Shatnertage's Mostly-1st-Time Watch Thread

[Shatnertage]

If there were some kind of heated debate going on in here, I might get caught in the...

"Crossfire"


I expected this episode to be about people on different ends of the political shouting at each other, but I was wrong. It's the story of unrequited love. And how Worf likes to be regular.

In a sentence, I'd say this is a good episode, but a slow one. Which isn't bad, but it's a change of pace.

First of all, a Worf complaint. Yes, he's biologically Klingon and yes, I can accept that he's been a student of Klingon history and culture all of his life. But he was raised by humans and has been a Starfleet officer for what, ten years now? Surely he wouldn't be so peeved at having to live among humans by now. And the Klingons we meet aren't really orderly, either. It's like Data not understanding slang or not getting that reading the thesaurus every time some uses a colloquialism is bad form; there's no reason why, within the confines of the fictional universe we're watching, these people should be acting this way.

But I liked that exchange between Worf and Odo a lot, so I don't really mind. And I guess he's finding the station isn't as disciplined as Picard's Enterprise, which given Sisko's proclivity for hammock time I find likely.

By the way, we've got a new game in our household: talk like Crazy Sisko. For example, today I brought home a surprise desert treat from Fresh and Easy which I announced as PUMPkin CHEESEcake PIE!, followed by that crazy eye thing Avery Brooks does. It's strange to me because he doesn't do crazy Sisko in every scene, or when Sisko's supposed to be particularly crazy. Maybe it's just when he's channeling Shatner or something.

Back to the episode. Odo's still got feelings for Kira, who on that level doesn't even he exists! If John Hughes ever made a Trek episode, this would have been it.

The scene where Mr. Stephens tells Miss Kenton...I mean Odo tells Kira that he's canceling their Tuesday morning briefings was ripped straight from The Remains of the Day. Since this is combining two of my favorite things, I thoroughly approve.

This is an episode about relationships, and there are five of them: Kira/Odo, Kira/Shakaar, Shakaar/Odo, Odo/Worf, and Odo/Quark. And what's interesting is that the most straightforward one of them all is the one where both parties are blatantly lying to each other.

Yes, I'm talking Odo/Quark. It's clear that there's a real friendship between them, despite both their protestations. And I like that neither of them can admit it, at least not out loud. It's something that we've known for a while but it's nice to see here.

Odo's a "friend" to both Shakaar and Kira, though with Shakaar he's also bound professionally. It's agonizing to watch him have to protect the guy who's romancing the girl he's in love with. Again, it reminds me of a John Hughes movie.

Worf/Odo's interesting because they definitely don't see eye-to-eye on station security, but they're both outsides who don't like guests, so they've got that in common.

Odo/Kira...well, I have a feeling that we haven't seen the last of those two together.

On MA it talks about how Rene Auberjonois improvised the loose strand of hair in the post room-smashing scene because it reminded him of a Japanese painting of a defeated warrior. That's why Auberjonois is awesome.

So in the end the good guy doesn't get the girl, and we've got the feeling that he's not okay with that. And that's what makes it a good episode.

 

[TheGodBen]

The scene where Mr. Stephens tells Miss Kenton...I mean Odo tells Kira that he's canceling their Tuesday morning briefings was ripped straight from The Remains of the Day. Since this is combining two of my favorite things, I thoroughly approve.

Which scene, the one where Stevens walks in on Miss Kenton when she's crying and instead of telling her that he loves her he tells to do some dusting? Because that scene is a canon violation! It never happened in the novel, Stevens wasn't such a heartless bastard. Actually, I hadn't thought about it before but Stevens and Odo are very similar. Both are stoic, dedicated to their work, and a little bit fascist. But yeah, that's one of my favourite novels.

That Odo/Quark scene is probably my favourite between them in the show, rivalled only by their final scene together. Even in private, even though they both know the truth, they keep up the pretence that they're enemies.

