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Pick posted:Sisko comes off as kind of an rear end in a top hat tbh. Very righteously indignant often when it's not appropriate. I get he's pissed about his wife but Picard isn't Locutus and it's basically making GBS threads on a man with a horrific torture experience that occurred in service to the federation. It ~feels cool~ but it's actually cruel and a terrible first impression. Feels very 90s edgy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiFznzKnrLc A lot of DS9 is like that-- stuff that fans rationalize as "oh it's Star Trek being pushed to its limit" when really it's Star Trek retrofitted with a more conventional and traditional macho sci-fi show skin. It comes out on-balance better because the Trek trappings prevent machismo from taking over, but there's a reason some nerds consider the dogfights and macho warhawking in DS9 the "true" jumping of the shark for the franchise. mind the walrus fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 18:45
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I actually do find the focus on a huge war (while unsuccessfully egregiously mimicking what Babylon 5* was doing) a huge negative turn for Trek. *Not to mention in B5 the literal resolution is pointing out fighting a war loving sucks poo poo
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Jun 12, 2020 18:48
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Also a lot of fans like Sisko punching Q in the face but I just think it's stupid
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Jun 12, 2020 18:49
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I don't mind the punching but I do find the " Sisko punched Q once and Q never bothered him again" meme a bit of missing the point. On the one hand like yeah it's true, but it's also true that Q found DS9 primitive, backwater, and boring and thus never bothered with it. It's the God-Being equivalent of pissing on the floor-- sure it works in keeping him away but you also just lost a powerful social contact who can Deus Ex Machina your rear end out of jams.
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Jun 12, 2020 19:02
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it would probably be really hard to reconcile Q with the prophets honestly
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Jun 12, 2020 23:22
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Sisko is great.
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Jun 12, 2020 23:26
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I grew up visiting a single dad starting around '96 and while Sisko is a widow and not a divorcee they really did key in on single dad energy well. There's a moment where Sisko does this really annoying macho fist thing with Jake's face in the first episode and it's the exact kind of self-absorbed crap my dad would do. Even though I didn't watch it during first run DS9 is kind-of nostalgic for me in that it feels like going to visit that crappy apartment on weekends, complete with that mid-90s green tones that showed up in everything.
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Jun 12, 2020 23:31
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The War in DS9 is nothing like the war in B5. The Dominion War was designed from the ground up to work specifically with Star Trek's previously established universe. The point was not to revel in cool battle scenes and indulge military scifi's tropes and trappings. The point is to explore and test the ideologies and principles of the major Star Trek races as they were established in Next Generation and expanded in DS9's early seasons. The Dominion is deliberately designed to be a foil/dark mirror for everything those races stand for: Diplomacy, Political Machinations, Religion, Warrior Culture, Inter-Species Cooperation, Technology-Enabled Societal Advancement, Expansionist State-Building, Might-Makes-Right Morality, every part of the Dominion is set up to challenge and/or negatively reflect things that the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians and Bajorans hold dear. The show uses the war to see if the Alpha Quadrant's values can hold in the face of an existential threat. To demand that the characters who represent those cultures and those values evolve in order to preserve them in the face of not only the external threat of the Dominion, but the internal betrayals of those values. To overcome their own temptations to abandon those values, or even a few times to accept that sacrificing them is the lesser evil for the sake of stopping the Dominion. It works on its own as self-contained military scifi, sure, but its real value only appears in the larger context of the Star Trek Franchise. It's a companion piece to Next Generation, a gauntlet thrown directly the feet of Roddenberry's Utopian ideal, but done so with every intention that it will end with everything Star Trek champions overcoming that test.
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Jun 13, 2020 02:21
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It's completely undercut multiple times by things like the unprompted intervention of the wormhole aliens.
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Jun 13, 2020 06:42
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Verviticus posted:it would probably be really hard to reconcile Q with the prophets honestly I think instead of get rid of Q, they should just have pretended he didn't exist. That's what they did for the Borg (thank god).
