I'm not so sure it wasn't on purpose (the eminent domain criticism)...after all, there was a pretty direct comparison made between what Kira/the Federation was doing, and what the Cardassian oppressors did.
Shatnertage's Mostly-1st-Time Watch Thread
- Thread starter Shatnertage
- Start date
^ I agree, but I also thought the comparison was primarily made in order to show Kira's reaction to her changing role, and only secondarily a story of its own.
Last edited:
But it wasn't even a "necessary evil" sort of thing, like they had to evacuate the moon because it was becoming unstable. It was a crisis entirely created by the Bajorans and the Federation, and doesn't show them in a positive light at all.
Kira should have gotten Mullibok a lawyer. At the very least you'd tie up the process so long that they'd just go with the eco-friendly alternative.
Kira should have gotten Mullibok a lawyer. At the very least you'd tie up the process so long that they'd just go with the eco-friendly alternative.
Wasn't there a famine on Bajor and the energy from the moon was going to be used to power replicators to feed millions of people, or something? I know it's mentioned in season 2 that Bajor is suffering from a famine, but I can't remember if that was part of the plot in this episode. If not then it would have helped make the Bajoran government's position understandable, because it is favourable to move a couple of dozen people to new homes than allow millions to starve.
This episode could have been helped if the show had focused more on Bajor and shown just how desperate conditions on the planet were. Even with Federation assistance, most Bajorans live in poverty and the government can't do much to help. The economic bonus of having the wormhole nearby hasn't materialised yet and wont for some time.
This episode could have been helped if the show had focused more on Bajor and shown just how desperate conditions on the planet were. Even with Federation assistance, most Bajorans live in poverty and the government can't do much to help. The economic bonus of having the wormhole nearby hasn't materialised yet and wont for some time.
From what I remember, the energy would be used to heat 300,000 homes.
Strange that on one hand the Federation is a post-scarcity economy with seemingly endless resources to spend on humanitarian efforts, but they can't do anything to ease conditions on a planet they're courting as an ally--and one with tremendous strategic importance.
Strange that on one hand the Federation is a post-scarcity economy with seemingly endless resources to spend on humanitarian efforts, but they can't do anything to ease conditions on a planet they're courting as an ally--and one with tremendous strategic importance.
As much as I hate eminent domain, I still have problems with this episode. By and large, my problems are same as my problems with Star Trek Insurrection - what makes Mullibok so special? We're supposed to believe that his being able to stay on the moon somehow trumps the needs of 300,000 Bajorans who can't even heat their homes?
Sorry, but I just don't see it (needs of the many, etc.). It's not like the Provisional Government is coming in and saying that they're just going to throw him to the wolves.
Yes, a man's home is his castle, but there comes a time when that man should at least consider the wider implications. Mullibok doesn't do that. As far as he's concerned, it's all about him. The fact that he's not a very likable person to being with doesn't work in his favor either. If they were going to try and get the audience to side with him, they would have done a lot better to make him a lot less abrasive. The writers seem to have a problem in this area, as something similar will happen in an mid-Season Two episode (but more on that when the time comes).
That being said, the fact that the Provisional Government, like you said, is willing to negotiate with off-world investors but not one of their own citizens is rather perplexing.
On the whole, this is an average episode - buoyed up by Jake and Nog's hijinks, Nana Visitor's acting and the fact that it all ended with the correct decision to get Mullibok relocated. But, it's dragged down by Mullibok's nonsensical stubbornness.
Sorry, but I just don't see it (needs of the many, etc.). It's not like the Provisional Government is coming in and saying that they're just going to throw him to the wolves.
Yes, a man's home is his castle, but there comes a time when that man should at least consider the wider implications. Mullibok doesn't do that. As far as he's concerned, it's all about him. The fact that he's not a very likable person to being with doesn't work in his favor either. If they were going to try and get the audience to side with him, they would have done a lot better to make him a lot less abrasive. The writers seem to have a problem in this area, as something similar will happen in an mid-Season Two episode (but more on that when the time comes).
