Dalek and Warcry's Endless Star Trek Thread

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Post by inflatable dalek »

I'm mid season 3 of DS9 now and if I had a drink every time Sisko took the Defiant--Bajor's one and only defence--on a jolly I'd be blind pissed by now. Especially if I drunk a double every time he took the entire cast with him (for bonus points if non-Star Fleet people like Kira and Odo act like they have jobs on the ship).
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Post by Tetsuro »

Well I just finished DS9 myself and a friend of mine keeps bitching about the fireballs but personally I think all that stuff you can just easily fanwank away - which is probably another bad sign.

What I do have a problem with is characters being written badly, like the blatant character assassination of Winn and Dukat - apparently the writers felt that in spite of their best efforts, Dukat was still too popular with the audiences so they had him literally come out and say that all the niceties he's said about the Bajorans in the past were lies. Because yes, apparently having three dimensional characters is bad. Same goes for Winn - in the extras her actor speaks about how Winn only paid her faith lip service and was all about having power and keeping it, but that doesn't explain why she got so mad about the prophets never speaking to her.

And in spite of all that, it's still a stronger series finale than what Voyager got.
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Post by Heinrad »

So I'm a little over halfway into season 4 of Voyager, and I have to say, I'm liking it more than I remember.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Does Warcry still even like Star Trek is my question.

Into season 5 of DS9 now, which along with six probably makes for the best run of episodes in the series. Hugely helped by the fact that for the first time in two years it doesn't open with a major relaunch that basically resets the show into a new first season that has to find its feet.

Worf has settled in as well, for most of the first year they clearly have no idea what to do with this character fostered upon them, and it's fun spotting all the time he does less strategic operating and more escorting people to airlocks or answering the space phone. The silliness of him getting the Defiant into a fight with the Excelsior class ship in Paradise Lost (despite being on an urgent mission and on a ship that can turn invisible he just flies right up to the ship commanded by Leah Brahms just so they have to fight) makes sense if you assume he's bored out of his mind.

Oddly even though people usually say Worf works better on DS9 than TNG, he's undergone quite a severe personality change. The guy who was always a bit serious but could still play poker and had a dry sense of humour has now got a massive rod up his arse and is a very dull, very serious grumpy old man. Who enjoys beating the crap out of his woman during sex (and yes, different species. And Dax is up for it and gives as good as she gets. And I suppose in a future where even the most serious injuries can be healed instantly BDSM could go to all sorts of places. But can you imagine him breaking Troi's ribs during sex when they were together? Or her doing the same to him?).

It doesn't help he flat out says at one point he's never been with a Klingon woman, which seems a bit unfair on the only convincing relationship he's had up till this point. Boy must be keep to repress his son.

All of which reaches his nadir in Let He Who Is Without Sin, which not only manages the feet of being sexist without being sexy but struggles to try and put Worf back towards how he was in TNG but makes him seem more of a dick in the process.

More cheerfully, Trials and Tirbbleations is possibly one of the greatest episodes of TV ever made. Still the slipping of them into the old footage looks flawless 21 years later, every joke is brilliant and it's just warm and fuzzy and so close to being perfect (only a couple of contrivances to role with, poor security on the Defiant and the Enterprise not noticing a massive explosion) it's insane it didn't win every award going. It's especially baffling it didn't get the effects Emmy.

And when you're watching it in order and it's been 270 odd adventures since you last saw her, having the original Enterprise back packs quite a emotional punch. I wonder what happened to the new model they built for this one?
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

inflatable dalek wrote:And when you're watching it in order and it's been 270 odd adventures since you last saw her, having the original Enterprise back packs quite a emotional punch. I wonder what happened to the new model they built for this one?
Maybe it was sent to Las Vegas when one of hotels/casinos there was running "The Star Trek Experience".

It might have be donated to the Smithsonian Museum because I recall a model of the original Enterprise was donated to them.
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Post by Warcry »

inflatable dalek wrote:Does Warcry still even like Star Trek is my question.
:lol:

Been a while since I watched any, but yes.
inflatable dalek wrote:Into season 5 of DS9 now, which along with six probably makes for the best run of episodes in the series. Hugely helped by the fact that for the first time in two years it doesn't open with a major relaunch that basically resets the show into a new first season that has to find its feet.
Season 5 of DS9 is probably my favourite season of any Trek show ever. Like you say, the show finally seemed to figure out what it wanted to be and what story it wanted to tell the year before, and once it stopped flailing around the writers and actors were really able to get going. Season six was great too, as was season four (and you mentioned my favourite part of that later) but in the fifth season you could just see all the puzzle pieces falling together and it was amazing.
inflatable dalek wrote:Worf has settled in as well, for most of the first year they clearly have no idea what to do with this character fostered upon them, and it's fun spotting all the time he does less strategic operating and more escorting people to airlocks or answering the space phone. The silliness of him getting the Defiant into a fight with the Excelsior class ship in Paradise Lost (despite being on an urgent mission and on a ship that can turn invisible he just flies right up to the ship commanded by Leah Brahms just so they have to fight) makes sense if you assume he's bored out of his mind.
Since you brought it up, I'm going to remind everyone yet again about how much I love Homefront and Paradise Lost. Some of the plot beats are a bit silly (like using a bunch of hormonal, unreliable teenage cadets to carry out a terrorist attack against your own government), but I loved getting glimpse of how the regular civilian population views the world vs. how Starfleet (and the audience) does. Sisko's dad was great for that, and brought a much-needed sense of perspective to a series that, in spite of featuring a few civilian main characters, never did the greatest job of showing how it's big, dramatic political events actually impacted the little people they were trying to make life better for.

I also loved Admiral Leyton as a character. So often the high-ranking Starfleet antagonists we get are one-dimensional caricatures of hackneyed villainy, but here we got someone with some depth. Leyton was actually 100% right about basically everything he was worrying about, but still managed to be so, so very wrong and I love the character a bit more every time I watch. Movie Ratchet's acting helped a lot to make it feel like more than just another Insane Admiral of the Week, too.
inflatable dalek wrote:Oddly even though people usually say Worf works better on DS9 than TNG, he's undergone quite a severe personality change. The guy who was always a bit serious but could still play poker and had a dry sense of humour has now got a massive rod up his arse and is a very dull, very serious grumpy old man. Who enjoys beating the crap out of his woman during sex (and yes, different species. And Dax is up for it and gives as good as she gets. And I suppose in a future where even the most serious injuries can be healed instantly BDSM could go to all sorts of places. But can you imagine him breaking Troi's ribs during sex when they were together? Or her doing the same to him?).
In season four especially, it really seems like Worf isn't even supposed to be there for most of the episodes. He has some that focus on him, sure, but a lot of the time it felt like they were just paring off an action or two from a couple different characters every episode and giving them to him so that Michael Dorn wasn't putting on the makeup just to be a background extra.