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Jun 13, 2020 06:43
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Pick posted:It's completely undercut multiple times by things like the unprompted intervention of the wormhole aliens. Um... the intervention of the wormhole aliens was, in fact, DIRECTLY PROMPTED. By the protagonist. In direct relation to his character arc concerning his relationship to them, to faith and to his role as a spiritual leader. Ben Sisko, the messiah of the Bajoran religion, spent the majority of the show wrestling with the fact that he knows that the Gods in that religion are simply powerful aliens and that taking on that messianic role is in many ways incompatible with everything he believes and represents. He slowly, in episodes before that intervention, comes to accept that role, the responsibilities, the attachments to Bajor that come with it, and even discovers a measure of real faith in those aliens and the destiny they've laid out for him. Then at the moment where the fate of everything he cares about is to fall to ruin, he turns around and, in his role as their messiah, demands that those Aliens do the same thing they've demanded of him time and again: accept the mantle that's been thrust upon them. "You want to be Gods? Then be Gods. I need a miracle."
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Jun 13, 2020 08:06
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Pick posted:Also a lot of fans like Sisko punching Q in the face but I just think it's stupid That scene is hilarious because Q puts himself and Sisko in a boxing ring and then gets offended when he gets punched. It's such a Q thing to do.
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Jun 13, 2020 08:12
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Crowetron posted:That scene is hilarious because Q puts himself and Sisko in a boxing ring and then gets offended when he gets punched. It's such a Q thing to do. I also like that once Q is done getting offended he declares that himself being punched is a victory because it means Sisko is way easier to manipulate than Picard was.
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Jun 13, 2020 08:14
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My mouth isn't full of blood, it's victory wine
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Jun 13, 2020 08:41
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Sanguinia posted:Um... the intervention of the wormhole aliens was, in fact, DIRECTLY PROMPTED. By the protagonist. In direct relation to his character arc concerning his relationship to them, to faith and to his role as a spiritual leader. And this is why I'll go to bat for DS9 over BSG any day. I don't give a gently caress that BSG wanted to involve actual religion, and on a micro scale BSG is way more watchable than DS9 ever was, but DS9 actually managed to thread its thematic needles by being organized and having a plan.
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Jun 13, 2020 12:52
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Sisko's role is an interesting one, more a Moses figure than a Jesus really. He's basically a go-between, handling negotiations between the Bajorans, the Prophets and the Federation, and having to navigate the agendas, needs and responsibilities of all three. (and then some) DS9 definitely goes into how intrigue and diplomacy can be much more interesting and fun than war, which is usually banal and horrific. Quark using Ferengi bargaining philosophy and game theory applied to diplomatic negotiation is interesting, and he takes it to the point of bargaining with the Prophets when necessary. The overall idea is testing the Federation and other cultures' ideals, and the ones that win out are the long-term ones, while the shortsightedly belligerent pay dearly for their mistakes.
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Jun 13, 2020 15:56
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I caught about 5 min of a BSG episode on that Comet channel and I couldn't take it anymore. I loved the poo poo out of that show when it was on but man it does not hold up anymore.
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Jun 13, 2020 18:57
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Sanguinia posted:Um... the intervention of the wormhole aliens was, in fact, DIRECTLY PROMPTED. By the protagonist. In direct relation to his character arc concerning his relationship to them, to faith and to his role as a spiritual leader. This is a great post, thank you.
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Jun 14, 2020 02:17
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Peachfart beat me to it but those are some good extremely nerdy posts Sanguinia. That's not a bad thing.
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Jun 14, 2020 02:59
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mind the walrus posted:I don't mind the punching but I do find the " I'm trying and failing to think of a time Q got anybody out of a jam he didn't get them into in the first place.
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Jun 14, 2020 03:08
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It's admittedly more of a theoretical benefit
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Jun 14, 2020 07:11
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Lemniscate Blue posted:I'm trying and failing to think of a time Q got anybody out of a jam he didn't get them into in the first place. There was the bit where Picard was having a bit of a crisis and Q basically gave him an Its A Wonderful Life treatment over if he hadn't gotten stabbed through the heart in that bar fight, and followed Picard's request that it wouldn't involve changing the timeline for anyone else in major ways but just examining his own life.
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Jun 14, 2020 07:31
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The Butcher posted:Peachfart beat me to it but those are some good extremely nerdy posts Sanguinia. Ya'll are gonna make me blush. Analyzing themes and characters arcs for nerd poo poo is basically my posting gimmick, ask anybody in Fight Island or the WoW Lore Thread.
