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innerbrat and I have started intermittently watching Deep Space Nine. We have just finished episode eight, which seems like as good a place as any to start putting up episode reaction posts.

For future reference: Debi has seen through season three or four before giving it up out of overwhelming scientific frustration. I have seen only one episode previously while actually paying attention, but I am watching with the vague spoiler awareness that one gets from having episodes on in the background all the time in my parents' room growing up, and also occasionally seeing gifsets go by on my tumblr dash.

1 & 2. Emissary

Neither Debi nor I realized that this was a double episode when we started watching it and were very confused about why this episode seemed to stretch on forever, much like Sisko's tragic backstory. "But you exist here!" YES. WE DO. FOREVER, APPARENTLY.

Anyway the main outcome of this episode was a tentative affection for the cast and a vague lack of interest in existential wormhole aliens.

3. Past Prologue

Kira episode! I am way looking forward to more Bajoran politics. Garak is introduced and asks Bashir out on a date; Bashir is way too interested in being a SEXY SPY to notice, triggering the first of many, many groans of "OH, BASHIR." We both vaguely expect Kira's terrorist friend to weight the moral scales irretrievably by proving to have killed LOTS OF CARDASSIAN BABIES in his past, so his actual moral extremism seems fairly light by comparison.

4. A Man Alone

Odo episode! This is the one where I start shipping Odo/Quark, to my vaguely horrified shame. It's just, it hits my noir buttons AND my jaded-enemies-who-are-each-other's-best-friends-but-won't-admit-it buttons! I'M SORRY EVERYONE.

This is also the one where Bashir clones a guy to prove that the original guy killed another one of his clones, and then completely fails to explain what they're going to do with the newly created clone after that. Like, how is that first conversation going to go?

"Hello, citizen! Welcome to existence!"
"???"
"Here is a suit of clothes, courtesy of the Federation, and a biographical dossier on your murderous clone-brother."
"???"
"Now go forth and become . . . not a murderer, I guess. Bye now!"

In other words, ACE BIO-ETHICS, DEEP SPACE NINE COMMAND TEAM.

We also have a lot of questions about who found a bucketful of proto-Odo and brought him home to foster. Like, who first looked at that bucket of baby slosh and was like, "how cute! I bet it's sentient! Can we keep him?"

5. Babel

This is the one that got us really excited because we thought it was going to be a plot about universal communicators breaking down and examine science and social linguistics!

. . . it was not a plot about any of that, instead it was an excuse to have a generic "OH NO PLAGUE!" plot. I mean normally I like "OH NO PLAGUE" plots, but in this case I was disappointed.

This is also the episode that sets up the problem of O'Brien being the only engineer on the station and having to fix ALL the vending machines ALL the time and then utterly fails to solve it, which means that Debi and I have now headcanoned that O'Brien cloned himself at the end of the episode and in all future episodes, whenever O'Brien is onscreen doing something plot-related, somewhere an O'Brien clone is toiling away sorting out somebody's plumbing. Look, we have already established that Deep Space Nine has ACE CLONING BIO-ETHICS.

6. Captive Pursuit

In this episode O'Brien (or maybe O'Brien Clone One) gets tired of not having a special alien friend to call his own and therefore adopts one. Everyone else has one! Bashir has Garak and Quark has Odo (okay, Quark and Odo have each other, I guess) and Sisko has Kira and Dax and O'BRIEN HAS NO ONE, except now he has the star of The Most Dangerous Game who has to leave at the end of the episode anyway. SORRY, O'BRIEN.

7. Q-Less

This is the one where Sisko demonstrates that he has no tolerance for any of this weird flirty trolling that Q likes to pull by punching him in the face. This is also the one where Odo calls Quark into his office because Quark is having a thing with Q's ex-girlfriend Lara Croft, and they have a conversation where Quark leans way over into Odo's personal space and demands to know if there is anything he desires, anything at all, and I swear to God they are acting out a scene from a noir movie with Odo as PI and Quark as femme fatale. I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

Meanwhile, Bashir flirts with everything in sight and then falls asleep for the rest of the episode. "The problem with Bashir," says Debi, "is he learned about girls from books and then got really attractive."

8. Dax

This is the one that firmly establishes for me that Odo just wants to be in a noir movie, because he's kind of annoyed about being sent off to investigate a murder that the previous Dax might or might not have done until the backstory gets all sleazy and scandalous and then you can almost see him putting on the mental fedora.

(Also, Debi and I have decided that this show would be way better if they'd hired the Capital Scandal costume designer. UNIFORM FEDORAS FOR EVERYONE.)