 

[Admiral Shran]

First of all, a Worf complaint. Yes, he's biologically Klingon and yes, I can accept that he's been a student of Klingon history and culture all of his life. But he was raised by humans and has been a Starfleet officer for what, ten years now? Surely he wouldn't be so peeved at having to live among humans by now.

I don't think it's that he's peeved about living among Humans. It's that he's upset that things on the station aren't as orderly as he's used to (like on the Enterprise, which was very orderly compared to the station) and that people don't seem to respect his boundaries.

Many times, even on TNG, I can't say I blame him. It gets toned down on DS9, but on TNG there are countless times when people expect him to think, act and speak like a Human.

 

[Shatnertage]

After some time away, I've made a...

"Return to Grace"

This episode was way, way better than I thought it would be from the blurb, which had to do with Kira attending a conference. I should have known that they'd never get to the conference and instead would do much more interesting stuff. Besides mediating sessions held on the Enterprise, did anyone planning to go to a conference on TNG ever end up there? I don't recall an episode set at a conference, although there were plenty where they were en route to or from one when the fun started.

When Kira and Bashir were talking about what Kira was doing when Shakaar asked her to go, I volunteered something about her head banging against the headboard, but it turned out it was just a G-rated foot massage.

Then Dukat shows up, and the episode goes from 0 to awesome, just like that.

I can't help but wonder what the show would have been like if Mark Alaimo had been cast as Benjamin Sisko. For my money, even under the makeup, he does a much better job of playing things ambiguously than Avery Brooks does. For example, in the scene, where the Klingon ship appears in front of DS9, Brooks just kind of stares at the screen. Is he feeling surprise? Anxiety? Excitement? Annoyance? It's impossible to tell, since he just looks like he's waiting for his morning coffee. Alaimo, on the other hand, lets me know exactly what Dukat wants me to think he's feeling, but I'm never quite sure if that's what he's really feeling.

Back to the story: Dukat's really coming on strong here with Kira, and she's a bit too chipper about it, IMHO. My wife, as well, noted that Kira has been much smilier this season (I didn't dare show her Shran's photoshop from a few pages back), and she generally doesn't seem angry or conflicted anymore. Which is great for her, but not so great for the show. Dukat does a great job of pushing her buttons, reminding her that she's the only one in her cell Shakaar didn't bed the first time around.

And then we find out that Dukat's wife has left him and is sleeping with a guy who reminds Dukat of Shakaar. This guy can't catch a break, and all because he fathered an out-of-wedlock child years ago.

Wait, didn't this same thing just happen to Arnold Schwarzenegger? It's like it's ripped from the headlines, only 15 years before the fact.

Ziyal is a great addition to the DS9 ensemble, a character who by her very nature is going to be very conflicted. And I like what they do with her here, making her a young Kira-in-training. I have a bit of a hard time believing she'd be such a softie after essentially growing up in the Breen prison camp mine, but for the sake of the story it works.

We also meet Damar here, who I've heard about and seen in the odd episode that I caught in the initial run. My big problem with Damar is his name. It sounds like Lamar to me, and for some reason I think of Blazing Saddles and Hedy LaMarr ("HEDLEY!"). I'm fervently hoping that I can stop calling him Hedley Damar by the time he gets something interesting to do.

So we end up with Dukat becoming a guerilla fighter and Kira taking care of his daughter. Very interesting place to take the character. I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of of this side of him in the future.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

You absolutely nailed why I love Marc Alaimo's acting. He has superb control over all of his expressions and gestures. Speaking of interesting casting, I've always wondered what it would be like if he'd been cast as the captain on Enterprise. I think he would've forced the writers to raise the bar big time. That, and he always seems to be typecast into bad-guy roles; it would be very interesting to see him play a good guy for once. I'm quite sure he's capable of it. (I actually wrote an AU version of Dukat who is quite the introvert--and it was very easy to picture Alaimo playing the role with the different kind of subtlety that would demand.)

As for your point about Ziyal being such a softie, my personal theory is that she is psychologically stunted as a result of her time in captivity. Remember that her rescue happened in a very "fairy tale" way, after being told that her idealistic hope that Dukat wouldn't kill her was impossible, by everyone around her. So in effect, it seems to me that Ziyal is a much younger girl emotionally than she is on the outside, and she believes in magic.

