Comment Stream

Re: DS9 S5: Let He Who Is Without Sin...

@Elliott

Ha! At this point do you ever feel like you couldn't change your mind even if you wanted to? People's perception of your opinion is probably bigger than it actually is =P

Re: DS9 S7: Extreme Measures

@ Elliot
You say surprisingly, but wasn't Section 31 portrayed as an antagonistic force every time we saw them? Sometimes they shared the same long term goals as our "heroes", but they were usually willing to get there via very different methods.

Re: DS9 S7: Afterimage

@Dave in NC
I thought she was at least passable in Dead Zone. I agree with you, for the most part, about DS9 though.

The thing with Star Trek is, I don't know if it's the directors or what, but the acting on Star Trek often...comes across differently. It's certainly not naturalistic, put it that way. It has a very specific cadence, a bit of a slow and laboured ring. Realisations are over-emphasised, laughs are never quite convincing.

I mean I still love it, but I don't quite believe the events in front of my eyes because of it. Even Bashir and O'Brien, who have one of the more believable-looking relationships in Trek, get stung by it. In that scene in Explorers where they get drunk, it's a pretty good scene but it has this air of forced "ho ho look at this mateship!" to it.

Hopefully someone knows what I'm talking about. I've been a Trek fan for most of my 33 years...by that I mean more than 20 of them, and it still has a really special place in my heart. But yeah, looking back, I think the actors were actually discouraged from inserting any sort of natural rhythm, inserting "uh"s, stumbling slightly on words, all that sort of thing. That's one thing I think Battlestar did well, for the most part.

Re: TNG S4: The Wounded

I like to think that although the Federation is moneyless, since they're posted on a Bajoran station they'd get some kind of stipend of local currency. I understand the ideal of the Federation being without currency but it's practical to keep some sort of reserve of international funds to allow your officers to do their job. Starfleet must have some sort of latinum reserve at least for trading purposes.

Tongo probably doesn't qualify as claimable on the Federation expense account though! If not that, it may be that Starfleet officers just come into a bit of local money and think it prudent to start building an account. Certainly if you were a US officer stationed in the Phillipines, for example, and for some reason there was no exchange rate, it'd be advisable to hoard a bit of local currency in case the need arises.

Re: TNG S1: Skin of Evil

I think Yar could have been my favourite character but a show like TNG was the wrong vehicle for her backstory. Not to knock TNG, I honestly love it and DS9 in totally different ways, but the show just wasn't the right format for a character like hers. You need time to see just how damaged she would be and how little trust she lacks, and see her grow to accept her childhood and go in new directions.

I do think she was poorly cast though. I think I read they initially had a Vazquez from Aliens type character in mind. But a blonde Vazquez? Maybe if she had been a reboot Starbuck kind of person, but Denise Crosby was just all wrong.

I can't comment too directly on her acting, but I see she's about to appear on The Walking Dead (at 57!) so we can see if she got better with age. And let's face it, first season scripts didn't give her much to work with. It's a shame, I can imagine an alternate universe where her character really found her feet and became awesome.

Re: DS9 S7: What You Leave Behind

@Ric "This is the utopian Federation from original Star Trek.... One that accepts genocide during war times, not like current 20th-2st centuries, but like 17th empires, like 20th century nazi. And in the end, no regrets and no help to the surrendered enemy!"

That's interesting because TNG's "I, Borg" gets a huge amount of crap thrown at it because it shows the Enterprise coming upon a weapon that could wipe out the Borg and save millions of lives, but they choose not to use it because it amounts to genocide. The comments on that page more or less amount to "the blood of millions is on Picard's hands!" And I, inconsistently I suppose, defend that episode. There will be upset fans no matter what you do really.

Admittedly the parallel is not quite there. The Borg scenario requires taking an action. The Dominion scenario on the other hand involves the action being taken by a third party (the rogue group Section 31) and Starfleet having an opportunity to intervene. It conjures up ethics class discussions about the Trolley Problem and taking an action that ends a life versus a lack of action that then takes a life.

