Comment Stream

Re: TNG S1: Justice

Roddenberry’s over-sexualized aesthetic notwithstanding, the episode infuriates me because it is never resolved. It’s like the writers had a solid idea for the conflict, but passed on a resolution that solved the problem for everyone.

Re: TAS S1: Introduction

The Alan Dean Foster novelizations of these stories (Star Trek Log 1 - 10) remain some of the more compelling novels written for Star Trek TOS. The earlier stories were mostly a quick hash of the plot (think the James Blish novelizations of the original Star Trek [of which I have the ENTIRE first print run of]), but towards the end the novelizations got longer and more intricate.

Re: ORV S2: Lasting Impressions

...or maybe this is Jammer's doing? If so . . . Hahaha. Haha. Haha. Ha.

Re: ORV S2: Lasting Impressions

Yes, Slacker, we're all seeing the same thing. Looks like Jammer's site has been hacked or attacked with a virus by some asshole. All comments to all articles have bee affected. Hopefully there's a backup,

Re: DS9 S4: Homefront

I can't read all this shit (but will) but it doesn't seem as though anyone has mentioned the best part of this episode: When Joseph Sisko catches Ben staring at his bloody knife and calls him by his middle name and proposes a scenario where a changeling would attack a human, store human blood, and use this blood to fool any test they could create, something Star Fleet Medical should have considered in the FIRST PLACE! when developing a test for changelings. It takes a man with the knowledge of the roux and its development from generations of mixing and mimicking to know there is no defense.

Man, if someone wanted to write and direct a real, classic, transformative Star Trek movie, all they would need to do is read every Jammer review and ALL of the comments for each. Within the comments sections you have plot dissection, you have questioning of character motivation within larger character arcs which are also called into question. You have critiques of writing and story, and rebukes of deviation from cannon, as well as allowance of and tolerance of . . . and DESIRE FOR . . . this deviation from cannon. You see jealousy, you see hatred. You find loyalty for one captain or another, writers or showrunners, one producer or another. The most rabid and exacting of fans can't stifle true creativity. The entire Trek universe is available for your story. A writer merely has to pay attention and then make a decision which way he's going to go. That path is laid out in front of you. A river of gold pressed . . .

Re: TNG Season 7: The home stretch

Sorry, dude.. you've got to start again with TNG. In Blu-Ray, it's **stunning**!

Re: DS9 S6: Far Beyond the Stars

Jon - well, this idea of Sisko hallucinating as a way of finding the Emissary orb is part of the somewhat important revelation that Sisko was deliberately conceived by the Prophets 40 years earlier so they could use him when the time came, which is 'now'.

The 1950s story and the incarceration in a mental hospital aren't particularly critical, but Sisko learning the truth about his origin certainly is. It's only after learning the truth about his mother that Sisko can completely give himself up to the job of being emissary, and not worry about nagging doubt from the rational atheist part of him that doesn't like supernatural explanations for anything.

Honestly, they could have easily done the whole story about him finding the Emissary orb and discovering his true origin, without ever having this 1950s story occur at all. But this episode, which seemd completely pointless at the time, does at least seem to have a reason for being written once you know the whole story.

Re: DS9 S6: Sacrifice of Angels

@Nic - Yeah, I didn't really mean to mention Braga at all, it's just that since Enterprise I automatically think of him whenever I see something in Trek I don't like.

What you are saying is that the prophets interefered this time because Sisko was needed alive for their future projects and by the time he spoke to them, the only way to keep him alive was to obliterate the incoming fleet.

I don't buy it. They could have just magically transported Sisko onto the planet Bajor instead, and let the fleet come through and wipe out the defiant on the way through.

If the prophets realised that letting the Dominion fleet come in would lead to them taking control of the entire alpha quadrant, and *that* was incompatible with their long-term goals that Sisko is involved in, then why didn't they interfere a hell of a lot sooner?

The prophets can see all possible futures anyway, so they should have known full well that the Dominion reinforcement fleet will never be allowed to enter the Alpha Quadrant. Surely then they would have simply not allowed any Dominion ships to enter the Alpha quadrant at all... ever.

All of this just leads to a very deep rabbit hole that can't easily be closed. It's far better to not let the story get to the point where huge arbitrary interference is needed by these 'Gods' in the first place. As I said in my previous post, the writers should have been able to think of an 'organic' storyline that stopped the Dominion reinforcements from entering the quadrant, and the prophets should stay as a god-like force that nevertheless does not interfere directly in the wars of mere mortals.

