TheGodBen Revisits Deep Space Nine

[Ln X]

Nerys Ghemor wrote:

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When you look at what the Federation as whole does, they are party to a LOT of abusive behavior, by failing to call their member and allied states on it. One of the most egregious examples is with the Klingons. By maintaining a tight alliance and trade relation with the Klingons (and not a mere non-aggression pact, which simply means they won't shoot each other), they are in effect endorsing Klingon conquests and brutality, which has continued even while the Klingons are allied with the Federation. Yet they dare to rail on about the same things when talking to other powers. If they mean it, then they shouldn't endorse it when the Klingons do it either. They really ought not be associating with the Klingons any more than it takes to prevent a war from breaking out.

I'm not so sure about that. It seems in the late 24th century the Klingons had quietened down their aggressive/conquering shenanigans quite a bit. I base this on Worf saying in The Way of the Warrior about 'his people returning to the old ways' (i.e. the sort of aggressiveness we saw in TOS and in the Star Trek films). Plus Kang in Blood Oath talks about how Klingons have mainly given up the true values and meaning of honour and how some of them have taken up other occupations instead of being a loyal soldier of the Klingon Empire (or some other job which assists the Empire). In fact the only real 'conquering' or battles that the Empire engaged in were with the Romulans (all those skirmishes between the two sides borders).

Besides the Federation is using diplomacy to protect itself. Why double the size of Starfleet when with diplomacy you have allies to protect you, and to keep other quaralous factions in check? Now I don't think it is wrong for the Federation to make peace with the Klingons (or any other aggressive species), if the Klingons are conquering other non-Federation worlds. Why kick up a fuss for the supposed moral high ground against the Klingon's conquering someone?

I personally think that the Federation only started trading with the Klingons when the Klingons toned down their battle-like ways and conquests. One thing I have noticed on this site is the occasional Federation bashing, and all this hoo-har about how hypocritical the Federation is. Well firstly the Federation is trying to deal with races and civilizations who don't share the Federation's values. Now the Federation does with its diplomatic dealings try to do things prim and proper to the best of its ability.

Remember that the Federation only kicks up a fuss about say the Romulans or Cardassians (or any other race/civilization) when Federation interests are threatened. For instance if the Federation is contact with say race X who live near the Cardassian border, and the Cardassians are giving this race trouble, then the Federation asks the Cardassians to stop doing this. Of course the Federation will never militarily help race X if they are not part of the Federation, and so ultimately when all other diplomatic and soft options have been worn out, it would take an awful lot for the Federation to directly defend this race from the Cardassians.

Whatever people say about the Federation I prefer their way of doing things because it is fairer. The Klingons would just conquer you, with no questions asked. The Romulans would pretend to be your friend, and then back stab you if it suited their interests. As for the Cardassians, if you oppose them then they get nasty quick, and get pretty brutal on you if they feel they can get away with it. The Federation ain't no angel but sure is a damn sight better than other civilizations/races we know of.

[TheGodBen]

This has been an interesting discussion. Time to prematurely end it.


Heart of Stone (***½)

Back in the dark days of the 1990s, it would often takes months, and in DS9's case over a year, for new episodes of American TV shows to make their way across the Atlantic, presumably because they were transported by rowboats. To counter this, hardcore fans would get their friends or relatives in the New World to record episodes onto VHS tapes and send them over on a new invention called an "aeroplane" so that the latency was closer to weeks and not years. This resulted in Star Trek fanclubs springing up where you could pay money to sit in a room with other nerds and watch new episodes of Trek. I was a member of such a club for a time, and it was while attending this club that I became a Niner. Looking back on it now I realise that this whole endeavour was probably illegal, but I feel surprisingly little compassion for the media companies that let their love of rowboat transportation get in the way of providing a quality and timely service.

Why am I telling you this story? Because this was the first episode of DS9 I saw at that club, and I kinda wanted it to end so that I could see that awesome-sounding new show called Voyager. I saw this episode before I saw The Search, so I was fairly surprised by the reveal that Kira was a shapeshifter as I didn't know Odo had found his people. Thinking back, I'm actually fairly surprised that I wasn't more surprised.

