TheGodBen Revisits Deep Space Nine

[Seven of Five]

I remember watching this thinking how sweet it was to see Odo confessing his love to Kira after her heartache with Bareil. Then of course the rug is cruelly pulled out from us, and instead it took like another two years for him to tell her, then another year after that to get together!

I love Odo/Kira. I thought Odo's seemingly unrequited love was something we could easily identify with, and easily sympathise alongside him. When this turned into an actual relationship I was very pleased, and was a blubbering wreck at the end when they were seperated.

Nog joining Starfleet Academy was a masterstroke. I'm so glad they went with the less obvious Jake-in-Starfleet option and plumped for something that gave Nog brilliant development over the series.

And as for Odo singing Louie Louie with Chief O'Brien while rafting (!) I think the writers kept sneaking in wackier, perhaps more epic ideas of holosuite adventures because they didn't have the time or money to these things. Sure, we ended up with a baseball and all the Vic Fontaine episodes in the end, but at that time in season three the thought of the pair of them was enough for me.

 

[DS9 Gal AZ]

I shipped Odo and Kira hardcore during the show. Man, did it take forever for them to finally become a couple ... and then I couldn't even enjoy the episode where they finally did, because that stupid Vic Fontaine took over the episode. Grrr. /

But "Heart of Stone" was pretty good. They'd been hinting at Odo's feelings for Kira for a good long while, and we finally got conclusive proof he loved her.

 

[Admiral Shran]

I for one would enjoy seeing Odo and O'Brien rafting together while singing Louie Louie, but I guess I'll have to settle for the mental image of it.

Replace 'rafting' with 'camping', and 'Louie Louie' with 'Row Your Boat', and you'll have a good idea of how it probably would have worked out.

Dammit man, why did you have to go and ruin a perfectly good image?

I love Heart of Stone, easily one of my favorites of Seasons 1-3 and probably my favorite this season. Odo's unrequited love for Kira was something I could very easily identify with and made him one of my favorite DS9 characters. And Nog's storyline is equally as powerful. The scene where he confesses to Sisko that he doesn't want to end up like his father gets me every time.

 

[TheGodBen]

Replace 'rafting' with 'camping', and 'Louie Louie' with 'Row Your Boat', and you'll have a good idea of how it probably would have worked out.

I was going to say that DS9 could make it work because it has Odo and motherfucking O'Brien, but then I remembered that TFF had Spock and motherfucking McCoy and they couldn't make it work. I'll defer to your wisdom.


Destiny (***½)

Here's an episode that's pretty average overall but it's elevated by the thematic significance of being the first time that Sisko opens up his mind to the possibility that he is the Emissary rather than just tolerating it and sometimes using it for a political advantage. It's weird that it took the series this long to return to this storyline, it hasn't really been developed since Emissary. For the first time Sisko is forced to choose between his role as Emissary and his job as a Starfleet officer, and since he doesn't really believe that he is the Emissary that's an easy choice for him to make. But even still, he's conflicted between what Kira thinks he should do and what he has been trained to do, and Kira does have a point in saying that the Prophets are outside time and would therefore be perfectly capable of relaying visions of future events to those in the past. So it's interesting, but not as much as later episodes that take on this theme.

While the ending attempts to say that the prophesy was correct but it was misinterpreted, I can't help but see it another way, it just reinforces why guys like Sisko should never put their faith in prophesy. Trakor suffers from the same problem as every oracle in human history, his prophesies are so vague that they can be reconstrued to mean almost anything. You certainly can't predict the future with them or use them as the basis for an important decision, it's hardly even worth writing them down. The whole thing is almost a waste of paper, but it sounds vaguely poetic so it stuck around. If Trekor wrote "Two years after the end of the Cardassian occupation, three Cardassian scientists will show up on a space station to do an experiment on the Celestial Temple but it will go wrong and a comet will change course and almost destroy the Temple, but the Emissary will save the day using a subspace field in a shuttlecraft, but enough magic dust will escape to allow communication from one side of the Temple to the other" people would have laughed and called him a nutter. Funny that.

Meanwhile, there's a comic b-plot where O'Brien and a Cardassian scientist named Gilora are forced to work together... with sexy results! Well, kinda. It's light, it's somewhat humorous, and O'Brien bangs his head yet again. On reflection, I should have had a counter for that as it happens so often. It's probably why O'Brien's head is so big, it's swollen from all the bruising. Anyway, O'Brien turns her down because she's a spoon-head and he hates what he has become because of her. Gilora is upset about this because she was hoping to marry him so that she could gain Federation citizenship, but instead she's going back to Cardassia where she'll be executed by the Obsidian Order. Who is she anyway?

