TheGodBen Revisits Deep Space Nine

[Admiral Shran]

Destiny is a very good one, IMHO. I'm glad they finally returned to the Sisko as Emissary storyline (took them long enough) and I agree that this episode is really the first of the Emissary Arc/Trilogy.

As for the prophecy - well, how else would it work? If Trekor had started talking about Cardassians, subspace whatevers and super advanced starships, the Bajorans of his time would indeed have thought he was insane. So, he used language they were familiar with. I agree that it's not the best way to record revelations from gods that have (in this instance) been proven to actually exist, but it's the best course available.

Imagine if someone from 2012 went back in time to the American South in the 1840s and started telling people that they should do away with slavery because one day there will be massive moveable machines the size of their houses that will go up and down their fields and do all their harvesting for them, so they therefore don't need to rely on slave labor. Imagine they then started going into intricate detail about how these things called tractors and combines work and are produced. The people of that time would just brush off the person's arguments like he was a lunatic.

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?

I see what you did there.

[Skywalker]

I don't mind prophecies in this instance because we're dealing with a religion that worships beings which exist outside of time. I never really felt like Trekor supposed to be some sort of Bajoran Nostradamus; it's very possible that the Prophets sent Trekor visions of future events to help set the Emissary on the correct path in the future. And knowing the Prophets, it's not surprising to me at all that they would have been rather vague in their descriptions to Trekor.

[Admiral Shran]

Skywalker wrote:

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it's very possible that the Prophets sent Trekor visions of future events to help set the Emissary on the correct path in the future.

The Prophets play the long game.

[Deranged Nasat]

Admiral Shran wrote:

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The Prophets play the long game.

That's because no matter how long it takes, they're already there. Have been there. Will be there again, at some time in the past, now.

[Seven of Five]

Deranged Nasat wrote:

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That's because no matter how long it takes, they're already there. Have been there. Will be there again, at some time in the past, now.

I always used to surmise that Sisko is the big power behind everything prophet-related.

We know in season seven that a prophet inhabited Sarah and had a baby with Joseph. Since the prophets live in a non-linear state, then it's very simple for them to encounter Sisko in Emissary, and then go to Earth's past to ensure his birth.

Therefore, it is also possible that Sisko (who joins the prophets after his 'death' at the end of show), could be in on the whole plan. Hell it could be his plan to start with.

[TheGodBen]

Admiral Shran wrote:

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I see what you did there.

I don't remember much about Lochley, but I do remember not knowing much about her.


Prophet Motive (*½)

Back in The House of Quark the writers hit upon the brilliant idea of the unlikely pairing of the Klingons and the Ferengi, and it was used for good comedic, as well as dramatic, effect. This episode hits upon the even more unlikely pairing of the Ferengi and the Prophets, and it's not quite as successful. I've said it before and I'll no doubt be saying it again before this thread is finished, Ferengi comedy episodes too often hit upon the same jokes about them being greedy misogynists and repeat them for an hour. This episode skips the sexist part of their nature leaving only the greed angle, and that makes it a bit tiresome. It's an interesting concept for an episode alright, and I did enjoy seeing Quark communicate with the Prophets (although it would have been nicer if this wasn't only their second actual appearance on the show). The solution to the problem, the Prophets reverting Zek because they didn't want to deal with the Ferengi anymore, was fitting and perhaps a little ironic.

Speaking of Zek, over the Christmas period I learned that Wallace Shawn co-wrote and starred in My Dinner With Andre, which is a movie I have obviously heard a lot about but never actually watched. But Shawn's involvement piqued my interest enough to check it out and it's very odd to watch Wallace Shawn go from an intellectual movie where two men discuss what life is all about to seeing him in giant ears and snorting beetles up his nose. And I thought that Bryan Cranston's range was impressive. At least he gets to play a different Zek than usual in this episode, and hearing him happily humming while trapped in a sack actually managed to make the sides of my lips curl upwards slightly.

Meanwhile, Dr Bashir is nominated for some medical award that he doesn't win. This plot feels incomplete somehow. It's like they had an idea and then wrote some scenes around that idea, but it never really managed to develop into a story. I read on MA that it was something of an in-joke about how the producers on TNG reacted to being nominated for an Emmy, which may explain why it felt half-baked as they were trying to make fun of themselves a little while not being willing to go the whole way. But hey, we got the introduction of the dart board, so that's something.

[Admiral Shran]

It's good that the Prophets finally make a return appearance, especially since the previous episode dealt so heavily with Sisko as the Emissary. Aside from that, there's not much I'd recommend about this one.

But, hey, at least it's not as bad as Meridian.

[Ln X]

Admiral Shran wrote:

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It's good that the Prophets finally make a return appearance, especially since the previous episode dealt so heavily with Sisko as the Emissary. Aside from that, there's not much I'd recommend about this one.