Re: DS9 S6: Far Beyond the Stars

Ha - for those who don't realise, Weiss is being savagely sarcastic in that last comment, because there WAS a TOS episode where there were two alien races who where both half-white and half-black.

Episode 70: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. Check out the picture here:

ttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/630098866X/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=404272&s=video

(add the 'h' at the start of that address, this forum doesn't allow h ttp to be used for some reason)

These two races were locked in perpetual conflict because one of them was white on the left, but the other race had black on the left.

It was an incredibly heavy-handed didactic treatment of the race issue, so bad that it's laughable now. But I think in it's time, the general TV-watching public were actually seriously ignorant about such things and may well have needed the message shoved down their throats like that.

Either way, I wasn't even alive when that episode aired, so I'm in no position to make any judgement as to whether this story was too heavy-handed to be useful for it's audience at the time.

But for this episode of DS9, I was alive in 1998 and I stand by my opinion that it is too simplistic and obvious for the audience of 1998 when it was aired.

I realised much later in the series that this episode was the start of a critical story arc for Sisko, and mental breakdown here that I described as 'weird and over-the-top' is much better understood in the context of the later episode where Sisko is searching for the Emissary's orb and discovers the truth about his own origin.

But I still think this was a clumsy and artificial treatment of racism in the 1950s, and even as the first episode in the long-term arc it starts, I think it could have been done a lot better.

Re: DS9 S5: Blaze of Glory

Thanks Jay. A quick Google search of for 'treaty of algeron' led to lots of information about it and several threads debating what a silly thing it would have been to sign such a treaty. Not much point beating a dead horse; this cloak issue seems to have been debated enough in the trek world already.

What I do think is interesting is the fact that recent technological developments has shown that a cloaking technology is actually not far off - one research team have already built a working cloak that only works for microwave wavelengths of light.

So it seems likely that if we *ever* achieve faster-than-light travel, it will almost certainly be a long, long time after various types of cloaking devices are in common use.

Of course, a visible-light cloak isn't that useful in a spaceship, because most surveying of surrounding space is done via various sensors of which visibility is only one.

The cloak would have to work with many different wavelengths of light outside the visible spectrum, as well as concealing other telltale signs of a space-ship presence, such as the gravity it would exert on other bodies, it's exhaust, it's communications, and more. It would also need to absorb and not reflect whatever is being used for radar-type sensors in the future too.

Still, it's a weird idea to agree not to *catch up* with an enemy's tech in exchange for peace. On earth we already have treaties like the bans on biological weapons and chemical weapons, where all parties agree not to develop specific technologies in exchange for peace. But it's practically inconceivable that the US today would agree not to acquire tech that an enemy already has.

Re: DS9 S7: When it Rains...

Actually, I've come to see in Garak an extremely cold and ruthless side. I think he would be quite ready to cooperate with anyone if it made sense tactically. I think that would have been lesson #1 growing up in the house of the Obsidian Order.

Kira is prepared to work with Damarr, I think it was harder for her than it was for Garak.

But I also find it absurd that the Cardassian rebels would need Kira's assistance. Euqally absurd of the idea that one person could come in and train and deploy a rebel force with thousands of troops.

We never see any troops in this show; even in the seige of AR-558 we see a dozen or so footsoldiers at the most. But we hear things like the Cardassians losing 500,000 soldiers on that moon that finally proved the last straw for Damarr.

Obviously Trek doesn't have the budget to conjure up the effects necessary to show a 500,000 strong army in action, or a battle with than many on each side. But they should never have mentioned those sorts of numbers when all we ever see is the same 5 or 6 people doing *everything* themselves.

With so much being done in space, and the way a couple of battlecruisers can secure an entire solar system, they really should have stayed away from talking about footsoldiers at all. It's somehow ruined the story of the dominion war for me that they try and imply there are millions of troops involved on each side.

As for the question of the Federation committing genocide - I don't see it as quite the moral quandary that Jammer does. Normally when you talk of genocide, it's abhorrent because it implies that 99% of the people killed are innocent civilians. But if you just spoke of killing all the armed forces, it becomes much less troublesome.

Well, the dominion is united - every single founder is an active participant in the fight against the alpha quadrant. In my opinion the entire founder population might be just one sentient individual anyway.

Against this kind of enemy, I think in a desperate situation like this, the idea of 'genocide' being morally wrong doesn't carry the same weight as it does in a normal country-at-war situation.

I think it's actually a pretty reasonable response, in that it could easily save millions or billions of lives if it defeats the founders a few years early, while killing only known combatants.

