Shatnertage's Mostly-1st-Time Watch Thread

[Nerys Ghemor]

I agree. And without just crapping on them like usually happened in TNG when a society with a religious faith was brought up.

Rather, I think we get a very well-rounded picture of the Bajorans that's in line with reality: a society that's a mixed bag with devout people, people who aren't so devout, fanatics, and people who are moderate. People, with different personalities and opinions, who actually have brains and use them. Not the TNG stereotype of cowardly, anti-intellectual morons.

 

[Shatnertage]

That's also what I liked. Kira is obviously pretty secular but she's still in awe of the Kai, which says a lot about the Kai. And it's a much more nuanced and accurate portrayal of religion as well. Thank God (pardon the pun) we don't find out the Bajoran god is actually a computer here.

 

[TheGodBen]

Just to add to what Admiral Shran said, the Kai is also empowered with the ability to negotiate on the behalf of Bajor with other interstellar powers. I suppose, in a way, the Kai is like the head of state (with some additional powers) while the First Minister is the head of government. The show begins to address the issues surrounding the Bajoran government in the second season.

I'm completely in agreement with what Admiral Shran said about "killing" off Opaka. This is definitely one of the better episodes in season 1, but getting rid of (for the most part) such an important character after barely having explored her at all rubs me the wrong way.

What's the significance of her giving the necklace to O'Brien? It does foreshadow that she's not coming back, but does it augur any big role for Molly?

Ummm... no. At this point, the writers weren't planning ahead much, if they were then they probably wouldn't have done what they did to Opaka in this episode. But, if you ever rewatch DS9, you will notice that there are some minor things in episodes you have already watched that seem to foreshadow events in later seasons.

Kira is obviously pretty secular...

Actually, she's quite religious. She believes that the wormhole aliens are the Prophets and that the wormhole is the Celestial Temple, and she struggles with whether Sisko really is the Emissary. But this sort of stuff doesn't really come up until the end of the season.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I actually don't think Kira is secular--as in a Bajoranist (I guess that's what you'd call a Bajoran "humanist"), but she is certainly not a fundamentalist.

 

[Admiral Shran]

^ Exactly, she's religious, but not a fundamentalist.

 

[Shatnertage]

I should probably clarify: I do mean secular in the sense Shran suggested. She may be religious, but she's fully engaged with the world and doesn't hide behind doctrine or use her beliefs as a substitute for her own reason and observation.

Or maybe I'm projecting myself onto her already.

 

[TheGodBen]

Kira may not be a fundamentalist, but she's certainly willing to make some questionable decisions based on religious doctrine.

Spoiler: later episodes

Such as resigning in Accession.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Regarding that spoiler, one thing I wasn't clear on in that episode was whether it was a matter of "you SHOULD do that," or "you HAVE to do it because it's the law now."

 

[Admiral Shran]

Spoiler: later episodes

I was always of the impression that she felt she had to do it, not that she simply wanted to do it. After all, she's not to happy to go through with it in the first place. Even the moment it's announced, it's clear that she's not happy about the situation.

 

[Shatnertage]

I've got to confess I didn't have the willpower not to click TGB's spoiler box. Luckily I've got a lousy memory these days, so it'll still be a complete surprise when I see that episode. I've already forgotten the name!

And now it's time to settle in and listen to a long story about...

"The Storyteller"

This was a fun little episode. It's half buddy road trip with O'Brien and Bashir, and half "The Dauphin" with a twist.

Partially, it's fun because I've been reading the "Facts about Colm Meaney" thread. So when O'Brien was made the new Syrah (I know that's not how it's spelled, but work with me), I turned to my wife and said, "He's going to beat the ever-loving shit out of the Dalrock, and it'll never come back, ever."

I call him the Syrah because after we heard them say the name a few times, my wife said, "Isn't that a kind of wine?" Wikipedia says yes, but we know it better as Shiraz.

I'm warming to Alexander Siddig and Dr. Bashir. I've really liked what he's done in the past two episodes. He and O'Brien make a good double act.

My wife pointed out that, whenever we see Miles, his sleeves are rolled up. Because he's that hard working. And that all of the villagers' clothes, as usual, look like they've never been worn before.

The story on the station was fun, too, with Nog and Jake getting a new partner in crime who learned a valuable life lesson from them. It was cute.

Though I've got to wonder: why doesn't Odo, who generally seems pretty misanthropic, lock his bucket up a little better? Or better yet, why can't he get a bucket that's built into the wall, so no one can steal it? If I was that vulnerable and had that many enemies, I'd design some kind of vault that I could seal myself into while I was in the bucket.

It's funny to hear people talk about Odo's bucket, because we call the littlest one's carseat/stroller carrier "the bucket."

And this is the second time the security office has been broken into already: he really needs to buy a better security system. Or post guards. I'd like to see one of those posters like they have in factories that say "it's been __ days since our last accident." In this case, it would say, "It's been __ days since someone last broke into the office."

So this wasn't the best hour of TV I've ever seen, but it was fun.

 

[Admiral Shran]

Definitely not one of my favorites, but YMMV.

It just seems like yet another TNG episode (and a pretty boring one at that) masquerading as a DS9 one.

About the only thing I fondly remember about it was that I found the girl who played Varis attractive back in the day.

