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Apr. 9th, 2014 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsDebi and I officially into Season Four of Deep Space Nine! ALMOST HALFWAY THROUGH, sort of, kind of, except Season One was short so not really all that close, in fact. BUT SORT OF. Anyway the most important thing is that NOW WE HAVE WORF.
23. Family Business
Cartoonish Ferengi episode! Quark and Rom's mother is revealed to be THE MOST FEMINIST FERENGI, Rom loves her, Quark rages at her, wacky Ferengi hijinks ensue. I'd be a lot more interested in Ferengi feminism if we saw any of what happens within, like, an actual Ferengi female social sphere, instead of having it all framed through Quark's Wacky Profit-Related Hijinks.
Meanwhile, Kasidy Yates! BASEBALL ROMANCE FOR SISKO. I'm into it.
24. Shakaar
IT'S THE FIRST BAJORAN POLITICS EPISODE IN SO LONG WITHOUT BORING BAREIL IN IT. I would love it for that reason alone. No, but the politics are actually really interesting! Like, the question of how much force a centralized government should exert in times of lean resources is a legit one, and so is the question of how difficult it is to reintegrate revolutionary forces into peacetime conditions.
...however, however, back on Deep Space Nine, I am one hundred percent sure this conversation happened:
DAX: So .... Kira has spent the last three weeks on Bajor engaging in terrorist activities without filing for official leave ...
SISKO: Oh, it's fine, I got Bashir to use his magical emergency-medical-leave powers. She's covered. You know Kira, she's gotta do what she's gotta do.
DAX: ... yeah, remember that time that I took off to go have a blood feud that wasn't even illegal, and I came and asked for leave, OFFICIALLY, like a GOOD OFFICER, and you were like, Dax, if you go murder any Klingons, you're FIRED. Remember that? WHERE WAS YOUR EMERGENCY MEDICAL LEAVE THEN?
SISKO: Dax, I'm not sure you understand quite how much I dislike Kai Winn.
DAX: Ugh, Kira gets away with ALL the murder. >:(
(Not that Kira actually murders anyone in this episode! <333Kira.)
Meanwhile meanwhile, Bashir and O'Brien literally just play ping-pong all episode, because what complements a story ... about complex political responsibilities and guerrilla warfare ... like the most pointless sports hijinks subplot ever ...?
25. Facets
I have NO IDEA how to feel about this episode. I mean, on the plus side, it's a Jadzia-centric episode that she spends fully conscious and not on an operating table! So, points there.
And, okay, things in this episode that are great:
- Tobin Dax, aka Boring Dax, aka MY FAVORITE DAX, because the rest of Dax is SO HILARIOUSLY EMBARRASSED BY HIM, ugh, what a NERD
- Nana Visitor rocking out as Tiny Old Lady Dax
- the fact that Curzon-Odo just straight-up GOES FOR IT with Quark, like, saunters up to him and literally just PLANTS ONE STRAIGHT ON HIS HEAD, like, 'are we gonna do this thing or what?' and Quark has to go retire to his fainting chamber with his heart all a-tremble.
- Sisko just flat-out admitting that, you know, he loved Curzon and all, but ... he's a pretty terrible person ....
- the fact that Curzon-Odo NEVER ENCOUNTERS KIRA, because oh, god, TERRIBLE
- Jadzia's reaction to finding out that Curzon was creepy in love with her, because she's just like "oh, dude, that's not weird at all! I mean, why would it be weird? You love me? I LOVE ME. Come on, I'm awesome."
Things in this episode that are not great:
- CURZON BEING CREEPY IN LOVE WITH JADZIA ... what .... I .... like, Jadzia might be comfortable with this, but I'M NOT!
26. The Adversary
Was Ron D. Moore involved in this episode? Because the whole "The Changelings are everywhere! They could be anyone! ... THEY HAVE A PLAN!" thing feels very Battlestar Galactica ...
OK, anyway, that said, Debi and I just become more and more attached to poor Eddington. POOR EDDINGTON. Everyone ALWAYS, AUTOMATICALLY hates him and assumes that he is the bad guy of the week. He came here to make friends, guys. He came here to make friends. AND GET PROMOTED, which is another thing that will never happen.
1 and 2. The Way of the Warrior
Debi and I spent pretty much this whole episode just exclaiming "Worf!" "Worf!" "WORF!" at each other.
... look, Debi loves Klingons, and I got caught up in her enthusiasm.
However, there were a lot of other extremely notable things about this episode:
- Dax seduces Kira with holosuites. That's ... very much a thing that happened.