Wormhole in Peril: 3

 

[Ln X]

Yeah TheGodBen didn't two of the good Cardassian scientists say they had friends in Central Command to protect them? This episode develops Sisko's role as the Emissary and what is overlooked is Kira's spirituallity. This really shows in this episode and how her beliefs override any duty she has to Bajor or Starfleet. All in all this episode was a bit of lighthearted fun...

 

[MacLeod]

Back in the dark days of the 1990s, it would often takes months, and in DS9's case over a year, for new episodes of American TV shows to make their way across the Atlantic, presumably because they were transported by rowboats.

You make me realize just how spoiled we are, nowadays.

And now we moan if we don't get it witin a week of the states. Hard to think that we had to wait s years to see TNG on the Beeb. (I think it was almost 3 years to the day, on the plus side aside from the great teevision god of sport prempting it every few weeks, we had it almost none stop for years)

 

[Lindley]

Gilora is upset about this because she was hoping to marry him so that she could gain Federation citizenship, but instead she's going back to Cardassia where she'll be executed by the Obsidian Order. Who is she anyway?

Don't worry, she got cosmetic surgery to look human, then married John Sheridan just long enough for the citizenship thing. It worked for her!

 

[Seven of Five]

This episode suffers a little bit for me by having a prophecy at the centre of it. The last time I saw it, I had also seen Buffy and Angel to death, not to mention other TV series or films that utilised it. It just made me think that a standard non-specific prophecy is nowadays a way overused tool.

Aside from that though it was good to see Sisko move towards becoming more accepting of his Emissary status. I said before season three was good for him, and this is another example.

I like Heart of Stone more than this episode, just to poke at your ratings a bit.

 

[InklingStar]

I forget where I first read it, but this episode can be seen as the first in a trilogy arc showing Sisko's acceptance of his role as the Emissary. (Maybe it was the Companion.) In Destiny, he reluctantly accepts that this is how the Bajorans see him. In Accession, he stands up and says "I am the Emissary" but he still sees himself as a Starfleet officer first. Finally in Rapture he dives headlong into prophecies, no matter what Starfleet or the Bajorans want him to do. By then he is well prepared for the revelations of season 7.

 

[Paper Moon]

I forget where I first read it, but this episode can be seen as the first in a trilogy arc showing Sisko's acceptance of his role as the Emissary. (Maybe it was the Companion.) In Destiny, he reluctantly accepts that this is how the Bajorans see him. In Accession, he stands up and says "I am the Emissary" but he still sees himself as a Starfleet officer first. Finally in Rapture he dives headlong into prophecies, no matter what Starfleet or the Bajorans want him to do. By then he is well prepared for the revelations of season 7.

See, it's stuff like this that's why I love DS9. It looks for all the world like the writers planned all of this out in advance from day one, when, of course, it was really nothing like that. (Granted, as things went on they planned more, but still.)

 

[Admiral Shran]

Destiny is a very good one, IMHO. I'm glad they finally returned to the Sisko as Emissary storyline (took them long enough) and I agree that this episode is really the first of the Emissary Arc/Trilogy.

As for the prophecy - well, how else would it work? If Trekor had started talking about Cardassians, subspace whatevers and super advanced starships, the Bajorans of his time would indeed have thought he was insane. So, he used language they were familiar with. I agree that it's not the best way to record revelations from gods that have (in this instance) been proven to actually exist, but it's the best course available.

Imagine if someone from 2012 went back in time to the American South in the 1840s and started telling people that they should do away with slavery because one day there will be massive moveable machines the size of their houses that will go up and down their fields and do all their harvesting for them, so they therefore don't need to rely on slave labor. Imagine they then started going into intricate detail about how these things called tractors and combines work and are produced. The people of that time would just brush off the person's arguments like he was a lunatic.

Gilora is upset about this because she was hoping to marry him so that she could gain Federation citizenship, but instead she's going back to Cardassia where she'll be executed by the Obsidian Order. Who is she anyway?

I see what you did there.

 

[Skywalker]

I don't mind prophecies in this instance because we're dealing with a religion that worships beings which exist outside of time. I never really felt like Trekor supposed to be some sort of Bajoran Nostradamus; it's very possible that the Prophets sent Trekor visions of future events to help set the Emissary on the correct path in the future. And knowing the Prophets, it's not surprising to me at all that they would have been rather vague in their descriptions to Trekor.

 

[Admiral Shran]

it's very possible that the Prophets sent Trekor visions of future events to help set the Emissary on the correct path in the future.

