Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Rewatch

[Chairman Yang]

Not much to say about this episode other than I'm well happy to see some horrifying death and torture back in Star Trek. I want people being reduced to steaming piles of flesh every week! It's what Gene would have wanted, after all.

Huge laugh at Kira laying out a series of desperate security men. "Please, Major! You'll kill us all!", "Please don't vent us into space, Major!". Too funny.

"I could have killed half the population of Deep Space 9"... Aye, it does seem pretty easy with Captain Crime in charge of security.

Five? Yeah, sure. Five. Absolutely OK.

5/10

[daf]

107 | "The Darkness And The Light"



The Phantom of the Ops Error

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Highlights :
• The Sleepy 'Uuuuuurbs Skimping Sketch
• The "That's One" Menacing Message Mystery
• Smirking Worf's Dax Debt Tongo Tirade
• Hungry Guard's Gratis Replicator Repast (sloo! now for a feast!)
• Furel's Phaser Night Fright
• Pals Pitiful Present : Box of Makra Herbs
• Emergency Nog Scene : Big Ears Message Unscrambler
• Shakaar Cell Slaying #1 : Latha's Ceremonial Candle Ka-blammo
• Shakaar Cell Slaying #2 : Fried Fala's Beam-in Burn-up
• Shakaar Cell Slaying #3 : Mobra's Micro-explosive Mortality Mystery
• Shakaar Cell Slaying #4 & 5 : O'Brien Quarters Q'Boom-o!
• Kira's Loopy Likely Suspect Slaying Scoot-off
• Krazy Killer's Fried-Faced Revenge Revelation
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Other Bits :
• Space Place #147 : The Calash Retreat
• Rule of Acquisition #111 : "Treat people in your debt like family, exploit them."
• Space Nosh #77 : Makara Herbs
• Quark's Space Plonk #16 : Saurian Brandy
• Space Critter #36 : Sinoraptor (Bajoran)
• Space Drugs #14 : Makara Herbs
• Space Drugs #15 : Merfadon (sedatve)
• Cosmic Culture #11 : Days of Atonement (Bajoran)
• Gizmo Corner #5 : Remat Detonator
• Gizmo Corner #6 : Hunter Probe
• Lower Decks #24 : Lieutenant Brilgar
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4/10

[Lemming]

Gotten hold of the most important videogame of 2000 - Deep Space Nine: The Fallen.

If you've ever wanted to experience an episode of DS9 in the form of a very clunky, awkward-looking third-person shooter, this game is the one for you.


Opportunities also exist to play as Kira and jump up onto Sisko's desk, fucking his baseball up.

Is the chair that big in the show? It looks like it's dwarfing Sisko.

(the game actually somehow looks better in these official screenshots than it does on my screen, and that's saying something given how bad it looks in those screenshots)

The game is apparently set during season six so I'm putting off playing it until we reach that point, but wow, this game's a winner. Making it even better is that Brooks and Meaney didn't take part, so you get bad impersonators playing Sisko and O'Brien.

[daf]

That tiny Sisko is hilarious - he's going to have to crawl along the desk to reach his precious baseball!

[Blumf]

That tiny Sisko is hilarious - he's going to have to crawl along the desk to reach his precious baseball!

Big scene where he's talking about some major upcoming battle or whatever, just seeing his bald head above the table, then he reaches up to get his baseball.

[Blumf]

That episode where Jake and Nog accidentally sell his desk, but replace it with a bigger one.

[Chairman Yang]

See now I want to play Harbinger, which was cool enough to have actual Avery Brooks do the voice of Sisko but does look like an educational game you'd find on a free Mormon DVD.

[Lemming]

The sheer wrongness of everything visually in Harbinger is delightful. It's like a representation of the station as it would be perceived by Keiko while suffering from a stress-induced cluster headache.

I can't believe how many Star Trek games there were from like 1995 to about 2003. Really want to give Star Trek: Klingon a proper go since it's written by Hilary Bader (great work on Trek and Xena), directed by the maestro himself Jonathan Frakes, and features heavy doses of Gowron.

[Blumf]

The Darkness and the Light S05E11

Kira has a secret admirer.