Re: DS9 S1: Progress

It's been awhile since I've seen this one but aren't the holdouts offered land on a different moon as compensation? As long as you're justly compensated, the government forcibly purchasing your property isn't unusual, it happens all the time even now via eminent domain. You do have legal recourse though, Bajoran lawyers should have been rushing to defend these farmers, get the issue out into the press, drum up some grassroots support for this David and Goliath story, make the political costs greater for the Provisional Government than the gains of booting them out.

Damn I think I want to see my version now.

Re: DS9 S3: Heart of Stone

@Paul M
Must be that pesky affirmative action again ;)

Re: DS9 S7: Penumbra

@Ric Well, the Prophets exist outside of time, their non-linear nature seems to allow them to see not only the future, but all possible futures. Therefore if I was Sisko and they said "you shouldn't get married, it's going to end badly", I'd go "well, thanks for the heads up". In retrospect, since he did get married and we saw how that ended, they were trying to save him from heartache.

I'll admit it would be nice if they spelt things out a little clearer re: the whole "nothing but sorrow" business, but a) english is their second language; b) you can level that charge at just about any prophecy-based piece of fiction; or c) maybe they don't want to trigger the timeline where Sisko does what he is told without truly understanding why, they want the timeline where Sisko makes a mistake, pays the price and learns from it.

Re: TNG S2: Up the Long Ladder

@Jons It's funny you mention that, I was recently talking to a friend about my frustration that sci-fi of all things tends to do this. His theory was that the majority of science-fiction stories are retellings of the Frankenstein story, that they're all about the dangers of the future and man playing with fire. I don't think "majority" is accurate but it's definitely a big theme through a lot of sci-fi.

It's probably just a reflection of our society too though, in that we tend to elevate and personify nature ("not what nature intended") versus a general theme that man cannot exceed nature and shouldn't try (transhumanism, genetic modification, that sort of thing). I tried to explain to a friend who "doesn't drink anything with chemicals in it" that water is a chemical; we went around in circles for 20 minutes.

I like that duality in fiction though, there's this sort of double-edged sword, we celebrate the potential of the future yet are wary at the same time (striking a balance is probably best).

Along those lines, I recommend Spike Jonze' latest movie "Her".
Plot setup (but not ending) spoilers: People focus on the "man falls in love with his operating system" element like it's a joke, but it ends up being a really nice and positive look at how love transcends the need for bodies. And I'd say it's quite a pro-science movie, if you know what I mean. There's never a sense of "how sad, why couldn't he find a real person", the movie barely even questions the worth of an AI (one or two characters aside).

Re: DS9 S4: Homefront

Also you only see strawmen if you go in presuming there's a debate going on.

In The Cards: I don't think the writers of DS9 were arguing anything in that episode. It was 43 minutes of fluff. Nog was in the scene, Nog is a Ferengi, so they gave him the dialogue that I would certainly expect him to say in that scenario. And then they proceeded to not uphold either angle, because they weren't "upholding" anything, he was spouting the same crap Ferengi always spout and whether it holds up for us or not is irrelevant, because no one is trying to convince us the Ferengi are right, they just are what they are. It was character dialogue, not a soapbox agenda.

AR-558, I don't think the Federation's "ideals are simultaneously made to look inadequate and tenuous", I think the Federation was fighting a long war and resources were becoming thin. Any power on the show would have faced the same issues. It was not a comment on Federation philosophy or effectiveness.

Tears of the Prophets: "Instead, the opinion is offered (and left unchallenged) that 'going against the prophets' is automatically bad because, shut up."
If there was a political message in this episode, which I doubt, it was if aliens who can see future timelines give you advice, you should probably consider that advice really carefully.

Anyway, the point is I don't think DS9 was attacking anything, as you say, I think you decided it was attacking and view everything through that lens. At best, they were striving to push Trek into some uncomfortable places, but most of the time it was just being a sci-fi show.

