The DS9 violence cuts are really getting on my nerves now. Evil Odo's explosive death was completely edited out of Crossover on Thursday, while their tampering with the opening scene of The Collaborator last night was probably the clumsiest piece of editing I've ever seen, right down to stray frames either side of the removed shot.
The offending sequence was Bareil's orb experience on the Promenade, where he walks into the dead body of Prylar Beck who is hanging from the upper level. SyFy cut away from that as soon as possible, and over to Kira playing springball.
Here's how the scene plays uncut;
BAREIL: "Nerys?"
KIRA: "Vedek Bareil...wanna play?"
BAREIL: "Help me...please!"
But in order to remove this shot of Bareil;
SyFy edited this whole bit down so that it only shows Kira, with Bareil and his swinging friend kept firmly off-screen.
Thus, things get silly;
BAREIL (off-camera): "Nerys?"
KIRA: "Vedek Bareil...wanna play?"
BAREIL (off-camera): "Please!"
So rather than being a scene about a man being tormented by the events of his past, SyFy decided it should instead be about Bareil being afraid Kira won't play springball with him. Cos that makes sense.
Later on in another Orb vision they also removed this shot of Kira;
Knives in particular seem to be a huge no-no on the SyFy channel. Duet, Necessary Evil, The Collaborator - they all feature stabbings and in all cases SyFy have removed any and all shots of the blade. What's left is more of a
suggestion that a stabbing has taken place.
Now like Trek Survivor said, the BBC showed all this stuff more-or-less uncut in the same timeslot
twenty years ago. For instance, I clearly remember watching Odo explode. The only issue the BBC ever seemed to have with violence on DS9 was the occasional broken neck. So why the sudden squeamishness on SyFy? And if these relatively tame sequences are getting the chop, episodes like Way of the Warrior, To the Death, Empok Nor & Rocks and Shoals are going to be almost unwatchable.