That being said, the fact that the Provisional Government, like you said, is willing to negotiate with off-world investors but not one of their own citizens is rather perplexing.
On the whole, this is an average episode - buoyed up by Jake and Nog's hijinks, Nana Visitor's acting and the fact that it all ended with the correct decision to get Mullibok relocated. But, it's dragged down by Mullibok's nonsensical stubbornness.
^ And the fact that they're destroying a stable, life-supporting habitat, just so they can power those 300,000 houses a year early.
If you had told me this plot was from a MU episode, I would have believed you.
By taking dialog and action from this one out of context, you could make a great "Sisko is a dick" video. Just show the old man bawling his eyes out, then Sisko encouraging Kira to evict him, then Kira burning the place down.
If you had told me this plot was from a MU episode, I would have believed you.
By taking dialog and action from this one out of context, you could make a great "Sisko is a dick" video. Just show the old man bawling his eyes out, then Sisko encouraging Kira to evict him, then Kira burning the place down.
^ I don't think that it was supposed to be a very lush environment. I get the impression that the only vegetation was whatever was brought up from Bajor, and it's not like they need any more borderline arable land. It was probably deemed to be a much better use to use it to generate energy.
Even if there are as many habitable planets and moons as there seem to be in Trek, I'd assume they are finite. Energy production, however, seems to be infinite. It's illogical to sacrifice a finite resource for an infinite one. [/inner Vulcan]
During the watching of the episode I had a deep and profound wish that actually came true! I wish it were always so easy...
"If Wishes Were Horses"
This one easily wins the coolest title/worst episode sweepstakes.
We actually start out well, with Odo and Quark insulting each other. Quark offers to make Odo some shapeshifter holo porn. I think of Reg Barclay, who surely will make a guest appearance soon.
In fact, if you just take the title of this episode and mash up two Barclay TNG eps, you've got this episode: the crew's hidden fantasies ("Hollow Pursuits") are given life by an external force ("The Nth Degree"). Funny that I loved both of those episodes (the former is easily in my Top Ten TNG list) but hated this one.
Oh yay, a baseball holoprogram. I'm getting drowsy already.
Then we get Bashir doing his Hugh Grant stuff with Dax, and it's pretty good. I'd actually like to see an episode dominated by his romantic misadventures.
But then things turn ugly. When we see Rumplestiltskin, my heart sinks and I realize what we're up against. Ugh,
FantasyDax was pretty amusing, I'll grant the episode that. It would have been funnier if everyone had fantasy versions of other crew members running around. I really liked the scene where Dax and Bashir patch things up; I'd liked to have seen more of this. In fact, I probably would have loved the episode if they'd have ditched everything but FantasyDax and had the whole thing be a comedy of errors, as FantasyDax says and does one thing that gets contradicted when RealDax shows up later. You could have kept them apart for long enough to keep people guessing just what was going on.
Rumplestiltskin added absolutely nothing except cringe factor. Buck Bokai...well, he just seemed to be a plump, pleasant guy, not the dominating athlete that he was supposed to be. I know what they were going for there (a Babe Ruth look), but he just looked like a guy in his pajamas.
And his appearance got me thinking about baseball's place in DS9, which seems to be highly romanticized. When I see a baseball player, the first thing I think is "overpaid, entitled, steroid-abusing athlete." In DS9, they have an almost poetic purity. Strange.
So as soon as the imaginations run wild, I ask my wife, "Why don't they just wish that the anomaly would go away?" in a ha ha, I'm so much smarter than the writers tone.
Come to find out, that's exactly how the episode ends about a half-hour later.
I have a pretty hazy idea of the episode's conclusion because my wish came true. I was wishing that I didn't have to watch "If Wishes Were Horses" anymore, and I was so drowsy that I nodded off right around the time the void started expanding. I was in and out of it for the rest of the episode, but I remember that Bokai threatened to return in a year.
If my wish comes true, they won't.
During the watching of the episode I had a deep and profound wish that actually came true! I wish it were always so easy...
"If Wishes Were Horses"
This one easily wins the coolest title/worst episode sweepstakes.