Re: DS9 S7: Strange Bedfellows

The idea of Gul Dukat offering up his body to Kai Wynn as part of the 'Guide' package sent a shiver up my spine that lasted for twenty minutes.

And when she said 'the man who shares my bed', I almost threw up. I'll say one thing for Dukat; he's got a strong stomach.

He's also back to his full operatic bombastic self by the end of the episode - how Kai Winn hasn't yet realised who he is, is extremely difficult to believe.

Unfortunately for the Breen, their masks make them look exactly like the K9 robot dog from the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who, and now of the Sarah Adventures on the BBC. And I mean *exactly* like the dog's head.

So they just look like walking canines to me. Not very threatening.

Re: DS9 S7: 'Til Death Do Us Part

Sisko behaves so childishly in this episode it's difficult to believe; but it's not necessarily out of character.

The very previous time he ignored a prophet warning, Jadzia was killed, the wormhole was locked shut, and he had to go to earth for 3 months until he discovered the Emissary's Orb and reopened the wormhole.

Does that mean nothing to him just because he thinks he loves Casidy? This is the woman who was treacherous enough to smuggle supplies to the Maquis back when Sisko hated them to the point of obsession. She served 6 months in jail for that, and now this idiot wants to marry her.

Wouldn't starfleet have something to say about him marrying a convicted criminal and supplier to the Maquis, and in fant she's marrying the guy who arrested her? I would have expected that he would have to resign his commission before being allowed to do that.

But ignoring the prophet's warning is much worse. It's actually impossible to believe that the guy who blamed himself for Jadzia's death, because he ignored a Prophet warning before, would be so feeble-minded as to gleefully do the same thing again. If it were me, I would assume that the Prophet meant that Kasidy would die somehow, that's what leads to his perpetual sorrow.

Bah, it's just complete bullshit.

Worf is really pissing me off, too, with his petty jealousy and paranoia about Dax loving someone else. I am pretty sure a honour-obsessed Klingon would just kill her if he really thought she was getting it on with Bashir. But he seems to have reconciled her existence and now seems to have decided to continue his relationship with Jadzia by hooking up with Ezri, in the process dishonouring Jadzia and the supposed effort he went to to get her into sto-vo-kor, while also dishonouring Ezri by completely ignoring her individuality as a person, and just using her to get at what's left of Jadzia.

Worf is not only jealous like a child, but also a real jerk with the way he's using Ezri now. I think he actually thinks he has officially resumed right where he left off with Jadzia, and poor Ezri doesn't have any idea that he's decided this.

I do like how this episode reveals what a true bitch Kai Wynn is; she gets to talk with the prophets once (and I'm sure they are paghwraiths) and she has completely forgotten about the emissary and instead will do whatever Dukat tells her to... especially if it undermines Sisko along the way.

You would need the IQ of a spoon to not notice that it's Gul Dukat with a fake nose. His voice is identical.

Re: DS9 S7: Chimera

Yeah.. planetary soup. I actually believe that the founders is just a single being. The 'baby' changelings that were sent out into space were actually just fragments of the whole thing, somehow stripped of their knowledge of themselves.

When Odo first meets the founders (and every time after that when the female is teaching him about the great link) he tries to get an idea of how many there are, and her answer is evasive enough to ring the alarm bells. She says things like 'Sometimes we are as one, sometimes we are many; it depends on how you look at it'.

That is classic cultish diversion to avoid the truth - once you are reunited with the great link, Odo, you won't have your own thoughts or personality any more. It's a single creature, capable of spiltting itself up almost infinitely, but when a piece if integrated back into the 'whole', it cases to be separate.

Bear in mind I've never read of watched any material or DVD commentary that might shed light on what the writers of the show meant. I'm just taking the show as I see it, and the singularity of the founder (not plural) seems pretty clear to me.

This theory has some holes in it. If it splits itself into 100 equal parts... which one is the 'real' founder?

I think it just knows innately which part is 'itself' and which parts are formerly 'itself'. Pretty much the same as the way our consciousness just 'knows' that I am me.

Anyone actually agree with me about this?

I think Odo was actually pretty terrified of losing his uniqueness if he joined the founder fulltime, but it wasn't shown in the series so it's probably just me making shit up to amuse myself.

Re: DS9 S7: Chimera

@Elliot:

OK, so that explains it. I guess they are telling us that the chengelings sent in as 'spies' were much much older than herself, and more skillful too.Seesa a bit weird because she seems to be the leader, but I' not going to quibble about that. AS a longtime Trek fan I only need the barest hint of an explanation to satisfy my nitpickiness.

