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Thanks to the miracle of the internet, as it were, I’ve been watching Deep Space 9. I had flashbacks through the first few episodes, up to “A Man Alone.” I had seen the first few, it seems. It turns out that most of what I remembered about the series was the pilot, “Emissary.” I remembered Sisko meeting Picard for the first time & the species outside time. That plot is heavily influenced by Stanislaw Lem’s novel “Solaris,” btw. In that novel (made into two films in 1972 & 2003), an incomprehensible alien probes human minds & produces whatever it finds to be significant, usually something horribly painful. Until the last few days, all I really remembered of DS9 was that they were not bringing him there, back to Wolf 359 & the death of his wife. He just never left.
Anyhoo. I’ll probably make a few notes as I go.
Here’s the first. From “A Man Alone,” in which a Bajoran terrorist fakes his own death to frame Odo for his murder. At one point, he & Sisko discuss the terrorist:
Odo: His name is Ibudan. He used to run black market goods through here to the surface during the Cardassian occupation, gouging his fellow man who needed medical supplies & so forth. Some Bajorans actually considered him a hero. But I saw him let a child die when the parents couldn’t afford the drug that would’ve saved her life.
That was 31 years ago from the same series that brought us the Bell Riots (which I’ll get to sooner or later). Plucked right out of last week’s headlines.
@darth_hideout@c.imSo before I even started at the beginning, I watched "Blood Oath" (S02E19), which I posted about recently. Naturally, as a Trekkie since more than a decade before TNG, this one has plenty of charms for me. But it brings a bit of closure in a certain sense. The first episode I can ever remember seeing is "The Squire of Gothos." And while it may not be the same character, seeing the end of Koloth brings something full circle.
The performances by the three Klingons were excellent. John Colicos, who also played Baltar in Battlestar Galactica, was a spectacularly colorful washed-up Kor. But Kor was always expressive. The episode more or less began and ended with him singing. (And apparently dying off camera, unlike the other two.)
Of the originals, Kor is by far my favorite, though I liked all three. But I was also quite impressed by Michael Ansara as an older, wiser Kang. I really enjoyed his voice & sometimes had a difficult time connecting it with the harder voice of the earlier Kang.
Anyway, achievement unlocked. 
Supplemental log:
Watched "The Sword of Kahless" (S4E9). Kor's still kicking.
Now that I'm well into the 4th season of #StarTrekDS9, I've seen 2 of 5 mirror-universe episodes. This seems to be one of those recurring themes, like Tribbles, in #StarTrek series. I thought every series had a mirror-universe episode, but apparently TNG did not? And then DS9 took it and ran with it. But Voyager skipped it?
I've seen all of Enterprise & sorta recall "Through a Mirror, Darkly." Sorta = basically not at all.
I can catch up on a lot through Memory Alpha w/o a P+ subscription.
It's spawned so many thoughts I guess I'm writing a book about it. Lol
So obviously the MU theme struck me. And numerous other things. But I have to say, the two most engaging characters in the whole series are the two Cardassians we see most: Garak & Gul Dukat.
I'm not certain if I think Garak is becoming less interesting as we learn more. At first his opacity & charm make him intriguing. But there's no longer any surprise when the simple tailor hacks into a security system or knows what's going on before anyone else. (Eg in "The Way of the Warrior," Sisko just invites G in to measure him for a suit in order to warn the Cardassians of an attack.) I think I learned from MA that his father is Enabran Tain (now dead). I still have half a series to go tho.
One of the funniest things I can recall seeing in some time was a scene in "Civil Defense," in the 2nd or 3rd season, when a Cardassian booby trap has been sprung & a synthesized phaser turret is firing around Ops. Everyone is ducking for cover. Dukat beams in directly in front of the turret, knowing it won't fire on Cardassians, and stands there gesticulating & pontificating, punctuated by phaser blasts, thinking he has the whole thing in hand. Had to pause it to stop laughing.
