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Sep. 4th, 2003 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI am deeply embarrassed. The same day I wrote I can't see Jack/Will in Pirates of the Carribean, the reviewer of the SZ (= German equivalent of the New York Times) writes in his review he can see Jack/Will. (He called their first duel "erotic" and "tender", I kid you not.) Moreover, as various helpful people have pointed out to me, one doesn't even have to see Jack/Will to see slash, as there is always Jack/Norrington, Jack/Bootstrap Bill, and Jack/Barbossa. What can I say? Well, that I still can't see Jack/Will but can be persuaded to any of these three, plus Jack/Elizabeth/Will does have some appeal. I actually found this Jack vignette a delightful read.
Meanwhile in space, the final frontier: good news all around. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anonymous_sybil wrote in her lj, Joss got the green light for the Firefly movie and will be making his big screen debut as a director with it. (And here I thought it would be a TV movie!) Go, team ME!
Also, wishing does help. A few days ago, I wrote, not for the first time, about my longings for a Centauri-centric B5 archive.hobsonphile then went ahead and created one, for which I was delighted to contribute my own humble efforts. Today, I read in her lj that more contributions by other people have arrived. Read the first ones here.
Moreover, after chuckling in delight at Soul Mates and sobbing my heart out at The Fall of Centauri Prime (both of which I rewatched for the Timov story), I decided to visit my other favourite space station, Deep Space Nine.
I still dislike the opening two-parter, The Search as much as I did back when it was broadcast - there are episodes which can pull off the "it was all a dream" gimmick, but those two don't belong among them. However, they introduced two key plot points for the rest of the entire show - the revelation that Odo's people, the Changelings/Founders are the leaders of the Dominion, established as the threatening, mysterious power of the Gamma quadrant in season 2, and the fact Odo both feels a strong connection to them and a horror at what they made of themselves. Odo being torn between the Great Link, as the Founders' collective is called, and his life on DS9 is a theme which only will get resolved at the end of the series. And I can't praise the concept and execution of the Founders enough.
Voyager did not quite manage to come up with a good antagonist and/or semi-regular Alien race on its own - the Kazon never were interesting, and the Borg lost threat and mystery with each reappearance, plus there wasn't that much to explore about them. (Though bringing in the Borg did give us Seven of Nine, and I do like Seven quite a lot.) DS9, partly due to its different premise - a space station, not a ship on the move -, on the other hand, excelled in either exploring or creating various people and cultures. I already wrote about the Bajorans and Cardassians some months ago, and the Ferengi (a one-note joke on TNG, not so on DS9, but more about them in a moment). The Founders, however, and their helpers, the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar, were races DS9 did not inherit and evolve from TNG but came up with on its own. Making one of the regular's people the enemy was a good idea in any case, because it was a source for constant angst and drama. However, choosing Odo - and hence the shapeshifting nature for the antagonists in question - made the idea brilliant. Odo up to this point was mostly presented as stoic and tough, with a few exceptions (his conversation with Lwaxana Troi, and the rather strong hint at his issues in regards to being treated as a specimen by the Bajoran scientists who originally were in charge of him). And as we all know, angst, with rare exceptions, works best with people who aren't emoting all over the place anyway. Plus the Founders were decidedly not the Borg, despite having, forgive the pun, fluid conceptions of individuality. They weren't after the destruction and assimilation of all life, but they were shockingly ruthless in their quest for absolute dominion. At the same time, they were presented as genuine in their longing for Odo's return.
Founders aside, season 3 provided most of the regulars and several of the semi-regulars with more depth. House of Quark isn't just one of my favourite Quark-centric episodes (and a scream in the way it uses the Ferengi/Klingon culture clash) but the episode in which the family dynamic between the Ferengi undergoes a subtle but significant change. While Quark had already been presented as faceted in the previous two seasons, his brother Rom had been something of a one-note character, called an idiot not just by Quark but by Odo and not given any characteristics beyond "is Quark's weaker and foolish brother, wants to inherit the bar". The relationship between Rom and Quark had been presented as strictly exploitative. In House of Quark, however, while the power dynamics are still the same, Rom starts to aquire dimensions. Not in a big revelation - he's a peripheral character in this episode - but in the way he encourages Quark, in the final scene, to tell his Klingon adventure once again. (When Quark objects, resignedly stating it won't draw any customers anymore since he has told it so often by now, Rom states "well, I'd like to hear it".) It's an affectionate gesture between siblings, and Quark takes it in this way. It's here we first get the idea the brothers care about another.