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Jun 14, 2020 21:48
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Wait, there's a DS9 ep where O'Brien is replaced with a time clone? drat ,they just straight ripped that off in Voyager when Harry and Baby Naomi Wildman join the "real" VOyager after a time fracture splits it in two, didn't they? And speaking of, Voyager has at least one reference to crewman/NCOs. When they take on the four or five surviving members of The Equinox, Janeway busts them all down to crewman rank.
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Jun 15, 2020 21:47
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Pick posted:I don't like Avery Brooks's performance as it fits in with the rest of the cast. He's not a bad actor but I think he's from a completely different acting school and it's jarring. Some pushback against Sisko was pure racism but some of it was legitimately stage acting among TV actors. You can say literally the same thing about Patrick Stewart, though. In both cases it was a deliberate choice to have a larger-than-life character as the For me there were maybe two or three scenes in the whole series where I felt like Brooks was overacting. The rest of the time he was perfect.
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Jun 16, 2020 04:29
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off the top of my head when sisko yells "YOU BETRAYED YOUR UNIFORM" i could see someone having issues with that but i dunno, thats just who the character is to me. hell there was an entire two episodes where sisko repeatedly tries to give someones uniform back to them in the hopes that it would somehow trick them into rejoining starfleet
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Jun 16, 2020 05:01
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I love Brooks' performance in general personally because he has a lot building up and going on behind each bombastic delivery. It never felt like he was overselling it to me. That episode where Odo finally gets laid with some random woman and is late to a meeting. Odo sort of starts to talk about that being why he's late and Sisko sort of cuts him off just like "A WOMAN!.....that's NIIIIICE!" or whatever and it's an amazing delivery because I can't even remember the exact wording but because of how the scene is set up he says two completely different things to Odo simultaneously with his tone and that stood out to me. Like you can hear both "Odo, you've been through so much poo poo in your life and it's great that you've been able to make some friends now and have even found some intimate companionship" and " I cannot loving believe you just brought this banal dogshit poo poo up in my meeting that you're not even on time too. Now shut the gently caress up and help me win the dominion wars" I feel like a lot of his on the surface generically loud moments have that duality and political acumen in them and meshes well with the position he's in where he has to take all of these folks' and factions and agendas into account all the time on a personal and macro level to keep everything from going to poo poo. And the way that interacts with his genuine devotion to Starfleet comes up in interesting ways like when he mega flips out on Worf arranging his brother's suicide on the station and stuff. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Jun 16, 2020 |
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Jun 16, 2020 14:30
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When Brooks is good he's really good, but toward the back half of the series it gets to be a bit much. I actually feel like a real douchebag saying it because I can tell it was motivated by very very real things in his real life that he must have been forced to deal with regularly as the lead in a nationally syndicated mega-franchise show for 7 years... but the Benny stuff is a bridge too far. It touches on some super real problems that persist to this day and in isolate they're good television, but as part of a Star Trek show I kind-of hate it.
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Jun 16, 2020 15:30
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Thing is that Benny Russel episode isn't just about racism or the civil rights struggle but about early science fiction and the struggles it has trying to be progressive, the premise being very much like what caused EC to stop making comics. The other writers in the episode are references to various other sci-fi authors, with O'Brien's being an Asimov stand-in most obviously. The themes aren't always as unsubtle as Star Trek usually is. But say, take Dukat's rants about the Bajorans, and consider in context he's saying this to an African-American man, who has literally experienced historical eras of segregation and stratification by race and class.
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Jun 16, 2020 16:12
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Thing is that Benny Russel episode isn't just about racism or the civil rights struggle but about early science fiction and the struggles it has trying to be progressive, the premise being very much like what caused EC to stop making comics. The other writers in the episode are references to various other sci-fi authors, with O'Brien's being an Asimov stand-in most obviously. This reminds me of the Casino Heist episode where Sisko doesn't want to help because the program whitewashes the racism of the 60s, ranting about how black people could only be laborers or performers and would never be permitted to be customers on the strip. But it turns out that by the year her cites that Sinatra and the Rat Pack had been working with Sammy Davis Jr. on the desegregation in Vegas for like a decade and succeeded in strong-arming a lot of the big hotels and casinos into going along with it. I always thought that was kind of funny since I heard it. Like maybe by that point in the war Sisko is so frayed that its getting hard to keep all his Enlightened Starfleet Renaissance Man skills strait and his encyclopedic knowledge of history is starting to blur a bit.