And the "Strategic Operations Officer" thing really has to be the most meaningless job title in all of Star Trek. Considering what he actually did on the show I'm not sure why they didn't just call him the commander of the Defiant. If nothing else it would have felt like career advancement for him.

I didn't actually mind the personality change all that much. The man just watched the only home he'd ever had as an adult get blown to bits in an attack that he (as security chief and tactical officer) must have felt personally responsible for not stopping. Then on top of that, the son he finally came to feel comfortable being loving towards has gone back to live with his grandparents, the Klingons banished him again and he's stuck on a space station with people that (O'Brien aside, sometimes) he doesn't seem to particularly like. And then all that shit with Kurn. His life had completely fallen apart. He loosens up a bit once Martok and Jadzia become his new family, but it took a couple years for him to become comfortable with his new life (or for the writers to become comfortable with him as something other than the stock grumpy Klingon who'd been forced on them as a ratings stunt, if you rather).
inflatable dalek wrote:It doesn't help he flat out says at one point he's never been with a Klingon woman, which seems a bit unfair on the only convincing relationship he's had up till this point. Boy must be keep to repress his son.
As far as the violent sex goes, it was actually a running joke across most of TNG that Worf considered human women "too fragile" to copulate with, and that Klingon mating rituals were ridiculous things that involved the woman screaming and throwing things while the man read love poetry before slamming into each other so hard that it broke bones. I'm not surprised that DS9 picked up on that.

But of course, as with all of Worf's overcompensating hyper-Klingonness, it's kind of up in the air how much of that is actual Klingon behaviour and how much is Worf living out the "perfect Klingon" stereotypes he's got stuck in his head. I always assumed that Dax knew better but went along with it anyway because (on account of inheriting the memories and proclivities of seven or eight different people) she was always on the lookout for anything different from the norm.
inflatable dalek wrote:All of which reaches his nadir in Let He Who Is Without Sin, which not only manages the feet of being sexist without being sexy but struggles to try and put Worf back towards how he was in TNG but makes him seem more of a dick in the process.
I choose to forget this episode exists.
inflatable dalek wrote:More cheerfully, Trials and Tirbbleations is possibly one of the greatest episodes of TV ever made. Still the slipping of them into the old footage looks flawless 21 years later, every joke is brilliant and it's just warm and fuzzy and so close to being perfect (only a couple of contrivances to role with, poor security on the Defiant and the Enterprise not noticing a massive explosion) it's insane it didn't win every award going. It's especially baffling it didn't get the effects Emmy.
I refuse to believe that. 21 years? Shit, we're old. :(

But you're right, this episode really was a special effects masterpiece and if it didn't win any awards that's a travesty. Though maybe not a huge surprise...special effects awards usually go to the biggest explosions, not the best work, and while this episode was amazingly well-done it really wasn't all that flashy.
Tetsuro wrote:What I do have a problem with is characters being written badly, like the blatant character assassination of Winn and Dukat
It got really bad for those two in the end. :(

For the most part I don't mind Winn turning into an outright villain. She'd always been a self-serving cunt whose faith never went more than skin-deep. I actually don't have a problem with her deciding to side with Space Lucifers. But choosing to work with Dukat, and having a complete lack of awareness of how much he's manipulating her? That's something that doesn't sound like Winn at all.

I don't think I've ever seen writers work so hard to assassinate a character that they created as the DS9 staff did with Dukat, though. I don't think there was a single solitary frame of footage that he was in after the Feds took back DS9 that wasn't intensely cringeworthy. Them trying so hard to make us hate him was easily the worst part of the last two seasons, and the fact that it lasted so long makes it way worse than what they did to Winn in the last handful of episodes.

At least Weyoun and Female Shapeshifter got a good ending to their stories.
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

OK I finally watched Star Trek: Beyond and here is what I thought:

The good:
Justin Lin's a better action director than Abrams.
The script was a million times better than the crap that the least talented pair of writers in Hollywood K/O could do.
The return of the soul of the Star Trek franchise.
The Yorktown space station was simply one of the most awesome things I've seen in ANY sci-fi film in a long time and I want to see more of it. Better yet set the next movie there.
Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, and Simon Pegg were all awesome.
The new alien girl was fun.
It was nice to see a more ensemble film than Kirk dealing with his daddy issues film.
The way the Enterprise was destroyed was cool.
The gravity defying climax was a cool idea.
Idris Elba.
The songs used were fun and energized the movie in a way that the original score didn't.

The bad:
Chris Pine is still one of the most boring and awful actors in Hollywood he's right next the equally boring and awful Henry Cavil.
The destruction of the Enterprise wasn't particularly emotionally moving like it was in Star Trek 3 or even in Star Trek: Generations it was more been there seen that already.
The gravity defying climax was hard to follow.
The original score was dull and didn't work for me. When cheesy 90s pop songs are more lively and works better maybe you need a new music composer.
The deaths of Lenard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin sucked a little bit of the energy and fun out of it.

Overall: I liked it as a sci-fi action film, but as a Star Trek film I would say it's about 6 or 7th best. It's certainly the best out of the new timeline. Also since I think that everything I've seen Chris Pine in he's awful, boring, or both and he is the supposed lead in this film he gets 3rd billing after John Cho and Simon Pegg was a treat for me. Because Cho and Pegg along with Quinto and Urban pretty steal the show. So maybe there is hope for this film series yet. I give it a 3 out of 5.
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Post by Tetsuro »

Finished the sixth season of Voyager. Good news is that there were quite a few more episodes that I actually liked than I expected, like . Bad news is, there were also quite a few that I didn't, and Borg Queen really is every bit as stupid a character as I thought she was.

