Shatnertage's Mostly-1st-Time Watch Thread

[Shatnertage]

I'm starting to think that DS9 has some kind of grudge against me. What did I do to you, besides not watch when you were first broadcast? I must have some serious bad karma to work off, because that's the only explanation I can find for...

"The Nagus"

This isn't just a bad episode: it's deliberately annoying. Dumb and Dumber was on yesterday, and I caught the "you wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?" scene. That's pretty much what this episode was for me. It's like the producers are actively trying to lose viewers. If I wasn't promised better things ahead, I probably would have stopped watching after this one.

First, they've got to make Zek look completely repulsive, then have him do a very, very annoying laugh. Like I said, it's like they want people to turn the show off. I haven't seen this level of bad decision-making since 1980s Doctor Who, and that's saying something.

There was one scene that almost redeemed this episode: the Godfather pastiche, with the lobster thing standing in for Don Corleone's cat. It would have been funnier if they'd have brought Al Martino in for Quark to slap, but as it is it just made me aware that, yes, the writers had seen a good movie, and deliberately tried to make something as bad as they possibly could.

I also liked how Odo saved the day in the end, and the B story with Jake and Nog was actually quite good. I almost got teary-eyed when Sisko saw that Jake was teaching Nog to read--great stuff.

Of course, you've got to wonder how someone could hope to be any kind of merchant if they were illiterate, since writing and trade are codependent. But for the sake of the episode, it set up a wonderful moment.

So I guess there were two good things about this episode.

At this point in my watching, I've got some real questions about people who put VOY or ENT down and praise DS9 as something on par with The Wire. I can see the potential, but so far there's just as much goofy, embarrassing stuff as there is in either of the later shows. If I felt like arguing about it, next time someone off-handedly slagged Voyager, I'd challenge them to do a compare and contrast between "The Nagus" (or really anything we've seen so far outside of "Emissary" and "Captive Pursuit") and, say, "Counterpoint." Or even "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy," which is one of my favorites because it has fun with itself without devolving into crap.

 

[T.D. Possum]

^This is one of the reasons I warned you about the early seasons. Hang in there. It gets better. The second half of Season One even has a couple of episodes that are often in peoples' Top Tens.

 

[TheGodBen]

I also liked how Odo saved the day in the end, and the B story with Jake and Nog was actually quite good. I almost got teary-eyed when Sisko saw that Jake was teaching Nog to read--great stuff.

It's an especially nice moment for returning fans. I'm not sure how much you know about the future of the show, but Nog is actually one of the best developed characters in Star Trek. No joke. I could show you a scene involving Nog in the final season (don't worry, I wont ) and you'd barely even recognise him, but for a long-time viewer that transition that starts here is a perfectly logical evolution.

That's why I prefer DS9 to Voyager, because on Voyager you had characters like Harry Kim that barely changed at all over 7 years while on DS9 they'd take characters like Nog, originally used for comic relief, and they actually did something with them. DS9 built upon itself to become something greater while Voyager was content to be what it was. That fine if you like what Voyager was, but I prefer shows that display a little more ambition.

 

[Sykonee]

This isn't just a bad episode: it's deliberately annoying. Dumb and Dumber was on yesterday, and I caught the "you wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?" scene. That's pretty much what this episode was for me. It's like the producers are actively trying to lose viewers. If I wasn't promised better things ahead, I probably would have stopped watching after this one.

Funny you should say that. If you ever see the ratings trend for DS9, you'll find that the first big drop in viewership occurred right around this string of episodes.

Fun Fact: When originally aired, Move Along Home and The Nagus were the only two new episodes showed for most of March (that's including TNG, which was showing a bunch of reruns). DS9 had a great opportunity to show off its stuff, but really dropped the ball showing those two.

 

[Kirby]

Hey Shatnerage I love your reviews. I haven't watched much DS9, especially anything pre season five in a long time, so these are a nice trip down memory lane. My feeling are about the same as yours on these episodes.

However, I didn't hate "The Nagus" as much as you did. In fact, I think Wallace Shawn's portrayal was brilliant. The episode itself did suck, but Shawn is so much fun to watch in this role (and he comes back).

 

[Shatnertage]

Funny you should say that. If you ever see the ratings trend for DS9, you'll find that the first big drop in viewership occurred right around this string of episodes.

I'm not surprised. This is pretty bad stuff.

But I'm hopeful that it will get much better.

And "The Nagus" at least gave me another member of the Star Trek Chatterbox club: Zek's valet (I forget his name). So far it's Mr. Homn, Morn, Lt. Ayala, and him.

And you what? I think that Mr. Homn is actually the most talkative out of all of them. That's saying something.