Still with the Bajoran religious wankers. They're all poncing about in a cave, staring at a light. Thankfully the light kills one of them. Must be the will of the Prophets.

Kira's preggers, remember, and it's a right old ball ache. She's supposed to be taking some herbs, herbs that counteract sedatives. Write that down. Odo pops in to give her the news that her old resistance buddy was the Vedek we just saw killed, and it was a targeted assassination. "That's one"! It's no use, Sisko for some reason is trying to trace the call, and unsurprisingly failing. Where's Dax, she'd know what to do.

Another call for Kira, popular gal, this time an old friend who's shitting herself about the killing. It's only been one guy so far, and a menacing call. How'd this person find out about it all so quick? Whatever, obviously the safest place for her is on DS9 with Odo's patented foolproof security systems. We'll get Dax and Worf to swing on by to pick her up. Ah, so that's why Sisko was doing the tracing, not Dax. She and Worf are pissing about on Starbase 63.

Well Dax and Worf have been on an important mission, pissing about playing Tongo. Now it's time to beam scared woman aboard, and oops. Wow, we get to see the result of a failed transport. Take THAT ST:TMP! Barclay has a point about transporters. "That's two"

In Odo's fortress of ultra security, Kira talks over Odo's very insightful and not at all obvious theory that the killer might be someone harmed by her old resistance team. Just then, his unhackable computer terminal is hacked. A picture of some other team mate is shown and "That's three".

Okay, let's assign a bodyguard to Kira, that'll work for sure. Yup, not 5 seconds after she goes to bed, the guy is on the floor. Fortunately, it thanks to two of her old gang. Yes, that DS9 security sure is top notch, just beam on in! Kira's two friends well be nice and safe here.

Nog figures out the messages are made of samples of Kira's voice. Not really important, but there you go.

Oh noes!! A major explosion has breached the hull around the O'Brien's quarters. That's Keiko's orchids fucked then. Also Kira's two buddies. Kira goes Rex Kramer on the DS9 security staff trying to get to the quarters

One heavily pregnant woman just ripping through Bajoran and Star Fleet security like they're Jem'hadar fighting main cast. Luckily, for everyone on the habitat ring, she collapses before she can vent the section. Do they not have emergency hull breach atmospheric containment shields?

Okay, really, this is too much. So Kira hacks Odo's unhackable security terminal by burping or something, grabs his dossier on suspect than beams off. This would never happen if Odo was allowed to perform one on one body cavity searches on Quark every 10 minutes.

First three suspects on the list are not it. Wonder how Kira figured that out, it's not specified. Did she torture them? Or were Odo's records so out of date they'd all died years ago?

Forth on the list a Prin, and it's clear Kira never watched Total Recall, as she gets owned by the oldest trick in the book, a holo projection diversion.

Prin is a bit mad. You can tell by the subtle hints, like him endlessly reciting bad poetry. You might have to rewind to catch it though. The guy's face is all messed up, thanks to a bomb or something Kira's team planted. But he's a good guy really, taking pains to avoid innocent victims (tell that to Keiko's orchids!) Which leaves a bit of problem, seeing as Kira's preggers. Time for a DIY caesarian! Kira asks for a sedative, and because Prin's just so nice, he give her one.

Ah hah! Kira's been taking those herbs, the sedative doesn't work! You see Prin, nice guys always finish last, and now you're dead! The end.


Why wasn't this story in the first or second season, when Bajoran shit mattered? We've got the Dominion directly pissing about in Alpha Quadrant business and we're playing catch up with the fall out from the occupation now?

One thing of note to me was, seeing as the Cardassians are basically Nazi, they (well Germans in general at the time) quite liked a good facial scar. Young officers would actually inflict them on themselves as a mark of class. So, surely the Cardassians would have a similar love of damaged tissue.

And I know things have to have a certain flex for the needs of the story, but really, was there a single security success this episode? Just everything failing constantly, even by Odo's standards it was terrible. A toddler with a spud-gun could single handedly take over the entire station within a a few hours. He wouldn't even need the spud-gun!


