FOUNDER: I can't do that, Odo. I don't have your faith in the solids.
ODO: Perhaps I can change your mind. Link with me.
What is DS9's Biggest Misfire?
- Thread starter Bad Thoughts
- Start date
ODO: Perhaps I can change your mind. Link with me.
If you're going to cast J.G. Hertzler as a changling, please dub his voice. I love his work, but when I hear Mr Hertzler speak, Martok is the character who appears in my mind.
What part of that implies that he controlled her?
None. What you wrote implied that linking had no influence on the Female Founder, other than she was able to secure the cure, when Odo believed quite clearly that some level of deeper understanding could be achieved by linking.
Then we agree. Odo linking was more than just promising to deliver the cure.
DS9 had good and bad episodes like every other Trek, so I'll focus on thematic misfires:
1. The Ferengi. Quark, Rom and Nog are good characters and worth having in the show. In particular they are a nice mix of characters in a species in a franchise that tends to assign a set of characteristics to each race. But that should have been the focus of the Ferengi plots. Bringing in the Nagus every other Ferengi story and ending up with our resident Ferengi characters becoming in essence the First Family of Ferenginar was stupid small-universe stuff. And the Ferengi attitude to women is much less funny/quirky when it's presented on screen as the focus of whole episodes.
2. Bajor. It seemed they never really knew what to do with this. The basic idea of Starfleet coming in to try to stabilise their world following a brutal occupation was sound, but they clearly didn't think ahead how they would do this or show it. Nearly all of the planet's development happens off screen, and you rarely see any sign of the occupation at all except in flashback. DS9 got called dark, gritty, all sorts of things, but imagine if the crew had spent season 1 liberating concentration camps!
1. The Ferengi. Quark, Rom and Nog are good characters and worth having in the show. In particular they are a nice mix of characters in a species in a franchise that tends to assign a set of characteristics to each race. But that should have been the focus of the Ferengi plots. Bringing in the Nagus every other Ferengi story and ending up with our resident Ferengi characters becoming in essence the First Family of Ferenginar was stupid small-universe stuff. And the Ferengi attitude to women is much less funny/quirky when it's presented on screen as the focus of whole episodes.
2. Bajor. It seemed they never really knew what to do with this. The basic idea of Starfleet coming in to try to stabilise their world following a brutal occupation was sound, but they clearly didn't think ahead how they would do this or show it. Nearly all of the planet's development happens off screen, and you rarely see any sign of the occupation at all except in flashback. DS9 got called dark, gritty, all sorts of things, but imagine if the crew had spent season 1 liberating concentration camps!
The Pah-wraiths. I thought the idea of "evil" omnipotent aliens was clunky and boring.
I can kind-of-sort-of fanwank the speed of change in Ferengi society by going back to the beginning of TNG, where the Ferengi are totally cut off from the rest of the galactic community, to the extent that no one even knows what they look like. There was a way to make this work: the isolated profit-obsessed species finally connects with the rest of the galaxy, and finds that their money-making opportunities are curtailed by people not wanting to do business with such a repressive society. Change is driven by feminist reformers, but it succeeds because enough of the misogynist Ferengi are willing to go along for pragmatic financial reasons. Plus, you can believe that a species that has been walled off by themselves, doing their own thing in a totally insular way for thousands of years, could change dramatically and rapidly in response to suddenly opening to a vast galaxy filled with so many alien races.
Of course, none of this ends up on screen in any of DS9's Ferengi episodes. I'm reaching! And I've got nothing to help justify the idiocy of Grand Nagus Rom.
No I think the reason is far simpler the prophets are socialists!
Exactly. Odo had no leverage over the founders until the moment he linked with the female shapeshifter in the final episode.
Yeah, I think the Ferengi storyline with Zek and the "EO revolution" was there for humor. I'm not sure it was meant to taken too seriously.
It's odd that the Federation settled for such a treaty, but maybe assimilating Odo into the great link will bring a Reformation upon the Dominion. One thing the Federation got out of it was all Jem Hadar leaving Fed. space, and Federation gets unhindered access to the "Gamma Quadrant."
Yeah, I think the Ferengi storyline with Zek and the "EO revolution" was there for humor. I'm not sure it was meant to taken too seriously.