 

[MacLeod]

At this point in my watching, I've got some real questions about people who put VOY or ENT down and praise DS9 as something on par with The Wire. I can see the potential, but so far there's just as much goofy, embarrassing stuff as there is in either of the later shows. If I felt like arguing about it, next time someone off-handedly slagged Voyager, I'd challenge them to do a compare and contrast between "The Nagus" (or really anything we've seen so far outside of "Emissary" and "Captive Pursuit") and, say, "Counterpoint." Or even "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy," which is one of my favorites because it has fun with itself without devolving into crap.

Whilst both of those episodes you mention are some of Voyager's better episodes, they aired in S5 and 6. I think it's a little unfair to judge S1 of DSN against episodes from S5 and 6 of VOY.

 

[TheGodBen]

I'd actually say that Voyager's first season compares favourably when compared to DS9's. Voyager's first season was a mixed bag, but it focused more on its premise than DS9 did in its first year and I think that it displayed more potential for its future. Sadly, I feel that Voyager's second season squandered much of that potential and dragged the show off course, something from which it never fully recovered and it ended up being a fairly average show overall. On the other hand, DS9's second season went in the right direction, started focusing more on its unique attributes and provided a steadier foundation for the things that followed.

That's not to say that DS9 was perfect, even the most acclaimed seasons of DS9 contain crap that reaches Threshold territory. DS9 at its worst scraped the barrel just as hard as the other Trek shows. But its highs surpass what was achieved by any of the other shows, buoyed up years of story development, not just 45 minutes.

(That's not to say that DS9 is on par with The Wire, that show is a visual novel and it's on a whole other level with only a handful of shows as its contemporaries.)

 

[Admiral Shran]

One thing I'll add to the faults of The Nagus is that even though the one good thing about it is Jake teaching Nog to read, Sisko's inital reaction is a little odd, IMO. He walks in with a look of stoic determination on his face, sees the two of them reading and backs out with the same look on his face. Not a smile, nothing. Weird.

 

[Kirby]

DS9 was very hit or miss the first season. It feels like they were trying to write TNG-style stories for a large part of it and they didn't truly find their 'voice' until the second season. Even then, it wasn't until season three that it really picked up.

 

[Shatnertage]

I am being pulled into something that, at first glance, sounds like a standard Trek episode and at times threatened to break out into Courtroom Trek. As it was, I fell into a...

"Vortex"

This one was actually pretty good.

We get to see a little more of Odo, and Rene Auberjonois does a really good job with it. This is the first time I've really been impressed with his performance. The ending, when Odo says "cousin," was brilliant.

We also have more of the friendly antagonism between Quark and Odo, which is always a good thing. And Randy Oglesby as the Miradorn guy(s) was great, too.

But this is Odo's episode, and I'm starting to get a sense for how alone he feels. After 7 years of Data on TNG and 7 years of the EMH on Voyager, it's almost a prerequisite to have someone on the crew who is completely unique (yes, the EMH was mass-produced, but the Doctor was the only one with that level of self-awareness). Still, Odo's an interesting character.

We also see Odo smile, which I don't think we've seen yet. I think it's also a prerequisite on Trek to have a character who doesn't smile much.

This one was interesting because I didn't know which way it was going to go. The changeling asteroid turned out to be a red herring, but Odo made a surprising decision in letting Croden go free. I'm really glad it didn't turn into CourtroomTrek, with the regulars playing lawyer.

So I liked this one.

 

[HoneyBLilly]

This one was pretty good.

I liked it.

And I think this is where I fell for Odo, who is my favorite male character on DS9

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I'd actually say that Voyager's first season compares favourably when compared to DS9's. Voyager's first season was a mixed bag, but it focused more on its premise than DS9 did in its first year and I think that it displayed more potential for its future. Sadly, I feel that Voyager's second season squandered much of that potential and dragged the show off course, something from which it never fully recovered and it ended up being a fairly average show overall.

I think the same can be said of Enterprise, actually. Its first season was - in my opinion - also quite strong and offered a sense of what the show was about and where it might be heading. But as with Voyager, season two was largely a misfire, and while the show climbed back in later seasons to offer us some very good episodes, it sadly didn't reach the heights it could have after that second season stumble. Whereas most DS9 fans believe that its quality was more a steady climb (though as with all the 24th century shows there's the controversy over the final season and whether it dips in quality).

Of course, I like all the modern Trek shows, albeit with a bias towards DS9 as "the best".

 

[exodus]

I'm starting to think that DS9 has some kind of grudge against me. What did I do to you, besides not watch when you were first broadcast? I must have some serious bad karma to work off, because that's the only explanation I can find for...

"The Nagus"

This isn't just a bad episode: it's deliberately annoying. Dumb and Dumber was on yesterday, and I caught the "you wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?" scene. That's pretty much what this episode was for me. It's like the producers are actively trying to lose viewers. If I wasn't promised better things ahead, I probably would have stopped watching after this one.