Why did Unimatrix Zero need to be destroyed and how did the Queen even find out it existed, since it obviously had absolutely no bearing to the drones outside their regeneration cycle? The collective probably would've continued functioning just fine either way. It pretty much flies right in the face of the whole "Borg ignore you until you become a threat and/or a potential subject of assimilation" thing, so the only reason the Queen wanted to wipe it out is because...she's just that evil. And that's dumb.
Warcry wrote: It got really bad for those two in the end. :(

For the most part I don't mind Winn turning into an outright villain. She'd always been a self-serving cunt whose faith never went more than skin-deep. I actually don't have a problem with her deciding to side with Space Lucifers. But choosing to work with Dukat, and having a complete lack of awareness of how much he's manipulating her? That's something that doesn't sound like Winn at all.

I don't think I've ever seen writers work so hard to assassinate a character that they created as the DS9 staff did with Dukat, though. I don't think there was a single solitary frame of footage that he was in after the Feds took back DS9 that wasn't intensely cringeworthy. Them trying so hard to make us hate him was easily the worst part of the last two seasons, and the fact that it lasted so long makes it way worse than what they did to Winn in the last handful of episodes.

At least Weyoun and Female Shapeshifter got a good ending to their stories.
The problem I had with Winn's change of heart is that much like Dukat, there was at least some doubt over whether everyone's prejudice towards her was justified or not; that is, whether she actually believed what she preached. Of course, she wasn't actually in charge of a brutal occupation that murdered millions helped win some points in her favour, but it did seem to me that her decision to serve the space demons came a little too easy. When Kira told her she should step down and when she found she'd inadvertedly been serving the Pah-Wraiths, there was no dilmmea for her over what she thought was more important, her power or her faith. She was clearly upset when she learned the truth so she probably didn't just have faith as a window dressing.

I guess there's a lesson to be learned here; never write your characters with specific expectations over how the audience should and should not feel about them.
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Post by Heinrad »

Most of the way through season 5 of Voyager, and I think my favorite episode is either Course: Oblivion, Brides of Chaotica, or Thirty Days, and all for different reasons.

Although I'm still wondering why they felt the need to set this in the Delta Quadrant.
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Post by Heinrad »

And I just watched the episode Relativity. In it's own way, it makes sense. However, as we know it's the future Braxton's actions that cause the current Braxton to become him, then the logical way to stop that from happening would be to not punish the current Braxton for his future actions.

Starfleet getting time travel as a standard was a really bad idea.
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Post by Tetsuro »

I didn't particularly like Course: Oblivion, but that was mostly because of my distaste for Shoot the Shaggy Dog type of stories.

If they'd at last had the courtesy of succesfully launching the capsule it might've felt worthwhile, but such as it is, the whole story was just a waste of time.
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

Many pages back I posted my all time favorite episodes of each Star Trek series, I've been meaning to do a worst episode list for quite sometime. The only problem is that outside of a select few episodes that I don't care for mostly because I find them boring, but really most of the "awful" episodes I tend to just find forgettable, (which is to be expected considering the sheer number episodes), what is more even those few that I personally find really awful like "Spock's Brain" have it's a "so bad, it's actually kind of good" type of vibe to it, it's kind of hard to hate it that much.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Warcry wrote::lol:

Been a while since I watched any, but yes.
You and your having a life.

Season 5 of DS9 is probably my favourite season of any Trek show ever. Like you say, the show finally seemed to figure out what it wanted to be and what story it wanted to tell the year before, and once it stopped flailing around the writers and actors were really able to get going. Season six was great too, as was season four (and you mentioned my favourite part of that later) but in the fifth season you could just see all the puzzle pieces falling together and it was amazing.
Especially impressive considering how they still seem to have been making it up as they go along.

Since you brought it up, I'm going to remind everyone yet again about how much I love Homefront and Paradise Lost. Some of the plot beats are a bit silly (like using a bunch of hormonal, unreliable teenage cadets to carry out a terrorist attack against your own government), but I loved getting glimpse of how the regular civilian population views the world vs. how Starfleet (and the audience) does. Sisko's dad was great for that, and brought a much-needed sense of perspective to a series that, in spite of featuring a few civilian main characters, never did the greatest job of showing how it's big, dramatic political events actually impacted the little people they were trying to make life better for.
Yeah, it's a good one. The only real problem is Star Fleet trying to take over the Federation should have had massive, massive consequences but it's never mentioned again (at least after the attempted coup in Star Trek VI there's an 80 year gap to have shit sorted out in).
I also loved Admiral Leyton as a character. So often the high-ranking Starfleet antagonists we get are one-dimensional caricatures of hackneyed villainy, but here we got someone with some depth. Leyton was actually 100% right about basically everything he was worrying about, but still managed to be so, so very wrong and I love the character a bit more every time I watch. Movie Ratchet's acting helped a lot to make it feel like more than just another Insane Admiral of the Week, too.
It helps it's exactly the same character he played on Babylon 5 (who famously was killed offscreen and replaced by God from Quantum Leap after deciding to do DS9 rather than the "Breakaway from Earth" story on the that show), he'd had some good practice. Though it says a lot that there he's the hero whilst here he's the villain.
And the "Strategic Operations Officer" thing really has to be the most meaningless job title in all of Star Trek. Considering what he actually did on the show I'm not sure why they didn't just call him the commander of the Defiant. If nothing else it would have felt like career advancement for him.
I think they had a problem in that it made no sense for Kira to have a position of authority on the Defiant as it's a pure Star Fleet ship, but they'd already established it and taking that away and giving it to Worf would be taking away a role from one of the established characters (which of course, from a protecting egos point of view, they must have wanted to be seen to avoid doing when they put Worf in). Season 4 is all over the place on who takes charge on the ship when Sisko isn't there before finally coming down on Worf's side at the start of season 5 (and I think later on Dax is firmly next in line).
I choose to forget this episode exists.
Though it's actually done wonders for him, since then he's been Proper Worf again, much more fun and with a real return to the deadpan "Nice planet" humour. "There is an old Klingon saying, you cannot loosen a man's tongue with root beer".

I refuse to believe that. 21 years? Shit, we're old. :(
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For The Uniform is an underrated gem, even if Sisko's actions at the end are really worse than any of the stuff that causes him trouble in The Pale Moonlight. great performances (Brooks pissed is just scary) and a good tense well thought out plot make for a winner.