I’ve been thinking a good deal about the writing in #StarTrekDS9 & the evolution of TV in the last decades. Unlike, say, Star Wars, #StarTrek has primarily revolved around broadcast TV series (now streaming/subscription, like every other new series). TV itself has evolved & you can see it in Star Trek.
TOS was a relatively unordered series. Outside of the two parts of “The Menagerie,” there are a handful of episodes that mention the events of others. Of course, if you like, you can sequence most of them by Stardate, but that's not the same as the original broadcast order. For the most part, you can watch TOS in virtually any order. I’ve known every TOS episode by title since the 70s. I have almost no idea which season they occurred in. It’s irrelevant, at least to the narrative. TOS was situational sci-fi, like situational comedy: It revolved around a fixed set of characters in a fixed situation & followed them through episodic encounters. At the end of each episode, everything was always back to normal. Not many Star Trek fans can tell you if “Shore Leave” was before or after “A Taste of Armageddon.” Who cares?
One series that stands out for its departure from this sort of formula is “The X-Files,” contemporary with DS9, which was known for its “mythology” (the business revolving around the smoking man, Mulder’s sister & gov’t conspiracies & cover-ups) & episodic content, simply Mulder & Scully in this week’s adventure, just like the crew of the Enterprise in TOS. But every now & then, usually at the beginning & end of each season & often in multipart cliffhanger episodes mid-season, the main storyline would resume for a bit in dramatic fashion, only to end up unresolved, promising more in the future.
This exactly describes the structure of Enterprise & the narrative about the Temporal Cold War & the formation of the Federation. I think this structure was still evolving in the early seasons of DS9, but it solidifies by the 3rd season or so.
Today all new TV shows seem to be miniseries for paid subscribers. I always used to think that there always had to be 26 episodes in any TV season, one a week for half the year (hence, a “season,” not a year). Now 8 paid installments is a “season,” which occurs every couple of years if you’re lucky.
But episodic TV has largely disappeared.
#StarTrekDS9 gets to be a bit formulaic at times. It’s strange even how often the same formula appears in two consecutive episodes. Most episodes have titles that may apply, sometimes with a bit of irony or metaphor, to two different storylines. For example, “Playing God” involves a decision about the fate of some proto-universe almost-roadkill on a runabout as well as another narrative about Dax tutoring a hopeful Trill initiate & holding power over his future.
The scripts explore the characters & their relationships as a rule to the point that it almost becomes a space soap opera. There are eps of TOS that revolve around something like Spock & his history & family (“Amok Time,” “Journey to Babel”) or McCoy having a year to live because of a disease (“For the World is Hollow & I Have Touched the Sky”). There’s more resistance to progress than anything else. At the end of a few episodes, Spock comically and resolutely refuses to admit having displayed any emotion, or he & McCoy bicker until Kirk cuts them off, etc.
In fact, in TOS, Spock is notably the ONLY non-human on the Enterprise. Much is made of his alienness & his struggles living among humans. In large part, the TOS episodes about him explore Vulcan culture, families, rituals, etc. These eps are less about developing the character than the species.
If I had to guess, I’d say at least half the episodes of DS9 involve characters in unlikely pairs in a runabout, often “coming to terms” or something similar. My faves, in fact, are the ones with Bashir & O’Brien because they almost never see eye-to-eye. They grow to respect each other a bit grudgingly, but they often avoid or at least resist the formulaic emoting, much more like Spock & McCoy in the original series.
And finally I guess I think it’s disturbing the way that DS9 belabors the Bajoran and other religions. It’s one thing to portray a primitive culture as worshiping deities, but much is made of Bajoran spirituality. It’s a disappointing turn for a franchise that started out kicking the gods whenever possible & has, I think, exactly two lines anywhere in TOS that betray that idea, possibly for the benefit of censors or something.