First, they've got to make Zek look completely repulsive, then have him do a very, very annoying laugh. Like I said, it's like they want people to turn the show off. I haven't seen this level of bad decision-making since 1980s Doctor Who, and that's saying something.

There was one scene that almost redeemed this episode: the Godfather pastiche, with the lobster thing standing in for Don Corleone's cat. It would have been funnier if they'd have brought Al Martino in for Quark to slap, but as it is it just made me aware that, yes, the writers had seen a good movie, and deliberately tried to make something as bad as they possibly could.

I also liked how Odo saved the day in the end, and the B story with Jake and Nog was actually quite good. I almost got teary-eyed when Sisko saw that Jake was teaching Nog to read--great stuff.

Of course, you've got to wonder how someone could hope to be any kind of merchant if they were illiterate, since writing and trade are codependent. But for the sake of the episode, it set up a wonderful moment.

So I guess there were two good things about this episode.

At this point in my watching, I've got some real questions about people who put VOY or ENT down and praise DS9 as something on par with The Wire. I can see the potential, but so far there's just as much goofy, embarrassing stuff as there is in either of the later shows. If I felt like arguing about it, next time someone off-handedly slagged Voyager, I'd challenge them to do a compare and contrast between "The Nagus" (or really anything we've seen so far outside of "Emissary" and "Captive Pursuit") and, say, "Counterpoint." Or even "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy," which is one of my favorites because it has fun with itself without devolving into crap.

I actually like most of the Ferengi eps. on DS9.
I like how the Ferengi are representations of humanity in the US during the Carter/Regan era. I think the writers did want us to be repulsed by them and all what we embraced & idolized during that period. We talk about evolved humanity yet millions of folks imitate and idolize Scarface & the Godfather as if they were role models. There's a little Zek in all of us.

I think the same can be said of Enterprise, actually. Its first season was - in my opinion - also quite strong and offered a sense of what the show was about and where it might be heading.

Yeah, the decontamination scene showed us all that ENT. was heading away from plot driven drama to using sex as a cheap ratings tactic. Voyager may have used a catsuit(fully covered from head to toes) but they never stooped as low as showing men in underwear with semi erections or rubbing someone naked down with vaseline kills germs.

But as with Voyager, season two was largely a misfire, and while the show climbed back in later seasons to offer us some very good episodes, it sadly didn't reach the heights it could have after that second season stumble.

Voyager never stumbled where it was at risk of cancellation, lasted 7 seasons and made Seven of Nine and Capt. Janeway household names. Voyager was also used to launch a network(looking back, Voyager was ther only show keeping that network running)and a themed restaurant in Las Vegas. Regardless of what fans may speculate, Voyager did more for Paramount than ENT. did. ENT. lost it's audience by also not taking into account it wasn't family friendly anymore. Childern can still watch Voyager with their parents.

 

[Athena28]

I am being pulled into something that, at first glance, sounds like a standard Trek episode and at times threatened to break out into Courtroom Trek. As it was, I fell into a...

"Vortex"

This one was actually pretty good...

Two things I really liked in this ep.:

• Odo's homage to Dr. McCoy, "I'm a security officer, not a combat pilot!"
• The whole thing with 4 people & 5 glasses -- when it's revealed Odo was one of the glasses.

 

[TheGodBen]

"Vortex"

This one was actually pretty good.

I'd say that Vortex is good, not great, but I'd include it as one of the essential episodes from the first season. I'd say that this is the real beginning of Odo's character arc (A Man Alone was a bit too police-procedural).

I think the same can be said of Enterprise, actually. Its first season was - in my opinion - also quite strong and offered a sense of what the show was about and where it might be heading.

I don't know, I think that Enterprise squandered just as much of its potential in its first season as DS9 did. Both shows had episodes that serviced the show's original premise, but those were swimming in a sea of mediocre alien-of-the-week episodes. Voyager had similar problems, but it wasn't as acute until season 2. As a result, Voyager's first season is my favourite first season of all modern Trek.

 

[T.D. Possum]

I actually like most of the Ferengi eps. on DS9.
I like how the Ferengi are representations of humanity in the US during the Carter/Regan era. I think the writers did want us to be repulsed by them and all what we embraced & idolized during that period. We talk about evolved humanity yet millions of folks imitate and idolize Scarface & the Godfather as if they were role models. There's a little Zek in all of us.

I always think of the Ferengi as a bunch of little J.R. Ewings.

Look, exodus, we agree on something.

 

[Shatnertage]

I'm finally back with another episode whose analysis, I think, won't force us to draw...

"Battle Lines"

Now I'm starting to see what people are talking about. This was, I thought, a great episode. It took a few Trek stock ideas (you could call them cliches if you wanted to be uncharitable) but, thanks to inspired acting and some interesting twists, takes it someplace new.