- ...relatedly, who was Dax even playing in the King Arthur holosuite program?!?
- and then Worf enters and Dax is just like "DIBS DIBS DIBS"
- meanwhile, Sisko SAYING THINGS LOUDLY NEAR GARAK is, like, one of his best and funniest diplomatic schemes ever
- Garak and Quark bitching about the Federation is also pretty great
- but not quite as great as Sisko DASHINGLY RESCUING DUKAT, following which Dukat is snippier to him than ever
DEBI: Everything is better since we found out Cardassians flirt by being really snotty. EVERYTHING.
And then Worf decides to stay and gets promoted to command track. Yay!
...meanwhile, Eddington is nowhere to be seen and, like, on vacation for the length of this episode ...? Presumably he's going to come back from a relaxing two weeks on Earth to find that the command-track position that he'd been aiming to apply for has been taken by this TOTALLY RANDOM NEW GUY that everybody already likes better than him. EDDINGTON'S LIFE IS THE WORST.
3. The Visitor
This is a really depressing episode ... so we made a lot of jokes while watching it ...
OK, so this is the one where there's a whole alternate timeline where Sisko gets accidentally warped into Timeheart or something, but makes occasional ageless appearances to say encouraging dad things and demand grandchildren. Unfortunately, Jake Sisko spends 80 years dedicating himself to pulling Sisko out of Timeheart because he loved him so much, so Sisko is ETERNALLY DISAPPOINTED. "Oh no," he is clearly thinking in every appearance, "I was ... too good a dad! I DID MY WORK TOO WELL."
Then at the end Old Jake figures out how to push a reset button so the whole thing never happens, leaving Sisko with only the MINOR TRAUMA of watching his sad 80-year-old son die in front of him. Presumably Sisko will now spend the next year desperately setting Jake up with every girl on DS9. Grandchildren. GRANDCHILDREN! BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.
4. Hippocratic Oath
"You know," Debi said, five minutes into this episode, "there aren't any female Jem'Hadar, right? Or else this episode would be about how Bashir is convinced to help them by his romance with a beautiful Jem'Hadar ..."
So we watched a few more minutes.
O'BRIEN: We need to escape from the Jem'Hadar!
BASHIR: But he isn't like other Jem'Hadar, O'Brien! He's DIFFERENT. He has FEELINGS. COMPASSION! I can change him.
DEBI: ...all right, my mistake, this is an episode about Bashir's romance with a beautiful Jem'Hadar.
I mean, it still takes Bashir like half the episode to figure out that HELPING A SENTIENT SPECIES break free of the drug addiction that makes them ACTUAL SLAVES is maybe probably the ethical thing to do, because ethics are not Bashir's strong point, and even then he has to be motivated by his romance with a ~special~ Jem'Hadar, but, you know, anyway.
We spent some time imagining how this episode would have gone if any of the other cast members had crash-landed with Bashir, instead of O'Brien.
SISKO - immediately grasps the tactical advantages of releasing the Jem'Hadar from Dominion control; helps Bashir cure the Jem'Hadar, aims the Jem'Hadar at the Founders, aims the Klingons at the Jem'Hadar, and rests on his laurels, content in the knowledge that he has averted the entire Dominion war and will spend the next three seasons happily playing Bajoran politics
KIRA - initially advocates killing all the Jem'Hadar, has reluctant sympathy for the Jem'Hadar by 10 minutes in, is in full-on Colonized Planet Empathy mode by 20 minutes in, is yelling at Bashir to CURE FASTER by 30 minutes in, and by 40 minutes in all the Jem'Hadar are cured and Kira is really overinvested in ALL OF THEM
JADZIA - on the one hand, would probably be scientifically useful and supportive of the development of a cure; on the other hand, her friendly competition with Bashir to see which of them is going to be the first to cross off the Jem'Hadar square on their Alien Species Sexy Bingo Cards might put a critical delay into the experimental proceedings
QUARK - encourages Bashir to develop the cure and then sells it to the Jem'Hadar at ten bars of latinum apiece
Anyway what all of these scenarios have in common is that THEY ALL END BETTER THAN THE O'BRIEN ONE.
I have already talked a lot about the A-plot so all I am going to say about the B-plot in which Worf spends the whole episode BACKSEAT SECURITY-ING an increasingly frustrated Odo is that it is beautiful.