I've skipped a few episodes on this run through the series, but only the fluff and inconsequential ones. I was pretty sure I hadn't missed anything with founders in it but I was probably distracted by email or something.

Thanks anyway

Re: DS9 S7: Chimera

Sorry, I seem to repeat myself for a large chunk of that last post. Can't edit it, so you have to live with it. I think it's pretty obvious what my point is, anyway.

Re: DS9 S7: Chimera

This episode was a bit annoying because Laas was such an a-hole, but it did raise a neat idea about love, as Nic points out: Changelings could never feel love as we do, despite claiming it was a pale imitation of the great link. Changelings can not, apparently, choose to link just between two of them and exclude the rest of the population.

So a key part of humanoid love is the idea that it's an intimate connection between just two people and it's like a secret you have that you don't have to share with anyone else.

Unfortunately the episode was almost ruined by the one line of dialog where Odo and Laas agree about the difficulty of emulating humanoid faces. It reminded me of the glaring inconsistency they created when they had changelings take over the positions of Bashir, Admiral Ross, and Martok. These clones were perfect in every respect yet they still persist with the idea that changelings can't 'do' human skin in detail.

How does this sort of thing get through everyone and end up as part of the script? Did I miss a bit of technobabble somewhere that explained this?

I think they could have explained it by saying the replacements *were* actual clones that they made using DNA from the source person. This would make sense because they have already established both DNA & cloning expertise, and the ability to accelerate clone growth so they reach maturity in a couple of weeks.

But I distinctly remember these replacements acting as changelings at the time they were 'caught' (except for Bashir) so the writers shot themselves in the foot.

This show already suffers from implausability, just because of the science stuff they can do which would be impossible as we currently understand the physical universe.

They have also formed bad habits that make the audience work even harder to suspend disbelief, like the random way that the deflector seems to be this magical device than can emit streams of magical particles that can apparently do almost anything that is required in order to wrap up the plot.

But on top of this, from time to time they let slip something like this changeling issue with skin detail that finally tips the scales and makes it impossible to take seriously any more.

Luckily that only last for a few minutes and I soon forget. But it really sucks.

It sucks first because it's not necessary. I can think of dozens of ways to explain their ability to insert 'replacement' humanoids as spies. The easiest is to say that they are clones, created by taking the DNA of a Vorta and then adding the necessary bits to make it look and act like the target. This is beleivable because we already know they can do this stuff.

But I've seen these spy characters act like changelings when they get found out, so the clone excuse can't be used.

Or, they could simply tell us that it takes a lot more skill to perfectly do humans than Odo is capable of, because he is self-taught. They could then show how Odo improves over time, and eventually he could not have to do 2 hours of makeup every morning. This explanation would have been easy too, but they have screwed up again by showing the female founder have the same crude facial features while obviously being a very experienced shapeshifter.

Why do the writers do this to themselves? Did I miss a bit of technobabble that explained how the spies can perfectly imitate human skin and hair?

Surely I must have missed the explanation, it's almost impossible to believe such a glaring contradiction could be left hanging in the air like the most stinky fart ever, while everyone just stands there breathing it in, making no effort to move away or anything.

Re: DS9 S6: Tears of the Prophets

Well, first let me admit I never liked Jadzia - I don't really know why but I'm not sorry she's gone at all.

The serious flaw in this episode was Sisko choosing to go on the mission instead of staying on the station. After all he had been through with the prophets, had they ever lied to him? Especially after he basically failed them in 'the reckoning', I was waiting for him to tell the Admiral 'Then I choose to be Emissary' when he was given an ultimatum.

After all, he had seen the Defiant go off on missions without him dozens of times already, and did he actually *do* anything during this mission? He didn't need to be there at all.

After all the time we've spent seeing Sisko gradually coming to accept that the prophets are 100% real and he is the genuine Emissary, his choice here was completely against character.

People saying that he wouldn't have prevented Dax's death if he had been there anyway - well we don't really know. He might have accompanied Dax to her first Orb experience to guide her, he might have been standing behind Dukat when he transported in, he might have shot him right then with a phaser and sent the pag-wraith running away... who knows?

I think we have to take at face value the idea that the prophets simply knew that if he stayed, Dukat would have been prevented from killing the orbs like he did.

Also note that the Orbs were the important thing. The prophets didn't care about Dax getting killed. They needed Sisko there to stop the pag-wraith getting into the Orbs and then (somehow) closing up the wormhole.

Actually, the whole idea of the wraith just getting into the Orb, and from there somehow killing the other Orbs and then closing the wormhole for good seemed like a shortcut. They could have spent more time creating a dramatic battle involving Dukat as the Wraith's physical form.