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Jun 16, 2020 20:04
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Sanguinia posted:This reminds me of the Casino Heist episode where Sisko doesn't want to help because the program whitewashes the racism of the 60s, ranting about how black people could only be laborers or performers and would never be permitted to be customers on the strip. But it turns out that by the year her cites that Sinatra and the Rat Pack had been working with Sammy Davis Jr. on the desegregation in Vegas for like a decade and succeeded in strong-arming a lot of the big hotels and casinos into going along with it. Honestly it's pretty unbelievable that he'd be able to keep track of that much history without slipping things up by a decade here and there. The 1960s are like 400 years prior to when DS9 takes place, which is the equivalent of like, 1620s relative to now. Even pretty well educated people get muddled about major events in that period (Witch Trials and 30 Years War in Europe, Ming-Qing Transition in China, peak of Mughal expansion in India, etc) unless they're actually specialists in that one of those events. What I'm saying is that it's good that Sisko was wrong.
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Jun 16, 2020 21:15
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Thing is that Benny Russel episode isn't just about racism or the civil rights struggle but about early science fiction and the struggles it has trying to be progressive, the premise being very much like what caused EC to stop making comics. The other writers in the episode are references to various other sci-fi authors, with O'Brien's being an Asimov stand-in most obviously. Sanguinia posted:This reminds me of the Casino Heist episode where Sisko doesn't want to help because the program whitewashes the racism of the 60s, ranting about how black people could only be laborers or performers and would never be permitted to be customers on the strip. But it turns out that by the year her cites that Sinatra and the Rat Pack had been working with Sammy Davis Jr. on the desegregation in Vegas for like a decade and succeeded in strong-arming a lot of the big hotels and casinos into going along with it.
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Jun 16, 2020 23:20
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It's almost like it was a show made in the 90's that was referencing the still ongoing racism of the 90's.
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Jun 17, 2020 00:22
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this is only partially on topic but this is basically a general ds9 thread: in 'in the pale moonlight', when vreenak is drinking the replicated drink and hes describing how he feels about it, is that supposed to be a metaphor for his feelings on the federation and the conversation at hand
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Jun 18, 2020 23:30
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Peachfart posted:It's almost like it was a show made in the 90's that was referencing the still ongoing racism of the 90's.
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Jun 19, 2020 00:01
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Verviticus posted:this is only partially on topic but this is basically a general ds9 thread: in 'in the pale moonlight', when vreenak is drinking the replicated drink and hes describing how he feels about it, is that supposed to be a metaphor for his feelings on the federation and the conversation at hand I think it's more of a foreshadowing that there's no way in hell they were gonna fool him with the faked evidence, Sisko definitely notes how sharp the guy is and is hesitant about the plan. And of course the plan works exactly as Garak had planned and gets the exact effect Sisko wanted, but not quite in the way Sisko was expecting from Garak.
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Jun 19, 2020 02:30
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Vic sucks rear end and so do all the episodes with him. It feels like suddenly everyone on the station is an emotional cripple and can't hash things out between one another like they have for the past 6 years. The only person where it almost makes sense is Ezri but that's because she's both familiar with everyone but also a complete stranger.
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Jun 19, 2020 23:08
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i think the nog ptsd episode is pretty good but other than that the vic episodes are, eh
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Jun 20, 2020 00:07
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After six seasons of 20+ 44 min episodes, a new guy showing up gets attention It's really too bad Vic couldn't also have been installed on Voyager, there's an ep where Neelix has some problems and Chakotay is all "let's do some hallucinogenic drugs" and they make Neelix worse, and Chakotay is all "well, good luck in your future endeavors" You have a chief engineer with really serious head problems and she keep inflicting them on others, and nobody does poo poo You have an Lt. who for some reason has been kept an ensign because otherwise the senior officers wouldn't have a punching bag
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Jun 20, 2020 00:36
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It's not like everyone's been through multiple wars and skirmishes with constantly changing allegiances taking a physical and emotional toll on the entire station, also inclusive of the traumatic death of a key crew member, over the past five years or so, and are in need of both comfort and entertainment via the only outlet they have available. Vic Fontaine rules, is what I'm saying.
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Jun 20, 2020 00:38
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