The a-plot here is okay, it follows the principle that if you put two people in a room and have them talk for an hour then something interesting might happen. It's a bit undermined by the fact that Kira isn't really Kira, but all the important character stuff was coming from Odo anyway so it's not such a big deal. This episode tells us that Odo is mellowing out, he's finding time for activities outside his work and he's growing closer to the rest of the cast. It suffers a bit from that fact that we're being told these things and not shown them, I for one would enjoy seeing Odo and O'Brien rafting together while singing Louie Louie, but I guess I'll have to settle for the mental image of it. There is the big scene where Odo admits his feelings for Kira for the first time, but that's victim to a bit of a reset button by the end of the episode.

The better part of the episode is the b-plot where Nog tries to join Starfleet. What could have been a side-plot played for laughs ends up being the turning point in one of the most impressive character arcs in the show, and it contains one of the best emotional scenes too. Having Jake decide not to join Starfleet was a great move, but having Nog decide to do it instead is a masterstroke. I especially love Nog's line where he tells Sisko that he wont regret this decision as it reminds me of Nog's final scene in the show.

[Deranged Nasat]

TheGodBen wrote:

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Back in the dark days of the 1990s, it would often takes months, and in DS9's case over a year, for new episodes of American TV shows to make their way across the Atlantic, presumably because they were transported by rowboats.

You make me realize just how spoiled we are, nowadays.

[Sykonee]

TheGodBen wrote:

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I for one would enjoy seeing Odo and O'Brien rafting together while singing Louie Louie, but I guess I'll have to settle for the mental image of it.

Replace 'rafting' with 'camping', and 'Louie Louie' with 'Row Your Boat', and you'll have a good idea of how it probably would have worked out.

[defiantfan]

I missed "The Search" myself when I watched it too but I liked that they making Odo a little more than just the gelatinous Policeman

[Seven of Five]

I remember watching this thinking how sweet it was to see Odo confessing his love to Kira after her heartache with Bareil. Then of course the rug is cruelly pulled out from us, and instead it took like another two years for him to tell her, then another year after that to get together!

I love Odo/Kira. I thought Odo's seemingly unrequited love was something we could easily identify with, and easily sympathise alongside him. When this turned into an actual relationship I was very pleased, and was a blubbering wreck at the end when they were seperated.

Nog joining Starfleet Academy was a masterstroke. I'm so glad they went with the less obvious Jake-in-Starfleet option and plumped for something that gave Nog brilliant development over the series.

And as for Odo singing Louie Louie with Chief O'Brien while rafting (!) I think the writers kept sneaking in wackier, perhaps more epic ideas of holosuite adventures because they didn't have the time or money to these things. Sure, we ended up with a baseball and all the Vic Fontaine episodes in the end, but at that time in season three the thought of the pair of them was enough for me.

[DS9 Gal AZ]

I shipped Odo and Kira hardcore during the show. Man, did it take forever for them to finally become a couple ... and then I couldn't even enjoy the episode where they finally did, because that stupid Vic Fontaine took over the episode. Grrr. /

But "Heart of Stone" was pretty good. They'd been hinting at Odo's feelings for Kira for a good long while, and we finally got conclusive proof he loved her.

[Admiral Shran]

Sykonee wrote:

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Replace 'rafting' with 'camping', and 'Louie Louie' with 'Row Your Boat', and you'll have a good idea of how it probably would have worked out.

Dammit man, why did you have to go and ruin a perfectly good image?

I love Heart of Stone, easily one of my favorites of Seasons 1-3 and probably my favorite this season. Odo's unrequited love for Kira was something I could very easily identify with and made him one of my favorite DS9 characters. And Nog's storyline is equally as powerful. The scene where he confesses to Sisko that he doesn't want to end up like his father gets me every time.

[TheGodBen]

Sykonee wrote:

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Replace 'rafting' with 'camping', and 'Louie Louie' with 'Row Your Boat', and you'll have a good idea of how it probably would have worked out.

I was going to say that DS9 could make it work because it has Odo and motherfucking O'Brien, but then I remembered that TFF had Spock and motherfucking McCoy and they couldn't make it work. I'll defer to your wisdom.


Destiny (***½)

Here's an episode that's pretty average overall but it's elevated by the thematic significance of being the first time that Sisko opens up his mind to the possibility that he is the Emissary rather than just tolerating it and sometimes using it for a political advantage. It's weird that it took the series this long to return to this storyline, it hasn't really been developed since Emissary. For the first time Sisko is forced to choose between his role as Emissary and his job as a Starfleet officer, and since he doesn't really believe that he is the Emissary that's an easy choice for him to make. But even still, he's conflicted between what Kira thinks he should do and what he has been trained to do, and Kira does have a point in saying that the Prophets are outside time and would therefore be perfectly capable of relaying visions of future events to those in the past. So it's interesting, but not as much as later episodes that take on this theme.

