Shatnertage's Mostly-1st-Time Watch Thread

[Shatnertage]

And now, the end is near. It starts with a...

"Penumbra"

This is it--the final arc of the final season of DS9. There's a lot riding on this for me. Up to this point, as you might point out, I've been conflicted about the show. There's a lot to like, but a lot that doesn't totally work for me. So this arc is going to really determine how I feel about DS9. At this point there are definitely fewer episodes on the rewatch list than VOY, though there are several brilliant DS9 episodes that, I think, outshine the best of VOY.

And that leads us to "Penumbra." We start with Sisko having bought land on Bajor. And planning to get married. By a minister. Which means, I guess, that both money and religion are alive and well in the 24th century Federation. Although I'd guess that Sisko wouldn't have to pay for too much on Bajor, being the Emissary and all.

But the Prophets don't want him to get married. Sarah Prophet shows up and, like the worst mother-in-law ever, explains that if Sisko marries Kassidy, he'll only know sorry. I feel sorry for Kassidy, and I'm wondering if Penny Johnson enjoyed working on Larry Sanders or DS9 more.

That's the semi-A-story. The B-story is on Cardassia, where our good friends Weyoun and Damar are playing the bickering Bickersons again. Weyoun thinks Damar's drinking too much again; Damar thinks the Founder isn't looking so hot. Then Dukat turns up and gets turned into a Bajoran. Wow.

The C-story has Worf getting lost and presumed dead, and Ezri going after him. She rescues him, then they start bickering. But then they kiss and, though it isn't canon, most likely have sex. With their clothes on. They then get stunned by some Boba Fett-looking Breen and taken captive.

Clearly this episode is about setting up tensions--Sisko and the Prophets, Weyoun and Damar, Ezri and Worf, and whatever Dukat's up to.

It's decent. I won't say I loved it, mostly because Avery Brooks doesn't really carry his scenes that well. He really seems to be going through the motions here. But I can see that this isn't going to be an instant-gratification thing.

I was so intrigued that I watched the next episode, and I'll get to that later.

 

[Shatnertage]

I'm back again with an episode title that might be ironic...

"'Til Death Do Us Part"

Again, we've got three main stories, which then splinter into four and, at the very end, coalesce back into three. The most tedious of the stories is the Sisko/Yates nuptials. Things pick up, though, when Kai Winn shows up and volunteers to do the ceremony--surely Sisko wouldn't mind? Sisko lords it over her that he had a vision from the prophets who gave him the no go on the wedding. She's still smarting when she walks out of his office...and has a vision from the prophets! Congratulations, Kai Winn! I can only imagine how that must have felt. All her life she's waiting for a vision, then, pow! she has one. A man of the land is on his way.

That guy, we find out, is Dujat, now disguised as a simple Bajoran farmer. Before he hooks up with Winn, though, he has a great scene with Damar. Weyoun had woken up a hung-over Damar, who goes right back to the kanar. I lift a glass of McCallan 12 to him. Then Dukat tells him he's got to pull himself together for Cardassia, which needs a leader. So the B-story is Weyoun and Damar going on a trip.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExigIpJ286w[/yt]

Sisko's sure he's not going to get married, then he changes his mind at the last minute and says, "Hey, why not? What do the prophets know, anyway?" Kasidy for some reason agrees to marry him, even though he just kind of stiffed her.

And I'm sad to say that Avery Brooks is really hurting this angle. Cirroc Lofton, who was what, twenty, when he made this, is acting circles around him--indicating inner turmoil with things like facial expressions and body language. Brooks is still just kind of passive, almost serene. He'd make a great poker player.

The C story is Worf and Ezri in captivity. They did it, so Worf assumes they'll be together for the rest of their lives. Ezri isn't so sure. Then, when she's all messed up from her interrogation, she calls Julian's name...which must mean that she's in love with him and will spend the rest of her life with him. Because love is just a switch that's thrown when you casually know someone, not a sense of mutual affection, respect, and dependence that develops over time. The C story then runs smack dab into the B story, when the Breen show up on Weyoun and Damar's ship.