Meanwhile Sisko plays lawyer, we learn a lot about Trills in an effort to establish that THE PERSONALITIES ARE SYMBIONT, NO SERIOUSLY, SYMBIONT, Kira is extremely awesome in her ten seconds of screen time (there hasn't been enough Kira for ages!) and the show flirts with letting Dax make out with a lady but we're not quite there yet. Debi assures me that it will come.

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You should be ashamed for not calling it odork.

This show did not have NEARLY as much slashy subtext in the 1990s. I swear, it must've got visited by the Slash Fairy since I saw it last,

I've only seen three episodes of any Star Trek in all my life, and I know about odork!

Mostly because I think odork is a hilarious ship name, but still ...

IN FUTURE I WILL NOT MAKE THAT MISTAKE

Then there will be no reason to be ashamed!

/is completely unashamed to be vidding her DS9 OTP right now

Odo and Quark are eminently shippable. As were Garak Bashir until the producers got antsy. Season 1 is a bit slow, because it is finding its feet, but all in all DS9 is my personal favorite Star Trek. I hope you hang in until it really picks up and I hope you enjoy the series.

Hee, I definitely plan to! DESPITE MY MANY QUESTIONS, I am super enjoying myself.

DS9 is pretty much the best, in my extremely biased opinion (Ask my poor friends, who I keep badgering to watch it so I have people to talk to about it!) A fair number of the early episodes are pretty weak in comparison to the later stuff, but they still hold up pretty well.

This is what I hear! I am definitely excited to get to the more continuing-plot-arc stuff later on -- I'm enjoying the episodic stuff, but season-long political arcs are my jam. :D

I saw "linguistics" and got excited. Then I saw the words surrounding "linguistics" and got unexcited.

Today in epic sagas...

Seriously! COME ON, STAR TREK. You are supposed to be the meaty show of philosophical interest, it's time to step up!

This was my tragic arc also.

You, I think, want to watch Vic's episodes. Vic Fontaine is a holographic lounge singer who gets rather more presence than most of Trek's other holograms.

(One of these days I want to know why I remember the names of fictional characters better than the names of my coworkers.)

Well, in theory I will be watching all the episodes!

Hee, I love this and Tor just started their rewatch and only just did Babel. I have affection for DS9 though I also gave up on it somewhere around season three or four.

I look forward to more and if I'm ever in the area will join in watching. Oh and Bashir was one of my TV crushes because Bashir. <33s

Someone told me season four or five was when it got good! I don't know whether or not to believe them, but WE'LL SEE, I GUESS.

I suck at recalling when episodes happen in which series especially for Star Trek because there's so much. I might end up doing some watching along as Star Trek is a happy place for me.

Oh and important question. Should I read Cotillion or The Masqueraders next?

COTILLION. Cotillion is the best. I'm reccing it over a crossdressing book so you know it must be good!

That's all I need to know. There was a Dawn Treader bookstore stop this weekend. I also found Froi of the Exiles for a dollar.

There's a definite shift in the style of the show somewhere between S3 and S4 (and Worf arrives at the start of S4). I love the direction it goes in then, though some fans disliked it - but there are some great episodes even before then.

I'm not sure. Season Four is when the SPOILER EVENT gets started, but for all that, I don't think it seriously shifts in tone.

Maybe tone was the wrong word, but there's a definite shift towards arc-based stories.

Hi, I'm from your network (or you're from mine?), but close enough, right? Your reviews had me chortling. The clone theory is the only thing that makes sense. Man, now I want to rewatch.

Hee, thanks! :D CLONES FOR EVERYONE. It's my new default theory. "How does Bashir have time to flirt with everyone on Deep Space Nine?" "CLONES!"

"he learned about girls from books and then got really attractive" made me CACKLE with laughter. That explains basically everything you need to know about Bashir.

Half the reason I made this post was to capture Debi's wisdom for posterity. There is just so much "oh no . . . oh, no, no. NO."

Quark leans way over into Odo's personal space and demands to know if there is anything he desires, anything at all, and I swear to God they are acting out a scene from a noir movie with Odo as PI and Quark as femme fatale. I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

AHAHAHAHA

you are really gonna love the time in like four seasons when they climb a mountain together and have HIJINX!

also the other time THIS VERY SEASON that Odo has an actual noir episode.

DS9... is really great.

Is that the episode where they get stranded and Odo breaks his leg and Quark has to drag them to safety?

oh my god I had vague presentiments that there was a noir episode sometime in my future but I did not dare to dream it was THIS SEASON *____*

so many delights to come

God, yes. The more I think about the fact that Quark is the femme fatale to Odo's hard boiled liquid detective, the more I love it. All I can think of is Quark in a sequined cocktail dress, with a feather boa and a cigarette in a long holder, with his legs crossed at the bar.

