DS9: A Stitch in Time audio book petition

[Stevil2001]

I dunno man, it's just terrible. I hate it. It's not real. It sounds bad. I cannot imagine Dukat's wife lovingly looking at him and saying "Skrain" or one of his work buddies saying, "Yo, Skrain, what's gulling?" I cannot even imagine Ben Sisko getting mad and bellowing "SKRAIN DUKAT!" Twenty-five years on and I haven't come around on this issue, so it seems unlikely I will change my mind. It's just not a thing a person should be named, like Jeff.

 

[David cgc]

I cannot even imagine Ben Sisko getting mad and bellowing "SKRAIN DUKAT!"

I, on the other hand, will now never stop imagining it.

 

[Christopher]

I dunno man, it's just terrible. I hate it. It's not real. It sounds bad.

I just don't see why. It sounds like "screen" or "strain," a perfectly normal sound. It sounds only slightly different from "Shran." It's not too far off phonetically from "Sergei," as in Worf's adoptive father.

It's just not a thing a person should be named, like Jeff.

It is supposed to be an alien name, after all. If anything, it's rather ordinary for that.

 

[Tosk]

It's not real. It sounds bad.

That's actually why I like it. It has a harsh quality. It's very easy to sneer when pronouncing it, so it's perfect for Dukat.

 

[Stevil2001]

It sounds like "screen" or "strain," a perfectly normal sound.

I'm willing to go out on a limb here and say it would also be stupid if Gul Dukat's name had been revealed to be "Screen" or "Strain."

 

[Christopher]

I'm willing to go out on a limb here and say it would also be stupid if Gul Dukat's name had been revealed to be "Screen" or "Strain."

Which is taking the phonetic analogy too literally. The point is that there are much weirder-sounding names in Star Trek. Neelix. Tuvok. Frankly, I always thought "Odo" and "Dax" were pretty bad character names, and I wasn't too fond of "Sisko" either. And I still cannot understand for the life of me why anyone thought "Worf" was a good name for a Klingon. It sounds like the name of some comical dwarf-like creature.

 

[Stevil2001]

Fair enough. All of these names have been known to me my entire life, so they sound perfectly natural, but I am not going to interrogate you on why you don't like "Worf" when "Ward" is a perfectly normal name. There's just something about "Skrain" that doesn't work for me and never will.

Anyway, moving on from this fascinating digression, it's interesting to note that (as per the section where Garak goes to Romulus) the book seems to treat the Edosian orchid as a plant native to Cardassia, but elsewhere in the tie-ins, "Edosian" has been taken as Arex's species name, in lieu of the old "Edoan."

 

[Christopher]

I am not going to interrogate you on why you don't like "Worf" when "Ward" is a perfectly normal name.

It's like I said -- it's just not a sound I'd expect to be associated with a Klingon. It's made of soft, fluid sounds rather than anything sharp and aggressive-sounding like "Kang" or "Kruge." And it sounds like "dwarf," or like Tim Conway's comedy character Dorf, so it evokes associations of small, comical characters. ("Ward" isn't a good comparison, because it's the "-rf" sound at the end that's the main issue. Does "Murf" sound intimidating? If it had been something like Worg, that might work better.)

Although it did strike me a few years back that "Worf" is a partial homophone of "warfare," so maybe that was what they were thinking on some level?

 

[Stevil2001]

It's like I said -- it's just not a sound I'd expect to be associated with a Klingon. It's made of soft, fluid sounds rather than anything sharp and aggressive-sounding like "Kang" or "Kruge." And it sounds like "dwarf," or like Tim Conway's comedy character Dorf, so it evokes associations of small, comical characters. ("Ward" isn't a good comparison, because it's the "-rf" sound at the end that's the main issue. Does "Murf" sound intimidating? If it had been something like Worg, that might work better.)

Although it did strike me a few years back that "Worf" is a partial homophone of "warfare," so maybe that was what they were thinking on some level?

Like I said, it's a valid position to hold.

 

[Stevil2001]

Oh man, that Bashir/Garak scene just before Garak leaves for Cardassia with Kira. All the feels, so well written, and Andy does a great job performing it. It's funny, the whole book is written to Bashir, but Bashir is not actually in it very much.

Like I said above, Robinson mostly eschews doing impressions, but he every now and again gives us a little hint of how Siddig would read a line. He perfectly captures the way Bashir would say "Garak."

 

[Corran Horn]

I'm willing to go out on a limb here and say it would also be stupid if Gul Dukat's name had been revealed to be "Screen" or "Strain."

"Elmo"

 

[Tosk]

It's funny, the whole book is written to Bashir, but Bashir is not actually in it very much.

Just to be slightly pedantic, IIRC Garak didn't actually write the book for or to Bashir. He was writing it for a long time, and then finally organized and updated it (which is why there's at least one interstitial addressed directly to Julian) before sending it to him.

 

[Christopher]

It's funny, the whole book is written to Bashir, but Bashir is not actually in it very much.

Aside from what Tosk said, I think that makes perfect sense. If you're writing to a specific person, you don't need to tell them about their own actions.

 

[Stevil2001]

Aside from what Tosk said, I think that makes perfect sense. If you're writing to a specific person, you don't need to tell them about their own actions.

It's not a complaint, and I know that it makes perfect sense, it's just something that struck me during that passage.

Anyway, my Libby loan came to an end with ninety minutes left to go. I will have to come back to it when I get back to first place in the hold line, which Libby estimates will be in four weeks!

 

[Avro Arrow]

For any Canadians who may want to get this, but prefer CDs over a digital file, and haven't actually purchased it yet... Amazon Canada currently has the CD version on for $40.80, down from its usual $54.79. There are 4 copies left as of this writing.