Who in the production said it should be abbreviated STD against convention (ST:TOS, ST:TNG, ST: DS9, ST:VOY, ST:ENT)?
If You Could Rewrite DS9
- Thread starter Refuge
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Anyway, lets drag this thread back on track to the best Trek series, DS9, and what fun things fans would loved to have played with or tweaked had they the power to change things.
I never said it was.
I would have kept a lot of it the same. I would have liked it to be a Federation station -- built on the far reaches of known space. I would have nixed the whole wormhole/prophets angle, and started the show off with the premise that this is a dangerous place and not some exciting frontier. Rumors about the Dominion could have been circulating from the beginning, a bit like the Borg buildup in TNG.
I agree I am not fond of mysticism in sci. fi.
It was sort of a cop-out, I think. Exploring interactions and integrations between the Federation and a religious society is interesting from a sociological and political standpoint. An episode in which Keiko O'Brien was trying to start a school and faced challenges from Vedick Winn was an example of something very compelling. I would have liked to see more of that rather than The Sisko asking Mom and Dad to wipe out the invasion fleet, pretty please.
IMO, the mistake was to make the prophets real. You don't need "real" gods to deal with a religious society, and it prevents you from considering it from an objective standpoint.
They could have done most of the stories while keeping the ambiguity as to the existence of the "gods", and not write the ones where the ambiguity was impossible to maintain.
The Prophets being real is just the same as Q (who was worshiped as a malevolent deity by at least one culture that we heard of). They are a species outwith our realm of understanding and time, so its understandable why the Bajorans would worship them. When dealing with the religion associated with them (such as the school bombing) DS9 did some great stories, as that is something that resonates very much in the here and now, but when dealing with the aliens themselves then things did get a little stretched--they were definitely a "less-is-more" plot device.
The difference is that the Prophets were imbued with their roles as gods of the Bajorans, leaving prophecies in stone, making (miracles) happen. Even Sisko called them on that (and they punished him for it): "If you want to be gods then BE gods." Remember?
They didn't leave prophecies in stone, their probes (the Orbs) were picked up by the Bajorans, who experienced visions and wrote them down, never knowing when/if what they saw would come to pass, the people interpreted what they saw in a way that made sense to them. For all we know the Prophets are actually Bajorans from the future, highly evolved to the point where they have no physical form, hence whey they are "of Bajor".
Just remember: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Just remember: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
I don't believe in magic, nevertheless, I am willing to examine claims of advanced technology.
The Prophets are technology. They manipulated time-space to build the wormhole. It is almost entirely the basis of what makes them unique.
Neither did Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote the line.
I've heard that Kubrick and he couldn't stand each other. A.C. Clarke insisted that there'd be aliens, IE people in "alien suits" in the movie. Kubrick rightly sensed that it would have ruined the mood.
Keeping to the most common convention of TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY the show should be D.
Given that all the other acronyms have three letters. that's definitely not what it should be! In keeping with VOY, for example, it could be DIS although DSC is even better. DISCO would be unusual but still acceptable, and definitely better than "D".
What does it really matter?
I'm not even sure what the exact definition of a "god" is, or what the 'minimum requirements' would be for godhood. As long as I don't know, it makes no sense for me to argue about whether the wormhole aliens actually were gods or not. They exist, they have certain powers, and they have a relationship with Bajor, that much is certain.
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