The religion angle is really fascinating actually, because not only is Ronald D. Moore agnostic and, based on his BSG podcasts, deeply suspicious of religion, but ironically some of your posts "defending" Trek actually start to sound like people defending their religion.

My feeling about the Bajorans and their very presence on the show is that RDM was neither holding them up as a shining example nor casting them down, they were just there. The Federation might have moved beyond religion but it will always have to interface with religious people - and when there's stable wormholes involved that you want to borrow, you should probably stay on their good side, defend them from attackers to keep it in good hands, and in general not be douchey to them. It's the same thing with the Ferengi, the Federation might maintain a moneyless society but it still needs some form of latinum reserves to trade with the the Ferengi for all those "unreplicatable" medicines the Enterprise was ferrying around.

The point to all those parts, to me, isn't to get on a soapbox and denounce them, it's to put them in there because the galactic community, if there were one, would probably have them. It's kind of like conservatives complaining that any TV show with a gay character is "pro-gay" by default. Regardless of your stance on them, editing them out of existence is a bit disingenuous. So yeah, good or bad, the Bajorans are there, the Ferengi are there.

It's the same theme with the Maquis. You said "they're just about the most self-righteous assholes portrayed in this franchise". Yeah they are, sure. Self-righteous assholes do exist. I don't think the show went out of its way to demand that we switch sides and despise the Federation along with them. They were antagonists. It was a shitty situation, but also not a very surprising one. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few at all that, sure, they should have packed up their homes in exchange for the lives saved via the treaty. But do you really think you could get a whole colony of people to follow through on that? I doubt it. So yeah they were selfish, but understandably so, and they went down in flames because of it in the end.

Eh, I'm way off track now. Just saying that maybe Ronald D Moore didn't hate the rest of Trek as much as you think. What I think he did do was take the focus to the edges of the Federation and take a peek at the rest of the galactic community and see what they were doing and thinking and feeling. And some of them spoke out against the Federation because they're just as nationalistic as humans are. The Federation is their "other", so of course they would. I don't need the writers to present arguments for and against because it's not a debate they're putting forward, it's just the way that universe is and those non-Federation citizens think, and I'm perfectly capable of making my own assessments. I don't need Jake to defend Federation economics, I can already see it.

Re: VOY S7: Repression

@Nick

You can tell the whole moneyless future, limitless resources thing really writes them into a corner. They have to make replicated food "not as good as the real thing" to justify people sourcing fresh ingredients, or even cooking at all. The list of unreplicatable goods is kept long and vague so the Enterprise can be rushing some random medicine to another planet as a plot device. In a world where you could replicate anything, the only really valuable objects would be the spare parts for when the replicator breaks down (maybe all colonies have two as a failsafe).

The replicators do have to build things out of something though, so I suppose the very act of collecting raw matter would be enough to drive an economy of a sorts (just a really efficient one where you can turn anything into anything). And the process of replicating itself requires energy, which isn't limitless, so there's that I suppose.

It does keep it all relatable too. It'd be hard to really comprehend or relate to the dilemmas facing a society that can create food, medicine, anything at a whim.

But yes as you point out, it's interesting that Star Trek barely touches things like mass-producing robots or genetic engineering or cybernetics (beyond Data, Bashir and Geordi, respectively). It's like these things just...didn't happen, in *any* of the major societies, as far as we can see. Even if it's not the "Starfleet way" and there's some Treaty of Shortsightedness that blocks it, I imagine someone like the Romulans would *love* an army of vision enhanced cyborgs. The Cardassians could have used drones in the labour camps mining dilithium, made the occupation much smoother!

