doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
I love how everyone "defending" In The Pale Moonlight is essentially proving Dennis' point for him. 
Why do they still let Braga do TV shows?
- Thread starter Mach5
- Start date
I love how everyone "defending" In The Pale Moonlight is essentially proving Dennis' point for him.
Old song.
I think the casual viewers had probably abandoned DS9 long before ITPM ever was written or aired. There is no doubt but that the first two seasons were fairly mediocre. I would have thought that the desertion occurred then. I don't think it's fair to blame episodes like Moonlight for the decline.
I accept that there is some degree of copout but the writers were working within the constraints of Rodenberry's 'advanced' 24th century humanity and could only push the bubble so far. I would imagine that if old Gene had still been alive and had any clout at that time, he would have nixed that storyline.
Eh...He said he'd do it again, after he knew the result of involving Garak in his scheme, I don't see how that cleans his hands, he was willing to accept his guilt and live with it, even if he had it to do again.
You're not getting it.
Sisko didn't do it. The people in charge of the show not only avoided having him do it, they avoided having him make a decision about it before it occurred - even the decision to look the other way.
Things don't happen by accident in scripts, or because the characters decide to do things. If the producers had been willing to show Sisko as capable of and willing to plot an assassination "for the greater good," they'd have done so. That's just not gonna happen in Star Trek, though, and there was no chance of it happening on DS9.
Cop out.
I am getting it, after he knew what happened, he said he would do it again, there's no ambiguity there, he didn't say he wouldn't do it again, and he didn't say if he had it to do all over again, he would do something different, he said he would do it again, that's accepting responsibility for what happened, and therefore admitting to himself he would choose to do be actively involved in the decision.
That sort of cop-out is not unique to Trek. I remember reading a few interviews with Quentin Tarantino, where he complained about the way that bad guys in movies get killed, because we the audience want to see them getting killed, but not at the hands of the heroes, because we the audience don't want to see our heroes as killers.
The example he always used was Patriot Games; he reckoned Sean Bean's character deserved to die and Harrison Ford's character would have been well within his rights to kill him. However, Bean's character dies by falling off a speedboat and banging his head on a rock. We're meant to be glad he's dead but we can't cope with seeing our hero kill him. was QT's take on it.
The example he always used was Patriot Games; he reckoned Sean Bean's character deserved to die and Harrison Ford's character would have been well within his rights to kill him. However, Bean's character dies by falling off a speedboat and banging his head on a rock. We're meant to be glad he's dead but we can't cope with seeing our hero kill him. was QT's take on it.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
Which is why "The Spy Who Loved Me" is one of the better Bond movies -- 007 flat-out shoots Stromberg from across the table, more than once, killing him.
Mal Reynolds kicks a guy into an engine intake for refusing an instruction and threatening to come after him later.
OTOH, he did let Jayne back into the ship after Cobb sold them out. Nobody's perfect.
OTOH, he did let Jayne back into the ship after Cobb sold them out. Nobody's perfect.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
Mal Reynolds kicks a guy into an engine intake for refusing an instruction and threatening to come after him later.
OTOH, he did let Jayne back into the ship after Cobb sold them out. Nobody's perfect.
The fact that the Browncoats tend to lionize that particular action of Mal's would seem to simultaneously prove and disprove your theory. On the one hand, "hey, it's cool!" if it's someone outside of Star Trek (Mal) but completely "dark" and "going too far" if it's someone *from* Trek (Picard vs. the Borg Queen, or Sisko in the aforementioned examples.)
Did anyone go this nuts over Kirk's boot kicking Kruge off the cliff?
Not really, since my criticism was of some elements of trek fandom in particular in their defense of Trek, not fans in general. Obviously, fans of the Dirty Harry movies would be likely to take an entirely different view of personal morality than fans of the Care Bears.
Of course there's considerable overlap between fandoms, but they're not congruent sets.
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
Good point. In that venn diagram though, the middle-ground crossover would be a very interesting thing to observe, at least in terms of what people are going to be judgy about versus what they'll let slide.
Well, I enjoyed BSG's "darkness," but not because I personally approved of the characters' actions. It was entertaining to watch even if I wouldn't condone that kind of behavior in real life.
But I'm also not the type of person that must "identify" with the protagonist(s) and be able to support their actions from a moral standpoint. I just ask that it be interesting. Hell, I can't condone a damn thing anybody does in Breaking Bad, but it's still an extremely compelling show to watch.