Anyway, I loved the final scene between Weyoun, Damar and the hilariously mad Dukat at the end - every time Dukat reveals another way in which he has won a major victory, both Weyoun and Damar shout 'Well, so what?' in sheer horror...

Dukat genuinely doesn't seem to notice that nobody else gives a crap about the pain he's dealt to both Bajor and Sisko.

It was absolutely hilarious and I hope Weyoun skins Dukat alive when he returns 'triumphant' to Cardassia.

I guess the writers had to get the wormhole closed, and Dax killed somehow, and it was easiest to let Sisko go off against all instinct and fail to protect the prophets.

One final whine... it seemed absurd for Bashir to come out of 'surgery' wearing the red gown as if he had been elbow-deep in guts... and he says 'I saved the symbiont but I couldn't do anything for Jadzia'... and in the very next scene she's still speaking! Errr... wouldn't a doctor be still there trying every possible thing until she has definitely died? Even today, doctors have about half an hour worth of stuff to try *after* a person dies, to try and get them back.

It seems logical to me, given the medical tech we've seen time after time on this show, that if a human is capable of speech, i.e. the brain is still active, then a competent Starfleet doctor could keep the brain alive practically forever while a new body is grown from DNA or something?

I bet that the EMH from Voyager would have had Jadzia up and running around in a couple of days.

We know that she had to die, of course, because Farrell wasn't returning. But in that case she should have been dead and stone cold when Sisko and Warf get there. But no, the writers can't help themselves and they just *have* to give us the 'dying in Warf's arms' scene. It was pathetic. If they wanted the dying scene, they should have had Bashir in there frantically trying to keep her alive at the same time.

As it was, it made her death seem really bizarre, almost like terrible fan-fiction.

Still, it was a reasonable end to a mixed-bag season 6. It's great that I have no memory at all of what happens next season, even though it's only been 2 years since the last time I watched the whole thing. It will be like a new series again.

Re: DS9 S6: In the Pale Moonlight

I have to disagree with RT about Avery Brook's last line being perfectly done. The emphasis on 'can' that suggests he is trying and failing to convince himself of that, is so badly done it's difficult to imagine how it was chosen from the probably 100 takes they did of that final scene.

However, the problem is that in reality, a person trying to convince themselves that they can live with what they've done will always be speaking to himself mentally, in his head. So as humans we don't have much experience with hearing that kind of sentiment out loud.

The closest thing I can think of is a boxer, standing in his changing room before a bout he is likely to lose, clenching his fists and shouting 'I *can* win this' to himself. Or some similar situation. And compared to that, Avery Brooks' version sounds small and obvious and badly acted.

Then again, maybe it's just me, but I find Brooks' acting pretty much uniformly awful whenever he does anger or frustration or any negative emotion. I think in real life he's a pussycat and he just can't do 'bad' very convincingly.

I did enjoy the episode the first time I watched it because the shuttle explosion was a genuine shock, I wasn't expecting it and in fact was really clueless as to what was going to happen after the hologram fake was detected.

And the retrospective narrative style was interesting, I'm not sure if DS9 has done one of those before.

But, by far the worst part of this episode for me was the main idea that Sisko was being torn apart by his evil actions in getting the Romulans into the war. If 'for the uniform' had never happened, it could be believable. But it had, so it wasn't.

There's 2 parts to his anguish. First, the people who were killed by Garak. An earlier commenter mentioned that the death of the romulan soliders on the shuttle didn't seem to bother him, and that's a key point. By this stage Sisko has murdered dozens of people in one-on-one combat... hell, he's murdered at least 50 Jem'Hadar face to face already.

Second, he's destroyed at least a hundred enemy ships by this point in the series, sending thousands of soliders to their death, the vast majority of whom were just innocent grunts fighting for their commanders like Sisko's own underlings.

So the idea that he cares about the death of a couple of random people is ridiculous.

The second part of his pain is the idea that he cheated to get another entire race tangled up in his war, and there will be thousands and thousands of deaths in the future because of this. I think this is the obvious *real* source of his pain, but again, I just don't beleive that someone in his position, having done the things we've seen him do, would even blink at this in reality. His self-hate for this is just not believable.

First, the fact is that the Romulans *would* have been invaded by the Dominion after the current war was won. That's been the Dominion's plan all along - they will enslave Cardassia and Bajor as well, eventually. And then *every* other race in the quadrant.

So even though the Romulans don't see it, he's actually done them a huge favour.