Re: VOY S7: Drive

In the way BSG (and to a lesser extent Star Wars) render space combat as fighter planes and aircraft carriers, Star Trek seems to render space combat more as a navy metaphor...with your large, slow moving cruisers firing cannon volleys like the Enterprise, or your cloaked ships standing in for submarines. I think that's where the 2-D bias originates, when you're thinking of space as an ocean it's easy to get stuck in that mindset =P

Not saying it's good or bad mind you, that's just how I see the way Star Trek "thinks" (and it's not a hard rule or anything, things like Bird of Preys or the Defiant, when they're decloaked anyway, are a bit more in the fighter plane category).

Re: DS9 S7: What You Leave Behind

On Memory-Alpha, Ira Stephen Behr is quoted as saying "We had planned to see Terry Farrell in the flashbacks but she refused to let us use any of her clips. The way I see it is this: Her manager was informed that we were thinking of using Terry in a scene in the final episode. It would have probably been three hours of work... maybe four. The price they quoted us was too high for the budget. After all, this was a show where we had to cut out hundreds of thousands of dollars from the original draft. Her manager was informed that we weren't going to be able to use Terry. And on top of it, the scene we had been thinking of for her was really not that germane to the plot. I think Terry's feelings were hurt. When it came to the issue of the clips, they again felt that they would prefer that we went a different way without using the character of Jadzia Dax. So we did. I wasn't happy about it. I'm still not happy about it. But it is a reminder that even Star Trek is just part of the great showbiz sludge."

I'm surprised too that actor likeness copyright works that way, but it makes sense. I seem to remember reading getting all the old Trouble With Tribbles footage was a legal nightmare as well, contacting estates of extras etc.

But Terry Farrell attended the DS9 wrap party, so things couldn't have been that bitter. Also we're only hearing one side of the story.

I'm no expert, but maybe her contract was lacking one of those "continuing use" clauses.

Re: BSG S4: Blood on the Scales

@Cureboy

My absolute favourite part of the second half of Season 4 is the Zarek/Gaeta mutiny plotline, and it really cemented Gaeta as my favourite character at the time. His arc from enthusiastic Baltar fan to angry, one-legged pessimist is sort of awe-inspiring. And it explores an interesting side-element of optimism...the crash down can be twice as hard if your hopes are dashed and the people you believed in let you down, leading you to become as bitter and angry as Gaeta did. And I like that he was never caricatured as a villain, he really wanted a positive change to occur, he just blindly believed it could happen bloodlessly.

Re: TNG S5: The Outcast

@Andy's friend

Your comments on homosexuality in the future certainly got me thinking. While it's an issue I regularly fight for, to be honest if I knew my unborn child was gay and I had the opportunity to "fix" it, I might even do that...not out of shame or anything, but because I can see in my friends how much harder it is to live with. But then that's probably more an indictment on our society than on them. Ideally we reach a place where it's not such a negative, in which case even if the option were available, it may not be something that's taken up.

I won't go on that topic too much, it's a big one, but it also leaves me wondering why Geordi's vision wasn't caught earlier either.

What I really wanted to reply to was as far as TNG's idealism goes. The thing about the Roddenberry vision that bothers me is that it presumes humanity moves forward in one collective heap. But we don't, there are always outliers. Most of the things you listed still happen. "Society", as a set of regulations that overlays the way we interact with each other, might condemn them now but it doesn't stop them from happening.

So I liked the middle ground that DS9 took. I still argue that it had an optimistic view of the Federation, that by and large it was made up of good people, but they were willing to say there are bad apples. There will always be bad apples because what society defines as a "bad apple" is someone with a different idea, and if no has different ideas then we never move forward. I don't believe that Section 31 *could not* exist in the Federation, but I do believe it would be small, it would struggle to gain traction amongst the wider human society, and the majority of Starfleet citizens would react just like Bashir and O'Brien did: with horror.

On top of that, people seem to ignore that DS9 was able to put most of its dissenting "voice" into alien characters like Quark, Kira or Garak. I think that's fair. Roddenberry had a vision for how humanity would evolve, but we would still have to interact with the rest of the galaxy.