So that makes the D story, Dukat and Winn, the C story. And this one is wonderfully executed. I completely buy that Winn would be so taken by Dukat--after all, the Prophets seemingly sent him to her--and that Dukar would be equally entranced by the hold he has over Winn. There is some real irony here: Winn finally gets what she wants--a vision. Dukat gets what he wants--to win the hearts and minds of the Bajoran people. And Sisko, who's done everything right and is the hero of the story, can't have the one thing he wants, which is to marry Kasidy Yates and live with her on Bajor.

There's some very sly stuff when Dukat is asking why the Prophets would speak through one as lowly as he--when we know it's not the Prophets speaking through him, and that he considers himself one of the most important people in the quadrant. Just brilliant.

I definitely liked this one better than "Penumbra," particularly the Winn/Dukat stuff. At this point, pretty much anything is possible there.

 

[Shatnertage]

I'm really on a roll here. I've gotten up to...

"Strange Bedfellows"

Well, we've now got a new A story--it's Worf and Ezri and Damar and Weyoun. And the Breen. Lots of Breen.

Worf and Ezri reconcile, and they're going to be executed. Weyoun and Damar are drifting apart, as Weyoun is now best buds with Thol Got. A Thol definitely outranks a legate, at least according to Got. And I'm imagining him hosting a Breen competition TV show called Thol's Got Talent, for some reason.

I've got to say that every time Got talks in that electronic teacher from Charlie Brown/R2D2/Chewbacca voice, I get the serious giggles. Especially because, when he first comes in, I swear that he says, "I'm gonna take a shit right over there" as he walks towards Damar's area. And then at one point he says something that sounds like, "Thank you." Were they trying to cut the tension with some laughs there?

Weyoun was also great in this one--getting killed by Worf and trying to talk Damar into signing the Breen treaty. It's like he's in Glengary Glenn Ross. ABC-Always Be Closing. But I don't think he can close Damar here. I loved Damar's line about how they'll just get another Weyoun clone, and that Worf should have killed him, because there's only one Damar. Foreshadowing? Anyway, Damar's totally stealing the show at this point.

Then, at the end, he does the unexpected face turn, saving Worf and Ezri and letting them know the Federation can count on him. As an added bonus, he gets to make Weyoun look like an ass. Unfortunately for me, he's stopped drinking, so I can no longer raise a glass of Macallan 12 to him when he's drinking.

Back on the station, Martok gives Sisko a great, great speech about the glorious war of marriage. It really was fantastic.

And the big news is that Kai Winn finally goes over to the dark side. All of that frustration of never having a vision from the Prophets all those years finally comes spilling out. I loved her scene with Kira, where she seems to be heading down the right path, then realizes that she can't give up power, and that she loves being in charge more than she loves the Prophets. Her final scene with Dukat is equally brilliant. Having come around to the dark side, she now denounces the Prophets she's been serving all of her life, because they never did anything for her. Very powerful stuff.

I've got to say that I like this episode even more than the last one, so my enjoyment of the arc is growing. And I wished they'd have made the entire series like this. It would work a few years on a bunch of other shows, and the whole set-up of the show lends itself more to stories where things change greatly (you've got a war going on) than the original Trek premise of "Wagon Train to the stars."

Really liking this.

 

[intrinsical]

From what I remember the producers did want to write series long arcs, but all their their proposals were shot down by higher ups in Paramount who strongly preferred episodic stories. It was only towards the later seasons and especially the final season when the management's attention was on Voyager that Ira Behr and co were able to get away with submitting proposals for seemingly stand-alone episodes.

 

[MrJ]

Back when DS9 was ending Cinescape Magazine did a cover page article called "Deep Sixing Deep Space Nine". Where they had along with the TV Guide quote how DS9 was the "Best written, acted and all around greatest Star Trek series ever" an interview with Ira Steven Behr. In it he talked about how much in the beginning of DS9 Berman and other Paramount executives were meddling so much in the show. But when Voyager started they gradually paid less and less attention to DS9, until by the last half of season 7 in Behr's own words "They [Paramount and Berman] didn't give a shit" about DS9 anymore.