 

[Shatnertage]

I can agree with that.

 

[BlueStuff]

Rule no. 1 of Trek: never go to a conference. Something bad WILL happen either on the way there, on the way back, or at the conference itself.

 

[Sykonee]

You absolutely nailed why I love Marc Alaimo's acting. He has superb control over all of his expressions and gestures. Speaking of interesting casting, I've always wondered what it would be like if he'd been cast as the captain on Enterprise. I think he would've forced the writers to raise the bar big time. That, and he always seems to be typecast into bad-guy roles; it would be very interesting to see him play a good guy for once. I'm quite sure he's capable of it.

Didn't Alaimo play Dukat as if he was the hero of DS9 anyway?

 

[MrJ]

Didn't Alaimo play Dukat as if he was the hero of DS9 anyway?

That's why he was such a great villain. Same with Khan. Both Marc Alaimo and Ricardo Montalban played their parts as if their characters were the heroes of their own story. Giving them much more depth and believability than some of the more two dimensional villains in Star Trek.

 

[Admiral Shran]

My wife, as well, noted that Kira has been much smilier this season (I didn't dare show her Shran's photoshop from a few pages back)

If she's reading the thread, she'll have to see it now.

Return to Grace is a very good episode, if for nothing else than the arc it sets Dukat upon.

You absolutely nailed why I love Marc Alaimo's acting. He has superb control over all of his expressions and gestures. Speaking of interesting casting, I've always wondered what it would be like if he'd been cast as the captain on Enterprise.

While I really like Scott Bakula on ENT, and think that he did the best with what he was given, I agree that Alaimo would have owned the role.

 

[JayOwl]

My wife, as well, noted that Kira has been much smilier this season (I didn't dare show her Shran's photoshop from a few pages back)

If she's reading the thread, she'll have to see it now.

KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!! In the nicest way possible that is.

 

[Athena28]

After some time away, I've made a...

"Return to Grace"

This episode was way, way better than I thought it would be from the blurb, which had to do with Kira attending a conference. I should have known that they'd never get to the conference and instead would do much more interesting stuff. Besides mediating sessions held on the Enterprise, did anyone planning to go to a conference on TNG ever end up there? I don't recall an episode set at a conference, although there were plenty where they were en route to or from one when the fun started...

Love Demar. Love what he becomes. Love Casey Biggs.

 

[JWD75]

You absolutely nailed why I love Marc Alaimo's acting. He has superb control over all of his expressions and gestures. Speaking of interesting casting, I've always wondered what it would be like if he'd been cast as the captain on Enterprise.

Marc Alaimo as the Captain on Enterprise would have been beyond awesome. I'm sure that he would have hit it out of the park and made the show much more watchable. After his excellent work on DS9 he certainly proved himself worthy of a promotion to a starring role.

 

[Shatnertage]

Admiral Shran is killing me with the Kira avatar. Please make it stop.

 

[Shatnertage]

And now we can talk about HONOR with...

"The Sons of Mogh"

The possible tedium of a Klingon episode--which might feature lots of pontificating about honor--is offset by the knowledge that Tony Todd is going to be in this. He's the reason why "Sins of the Father" is a great episode, and I don't think it's a coincidence that "Sins" takes a nosedive once he's out of the picture and the focus shifts to Picard. He was great in Voyager as the Hirogen guy, too.

But first we have Dax and Worf indulging in some Klingon foreplay, and just as things are getting too hot and heavy for TV, Odo calls to say that a drunk Klingon has just shown up. We don't know if he came on his own ship, which would mean he was warping while intoxicated, or if he had a designated driver. In any event, it's Kurn, who wishes to die. They mention Sto-vo-kor, which always makes me think of Stovetop Stuffing.

And then we get the tedious Klingon honor part, but Todd is so amazingly intense while also being understated that it's not so bad.

