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DS9 Versus: A viewing experient

Still, you can tell just from part 1 that the story is careening towards a massive reset. In fact, the reason why I don't have that big a problem with the reset in part 2 is precisely because it was so obvious it was going to happen.
 
Ah, man, had I known we'd be in for a match-up of this magnitude, I'd have tried to arrange my viewing schedule a little better. As it is, however, due to the Long Weekend I probably won't be able to get around to watching it for a couple days still. Well, unless I try to muddle through it with a major hangover.:beer:
 
just another episode about that weird dominion war. nothing special.
:guffaw::guffaw::guffaw:

It's really great to have the regular thread comic relief. :bolian:
I know it's nothing to do with me, but I think attempting to belittle someone who has a different point of view is bad form.
I'd give it to Year of Hell, personally. Because of the deus ex machina of SoA.
How about the epic reset button of YoH?
That's the nature of it though, isn't it? All the time meddling and that. But along the way it tells a great story, and rates among not only Voyager's best but the best of all Trek in my view.
 
Year of Hell would have been awesome, had it been an entire season with no reset button. Instead, it's a total cop-out. And believe me, I know cop-outs. I just finished Lost.
 
SOA - by a mile, not even close.

YOH is a fun watch but no more than that - as GodBen says it screams reset from the very start, which made it easier to deal with when it comes but doesn't help the buildup in part 1.

SOA manages to actually maintain tension right to the end - and the ending is rooted in the characters and the shows backstory. I know not everyone likes the resolution but it worked for me. Plus it created another layer for them to deal with in later episodes.
 
Ah, man, had I known we'd be in for a match-up of this magnitude, I'd have tried to arrange my viewing schedule a little better. As it is, however, due to the Long Weekend I probably won't be able to get around to watching it for a couple days still. Well, unless I try to muddle through it with a major hangover.:beer:
Once again, your dedication as a reviewer has been called into question. You should really try to be more like me because I can drink as much as I want and not get hungover. :techman: Yes, I'm dedicated my my reviewing, that's why I skipped watching B5 for the last three days, and I'm skipping it again tonight to watch Lost.


SOA manages to actually maintain tension right to the end - and the ending is rooted in the characters and the shows backstory. I know not everyone likes the resolution but it worked for me. Plus it created another layer for them to deal with in later episodes.
I don't understand the complaints about the resolution, they could just as easily have had Kira and Nog cut the weapons before the minefield was taken down, instead they did something unexpected. I enjoy it because it's the only time when the two big stories of the show really intersect, even in episodes like Tears of the Prophets and WYLB the war story and the Prophet story are separate from one another.

The biggest complaint I have about SoA is the fact that the Defiant is the only ship to get past the Dominion fleet, then it takes another two hours for more ships to break through. That stretched credibility.
 
That stretched credibility.
i believe absolutely everything about prophets and founders stretched credibility, overstretched in fact.

well, the silver lining of soa is that the soap opera which the ziyal business was, comes to its conclusion. do you remember how it all started? dukat ventured out to wring his long lost illegitimate daughter's neck because she violated his family or professional honour or so. her stepsister kira, the daughter of dukat's other alien long time lover, and dukat's enemy, saved her life. later on, she conspired with all of dukat's other adversaries, even sort of fell in love with his arch enemy garak. dukat loves her dearly, nonetheless, and goes bananas for good when she is killed by his best friend and confident. i'm positive pubescent girls were glued to the tv. who will she have sex with? who will she marry?

voyager never utilized stuff like this.
 
i believe absolutely everything about prophets and founders stretched credibility, overstretched in fact.
That's because your mind is limited by your corporeal nature. :p

i'm positive pubescent girls were glued to the tv. who will she have sex with? who will she marry?

voyager never utilized stuff like this.
Voyager is responsible for this, this and, most disturbingly of all, this. Just what are they doing with all that bread?! :wtf:

Alternatively, a Google image search for "Garak Ziyal" comes up with this, this and, my favourite, this.