I guess I should spare a moment for “Past Tense,” one of #StarTrekDS9’s best-known (two-part) episodes, which I’ve finally seen. It’s been much discussed, especially this year & I had read the MA plot summary before. The most surprisingly accurate thing, which I’d never seen mentioned, was when the guard who first detains Sisko & Bashir (the mouthy prisoner at the end, who is the last one to come around after Sisko has taken a bullet) is cursing the ads (!) that are showing up on his console at work while he’s trying to do his job. Phew. I felt that one.
Obviously this episode is heavily inspired by “The City on the Edge of Forever” and shares with it some details: three are stranded in the past, a pair and a loner looking for each other; some of the others are left in the “present” and can detect that Starfleet is gone because history has been changed. In the first case, of course, Edith Keelor must die. In the second, Gabriel Bell dies helping the visitors from the future, who then have to fill the gap.
This reminds me a bit of the plot of Asimov’s “The End of Eternity,” in which Eternity, a time-travel organization, is founded on a paradox because fundamental knowledge was not discovered but brought back from the future to the 20th cy to the organization’s founder. Or would have been, had the founder not died. The time traveler from the future was left to impersonate and become the actual founder of the organization that sent him back to assist.
What’s funny is at first I kept thinking, they’ve traveled back to the 90s. Only to realize, oh right, they traveled back to this very summer. Predicting the relatively near future is always going to be risky or fail. Consider that the time interval between the airing of “Past Tense” and the events it predicts was about the same as “Space Seed” predicting the Eugenics Wars of the 90s, another couched dystopian warning. Which, as much as I love that episode & as important as Khan is to the franchise, always makes me giggle thinking of Jerry Seinfeld & Jennifer Aniston instead of genetically-engineered superhumans. I’d say “Past Tense” landed much nearer the actual mark. The main failure was overestimating empathy in the 21st cy.
There are some fun bits, like Kira & O’Brien beaming around to different time periods only to dematerialize holding flowers & making peace signs in front of a couple of stoned Boomers. I’d like to burn every one of Dax’s 2024 costumes. I think a few episodes later, is it Jake & Nog who mention the resemblance of Bell in the history books to Sisko?
Oh, and nearly forgot the gorgeous exchange between Dax & the “dim” who had her commbadge. “I’m an alien,” ed note: accurate, “and I’m here to defend the Earth from its enemies, but I need that piece of jewelry.”
I think it’s so well-known & I knew so much about it that there weren’t many surprises. Definitely a high point for the series.
OK, so a little off-topic, but thinking about Kira's "I broke my nose" in "Past Tense" and comparing with "The City on the Edge of Forever" brought to mind this unfortunate line:
"My friend is obviously Chinese."
Which brings up a host of questions that lead unpleasant places. But I find myself wondering if it was Harlan Ellison or Gene Roddenberry who was responsible for that line.
And so:
The writers in 1994/5 would have known perfectly well there would be a presidential campaign in progress in the US at the time of the #BellRiots. I don't recall any mention of a big change in government that would have explained not having an election. Maybe I just missed it, though I read through MA just now and didn't see any explanation. It seems like the sort of thing that would likely have come up between Brynner & Dax or something. Idk.
Not that you could possibly expect the writers to predict what actually happened this year.
Two actors I recognized so far in #StarTrekDS9 with #ChrisCarter creds from that time:
William Lucking: Furel in "Shakaar." Also Roky Crikenson in "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" from the 3rd season of "The X-Files"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lucking
Megan Gallagher: Nurse Faith Garland in "Little Green Men." Also Catherine Black in "Millennium" (Frank Black's wife throughout the series).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Gallagher
These two don't seem to have appeared in #Babylon5, but maybe they had enough work.
Ladies and/or gentlemen, Roky Crikenson's finest hour.
Note also: "Kinbote" is a reference to Nabokov's mad, fugitive Zemblan monarch in "Pale Fire."