But more importantly, a rear-echelon mother-frakker one the losing side of a war this big and evil simply wouldn't think twice about doing this sort of thing to get a chance at victory. Sure, the Federation as imagined by Roddenberry originally would never have done this, but they would also have crushed the Dominion in two weeks due to their incredibly advanced technology as well. Roddenberry's Federation was *never* as pure as it should have been and by the time DS9 rolls around, the Fed is just as good at dirty tricks as every other species out there.

I enjoyed this story, mostly because I experienced genuine suspense in not guessing the outcome when I first watched it. But the core premise of Sisko's internal struggle is nonsense, and Brooks' acting was the over-the-top scenery-chewing over-acting we always get when he is in evil mode.

Re: DS9 S6: The Magnificent Ferengi

Ken, I actually concede your point. When I wrote the previous comment I was only about 20 minutes into the episode, but by the end I have to admit I laughed out loud a couple of times.

But it was much less 'bumbling Ferengi morons' and more like real people having a comedy of errors.

It emphasises, I guess, that DS9's writers had done a really good job of making the Ferengi less cartoon-stupid than in previous series.

Re: DS9 S6: Inquisition

Anyone who understands Roddenberry's design of 'The Federation' back in the late '60s should be able to realise that something like 'Section 31' would never be necessary in such an idealised future.

Another of Roddenberry's ideas for the Federation was that we had evolved beyond the need for money. Anybody can have anything they need, the 'system' will provide it free of charge. Technology such as replicators had become so efficient that the economic concept of 'scarcity' simply didn't exist and once that is true, currency itself becomes unnecessary.

People can argue about the 'realism' of that if they want to, but they are completely missing the point. That was what Gene wanted the Federation to be, end of story. Along with eliminating money, humans had managed to eliminate war, poverty, crime... pretty much every single negative aspect of human existence did not exist in Roddenberry's original vision of what 'The Federation' was.

This is quite easy to see in the original series, in most episodes. While there was conflict between humans and other species, the humans internally seemed to be completely at peace and united.

Of course, Gene and every writer since found it difficult to create compelling stories and characters within such a framework; conflict is essential to storytelling and suspense so even in the original series, the reality of Kirk's behaviour was often far from what you would expect from a super-enlightened race as Roddenberry designed them.

If the Federation really *was* so enlightened and peaceful, Kirk would have had brain surgery shortly after birth to change his obvious violent and irrational tendencies that were visible from examining his DNA. Right?

Roddenberry, for all his genius, wasn't quite clever enough to bring us a real believable version of this 'perfect' society that the Federation was supposed to be. For one thing, it is pretty obvious if you care to look that Human Society as shown in TOS and TNG was basically a communist, invasive hierarchy where people had no privacy and everyone worked as a cog in the giant Earth machine. Think about the sensor technologies they had in TNG; I wouldn't want to live in *that* kind of 'utopia' in a million years. No thanks.

Now, the Sci-Fi author Ian M Banks *has* managed to create a society in which technology has completely eliminated money, or 'wants' in general, where people spend their lives free to pursue whatever they like, including several gender reassignments per lifetime, practically infinite life-length, real AI that is vastly more powerful than any organic brain, and implants that let humans metabolise any drug of their choosing at will just by thinking about it... for pleasure as well as to enhance physical attributes.

This society is called the 'Culture' in his novels and by setting them in a society that is many thousands of years more evolved than our own, he is able to make all this seem quite believable.

Roddenberry's problem was that he gave just 100 years after the eugenics wars for mankind to become so enlightened, and from the comments even on this page it's obvious that people don't believe that's long enough to really transform society. If TOS was set in the year 10,000... all that utopian mumbo-jumbo would have been a lot more beleivable. But I don't think Roddenberry had the sheer imagination required to realistically portray a culture that far evolved from our own.

And the tech, makeup, and set-building of the 1960s wouldn't have allowed it either.

Anyway, back to the original point: No, 'section 31' would never have existed in Gene's original version of the Federation. But this original vision was hopelessly compromised even in the TOS run in order to come up with plots, so it's silly to expect DS9 to be more 'pure'.

In reality, the universe as portrayed in TNG, Voyager, DS9 and even Enterprise was far darker and meaner than Roddenberry's original vision of super-enlightened mankind and similarly advanced aliens. We do get Picard and others *appearing* to take the moral high ground time and again, even making quite enormous sacrifices to do so. But in reality the Federation could not exist in the universe as we see it in the various series' without being just as immoral as many of their enemies. Section 31 would *definitely* exist.