 

[TheGodBen]

Once again, I agree with Shran. In fact, this literally was a TNG script that was repurposed to work on DS9, and it shows as both the A and B plots had barely anything to do with Bajor's situation. Bajor is a planet that is struggling in the aftermath of a brutal occupation and I want Bajor episodes to focus on that rather than this sort of generic stuff.

The O'Brien/Bashir scenes at the start were good though, they are the highlight of the episode for me.

 

[Shatnertage]

Not only was it a TNG script, it was a first-season script, so this is basically a TOS idea.

I was thinking that it doesn't say a lot for Bajor's central government that they'd let a village deteriorate to the point where they need a fake smoke monster to keep everyone in line.

Wow--I wonder if the Lost guys got the smoke monster idea from this episode.

It did seem pretty generic "planet of the week" stuff and, like TGB says, not anything that has to do with the Cardassian occupation.

 

[Admiral Shran]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Sirah say that the village had been dealing with the Dal'Rok for quite some time and that the purpose of creating it was to unite the villagers against a common opponent.

Seems kind of odd that the villagers would need something like that when the Cardassians were occupying the planet.

Just more evidence that it's little more than a redesigned TOS/TNG story.

 

[Shatnertage]

^ I think he said it was 90 years before. Didn't the Cardassian occupation start about 50 years before DS9 starts? So as Shran says, you'd think they'd have had enough common enemies over the years to let them put the smoke monster to rest.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I was thinking that it doesn't say a lot for Bajor's central government that they'd let a village deteriorate to the point where they need a fake smoke monster to keep everyone in line.

The central government was weak. Exceedingly weak. It's not like the writers wanted you to think otherwise.

As for the Cardassians...man, if I'd been a warlord of the Occupation, I would've tried my damnedest to get my hands on that Orb fragment...

 

[Sykonee]

To be honest, I always figured that village was some totally remote place that few really bothered with. Like, the Bajoran equivalent of Siberia (tho' obviously more equatorial in location).

 

[Athena28]

...And now it's time to settle in and listen to a long story about...

"The Storyteller"

This was a fun little episode. It's half buddy road trip with O'Brien and Bashir, and half "The Dauphin" with a twist...

I never knew it was a reworked TNG ep., but I do know I didn't care for half of it. The O'Brien/Bashir storyline was fun -- but the rest of it...Nope.

 

[Shatnertage]

Now comes an episode that makes me think the Federation isn't such a great place. It seems that in the next 300 years we won't make much...

"Progress"

Finally, an episode of Star Trek dealing with eminent domain issues! Handled in the usual Trek way, which is having a single officer solve a complex problem that would usually engage teams of professionals.

In the runabout, Dax talks about how Morn asked her out. She said she was busy, but thinks he's kind of cute. Well, there's at least one person in the Trekverse who's into Morn porn. Then again, given that Seven had a stash of Chakotay porn, the bar isn't exactly set very high.

So Kira's got to evict these three people from a moon which is going to be used to somehow power Bajor.

I don't like getting bogged down in technical details, but from what they said it sounds like a pretty sucky plan to begin with. You've got an inhabitable moon that's apparently M-class (or whatever class a moon would be); in order to get energy from it, you will have to poison the atmosphere, making it unlivable. You already relocated 47 inhabitants, and there are 3 holdouts.

But what about all of the animals? We didn't see any, but the moon had pretty extensive foliage, so I'd assume there was a diversity of life on it. Did that life develop independently there? If so, it would be home to unique lifeforms. Even if not, some neat things might have evolved there. And the Bajoran government, with Federation help, is going to destroy all that so people can get power without having to wait a year.

And they're the good guys?

Seriously, this made me think of the Kelo case. If you were trying to make a case against eminent domain, you couldn't do a better job. This wasn't an "Ensigns of Command" case where the threat came from an external force that everyone agreed was being dickish. This was the Federation itself engineering the destruction of a habitat.

So in the 24th century I guess they don't require environmental impact statements.

It's almost like the point of the episode is to convince us how completely fucked up the Federation is. The other great example of this, from a human resources perspective, is TMP, where Starfleet has Kirk, the guy who's replacing him, break the news to Decker that he's being relieved of command and busted down in rank.

My wife drifted in and out during this one, so I had to explain midway to her that Kira was trying to evict Mullibok before they destroyed the moon.

"Do they have to build a hyperspace bypass?" was her response.

So basically what I got from this is that Bajor (assisted by the Feds) will do whatever it wants regardless of the environmental or human consequences. Then they'll send someone to help finish building your kiln before phasering the shit out of it and setting your house on fire.

And these are the good guys?

There was an amusing B-story with Jake and Nog becoming yamok sauce/self-sealing stem bolt/Bajoran real estate tycoons that I actually liked. But even it raised some interesting implications. The government was going to negotiate with offworlder speculators who were the lone holdouts preventing them from building a waste treatment plant, but they have no problem using eminent domain to destroy the home of a veteran of the Cardassian occupation?

So this one was a real head-scratcher. I don't know what they were going for here, but it made me think that the Bajorans aren't quite as spiritual as they say they are. At the very least, they're awfully cavalier about environmental stewardship.

 

[T.D. Possum]

I think this episode was intended to be focused more on Kira and the beginnings of her transformation from rebel to Federation-linked authority figure. I don't think we were supposed to pay a lot of attention to the eminent domain issues. However, now that you bring them up, I do agree with you - that was pretty bad stuff going on.