Quark's longing for respect which is important for this episode brings up something I talked about withandrastewhite. Quite often, the Ferengi are used by the writers to poke fun at our own (capitalist) customs, and on TNG this was done to make the humans look better. DS9 does this now and then as well, but balances it with moments where the narrative favours Quark's pov. His acerbic comment to Sisko in the season 2 finale, for example; in House of Quark, another case in point arrives when Quark, often derided by Kira for his cowardice and looking-out-for-my-own-skin ideology, gets stuck with the race which prizes physical courage, fighting and honour above all - the Klingons. And he comes out looking better. It is nonsense to kill people instead of negotiating with them, and when he says having me fight D'Gor is nothing less than an execution - so that's what you're going to get - an execution, he manages to shame the entire Klingon Council. Go Quark!
Star Trek, in all of its incarnations, often gets accused of being "preachy". It can be, no doubt, but the desire to get a message across can lead to excellent story telling as well. Take the season 3 two-parter Present Past. It uses one of Trek's favourite devices, the time-travelling episode. But in this case, our heroes don't arrive, a la Kirk, Spock and McCoy, in Earth's past or present, in a period the present-day viewers can either look backwards to or can smile at amusedly, but in our immediate future. And it looks dire. Not in the sense of an atomic war (which the writers of the original Trek had speculated would happen, along with most Sci-Fi authors in the 60s), but in the sense of a US in which the gulf between rich and poor has widened so much that the poor/homeless/unemployed are locked away in "Sanctuaries" (no civil rights if you don't have the cash in the 21st century the DS9 writers predicted). There is a genuine anger behind this two-parter, which results in a gritty drama. (With good guest actors, too, and, something rare not just in Trek but most American TV shows, they look stunningly average and/or ugly, not pretty.) As far as Sisko is concerned, this is, I believe, the first episode (or rather, episodes) which showcases what becomes a dominant trait in the later seasons - his capacity for righteous fury and single-mindedness, and you can see Avery Brooks relishes this possibility. Past Present doesn't offer any easy solutions, either; the ghetto inhabitants we've become familiar with and attached to die, and while we're told that things would change after this, Bashir once again reinforces the message in the final exchange with Sisko, once they're all safe in the 23rd century again - "but what I can't understand is: how could they let things get this far?" It's a direct appeal from the writers at their audience, and no matter whether it worked, I'm glad they did it.
One of the many enjoyable things of the third season is that it gives us plenty of Garak and Dukat. (Insert rant about seventh season Dukat here; but Dukat from the pilot up to the sixth season episode Waltz was a great character.) It even gives us one episode in which both appear, Civil Defense, the obligatory episode every Sci-Fi show has in which a self destruct sequence is activated and everyone must band together to stop it. But DS9's way of handling this particular cliché is great fun. (And not just because Odo and Quark are stuck in his office together.) Garak gets to dispense one-liners and snark at Dukat who snarks back and for the first but not the last time gets a kick out of flirting with Major Kira. (A one-sided flirt, of course, yet still great fun to watch; those two have terrific chemistry.) The two most important Garak episodes in the third season, however, form another two-parter, Improbable Cause and The Die is Cast in which, after three seasons of teasing and hinting about Garak's past, the audience is finally told something definite, while more mysteries are hinted it. What was the reason for the fall-out between Garak and his mentor (and much more), Enabran Tain? The show never tells us. (The novel A Stitch in Time does, but I didn't find the explanation very satisfactory, so I don't regard it as canon.*g*) But then, Garak himself doesn't approve of definite explanations. The part where he reinterprets "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" for Bashir, who just told him the story in order to make a point about the wrongness of lying, is one of my favourite scenes of this two-parter.