Shame they couldn't let the Les Mis influence be understated. Remember when we just had a casual close up of Khan's books? Not "Hey captain, have you ever read my favourite novel?". They "Captain Ahab's gotta go hunt his whale" stuff in First Contact is a bit heavy, but looks mild compared to Sisko actually getting a copy of Les Mis out and explaining the plot to the audience.

For the most part I don't mind Winn turning into an outright villain. She'd always been a self-serving cunt whose faith never went more than skin-deep. I actually don't have a problem with her deciding to side with Space Lucifers. But choosing to work with Dukat, and having a complete lack of awareness of how much he's manipulating her? That's something that doesn't sound like Winn at all.
She's fully aware he's trying to use her though, she just thinks she's using him more effectively (she does turn on him first), but is very wrong.
I don't think I've ever seen writers work so hard to assassinate a character that they created as the DS9 staff did with Dukat, though. I don't think there was a single solitary frame of footage that he was in after the Feds took back DS9 that wasn't intensely cringeworthy. Them trying so hard to make us hate him was easily the worst part of the last two seasons, and the fact that it lasted so long makes it way worse than what they did to Winn in the last handful of episodes.
I think Dukat going completely off the deep end makes sense, he had not only lost everything again, the daughter he'd finally accepted was murdered right in front of him. Whilst it's understandable none of the other characters have much sympathy for him I think it's a logical progression he'd wind up far more unhinged than ever before.

Mind, one of the problems with the last episode is that of all the villains he winds up burning in hell forever when he's arguably not been responsible for his own actions for two years.
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Post by Warcry »

Cyberstrike nTo wrote:Many pages back I posted my all time favorite episodes of each Star Trek series, I've been meaning to do a worst episode list for quite sometime. The only problem is that outside of a select few episodes that I don't care for mostly because I find them boring, but really most of the "awful" episodes I tend to just find forgettable, (which is to be expected considering the sheer number episodes), what is more even those few that I personally find really awful like "Spock's Brain" have it's a "so bad, it's actually kind of good" type of vibe to it, it's kind of hard to hate it that much.
I think that's a good point. There's so much Trek out there now that the bad (or even middling) episodes just sort of fade into the background for me. Hilariously terri-bad stuff, I'll remember, and the bad movies are more memorable just for being movies, but the random terrible episodes of TNG or whatever don't come to mind at all unless someone brings them up.
inflatable dalek wrote:You and your having a life.
It's fun. You should try it some time!
inflatable dalek wrote:Especially impressive considering how they still seem to have been making it up as they go along.
I don't think they ever really stopped. Even up until the final few episodes they seemed to be doing whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. But the first few seasons drifted around at random, throwing out lots of plot leads (Bajor, the Cardassians, the Prophets, the Dominion) all pulling in different ways, and nothing really progressed except at a snail's pace. And then season four went right off the rails with the Klingon plot, which if memory serves was forced on them by the studio. When season five hit, they finally took all of those different plots and aimed them in the same general direction. The plot still had a lot of obviously made-up-on-the-spot asspulls, but they'd at least started trying to make them cohesive asspulls at that point.
inflatable dalek wrote:Yeah, it's a good one. The only real problem is Star Fleet trying to take over the Federation should have had massive, massive consequences but it's never mentioned again (at least after the attempted coup in Star Trek VI there's an 80 year gap to have shit sorted out in).
In keeping with the general tone of DS9, I'd always assumed that Jaresh-Inyo just had it covered up -- Leyton and his top allies "retiring" and everyone else being sworn to secrecy. Otherwise you'd have had Klingons and Romulans throwing it in Sisko's face for the entire rest of the series.
inflatable dalek wrote:It helps it's exactly the same character he played on Babylon 5 (who famously was killed offscreen and replaced by God from Quantum Leap after deciding to do DS9 rather than the "Breakaway from Earth" story on the that show), he'd had some good practice. Though it says a lot that there he's the hero whilst here he's the villain.
The situations were completely different, though -- on B5 his character was organizing resistance against a man who'd killed the legitimate president and made himself dictator, while on DS9 he was trying to do the same thing himself. The only real similarity is that they were trying to stage a military coup.

I always have enjoyed B5 a bit more (as blasphemous as that may be in this thread), but I think the moaning from that crowd over DS9 "stealing" the actor is a bit overblown. The character was almost definitely on his way out anyway, since Sheridan was obviously always going to wind up being the one leading the charge. The only thing that changed was how, and it's not like General Hague was an important main character who deserved to go out in a blaze of glory.
inflatable dalek wrote:I think they had a problem in that it made no sense for Kira to have a position of authority on the Defiant as it's a pure Star Fleet ship, but they'd already established it and taking that away and giving it to Worf would be taking away a role from one of the established characters (which of course, from a protecting egos point of view, they must have wanted to be seen to avoid doing when they put Worf in). Season 4 is all over the place on who takes charge on the ship when Sisko isn't there before finally coming down on Worf's side at the start of season 5 (and I think later on Dax is firmly next in line).
I don't think Dax really landed in that spot until after Martok joined the cast and Worf became his de facto #2. She never really did much commanding before the last episode of season 5 (that I can remember anyway) and like four episodes later she's captain of the Defiant. With a different character it actually could have made for an interesting arc, having to deal with such a drastic change in role, but Jadzia just jumped in without missing a beat. Which actually makes sense, being that she's a Trill whose past hosts have been in command positions.

Come to think of it, did she do any actual sciencing in the last season? I remember thinking at the time that they should have just put her in a red collar and been done with it, especially after they took Sisko off of Defiant and put her in charge.
inflatable dalek wrote:STAR TREK VI IS THE HALFWAY POINT OF THE FRANCHISE.
I refuse to process the implications of this.
inflatable dalek wrote:For The Uniform is an underrated gem, even if Sisko's actions at the end are really worse than any of the stuff that causes him trouble in The Pale Moonlight. great performances (Brooks pissed is just scary) and a good tense well thought out plot make for a winner.
Another of my favourites, though I'm not sure I agree with you about Sisko's actions. He left a bunch of people homeless, but no one actually died. As opposed to bringing an entire nation into a bloody war on false pretenses, directly leading to the deaths of probably millions of Romulans who have no actual reason to be fighting.