Four was the season of change(lings) in #StarTrekDS9. Let’s see:
Kassidy Yates & Ziyal, Gul Dukat’s daughter, both came to live on DS9. Then Yates departed for a Federation holding cell. Eddington ran off to the Maquis. Odo married Lwaxana Troi. Who was, by the way, previously married to Kang. Then she ran off to Betazed to have a baby. Nog left for Earth & Starfleet Academy & eats tube grubs at Sisko’s in New Orleans. Rom quit Quark’s and became a longshoreman. Some Klingon dude showed up and started camping out on the Defiant. Kira hooked up with First Minister Shakaar. Then she moved in with the O’Briens. And their baby moved in with her. Mirror Jennifer & Mirror Nog both died. The Mirror Ferengi are dropping like flies. And then, you know, Odo became human with a weird face. And:
Gowron, the head of the Klingon Empire, is a changeling.
Except, of course, he isn’t. But anyway.
Did I miss anything?
Sisko ceased to be the Emissary for half an hour or so.
“Rejoined” (S4E6) is an interesting episode of #StarTrekDS9. Dax meets a Trill whose symbiont was joined with a spouse of a previous Dax, ie an ex-wife in a former life. Only, Dax was male in the previous life. We are told that Trill disapprove of revisiting relationships from previous lives, which is reasonable, though we’re told the penalty is permanent exile, meaning ultimate death of the symbiont because the exiled Trill can no longer return to Trill for a new host when the current one dies. This seems a bit extreme, but it sets the stakes for the episode. Dax is always portrayed as a bit of an unorthodox & adventuresome Trill & she’s not entirely inclined to follow the rules in this case. Eventually there’s a scene where she kisses the other Trill, a woman, on camera.
It occurs to me that this was contemporary with “Melrose Place,” which I have to admit I watched quite a bit at the time. There was a gay male character named Matt. While the show was known for steamy bedroom scenes with shirtless heterosexual couples, Matt only ever exchanged heartfelt hugs with his boyfriends. I always felt bad for him.
A kiss between two women ranks lower on the reactionary scale than two men, but this was a brave step for DS9 at the time.
It stands to reason that Trill, especially older ones that have been through lives of hosts with different genders, would evolve to be non-binary & bisexual, pansexual, asexual, etc. After all, Sisko constantly calls her, "Old Man," because of Curzon Dax. They at least remember their attractions from previous lives. Jadzia is usually paired with men in the series, but this episode seems like a pretty straightforward and natural idea based on the notion of a symbiotic life form. I imagine it must have met some resistance at the time.
So after all the noise about the Bell Riots this summer & after seeing so many episodes of #StarTrekDS9 with progressive themes, in the 6th season I suddenly ran across “Far Beyond the Stars.” What a breathtaking episode.
Without addressing the core of the script, I’ll just say I kept wondering if we’d ever see Nana Visitor without the Bajoran nose prosthesis. Even in “Our Man Bashir,” part of the conceit is that everyone’s transporter patterns are stored in the holosuite & have replaced the usual characters in the program. So Worf has head ridges & Kira with the usual nose has a Russian accent. And then suddenly in “Far Beyond the Stars,” they went far beyond the makeup chair. Michael Dorn as Willie Mays. JG Hertzler (Martok) as the sketch artist. One of the most striking was Marc Alaimo (Gul Dukat) as one of the cops who harass & beat up Benny Russell (Sisko).
Honestly I really just love Alaimo’s portrayal of Dukat, especially after seeing “Waltz,” which is a bit of a tour de force, but really puts Dukat on full display. He’s by far the best villain in the series. Iggy Pop as a Vorta in “The Magnificent Ferengi” is fun though.
I finished watching #StarTrekDS9. There's plenty to say, but there's one line that stuck in my head & floats by once a day or so. From "To the Death" (S4E23), in which the Defiant crew join the Jem'Hadar for a mission. Before beginning their assault, the JH First makes his speech: "I am First Omet'iklan & I am dead...."
The JH march off after he finishes speaking. Weyoun (5?) sarcastically remarks they're, "Delightful people." Then O'Brien gives his own version:
"I'm Chief Miles Edward O'Brien. I'm very much alive & I intend to stay that way."