6/10 It's fine. Would have been better several seasons ago.


I too would like a go on Star Trek: Klingon just for that Gowron action

[Lemming]

S5E12 - The Begotten

While Kira prepares to give birth, Odo is put in charge of a baby Changeling.

- Odo's thrown his back out after some serious "investigative work" with Quark. The back injury is a result of Odo's preferred stance, the Uptight Fascist Bastard, which puts strain on the spine. Quark's got a bottle of blue Slush Puppie that he's trying to pass off as a Changeling. Odo recognises it as a little baby, as he once was.

- Sisko doesn't get why the Changelings jizzed some babies into space. Apparently it's to test the species they come into contact with or whatever. Sisko's eager to palm this off on other people so he can get back to sitting in his office doing nothing, so he authorises Odo to be in charge of literally everything. Meanwhile, Kira's gone into labour.

- Bajoran pregnancy rituals are, of course, shit as hell and Kira forces her mates to rattle some maracas. Even Bashir, who's meant to be an actual doctor, is forced to be part of this crap. O'Brien's extreme Type-A personality causes stress to radiate through the room, winding Kira up and making her womb tighten, trapping the baby within.

- Odo shoves the baby into a glass to carry it around on the station. There's a joke where Worf doesn't get what's going on, but like, fucking hell, why has he not been informed? Did Sisko not put out any kind of information about the presence of a Changeling on the station? Not even to Worf, who's clearly the de facto security chief at this point? Anyway, Odo enthuses to the baby about how exciting it'll be to learn to shapeshift. He's getting proper into the idea of reliving his own awful childhood vicariously through this new baby. Oh, bonus joke - Mora arrives, having "heard about" the Changeling. Mora possibly knew before Worf did, despite being lightyears away.

- Mora sticks his big multi-ridged nose into Odo's business. Laughs abound as this hilarious odd couple have to care for the baby together! The baby lies motionless and helpless as it listens to Odo and Mora whine and moan at each other, mentally scarring it forever.

- It's not long before Ronan, Beverly's Ghost Boyfriend, arrives. The Bajoran midwife says that Kira's timed out. She didn't hit the birth deadline and so there's a cooldown now that you gotta go through before you can try again. That's what you get for choosing Bajoran Bez and her birth-maracas over a real medical doctor.

- Odo pours the baby into a bowl to teach it about spheres. Can you imagine how funny it'd be if it turned out the baby was just treacle and this was Quark's best prank ever. Anyway, a week passes, during which nothing at all happens on the entire station. Mora spends the week plotting to get Odo into one of his CONTRAPTIONS. Mora feels the same way about watching Odo as DS9 viewers do:

MORA: I'm getting a little tired of standing around watching you, but I can't seem to pull myself away. I can't wait to see what next preposterous thing you're going to try.

- KIRA ARC - O'Brien is rubbing Kira's hideous swollen legs. Shakaar doesn't like the look of this, because he remembers what the rest of us have basically forgotten - Kira's his girlfriend! Kira breaks up the resultant penis-fencing by announcing that she's going into labour. Meanwhile, Odo and Mora keep parenting the Changeling, both getting supremely pissy at each other the whole time. The baby turns into a hideous mockery of Odo, which is considered good progress. Odo and Mora forget about the HORRIFIC ABUSE the latter inflicted on the former as a child, and have a party. Odo gets so sloshed that he rushes off to profess his love for Quark.

- Bajoran Bez returns to make annoying noises while everyone waits for Kira to shit out O'Brien Sprog #2. Shakaar and O'Brien's jealousy reaches fever pitch as they both force their heads up Kira's birth canal saying "it's MY baby!!!" and "well it's MY girlfriend!!!" Kira banishes both of them, causing O'Brien to miss yet another birth.

- While Odo's in the middle of his big speech about his beloved baby, the computer calls him to announce that it's dead meat. But ahh, get this for good writing - as one baby dies, another is born. Look at how smoothly things are running in this women-only space where it's just Kira, Keiko and Unnamed Bajoran Midwife. Things are going so well that Keiko decides to make the high-risk move of letting O'Brien and Shakaar back in, and they literally cant get through the door without being fucking stupid. O'Brien #2 is born and screams in anguish as its first experience of life is being held by a Bajoran.