"Why hello, my dear officer Odo. What brings you back to my little dive once more? Are you here to... pump me for information again?"

Also, this totally plays into one of my other favorite DS9 games: count how often Quark is kind of genderqueer. He is feminized... kind of delightfully often. Which you really notice of course when SPOILERS!!! He eventually has Bashir perform a full surgical sex reassignment one afternoon. So he can seduce another male Ferengi. This totally happens.

I love, love, love DS9. Especially Kira. (And Sisko. And Dax - though the writers don't get a handle on her until S2, more or less, so I always find S1 Dax odd. And O'Brian. And Odo. And Bashir. And...)

"The problem with Bashir," says Debi, "is he learned about girls from books and then got really attractive."

This is so true. Bashir's character development is interesting to me, because while it all feels plausible, there's a major twist that I will not go into because SPOILERS, which I believe the writers pulled out of thin air, and yet it works perfectly with what went before. Which had the potential to go so badly wrong, and they got away with it.

I love Bashir, because he does grow up (and the aforementioned twist makes me even more inclined to cut S1-2 Bashir some slack) but early on he hits my embarrassment squick so hard it's occasionally quite hard to watch him - the 'frontier medicine' line, for instance, even though I also enjoyed Kira's entirely justified put-down of him.

In the first episode when Bashir showed up, I turned to Debi and said ". . . he's supposed to be twenty-seven."

"Yes?"

"I'm twenty-seven. THIS IS AN INFANT."

And normally it's not like I feel particularly adult, but lord, Bashir! On the other hand his ever-present desire to play SPY has generated a lot of entertainment for us around various lot arcs so far, so I guess we can't really complain, except when he forgets about other people's personal boundaries. I hope for many, many more justified Kira put-downs!

ALL THIS. I loooove Kira and Bashir and... I actually totally love that he starts out as such a jerk, because I feel like it's so plausible, and it makes his character arc that much more interesting. (But only because the other characters do call him out on it, and he does grow up.)

Man, I gotta say, I am not yet used to looking at characters and feeling a sense of world-weary and mature exhaustion, but when it comes to Bashir . . .

I remember when this show first aired, Bashir was my favorite (I wrote a lot of angsty fanfic about him, which for me was about two fics). Then I tried to watch some of the series again a few months ago and all I could think was "Oh my gods, Bashir is AWFUL. He... he's a terrible person!" The way he objectifies Dax and basically every other woman he finds attractive... it almost makes me sad to have grown up to find out about rape culture and ingrained misogyny. :(

It's so true! The worst so far is in "Dax," which honestly, I'm pretty sure the only reason that one DOESN'T end with Dax decking him is because somebody else gets to it first. Mostly this just helps me feel justified in finding all his pain DEEPLY HILARIOUS.

He is a terrible person, and also hilariously unprepared for DS9. He's practically skipping around in an imaginary field of daisies, because this is gonna be an ADVENTURE! :D :D :D And then... and then.

... I might just have to recommit to a rewatch of this myself. >.> I have a feeling that, being more adult than I was when this first aired, not only will I have more secondhand embarrassment than before, and hate Bashir's awfulness while still wanting to cuddle his pretty face, but I will probably also join the ranks of the Garak/Bashir shippers. (I am ashamed to admit that, as a teenager, I shipped Bashir/Dax... do I get some credit for being an ignorant teenager?)

Several of the points I wanted to make were hit, including "there is in fact a noir episode with Odo as the PI, complete with voiceover," "your estimation of Bashir is particularly interesting for SPOILER reasons," and "yes, Kira is and remains awesome."

But this one remained untouched!

O'Brien cloned himself at the end of the episode and in all future episodes, whenever O'Brien is onscreen doing something plot-related, somewhere an O'Brien clone is toiling away sorting out somebody's plumbing.

Paging "Visionary," "Whispers," and "Hard Time" to the courtesy phone. (You will later find out that O'Brien does have an engineering staff. But those three episodes, the leading candidates of the "O'Brien Suffers" club, will be interesting especially if you keep your statement in mind.)

But is my estimation of ODO interesting for SPOILER reasons? Please tell me we get further information about his backstory as a sloshy foundling baby in a bucket! (I know we get information about his species origin, but really the bucket baby is what I care about.)

Also: DULY NOTED.

You will get some information about his sloshy past.

Not only do you get his bucket baby tales, you get to hear them from his massively embarrassing sloshy science dad. STOP SHOWING MY FRIENDS SLOSHY BABY PICS OF ME SCIENCE DAD OR I WILL FLUSH MYSELF DOWN THE DRAIN AGAIN.