What this proves is clear to all; all of Voyager's audience were post-menopausal women and all of DS9's audience were gay. There can be no disputing this, I have provided the evidence.
 
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That stretched credibility.
i believe absolutely everything about prophets and founders stretched credibility, overstretched in fact.

well, the silver lining of soa is that the soap opera which the ziyal business was, comes to its conclusion. do you remember how it all started? dukat ventured out to wring his long lost illegitimate daughter's neck because she violated his family or professional honour or so. her stepsister kira, the daughter of dukat's other alien long time lover, and dukat's enemy, saved her life. later on, she conspired with all of dukat's other adversaries, even sort of fell in love with his arch enemy garak. dukat loves her dearly, nonetheless, and goes bananas for good when she is killed by his best friend and confident. i'm positive pubescent girls were glued to the tv. who will she have sex with? who will she marry?

voyager never utilized stuff like this.
I know what you mean. It was almost as bad as that awful thing I watched the other day on TV, just because Picard was in it. Man, he must be really desperate for cash if he has to be in that kind of shit.

It's about this young prince who's sad because his dad, the king, died, and his mother remarried the new king, her brother-in-law, something like a month after her husband's death. But then it turns out that the king was actually murdered - and you know what nonsense they came up with as a way to reveal that? The prince sees his father's ghost. :rolleyes: I'm not kidding. So the ghost tells him that his brother, the prince's uncle, poisoned him so he could get the throne and the queen, and asks his son to get revenge on his uncle the new king. The prince vows to do so, but instead starts acting weird, pretending to be mad or something. Oh, and as if all the soap opera with the mother and the father and the uncle wasn't enough, the prince is also in love with the daughter of the new king's main sycophant. But since he's all pissed off at his mother, he's got issues with women or something, he keeps acting like a jerk to the girl, and it gets worse after her father and the king get her to spy on him and he figured it out. Then there's the most far-fetched scene ever - the mother invites the prince to her room to talk about his behavior, and he gets all angry and creepy, shouting at her and rubbishing her for marrying his uncle. But the sycophant was hidden behind the curtain all the time in order to observe the prince's behavior. And now get this - the prince hears a sound and thinks it's the king, and then decides to kill the king on the spot - even though he's had, like, ten times better opportunities to kill him before that but didn't. But now all of a sudden, like a complete idiot, he jumps and stabs the guy behind the curtain, before realizing it's really his girlfriend's father. Could they possibly have come up with a more random and convoluted plot device? So then the prince is sent out of the country, supposedly to get cured of his insanity - the king has figured him out and knows that he knows the truth, but can't kill him because of his wife. The girlfriend goes insane after her dad's death and drowns herself. The prince comes back and gets all melodramatic at her funeral, and goes on about how much he loved her, and, in a particularly embarrassing scene, then gets into a fight with her brother over who loved her more. The brother blames him for her death as well as his dad's murder and challenges him to a duel, but the scheming king arranges the prince's death by poison. All the mayhem ensues at the duel, and through a lot of far-fetched accidents that I can't even remember, they all end up dead - the queen, the brother, and the prince is poisoned but finds the time to kill the king and then give a melodramatic speech before dying. The writer must have gotten lost in the plot himself, and sick of his whiny, self-righteous main character and his constant blabbering, and decided to just end it all by killing off everyone (except a friend of main character's who basically does nothing all the time except hang around). Then some dude from another country, who we'd never seen before, comes at the end, finds everyone dead, and takes over. I want these 3 hours (yes, 3 fucking hours) of my life back. :vulcan:

It was almost worse than that absurd, cheesy old movie I watched on TV once, because young Shatner was in it. It's about this rich old guy and his three sons - or should that be four. The old guy is a miserly, horny old bastard and everyone hates him. The oldest son, played by the baldie from "The Magnificent Seven", is a hot-headed bad boy who drinks and gambles and is in lots of debts, but dad won't give him money. He's got a rich fiancee, but he has the hots for a local ho. But - get this - his dad has hots for the same ho, who's cock-teasing both the father and the son and stringing them both along. The second son is a reserved egg-head, who's - guess what - in love with his brother's fiancee, and she's cock-teasing him even while she's constantly talking about how much she loves his brother. There's a scene of confrontation between the fiancee and the ho, which almost turns into a catfight - I was expecting them to start wrestling in the mud. The youngest brother, played by Shatner, is a monk or something, and has no point in the story except to be the only character who's not an asshole. Just when you think that it's all going to be about 'who's going to fuck who', it gets more interesting - the old bastard is murdered, and it becomes 'who done it'. The baldie is the prime suspect - he had motives, the money and the woman - and he was to his dad's house the night that the ho promised to come over and finally let the old bastard fuck her, for the money that he had prepared for her. He turns up at a bar where the ho is having a party, acting all crazy and calling himself a killer. It turns out she never intended to go to the old man's, and it turns out she's actually not bad, just misunderstood, because of (surprise, surprise) a traumatic experience in her adolescence - she fell in love with some guy and he seduced her and dumped her, and her family threw her out, so she had to fend for herself and hook up with some old rick feller, and she got all cynical and angry at men. It turns out that the guy who seduced her is at the party, she found him and invited him over, because she supposedly thought all those years she still loved him, but now she realizes he is just a wuss and nothing special, and that, oh, the baldie is her true love. I'm sure the teenage girls were bawling their eyes out. So they hook up, but then the cops come and arrest him for the murder of his dad. But, guess what, he's not really the murderer, he's good but misunderstood. He was just over to his dad's house because he was freaking out that his ho-who-isn't-really-a-ho was going to fuck the old guy, and he panicked and struck an old servant on the head, and thought he had accidentally killed him. So now when he hears that the servant is OK and it's the dad who is killed and his money stolen, baldie realizes he's not a killer, but now he's already incriminated himself and everything points to him. It turns out the real murderer is actually yet ANOTHER son - a creepy servant of the old man who was his illegitimate son and was pissed off because he wasn't recognized and all. He admits it to the egghead brother for whatever reason, then goes and hangs himself. Who writes this stuff?! :vulcan: The egghead brother blames himself for some reason or other, and goes nutso. And if you thought all this was overblown melodrama, wait till you see the trial, which is completely ludicrous and the most embarrassing OTT soap opera I've ever seen. The egghead comes as a witness and acts all crazy and calls himself a murderer, and then faints. Then the fiancee - who's either hooked up with the egghead in the meantime, or she's just realized she was really into him all the time (I dunno, that chick was hard to figure out) goes all hysterical, and starts screaming and shouting all sorts of rubbish about the baldie, and basically buries him at the trial. To complete the spectacle, baldie's girlfriend starts screaming at her and calling her a bitch and a snake. So, in the end, the baldie is convicted for the crime he didn't commit, and gets sent to a harsh prison colony, and his girlfriend is totally devoted to him and accompanies him to the colony. Love triumphs. Tears everywhere. :rolleyes:

It's so fortunate that Voyager never utilized stuff like that. It's clearly superior to all those rubbish soaps.
 
Really, DevilEyes, how can you spend your time on such tripe? :eek:

As for me, after Kai Winn's biting critique, I have come to a new understanding of DS9's shortcomings. My only question: how could I have been so wrong for so long?:confused:

On a tangential note, regarding your point about the Mirror Universe on DS9 in some other thread I've lost track of, I got a chance to rewatch Crossover last night and was pleased to see that there is no "evil bisexual" innuendo in this episode. (The Intendant falls for Kira, but this is an expression of her narcissism.) Rewatching this episode reminded me how good it actually is: very dark, yet really hilarious at times. Repeated visits to the MU in DS9 and ENT certainly dulled its edge, but it's excellent as a standalone.

