Viewing posts tagged DS9 Season 2
Longtime Vaka Rangi readers may remember that I have a small tradition of making episode guide/reading list posts whenever I finish covering Big Eras of the project. The hypothetical situation is that someone who is new to the show and yet for some reason *doesn't* want to marathon binge-watch it as is the standard way of consuming TV these days could theoretically be interested in my recommendations for the best stories so as to emphasize the cream of the crop while avoiding filler and missteps. Each entry has a link to my essay on the story for those who might want to revisit them.
I first did something like this when, following a joke Kevin Burns made to me about Futurama, I was challenged to find "20 Good Episodes" of the Original Star Trek. TOS fans will likely be annoyed as there's probably more episodes from that show one could recommend (and I *still* would have chosen different episodes after publishing Vaka Rangi Volume 1), but I wanted to limit myself to 20 following the conceit of the game so I was far harsher in my choices than I might otherwise have been. I didn't do ...
It was a large room, filled with people. At the centre, a large horizontal bench over which presided the members of the judiciary: A human man, who looked to be in his early forties, and a Vulcan woman who looked youthful but could have been older than the ages of everyone in the house combined. The pair cast their gaze across the room to the wall on the far side, where a group of people were seated in a row, looking up with a mixture of anxiousness and confusion. “Read out the names of the accused”, someone said.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Commander Benjamin Sisko
Chief Petty Officer Miles O'Brien
Lieutenant Commander Data
Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge
Commander Jadzia Dax
Lieutenant Natasha Yar
Major Kira Nerys
“The revolutionary court is now in session.”
It was sometime in the first half of 1994. I was going grocery shopping with my mother at the local market ...
Vedek Bareil experiences an orb vision in this episode's teaser-The first we've seen since “The Circle” at the opposite end of the year. The one in “The Circle” was surprisingly trite, however, only showing us foreshadowing (and basically shot-for-shot foreshadowing to boot) of the climax to “The Siege”. Kind of a weaksauce spiritual vision, if you ask me. The vision in “The Collaborator” (or rather series of visions) is comparatively far more visually striking, utlising a lot of inventive cuts and camera angles as well as some well thought-out abstract visual symbolism. It's the first time since “Emissary” the Prophets have really felt like gods who have a presence in the lives of their people.
There are other, more explicit parallels to “The Homecoming”/“The Circle”/“The Siege” here as well, since “The Collaborator” effectively serves as the end of the Bajoran Provisional Government plotline that was the backbone to
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for almost a year and a half. It's been an interesting thing to watch unfold to be sure: The ...
This does, on the surface of things, seem to be an example of the show's worst impulses gone unchecked. Following “Blood Oath”, it now seems
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has no qualms about straight-up doing sequels to Original Series stories. As beloved and as iconic to not just Star Trek nerddom, but pop culture in general, as “Mirror, Mirror” may be, there's simply no avoiding the smack of fanwank that surrounds a brief like this. Especially in a month where
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is most assuredly staring down its own mortality in an climate of fanboys that is growing increasingly hostile to it.
The counterpoint is, of course, that “Crossover” gets away with it because it's quite simply a
tour de force.
One of my absolute favourite episodes of the series, I've loved “Crossover” forever, and I love it even more now. In hindsight, from the vantage point upon which I now sit, it does feel a bit like it's ushering in a block of stories that is ultimately the ...
Some mysteries should remain unsolved.
We all love a good mystery. I believe a wise man once said something to the extent of “And to many humans, a mystery must be solved”. There's that nagging sense that there is some big truth out there that's being concealed from you, and you can't rest until you learn what it is, because of information wanting to be free, or any number of other justifications for the quest for gnosis we've come up with throughout the ages. In the United States, perhaps we've wed our thirst for mysteries with our romantic ideal of vigilante justice garnered from the media's foundational myth of the “Old West”. Perhaps it's this simultaneous desire to see a mystery solved and a perpetrator brought to justice by a lone lawman that has brought about things like the noir genre, and that speaks to something about who we are as a people. Just go and ask Odo. I think this same desire for a certain kind of disclosure is part ...
It's over. This is the moment
Star Trek: The Next Generation officially ends. And it ends in the most ignominious manner imaginable: Assassinated on stage in front of its audience to make room for its presumptive younger sibling and overeager heir apparent.
No, not
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I've always maintained
Star Trek: The Next Generation and
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are effectively the same show (or should be read that way), the only difference being what part of the universe the camera lens shines on at any given moment. And never has this basic, yet frequently overlooked, truism been more clear than now, because when
Star Trek: The Next Generation goes down,
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine goes down with it. Where one leads, the other will follow, bound inexorably together by the ties of fate and kinship. And while yes, something *called*
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine continues for another five years after this moment, it's fundamentally a very, very different creature from what we've been watching since January of 1993. The shared universe that we've been witnessing unfold has suddenly and violently ...
So this episode. This one has been a long time coming, certainly for me. Here's an episode I've always heard so much about: A good, nay
great Jadzia Dax episode penned by Peter Allan Fields, possibly the most consistently excellent writer in
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's stable. It's a story I never experienced at the time, as I didn't have the magazine issue where this one was written up and I didn't, to my knowledge, see it on television before the DVD sets came out. Furthermore, this is supposed to be a kickass action story set against the backdrop of a glorious Klingon romp. If this isn't Dax's best story, its the one where she finally comes into her own as a character.
At least, that's what everyone tells me. And you can, I'm sure, see where this is headed.
The first thing that strikes me about “Blood Oath” is how much it actually feels like a Ronald D. Moore story. It isn't, obviously, nor could he have had any input on it considering he's not on
Star Trek ...
I've got a theory that Hollywood and the greater Los Angeles area are different from other big world cities. I mean granted every city is different in its own way because every place has its own unique energies, but even so there are general and superficial cultural similarities that we can notice if we do a comparative study of a lot of big cities. By those standards, I've always got the sense that Los Angeles is weirdly insular, at least the Hollywood area. It seems to operate less like a huge world city and more exactly like a small town with the exact same traditional relationship with vocational trade that's existed throughout modern western history. Nobody is in Hollywood if they don't want to be in the film industry, and if you grew up there you know everyone. Hollywood is an old European small town that just so happens to dominate the media of the entire country, as well as that of a few other countries.
It's no secret that the Star Trek team are massive old Hollywood fans. I think that's sort of a prerequisite ...
It was a large room, filled with people. At the centre, a large horizontal bench over which presided the members of the judiciary: A human man, who looked to be in his early forties, and a Vulcan woman who looked youthful but could have been older than the ages of everyone in the house combined. The pair cast their gaze across the room to the wall on the far side, where a group of people were seated in a row, looking up with a mixture of anxiousness and confusion. “Read out the names of the accused”, someone said.