We actually start out well, with Odo and Quark insulting each other. Quark offers to make Odo some shapeshifter holo porn. I think of Reg Barclay, who surely will make a guest appearance soon.
In fact, if you just take the title of this episode and mash up two Barclay TNG eps, you've got this episode: the crew's hidden fantasies ("Hollow Pursuits") are given life by an external force ("The Nth Degree"). Funny that I loved both of those episodes (the former is easily in my Top Ten TNG list) but hated this one.
Oh yay, a baseball holoprogram. I'm getting drowsy already.
Then we get Bashir doing his Hugh Grant stuff with Dax, and it's pretty good. I'd actually like to see an episode dominated by his romantic misadventures.
But then things turn ugly. When we see Rumplestiltskin, my heart sinks and I realize what we're up against. Ugh,
FantasyDax was pretty amusing, I'll grant the episode that. It would have been funnier if everyone had fantasy versions of other crew members running around. I really liked the scene where Dax and Bashir patch things up; I'd liked to have seen more of this. In fact, I probably would have loved the episode if they'd have ditched everything but FantasyDax and had the whole thing be a comedy of errors, as FantasyDax says and does one thing that gets contradicted when RealDax shows up later. You could have kept them apart for long enough to keep people guessing just what was going on.
Rumplestiltskin added absolutely nothing except cringe factor. Buck Bokai...well, he just seemed to be a plump, pleasant guy, not the dominating athlete that he was supposed to be. I know what they were going for there (a Babe Ruth look), but he just looked like a guy in his pajamas.
And his appearance got me thinking about baseball's place in DS9, which seems to be highly romanticized. When I see a baseball player, the first thing I think is "overpaid, entitled, steroid-abusing athlete." In DS9, they have an almost poetic purity. Strange.
So as soon as the imaginations run wild, I ask my wife, "Why don't they just wish that the anomaly would go away?" in a ha ha, I'm so much smarter than the writers tone.
Come to find out, that's exactly how the episode ends about a half-hour later.
I have a pretty hazy idea of the episode's conclusion because my wish came true. I was wishing that I didn't have to watch "If Wishes Were Horses" anymore, and I was so drowsy that I nodded off right around the time the void started expanding. I was in and out of it for the rest of the episode, but I remember that Bokai threatened to return in a year.
If my wish comes true, they won't.
I'm currently in the process of having my parents watch DS9 for the first time. A while back, they watched through all of ENT and loved it. I told them that if they liked ENT that they would adore DS9.
It was at this episode where they almost gave up. As soon as Rumpelstiltskin showed up, my dad declared that this was nothing like ENT. At this point in the series, I'm hard pressed to disagree. As mundane as those first two seasons of ENT were, I'll gladly take them over stuff like If Wishes Were Horses any day.
Like you said, the only redeeming quality of it is the contrast between Dax and Fantasy-Dax.
As for the baseball stuff - I've always had a problem with baseball on Trek, not just here. It does get better in the later seasons of DS9, but by and large it seems like the writers are saying that the game represents a simpler and more enjoyable way of life. I simply have never gotten the analogy.
It was at this episode where they almost gave up. As soon as Rumpelstiltskin showed up, my dad declared that this was nothing like ENT. At this point in the series, I'm hard pressed to disagree. As mundane as those first two seasons of ENT were, I'll gladly take them over stuff like If Wishes Were Horses any day.
Like you said, the only redeeming quality of it is the contrast between Dax and Fantasy-Dax.
As for the baseball stuff - I've always had a problem with baseball on Trek, not just here. It does get better in the later seasons of DS9, but by and large it seems like the writers are saying that the game represents a simpler and more enjoyable way of life. I simply have never gotten the analogy.
Fantasy Dax was pretty much the only mildly interesting thing in this ep., IMHO. At least she & Bashir had some good moments.