One thing I want to offload before it gets too far from my mind:
The episode is “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang” (S7E15). With some episodes, like “Trials & Tribble-ations,” I’d seen every frame in advance & there’s not that much to comment on. (In this essay, I will….) And so with this episode, I was expecting some variation on “A Piece of the Action.” While the premise is as silly, I think this is a much better-considered ep than APotA.
But there’s one scene that made me scratch my head a bit, when Sisko explains to Kasidy his objections to the sanitized 1962 Vegas simulation. In fact, a few minutes before that, she was flirting with the white guard in the casino (“You look like my HS QB”) & I thought, now if this were historically realistic—
I think Ben’s objection is well founded & very welcome. But the terms in which he expresses it make him Avery Brooks, not The Sisko. Especially, he uses the phrase, “our people,” when talking to Kasidy about black people in the 1960s. It’s entirely necessary commentary in the 1990s & still today. But it seems really anachronistic 400 years later in a world that is supposed long ago to have evolved past racism, poverty, war, etc. Such things should no longer matter in a colorblind human world. A century before, Uhura casually shrugged off being called a “negress” by almost-Abraham Lincoln & had to explain that things like that just didn’t matter anymore.
For the most part, I think you have to give the series kudos for handling of lots of social issues, particularly certain ones around gender & race. I mentioned previously the kiss between two women. In fact, the entire romance/marriage between Jadzia & Worf is notable. In the narrative, they’re (at least) two different alien species (assuming the Trill symbiont & host are probably distinct biological species). In reality, the actors were a black man & a white woman. In the 21st cy couples of different races have become common on TV. In the 90s this was still a seldom-broken taboo. After all, both Sisko’s wives were played by black women as well as his mother, Sarah, though Jake sometimes unseriously pursued Bajoran dabo girls who were played by white women. Putting Michael Dorn & Terry Farrell front & center was a bold move.
Aside from that, Vic Fontaine is a fun character (especially Mirror Vic, who only appears for a few seconds before being shot by Mirror Julian/Jules iirc in “The Emperor’s New Cloak”). And the episode ends with a gorgeous duet between James Darren & Avery Brooks of “The Best is Yet to Come.” Perfect ending. 
@darth_hideout I just finished season six on PlutoTV. DS9 is my favorite series of the bunch. The characters and the growth they go through during the course of the series are very relatable. Humanoid/symbiont, maybe not.
@darth_hideout
I've been thinking about this in a similar vein lately. For the first time ever (and I neeeeever thought I'd hear myself say this) Star Wars belongs on TV for the time being. The 'Mandoverse' has shown that's where their current strength lies. Of course I'm still excited for the Mandalorian film, but that's just a culmination of a solid TV era. The rest of the film universe can hold off for a bit, until Disney/Lucasfilm can work out a solid plan forward
Star Wars didn't produce a TV series at all until the 21st cy. "The Clone Wars" was pretty much Filoni's thing but under Lucas' auspices. Not even counting the 2-D series from 2003-2004, there are more than 100 eps in 7 seasons of TCW, dwarfing the total duration of all Star Wars films put together. (And the 3-D series is SW canon, while the 2-D series is not.)
Part of why it gets mixed reviews, imo, is that it was animation. This was Star Wars' first foray into TV & animation, 25 years after the first film. What made SW what it was originally was sfx in live action.
But TCW also developed its own weird structure by about the 3rd season. After that it's nothing but 3- & 4-ep arcs, like one animated feature-length film after another. I think this made for less episodic content.
Some are awfully good. Some spectacularly bad.
After that was 4 seasons of Rebels, also Filoni animation, but I think at this point among the fandom it's nearly as essential as "The Empire Strikes Back." It's way less controversial among fans than the sequels. This series returned to a format with a lot more episodic content.
I think Filoni deserves a lot of credit for SW on TV. He continues to have a central role in the Mandoverse & is still making a feature film afaik. Whether live action is really his thing idk.
@darth_hideout
Well we did have the Ewoks and Droids cartoons. I rather enjoyed those in the 80s. It was the original multiverse 