The Prophets play the long game.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

it's very possible that the Prophets sent Trekor visions of future events to help set the Emissary on the correct path in the future.

The Prophets play the long game.

That's because no matter how long it takes, they're already there. Have been there. Will be there again, at some time in the past, now.

 

[Seven of Five]

it's very possible that the Prophets sent Trekor visions of future events to help set the Emissary on the correct path in the future.

The Prophets play the long game.

That's because no matter how long it takes, they're already there. Have been there. Will be there again, at some time in the past, now.

I always used to surmise that Sisko is the big power behind everything prophet-related.

We know in season seven that a prophet inhabited Sarah and had a baby with Joseph. Since the prophets live in a non-linear state, then it's very simple for them to encounter Sisko in Emissary, and then go to Earth's past to ensure his birth.

Therefore, it is also possible that Sisko (who joins the prophets after his 'death' at the end of show), could be in on the whole plan. Hell it could be his plan to start with.

 

[TheGodBen]

Who is she anyway?

I see what you did there.

I don't remember much about Lochley, but I do remember not knowing much about her.


Prophet Motive (*½)

Back in The House of Quark the writers hit upon the brilliant idea of the unlikely pairing of the Klingons and the Ferengi, and it was used for good comedic, as well as dramatic, effect. This episode hits upon the even more unlikely pairing of the Ferengi and the Prophets, and it's not quite as successful. I've said it before and I'll no doubt be saying it again before this thread is finished, Ferengi comedy episodes too often hit upon the same jokes about them being greedy misogynists and repeat them for an hour. This episode skips the sexist part of their nature leaving only the greed angle, and that makes it a bit tiresome. It's an interesting concept for an episode alright, and I did enjoy seeing Quark communicate with the Prophets (although it would have been nicer if this wasn't only their second actual appearance on the show). The solution to the problem, the Prophets reverting Zek because they didn't want to deal with the Ferengi anymore, was fitting and perhaps a little ironic.

Speaking of Zek, over the Christmas period I learned that Wallace Shawn co-wrote and starred in My Dinner With Andre, which is a movie I have obviously heard a lot about but never actually watched. But Shawn's involvement piqued my interest enough to check it out and it's very odd to watch Wallace Shawn go from an intellectual movie where two men discuss what life is all about to seeing him in giant ears and snorting beetles up his nose. And I thought that Bryan Cranston's range was impressive. At least he gets to play a different Zek than usual in this episode, and hearing him happily humming while trapped in a sack actually managed to make the sides of my lips curl upwards slightly.

Meanwhile, Dr Bashir is nominated for some medical award that he doesn't win. This plot feels incomplete somehow. It's like they had an idea and then wrote some scenes around that idea, but it never really managed to develop into a story. I read on MA that it was something of an in-joke about how the producers on TNG reacted to being nominated for an Emmy, which may explain why it felt half-baked as they were trying to make fun of themselves a little while not being willing to go the whole way. But hey, we got the introduction of the dart board, so that's something.

 

[Admiral Shran]

It's good that the Prophets finally make a return appearance, especially since the previous episode dealt so heavily with Sisko as the Emissary. Aside from that, there's not much I'd recommend about this one.

But, hey, at least it's not as bad as Meridian.

 

[Ln X]

It's good that the Prophets finally make a return appearance, especially since the previous episode dealt so heavily with Sisko as the Emissary. Aside from that, there's not much I'd recommend about this one.

But, hey, at least it's not as bad as Meridian.

I agree with admiral Shran, but I'd say this episode is average. It's not quite the funniest Ferengi episode but it ain't terrible, and the scene with the Prophets was cool.

Admiral Shran what is with the Obama/Romney picture?

 

[Admiral Shran]

Admiral Shran what is with the Obama/Romney picture?

They're the exact same politically. The only difference between them is that one happens to call himself a Democrat and the other happens to call himself a Republican. And that's the choice we're supposed to have, yeah okay.

I mean, I don't support Obama, so why should I support someone who holds virtually all the same positions just because he's a Republican?

Check out the link in my signature to see what I mean.

 

[Ln X]

Admiral Shran what is with the Obama/Romney picture?

They're the exact same politically. The only difference between them is that one happens to call himself a Democrat and the other happens to call himself a Republican. And that's the choice we're supposed to have, yeah okay.

I mean, I don't support Obama, so why should I support someone who holds virtually all the same positions just because he's a Republican?

Check out the link in my signature to see what I mean.

You don't happen to read ZeroHedge and look at WilliamBanzai7's pictures?