YESSSSS THIS IS ALL I HOPED AND DREAMED

I love O'Brien. And I love it when O'Brien suffers. Mostly because he does it so well. "Visionary" is my favorite O'Brien episode. :D

Paging "Visionary," "Whispers," and "Hard Time"

Two out of three.

DS9 is the best. The best!

I will keep you all updated on my progress!

This is all interesting and terrifying! DS9 is the only star trek I never really got into. Well, ah. And Enterprise (bless its heart).

I don't know why of all of them I decided to start with this one -- well, it's partly because

gogollescent kept posting about political intrigue on tumblr and making it look interesting. But who knows, perhaps it will be the start of a SPIRALLING STAR TREK VORTEX! (Although the idea of like 150 episodes of DS9 seems pretty daunting in and of itself from where I'm sitting, I'll admit. US TV SHOWS ARE SO LONG.)

Roomie Joe and I did a Next Gen (re)Watch, and have recently moved onto DS9. Or as I call it:

Star Trek In A Mall.

I can't NOT see Gaius Baltar in Bashir.
I love Kira, but...want to know how someone can be THAT THIN and still have internal organs.
Odo's sass makes me happy.

Sisko is my second favorite Star Fleet captain.

I AM STEALING 'STAR TREK IN A MALL' AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME.

Bashir is TOTALLY Baby Gaius. WITH AN EVEN GREATER COMMITMENT TO SPARKLE MOTION, if that is at all possible.

Well, I'm not gonna body-police anybody, but based on her giant shiny eyes alone, I am pretty sure that Kira is an escaped homicidal Disney princess, if that helps . . .

The fact that neither Odo nor Sisko have any patience for any of anybody's crap makes me fundamentally delighted.

I can't NOT see Gaius Baltar in Bashir.

I KNOOOW. When I saw previews (and then the one or two actual episodes I saw) for Battlestar Galactica and saw Gaius I was all O.O!!!! Is that Alexander Siddig???

No?

Oh.

...

Are you sure it's not Alexander Siddig?

I remain half convinced to this day that James Callis is not real, just an extra stage name for Alexander Siddig after he gained some weight (seriously, how did he not just break in half while filimg DS9 the boy is SO SKINNY).

HAHAHAHA. HAAAAAAAA. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA okay, sorry, um, what was I-- yes. I look forward to your reaction to the show's later riffs on the O'Brien singularity problem. O'Brien never really manages to get an alien friend and keep them past their focus episode; this is one of the many, many tragedies of O'Brien's on-station life.

You already know my pleased, malicious thoughts re: Odo/Quark. What else? In some ways I wish Odo had gotten to star in his noir film; he's an odd character in that he's the gruff frontiersy sheriff for a season and then they take a left into politics and war, at which point criminal shenanigans suddenly pale beside, as Vimes would say, much larger crimes, and the question of who found or filled Odo's bucket becomes the hinge of relevance, rather than his ability to manifest a fedora. Enjoy it while it lasts, is what, although of course his essential lawful-curmudgeonliness remains untouchable throughout.

Dax's endless string of attractive widows/ex-conquests is one of the really beautiful things about DS9, and I refuse to believe that she and Enina didn't get in a nostalgic quickie before Enina went home to, presumably, have a pretty awkward family dinner.

Edited 2013-05-30 07:37 (UTC)

The O'Brien Singularity Problem is going to be the title of my first album.

omg. I know that I for one will be looking forward to thoughtful arias about what do to when you get replaced with a--ahem. Yes. Well.

skygiants knows not what joys await her.

Why did O'Brien join the DS9 crew anyway, if it was not to get a special alien friend? I AM DISAPPOINTED ON O'BRIEN'S BEHALF.

I think I already know your pleased, malicious thoughts re: this entire experience >:| I am enjoying Frontier Sheriff Odo immensely while it lasts, although even as of the first season he seems to feel vaguely out of place; he's still attempting to make it as a Rugged Loner while everyone else is functioning in a practical Federation team environment. I find it deeply entertaining how put-upon he looks whenever anybody expects him to function as part of the team even now, to be honest.

I kept wondering where all your characterization of Dax, Ladies' Woman, Woman About Town was coming from and now at last I think I have a clue! THE FIRST OF MANY, I presume. I am down with nostalgic quickie headcanon for Enina and for anyone else.

He does eventually become attached to Bashir. That is about as close as he gets, which just goes to show that O'Brien's is not a happy lot.