To put it another way, just because we're a moneyless society in 350 years doesn't mean Starfleet doesn't have a stash of Gold-Pressed Latinum, or else what are they trading with the Ferengi? They can't say "oh we're a moneyless society", the Ferengi reply "well, too bad, we're not giving it to you for free".

My point is I think we'll go a long way in 350 years, but who knows what we'll find out there when we get there. "Utopia" sort of implies a closed system in a way, but what happens when utopia has to interact with everyone else? *That* was the interesting question I thought DS9 was asking. Because it's easy for someone on Earth to never see Latinum and live in harmony, but a posting on the fringe like DS9 requires a different skill set. Example 1: if you want to bond with the locals, you can't sit in your quarters drinking your free Starfleet beverages, you need to hang out where they hang out, and bond. And to do that, you're going to need a stipend of local currency of some kind, which I assume is how they paid Quark's tab. Example 2: religion may have died off in the Trek future, and fair enough, but if you want access to another culture's wormhole you can't go throwing it in their faces.

Eh, I'm rambling slightly now, haha, hopefully there's some cogent message in here. The point is, I loved TNG and I loved DS9. A metaphor I've used before here: sometimes I like a restaurant and sometimes I like a bar. They both serve different functions, they have different atmospheres, and they are both true. Some people find restaurants stuffy and boring, some people find bars uncouth and messy and dangerous. But for me at different times, in different moods, I like them both. But most importantly they can be true at the same time.

Re: DS9 S6: Far Beyond the Stars

To back up what William B is saying, the way I understand it is this...and apologies if this is a bit crass...but I have yet to meet someone who can choose what causes blood to flow to their penis. Stimulus, response. I have a thing for brunettes, that was also not a choice.

I'm slightly more open to the idea of acting on the situation being a choice, but really given the other options are a) live alone until death; or b) find a woman to lie to until death, I think that's a hit our society can absorb (especially since it's been absorbing that hit fine for thousands of years), I think we can manage to let them find some happiness before they die.

Maybe if your population is at critical levels I could buy coupling up for the good of mankind (like, a colony on the moon are the last humans alive and they're just barely replacing themselves each generation, *that* kind of critical). Beyond that, the sum negative of a gay person living a lie, lying to a partner who probably knows, and children born into a loveless marriage probably outweighs the positives of a slight population bump.

Re: DS9 S5: Doctor Bashir, I Presume

@Michael
It's true, Trek has never really properly delved into any transhumanism ideas, which is a shame as it's one of my favourite topics. They'll touch on things like cybernetics briefly, but they seem to be things that the Federation just doesn't really do (I mean look at the zooming LaForge's implants can do in First Contact. I'd be going out and getting a pair of them installed! The Federation troops seen in DS9, if not genetically engineered, should be filled to the brim with enhancements)

But regarding genetic engineering specifically, I think it's not only a fear of what we might create, but also a general "nature is better" attitude that pervades most of our culture. Phrases like "not what nature intended" sum it up really, nature doesn't have a consciousness or agenda and is actually pretty good at imperfection (also I think the personification of nature might point to a religious origin).

In that light, I think Gene would have been all for some of the more cyberpunk themed concepts, but it's a particularly eccentric pill for an audience to swallow because it's so far removed from our understanding now.

Re: TNG S7: Preemptive Strike

@Rosario

The only fear I have is that fiction ends up becoming this sort of global delusion that we all tell each other to convince ourselves everything is going to turn out all right in the end. That, more than anything, scares the hell out of me, the idea of us turning our backs and pretending to erase unpleasant truths from existence rather than using fiction as a medium to examine and reflect.

I'm not saying we have to wallow, just that there's room for a balance. You can't have every story reward goodness, it's condescending and a bit insulting. Insulting for everyone who's lost someone who, for example, died randomly despite being a loving, caring person. Insulting maybe even for anyone who has robbed a bank and gone on to live a long, fulfilling life, because sometimes crime does pay and you can't lie about that *all the time* without your audience getting a pretty good vibe of untruth about the whole thing (or worse, they don't get a vibe of untruth about it, only to get slapped in the face by reality when they leave their lounge room).