I actually read a wonderful fanfic on Ad Astra by Rocky (don't think he posts here??) that explains a bit about why baseball is seen the way it's seen in the 24th century. Why Sisko may romanticize it as much as he does.
http://www.adastrafanfic.com/viewstory.php?sid=329
I think because I saw the episode again after reading this fanfic, I didn't mind Buck Bokai. It was Rumplestiltskin that irritated me.
http://www.adastrafanfic.com/viewstory.php?sid=329
I think because I saw the episode again after reading this fanfic, I didn't mind Buck Bokai. It was Rumplestiltskin that irritated me.
Energy isn't infinite, Bajor would need some sort of fuel to power their plants and they probably don't have many resources left after the Cardassians spent 50 years stripping the planet of them. I also doubt that they have much of anything to trade in order to buy fuel from other worlds. And I doubt that the Federation would be thrilled to incorporate a member world that's unable to stand on its own two feet and relies on Federation handouts for everything, so when they see an opportunity for Bajor to generate some of their own power they pushed for it.
Keep in mind that the depiction of the Federation in DS9 is a bit more... political than in TNG.
TNG is a show about a ship of ambassadors whose job it is to travel the galaxy and tell aliens how awesome the Federation is. DS9 is about the hard work that happens once that ship leaves.If Wished Were Horses competes with The Passenger for the spot as my least favourite episode of the season. This episode just loses out on the bottom spot because of the baseball, which becomes a recurring guest character on the show right up to the finale. (Hey, if Morn can be a guest character then so can the baseball.
)
If your character has meaningful moments in an otherwise bad episode, you might feel like one of...
"The Forsaken"
My wife hit the nail on the head with this one. After it was over, she said, "The B story was better than the A story."
Actually, both the B and C stories were better than the A story.
Here's how I break it down:
A: strange computer program that is causing potentially life-threatened system failures
B: Odo is stuck with Lwaxana Troi
C: Bashier babysits the trio of ambassadors
Is there ever any episode of Trek where the visiting ambassador is anything but a gigantic pain in the ass? I think ambassadors would probably be cool, open-minded people to talk to, with lots of interesting stories to tell. Since their job is to be nice to people, often people who are angry at the country/planet they work for, they'd probably be pretty polite, too.
In Trek, though, every ambassador is a total tool. I wonder if someone with diplomatic plates sideswiped one of the producers' cars or something.
So here's how I felt about each of the stories:
C story: loved it. For some sadistic reason I can't get enough of Sisko making Bashir squirm. Sisko openly talks about how he's giving Bashir the shit assignment because he's the rookie, and, hey, he had to do it when he was a rookie. It's like hazing.
Though in the first scene I was wondering why Dax, with three centuries of experience, wasn't tasked with watching the ambassadors. This was nicely lampshaded when the Vulcan calls her a "young woman," and at that point I figured out that she would have been great at it, but it was a crap job that was beneath her, so Sisko gave it to the new guy.
Alexander Siddig as Bashir is really start to grow on me. I still see a lot of Hugh Grant in his performance, particularly when he gets flustered, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I'm a little distressed to see that the Vulcan ambassador has graffiti-like writing on his shirt, like a 24th-century version of Ed Hardy. It can never be logical to wear Ed Hardy shirts.
This story has some nice resolution, when Bashir's quick thinking saves the lives of the ambassadors and they make nice with him.
The B story involves Lwaxana Troi, one of the most unjustly hated characters in Trek. I can't get enough of her, and I think Majel Barrett was a great comedic actress. Her and Rene Auberjonois work well together here. And of course, when anything close to a rom com breaks out on Trek, I'm happy.
We learn a lot about Odo's origins here, too, and the vulnerability he feels when he becomes a liquid.
I suggested they use Lwaxana's dress as a satchel to hold him when he first mentioned that he'd be going liquid, but this didn't occur to either of them until the very end.
I loved the "What are you thinking about?"/"How many volts is in that TECH" exchange.
So far, so good. How about that A story?
To me, this was totally incomprehensible, mostly because That's Not How Computers Work. You'd think they'd have a firewall or something, but I guess not. Also, there's the common Trek misconception that when you download a file the file physically is transferred and is no longer in its original location. By uploading a file, you don't remove it from your computer.
