weird yet crappy photoshops. So, as a reward, here's a picture of what it would like like if Community did a DS9 spoof episode:



Forgive me? Good.

My point was that this episode feels real to me, even if it is about aliens and moons. This is an issue that has probably come up in every country that achieved independence from another, the fact that some messy things need to be done no matter who is in change, and some people that are so focused on achieving independence don't plan for the realities that await once it is achieved. Kira's problem is one that I can relate to, and it's one with no easy solution, she just has to hope that she's doing the right thing and that the benefits of this project will outweigh the harm it has caused. I also like Mullibok, even if the writer's intention was that I wasn't supposed to. I liked him because he's a stubborn, manipulative son of a bitch, which are qualities that I recognise in myself.

The problem with this episode is really more of a technical one. Destroying the ecosystem of an M-class world seems like an awfully high price to pay just to heat a couple of hundred thousand homes. For that sort of sacrifice you'd expect much greater returns, perhaps even enough energy to power half of Bajor. But I guess it's possible that the writers didn't want to make it too easy for Kira to justify her decision at the end of the episode and they wanted it to be more morally ambiguous.

The b-story follows Nog and Jake as they navigate their way through the Great Material Continuum. It's a relatively fun diversion from the heavy a-story and a better use of the characters than in the previous episode. I could criticise it if I want to, but I don't.

[Seven of Five]

I agree with those that say the premise of The Storyteller was poorly thought out. Were these Bajorans somehow different to the ones we had seen starting to recover from 60 years of occupation? Perhaps the occupation wasn't really that brutal, and therefore didn't unite the Bajorans? And then, perhaps, after all of this, only mighty O'Brien can come in and save the day with his stories?

I mean I like the guy, but seriously?

What stops this episode from bring ranked amongst the dreck season one is the Bashir/O'Brien interplay. It's so funny seeing the start of the great Julian and Miles relationship. Them not getting along at the start was played for laughs well, and their relationship would gradually develop to the point where it hurt a lot for them to be seperated. Their appearance together here stops the audience from totally giving up.

EDIT: The pic is brilliant! I forgot that DS9 and Community did a very special episode crossover.

Progress is a good episode that I'd forgotten existed, and is yet another reason why I love Kira and Bajor so much in the early years. Kira was put in the thankless position of having to move Mullibok, who wants to die where he lives. It was very poignant for Kira to realise how she had pretty much become what she had been fighting in the resistence, which is excellent viewing.

Kira resolves herself to help Mullibok build his kiln, which helps to give him some closure. But then she destroys it, which had me particularly open-mouthed. I couldn't believe it. There's some really good stuff in this essentially quiet episode.

[BlueStuff]

Progress.

I'm not sure if we were supposed to like the guy or not, frankly. I did not. Get the hell off the planet, you!

Nice photoshop, TheGodBen. Any chance of a The Wire one in the near future?

Looking back, the first season is really bad. When first I watched I didn't notice much because I didn't know just how good the show would eventually get. But even then some episodes were enough to reduce me to a curled up, weeping wreck.

[Deranged Nasat]

I agree with the general sentiment of the thread so far: all else aside, what makes Progress much better than The Storyteller is the way it uses Bajor - not as a planet-of-the-week with the rather moronic and petty local troubles (which is TNG all over, much as I love TNG) - but as a wounded planet with serious global issues that's in the process of making hard decisions about what its independence is going to look like. It's an interesring comparison between the episodes' handling of the setting, and Progress is the contender that both truly understands the potential of that setting and offers a serious, respectful portrayal of Bajorans as a troubled people.

EDIT: Oh, and it was about time we got another Kira-centric episode. One of the show's best characters - if not the best - and who I often thought could do with a little more First Season attention than she got. I suppose my (justified or not?) perception of her underuse also reinforces how Season 1 often focuses on technobabble wacky science mysteries or other lower tier TNG matter rather than fully appreciating DS9's unique potential.

[Seven of Five]

Oh I loved the guy, for the record. I just couldn't dislike him. I was totally in Kira's shoes there, because she got quite close to him. Though obviously in the end, not too close.