Garm Bel Iblis
Commodore
I've got a soft spot for "Profit and Lace."
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the best ever DS9 episode - not Far Beyond the Stars?
- Thread starter indolover
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In the Pale Moonlight is the best DS9 episode, although DS9 has a great many masterpiece episodes which are all 10/10.
I'll never understand why Duet or The Visitor or Trials and Tribble-ations are often cited as the best. DS9 has tons of episodes that are much, much more worthy than those ones are.
Far Beyond the Stars is a great episode but it suffers due to being too rushed. It should have been a two-parter, or had a followup episode later in the series (the lame false Pah-Wraith false vision nonsense doesn't count).
I'll never understand why Duet or The Visitor or Trials and Tribble-ations are often cited as the best. DS9 has tons of episodes that are much, much more worthy than those ones are.
Far Beyond the Stars is a great episode but it suffers due to being too rushed. It should have been a two-parter, or had a followup episode later in the series (the lame false Pah-Wraith false vision nonsense doesn't count).
I've always wished I had more people to discuss this with, but I've always felt Waltz is my favorite episode in the entire Star Trek Canon.
Gul Dukat was always my favorite character, and he finally got his full episode. The result was brilliant acting by Marc and Avery and holy crap.... what an episode.
Gul Dukat was always my favorite character, and he finally got his full episode. The result was brilliant acting by Marc and Avery and holy crap.... what an episode.
I think it's a strong episode as well, though it would never get my vote for series' best. It suffers from a lot of criticism due to how Dukat was portrayed from that point on: many fans prefer the morally ambiguous Dukat from seasons 2-4 (roughly).
For me personally, In the Pale Moonlight, Chimera and Tacking Into the Wind are the episodes that immediately come to mind as high points.
In the Pale Moonlight is the quintessential DS9 episode insofar as it explores the limits of Star Trek's very premise, morally and intellectually speaking.
Chimera is a majestic piece of storytelling that is almost mythical as far as the density of its themes are concerned.
Tacking Into the Wind is DS9 firing on all cylinders as conflict between individuals decides the fate of the galaxy.
Duet, Far Beyond the Stars and The Visitor are very good, though I don't number them among my favorites.
There are a lot of great episodes, though, and picking the best is something of an exercise in futility: the show wouldn't be as good as it is if this were an easy task. Beyond that, part of what separates DS9 from other Trek shows is its on-going character and story arcs, which by nature can't really be captured within a single episode.
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You're far from "few." Brooks' acting sucks at the end of "Far Beyond the Stars"--whereas in "In the Pale Moonlight," he gets the right balance.
Opinions certainly differ on this point. For my money, Brook's performance in FBtS is 100% convincing and one of the episode's strong points.
It does however pale in comparison to his finest screen performance, as immortalized in the following clip that I saw for the first time a couple of days ago, and from which I have yet to fully recover because it is so hilarious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo_IAkl5LfQ
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I can't name just one. For instance, I love anything connected to the Mirror Universe, so my inclination is to name every one of those, despite the general consensus against them. But, my recent re-watch (I just started season 7) has shown me that every season has at least one stand-out episode.
I think Crossover and Through the Looking Glass are excellent and good respectively. The mirror universe episodes go down hill pretty rapidly from there, though, in my opinion. It starts to feel more like a yearly obligation and less like the writers are having fun with it, as they clearly were at first.
I really like the mirror episodes as well, Crossover was brilliant.
Through the Looking Glass was a fairly good follow-up.
I thought Shattered Mirror was almost the best of the mirror epsiodes, but fell down just on the basis the mirror universe wasn't really new any more.
Resurrection was an interesting concept, but coming when it did after the Occupation Arc, it was kind of forgotten, and they didn't do all they could with the story anyway.
As for the pariah of the group, Emperor's New Cloak, it would have been appropriate in a world where Season 8 was coming up and they could do a proper, serious closure to the Mirror Universe then. As it was, in the guise of a fun Ferengi romp, it was OK, but not good enough to close off that arc.
Through the Looking Glass was a fairly good follow-up.
I thought Shattered Mirror was almost the best of the mirror epsiodes, but fell down just on the basis the mirror universe wasn't really new any more.
Resurrection was an interesting concept, but coming when it did after the Occupation Arc, it was kind of forgotten, and they didn't do all they could with the story anyway.
As for the pariah of the group, Emperor's New Cloak, it would have been appropriate in a world where Season 8 was coming up and they could do a proper, serious closure to the Mirror Universe then. As it was, in the guise of a fun Ferengi romp, it was OK, but not good enough to close off that arc.
How can you say that his acting sucked at the end of FBTS? Eh? Come again? I mean, suffering a nervous breakdown is not exactly neat, rational, or anything else like that. It's precisely because the end seems a bit out of place that the performance is so moving. If you saw a nervous breakdown happening for real, it could seem so out of place that you might even say that the person was over-acting.