 

[TheGodBen]

It's a pity that the show wasn't more serialised, the Final Chapter arc suited the series well and it would have been nice if the final two season were like it throughout. There are a couple of low-points in the arc, but overall it works quite well. However, considering the writers had to fight for each and every episode in the 6-part Occupation arc, we're lucky that they managed to convince Paramount to end the series with a 10-hour arc.

Season 7 is rougher than seasons 5 or 6 and many fans write the whole season off, but this final arc, and particularly Damar/Cardassia's role in it, redeem it for me. I honestly think that's some of the best material the show ever produced, and I'm still impressed that a minor character introduced back in season 4 becomes such a highlight of the show.

 

[Athena28]

I'm back again with an episode title that might be ironic...

"'Til Death Do Us Part"

Again, we've got three main stories, which then splinter into four and, at the very end, coalesce back into three. The most tedious of the stories is the Sisko/Yates nuptials. Things pick up, though, when Kai Winn shows up and volunteers to do the ceremony--surely Sisko wouldn't mind?...

While I found the ick factor very high in the Dukat/Winn story, I also loved it due to the high quality acting.

 

[apenpaap]

One thing I really hated was Kai Winn saying she had never really believed in the Prophets... In general, DS9 is good at portraying different sides to religion, both the bad and the good ones. But Winn has always been the personification of most of those bad sides (not all, there have been some other characters). To have her really have been a non-believer all this time has some serious unfortunate implications: a real believer would never do these bad things, obviously those who do are really evil atheists just pretending to be religious.

Now, I'm very sure that implication was never in the writers' minds, but it is one that is sort of given off, and one they probably should have given thought before writing that episode.

 

[Thor Damar]

I always took it as a characterization somewhat similar to Exquisitor Vorbis of the Discworld. Someone whose religions beliefs are actually about looking so far into themselves that they loose any sense of perspective. They become very closed minded and intolerant because no-one matches up to their own self involved standards.

Thus Vorbis would have gladly killed Om his supposed God and Kai Winn turned against the Prophets after they refused to give their blessings to her and proclaim her as emissary.

Also, she didn't abandon her religion and become an atheist (which is of course not a religion) she merely changed her allegiance and worship to the Pah-wraith instead.

I actually quite appreciated the Dukat/Winn plot.

 

[apenpaap]

^It's admittedly been a while since I saw the episode, so I could be misremembering it, but didn't she say she had never really believed the Prophets, just paid service to them and kept appearances? Because that's what I was talking about, not her conversion to the Pagh-Wraits.

 

[Sindatur]

^It's admittedly been a while since I saw the episode, so I could be misremembering it, but didn't she say she had never really believed the Prophets, just paid service to them and kept appearances? Because that's what I was talking about, not her conversion to the Pagh-Wraits.

Eh, it's no different than a jilted lover or emotionally abandoned child "Heh, I never loved you anyways"

I don't think she really meant, she was just hurt that she spent her life serving their cause. Yea, she switched teams for the power, but, I don't believe it's true that she never had any faith

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

In some ways Kai Winn reminds me of the ancient Israelites who spurned God in the desert even with TONS of physical evidence of His existence and intervention. The Bajoran faith is similar in that there is tangible evidence of it. So in a way, her faith was in tangible evidence and visions, never in the Prophets themselves or anything beyond the physical. So her statement is true: she believed in miracles, visions, Orbs, and political office, but her faith in the Prophets for who they were (which is what a Bajoran like Kira strives for) never existed.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I can see what apenpaap means (I think he's remembering the "do you know what I felt...nothing" speech in particular), although I didn't interpret it along those lines myself. I suppose I'd say that I certainly understand and acknowledge his point of criticism, but I came to different conclusions. If you'll forgive the length of this, I sort of assumed that Winn's faith was genuine - she wasn't saying it was absent - but that it was ultimately hollow to her because it wasn't "good enough" to gain her what she wanted. So I don't think absence of faith drives or defines her. She's not, as I see it, now portrayed as a non-believer in bishop's clothing, she is truly a bishop, and she does believe, but she can't enjoy her faith in the humble manner of other Bajorans because her psychology demands that she get something back from it - and the Prophets haven't given that.