- The Changeling dies, turning into blue Powerade. It sinks into Odo's body, causing him to experience the power of twenty bone-shaking orgasms at once, after which he's regained his shapeshifting abilities. So literally nothing at all came of him being solid, fair enough. Elsewhere, Shakaar invites Kira back to Bajor because he thinks that the relationship he's formed with the woman he first met when she was a 13 year old child soldier under his command is starting to disintegrate, but she fobs him off with the old "i want to see O'Brien's baby" excuse. Kira and Odo both agree that it sucks that they lost parenthood of their respective babies - one through death, the other through the fate worse than death of being handed over to O'Brien and Keiko.

--------

I really like the way the Changeling baby is shown some basic shapes to change into, and that Odo pours it into those shapes to help it shapeshift. Feels like something that might actually be done with Changeling infants to help them learn.

Mora's definitely one for Chairman Yang's "LESS BORING BAJORAN MAN" award. The character really is unnerving; I think the script wants you to like him a bit more than I actually do and yet the episode works really well thanks to his sheen of dodginess. I like the Bajoran midwife too, how she's clearly occupying a role that's revered in Bajoran society, to the point where she's totally un-arsed about the leader of her whole planet walking in, and basically calls him a cunt.

Also really like the mini callback to "Disaster", with O'Brien bemoaning how he missed Molly's birth. In fact, speaking of which, Worf should have had a bigger role to play in this one*. Maybe even go through some fantastically contrived series of events that conspire to force him to deliver yet another O'Brien Youngling.

*a criticism I would make of every single episode of every single TV series, including non-Star Trek series

6/10

[Wonderful Butternut]

Oh goodie gumdrops.

For the Uniform is next. Prepping the minus 10,000 / 10 rating.

[Lemming]

You never know! It might get the Mr Homn 11/10 rating if our attitudes toward biological warfare have softened.

I do remember finding the "Eddington is Moriarty and he's always ten steps ahead of us!" stuff hilarious, so it's got to be at least a 3/10 for unintentional comedy.

[Chairman Yang]

Review is slightly delayed due to trying to install Windows 3.1 so I can play Gowron Game :D

[Wonderful Butternut]

Review is slightly delayed due to trying to install Windows 3.1 so I can play Gowron Game :D

Absolute gold:

[Chairman Yang]

Haha the Pakled scene was a highlight. There was a whole subplot about composing an epic poem to an old man where you could see money burning on screen. Overall I'd give it...

Dogshit/10

[daf]

108 | "The Begotten"



My Two Duds

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Highlights :
• Stiff-backed Odo's Bed Posture
• Quark's Dead Baby Changeling Latinum Slip Haggle
• "Why are you talking to your beverage?"
• Medic Mora's Mass Measuring Meddle
• Soft Symmetry Sameness Shapeless Splodge Sphere
• Odo's Mr Pyramid meet Mr Cube Changeling Chatter
• The Six Millivolt Torture Test
• The Quark Qonfusing Drunk Odo Sketch
• The Dying Blob Bombshell
• Changeling Changeover : Odo's Omazing Obsorption
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• B-Plot #1 : Bajoran Baby Gong-Bonging Boredom
• B-Plot #2 : Bickering Blokes Baby Birth Ban
• B-Plot #3 : The 'After You' Door Squidge Sketch
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Other Bits :
• Space Sickness #13 : Pinched Nerve
• Space Splosh #41 : Champagne
• Space Critter #36 : Alvanian Spine Mites
• Space Critter #37 : Tarkalean Hawk
• Space Critter #38 : Filian Python
• Odo's Omazing Ocrobatics #4 : Tarkalean hawk
• Technobollocks : Electrophoretic Diffuser
• Technobollocks : Biomimetic Fluctuations
• Technobollocks : Morphogenic Matrix
• Technobollocks : Cytoplasmic Separator
• Technobollocks : Protein Decompiler
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6/10

[Mr Trumpet]

Odo's meant to have modelled his appearance on this guy. Would it have been better if Rene Auberjonois had played both roles or nah?