When it first aired, I taped the episode, and then the next day I showed it to a very casual fan of the show. When Sisko broke down, he was genuinely moved. "Wow. That's good acting." That's what he said.
On topic, a criminally underrated episode is The Quickening.
Forgot to mention this one. It's superb and pretty much validated the whole Odo-Kira romance for me.
On another note, I don't really mind Brooks's performance in Far Beyond the Stars. Maybe he does go over the top, but sometimes I think you can get away with that, and I think he does here.
If you want to see a nervous breakdown done RIGHT, look at the way Edward James Olmos handled it when he got THE NEWS about Colonel Tigh. It was powerful stuff, far from rational--but it actually came across as believable, and not just someone doing Shatneresque overacting.
I used to like The Visitor very much, until the finale negated it by dooming Jake to pretty much the same fate after all.
Now my favorite would have to be By The Pale Moonlight, though Far Beyond is not far behind.
Now my favorite would have to be By The Pale Moonlight, though Far Beyond is not far behind.
So, what are you saying here? That you would have liked to see more done with that story? I kind of felt that way too when I saw this one again last week. But, I'm not sure if a two-parter would have been a good thing for this paticular one. What do you think?
This is a great response, especially the end. DS9 was quite remarkable in how it stayed to the course of character development. You cared about everyone, even down to the smaller roles. I need to dust off my DVDs again.
Definitely not a two-parter, there isn't that much mileage in resurrecting Bareil, mirror universe or not.
I actually just rewatched it in order to give a detailed enough answer, the actual plot isn't one of the more memorable plots in the series. The fact is, having Mirror Bareil be the polar opposite of his counterpart, having Kira fall for this new Bareil and then he betray her is all too predictable a story. We've seen with the example of Smiley that being a mirror character does not mean you have nothing in common with your Prime counterpart, and having a mirror character they're specifically writing an episode about to be completely opposite to Prime Bareil is lazy storytelling.
Bareil and the Intendant's motives for the Orb heist weren't rock solid either. Why would the inhabitants of Mirror Bajor join them just by bringing them an ancient artifact that will mean nothing to them anyway?
The entire story was just rushed, and to be honest, it would have been a lot better if only Bareil had crossed over, no Intendant, and the whole episode dedicated to exploring his differences between him and Prime Bareil, rather than another reminder than the Mirror Universe is bad. As an possible extension, it could even have been a true resurrection of Bareil, maybe with Mirror Bareil wishing to take Prime Bareil's place in Bajoran society, becoming a minor recurring character again. Seeing a mirror character acting outside of a mirror episode would firstly give the mirror arc a consequence, rather than being just standalone once-a-season stories, and would have really showed us how one of them reacts to living permanently in our universe.
Yeah. But DS9 already went there with the Intendant. I never could see her as Kira from another universe, she always just seemed to be a completely different character played by the same actress. Which became the template for writing other characters in the MU - by just making them polar opposites of the prime universe characters: "Oh, wouldn't it be fun if Mirror Brunt was a nice guy, and Mirror Ezri was a thief and a 'bad girl'... Hey, how about we make her lesbian as well?"
It would be much more interesting to watch a MU where characters are believable as basically the same people as their prime universe counterparts, but different because of the different circumstances and upbringing. Mirror Spock, for instance, still felt like Spock.
I can't say I agree. I thought part of the strength of the first crossover was that the characters we met were believable as warped versions of their counterparts. That's especially the case with the Intendant: basically she's got all of Kira's passion and determination, but none of her moral values and no higher cause: her libido is out of control.
As for Resurection, it's one of the few DS9 episodes that has no redeeming value as far as I'm concerned. It's an example of the kind of thing DS9 mercifully avoided most of the time: the characters are subservient to a lame gimmick. There's no reason to believe that Kira would fall for the mirror Bareil on the basis of superficial similarities. And the "her love sorta redeemed me" ending is also lame.
I guess we can chalk this up to the show having just spent all its creative energy on the opening arc of the season. Further proof that Post coitum omne animal triste est: there's just nothing in this episode that means anything at all, and it isn't entertaining.
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I don't agree. Passion and determination is not enough. I don't see Kira being completely self-centered, narcissistic and hedonistic; if the Intendant had any kind of cause she seemed to really believe in and fight for - say, crushing the Alliance's opponents or making Bajor stronger or showing those Terran scum their place - I would buy her as MU Kira, a ruthless despot and oppressor. But she didn't care for anything but her own power and her own pleasure. So no, I don't see her as another version of Kira.
I also think it is completely idiotic to portray MU people having different sexual orientations than their counterparts, so MU Kira shouldn't be any more bisexual than prime universe Kira. Same thing they did later with lesbian Mirror Ezri. I don't think it's something that is taught and changes depending on the circumstances, and I doubt that the writers actually were thinking that... They probably just weren't thinking. Or else they would have tried to avoid the "evil bisexuals/evil lesbians " cliche.
(My previous thoughts on the subject:
http://trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=3985141&postcount=4
http://trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=3987000&postcount=20)
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