The funny thing is, when Kai Opaka first showed up I started telling my wife how much I liked her. She just seems very calming, and there's something about her that makes me want to hug her--not in a romantic way, but she just looks like a hug from her would really cheer you up if you were down. A big part of this is the way Kira plays off of her.

So before I go on, I'm trying to figure out just what the Kai does. She's the spiritual leader, but does she also have some control over the temporal government, like Iran's ayatollah? Or does she control a formal church structure, like the pope? Is she elected, or is it hereditary, or chosen "from beyond" like the Dalai Lama?

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?

I thought Nana Visitor was great, just great. Her anguish at Opaka's death was actually painful for me to watch, because I've got an idea of how guilty she must have felt. Imagine if you get to meet your idol and drive her around for a day. She's moderately pleased with you. Then you crash the car and kill her.

Sure, it wasn't Kira's fault, but she was at the wheel, and I've got to think she'd feel a lot of guilt. I know I would.

The Ennis and Nol-Ennis is something straight out of TOS (MA points to "Day of the Dove" specifically as an inspiration"), but they had a little twist: they are immortal. My wife thought she recognized the guy who played She-La, but scanning IMDB we couldn't figure out from where. He kind of reminded me of Gene Simmons. He was good, though, particularly when he responded to Kira's "You've got to get your act together" outburst.

This is another episode where Sisko is pretty passive; he's mostly telling other people what not to do. We get what I think is the second case in the series of Sisko yelling at Bashir ("I don't need you to tell me about the Prime Directive"). For some reason I find Sisko's dressings-down of Bashir oddly satisfying. If I was going to keep track of anything, I'd start with that.

The second big scene is Kira's conversation (or would you say confession) with Opaka, which again I thought was pitch-perfect. I really felt the emotional truth of what she was talking about, and I think it pairs nicely with what we've seen from, say, O'Brien in "The Wounded." It's also an interesting contrast to the Ennis/Nol-Ennis conflict, which at this point is completely pointless. Kira was fighting for a just cause, but the fact that she was fighting at all makes her, on some level, equivalent to the immortal fighters on the moon, which brings up all sorts of interesting philosophical points.

What I really liked about this episode was that it didn't have a happy ending. In the TOS version, Sisko would have given the Captain Kirk speech, Bashir would have made them mortal, and, now bound together by their common past, the former enemies would have worked together to tame their moon and build a home for themselves.

Instead, the Captain Kirk speech falls on deaf ears. Now matter how impassioned and logical your pleas for peace might be, some people don't want to listen.

That is pretty depressing, but it's also a much better reflection of reality as we know it.

This is the first DS9 episode I can legitimately argue is great. The fact that we can probably spend a few days talking about it says everything.

 

[Admiral Shran]

"Battle Lines"

So before I go on, I'm trying to figure out just what the Kai does. She's the spiritual leader, but does she also have some control over the temporal government, like Iran's ayatollah? Or does she control a formal church structure, like the pope? Is she elected, or is it hereditary, or chosen "from beyond" like the Dalai Lama?

I don't know if this will spoil anything, so I'll put it spoiler code (just to be safe)....

Spoiler: the Kai's place in Bajor's society

The Kai is like the Pope in the Roman Catholic Church. She doesn't control the temporal government of Bajor (that responsibility falls to a popularly elected First Minster, who oversees the popularly elected Chamber of Ministers), but most likely she has a strong influence over the actual day-to-day running of things. The Kai heads the Vedek Assembly, which is the ruling spiritual council of Bajor and serves the public's religious needs and acts as something of an advisory board to the Chamber of Ministers - I would guess something similar to Britain's House of Lords. The Kai herself is also popularly elected, so she's not chosen "from beyond."

What I really liked about this episode was that it didn't have a happy ending. In the TOS version, Sisko would have given the Captain Kirk speech, Bashir would have made them mortal, and, now bound together by their common past, the former enemies would have worked together to tame their moon and build a home for themselves.

Instead, the Captain Kirk speech falls on deaf ears. Now matter how impassioned and logical your pleas for peace might be, some people don't want to listen.

That is pretty depressing, but it's also a much better reflection of reality as we know it.

True, very un-TOS. This episode is a definite step in the right direction. However, the powers that be are still making massive mis-steps - such as killing of Opaka. Clearly she was set up as someone important in Emissary and now, in her second appearance, she's essentially tossed aside in a meaningless adventure-of-the-week episode.

I like the fact that they were willingly to "kill off" a recurring character, but it would have been nice to see more of her.

 

[Athena28]

I'm finally back with another episode whose analysis, I think, won't force us to draw...

"Battle Lines"

Now I'm starting to see what people are talking about. This was, I thought, a great episode. It took a few Trek stock ideas (you could call them cliches if you wanted to be uncharitable) but, thanks to inspired acting and some interesting twists, takes it someplace new...

I liked the way they began to bring in the religious aspects of the Bajorans. Made them a very interesting people.