Winn always comes across as very results-driven, very selfish in the not entirely negative (but still troublesome) sense that she expects to gain something from what she does - otherwise, why is she doing it? What she seeks, of course, is power and status, and her actions and social interactions are basically all geared towards getting it. From supporting Minister Jaro to becoming Kai, she seems to work on the basis that every interaction and personal step forward is a matter of buying up more station and influence, and that for each step she takes she will, by rights, get rewards.

She's different from Dukat in that Dukat (as I see him) is entirely self-centred, not just selfish; everyone and everything must revolve around him simply by virtue of his existence (as I've said before, I personally believe that Dukat doesn't have a fully functioning concept of empathy). Winn has a far less childish sense of how things work, in my opinion; she doesn't expect the world to revolve around her without her doing anything, she expects to make her way forward in the world as a functioning part of that world. Unfortunately, I think she's selfishly fixated on the idea that simply through doing so she should by rights get results. It's as if she feels entitled, not simply through existing but because she worked for it. I recall one of her few genuinely sympathetic moments (in Rapture, I think), when she tells Kira something along the lines of "you resistance types think it's all about you. Well, I fought to preserve Bajoran culture too, in my own way - by preserving/preaching the faith even though I was imprisoned and beaten for it". In other words, what angered her is the perceived impression of resistance fighters that people like her didn't work for their freedom and that she didn't struggle or suffer to get where she is today.

I guess if Dukat strikes me as a traumatized selfish little boy who demands attention and never mastered empathy, then Winn is the slightly older girl who has mastered it and has fixated on the lesson that "if I'm a good girl who works hard, I'll get a reward - and I will deserve that reward, because I've worked for it". For Winn, not getting something back for her troubles, her hard work, or even her compassion, is unacceptable. I don't think that she's faking anything, and I personally didn't read her comments in the final arc as denying her faith. I think it's more that she views everything in term of her "right" to get a reward and that colours everything she does. And because what she wants is security and power, she thinks that the reward for service is status. And I think that even love is service to her, which doesn't mean it's not genuine.

I think what Winn was concerned about with her "wormhole story" was the fact that she was never satisfied because her faith wasn't truly getting her results. The other Bajorans loved the Prophets just for existing, while Winn expected the Prophets to "give something back". But the Prophets made her Kai only to strip the post of its meaning by having the Emissary become Their voice. In the first few seasons, Winn refused to believe Sisko was the Emissary. In "Rapture", she finally accepted it, and she must have resented the Prophets strongly for that - she served them for decades, loved them even, and then they bestow rewards not on her but on this alien who didn't even follow the faith!

So while I see apenpaap's point, I personally see Winn not as a false believer but as a believer who thought she was owed something by her gods for her years of service...and the gods wouldn't give it. And to someone like Winn, that causes her understanding of the world to crumble. From her point of view: What's the point if years of service gets you nothing?

 

[apenpaap]

^You know, that's a very good analysis of her. I think you may very well be right, and I'll keep it in mind as I'm sure it'll make the final arc more fun to rewatch (I'm in mid-season 3 right now).

 

[Shatnertage]

It's not that she didn't believe in the Prophets--she knew they were real. It was that they had never spoken to her. I think Ghemor is right in saying that its very much like the Hebrews in Sinai, who had just witnessed a host of miracles, including manna that fell from the skies and fed them every day, but, when Moses was a little late in getting back, turned to the Golden Calf. It wasn't necessarily that they didn't believe that God had taken them out of Egypt; it was just "what have you done for me lately."