I'm not sure when the writers got the bright idea to make the Intendant bisexual because I haven't had a chance to rewatch the other episodes, but it's possible that she has both male and female consorts as early as the second crossover.
 
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Once again, your dedication as a reviewer has been called into question. You should really try to be more like me because I can drink as much as I want and not get hungover. :techman:
I must have subconsciously taken that to heart. I had a ridiculous amount to drink (probably the most all year), with several blank bits of the night in my memory. Yet, I awoke afterwards feeling perfectly fine, if a little fatigued. And a bruise to the left of my tail-bone.:alienblush:

Week 10: (Ending 11.09.97)
DS9 - Sacrifice Of Angels (Airdate 11.03.97)
VOY - Year Of Hell (Airdate 11.05.97)

Weekly Winner
DS9

Next:
DS9 - You Are Cord-

What? What!? Oh, fine.

It boils down to two factors here:
1. Resolution vs Set-Up
2. Stakes

The first is self-explanatory. As for Stakes, it's what's going to give DS9 the Trump Card nearly every time. SoA involves several powers which we've come to be quite invested in, for anyone who's watched Trek for a number of years. As is repeatedly stated in the episode, the fate of the Alpha Quadrant was literally at stake here. There was no other way around it: either Sisko succeeds and the war's strategy takes a new form, or he fails, and we're watching the adventures of Gul Dukat in a new series called Star Trek: Dukat's Legacy (actually, that would have been a pretty cool series, now that I think about it).

As for the Prophets' involvement, I've no problem with it. Once the writers decided the minefield was coming down despite Our Heroes' best efforts, there wasn't much other option for them to go to for a resolution. From a storytelling point of view, it makes sense. Plus, it doesn't feel like a gratuitous cheat due to their Ominous Omen regarding Sisko - the Gods granted a miracle, but with it comes a price. What that price is, we don't know yet, but hopefully we'll find out soon.

Look, when it comes to character elements, action elements, drama elements, plot elements, and whatever else you may have, DS9 and VOY were about as evenly matched as they've ever been. Unfortunately, the scale of the shows are quite different. In YoH, we're dealing with a single sector of space, with a handful of races we've never met before; rather on DS9, one, perhaps two quadrants, with several races and Empires/Federations/Dominions. Year Of Hell may have been an Event Episode, but it's not a Major Event Episode, and this is why VOY has often lagged behind DS9 and B5 here, in that the very nature of its show remains somewhat limited in poignancy.

VOY can still do solid self-contained episodes, but can't compete on the same epic scope the other two shows do.

Weekly Winner
DS9

Next:
DS9 - You Are Cordially Invited
VOY - Year Of Hell, Part II
 
YES!!! DS9 POWER!!!

I knew it, really. While Year of Hell is an exciting watch, there isn't really anything Voyager can turn out that can trump the end of the Occupation Arc, like you said, a large part of that is due to its setting travelling through unknown space, it can't meet many races long enough to make it interesting.

The Krenim are however about the best alien-of-the-week you get, especially since they've been foreshadowed in Before and After, and the concept of the time ship is brilliant, and in a way, kinda similar to the whole crack-in-the-universe business we've got going on over on Doctor Who right now, except its controlled on Voyager, uncontrolled over on DW, and we still don't know its exact nature over there. Year of Hell is one of my favourite Voyager episodes, despite its massive reset, but that doesn't come into play until the second chapter. Which by the way, is going to trounce You are Cordially Invited every which way, IMO. I don't think a wedding episode can do much against the second parter of an Event episode.

As for Sacrifice of Angels, it has ship battles on a scale never really seen before, and I loved the dramatic tension that kept it going right till the end. All the main characters were involved as much as they could be, and there were significant developments for all of them. The Prophets were, in a way, the best thing about SoA, as it fits into Sisko's character arc perfectly.

And actually, I would have loved to see Star Trek: Dukat's Legacy too. That would have been one show of awesome, as long as it was written well enough.
 