Agreed about Angry Sisko, though. Avery Brooks did such a good job bringing depth to the character, and he's equally believable as a loving father figure or kindly friend as he is as a vengeful rage-machine.
inflatable dalek wrote:Shame they couldn't let the Les Mis influence be understated. Remember when we just had a casual close up of Khan's books? Not "Hey captain, have you ever read my favourite novel?". They "Captain Ahab's gotta go hunt his whale" stuff in First Contact is a bit heavy, but looks mild compared to Sisko actually getting a copy of Les Mis out and explaining the plot to the audience.
I get where you're coming from, but I think this creates a nice bit of ambiguity about Sisko's choices. It's one thing for them to write Eddington and Sisko's actions to mirror the protagonists of the book, but by having Sisko bring up the book it raises the question of whether Sisko is acting the way he is because he has a genuine insight into Eddington's world view? Or is that just a hollow excuse after the fact for doing exactly what he would have done regardless? The episode left me genuinely unsure, and I don't think it would have been able to do that without the direct references to the book.
inflatable dalek wrote:I think Dukat going completely off the deep end makes sense, he had not only lost everything again, the daughter he'd finally accepted was murdered right in front of him. Whilst it's understandable none of the other characters have much sympathy for him I think it's a logical progression he'd wind up far more unhinged than ever before.
Dukat going nuts makes sense, but he was only actually nuts for about forty minutes of screen time before he came back acting like a super-evil caricature of who he's always been. I don't remember him showing any sign of mental illness after "Waltz", just generic, moustache-twirling evil.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Warcry wrote: It's fun. You should try it some time!
A life where I covertly imply you have a smaller penis than Brend's is as rich as any.

I don't think they ever really stopped. Even up until the final few episodes they seemed to be doing whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. But the first few seasons drifted around at random, throwing out lots of plot leads (Bajor, the Cardassians, the Prophets, the Dominion) all pulling in different ways, and nothing really progressed except at a snail's pace. And then season four went right off the rails with the Klingon plot, which if memory serves was forced on them by the studio. When season five hit, they finally took all of those different plots and aimed them in the same general direction. The plot still had a lot of obviously made-up-on-the-spot asspulls, but they'd at least started trying to make them cohesive asspulls at that point.
I think my favourite ass pull at the moment is how Worf got his honour back in today's episode. "Wait, all I needed to do was get adopted into another family? Wait till I tell Kurn...ohhhh".

Especially daft as he sets up the mind wiped Kurn with an old family friend who presumably could have done exactly the same thing Martok did for both of them.

I always have enjoyed B5 a bit more (as blasphemous as that may be in this thread), but I think the moaning from that crowd over DS9 "stealing" the actor is a bit overblown. The character was almost definitely on his way out anyway, since Sheridan was obviously always going to wind up being the one leading the charge. The only thing that changed was how, and it's not like General Hague was an important main character who deserved to go out in a blaze of glory.
Considering that after they break away from Earth the Clark plot is basically ignored for close to a year I can the original plan would have been Hague being in that two parter, surviving and then going off in his ship to lead the fight against Earth out there whilst Sheridan deals with the Shadows. Then come early season 4 he's killed off...

I suspect that stuff will seem even more relevant in the current climate.

I don't think Dax really landed in that spot until after Martok joined the cast and Worf became his de facto #2. She never really did much commanding before the last episode of season 5 (that I can remember anyway) and like four episodes later she's captain of the Defiant. With a different character it actually could have made for an interesting arc, having to deal with such a drastic change in role, but Jadzia just jumped in without missing a beat. Which actually makes sense, being that she's a Trill whose past hosts have been in command positions.
They've basically completely thrown out her original, reserved and aloof science character by this point. The recurring Dax's lab set got destroyed in season 3 and I think wanting to investigate the planet in Children of Time is her last bit of science. By the end of the season Rom is out teching her!

I really like how her character and the performance has grown though, much more fun.

I'm so glad the minefield is about to go up, removing Sisko constantly whacking the Dominion hive by flying his heavily armed battleship into territory they've emphatically told star fleet to stay out of FOR SCIENCE. It's amusing the war starts because they ignore him going "This side of the wormhole is ours, stay out" in the same way they did to him at the end of season 2. It's telling there wasn't a Dominion War, or indeed any Dominion presence on our side, in the timeline where Sisko died at the start of season 4.

Which makes Jake responsible for millions of deaths (including Dax's) and the loss of Nog's leg in altering history so as to stop his dad becoming an immortal living in a white void three years early.
I refuse to process the implications of this.
It's even further past the halfway mark now!

Agreed about Angry Sisko, though. Avery Brooks did such a good job bringing depth to the character, and he's equally believable as a loving father figure or kindly friend as he is as a vengeful rage-machine.
It verges on Shatner-ish at times (I'm not surprised that he was apparently the only Captain to out-Shatner Shatner in that documentary Bill did) bit it works.

I do wish that when the uniforms changed they'd told Brooks he didn't have to wear the entire Captain's uniform at all times. Picard treated the waistcoat as an alternative to the jacket, Sisko wears both at once and now looks as wide as he is tall.

I get where you're coming from, but I think this creates a nice bit of ambiguity about Sisko's choices. It's one thing for them to write Eddington and Sisko's actions to mirror the protagonists of the book, but by having Sisko bring up the book it raises the question of whether Sisko is acting the way he is because he has a genuine insight into Eddington's world view? Or is that just a hollow excuse after the fact for doing exactly what he would have done regardless? The episode left me genuinely unsure, and I don't think it would have been able to do that without the direct references to the book.
I think the problem is, Eddington is only obsessed with being this Victorian literary hero in just this one episode, which is all the stranger as he won't shut up about it. He doesn't even use the nickname for Sisko in Blaze of Glory!

I really do love the "Cardassia joins the Dominion" two parter. Smart (well, bar the Runabout in orbit... but that's held up as potentially weird later on) tense stuff that completely changes the direction of the show in a logical way.

Though, not to sound uniform obsessed, I kind of wish they hadn't done the cute gag with the real Bashir in his old uniform. Because that firmly pegs when he was replaced and means the Changeling performed major brain surgery on Sisko and was even touching Odo the moment he got his powers back. Both of which should seem more sinister in retrospect but no one cares. Even protective family man O'Brien is happy to make jokes rather than be paranoid about Kira-Yoshi's birth.

Oddly I really like the genetically engineered background to Bashir that comes out of nowhere in the next one (even the episode set entirely in his head where he's tormented by someone who knows all his secret shames doesn't mention it!). Mainly because it's a good fun episode with some emotional heft to it.