Nasat is right, too, in that she had sacrificed so much for her faith, and believed she got nothing back in return.

I've got a subsidiary question about whether orb experiences, which it looks like just about anyone can have, are different from visions from the prophets. Are they?

Anyway, on to the arc...

"The Changing Face of Evil"

A lot happening here. There are again three stories:

1. Winn and Dukat

2. Damar, Resistance leader

3. Those Squabbling Siskos/with their wacky neighbors Worf and Ezri (and the rest)

Of these, the first two are the most interesting, which makes for great television, and seems to explain a few of the reasons that DS9 had some problems--the most compelling stories don't seem to involve the main cast. I've been thinking about this for a while, and it's fascinating. Did the cast notice that they were not the center of attention? Did they care? It's a strange situation, for sure.

Anyway, Winn completes her journey to the dark side here, killing Sorbal and then letting Dukat hide the body. Plus, she now knows who Dukat is, but doesn't care. It's still an interesting story. In the movie version in my head, Meryl Streep plays Kai Winn and Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Gul Dukat. That's not taking anything away from the actors they've already got, who are phenomenal. I'm just saying I could see this happening on a cinematic scale.

Damar's become my favorite character on the show, hands down. I love love love the scene where Weyoun says that something's different, he's got more confidence now, then goes charging down the completely wrong road, believing it's the Dominion's military success and the Breen alliance that's made him stop drinking. Plays brilliantly to Damar's observation that Weyoun's weakness is his overconfidence. Then he goes and destroys the cloning facility, so there can never be another Weyoun. Those guys are going to have to kill each other in the finale. Or something.

The Breen still made me crack up every time they talked. Does anyone else find this funny, or is it just me? And my wife?

The Sisko stuff--meh. I can see what they were going for here, but it doesn't work in the execution because Sisko just isn't radiating a newlywed vibe. He's still the captain, giving orders, making concessions. It just doesn't feel right. Also, he seems pretty blase and un-self-aware about the Prophets' predictions of sorrow. After all, he just lost his ship. Shouldn't he be getting Jake to safety?

All in all, good stuff, and I'm looking forward to the next installment.

 

[apenpaap]

Glad you like Damar as much as I do. He is one of my favourite DS9 characters, which says a lot. As for the Dukat/Winn stuff, I think it is quite poor, story-wise, but salvaged heavily by two brilliant actors and their two brilliant characters.

 

[lurok]

I find the Breen hilarious too but only 'cause I keep imagining Princess Leia under there.

 

[intrinsical]

The final arc is filled with lots of twists and turns. Out of all the twists, my favorite is and always will be Damar's entire arc, how he grows from Dukat's faithful follower to unwilling puppet of the Dominion to leader of the Cardassian resistance to... *spoilers*

 

[Shatnertage]

It's always pouring...

"When It Rains..."

Again, lots of stuff going on here. Kira gets to go help the Cardassian insurrection. She's reluctant to do so at first, and they're reluctant to have her, but she gets to wear a Starfleet uniform and has the rank of commander, so things are OK...for a while.

Bashir runs into some red tape trying get get Odo's medical records. I don't understand exactly why the Starfleet scans wouldn't already be part of his file on DS9, but I'm willing to play along.

Dukat gets into Kai Winn's secret stash of Pah Wraith porn, plays with it himself, and goes blind! I guess they were right all along. She then sends him out to live as a beggar, and he's not too happy about it. Apparently his eyes can see just fine. They went to the doctor and everything:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxfPIe2qqxw[/yt]

No machine could give the kind of stimulation needed to remove his inner block, so it's up to the Pah Wraiths.

Gowron also shows up, bugs his eyes out, and steals Martok's job. How does he do that? (bugging his eyes out) Looks like he's going to have a long and successful run as commander of the Klingon forces.

 

[Sykonee]

Gowron also shows up, bugs his eyes out, and steals Martok's job. How does he do that? (bugging his eyes out) Looks like he's going to have a long and successful run as commander of the Klingon forces.

You're cheating, aren't you.