WRONG! Totally the wrong call, but I've come to expect this of you. I don't even know why I bother to read this thread. :rolleyes:

Seriously, I'd give the win to Sacrifice of Angels too, it contains a lot of what makes DS9 great and the battle is right up there as one of the best action sequences in all of sci-fi. The scale was mind-blowing, and I still get chills watching the Sitak and Majestic getting blowed up real good (but not when that shot was reused in WYLB). In the Pale Moonlight may be my favourite episode, but I've watched Favour the Bold/Sacrifice of Angels more times because it's like watching a movie. Hell, it's probably better than all the Trek movies.

Year of Hell is good too, it does give SoA a good run for its money, but it just can't match the scale of DS9.
 
One of the rare times a Voyager episode can actually seriously compete with its DS9 equivalent.

In fact, YoH may be one of Voyager's best episodes ever.

Of course, SoA isn't one of DS9's best and still wins the day. It's a true epic battle that is the culmination of year's of storytelling: The Federation finally lays the epic smack-down on Dukat and the Dominion. The fact that the show is (semi)serialized at this point makes the payoff better. It's almost shocking how many BIG and CATHARTIC moments are crammed in this episode.
Would this be a good episode if it aired three episodes after "The Search" when the Dominion was established? Sure. But the culmination of layered storytelling gives it extra punch. The only flaw is the patness of the Wormhole stuff. This would piss me off a lot more if it were a 2 parter. The fact that they spent 7 episodes (actually 8 since In the Cards, underrated masterpiece, got the whole thing moving) on this story earns a lot of goodwill. Really ambitious storytelling (by Star Trek standards)

The occupation arc was like an in-continuity Year of Hell (except it only lasted a few months but I digress). Another reviewer once compared the occupation arc to "Yesterday's Enterprise", war torn Federation, except it actually happens.

It says something about VOY as a show that YoH ended up not happening (just like Timeless, another well regarded VOY episode).

One of the reasons YoH is good.................. is because of how lifeless and uninteresting and safe "regular" Voyager continuity is. When you take the premise of the show there's no reason why some of that stuff shouldn't happen. It's just frustrating to have such a dynamic premise (half Maquis, half Starfleet, on a ship stranded 70 years away with no backup, no repairs, no nothing).... and play everything so goddamn safe and technobabbly. ARGH.
 
One of the reasons YoH is good.................. is because of how lifeless and uninteresting and safe "regular" Voyager continuity is. When you take the premise of the show there's no reason why some of that stuff shouldn't happen. It's just frustrating to have such a dynamic premise (half Maquis, half Starfleet, on a ship stranded 70 years away with no backup, no repairs, no nothing).... and play everything so goddamn safe and technobabbly. ARGH.

I've taken to just never going into the Voyager sub-forum because I find the show so irritating, and its fans have a right to discuss a show they enjoy unmolested by the likes of me.

What irritates me is that I really, really want to like that show. I'd love to have 7 more seasons of Trek to enjoy. There were so many interesting things the writers could have done with what is an excellent premise. Year of Hell should have been... A Year of Hell. This could have lasted a season and been awesome. A female Captain? Yes, please. Tensions on a Starfleet vessel lightyears from the Federation? Again, sign me up. Watching Voyager is depressing because it could have/should have been great.

Watching DS9 is incredibly satisfying because here I can say: yes, not everything you tried worked, but damn your show is full of great ideas and epic moments.

While Sacrifice of Angels is the culmination of years of buildup involving both plot and characters, it's the little touches like the symbolic use of the baseball that really make the whole thing come together.
 