That's when it occurs to me that this show would be a whole lot different if Tony Todd had been cast as Ben Sisko. In a good way. Then Avery Brooks, in his single scene, does a pretty good job of being a distant authority figure, and I'm back to thinking he's not so bad.

So the House of Mogh is into all kinds of trouble because Worf crossed Gowron. The only solution is for Kurn to die. This gets me thinking that maybe the Klingon obsessing with killing and dying over the smallest of slights (like filling out the comment card aboard a Klingon starship) might be a structural adaptation on a high birthrate and long lifespan. That's the only way to explain why this species has such a cultural predilection for early death.

Kira and O'Brien also discover that Klingons are mining the area around Bajoran space. I don't think that's really how space works, but I'm willing to accept it for the sake of the story. I suspect that these two strands will connect in a way that lets Kurn find absolution...but I'm wrong.

With about 8 minutes to go, I conk out, simply too tired to watch any more. And I think that this is a really good episode.

Last night I picked it up again, and things went bad. There was another phenomenal--phenomenal--scene with Worf and Kurn, the one where Kurn says he wishes they'd grown up together. Then things get stupid. Worf has Bashir wipe Kurn's memory, change his features, and change his DNA, and they give him a new identity.

I don't even know where to start with how wrong that is. The operation is entirely without Kurn's consent, which surely violates medical ethics. If a Cardassian doctor performed this procedure during the operation on someone like Kira to make her "forget" she was a member of the resistance, would we think it was OK? And they haven't really solved Kurn's problems; they've just killed him. He's now a man with no memory of his past whatsoever, which is a kind of living hell, I'm sure. Plus, what about all those retainers of the House of Mogh? They don't have any chance of leading normal lives now, and not even the closure of knowing Kurn is dead.

It goes without saying that this episode's resolution was a major disappointment.

Beyond that, Kurn is a good character and Todd is a great actor. Why would you want to kill him off? If I was a producer I would have given RDM the no-go on getting rid of him.

The way I thought the story was going to end up was that the mines were being laid by some kind of Klingon dissident faction that wanted to prevent the Empire from invading Bajor. Kurn joins them, since they're all dishonored, and at least has other Klingons to play with, and is still in play. And you've got another independent thorn in the Klingons' side to go along with Dukat, another player who can destabilize things if the drama needs it.

Good idea, lousy resolution.

 

[Shatnertage]

And after watching the end of "Sons of Mogh," I decided to double down on DS9 and watch the next episode. After all, it's been a pretty good run. I was punished with...

"Bar Association"

Did you know that the Ferengi were greedy? If you forgot, here's another Ira Steven Behr "capitalism is bad, even though I'm not going to start by working for free" Ferengi episode to remind you. Ugh.

I predicted that we'd hear Rom moaning and saying "Moogie." He did both, but luckily it was early on and we got it out of the way.

But that's almost the only good thing about this episode, which turned into an anti-capitalist screed. Don't believe me? Then why did Rom rapturously read from the Communist Manifesto at one point? Creepy.

The most sensible one was Odo, who expressed his distaste for mobs of any kind.

The whole thing was a strawman argument anyway. Quark's slashing his employees' pay long-term would have been bad business, since if there really was a free market for Ferengi labor, he would have lost his employees. As I think the past 40 or so years of labor history has shown, simply demanding higher pay and more perks doesn't always translate into long-term success for the business itself. I guess if you're a member of the Writers Guild that might not be the case, since that kind of creative work can't be outsourced (yet, anyway), but looking at a number of industries seems to say that the union movement isn't exactly riding on a wave of victories in the U.S. I just found the "four legs good, two legs bad" reductionism off-putting.

There were three good things about this episode, though. One was Worf's beating the ever-loving shit out of the Dopterian thief (c'mon, you know it happened) and then deciding to move on board the Defiant. I like it, because he's kind of like a guy who takes a job and then rewrites the job description to better fit the stuff he likes to do. First he's supposed to be heading up Federation strategy for the sector, which sounds like a really boring desk job, and honestly one that shouldn't put him under Sisko in the chain of command since DS9 is but one piece of the puzzle. Now he's in charge of the Defiant. Makes more sense, anyway.