[Wonderful Butternut]

Odo's meant to have modelled his appearance on this guy. Would it have been better if Rene Auberjonois had played both roles or nah?

Nah. I think the resemblance is plausible with the two different actors and accounting for the fact that Odo 'can't do faces', but can do everything bloody else.

[Chairman Yang]

I'd love to be a space trader in Star Trek. Travelling around in a little shuttle, doing sly bargains with bartenders and fencing baby Odos. When I'd finally had enough I'd toss it all in and move to Earth and run a retro 21st-century chip shop or something.

It's kind of funny that in Gene's future utopia interpersonal conflict has been eliminated except that all sons absolutely despise their fathers. I think Jake might literally be the sole exception. Some top quality acting here, Odo talking to his pet glass of tea. All very emotional.

Right, I'm really really going to try to take the Bajorans seriously this week. Not going to get pissed off at them, not going to wish another genocide on them, they're a real people with a rich and respected... this is just the Betazoid dinner sketch but with babies, isn't it?

Dr. Mora's back. I'm not handing out another Interesting Bajoran Man Award. He's not getting two! :D I do like how he's still being written an overbearing and manipulative figure. His strand of the story unfolds exactly as you'd expect: he's initially a dickhead, he learns to work with Odo and then leaves with a renewed appreciation for him. It's Commander Maddox or Admiral Haftel or any one of a dozen Star Trek Fuckers of the Week.

Looked up to see what horrible fate befalls Kirayoshi in the spin-off media and it's far worse than you could possibly imagine:

He grows up into this slabhead and does his dad's job as Chief Engineer on the Enterprise F. Way to bring shame and penury on your family, mate.

The Begotten is pretty good? I have a lot of time for the Odo plot, it's sweet. The whole sitcom baby antics B-plot can fuck right off, cheap 90s soap opera filler. This episode kind of reminds me of Up the Long Ladder where I wish I could do a Tuvix procedure and split the two plots into one episode I watch and one episode I execute with a phaser to the back of the head.

6/10

[Chairman Yang]

Can you imagine how funny it'd be if it turned out the baby was just treacle and this was Quark's best prank ever.

Hahaha I've just clocked this line. Genius. They should have Mora walk in and be like "Mate... that's jam" and then the series ends.

[Blumf]

The Begotten S05E12

The ending of two pointless arcs

Ooo aaah, me bones. The stick up Odo's arse is playing him merry hell. But at least the prune juice is keeping him regular.

Quark has got something for Odo. Surprise! A dead baby of your species! Presumably he'll be selling Dax a dead symbiote slug next week. Actually, the baby changeling is alive, barely. Just needs hitting with some technobabble. Odo's a daddy, aww.

Kira's in labour, and like all things Bajoran, the birthing process is fucking stupid, and now O'Brien and Keiko are involved. The Bajoran midwife... well doula is probably the better term, as I doubt there's even a hint of medical knowledge involved... is forcing them to play some infant school percussion instruments. That gong is flat, like beating dented bin lid. Probably the artistic and craft pinnacle of Bajoran culture. Surprised the birthing ceremony doesn't involve wearing deele-boppers. Hey it's the man, the legend, Shakaar, here to help Kira relax by getting all alpha male with O'Brien.

Odo's taking baby out for a stroll. Is it really a safe idea to decant a baby changeling into a drink mug in the middle of a food area? Worf considers an upgrade to his prune juice habit. Odo's surrogate dad, Mora, turns up to give his two penn'orth.

We are watching René Auberjonois act against a bowl of gel. He's a relation to Napoleon Bonaparte, you know. Wonder what the Fench general would have thought of all this.

A long while later, and Odo's spare-the-rod parenting technique as achieved bugger all. Him and Mora have a screaming match over parenting techniques. But Sisko turns up and lays down the law, which is Star Fleet claiming control of a sentient being? Utopia! Reluctantly, Odo agrees to place the baby into Mora's electro-shock torture tray.

