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Tulip posted:I'm probably gonna ask this in more than one thread but like, why is O'Brien an NCO? Not like, what chain of causal events led O'Brien to not obtain a commission, I mean like, why does Starfleet have an entire category of rankings that seems to apply to only one person? As far as I can tell it's a shame pig thing? Actually I believe the first time Star Trek established non-commisioned crew was in TNG's The Drumhead. Simon Tarses is Starfleet but he's a lab technician with no pips, not an officer. Picard directly asks him if he "ever thought about attending the academy and going the whole route." Tarses explains that he enlisted in Starfleet as non-commisioned crew because as a teenager he wasn't willing to wait four years of school, he wanted to get into space ASAP and do exploring. O'brien is still wearing officer pips in The Wounded just a couple of episodes before that.
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Jun 6, 2020 10:33
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Tsaedje posted:'Crewmen' are all over TOS but the understanding of the difference between officers and enlisted crew got lost or deliberately thrown out when TNG started. Apparently not by season 4, as I just said. Picard makes Tarses not being an academy grad and an officer very explicit, and there is a stated rational behind the difference, ie Time To Get Your Rank.
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Jun 6, 2020 11:06
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GokuGoesSSJ3 posted:I got the impression Sisko's strongest skill was being really good at war strategy. He was one of the people in charge of strategy for the whole federation during the dominion war despite just being a captain wasn't he? Sisko was promoted to a strategic command position after DS9 fell yeah. He was second to Admiral Ross, who was portrayed as one of the top command guys for Starfleet during the war. That said, I always thought Sisko's strongest skill was his political acumen. The way he handles the constant schemes and crises that plague Bajoran and Cardassian space, how he navigates the 'cold war,' with the Dominion, how he handles the tightrope of his role as Emissary, it all takes a political mind that I would argue even outstrips Picard's.
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Jun 8, 2020 08:46
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Coucho Marx posted:No list, but there's a two-parter from right in the middle of season 4 (Homefront/Paradise Lost) that aged terrifyingly well. As a result of the threat of changelings (shapeshifter enemies) possibly infiltrating Earth following multiple violent encounters with the Dominion, the government invokes draconian security measures (blood tests, scans etc.), with Sisko finding himself agreeing with - and demanding - these changes. After all, it's his station on the front line, and he's fought these people more than once. An attack on infrastructure (that turns out to be a false flag operation) results in temporary emergency powers for the military, dangerously escalating the situation and giving the changelings an opportunity to frame Sisko to their benefit. Homefront/Paradise Lost is a strong contender for my favorite DS9, up there with Pale Moonlight, Improbably Cause/The Die is Cast, and Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges. That last one in particular does a spectacular job of tying together the entire on-going "Can the Federation's ideals survive the challenge of the Dominion?" storyline, running the ball that Homefront set up and Inquisition carried by introducing Section 31. The way it uses everything from Bashir's on-going character arc, from his revelation as an augment to his informal mentoring by Garak, to its use of recurring morally grey but clearly not evil regulars like Senator Kreetak and Admiral Ross... ung, so god drat good.
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Jun 10, 2020 01:29
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Kind of the whole point with the Ferengi arcs is that Rom's skills are explicitly devalued by the Ferengi, and he's failed miserably at the role society pushed him into- and Nog has seen this, and he knows his father has talents and that the Ferengi see them as nothing more than a resource to be exploited. Quark on the other hand would be doing well by business standards but traditional Ferengi hate him, more than he seems to realise, because he makes compromises to function in galactic society. It's even mentioned later that the rest of the quadrant is sick of the Ferengi's poo poo so they're looking for new customers in the Gamma Quadrant who haven't heard of them. I feel like there's an interesting analysis to be done on the Ferengi society as DS9 portrays it in that it seems like a lot of the worst parts of their culture are rooted less in their capitalism OR their religion than in the toxic way those two have intertwined. Quark often applies his Alien-To-Federation-Types Capitalist mindset to problems in a constructive way, like when he talked about "The Price of Peace," to the Vulcan Maquis, or when he attempted to empathize with O'brien and Bashir's fears over Earth being bombed by the Dominion by comparing it to a time Fereginar was struck by an economic crisis. Simultaneously Nog helps us see the Ferengi religion in a positive way, talking about how trade and commerce are effective tools for bringing people together and providing what they need for happiness and prosperity. Both sides of the Ferengi can be very positive. Its when those two MIX that Ferengi seem to show their worst sides. There are several Rules of Acquisition that directly encourage exploiting those you trade with, espouse complete amorality in the conduct of business (Peace and War are both good for business), and even imply racial supremacism (A Contract is a Contract ONLY between Ferengi). Quark was ready to literally kill himself to settle his contractual obligations because of religious dogma regarding how capitalism should work, and it took a GENUINE religious experience to dissuade him. One of Quark's biggest moans about Zek's reforms is that the Rules don't get taught in schools anymore. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 04:06
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BiggestBatman posted:And it turns out eventually that Bashir is a genetic freak as well! Something something Steiner Math parody
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Jun 11, 2020 20:17
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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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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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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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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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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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Neo Rasa posted:gently caress Rick Berman. If there's one plinkett meme that deserves to be repeated, its gently caress YOU RICK BERMAN, YOU RUINED THIS TOO? WHAT IS IT WITH RICKS?
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Jun 22, 2020 03:30
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Verviticus posted:he blows up a ('thankfully' revealed to be empty) civilian transport ship that decloaks in front of him and then assaults the other side's lawyer in the middle of a trial, That episode is awesome in literally every way, don't lump it into Worf's hot mess-ness in the rest of DS9
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Jun 22, 2020 23:03
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spankmeister posted:Worf is dumb as hell and his adherence to Klingon honor and whatnot has ruined his entire house. Idk how big a Klingon house is but worf ruined the lives of idk dozens of people just so he could do the honorable thing without ever even consulting them or taking them into consideration at all. Are you saying Worf should have sat idle for the sake of keeping his money and power while Gowron prosecuted his war on Cardassia and threw the Federation Alliance in the garbage? He did the equivalent of resigning from Trump's Cabinet when Trump did a lovely thing, should that not be praised?
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Jun 23, 2020 01:13
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Always thought of a joke where Quark is worried about being trapped in the Vault of Eternal Destitution and a Klingon says not to worry, they'll round up some buddies from Stovokor and bust them out. Hijack the Barge of the Dead and sail that mother strait down the Great Material Continuum!
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Jun 29, 2020 07:07
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Ghost Leviathan posted:These are the voyages of the Barge of the Dead. Our eternal mission: to seek out new afterlives of new civilisations. To boldly go where no ghost has gone before. Danny Phantom: The Next Generation
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Jun 29, 2020 07:39
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AlternateNu posted:Except for religion. That's what he has Kira for.
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Aug 2, 2020 09:39
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I thought it was OK as a one-sided thing. Younger people being enamored with older people isn't exactly a rarity in real life, and Garrak generally handled it better than most TV characters in the 90s would have, ie by NOT encouraging her or reciprocating her feelings. Even after she died his thought was to wonder WHY she loved him rather than to reciprocate. He did have that line about how being around her made his crappy life not feel so bad, but you don't HAVE to interpret that in romantic terms.
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Aug 7, 2020 10:23
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