Mind, it's a shame the British education system has apparently been replaced by the American by the 24th century. "Grades"? **** off.

Watched the Love of Spock documentary on Netflix today, no mention of his Transformers work at all (as if it was of no consequence to him), but it's a fascinating overview of Nimoy's life that's well worth a watch.
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Post by Warcry »

inflatable dalek wrote:A life where I covertly imply you have a smaller penis than Brend's is as rich as any.
You just go on believing that.
SPOILER! (select to read)
I prefer a life where my penis has actually seen use, but to each their own.
inflatable dalek wrote:I think my favourite ass pull at the moment is how Worf got his honour back in today's episode. "Wait, all I needed to do was get adopted into another family? Wait till I tell Kurn...ohhhh".
That's one of the bigger plot holes in the series, yeah.

Thankfully Kurn was boring so no one (seemingly including Worf) cared. :)
inflatable dalek wrote:Considering that after they break away from Earth the Clark plot is basically ignored for close to a year I can the original plan would have been Hague being in that two parter, surviving and then going off in his ship to lead the fight against Earth out there whilst Sheridan deals with the Shadows. Then come early season 4 he's killed off...
I don't think they'd had even that much planned out for him. If they'd had long-term plans for the guy to recur in the next season I'm sure Straczynski would have written around a one-episode absence. The fact that they were so willing to axe him off-screen tells me that they were probably planning to get rid of the character at around that time anyway.
inflatable dalek wrote:I really like how her character and the performance has grown though, much more fun.
Ferrell wasn't much of an actress early on, which didn't help the original version of the character get across. She certainly seemed more comfortable playing Dax as a gung-ho action hero than a coy, aloof nerd, but she'd also become a much better performer by that time.
inflatable dalek wrote:I'm so glad the minefield is about to go up, removing Sisko constantly whacking the Dominion hive by flying his heavily armed battleship into territory they've emphatically told star fleet to stay out of FOR SCIENCE. It's amusing the war starts because they ignore him going "This side of the wormhole is ours, stay out" in the same way they did to him at the end of season 2. It's telling there wasn't a Dominion War, or indeed any Dominion presence on our side, in the timeline where Sisko died at the start of season 4.
Although the show didn't do the best job of making this clear all the time, the Gamma end of the wormhole does not open directly into Dominion territory. Idran was a long way from their borders. They really have no more right to tell the Federation to stay out of the Gamma Quadrant than the Tzenkethi or Shelliac would have to tell visitors from the other side that they're not allowed to go to DS9.

Now practically speaking, poking the bear was a terrible idea. But for all the polite window dressing the Federation is an aggressively expansionist power. They didn't knuckle under in the face of Romulan territorial ambitions in the 22nd century or Klingon ones in the 23rd, and they're certainly not about to cow to some random power half-way across the galaxy in the 24th. That's just not how they do business.

The real foolhardy choice, then, wasn't ignoring the Dominion warnings. It was doing seemingly nothing to prepare for the inevitable war until after the Cardassians joined up with the enemy. The Federation should have embarked on an aggressive shipbuilding program (not to mention expanded their manpower) the moment they realized they were headed towards conflict, but instead they instigated a war against a technologically superior foe while their fleets were mostly made up of century-old Miranda and Excelsior-class rustbuckets. They should have been pumping out Defiant and Intrepid-class ships like they were going out of style for two years before the shooting started, given that the bigger ships like the Sovereign-class would probably take too long to get them in service before the war started. Basically all of the older ships were nothing but cannon fodder, save for the Galaxy-class and maybe the Nebulas.

Not to mention the utter failure to do anything to secure the Bajoran system when you 100% know that it's the only way for that enemy to get to you.

No wonder Leyton wanted to overthrown Jaresh-Inyo!
inflatable dalek wrote:Though, not to sound uniform obsessed, I kind of wish they hadn't done the cute gag with the real Bashir in his old uniform. Because that firmly pegs when he was replaced and means the Changeling performed major brain surgery on Sisko and was even touching Odo the moment he got his powers back. Both of which should seem more sinister in retrospect but no one cares. Even protective family man O'Brien is happy to make jokes rather than be paranoid about Kira-Yoshi's birth.
I'm surprised that it was never bought up, but I guess the writers didn't put all that much thought into it considering they didn't even tell the actor before episode started filming that he'd been playing a fake for three months.
inflatable dalek wrote:Oddly I really like the genetically engineered background to Bashir that comes out of nowhere in the next one (even the episode set entirely in his head where he's tormented by someone who knows all his secret shames doesn't mention it!). Mainly because it's a good fun episode with some emotional heft to it.
I'm taken out of it a bit by how Bashir's parents don't even vaguely look like they could be related to him, what with all three of the actors having clearly different ethnic backgrounds, but as far as nonsensical asspulls go it's not that bad. At least it gave the character a direction, something he was sorely lacking after he outgrew the early "immature manchild" phase.
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Post by Heinrad »

So I'm now at the Voyager episode "Child's Play", where the first of the 'Borg Children'(I kind of see where they were going with the idea, but still....), and we hit upon the real problem with the idea of doing this. I'cheb, and all the rest of the children, still have Borg implants to keep them alive. Dropping one of them off on a planet that's been more or less blasted back to the Stone Age, no matter how ingenious they've been, is not the greatest idea.

Never mind that the kid's father is Crowley, King of Hell.

From my point of view, it's not the emotional bonds, it's the sheer fact that his implants will probably be a beacon to any Borg cubes that go by the place.

And of course, Seven was right in her suspicions.
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Post by inflatable dalek »

Warcry wrote: I don't think they'd had even that much planned out for him. If they'd had long-term plans for the guy to recur in the next season I'm sure Straczynski would have written around a one-episode absence. The fact that they were so willing to axe him off-screen tells me that they were probably planning to get rid of the character at around that time anyway.
Considering JMS could be just as bad as any fan when it came to fuelling the rivalry between the two shows, dropping a bridge on Foxworth for doing the other show over his for even one week only wouldn't surprise me.

Mind, I'm really into the period where the "We don't watch Babylon 5 at all" protests start sounding really weak. Especially as they've using B5's unfairly sacked effects team for the big battles now, what did they use for their show reel?

