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selenakOne reason why despite the occasional need to get away I still think fandom and all it entails - especially discussions with fellow fen - is a great thing: one comes up with slightly insane cross fandom lightbulb moments and find they work for other people as well. My last two were Laurie being a female Dick Grayson and "if Vir Cotto was a Marvelverse character, he'd be Henry Hellrung". Trust me, it makes sense.
***
Once Battlestar Galactica is over, if I find time inspite of Darth Real Life overwhelming me, I want to to a compare and contrast post with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Though there is the danger of being too glib and just sum it up with "DS9 did most things BSG did first, and did them better". Which is certainly true for some aspects, but not all. Right now, I find myself nostalgic for two particular aspects. One, oddly enough, is Benjamin Sisko. This is odd because Sisko never was among my DS9 favorites. I mean, I never hated him, or disliked him, but if you had asked me about "what's great about DS9?", there would have been a lot of characters and storylines I'd have named before coming around to good old Benjamin Sisko. Right now, however, the Sisko looks especially good for several reasons. He had strong relationships with both of the two female regular characters on his show. Neither was a romantic relationship, and the female characters, Kira and Dax, had their own storylines; in neither case these were consumed by Sisko's. Also, Sisko managed to be that rarity in any genre show: a man in a good relationship with his son and his father. Said son, Jake, did not want to follow his father's Starfleet footsteps, and did not. Somehow, Sisko did not see this as a personal insult or make it all about him. When Sisko thought everything was falling apart and withdrew to brood about it, it only took two episodes. (This did not mean that the third episode pushed a reset button, it means he got his act together.) Whether or not his overall development from sceptical Starfleet Officer to religious icon was good for him is debatable, but it wasn't at the expense of anyone else's development.
(Why do I still feel just like but not love for Benjamin Sisko? To tell you the truth, it's the baseball obsession. I just don't get baseball. Never did, never will. When in The West Wing Jed Bartlett came out as not liking baseball, either, to Toby, no less, I wanted to hug him.)
The other DS9 aspect I'm nostalgic about right now are, you guessed it, the women. Kira is on a lot of people's list of favourite DS9 characters, and it's easy to see why. She's three dimensional, she's tough but her flaws are genuine flaws, not "oh, that Kira, so stubborn!" nice ones), she has a variety of relationships through the show ("relationship" here meaning friendships, feuds and romances alike), and never is defined through just one of them, and she goes from second most powerful person on the station to most powerful. My own favourite female character is actually Dax, but I've always enjoyed Kira's storylines and knew that if an episode was Kira-centric, we'd be in for a treat. Also, I have to admit that the show knew how to write Kira from day 1, whereas with Dax they floundered a bit in season 1, and didn't hit their stride until season 2. One mistake they always avoided, from the pilot onwards, was to make Dax the soft one just because Kira was the tough one; we never got that kind of annoying set-up with our two female regulars. Jadzia Dax was a scientist, but she enjoyed her martial arts as well. Like Kira, she had a variety of interesting relationships (again in the sense of friendships and romances, not either/or) without being defined by them; she had a great sense of humour, knew how to throw a party, and was never judgmental (which doesn't mean she didn't have lines you did not cross over if you wanted to remain her friend). When I saw Watchmen in the cinema, I saw the newest Star Trek trailer as well. It still looks like a bit like Star Trek: High School to me (and, err: Star Trek: I'd Rather Make Star Wars, but that could be interviews), but it did evoke nostalgia. Not for Kirk & Co., though. For Dax, and Kira - and naturally for my favouritest favourites, Quark and his family, and Garak, and Bashir - and O'Brien, and Kai Winn, and Jake, and yes, for Benjamin Sisko. Oh, I do miss them.
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A BSG vid reck: Untouchable, a Gaeta portrait.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kindkit, one section in it is practically made for you, as it deals with the "why didn't we get this on screen problem" quite neatly.