But, hey, at least it's not as bad as Meridian.

I agree with admiral Shran, but I'd say this episode is average. It's not quite the funniest Ferengi episode but it ain't terrible, and the scene with the Prophets was cool.

Admiral Shran what is with the Obama/Romney picture?

[Admiral Shran]

Ln X wrote:

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Admiral Shran what is with the Obama/Romney picture?

They're the exact same politically. The only difference between them is that one happens to call himself a Democrat and the other happens to call himself a Republican. And that's the choice we're supposed to have, yeah okay.

I mean, I don't support Obama, so why should I support someone who holds virtually all the same positions just because he's a Republican?

Check out the link in my signature to see what I mean.

[Ln X]

Admiral Shran wrote:

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They're the exact same politically. The only difference between them is that one happens to call himself a Democrat and the other happens to call himself a Republican. And that's the choice we're supposed to have, yeah okay.

I mean, I don't support Obama, so why should I support someone who holds virtually all the same positions just because he's a Republican?

Check out the link in my signature to see what I mean.

You don't happen to read ZeroHedge and look at WilliamBanzai7's pictures?

[Admiral Shran]

No, I had never heard of either before.

[Sindatur]

I'm almost caught up, I watched Defiant through Past Tense last night, so, I'm only 1 Disc behind.

Defiant, I really liked, the Obsidian Order has some big teeth, and Dukhat is really starting to get his panties into a bunch, something big is obviously coming.

Fascination, not nearly as good as last Lwaxana episode. Her going through Mentalpause could've been really cool, but, the campy lusting by all the characters just really ruined the episode for me

Past Tense, I enjoy this one. A little heavy handed, but, well worht the time it takes to watch it

[TheGodBen]

Visionary (**½)

A few years ago I made an off-hand comment about Visionary being an average episode and a bunch of people jumped on me proclaiming this to be a great episode, and as I hadn't seen the episode for a while I deferred to their judgement. So I sat down last night expecting a good episode and I came away more convinced than ever that this is an average episode.

As I've said before, the casual use of time travel in Trek bothers me, I'm half-surprised that getting struck by lightening doesn't send people through time because everything else seems to. In episodes like Past Tense and Trials and Tribble-ations I'm willing to give it a pass because the time travel angle is used as a means to an end, but in this episode the time travel is both the means and the end. This is undeniably a time-travel episode, which I'm not so hot for, but it's also a torture O'Brien episode, which I am. When O'Brien sees himself get shot, or laying dead on a hospital bed, I can forgive the use of time travel.

But the finale where DS9 gets blowed up real good and the wormhole collapses? That didn't work for me because preventing it relied almost entirely on luck. If O'Brien hadn't been knocked out by radiation and randomly started time travelling when the Romulans showed up then the station would have been destroyed and the series would be over. Frankly, it makes the command staff seem somewhat incompetent that this situation would have been allowed to develop at all. Also, what's to stop the Romulans from trying to destroy the wormhole again next week once everyone forgets that this even happened? The stakes should have remained small and focused on O'Brien's life, making the stakes too big caused the episode to deviate away too much from the torture O'Brien angle.

Ultimately, I can't help feeling that this was a TNG episode. It doesn't lose a point because the Romulan angle was DS9-centric, and that was always enough to save Voyager from losing a point. But still, the tone of this episode felt very TNG-ish, even the music reminded me more of something from TNG or Voyager than from DS9. Overall, the episode had good moments and bad moments, but I didn't find anything special about it. It wasn't skippable, but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again.

Wormhole in Peril: 4

[Deranged Nasat]

The biggest problem I have with the episode actually stems from something that on the face of it I applaud - good use of continuity. The fact that Romulan warbirds have quantum singularity engine cores is an important plot point carried over from TNG, but it raises the question - why did none of the central staff suspect a Romulan ship? Given all the TNG plots about them, surely Starfleet officers should be proclaiming "Romulans!" if their socks go missing at the laundrette, yet alone if a quantum singularity is mysteriously orbiting a Federation outpost while Romulans are actually onboard.

Still, at least it was nice to see the Romulans, as a follow up to their deal over the cloaking device. And given that I share the Odo/Kira love love, so to speak, it's amusing that the Romulans have guessed how he feels.

[Seven of Five]

This is another episode I liked more when I was younger because of the time travel. A bit like Civil Defense for me, this episode is nowadays merely alright, with one or two highlights. I got all riled up seeing DS9 destroyed when younger, but it's all just reset away in a typical Trek time travel travesty. I knew that they would need DS9 in future episodes, and time travel was being used heavily in the episode, so it just seemed a waste to show it blowing up in the first place.

I enjoyed seeing the Romulans here, and I also liked the continuing torture of O'Brien.