The final solution--to put the funky program behind a firewall--isn't all that ingenious. So this story made absolutely no sense to me.
The other two parts of this episode, though, were great, so this one was generally fun to watch.
"The Forsaken"
My wife hit the nail on the head with this one. After it was over, she said, "The B story was better than the A story."
Actually, both the B and C stories were better than the A story.
Here's how I break it down:
A: strange computer program that is causing potentially life-threatened system failures
B: Odo is stuck with Lwaxana Troi
C: Bashier babysits the trio of ambassadors
Is there ever any episode of Trek where the visiting ambassador is anything but a gigantic pain in the ass? I think ambassadors would probably be cool, open-minded people to talk to, with lots of interesting stories to tell. Since their job is to be nice to people, often people who are angry at the country/planet they work for, they'd probably be pretty polite, too.
In Trek, though, every ambassador is a total tool. I wonder if someone with diplomatic plates sideswiped one of the producers' cars or something.
So here's how I felt about each of the stories:
C story: loved it. For some sadistic reason I can't get enough of Sisko making Bashir squirm. Sisko openly talks about how he's giving Bashir the shit assignment because he's the rookie, and, hey, he had to do it when he was a rookie. It's like hazing.
Though in the first scene I was wondering why Dax, with three centuries of experience, wasn't tasked with watching the ambassadors. This was nicely lampshaded when the Vulcan calls her a "young woman," and at that point I figured out that she would have been great at it, but it was a crap job that was beneath her, so Sisko gave it to the new guy.
Alexander Siddig as Bashir is really start to grow on me. I still see a lot of Hugh Grant in his performance, particularly when he gets flustered, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I'm a little distressed to see that the Vulcan ambassador has graffiti-like writing on his shirt, like a 24th-century version of Ed Hardy. It can never be logical to wear Ed Hardy shirts.
This story has some nice resolution, when Bashir's quick thinking saves the lives of the ambassadors and they make nice with him.
The B story involves Lwaxana Troi, one of the most unjustly hated characters in Trek. I can't get enough of her, and I think Majel Barrett was a great comedic actress. Her and Rene Auberjonois work well together here. And of course, when anything close to a rom com breaks out on Trek, I'm happy.
We learn a lot about Odo's origins here, too, and the vulnerability he feels when he becomes a liquid.
I suggested they use Lwaxana's dress as a satchel to hold him when he first mentioned that he'd be going liquid, but this didn't occur to either of them until the very end.
I loved the "What are you thinking about?"/"How many volts is in that TECH" exchange.
So far, so good. How about that A story?
To me, this was totally incomprehensible, mostly because That's Not How Computers Work. You'd think they'd have a firewall or something, but I guess not. Also, there's the common Trek misconception that when you download a file the file physically is transferred and is no longer in its original location. By uploading a file, you don't remove it from your computer.
The final solution--to put the funky program behind a firewall--isn't all that ingenious. So this story made absolutely no sense to me.
The other two parts of this episode, though, were great, so this one was generally fun to watch.
Agree with you on that C-Story, definitely, Shatnertage. It's a great little side story that starts Bashir's steps towards becoming tolerable. (Very tolerable, in fact)
Odo's bits with Lwaxana were certainly the memorable part of the episode. I can only vaguely recall the computer story, and it wasn't particularly good.
Odo's bits with Lwaxana were certainly the memorable part of the episode. I can only vaguely recall the computer story, and it wasn't particularly good.
I don't think Riva came across as a tool, as far as ambassadors go--just highly stressed, which was understandable in light of the language barrier. But I agree that the un-ambassadorial ambassador is definitely a Trek trope. I even lampshaded it in an unpublished story once where an ambassador is actually polite and apologizes for a cultural misunderstanding--and everyone is stunned by how nice this guy is! 
One other genuine comic moment in this story: when Sisko calls for the "bipolar torch."
I was like, "They can't get it done because the torch is just too depressed to get out of bed today. Wait until it's in a manic cycle."
I was like, "They can't get it done because the torch is just too depressed to get out of bed today. Wait until it's in a manic cycle."
Similar threads