The Kira/O'Brien/Shakaar triangle is continuing to be awful. To no real narrative advantage. But there is a callback to O'Brien missing his first kid's birth. Worf really should have been involved in some way in this one, for comic purposes. Perhaps holding O'Brien and Shakaar apart whilst Kira pushes the new one out.

The Changeling baby is evidently a fan of James Cameron, re-enacting that scene from The Abyss. Would dearly love it if the baby did a perfect human face, then morphed into a middle finger. Odo and Mora are overjoys with the results of torturing a young child into performing, and wonder off to Odo's fortress of security competence to get pissed up. Why did Odo tell the replicator they're celebrating?

Mora is a lightweight, so Odo breaks into Quarks bar on his own to carry on the revelry. Quark find the booze hound in their conversation says an odd thing. "The centre cannot hold"? That's a weird quote for Quark to use. Why'd he be reading Yeats?

Bad news, Mora's just checked in on the baby and it's dying. Odo is understandably distraught. And as he holds the dying being in his hands, it absorbs into him. And just like that, Odo's back to being a changeling. Well that's that story arc knackered then init!

We end the episode learning that the leader of the entire planet of Bajor can't afford a private shuttle, has to slum it on Ryan Air. Also some emotional bollocks. The end.


Well, what did we get from the "Odo's not a changeling" arc? He broke his leg once when he forgot he couldn't transform into a bird and... that's it. The rest is just him being a normal solid. What the fuck!? Is that all they could do? A fucking massive development for a character and they just ignore it as much as possible then revert. 12 episodes of nowt.

But to his credit, Rene makes good work of the emotions here, and he works well with James Sloyan. Just wish there was more to go with it all.

On the other hand, the Kira pregnancy arc was at least a smart bit of on the fly writing to cover for Visitor's actual life. And although it doesn't really come to much, it did need to. Also an interesting contrast with a person that helped Trek exist, Lucille Ball, who had a similar situation in her sitcom, but had an uphill battle with network execs over even mentioning pregnancy. In a show about a happily married couple! Progress!!


6/10 Rene was great, but I'm docking points for the waste of character arc.


Wonder if you tapped the jar the baby Changeling would vibrate like a tub of Swarfega (if you don't know what this is, get yourself down to Halfords and find a tub to tap. That's your bank holiday weekend sorted. Sat in a Halfords, giggling)

[Lemming]

S5E13 - For the Uniform

To catch Eddington, Sisko realises he must become the villain.

- Sisko's heading into a Bad Guy Bar to meet with a shady informant who knows a thing or two about Eddington. But oh no - ambushed by Eddington!!! He's sent the informant to Hell World to die a horrible death, but he has an even worse fate planned for Sisko - he's going to talk at him. The gist here is this: the Bad Guy Bar is full of refugees from worlds that the Fed signed over to the Cardies. The Fed has offered to give them luxury apartments in utopia-earth, but they've all refused, and chosen to live here in a cave instead...? Anyway, they hate living in a cave, despite choosing to live in a cave. These people aren't even Maquis, btw, they're literally just displaced people who have inexplicably chosen to live in a cave. Sisko says that it's because they want to return to their old worlds one day, but if they're not actually doing anything about it, why not wait on Earth?

- Eddington beams out to a "Maquis raider". The Defiant gives chase into the Badlands (which people enter really casually considering a Starfleet ship famously vanished there with all hands missing a year or two ago). Oh, hahaha, here we go - holographic communication. I hate it!! It's so bad! Anyway, some guy from another ship says he'll cut Eddington off and then hand him over to Sisko for a personal beatdown or whatever.

- What's happening? Eddington's TRICKING US! Genius Sisko reasons that Eddington is "up to something", but Eddington's too quick on the draw - he disables the Defiant with... witchcraft, or something. The Federation's premiere ship has been taken out by a fucking idiot. Eddington also hacks the holo communication thing and taunts Sisko in person. Haha! Wouldn't it be funnier if he stood outside the holo-field and just poked his erect cock through, so it was floating on the Defiant's bridge. Sisko would be all "damnit! Major, shut that off!" and Kira would be like "I can't! He's ten steps ahead of us!"