23. Family Business
Cartoonish Ferengi episode! Quark and Rom's mother is revealed to be THE MOST FEMINIST FERENGI, Rom loves her, Quark rages at her, wacky Ferengi hijinks ensue. I'd be a lot more interested in Ferengi feminism if we saw any of what happens within, like, an actual Ferengi female social sphere, instead of having it all framed through Quark's Wacky Profit-Related Hijinks.
Meanwhile, Kasidy Yates! BASEBALL ROMANCE FOR SISKO. I'm into it.
24. Shakaar
IT'S THE FIRST BAJORAN POLITICS EPISODE IN SO LONG WITHOUT BORING BAREIL IN IT. I would love it for that reason alone. No, but the politics are actually really interesting! Like, the question of how much force a centralized government should exert in times of lean resources is a legit one, and so is the question of how difficult it is to reintegrate revolutionary forces into peacetime conditions.
...however, however, back on Deep Space Nine, I am one hundred percent sure this conversation happened:
DAX: So .... Kira has spent the last three weeks on Bajor engaging in terrorist activities without filing for official leave ...
SISKO: Oh, it's fine, I got Bashir to use his magical emergency-medical-leave powers. She's covered. You know Kira, she's gotta do what she's gotta do.
DAX: ... yeah, remember that time that I took off to go have a blood feud that wasn't even illegal, and I came and asked for leave, OFFICIALLY, like a GOOD OFFICER, and you were like, Dax, if you go murder any Klingons, you're FIRED. Remember that? WHERE WAS YOUR EMERGENCY MEDICAL LEAVE THEN?
SISKO: Dax, I'm not sure you understand quite how much I dislike Kai Winn.
DAX: Ugh, Kira gets away with ALL the murder. >:(
(Not that Kira actually murders anyone in this episode! <333Kira.)
Meanwhile meanwhile, Bashir and O'Brien literally just play ping-pong all episode, because what complements a story ... about complex political responsibilities and guerrilla warfare ... like the most pointless sports hijinks subplot ever ...?
25. Facets
I have NO IDEA how to feel about this episode. I mean, on the plus side, it's a Jadzia-centric episode that she spends fully conscious and not on an operating table! So, points there.
And, okay, things in this episode that are great:
- Tobin Dax, aka Boring Dax, aka MY FAVORITE DAX, because the rest of Dax is SO HILARIOUSLY EMBARRASSED BY HIM, ugh, what a NERD
- Nana Visitor rocking out as Tiny Old Lady Dax
- the fact that Curzon-Odo just straight-up GOES FOR IT with Quark, like, saunters up to him and literally just PLANTS ONE STRAIGHT ON HIS HEAD, like, 'are we gonna do this thing or what?' and Quark has to go retire to his fainting chamber with his heart all a-tremble.
- Sisko just flat-out admitting that, you know, he loved Curzon and all, but ... he's a pretty terrible person ....
- the fact that Curzon-Odo NEVER ENCOUNTERS KIRA, because oh, god, TERRIBLE
- Jadzia's reaction to finding out that Curzon was creepy in love with her, because she's just like "oh, dude, that's not weird at all! I mean, why would it be weird? You love me? I LOVE ME. Come on, I'm awesome."
Things in this episode that are not great:
- CURZON BEING CREEPY IN LOVE WITH JADZIA ... what .... I .... like, Jadzia might be comfortable with this, but I'M NOT!
26. The Adversary
Was Ron D. Moore involved in this episode? Because the whole "The Changelings are everywhere! They could be anyone! ... THEY HAVE A PLAN!" thing feels very Battlestar Galactica ...
OK, anyway, that said, Debi and I just become more and more attached to poor Eddington. POOR EDDINGTON. Everyone ALWAYS, AUTOMATICALLY hates him and assumes that he is the bad guy of the week. He came here to make friends, guys. He came here to make friends. AND GET PROMOTED, which is another thing that will never happen.
1 and 2. The Way of the Warrior
Debi and I spent pretty much this whole episode just exclaiming "Worf!" "Worf!" "WORF!" at each other.
... look, Debi loves Klingons, and I got caught up in her enthusiasm.
However, there were a lot of other extremely notable things about this episode:
- Dax seduces Kira with holosuites. That's ... very much a thing that happened.
- ...relatedly, who was Dax even playing in the King Arthur holosuite program?!?
- and then Worf enters and Dax is just like "DIBS DIBS DIBS"
- meanwhile, Sisko SAYING THINGS LOUDLY NEAR GARAK is, like, one of his best and funniest diplomatic schemes ever
- Garak and Quark bitching about the Federation is also pretty great
- but not quite as great as Sisko DASHINGLY RESCUING DUKAT, following which Dukat is snippier to him than ever
DEBI: Everything is better since we found out Cardassians flirt by being really snotty. EVERYTHING.