But I'm also not the type of person that must "identify" with the protagonist(s) and be able to support their actions from a moral standpoint. I just ask that it be interesting. Hell, I can't condone a damn thing anybody does in Breaking Bad, but it's still an extremely compelling show to watch.
Hey now, Walt, Jr. hasn't done anything bad yet. Except pick an awful nickname.
That's about right for everyone else, though. Maybe Gomez (Hank's sometimes partner) hasn't done anything too terrible?
I'm curious what Anderson thought of RDM breaking his format (toy) with BSG by making them all morally ambigeous or what have you? Or was it Check cleared, adios? Also who was the show runner during Pale Moonlight? Was it Behr or still Piller technically? They had already pushed the limits of that show with the war thing anyway and GR still had some pull posthumously, I guess, with Berman.
You know we can all do "I'm right and your wrong" type of posts, if you're not going to bother debating then there's no point you being here...
And if you think otherwise to the Xfactor et al being about talent, you're naive.
The TV show is about who has the best story, and the career after that is who is the best marketing.
Being able to sing is way down on the list I'm afraid.
(And have ANY of them demonstrated being able to play a musical instrument? What about writing their own song?
At the moment we have a dire version of Seven Nation Army in the chats by some product of reality television and that should tell you all you need...its awful)
I suppose that the apparent detour into nonsense about In the Pale Moonlight, Mal Reynolds, Breaking Bad and someone called Rupert Giles, is about Braga not being able to bring out the dark side.
In the Pale Moonlight is not dark in the sense that it lets its hero off with his hands bloodless. Sisko is let off the hook because the whole episode is about how he's really innocent, because in a sense he's just another tragic victim of blind necessity. His supposed inability to live with the guilt was meant to express the innate nobility of his character, his moral sensitivity. All that's really kind of uplifting, in a phony, sentimental way.
Objecting to the sentimentality is merely cheap cynicism. The real trick in the story, the truly dark aspect, is the way the story assumes the conclusion, which is that to survive you must do bad things. The absurd non-motivation of the Founders, the preposterous magical powers of the shapeshifters, the crazy war fought at the end of a long supply line completely controlled by someone else (
) the phoniness of this whole storyline and this episode shines like phosphorescent slime.
Mal killing a man for sass of course is not dark at all, but good dirty fun aimed at satisfying mean steaks in children of all ages. Unfortunately for the fans of Firefly/Serenity, neither the series nor the movie were black comedy. They were entirely serious, to the point of pomposity. But fans of Firefly and the new BattleStar Galactica are entirely committed to Taking Nonsense Seriously.
There is no point in contrasting the ways in which shows associated with Braga were different. Terra Nova was one of those shows which was a popular success if you look at the total audience. But too much of its audience was timeshifted, and the show was expensive, and so its canceled. This entire discussion is entirely predicated on the assumption, contrary to fact, that Terra Nova was a popular failure. I think its pretty obvious that the bbs groupthink is impairing rational thought.
In the Pale Moonlight is not dark in the sense that it lets its hero off with his hands bloodless. Sisko is let off the hook because the whole episode is about how he's really innocent, because in a sense he's just another tragic victim of blind necessity. His supposed inability to live with the guilt was meant to express the innate nobility of his character, his moral sensitivity. All that's really kind of uplifting, in a phony, sentimental way.
Objecting to the sentimentality is merely cheap cynicism. The real trick in the story, the truly dark aspect, is the way the story assumes the conclusion, which is that to survive you must do bad things. The absurd non-motivation of the Founders, the preposterous magical powers of the shapeshifters, the crazy war fought at the end of a long supply line completely controlled by someone else (
) the phoniness of this whole storyline and this episode shines like phosphorescent slime. Mal killing a man for sass of course is not dark at all, but good dirty fun aimed at satisfying mean steaks in children of all ages. Unfortunately for the fans of Firefly/Serenity, neither the series nor the movie were black comedy. They were entirely serious, to the point of pomposity. But fans of Firefly and the new BattleStar Galactica are entirely committed to Taking Nonsense Seriously.
There is no point in contrasting the ways in which shows associated with Braga were different. Terra Nova was one of those shows which was a popular success if you look at the total audience. But too much of its audience was timeshifted, and the show was expensive, and so its canceled. This entire discussion is entirely predicated on the assumption, contrary to fact, that Terra Nova was a popular failure. I think its pretty obvious that the bbs groupthink is impairing rational thought.
Anderson?
Which means what? Most of us here don't have jobs that involve TV, either. But when we talk about TV we try and get the basic information right.
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