While the ending attempts to say that the prophesy was correct but it was misinterpreted, I can't help but see it another way, it just reinforces why guys like Sisko should never put their faith in prophesy. Trakor suffers from the same problem as every oracle in human history, his prophesies are so vague that they can be reconstrued to mean almost anything. You certainly can't predict the future with them or use them as the basis for an important decision, it's hardly even worth writing them down. The whole thing is almost a waste of paper, but it sounds vaguely poetic so it stuck around. If Trekor wrote "Two years after the end of the Cardassian occupation, three Cardassian scientists will show up on a space station to do an experiment on the Celestial Temple but it will go wrong and a comet will change course and almost destroy the Temple, but the Emissary will save the day using a subspace field in a shuttlecraft, but enough magic dust will escape to allow communication from one side of the Temple to the other" people would have laughed and called him a nutter. Funny that.

Meanwhile, there's a comic b-plot where O'Brien and a Cardassian scientist named Gilora are forced to work together... with sexy results! Well, kinda. It's light, it's somewhat humorous, and O'Brien bangs his head yet again. On reflection, I should have had a counter for that as it happens so often. It's probably why O'Brien's head is so big, it's swollen from all the bruising. Anyway, O'Brien turns her down because she's a spoon-head and he hates what he has become because of her. Gilora is upset about this because she was hoping to marry him so that she could gain Federation citizenship, but instead she's going back to Cardassia where she'll be executed by the Obsidian Order. Who is she anyway?

Wormhole in Peril: 3

[Ln X]

Yeah TheGodBen didn't two of the good Cardassian scientists say they had friends in Central Command to protect them? This episode develops Sisko's role as the Emissary and what is overlooked is Kira's spirituallity. This really shows in this episode and how her beliefs override any duty she has to Bajor or Starfleet. All in all this episode was a bit of lighthearted fun...

[MacLeod]

Deranged Nasat wrote:

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You make me realize just how spoiled we are, nowadays.

And now we moan if we don't get it witin a week of the states. Hard to think that we had to wait s years to see TNG on the Beeb. (I think it was almost 3 years to the day, on the plus side aside from the great teevision god of sport prempting it every few weeks, we had it almost none stop for years)

[Lindley]

TheGodBen wrote:

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Gilora is upset about this because she was hoping to marry him so that she could gain Federation citizenship, but instead she's going back to Cardassia where she'll be executed by the Obsidian Order. Who is she anyway?

Don't worry, she got cosmetic surgery to look human, then married John Sheridan just long enough for the citizenship thing. It worked for her!

[Seven of Five]

This episode suffers a little bit for me by having a prophecy at the centre of it. The last time I saw it, I had also seen Buffy and Angel to death, not to mention other TV series or films that utilised it. It just made me think that a standard non-specific prophecy is nowadays a way overused tool.

Aside from that though it was good to see Sisko move towards becoming more accepting of his Emissary status. I said before season three was good for him, and this is another example.

I like Heart of Stone more than this episode, just to poke at your ratings a bit.

[InklingStar]

I forget where I first read it, but this episode can be seen as the first in a trilogy arc showing Sisko's acceptance of his role as the Emissary. (Maybe it was the Companion.) In Destiny, he reluctantly accepts that this is how the Bajorans see him. In Accession, he stands up and says "I am the Emissary" but he still sees himself as a Starfleet officer first. Finally in Rapture he dives headlong into prophecies, no matter what Starfleet or the Bajorans want him to do. By then he is well prepared for the revelations of season 7.

[Paper Moon]

InklingStar wrote:

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I forget where I first read it, but this episode can be seen as the first in a trilogy arc showing Sisko's acceptance of his role as the Emissary. (Maybe it was the Companion.) In Destiny, he reluctantly accepts that this is how the Bajorans see him. In Accession, he stands up and says "I am the Emissary" but he still sees himself as a Starfleet officer first. Finally in Rapture he dives headlong into prophecies, no matter what Starfleet or the Bajorans want him to do. By then he is well prepared for the revelations of season 7.

See, it's stuff like this that's why I love DS9. It looks for all the world like the writers planned all of this out in advance from day one, when, of course, it was really nothing like that. (Granted, as things went on they planned more, but still.)