That's creepy. I hope she wasn't killed in a propeller accident, you know like that guy in one if the Indiana Jones movie...
Talk about a nightmare for the prophets, putting all those little pieces together, like a human puzzle.
Sisko's mother:
- Thread starter kirkfan
- Start date
That's creepy. I hope she wasn't killed in a propeller accident, you know like that guy in one if the Indiana Jones movie...
Talk about a nightmare for the prophets, putting all those little pieces together, like a human puzzle.
I don't know about the Prophets, but the Pah-Wraiths were definitely shown to be able to take over living bodies (Keiko, Dukat), so there would have been no reason to take over a dead one. Plus, if Sisko's mother was already dead, you'd think that she's go back to being dead once the Prophet left her body after Sisko was born. That didn't happen.
I'm afraid I have to agree with whoever said that the Prophets pretty much used this person against their will. And the worst part of it is that Sisko never even brought that up. If I found out that the person I thought was my mother really wasn't, and that my "real" mother was some stranger possessed by some alien in order to create me, and never actually loved my father or even gave a shit about him, and then left him once she realized what happened, I'd be highly pissed off. It was just some nuttiness that came out of nowhere and wasn't handled in the most realistic of ways.
did the prophets have a choice? The Sisko was required, there was no way for there not to be a Sisko. For them the past is the same as present or future, so they are simply aware that one of them shares his mothers existence and directs her to give birth to Sisko.
They could never not do it that way, because that's how it always was and will be.
And now my head hurts.
They could never not do it that way, because that's how it always was and will be.
And now my head hurts.
I agree, this was some sloppy work by the writers. Or like the Sisko would say: "Some damn sloppy work!"
Point taken, but the problem is that the wormhole aliens didn't know who Sisko was when he first contacted them. If they had done such a thing in order for Sisko to be created, why didn't they acknowledge that fact in "Emissary?"
Plus, I wasn't talking about the wormhole aliens' ethics, I was talking about Sisko's reaction to finding out what they did.
True, Sisko's reaction is incomprehensible, he should have been indignant about what has been done to his biological mother. It's as if Sisko as part prophet himself no longer considered himself as part of the human species and therefore condoned the use of human people as long as it was part of the "greater good of the wormhole aliens". Also I find it a bit shocking that when he departed for the great beyond (with blank background), he didn't have a parting moment with Jake, even though he knew that in an alternate timeline Jake sacrificed his whole life to bring him back. I remember asking myself "What the hell is wrong with him?"
Because they acted after the fact from our perspective--it's basically the Akorem principle. If the Prophets don't live in time like humans, Sisko's birth, Sisko's meeting with the Prophets, and the Prophets' interference in Sisko's conception don't happen in any particular order.
Or, the way the Prophets acted in the first episode could have been an "act." They could have been purposely acting ignorant of Sisko, ignorant of time, etc., specifically to force Sisko to explain all of those things, leading Sisko to expose to himself where he truly "exists." He had to get deep in a very frustrating way in order to truly confront his own soul, and the Prophets knew that. This sets him up emotionally to be ready to take the job at DS9 (and in their eyes, to take his rightful place as Emissary).
That's because he's been transformed and is no longer human, He probably doesn't have a body either and uses his likeness to appear to Cassidy the same way the prophets use people one knows to appear to them.
True, but I'm saying that the Prophets' ignorance of linear time was (perhaps) all an act.
Was then Sisko putting on an act? Might he not return "yesterday?" Or does he now perceive the universe the way the Prophets do, and he is expressing the same non-linearity that the Prophets do in the pilot?
(None of which excuses the manipulation of Sarah.)
Yes, I agree with you. Sisko is not putting on an act. He could indeed return to yesterday, but because of his new understanding he does not. He is indeed expressing the same non-linearity that the Prophets do in the first episode.
BUT - Sisko also has an understanding of linear time, and that is also clear in his final scene.
And what I'm saying is it's entirely possible that the Prophets, while existing in non-linear time, ALSO have a clear understanding of linear time, and they had (for lack of a non-linear term) that same understanding in the first episode - we just didn't know it as an audience, and Sisko didn't know it either. And what I'm saying is perhaps they pretended to not understand linear time in their "first meeting" with Sisko simply for the sake of preparing the Emissary.