And then Worf decides to stay and gets promoted to command track. Yay!
...meanwhile, Eddington is nowhere to be seen and, like, on vacation for the length of this episode ...? Presumably he's going to come back from a relaxing two weeks on Earth to find that the command-track position that he'd been aiming to apply for has been taken by this TOTALLY RANDOM NEW GUY that everybody already likes better than him. EDDINGTON'S LIFE IS THE WORST.
3. The Visitor
This is a really depressing episode ... so we made a lot of jokes while watching it ...
OK, so this is the one where there's a whole alternate timeline where Sisko gets accidentally warped into Timeheart or something, but makes occasional ageless appearances to say encouraging dad things and demand grandchildren. Unfortunately, Jake Sisko spends 80 years dedicating himself to pulling Sisko out of Timeheart because he loved him so much, so Sisko is ETERNALLY DISAPPOINTED. "Oh no," he is clearly thinking in every appearance, "I was ... too good a dad! I DID MY WORK TOO WELL."
Then at the end Old Jake figures out how to push a reset button so the whole thing never happens, leaving Sisko with only the MINOR TRAUMA of watching his sad 80-year-old son die in front of him. Presumably Sisko will now spend the next year desperately setting Jake up with every girl on DS9. Grandchildren. GRANDCHILDREN! BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.
4. Hippocratic Oath
"You know," Debi said, five minutes into this episode, "there aren't any female Jem'Hadar, right? Or else this episode would be about how Bashir is convinced to help them by his romance with a beautiful Jem'Hadar ..."
So we watched a few more minutes.
O'BRIEN: We need to escape from the Jem'Hadar!
BASHIR: But he isn't like other Jem'Hadar, O'Brien! He's DIFFERENT. He has FEELINGS. COMPASSION! I can change him.
DEBI: ...all right, my mistake, this is an episode about Bashir's romance with a beautiful Jem'Hadar.
I mean, it still takes Bashir like half the episode to figure out that HELPING A SENTIENT SPECIES break free of the drug addiction that makes them ACTUAL SLAVES is maybe probably the ethical thing to do, because ethics are not Bashir's strong point, and even then he has to be motivated by his romance with a ~special~ Jem'Hadar, but, you know, anyway.
We spent some time imagining how this episode would have gone if any of the other cast members had crash-landed with Bashir, instead of O'Brien.
SISKO - immediately grasps the tactical advantages of releasing the Jem'Hadar from Dominion control; helps Bashir cure the Jem'Hadar, aims the Jem'Hadar at the Founders, aims the Klingons at the Jem'Hadar, and rests on his laurels, content in the knowledge that he has averted the entire Dominion war and will spend the next three seasons happily playing Bajoran politics
KIRA - initially advocates killing all the Jem'Hadar, has reluctant sympathy for the Jem'Hadar by 10 minutes in, is in full-on Colonized Planet Empathy mode by 20 minutes in, is yelling at Bashir to CURE FASTER by 30 minutes in, and by 40 minutes in all the Jem'Hadar are cured and Kira is really overinvested in ALL OF THEM
JADZIA - on the one hand, would probably be scientifically useful and supportive of the development of a cure; on the other hand, her friendly competition with Bashir to see which of them is going to be the first to cross off the Jem'Hadar square on their Alien Species Sexy Bingo Cards might put a critical delay into the experimental proceedings
QUARK - encourages Bashir to develop the cure and then sells it to the Jem'Hadar at ten bars of latinum apiece
Anyway what all of these scenarios have in common is that THEY ALL END BETTER THAN THE O'BRIEN ONE.
I have already talked a lot about the A-plot so all I am going to say about the B-plot in which Worf spends the whole episode BACKSEAT SECURITY-ING an increasingly frustrated Odo is that it is beautiful.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-10 03:29 am (UTC)Garak and Odo in Way of the Warrior: was that the root beer conversation? Because that was also MADE OF AWESOME. Oh man, I'm going to have to watch this episode again!
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Date: 2014-04-10 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-10 04:23 am (UTC)Heh.
Heh heh heh heh.
No comment.
Garak and Quark bitching about the Federation is also pretty great
The Root Beer Conversation is one of the best scenes in all of Star Trek.
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Date: 2014-04-10 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-11 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-12 02:06 am (UTC)PERPETUALLY PUFFY-JACKETED, LONG-SUFFERING AND SAD. Everyone loves Morn!