- The audience goes to sleep as Eddington and Sisko discuss the themes of the episode. It's about obsession. Sisko's seething at being so comprehensively owned, and rushes back to DS9 to snarl about shit. Now, let me pick out the worst scene in the episode - worse than the biowarfare shit by far:

ODO: I've removed two similar cascade viruses hidden on the station's main computer. By transmitting a signal, Eddington could have disabled our entire defence system.
SISKO: How long until you've eliminated all of Eddington's handiwork?
ODO: It's a good question. I can't guarantee we've found all of them. Eddington was DS9's chief of Starfleet security for eighteen months. He had the opportunity to infiltrate and compromise every system on the station.
SISKO: Then check every system on the station.
ODO: I intend to. Sir, have you ever reminded Starfleet command that they stationed Eddington here because they didn't trust me?
SISKO: No.
ODO: Please do.

No. Unacceptable. How is this fucking moron smugly showboating during a conversation about how the security system - HIS SECURITY SYSTEM - has been compromised for like a year?! Eddington was found to be a traitor and it's STILL TAKEN ODO THIS LONG TO RUN A FULL CHECK ON THE SYSTEMS EDDINGTON HIMSELF MAINTAINED, and he thinks THIS is the time to fucking brag about his hot shit security skills?! I genuinely wanted to punch his fucking stupid no-longer-solid face here, this is a shocker.

- Captain Haircut tells Sisko that he (Sisko) has been taken off the Eddington case due to colossal failure, and now Captain Haircut will be taking over. Starfleet have concluded that Eddington is a) too smart, b) too good, and c) has a much bigger cock than Sisko. Because this is the enlightened 24th century, Sisko feels so emasculated by this that he has to grunt like a Neanderthal and punch a boxing bag while screaming. I love how Dax holds the bag in a way that maximises the symbiont's chance of being accidentally punched.

- NEWS: Eddington is lobbing bio-weapons at Cardie civilians. Big Dick Sisko gets his masculine jaw-jutting credibility back by taking the Defiant on a personal death-ride toward Eddington's anus. Nog is now the comm system, we're going to holler in his sensitive years so he can relay shit around the ship. For slow viewers who can't grasp themes (eg Americans), Sisko loudly tells you again that the theme of this episode is obsession.

- If you liked the six-hour saucer separation scene in Encounter at Farpoint, you'll love the equally labourious Defiant takeoff scene from "For the Uniform"! Episode must have been running a couple minutes under time.

- Eddington thinks he's not irritating enough already, so he sends over Les Miserables and bores Sisko's brain out of his skull by pointing out that they're apparently both just like the characters in the book. We think we've got him but ohhh he's too good, he sent out a decoy and we've walked right into his trap, how will we ever stop him, he's always thinking fifteen steps ahead, zzZZzzzZZzz

- The Maquis have taken out Captain Haircut's ship and left it adrift. But don't worry, our favourite bit of tech, the holo-communicator, is still working. Captain Haircut and Sisko talk to each other like a couple of fucking Falklands veterans. "Save me a seat at his court martial!" "Good hunting, captain!" God the Federation has become boring as shit in this show, we might as well be watching Stargate half the time.

- Sisko knows Eddington, and thus knows where he'll strike next. The Defiant arrives and sees a stricken Cardie colony with two Maquis Raiders. They blow up one of the raiders and then pursue the other, which is opening fire on transport ships evacuating civilians from the planet. This was an epic ploy from Eddington - Sisko must now choose between chasing him, and saving the civilians. The Defiant saves the Cardie ship, and while they do so, Sisko seethes. He decides that to stop Eddington, he must... BECOME JAVERT.

- The plan is to give Eddington a taste of his own medicine with a bit of collective punishment. Sisko plans to fire nukes at a Maquis colony... with special nukes that only effect humans, which we have on hand. He gives the colony a warning, and the bridge crew look at him weird. Now, this is where you'd think Kira would step in and say "detain the captain, I'm taking command of the Defiant", but that doesn't happen because there's six minutes left and the characters just want to get the episode over with.