"Are you sure that's the moral, Doctor?" asks Garak.
"Yes," Bashir replies, adding, confused: "What else could it be?"
"Never to tell the same lie twice, of course."
Ah, the Cardassians: DS9's great shades-of-grey morality embodied. Or, as Garak puts it: "The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination."
One certainly can't accuse DS9 of that particular fault…
Meanwhile in space, the final frontier: good news all around. As
anonymous_sybil wrote in her lj, Joss got the green light for the Firefly movie and will be making his big screen debut as a director with it. (And here I thought it would be a TV movie!) Go, team ME! Also, wishing does help. A few days ago, I wrote, not for the first time, about my longings for a Centauri-centric B5 archive.
hobsonphile then went ahead and created one, for which I was delighted to contribute my own humble efforts. Today, I read in her lj that more contributions by other people have arrived. Read the first ones here.Moreover, after chuckling in delight at Soul Mates and sobbing my heart out at The Fall of Centauri Prime (both of which I rewatched for the Timov story), I decided to visit my other favourite space station, Deep Space Nine.
I still dislike the opening two-parter, The Search as much as I did back when it was broadcast - there are episodes which can pull off the "it was all a dream" gimmick, but those two don't belong among them. However, they introduced two key plot points for the rest of the entire show - the revelation that Odo's people, the Changelings/Founders are the leaders of the Dominion, established as the threatening, mysterious power of the Gamma quadrant in season 2, and the fact Odo both feels a strong connection to them and a horror at what they made of themselves. Odo being torn between the Great Link, as the Founders' collective is called, and his life on DS9 is a theme which only will get resolved at the end of the series. And I can't praise the concept and execution of the Founders enough.
Voyager did not quite manage to come up with a good antagonist and/or semi-regular Alien race on its own - the Kazon never were interesting, and the Borg lost threat and mystery with each reappearance, plus there wasn't that much to explore about them. (Though bringing in the Borg did give us Seven of Nine, and I do like Seven quite a lot.) DS9, partly due to its different premise - a space station, not a ship on the move -, on the other hand, excelled in either exploring or creating various people and cultures. I already wrote about the Bajorans and Cardassians some months ago, and the Ferengi (a one-note joke on TNG, not so on DS9, but more about them in a moment). The Founders, however, and their helpers, the Vorta and the Jem'Hadar, were races DS9 did not inherit and evolve from TNG but came up with on its own. Making one of the regular's people the enemy was a good idea in any case, because it was a source for constant angst and drama. However, choosing Odo - and hence the shapeshifting nature for the antagonists in question - made the idea brilliant. Odo up to this point was mostly presented as stoic and tough, with a few exceptions (his conversation with Lwaxana Troi, and the rather strong hint at his issues in regards to being treated as a specimen by the Bajoran scientists who originally were in charge of him). And as we all know, angst, with rare exceptions, works best with people who aren't emoting all over the place anyway. Plus the Founders were decidedly not the Borg, despite having, forgive the pun, fluid conceptions of individuality. They weren't after the destruction and assimilation of all life, but they were shockingly ruthless in their quest for absolute dominion. At the same time, they were presented as genuine in their longing for Odo's return.
Founders aside, season 3 provided most of the regulars and several of the semi-regulars with more depth. House of Quark isn't just one of my favourite Quark-centric episodes (and a scream in the way it uses the Ferengi/Klingon culture clash) but the episode in which the family dynamic between the Ferengi undergoes a subtle but significant change. While Quark had already been presented as faceted in the previous two seasons, his brother Rom had been something of a one-note character, called an idiot not just by Quark but by Odo and not given any characteristics beyond "is Quark's weaker and foolish brother, wants to inherit the bar". The relationship between Rom and Quark had been presented as strictly exploitative. In House of Quark, however, while the power dynamics are still the same, Rom starts to aquire dimensions. Not in a big revelation - he's a peripheral character in this episode - but in the way he encourages Quark, in the final scene, to tell his Klingon adventure once again. (When Quark objects, resignedly stating it won't draw any customers anymore since he has told it so often by now, Rom states "well, I'd like to hear it".) It's an affectionate gesture between siblings, and Quark takes it in this way. It's here we first get the idea the brothers care about another.