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Date: 2014-04-12 05:37 am (UTC)Okay, in my heart, he's actually REALLY CHEERFUL and has a rich inner life and is perpetually, like, writing happy fanfic in his head! It's just that his face is stuck in a "...welp." expression.
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Date: 2014-04-12 08:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-13 12:52 pm (UTC)Apparently the fact that he never speaks wasn't even intentional -- they kept writing him lines into episodes, and then EVERY TIME the lines would end up getting cut when they made edits. MORN!
no subject
Date: 2014-04-10 05:08 am (UTC)Was Ron D. Moore involved in this episode? Because the whole "The Changelings are everywhere! They could be anyone! ... THEY HAVE A PLAN!" thing feels very Battlestar Galactica ...
IIRC he's just a super big fan of it? But DS9 has all kinds of plot elements you see explored in BSG. Sometimes rather less thoughtfully, imo.
- ...relatedly, who was Dax even playing in the King Arthur holosuite program?!?
I...haven't ever thought about this, but good question. Hmm.
DEBI: Everything is better since we found out Cardassians flirt by being really snotty. EVERYTHING.
TRUTH.
I mean, it still takes Bashir like half the episode to figure out that HELPING A SENTIENT SPECIES break free of the drug addiction that makes them ACTUAL SLAVES is maybe probably the ethical thing to do
Yeah, this is one of those episodes where I feel like O'Brien is meant to be our everyman. Except that he's not remotely an everyman. Like, I think that his perspective makes total sense from a character point of view, and I can even sympathize with him...but in a HE IS SO WRONG kind of way where I'm not sure why this is even an ethical argument we have to have except that the episode wants it to be, and he's One of the Good Guys so we can't frame him as just a straight up antagonist.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-10 12:44 pm (UTC)I like to think that Dax was actually playing King Arthur and aiming for a Kira/Lancelot threesome, she just ALSO wanted to wear a pretty dress and pointy hat. DAX DOES WHAT SHE WANTS.
Aaaand yeah, like, one can see where O'Brien is coming from, but in addition to ... being flat-out unethical ... it's just SUCH A SHORT-RANGE VIEW. His grasp of tactics is WRONG and he should, actually, get brought up on charges for it. Freeing the Jem'Hadar would be AMAZING for the Federation. This is why you're not command track, O'Brien!
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Date: 2014-04-10 07:20 pm (UTC)That's how I feel about O'Brien in general. I don't have anything against him, it's just tiresome how the writers seem convinced that all their viewers are O'Briens.
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Date: 2014-04-10 09:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-10 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-29 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-10 07:21 pm (UTC)I have a thing for Shakaar because of the Zorro nostalgia factor. (Even though I'll readily admit that the show is pretty terrible.)
SISKO: Dax, I'm not sure you understand quite how much I dislike Kai Winn.
I feel ya, Sisko. Kai Winn gave me those KILL IT WITH FIRE feels because I kept being nervous that she'd severely fuck things up for the team. Which is also why she's one of my favourite villains.
the fact that Curzon-Odo just straight-up GOES FOR IT with Quark, like, saunters up to him and literally just PLANTS ONE STRAIGHT ON HIS HEAD, like, 'are we gonna do this thing or what?' and Quark has to go retire to his fainting chamber with his heart all a-tremble.
My headcanon is that Quark's soft spot for Dax is all about her Curzon side really. :-)
DEBI: Everything is better since we found out Cardassians flirt by being really snotty. EVERYTHING.
Indeed!
no subject
Date: 2014-04-11 04:58 am (UTC)Ha ha well, it's like ... half that and half the fact that Dax is clearly the least racist person on the station. Which isn't actually saying all that much, because dang, is everyone really racist towards Ferengi.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-12 08:12 am (UTC)I want a dark AU where the Bajorans ally themselves with the Klingons or the Founders because anything is better than what they went through under the Cardassians.
Also Sisko should point out that (Bashir thinks) Kira needs a couple weeks being a resistance fighter as part of her healing process. Dax's Klingon fetish is not a medical condition!
no subject
Date: 2014-04-13 12:54 pm (UTC)DAX NEEDS TO INDULGE HER KLINGON FETISH as part of her ... healing process ... from being Curzon! CURZON WAS A JERK. Living as Curzon for sixty years takes some recovery!
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Date: 2019-12-29 10:52 pm (UTC)BECAUSE CURZON GODDAMN DAX
Rene just *killed it* as Curzon, I tell you.
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Date: 2019-12-30 03:23 am (UTC)