Thoughts on Vic in DS9

[JirinPanthosa]

Maybe there are people who prefer battle scenes, slaughtering and fancy technology over plot and character-centered episode. I don't. But to each his own.

On the other hand, I'm not really a fan of Voyager's Captain Proton and quite happy that there aren't more episodes.

But Vic is different and an asset for the station. I prefer Vic over an arrogant psychobabbling counselor who tries to mentally dissect you.

I like the character centric episodes too, but to me Vic was about as big a 'Charm fail' as Okona.

Portrayals of psychotherapists on television are more based on Freudian cliches than reality. But personally I'd rather have character development between characters come up naturally with each other than be forced by either a bartender or a therapist, except in the case where somebody has something like Barcalay's anxiety disorder where a therapist makes much more sense.

And I'd much rather have seen Quark take the role of getting Odo and Kira together instead of using that idea for their anniversary.

So many things about Fontaine don't make sense.

1) Who is paying to run his program continuously? Quark must be making a mint off him.
2) How does a hologram presume to have deep insight into the human condition? If it were that easy Data should have had less problem understanding human emotion.
3) Why is everybody so into him? Bashir makes sense, maybe he gets one or two others into it. But certainly not Worf.

Paper Moon is really the only episode he was well utilized.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I always wondered how Vic and the EMH would get along. Once Voyager got home, I hope the Doctor loaned Vic the holo-emitter for a time so Vic could see the rest of DS9!

Why would he need a holo-emitter when he could just recreate it in the holodeck?

It's not the same thing. Not even close.

 

[BillJ]

I always wondered how Vic and the EMH would get along. Once Voyager got home, I hope the Doctor loaned Vic the holo-emitter for a time so Vic could see the rest of DS9!

Why would he need a holo-emitter when he could just recreate it in the holodeck?

It's not the same thing. Not even close.

That isn't how the show projects holographic tech. In the show its presented as being as close to the real thing that you can get.

 

[kkt]

I always wondered how Vic and the EMH would get along.

Vic would 86 the EMH.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Why would he need a holo-emitter when he could just recreate it in the holodeck?

It's not the same thing. Not even close.

That isn't how the show projects holographic tech. In the show its presented as being as close to the real thing that you can get.

It's still not the same. Vic can visit a simulation of the real DS9, but it is not ACTUALLY the real station. I think Vic would care about the difference.

 

[Orphalesion]

I like the character centric episodes too, but to me Vic was about as big a 'Charm fail' as Okona.

Portrayals of psychotherapists on television are more based on Freudian cliches than reality. But personally I'd rather have character development between characters come up naturally with each other than be forced by either a bartender or a therapist, except in the case where somebody has something like Barcalay's anxiety disorder where a therapist makes much more sense.

And I'd much rather have seen Quark take the role of getting Odo and Kira together instead of using that idea for their anniversary.

So many things about Fontaine don't make sense.

1) Who is paying to run his program continuously? Quark must be making a mint off him.
2) How does a hologram presume to have deep insight into the human condition? If it were that easy Data should have had less problem understanding human emotion.
3) Why is everybody so into him? Bashir makes sense, maybe he gets one or two others into it. But certainly not Worf.

Paper Moon is really the only episode he was well utilized.

A-men on all those accounts. What I presume somebody on Ds9 was waaaaay to much into the early/mid 20th century despite the many, glaring negative things about that era.

I'd actually take Okona ovr Vic, if only because Okona was at least hot.

 

[dub]

It never ceases to surprise me how polarizing Vic is among viewers. Star Trek has been taking us back to uncomfortable times in Earth's history since...well, since the 1960s! I think DS9 needed a bit of camp, and Vic came at the exact right time to loosen things up. He was never meant to be taken seriously, and that was clear each time he appeared. But they took care to make his character special, which I appreciate. The scene in Vic's bar at the end...gets me every time. I think the escape to a different time and era during the war, and especially the crooner scene and the way it was handled in DS9, added another level of romance to the series. The characters were escaping to an unfamiliar place to them, yet a place that was familiar to the viewing audience, if not directly certainly from pop culture. People are dying all over the place, and here is this guy who really is not impacted by the world "out there." His program is just a program. Yet, the "smarmy" guy clearly had a heart and a soft side, and he cared about our main characters, even though he wasn't real. But none of what we were seeing was real. And I think the writers were playing with that notion, and while they clearly loved Vic they never took him too seriously, but they made him a sentimental favorite (for those who loved him). Ira Steven Behr is obsessed with Sinatra, so clearly that's why the character kept cropping up. Behr didn't have a problem injecting his personality and his passions into the series, which sort of reminds me of Nick Meyer's approach. And to me, they both did amazing things when they had the keys.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I think the escape to a different time and era during the war, and especially the crooner scene and the way it was handled in DS9, added another level of romance to the series. The characters were escaping to an unfamiliar place to them, yet a place that was familiar to the viewing audience, if not directly certainly from pop culture.

As I wrote upthread, Vic is a product of the 1960s. And in truth, the culture of Las Vegas is really a product of the post-war era and the prosperity that rose during the 50s. Of course, there was nightlife in the 1930s and 1940s, but it would not include the Ratpackers that Fontaine represented.