Ferrell wasn't much of an actress early on, which didn't help the original version of the character get across. She certainly seemed more comfortable playing Dax as a gung-ho action hero than a coy, aloof nerd, but she'd also become a much better performer by that time.
That two volume oral history of Trek thing that came out last year apparently has some disparaging quotes from Berman about her, something along the lines of "You can't get beautiful women who are also good actors" (!).

Although the show didn't do the best job of making this clear all the time, the Gamma end of the wormhole does not open directly into Dominion territory. Idran was a long way from their borders. They really have no more right to tell the Federation to stay out of the Gamma Quadrant than the Tzenkethi or Shelliac would have to tell visitors from the other side that they're not allowed to go to DS9.
At the point at the end of season 2 they don't know that much about the Dominion, Dax being so foolhardy as to go "You can't tell us shit!" to a Galaxy Class destroying power that might actually have a claim on the other end is ridiculous.

Arena is a good counterpart, the Gorn do terrible things to that Federation colony. But at the end Kirk accepts they need to at least talk and the Gorn might have had a prior claim on the planet and mistook the Feds for invaders. If Sisko had been in that episode, he'd have been bashing the Gorn's brain in with the rock shouting "WHO'S YOUR DADDY!".

Plus, our end of the wormhole isn't in Federation space either. It's in Bajoran. And at the end of season 5 Bajor and the Dominion are in the process of negotiating (and ultiamtely sign) a non-aggression pact on Sisko's advice.
The real foolhardy choice, then, wasn't ignoring the Dominion warnings. It was doing seemingly nothing to prepare for the inevitable war until after the Cardassians joined up with the enemy. The Federation should have embarked on an aggressive shipbuilding program (not to mention expanded their manpower) the moment they realized they were headed towards conflict, but instead they instigated a war against a technologically superior foe while their fleets were mostly made up of century-old Miranda and Excelsior-class rustbuckets. They should have been pumping out Defiant and Intrepid-class ships like they were going out of style for two years before the shooting started, given that the bigger ships like the Sovereign-class would probably take too long to get them in service before the war started. Basically all of the older ships were nothing but cannon fodder, save for the Galaxy-class and maybe the Nebulas.
I mostly agree, but Excelsior's can still hold their own, the one in Paradise Lost only loses against the Defiant because O'Brien's pumped it up a bit without them knowing. I'd take one of those bad boys over a "Whoops, there goes another one!" Galaxy Class any day of the week.

Oddly Sovereign's don't seem to be held in high regard by Star Fleet, the Enterprise can't be the only one in service (and based on how bored Picard is in Insurrection she doesn't seem to have been doing any war stuff anyway) but they never show up for the battles.

(I know, I know. They wanted the franchises main hero ship to be special)

Mind, sending Intrepid classes into battle would be a bit mental. They're small science ships, it's not like one could single handedly destroy the entire Borg collective.
I'm taken out of it a bit by how Bashir's parents don't even vaguely look like they could be related to him, what with all three of the actors having clearly different ethnic backgrounds, but as far as nonsensical asspulls go it's not that bad. At least it gave the character a direction, something he was sorely lacking after he outgrew the early "immature manchild" phase.
Their look never bothered me (if Siddig can have Malcom McDowell in his real family tree, Bashir can have anything), I just like the fact they feel like a convincingly British family (well, apart from the mention of American style school "Grades"). The Del Boy style dad is especially well done.

God, Far Beyond the Stars is good isn't it? The handwave to basically not do an episode of Star Trek that week is flimsy at best, but the end result is fantastic.

Didn't realise the "We won't publish unless you make the lead white" thing was direcly based on something that happened in real life as well.

Considering Sisko's already established interest in African-American history and his love of classic baseball (plus of course, he works in space so he's probably read some old SF at some point for fun), him having a good working knowledge of the 50's and the struggles people like him would have gone through feels very right as well well even though there's been no real hint prior that this would be enough of a thing for him that the Prophets would pick that to send him into a dream over.

(Hmm, actually this comes just after it turns out Dukat is having visions as well, I wonder if the Greek Chorus in Waltz was EVIL Prophet sent rather than being down to his madness?)

I suppose no one on the production team knowing how to deal with Bashir's ethnicity and so them just writing his counterpart as white is a bit of a problem as well.

And I know everyone at the time was like "You could have set this today with no changes", but it really is striking how nearly 20 years later a piece of TV set in the 50's still feels so resonant. The casual acceptance of racism from people who aren't strictly racist but see it as status quo ("It's not about what's right, it's about what is!" being the key line) and the American police not needing an excuse to mistreat black guys especially.

Just finished Change of Heart (a title that kind of gives away the fact Worf will have a Change of Heart at the end). Terry Farrell was right, if they were going to kill Dax because being in the middle of a terrible war was a good time to off a regular it should have been in this episode. Even beyond it being a surprise to do it in the middle of a season, even beyond it having a direct impact on Worf, even beyond her eventual cause of death not really being dealt with (everyone hates Dukat anyway and he and Worf never meet in the last season, so what's the point? I think it comes up once after Ezri is settled in)...it actually would have been a death related to the war, which being zapped by a man possessed by the devil wasn't.
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Post by Warcry »

inflatable dalek wrote:Mind, I'm really into the period where the "We don't watch Babylon 5 at all" protests start sounding really weak. Especially as they've using B5's unfairly sacked effects team for the big battles now, what did they use for their show reel?
I had no idea that happened. Yeah, it's pretty hard to deny if they poached staff from the other show.
inflatable dalek wrote:That two volume oral history of Trek thing that came out last year apparently has some disparaging quotes from Berman about her, something along the lines of "You can't get beautiful women who are also good actors" (!).
Well, he's not entirely wrong even if he's being a jerk about it. I'm sure there are a lot of actresses who are both talented and beautiful, but the talent isn't mandatory and it's certainly not what gets their foot in the door in Hollywood. There's a lot of stunningly beautiful "actresses" out there who can't act their way out of a paper bag but go on to long careers anyway, because acting talent isn't what they're hired for.
inflatable dalek wrote:Arena is a good counterpart, the Gorn do terrible things to that Federation colony. But at the end Kirk accepts they need to at least talk and the Gorn might have had a prior claim on the planet and mistook the Feds for invaders. If Sisko had been in that episode, he'd have been bashing the Gorn's brain in with the rock shouting "WHO'S YOUR DADDY!".
:lol:

That depends. If we're talking about early-run, hair-and-no-beard Sisko he'd probably have done the same as Kirk. He didn't become completely obstinate until about half-way through the series.