***
Once Battlestar Galactica is over, if I find time inspite of Darth Real Life overwhelming me, I want to to a compare and contrast post with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Though there is the danger of being too glib and just sum it up with "DS9 did most things BSG did first, and did them better". Which is certainly true for some aspects, but not all. Right now, I find myself nostalgic for two particular aspects. One, oddly enough, is Benjamin Sisko. This is odd because Sisko never was among my DS9 favorites. I mean, I never hated him, or disliked him, but if you had asked me about "what's great about DS9?", there would have been a lot of characters and storylines I'd have named before coming around to good old Benjamin Sisko. Right now, however, the Sisko looks especially good for several reasons. He had strong relationships with both of the two female regular characters on his show. Neither was a romantic relationship, and the female characters, Kira and Dax, had their own storylines; in neither case these were consumed by Sisko's. Also, Sisko managed to be that rarity in any genre show: a man in a good relationship with his son and his father. Said son, Jake, did not want to follow his father's Starfleet footsteps, and did not. Somehow, Sisko did not see this as a personal insult or make it all about him. When Sisko thought everything was falling apart and withdrew to brood about it, it only took two episodes. (This did not mean that the third episode pushed a reset button, it means he got his act together.) Whether or not his overall development from sceptical Starfleet Officer to religious icon was good for him is debatable, but it wasn't at the expense of anyone else's development.
(Why do I still feel just like but not love for Benjamin Sisko? To tell you the truth, it's the baseball obsession. I just don't get baseball. Never did, never will. When in The West Wing Jed Bartlett came out as not liking baseball, either, to Toby, no less, I wanted to hug him.)
The other DS9 aspect I'm nostalgic about right now are, you guessed it, the women. Kira is on a lot of people's list of favourite DS9 characters, and it's easy to see why. She's three dimensional, she's tough but her flaws are genuine flaws, not "oh, that Kira, so stubborn!" nice ones), she has a variety of relationships through the show ("relationship" here meaning friendships, feuds and romances alike), and never is defined through just one of them, and she goes from second most powerful person on the station to most powerful. My own favourite female character is actually Dax, but I've always enjoyed Kira's storylines and knew that if an episode was Kira-centric, we'd be in for a treat. Also, I have to admit that the show knew how to write Kira from day 1, whereas with Dax they floundered a bit in season 1, and didn't hit their stride until season 2. One mistake they always avoided, from the pilot onwards, was to make Dax the soft one just because Kira was the tough one; we never got that kind of annoying set-up with our two female regulars. Jadzia Dax was a scientist, but she enjoyed her martial arts as well. Like Kira, she had a variety of interesting relationships (again in the sense of friendships and romances, not either/or) without being defined by them; she had a great sense of humour, knew how to throw a party, and was never judgmental (which doesn't mean she didn't have lines you did not cross over if you wanted to remain her friend). When I saw Watchmen in the cinema, I saw the newest Star Trek trailer as well. It still looks like a bit like Star Trek: High School to me (and, err: Star Trek: I'd Rather Make Star Wars, but that could be interviews), but it did evoke nostalgia. Not for Kirk & Co., though. For Dax, and Kira - and naturally for my favouritest favourites, Quark and his family, and Garak, and Bashir - and O'Brien, and Kai Winn, and Jake, and yes, for Benjamin Sisko. Oh, I do miss them.
***
A BSG vid reck: Untouchable, a Gaeta portrait.
kindkit, one section in it is practically made for you, as it deals with the "why didn't we get this on screen problem" quite neatly.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-11 04:24 pm (UTC)On Sisko: he should be brilliant. My feeling is *whispers* AB isn't very good... And, yes, the bloody baseball.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-11 05:13 pm (UTC)On the other hand, breakdowns are, err, not his speciality. Though I'm now seeing them in a new appreciative light because of EJO's breakdowns...
no subject
Date: 2009-03-12 12:51 pm (UTC)No ;-) I gather that on set, people were in tears at Benny Russell's breakdown in "Far Beyond the Stars", which leads me to agree with another commenter here that he's a far better theatre than TV actor. I suspect a lot of what he's doing simply doesn't communicate on TV. (Tho' you'd think he'd have got the hang of it after seven seasons.)