To your broader concern: I think most Trek fans tired of the Holodeck by 1998 and weren't eager for another piece of sentient technology. Moreover, it pushed the WWII metaphors too far. Yes, I wrote that Vic belonged to the Sixties, but often he was used to promote a Casablanca vibe. Vic made the connections too obvious.

 

[dub]

I see where you're coming from there. I guess the fact that it was obvious never bothered me. There were also very obvious religious metaphors, and none of those really bothered me either. In fact, they mostly worked for me. I probably shouldn't have brought up religion in DS9, eh?

I genuinely liked Vic as a character and I liked the actor and his chemistry with the cast, I liked the music, I liked the fact that he made an impact on characters and relationships on the show, I didn't really get bogged down in the fact that he's a hologram and that holograms have been done a lot (mostly poorly in the other series with some exceptions), and I didn't take his part in the show too seriously anyway.

But I get why it didn't work for you. Subjectivity is so intriguing. It's what keeps these boards alive.

 

[apollo1984]

Well I think that the whole Dominion War in series 7 would have been too intense for both the characters themselves and on the viewers to have been on 100% of the time. Vic was introduced so that the characters had somewhere to "retreat" to during the war (it was so far removed from their current day stuff it was like fair haven or whatever the Voyager equivalent was, it was simply somewhere to go to get away from it all) and that the viewer could have a little fun and easy watching.

I personally did enjoy Vic and one of my favourite episodes is Badda Bing....

"Wisdom" can come from all sources (I mean they made the chef in Enterprise the go to guy for advice) and as for holograms being able to understand emotions better than data could I mean Voyager did a fairly good job at having the people of fair haven being fearful then they found out that they were holograms, the doctor learning empathy while being stuck in the DQ and feeling sad when his holographic family had problems, it seems as if Star Trek has a history of holograms being more sophisticated than data's programming (at least in terms of personality).

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I see where you're coming from there. I guess the fact that it was obvious never bothered me. There were also very obvious religious metaphors, and none of those really bothered me either. In fact, they mostly worked for me. I probably shouldn't have brought up religion in DS9, eh?

I genuinely liked Vic as a character and I liked the actor and his chemistry with the cast, I liked the music, I liked the fact that he made an impact on characters and relationships on the show, I didn't really get bogged down in the fact that he's a hologram and that holograms have been done a lot (mostly poorly in the other series with some exceptions), and I didn't take his part in the show too seriously anyway.

But I get why it didn't work for you. Subjectivity is so intriguing. It's what keeps these boards alive.

In theory, I can appreciate Vic. I am not fan of the musical genre: I feel Sinatra tried to be so effortless that the character of the melody was lost in his legato. I like Jazz; I like a lot of what is derrogatorily referred to as "Cool Jazz." That style seems weak to me. I remember my father driving the family up to Las Vegas to see shows like this (as well as a few reviews, the first time I saw topless women), and I was bored. I also associated Vic with the successive revivalisms of the 1990s: Disco, Swing, ... .

By now I am ok with Vic. He was good for the stories, but I don't see what is essential about the character itself. A Monk or Gillespie-styled character could have worked as well, with more of a New York feel,but also offering more opportunity for humor. And the only thing that seems gratuitous to me is Badda Bing: it was the season's third dedicated Holodeck episode. Moreover, it wasn't focused on the main character, but on the holographic character.

Ironically, I might have appreciated him more if he was oven more subtly into the story. It would have been awesome if Bashir had a handheld device that projected a miniature singing Vic.

 

[dub]

I think the fact that the writers made an effort to show the characters care about Vic, and Vic about the other characters, gave the hologram some dimension instead of making him a one-off holodeck story or a 2-dimensional sounding board, as was often the case with other holographic characters in Trek. The fact that the writers went there with the character makes him essential in my mind. I think they absolutely could have used another musician from another time/style with another personality and it could have worked, sure. I'm glad they did it this way and went with something they (the writers - or Ira) had a passion for and not just some character type/setting that works well for the story. I like it when the writers go with what they know and love, because their love comes through in the characters and in the stories. It becomes more personal and not so much "just another story" or just another character to help move the plot along.

 

[Kilana2]

Vic was definitely better than the Captain Proton characters.

 

[Karzak]

I loved the episodes with Vic. He gave a bit of flair to the show when it was otherwise being too dark and grim with the war stuff.

 

[dub]

Vic was definitely better than the Captain Proton characters.

Whaa?!? Captain Proton was one of the more enjoyable and redeeming bits on Voyager.

I guess I'm a sucker for camp.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Vic was definitely better than the Captain Proton characters.

Whaa?!? Captain Proton was one of the more enjoyable and redeeming bits on Voyager.

I guess I'm a sucker for camp.

Vic was more alive than Tom Paris, er, uh, I mean Captain Proton.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Wisdom can come from all sources, but when it comes from a smarmy holographic crooner that doesn't make sense for the characters to be obsessed with, it comes off as forced.

 

[Inactive-Shapeshifter]

Vic was awesome.

 

[Inactive-Shapeshifter]

Vic was definitely better than the Captain Proton characters.

totally agree.

 

[maneth]

I don't hate Vic, but I don't love him either. To be honest, I don't really like any of the holodeck episodes much, although I do understand the need for a bit of relief from the war, both for the characters and the audience.