It's odd that the Federation settled for such a treaty, but maybe assimilating Odo into the great link will bring a Reformation upon the Dominion. One thing the Federation got out of it was all Jem Hadar leaving Fed. space, and Federation gets unhindered access to the "Gamma Quadrant."
I always interpreted the female changeling to be the spokesperson of the founders. She just happened to be the one founder caught in the DQ when the wormhole was mined. I know "spokesperson" is not a precise characterisation as she is a clear decision-maker -- and because the founders aren't specific individuals but nevertheless.... The rest of the founders are back at home and it's basically it's just that some of their AQ plans haven't come off and that's about their only punishment. Just the spokesperson getting locked up is certainly what it felt like was I watched it. Bit of a damp squib that with all those billions dead and everything in ruins. Particularly so as Dukat's own destination was a war crimes trail.
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Speaking of Misfires, we hear that "It's too late", the changelings are "everywhere" in The Adversary. In Paradise Lost, we learn of their presence on Earth. In Apocalypse Rising, Q'onos. By Infernos light, they've infiltrated DS9.
In Change of Heart, the Cardassian defector guy has the locations, identities and assignments of all changelings in the "Alpha Quadrant." The Wormhole has been closed down.
How is the female shapeshifter the only one left on "our" side of the wormhole? Did the treaty remedy the issue of all these infiltrators?
In Change of Heart, the Cardassian defector guy has the locations, identities and assignments of all changelings in the "Alpha Quadrant." The Wormhole has been closed down.
How is the female shapeshifter the only one left on "our" side of the wormhole? Did the treaty remedy the issue of all these infiltrators?
My original post should really have had a comma, it was my intention to present those as two motives.
1. Cure Founders.
2. Odo returns to Link.
So that's my bad for making it seem like one thing.
In contrast to much of Treks usual message of 'virtue is it's own reward', the Federation win the Dominion War largely because of two very unpleasant acts in their part - conning the Romulans into joining the war, and infecting the Changelings with a disease. It is unlikely they would have won without these acts, and yet they fly in the face of the Federation's values. I wonder how Sisko, one of the few men aware of both, feels about that.
As a moderator, I can only assume you have seen the following episodes: Enemy Within, A Taste of Armeggedon, Errand of Mercy, Obsession, A Private Little War, and The Enterprise Incident.
The mirror universe stuff.An object lesson in how to make an insipid idea worse.
The baseball episode.In fairness many American tv shows do a baseball episode,totally baffling to a foreign audience.
O'Brien and Bashir playing silly buggers in the holodeck(Viking warriors,Alamo defenders and ww2 fighter pilots)....all during a devastating war.
Also for a programme that was set in a waypoint station there was a distinct lack of colourful "guest stars of the week" just passing through a la "Gunsmoke" or the like.
The baseball episode.In fairness many American tv shows do a baseball episode,totally baffling to a foreign audience.
O'Brien and Bashir playing silly buggers in the holodeck(Viking warriors,Alamo defenders and ww2 fighter pilots)....all during a devastating war.
Also for a programme that was set in a waypoint station there was a distinct lack of colourful "guest stars of the week" just passing through a la "Gunsmoke" or the like.
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The occupation of Deep Space Nine in early Season Six. I have to be honest. I wasn't that impressed by the writing in those episodes. Even worse, that story arc led to the Dukat is "eeeevilll" declaration by Sisko, who could have simply acknowledged that the former had become insane. Come to think of it . . . Dukat's story arc after sucked . . . at least for me.
I didn't mind that. I didn't mind seeing that the Federation was capable of corruption. What I did mind was that their actions were pretty much swept under the rug by the show's writers in mid-to-late Season Seven with another political crisis involving the Kllingon Empire. Ezri Dax's accusation about the Klingon Empire being corrupt, following on the heels of the Federation's actions with the Romulans and the Founders struck me as rather hypocritical. And blind.
I didn't mind that. I didn't mind seeing that the Federation was capable of corruption. What I did mind was that their actions were pretty much swept under the rug by the show's writers in mid-to-late Season Seven with another political crisis involving the Kllingon Empire. Ezri Dax's accusation about the Klingon Empire being corrupt, following on the heels of the Federation's actions with the Romulans and the Founders struck me as rather hypocritical. And blind.
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