Bit of catching up needed here:

I love Rising Star. First time I saw it, I wasn't thrilled, but the second time it really impressed me. I very much appreciate the amount of resolution B5 gives its story arcs. Very sorry to see Ivanova and Marcus go, but what can you do? Essentially, this is the Season 4 finale and I must say I enjoyed this year of B5 a ridiculous amount. It dipped a little in the middle, but the first and last thirds of the season were fantastic. It's a tough call, but this season may just edge out Seasons 2 and 3 as my favourite year of B5. There's some cool stuff to come, but I guess Babylon 5's "imperial phase" as, in my opinion, the best sci-fi show on TV, probably ends here.
Behind the Lines is kind of typical of Echevarria's arc episodes - good, solid character work, but kind of low key. It's a good episode, but it only really catches fire in the last five minutes or so. Score one to B5.

Favor the Bold is the best episode of the Occupation Arc. I'm sort of at a loss to explain why - it just builds up towards the coming climax in such a compelling way and all the pieces fall into place just right. The stuff on the station (barring Leeta's brief appearance which is annoying) is the best material, but the episode as a whole is almost flawless.
As for Sacrifice of Angels, this is one of the most impressive spectacles in DS9 and a really exciting episode. Beyond, the obvious bells and whistles, Ziyal's death and Dukat's reaction to it were superbly done. As for the Prophets' intervention, I'm not wild about it, but I can live with it. I think Favor the Bold is a little bit better (it's probably easier to set up a big pay-off than deliver it), but overall these two episodes are one of DS9's all time high points.

I haven't seen the Voyager episodes.
 
Week 11: (Ending 11.16.97)
DS9 - You Are Cordially Invited (Airdate 11.10.97)
VOY - Year Of Hell, Part II (Airdate 11.12.97)

Berman: Oh man, I'm in a fix.
Braga: What's wrong, ol' chum?
Berman: I'm not sure who we can get to direct the second half of Year Of Hell. We can't use Kroeker again after he directed the first half and Sacrifice Of Angels for DS9. It'd just cost too much money.
Braga: How about Kolbe then? He's done some big episodes for us.
Berman: Yeah, but I like to save him for the season premiers and finales, plus he just recently did Favor The Bold. Again, costs. And don't mention Burton - I'm not sure he's quite ready for the big episodes.
Braga: Hm, well how about Vejar then?
Berman: Who?
Braga: Mike Vejar. I was talking to Ron the other day, and he was going on about how great of a director Vejar is on some of the episodes he wrote. Apparently he's also done a bunch of episode for some other sci-fi show that's on right now. ...what was the name of it again?
Berman: Vejar, huh? I think that name's a bit familiar. Didn't he do a TNG episode a long while back?
Braga: *blink* Uh, he just recently did one of Ron's Occupation Arc episodes, remember?
Berman: Really? Hm, I didn't even notice. Well, if Ron says he's good, I guess I'll give him a shot. He can't be worse than that Singer guy.
Braga: Um, yes.:shifty:

Yeah, VOY takes the easy win. I don't even mind the SUPER Reset Button plot, since this is more of a 'what if' type of episode with an intriguing villain. YACI has some moments of charm, but it's kind of corny too. And is that all the fall-out we're going to get with Odo, an unheard 'closet talk'??

Really, the only person who is going to say DS9 had the better episode this week is Too Much Fun.:p

Weekly Winner
VOY

Next:
DS9 - Resurrection
VOY - Random Thoughts
 
And is that all the fall-out we're going to get with Odo, an unheard 'closet talk'??

Ah, the infamous closet conversation, probably DS9's worst cop-out as far as character moments are concerned.

On the bright side, the sequence screams "insert fan fiction here," so I imagine there are quite a few people out there who have had fun with this :) As I recall one of the relaunch novels rehashes this scene in a flashback as well.
 
Yeah the missed conversation between Odo and Kira is the worst part of You Are Cordially Invited for me. It should have been an important arc/mini-arc or whatever between the two to set the scene later in the season for their relationship. Ignoring that hash though, the episode was fun and was a nice counterpoint to the six episode slog we just had.

Year of Hell Part 2 is the better episode, inspite of its reset button ending. Part One was unlucky facing the end of DS9's superb Occupation Arc, so it rightfully gets a victory here.
 
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