:)))))) Yes. Good point. But I wouldn't want you to be in any doubt, so I must continually reassert them. And yeah, Odo's career as lone-wolf-impinged-on-by-friendship is super enjoyable on its own merits. I particularly like his and Sisko's interactions on the subject, since Sisko has this remarkable ability to totally ignore team members' allergies to teamwork.

I PROMISE I DID NOT JUST PULL JADZIACOMO DAXANOVA OUT OF MY EAR. She is a creature of late-season DS9 more than she is a continual entity, but this is definitely the seed of things to come. It's the misplaced chivalry, is the important part. Delightful.

I am hearing many extremely ominous things about O'Brien's future career in this post . . .

And, ha, yes! It's especially great because Sisko and Odo have a similar lack of tolerance for anybody else's crap, so it's extra marvelous when they turn it on each other. (As opposed to the Starfleet captains represented before Sisko, who were much more the put-upon-ers than the put-upon.)

I AM GOING TO SEIZE ON ANY HINTS OF DAXANOVA I CAN GET.

Having already expressed my enthusiasm for DS9 and Odo/Quark, let me add the caveat that DS9's ethics regarding artificial life forms never get better, ever. Newly made clone dude actually may have it pretty good, considering. Starfleet probably has a creche for the raising of any and all adult clones who have been created for the purpose of criminal investigations.

I really feel like DS9, in addition to all their other staff, kind of needs a Special Ethics Officer. Someone whose entire job it is to wait around until Bashir says, "So, I'm going to do this thing," at which point the Special Ethics Officer goes "NO, YOU ABSOLUTELY CANNOT DO THAT THING."

Kirk could probably have used one too. Actually, can this be a standard Starfleet assignment?

I wouldn't trust anyone Starfleet assigned. Bashir is the super-ethics person in DS9, and his ethics, when it comes to artificial life forms...

BASHIR IS THE MOST ETHICAL PERSON?!?!?!

ENJOY! :D

I LOVE the idea of the Starfleet Special Ethics Officer. I assume they exist, but are always ignored. Kirk kept leaving them behind in spacedock. Bashir has secretly infected the one on DS9 with cardassian bowel parasites.

I was just going on recently about how Trek in general has never known how to handle artificial life. I mean, they love to bring it up, but every time they do it's like it's never come up before. Which is just weird. They have absolutely no rules about it. Data had been in Starfleet for decades before they decided to have a trial asking "hey, is this thing we made an officer actually a person?" Then on Voyager, they sort of casually make an AI a member of their crew, but stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that they've done so. I assume he can look forward to a similar trial thirty years into his career, when they suddenly go "Oh, are you a person? I hadn't noticed."

OF COURSE HE HAS. I mean, in a world where the vast majority of medical ailments can be fixed by waving a thingamabobber vaguely in somebody's direction, Bashir needs something to do with his time.

And yeah! It's really weird! You would think, given how apparently easy it is to make and develop, they would have come up with at least some consistent policies by now. Maybe the person who was supposed to develop the part of Federation bylaws dealing with artificial intelligence after Data's trial has been sick for the past ten years with Cardassian bowel parasites.

Ooh, you're watching DS9! I love DS9 so much, and I don't know what all this "it gets good in s4/s5" comes from, because to me it's always good. Though admittedly Dax gets better in s2 when they know what the heck to do with her.

There are some dud episodes, but all shows have dud episodes. And as others have pointed out, on occasion the show goes "HEEEEY let's have a plot event that COMPLETELY RETCONS THIS CHARACTER and give the actor two days notice!" but even that works out in the end, somehow.

Quark/Odo is immensely shippable in a hate-ship way, though I never got inspired enough to write it. If you write it, or if you find someone who has, I definitely want to read it!

Garak/Bashir is the kind of pairing that the actors were all on board and the higher-ups wouldn't hear about. So then they replaced it with ANOTHER slashy UST thing, and Andrew J. Robinson moved on to hint at Garak's bisexuality in a tie-in novel. So that makes sense.

Also, I think the Bajoran occupation is a super-interesting plotline, not least because the Cardassians have a whole culture of manipulative bastardness (their idea of flirting is... interesting) and there's a Bajoran villain as well who's just terrific.

ETA: Oh, look! I found a Quark/Odo T-shirt.

Edited 2013-05-31 18:07 (UTC)

I'm in the middle of reading Andrew Robinson's Garak novel right now, and it's lots of fun. He goes to Cardassian academy, which is sort of like Hunger Games meets Lord of the Flies, but with lizard people in the desert. And Teen!Garak gets hot for all the boys with the most prominent neck ridges.

It really is a lovely book. :-)

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p.s. I hate Bashir

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