What's your favorite episode B story?
Favorite B story
- Thread starter Laura Cynthia Chambers
- Start date
Nog asking for Sisko's help to join Starfleet.
It's in "Heart of Stone," where the A story is Kira (or what we as the audience and Odo think is Kira) slowly getting consumed inside of a rock while Odo reveals more and more about his feelings to her.
But, even when the episode first aired, I always found Nog's story more interesting.
It's in "Heart of Stone," where the A story is Kira (or what we as the audience and Odo think is Kira) slowly getting consumed inside of a rock while Odo reveals more and more about his feelings to her.
But, even when the episode first aired, I always found Nog's story more interesting.
The god damn Dyson Sphere! It should have been the A plot, or a setting for a whole series!
Do any tie-in novels reference it?
I make it the entire setting for a "DS9 / Babylon 5" style story telling where my UFP / StarFleet claims the territory since nobody else is around to claim it in 100+ years and takes a entire century to "Heavily Modify" and retro-fit the entire Dyson Sphere for massive colonization with standardized Hexagonal Grid Colonization Modules/Zones that are "HUGE".
The entire Dyson Sphere is colonized on the Outside of the Shell & Inside of it as well.
I renovated / modified the Dyson Sphere Shell to have a Internal and External Hexagonal Grid of differing sizes.
The outside Arcology City Ship Land Base has a MASSIVE # of Sockets for City Ships:
- Each Arcology City Ship Socket has a Hexagonal Side Length of (External = 62.10 km | Internal = 62.04 km) length restriction which allows for an internal Land Area 10,000 km².
- For size reference, Los Angeles County has a land area of 10,510 km².
- This means there are enough Hexagonal Arcology Socket Slots for <11,813,343,213,575> spots
I have 12x Pentagonal Zones on the Arcology that houses Circular Gate Doors to traverse from the inside to the outside.
Each Internal Surface Habitat Zone is segregated into 1,000 km per side regular Hexagon (Equiangular & Equilateral) with very tall/large walls that are 10 km high surrounding the perimeter of each Habitat Zone.
- The artificial mountainous walls have a steep angle of 84.3°, 1,000% grade.
- For size reference on the internal surface area:
- Earth has a ~Surface Area of 510,065,623 km²
- the British Isles have a Land Surface Area ~= 315,159 km².
- Each Hexagonal_ Zone ~= 2,598,076.211 km² with a Diagonal Length (Long = 2000 km & Short = 1732.051 km).
- That’s equivalent to ~0.5094% surface area of Earth
This creates an estimated area of <48,387,451,130> Hexagonal Large Habitat Zones w/ 1 Zone per UFP Member Race or one Zone per Biome type with each zone being a dedicated type of Biome.
The Nog plot in "HEART OF STONE" is definitely an easy choice... one of the best character arcs in the franchise.
For me, I'll actually go to a C plot... "SHADOWPLAY", Jake working with O'Brien and him telling his dad he doesn't want to join Starfleet. Leads to another home run scene between Ben and Jake, and yet another illustration of why Sisko was an excellent role model of fatherhood.
For me, I'll actually go to a C plot... "SHADOWPLAY", Jake working with O'Brien and him telling his dad he doesn't want to join Starfleet. Leads to another home run scene between Ben and Jake, and yet another illustration of why Sisko was an excellent role model of fatherhood.
He always is. Too bad Worf couldn't take a lesson from him.
...Seems a little on the nose.
I grew really tired of the Berman era's formulaic reliance on B stories, so I'm a bit hard pressed to come up with an example of a "favorite" right now. I could probably name a half dozen I hated that worked to the episode's detriment, though. So I guess I'll just second others' nomination of Nog wanting Sisko to sponsor him into Starfleet. Great character development that changed Nog's entire character arc.
...Was the Shelby/Riker conflict in TNG's "Best of Both Worlds" a B story? I don't know, because it was very well integrated into the main Borg/Picard plotline. I tend to think of B stories as being completely separate things. ("Oh, we need some ship jeopardy in addition to this story about Data dating another crew member! Let's show a lady halfway phased through the floor, even though it has nothing to do with anything else!")
"THE HOUSE OF QUARK" - O'Brien/Keiko.
Particularly as I've gotten older, I have really come to just love this B story, even more than Quark's story. Miles just wants to make his wife happy again, and he does all sorts of things to make this happen. Julian is the one who gives him the best advice, and the final piece of the puzzle on making Keiko happy. (This also indirectly shows a lot of growth for Bashir since the pilot.) This B story also illustrates one of the reasons why Sisko is such a great leader... his approachability and his willingness to make sure those under his command are happy. He was able to simply drop the ranks and talk one-on-one as someone who was married and help him.
There's a lot of great stuff in this episode, and I very rarely see anyone mention this one. This makes me feel like this is a very underrated episode.
Particularly as I've gotten older, I have really come to just love this B story, even more than Quark's story. Miles just wants to make his wife happy again, and he does all sorts of things to make this happen. Julian is the one who gives him the best advice, and the final piece of the puzzle on making Keiko happy. (This also indirectly shows a lot of growth for Bashir since the pilot.) This B story also illustrates one of the reasons why Sisko is such a great leader... his approachability and his willingness to make sure those under his command are happy. He was able to simply drop the ranks and talk one-on-one as someone who was married and help him.
There's a lot of great stuff in this episode, and I very rarely see anyone mention this one. This makes me feel like this is a very underrated episode.
Indeed. And I will add that I liked those two (and Julian) in Accession. It's kind of sweet that Keiko recognizes that Miles still needs time with his pal and makes it happen.
Kira's ill-fated attempts at art were also amusing, but one of he best scenes was of her smushing a bird she had made. She didn't say anything, nor did she have to.
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