Quark's longing for respect which is important for this episode brings up something I talked about with
andrastewhite. Quite often, the Ferengi are used by the writers to poke fun at our own (capitalist) customs, and on TNG this was done to make the humans look better. DS9 does this now and then as well, but balances it with moments where the narrative favours Quark's pov. His acerbic comment to Sisko in the season 2 finale, for example; in House of Quark, another case in point arrives when Quark, often derided by Kira for his cowardice and looking-out-for-my-own-skin ideology, gets stuck with the race which prizes physical courage, fighting and honour above all - the Klingons. And he comes out looking better. It is nonsense to kill people instead of negotiating with them, and when he says having me fight D'Gor is nothing less than an execution - so that's what you're going to get - an execution, he manages to shame the entire Klingon Council. Go Quark! Star Trek, in all of its incarnations, often gets accused of being "preachy". It can be, no doubt, but the desire to get a message across can lead to excellent story telling as well. Take the season 3 two-parter Present Past. It uses one of Trek's favourite devices, the time-travelling episode. But in this case, our heroes don't arrive, a la Kirk, Spock and McCoy, in Earth's past or present, in a period the present-day viewers can either look backwards to or can smile at amusedly, but in our immediate future. And it looks dire. Not in the sense of an atomic war (which the writers of the original Trek had speculated would happen, along with most Sci-Fi authors in the 60s), but in the sense of a US in which the gulf between rich and poor has widened so much that the poor/homeless/unemployed are locked away in "Sanctuaries" (no civil rights if you don't have the cash in the 21st century the DS9 writers predicted). There is a genuine anger behind this two-parter, which results in a gritty drama. (With good guest actors, too, and, something rare not just in Trek but most American TV shows, they look stunningly average and/or ugly, not pretty.) As far as Sisko is concerned, this is, I believe, the first episode (or rather, episodes) which showcases what becomes a dominant trait in the later seasons - his capacity for righteous fury and single-mindedness, and you can see Avery Brooks relishes this possibility. Past Present doesn't offer any easy solutions, either; the ghetto inhabitants we've become familiar with and attached to die, and while we're told that things would change after this, Bashir once again reinforces the message in the final exchange with Sisko, once they're all safe in the 23rd century again - "but what I can't understand is: how could they let things get this far?" It's a direct appeal from the writers at their audience, and no matter whether it worked, I'm glad they did it.
One of the many enjoyable things of the third season is that it gives us plenty of Garak and Dukat. (Insert rant about seventh season Dukat here; but Dukat from the pilot up to the sixth season episode Waltz was a great character.) It even gives us one episode in which both appear, Civil Defense, the obligatory episode every Sci-Fi show has in which a self destruct sequence is activated and everyone must band together to stop it. But DS9's way of handling this particular cliché is great fun. (And not just because Odo and Quark are stuck in his office together.) Garak gets to dispense one-liners and snark at Dukat who snarks back and for the first but not the last time gets a kick out of flirting with Major Kira. (A one-sided flirt, of course, yet still great fun to watch; those two have terrific chemistry.) The two most important Garak episodes in the third season, however, form another two-parter, Improbable Cause and The Die is Cast in which, after three seasons of teasing and hinting about Garak's past, the audience is finally told something definite, while more mysteries are hinted it. What was the reason for the fall-out between Garak and his mentor (and much more), Enabran Tain? The show never tells us. (The novel A Stitch in Time does, but I didn't find the explanation very satisfactory, so I don't regard it as canon.*g*) But then, Garak himself doesn't approve of definite explanations. The part where he reinterprets "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" for Bashir, who just told him the story in order to make a point about the wrongness of lying, is one of my favourite scenes of this two-parter.
"Are you sure that's the moral, Doctor?" asks Garak.
"Yes," Bashir replies, adding, confused: "What else could it be?"
"Never to tell the same lie twice, of course."
Ah, the Cardassians: DS9's great shades-of-grey morality embodied. Or, as Garak puts it: "The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination."
One certainly can't accuse DS9 of that particular fault…