I blame the promotion to captain. Obviously it went to his head.
inflatable dalek wrote:I mostly agree, but Excelsior's can still hold their own, the one in Paradise Lost only loses against the Defiant because O'Brien's pumped it up a bit without them knowing. I'd take one of those bad boys over a "Whoops, there goes another one!" Galaxy Class any day of the week.
Worf was trying really hard not to kill anyone when he was fighting the Lakota, though. A few quantum torpedoes to the drive section would have settled things pretty quickly.

And honestly, as much as we laugh at the Galaxy-class for blowing up so often, in the Dominion War battle scenes the Galaxies we saw were basically invincible, while Excelsior- and Miranda-class ships were getting cut in half by a single blow from the bigger Dominion ships. And heck, a handful of Maquis Raiders were able to cripple the Malinche.

The funniest thing about the Galaxies is that the generic background fodder were super tough but any ship that was actually important to the plot was almost certain to eventually die. Somewhere, the crews of Venture, Challenger and Galaxy are praying that they never get a guest star role in anything.
inflatable dalek wrote:Oddly Sovereign's don't seem to be held in high regard by Star Fleet, the Enterprise can't be the only one in service (and based on how bored Picard is in Insurrection she doesn't seem to have been doing any war stuff anyway) but they never show up for the battles.
I think the most reasonable in-universe explanation is that it's just too new of a design to have gotten too many of them built. It took seven years after the Galaxy was launched before they'd finished constructing Enterprise and Yamato, and almost a decade after that before the Galaxy-class became a regular sight in Starfleet. The Sovereign class isn't quite as big volume-wise, but it's still damned huge and I'm sure it took ages to build one. And since the Enterprise-E was apparently one of the first of her kind too, there were probably less than ten of the things in service across the whole Federation during the Dominion War.

Of course, that doesn't explain why they'd waste one of them on random diplomatic junkets in the middle of the conflict, so I'll just assume that Picard had pissed off an admiral or two that month.
inflatable dalek wrote:Mind, sending Intrepid classes into battle would be a bit mental. They're small science ships, it's not like one could single handedly destroy the entire Borg collective.
They're really not, though. They're built for science and exploration, yes, but we're not talking about an equivalent to the Oberth- or Nova-class here. Voyager was bigger than a Constitution-class starship and had as many weapons as a Galaxy-class. It probably doesn't have the same endurance as the bigger ships but it's no pushover either.
inflatable dalek wrote:Didn't realise the "We won't publish unless you make the lead white" thing was direcly based on something that happened in real life as well.
To one of the authors of the episode, you mean? Or just in general? Because I'm sure stuff like that has happened way more than just once.
inflatable dalek wrote:I suppose no one on the production team knowing how to deal with Bashir's ethnicity and so them just writing his counterpart as white is a bit of a problem as well.
Actually, a light-skinned Middle-Eastern man being treated as white is not at all out of character for that period. I don't know if it was different in Europe, but on this side of the ocean most people really had no idea about anyone from that part of the world. As long as they didn't dress like Yasser Arafat, have an obviously foreign name or really dark skin, no one would have noticed or cared. In Siddig's case, the English accent and relatively fair skin would have meant that most folks would have just assumed he was a Brit with a tan, especially with a name like "Julius Eaton".

Of course, all of that changed rather quickly after 9/11...
inflatable dalek wrote:And I know everyone at the time was like "You could have set this today with no changes", but it really is striking how nearly 20 years later a piece of TV set in the 50's still feels so resonant. The casual acceptance of racism from people who aren't strictly racist but see it as status quo ("It's not about what's right, it's about what is!" being the key line) and the American police not needing an excuse to mistreat black guys especially.
I don't think you could strictly set the episode now, but I agree with the spirit of what you're saying. The entertainment industry at least tries to have minority representation nowadays, which hurts the main plot of the story...but the basic point of it all is just as true now as it was then.

If anything, the general public's opinion of black people has gotten worse since then. Back then the stereotypical image of a black man was as something subservient and inferior -- nowadays it's a heavily-armed ghetto thug. They've gone from being seen as "lesser" to actively dangerous. I don't consider that an improvement.
inflatable dalek wrote:Just finished Change of Heart (a title that kind of gives away the fact Worf will have a Change of Heart at the end). Terry Farrell was right, if they were going to kill Dax because being in the middle of a terrible war was a good time to off a regular it should have been in this episode. Even beyond it being a surprise to do it in the middle of a season, even beyond it having a direct impact on Worf, even beyond her eventual cause of death not really being dealt with (everyone hates Dukat anyway and he and Worf never meet in the last season, so what's the point? I think it comes up once after Ezri is settled in)...it actually would have been a death related to the war, which being zapped by a man possessed by the devil wasn't.
I'd never considered this before but you're totally right. This is totally where Jadzia should have died. It's not like she did all that much in the back half of the season anyway.
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Post by Cyberstrike nTo »

inflatable dalek wrote:Considering JMS could be just as bad as any fan when it came to fuelling the rivalry between the two shows, dropping a bridge on Foxworth for doing the other show over his for even one week only wouldn't surprise me.

Mind, I'm really into the period where the "We don't watch Babylon 5 at all" protests start sounding really weak. Especially as they've using B5's unfairly sacked effects team for the big battles now, what did they use for their show reel?
To be fair the CGI effects for DS9 (and Voyager as well) still hold up the CGI effects for B5 look dated and most in seasons 1-4 are just bloody awful. Also the episode of Voyager called "The Void" is filled with B5 in-jokes including the casting of the late Robin Sachs (who also did the voice of Zaheed in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3) and it was directed by Mike Vejay (I think that is his name) who JMS said on a commentary track was one of his favorite directors.

I think in the end that the so-called "rivalry" between Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 both made each other better by forcing the writers to push the boundaries and try new things and too one-up each other. JMS put a subtle lesbian romance but never showed the women kiss, the writers on DS9 said "You want to go there we'll have Terry Farrell kiss a girl!" And then in the season 7 Mirror Universe they had Kira and Erzi Dax kiss!

I still think DS9 is better because of the episode "The Visitor" which for my money is the greatest 45 minutes of TV ever made for any show in any genre in any year.
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