(and yes, while this is a wild thought that spun off of this discussion about Sarah, I am not touching that one because I have no theories
)
While I respect that you are questioning and interrogating what the Prophets say about themselves, I think there is credibility in their portrayal in Emissary. If they were outrightly dishonest, that would be one thing, but that doesn't seem to be entirely what you are saying. Emissary presents many moments in which the Prophets show real ignorance of the relationship of cause and effect. As they discuss the morality of humanity, the Prophets insist that morality of actions can only be understood in terms of the results, not the inputs that go into decision making (which Sisko argues). The sequence of events, from past to present, is not only unimportant to them, it is not part of their mentality.
Dealing with the prophets puts us in a temporal version of Flatland, and we are in the two-dimensional world. We understand the temporality of the Prophets only as it intersects with our temporality.
All I am saying is what if the ignorance wasn't real at all but was presented for the sake of Sisko, as a way to get him to question linear time and begin to understand non-linear on a small scale? Teachers do this sort of thing all the time. It's not that they are lying. They are questioning. But while it appears to us and Sisko that the Prophets are needing the answers, it's really Sisko who needs the answers. And my proposal is that the Prophets always had the answers but they knew the questions would lead to some much-needed realizations for Sisko, the Emissary, which is why they played the ignorant card in their line of questioning.
I don't buy this totally non-linear time. I think the prophet have the power to travel through time, backward and forward, and that they've had this power for so long that they have a hard time imagining that intelligent beings still exist that don't, the way we have sometimes a hard time believing the conditions in which primitive people live. That's why they hated Kai Winn from the start and never responded to her pleas (not even in the Reckoning for example) because they knew that someday she would betray them for the Pah Wraith, unfortunately they had never heard of the notion of self fulfilling prophecy because they could have realized that they are the ones who thus pushed her into the Pah Wraith's camp. Just like Jesus pushed Judas to betray him by telling him, that he was gonna betray him. Anyway, What I mean is that the prophet 's local time is obviously linear, otherwise they wouldn't be able to communicate, as communication is A LINEAR THING! try reading a sentence backward for example and see if it still makes sense.
Ite missa est.
Ite missa est.
I don't buy this totally non-linear time. I think the prophet have the power to travel through time, backward and forward, and that they've had this power for so long that they have a hard time imagining that intelligent beings still exist that don't, the way we have sometimes a hard time believing the conditions in which primitive people live. That's why they hated Kai Winn from the start and never responded to her pleas (not even in the Reckoning for example) because they knew that someday she would betray them for the Pah Wraith, unfortunately they had never heard of the notion of self fulfilling prophecy because they could have realized that they are the ones who thus pushed her into the Pah Wraith's camp. Just like Jesus pushed Judas to betray him by telling him, that he was gonna betray him. Anyway, What I mean is that the prophet 's local time is obviously linear, otherwise they wouldn't be able to communicate, as communication is A LINEAR THING! try reading a sentence backward for example and see if it still makes sense.
Ite missa est.
I won't belabor the point here, but I find this razing of the prophets' nature as presented by the series to be both too convenient and too conventional.
Fin.
I don't buy this totally non-linear time. I think the prophet have the power to travel through time, backward and forward, and that they've had this power for so long that they have a hard time imagining that intelligent beings still exist that don't, the way we have sometimes a hard time believing the conditions in which primitive people live. That's why they hated Kai Winn from the start and never responded to her pleas (not even in the Reckoning for example) because they knew that someday she would betray them for the Pah Wraith, unfortunately they had never heard of the notion of self fulfilling prophecy because they could have realized that they are the ones who thus pushed her into the Pah Wraith's camp. Just like Jesus pushed Judas to betray him by telling him, that he was gonna betray him. Anyway, What I mean is that the prophet 's local time is obviously linear, otherwise they wouldn't be able to communicate, as communication is A LINEAR THING! try reading a sentence backward for example and see if it still makes sense.
Ite missa est.
I won't belabor the point here, but I find this razing of the prophets' nature as presented by the series to be both too convenient and too conventional.
Fin.
I find your dismissive attitude to be self-defeating. What better way to convince people that you ran out of arguments, when you respond like someone who ran out of arguments?
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