The second is that Avery Brooks' scene as Sisko is pretty good. I'm not sure I'm OK with the government using its muscle to coerce a settlement, but I like Brooks' portrayal of Sisko here. He's definitely growing on me.

The third is Jeffery Combs as Brunt, who's not my favorite Combs character, but is still pretty good.

 

[Admiral Shran]

Sons of Mogh - a good episode, even if they killed off a good recurring character. It really puts Worf in a bind. He's alienated himself from the Empire and now from his own family. All he really has left in the world is Starfleet.

One nitpick I'll point out - at the end Worf says he has no family. Um, forgetting someone aren't we? Alexander? Either that line needed a little re-working or the writers were trying to say that Worf is psychologically distancing himself from his own son. I prefer the second option.


Bar Association =

You've pretty much hit on all the major reasons why this episode is one of my absolute least favorites of the entire series.

Spoiler: My least favorites

(I'd say probably my third least favorite behind Profit and Lace and Let He Who Is Without Sin... respectively.)

Here we have an episode that goes to absurd lengths to show that labor unions can do no wrong whatsoever. Unions have their place, but come on, let's be reasonable.

We have "heros" who are willing to do things like 1.) attempt to forcibly coerce people to believe what they want them to believe (O'Brien vs. Worf in the barfight), 2.) imprison innocent bystanders (Bashir, even though he was a victim of the fight!), 3.) extort people in order to get them to settle with the union (Sisko vs. Quark), 4.) refuse to even negotiate with the "villains," 5.) take pleasure in the near-death of Quark and 6.) quote from the freaking Communist Manifesto! (all Rom vs. Quark).

We have a "villain" who is willing to 1.) be reasonable and come to a compromise with the union, 2.) wants to keep the leader of the strike from being killed by the Ferengi government and 3.) in the end capitulates to the union to get them back in their jobs.

I could give more examples if I re-watched the episode, but I'm not going to subject myself to that right now.

The real villain here is Brunt and the mercantilist government he represents. Yet, the episode is hell-bent on getting us to view Quark as the sole villain and oppressor of the innocent workers. Everything is his fault because he doesn't give his employees every single thing they want. I guess their greed is perfectly acceptable while his isn't.

Rom and the workers do have some legitimate grievances, but damn, you hit it out of the park when you called this episode an anti-capitalist screed.

 

[You_Will_Fail]

Wow, "Bar Association" is one of my favorite episodes.
Its funny, light-hearted, entertaining and I happen to approve of a world where workers have some power...so shoot me.

Then why did Rom rapturously read from the Communist Manifesto at one point? Creepy.

I don't get it, what's remotely "creepy" about that?

 

[Tora Ziyal]

On MA it talks about how Rene Auberjonois improvised the loose strand of hair in the post room-smashing scene because it reminded him of a Japanese painting of a defeated warrior. That's why Auberjonois is awesome.

That's a cool bit of info. I'm near the end of my own first- and second-time watch of DS9, and Odo has become one of my two favorite characters (Kira is the other). Auberjonois is definitely awesome.

 

[MrJ]

Wow, "Bar Association" is one of my favorite episodes.
Its funny, light-hearted, entertaining and I happen to approve of a world where workers have some power...so shoot me.

Then why did Rom rapturously read from the Communist Manifesto at one point? Creepy.

I don't get it, what's remotely "creepy" about that?

It's because ever since the big communist scare in the 1950's some Westerners, and in particular Americans, are absolutely terrified of anything even remotely socialist. They think that there is nothing good about Communism, and it is totally evil and the worst kind of political or economic system ever created, and should be feared. Never mind the fact that Star Trek always had, ever since the beginning, (but especially in TNG onward) pretty overt communist themes.

The way the Russians implemented their fucked up version of Communism was obviously bad. But the Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek version where the Federation has almost unlimited resources, resulting in a society where anyone can have whatever they want and money has no value and "people work to better themselves and the rest of humanity" isn't so bad.