Re: DS9 S6: Far Beyond the Stars

Alexander: "Has to be in the top five of DS9 episodes ever"

Wow, that's a pretty crazy idea :P I doubt even those who rate this episode as 'excellent' would claim that!

Alexander then went on a long 'rant' about racism and educating people about it. I use quotes around 'rant' because it wasn't angry or sarcastic, but 'rant' was the only word I could think of.

Here's my take: Roddenberry created the show not long after the period shown in this episode. Perhaps 15 years. He included African Americans, Chinese, and women in senior ranks right from the very first episode. You may remember that in the first episode, the XO was a woman, but the network executives got Gene to change it to make Spock XO for the 2nd and all further episodes.

However, Roddenberry *never* made a fuss about the race-neutral approach of his casting. He made the point that 300 years in the future, racism would be completely non-existant, so it would be highly unrealistic for any of the scripts to make a big deal about the race of officers on the ship.

So, I think this episode is *completely* against the way Gene wanted to deal with the issue of discrimination in the Trek universe. This episode is incredibly heavy handed, unsubtle, and itself completely cliched in it's portrayal of the police, the newstand boy, women, petty criminals and so on. In fact, almost every single character is a pretty offensive caricature in some way.

So it really is pretty lame to try and present some kind of message about racism while insulting half a dozen other groups along the way.

Besides, the 'lesson' the story tries to teach us might have been appropriate in 1950 or 1970, but in 1990-whatever it's completely inappropriate. It's good to discuss discrimination issues but this thing does it so clumsily, its almost impossible to think about without laughing at it.

Second, Sisko's 'breakdown' at the end when he gets the sack is just weird and over-the-top. A black guy in the 1950s who had made it into the writing trade would be *so* used to being discriminated against, he would never even dream of putting a black guy in the captain's role in his story. If he did, he certainly wouldn't be surprised if it was rejected.

No, the various racist incidents shown build up such a level of stress in Sisko, I think it only makes sense if it's Sisko himself getting treated so badly, and being completely unused to *any* kind of racism, he would find it very difficult to deal with. But the Sisko we know wouldn't respond to this by breaking down like a baby. He would suck it up and either ignore it, or go and beat the crap out of everyone who treats him badly.

Finally, the ending where 'it was only a dream' is really stinky and as always, the audience feels completely cheated. It might have worked if they writers had somehow tied the prophets into the dream and it was their way of communicating with Sisko about something. But instead, it was just a completely pointless diversion.

I actually skipped this the first couple of times I watched the series, but watched it this time based largely on Jammer's high rating and positive review. I think honestly that he, and many others, had so much fun seeing the regular characters playing dress-up (or, in some cases, dress-down, as they are all without the usual prostheses) that they gave a lot more credit to the actual story than it deserved.

It *is* entertaining seeing Quark without the makeup, or Odo as a real person. I liked Shimerman as the nasty principle on Buffy; and those of you who are old enough will remember Rene Auberjonois as the stuck-up irritating PR guy on 'Benson' about a thousand years ago. So it was good fun to see them as their ordinary selves again.

But the story was crap, and as allegory about discrimination it was childish and too obvious to take seriously.

ps: Rene Auberjonois doesn't look like he's aged one day since Benson in the early 1980s. He was born in 1940, so when he filmed DS9 he was almost 60 years old. Pretty well preserved, I have to admit.

Re: DS9 S6: The Magnificent Ferengi

"Until this episode, I never realized that just having a bunch of Ferengi scamper down corridors was pure comedy gold."

Did you never watch TNG? I always *hated* Ferengi because in TNG they were always portrayed in this 'keystone cops' bumbling-idiot way, and I just found it irritating. I find most Trek attempts at comedy episodes pretty annoying, but the constant Feregeni-as-idiot joke really got on my nerves.

Voyager was almost as bad, but finally in DS9 we found the role of Quark which kept the Ferengi's ultra-capitalist habits but built a much more rounded and realistic character around them.

Rom was plagued at times by the same old bumbling idiot, but by this point in the series he had acquired some very serious attributes. And the journey of Nog from idiot Ferengi child to starfleet cadet was a real growth in the nature of the Ferengi portrayal.

So to me this episode is actually a crappy return to old habits by the writers, I didn't find it funny and I really thinki Quark, Rom, and Nog deserve better than this from the writing team.

I'm not a humorless jerk, either. I love comedy when it's done right - in my collection of TV shows, the cartoon and comedy section is much larger than my drama and sci-fi collection. But comedy in Star Trek has never worked for me. The 'Q' episodes are annoying as hell. The 'alternate universe' and other 'evil twins' episodes that are done as comedy are never funny either. And the ferengi keystone-cops stories are just rubbish.