Also the problem with creating characters that are happy, caring, don't swear, everything on your list, is that they become so superhuman as to be completely unrelatable. To err is human and all that, it's the flaws that make characters who they are.

Now, that said, it's possible none of that relates to Star Trek at all as it's speculative fiction about the future rather than the present...but I stand by it as a general rule, hehe, false sense of security = bad (although I could probably be talked into the idea that the pendulum has swung too far in one direction. Like I said, balance).

Re: TOS S2: The Immunity Syndrome

@Paul

Yes, I took that to mean "most dangerous adversary" by virtue of the fact it cost the crew the Enterprise and Spock himself, for a period of time. Granted those things were a bit random, they were the result of battle damage as opposed to specific genius acts by Khan, but nonetheless the encounter with him was the most costly of all.

PS Hey, the anti-spam question changed! This has rocked my world.

Re: DS9 S5: Children of Time

@navamske
"But the possibility did exist for Kirk to have his cake and Edith too."

You just won the internet with that line as far as I'm concerned =P

Re: TNG S7: Preemptive Strike

One thing I wanted to add, I don't think it has to be an either/or situation. I believe humanity could reach Gene's vision, but we don't all improve at the same speed, there are always outliers. I don't think the Maquis or Section 31 or any of those themes necessarily have to trash humanity as a whole.

Also I think the worst thing you could do is portray the paradise of the Federation as being easy, or even the inherent goodness of humans in the future as being easy. It's hard work, it's important to put those ideals under pressure. Your characters need to be able to make mistakes.

Re: VOY S6: Virtuoso

@KL That's a bit aggressive =( But while Jammer might have a DS9 "bias", I'd say that's just his opinion of what works and what doesn't. Whether any one particular person agrees or doesn't agree, isn't that what a review is, an opinion? It's going to be subjective one way or the other.

I don't know if Jammer would agree with that, some might say reviews are looking to answer a sort of objective "truth" about quality, but I'm not sure there is an objective truth. So all you can do is find a reviewer who aligns with your expectations, so that you know their opinions will be an accurate barometer of your own opinion (that sounds a bit self-satisfying...to contrast, I read reviewers I disagree with all the time too, for the new perspective).

Actually on re-reading, I'll add one proviso...I think there's an objective truth when it comes to quality, but not style. I think the quality of both shows is quite high usually, though the styles are worlds apart. I'll read any reviewer to get an idea of "is this work of fiction generally well put together", but I know which of my go-to reviewers will dismiss sci-fi out of hand and which will be bored by independent films, etc.

Random off-topic fact: I'm tickled by how the way the Trek community is divided by TNG, DS9 and Voyager parallels the way Law and Order fans are divided by L&O, SVU and Criminal Intent. Like, perfectly, it's uncanny (Trial by Jury may or may not line up with Enterprise, haha...the parallel falls apart there).

Re: DS9 S1: Emissary

@grumpy_otter

Just to back up what Grumpy said, I think the religion aspects of DS9 are easier to manage than they were in BSG. When you say "aren't we above religion by now?", we might be but the Bajorans aren't and it's their space station =P So I think that tension can be enjoyed. Also the Bajorans are only a fragment of the concept whereas the Colonials on BSG were the whole show.

Also the BSG universe isn't very helpful to explaining the religious aspects, whereas...I don't think this is too spoilery...the wormhole aliens' godlike nature is not that unusual in Star Trek, though they are probably more naive in nature than the Q for example.

Also re: Sisko's acting...you're right it does get better, or at least the writers learn what he does well and what he doesn't. You're in for a bit of a wait though!

Also I'm enjoying reading your comments, great to hear the fresh perspective from someone who has no idea what's ahead.

Re: TNG S7: All Good Things...

@William B
Oh thanks, that's a good idea. I've added that in now and you're totally right, TNG and TOS are up the back.