I *do* like the small bits of humor that occur from time to time in all trek series. These are fine, and all good drama has a joke or two. But the attempts at comedy episodes always fall flat on their face. Trek just isn't a comedy show.

Re: DS9 S6: Sacrifice of Angels

Well, having watched the whole arc serveral times now, I just can't escape the fact that this episode was a complete disaster for the writing department. There's a whole *team* of people writing for this show, remember, and they collaborate a *lot* to come up with big arcs like the dominion war that last en entire season or longer.

It's acceptable, barely, to use a deus ex machina to resolve a single-episode storyline, and we have seen this before, at least once. There was that episode when the 'other' emissary arrived from the past, and in the end Sisko could only resolve the issue by going back to the prophets and asking them to specifically say which of them was the 'real' emissary.

As a writer, it's frustrating to have to use a device like the prophets apparently awesome power to resolve a plot. You are admitting that you couldn't think of a better way to end the story. In the emmissary story I mentioned, this is at least a resolution that fits the plot, so it doesn't seem too creatively bankrupt.

And as a writer on a series like Trek, if you establish the existence of a super-power like the prophets right at the start, you are very conscious that you cant just invoke them whenever you like to resolve any story. If Sisko could really just go into the wormhole whenever he liked, come to a full stop, and wait to be taken to the prophet's reality to beg them to do him a favour, then almost every story in the entire series could have been resolved a lot easier. Have they ever denied him when he asked for help?

So, the writing team had a long time to come up with a way of ending the occupation of DS9, and of making sure the jem'hadar reinforcements don't make it through the wormhole.

But if all they could come up with was a 1-minute miracle where the prophets simply 'deleted' the entire dominion fleet just seconds before they entered the alpha quadrant and doomed the entire quadrant to defeat, well, that is just incredibly embarassing for the writers.

In about 5 minutes of thought, I can come up with a few other ways to destroy that fleet without resorting to the prophet miracle. The defiant could have tried to close the wormhole, perhaps using some new type of torpedo that starfleet had been working on in secret to overcome the stability that was added by the fake bashir.

Perhaps they could have invented a new kind of warhead that would ignite some kind of plasma inside the wormhole that would destroy the entire jem-hadar fleet without closing it.

Or, perhaps, the could actually build on the freaking 'white' storyline that they started when the Defiant destroyed the only white depot in the alpha quadrant a few episodes ago. Remember that? The Jem Hadar should have run out within a couple of weeks, remember? But here we are months later, and that whole storyline has just been abandoned, with no explanation at all. Perhaps the Jem'Hadar that are already in the alpha quadrant should be slowly going insane because of the white shortages, with only a tiny number of Jem'hadar on DS9 still having a supply and able to defend the station against the now-crazed rest of the warriors. So, just a the DS9 manages to detonate the mines and open the wormhole, the crazed Jem'Hadar go in themselves to try and get more 'white', and they engage the reinforcements themselves and the two fleets manage to destroy each other almost completely.

That would be kind of cool and would actually tie up the story started weeks ago that went nowhere.

So... I really don't understand what goes on with Braga, Behr, and the rest of the top-level creatives in the Trek franchise. They should be ashamed to have to resort to such a weak solution to the problem of reinforcements coming from the Gamma quadrant. They should be ashamed to have not done anything with the 'white' shortage created a while back.

I've never read any of the supplementary material about DS9 and Trek that reveals some of the writer's thoughts and motivations. Maybe these questions are addressed already. But this episode in particular completely ruined the story for me, the excellence of the previous 5 or 6 episodes (not including Sons and Daughters), and the season as a whole. It was dumb. As soon as I saw the defiant enter the wormhole and stop, I literally groaned with despair. I couldn't *believe* they were going to do this.

Then they did it.

Re: DS9 S5: Empok Nor

My only complaint to add to Jammer's accurate observations is this: Garak and O'Brien had that conversation about O'Brien's heroic soldiering, on the runabout a long time before Garak was under the influence of any drugs.

But his attitude at that point was very antagonistic toward O'Brien, and while I know Garak is always playing mind-games when he talks about people's pasts, in this case it was way more aggressive and just plain mean than normal, and I don't think O'Brien's done anything in DS9 to make Garak hate him more than anyone else.

It really felt like he was already on the drugs before they entered the abandoned station, which of course was impossible, but the writers seemed to get Garak's personality *completely* wrong in that initial discussion.