- Eddington's like "no, wait!" but Sisko's TOO EVIL and fires the nukes. Sisko says he'll do it again if Eddington doesn't stop, yadda yadda, Eddington surrenders. Sisko and Dax find the whole situation hilarious.

--------

What gets me about the bio warfare shit isn't even that it's Sisko crossing a line or whatever, because it's DS9, it's all a load of bollocks at this point anyway. What gets me about it is that it's narratively unsatisfying within the episode's context. You can obviously pick apart the scant believability of the whole thing - are there really only humans on the colony, how is a planet meant to evacuate in one hour, won't Starfleet just sack this absolute fuckhead the instant he gets back to DS9, what about pregnant women in labour or people undergoing surgery, etc - but the episode wants you to assume everyone evacuates just in time and that Sisko knows that they can, and that Starfleet don't really care about this, so fine, whatever. It's obviously completely premise-busting shit but let's just accept what the episode wants us to go with.

But the whole point is for Sisko to become a melodrama villain, right? To give Eddington, who is basically deluded, a great evil to heroically sacrifice himself to prevent? So... wouldn't it have been way more interesting - and fit far better with the Star Trek setting and what we know of the Federation - if Sisko launched dummy warheads, and Eddington bought that they were real because his impression of Starfleet, and of Sisko, is so one-dimensional and caricatured that he'd believe that they'd do this? And then after Eddington turned himself in, Sisko could be like "ha, sike" and Eddington would have been truly brought down by his own obsession with being a "hero" character and his unwillingness to see the humanity in his "enemies"? Yeah, it would have been a pretty standard plot, but to be honest I'm not sure you could wring a winner out of this premise to start with.

Or even better, have the "I must become Javert" shit happen in the first act of the episode, and have the bulk of the plot be about how to use this dynamic to fool Eddington, preferably something with more interesting than bioweapons - I'm sure there's a lot of clever stuff you can do with the idea of having to play the role of the villains to manipulate a dork into giving himself up.

Instead, I'm not really sure what the point of it all is. Maybe that Sisko "had to" go to Eddington's level to beat him, but again, it doesn't feel like he did "have to" at all. It doesn't feel like something that's arisen naturally from any pre-established character flaw Sisko has. Kirk nearly starting two wars (Errand of Mercy and Arena) is interesting because it relies on his impulsiveness and single-mindedness, traits he shows often. Picard (initially) treating native alien people as essentially subhuman (Pen Pals and Who Watchers the Watchers?) is interesting because it relies on his dogmatism, which we see often. Janeway forcibly decoupling Tuvix and going apeshit on Ransom similarly relies on her quickness to be swayed by other people's suffering, which again we see often.

But Sisko nuking a planet? What's that all about? The episode's "obsession" theme is sort of undermined by Sisko's clear-headedness when he decides to become a melodrama villain, and Dax's approval, and the two of them laughing it up afterward. And I'm not sure obsession is a trait I really associate with Sisko anyway - possibly because I'd have trouble naming any trait that I'd associate with Sisko.

And again, Sisko's decision reflects badly on the Defiant crew and the Federation - no way would Worf go along with this, but also, Kira looks like a fool. The whole reason a first officer exists is to step in and take over during a situation like this, and she just sits there looking like she's scared of the teacher calling on her or something. Even if we're to believe that Sisko's never-before-seen "obsession" leads him to this point, what about the others?

3/10. Not sure what rating to give because I don't care for the episode's morals, which are the main thing to discuss, but I also didn't find it that fun to watch (unlike something like TNG's "Homeward", which was arguably far worse than this morally but at least flowed well and had a few unintentional laugh-out-loud moments from how audacious it was).

[Wonderful Butternut]

What gets me about the bio warfare shit isn't even that it's Sisko crossing a line or whatever, because it's DS9, it's all a load of bollocks at this point anyway. What gets me about it is that it's narratively unsatisfying within the episode's context. You can obviously pick apart the scant believability of the whole thing - are there really only humans on the colony, how is a planet meant to evacuate in one hour, won't Starfleet just sack this absolute fuckhead the instant he gets back to DS9, what about pregnant women in labour or people undergoing surgery, etc - but the episode wants you to assume everyone evacuates just in time and that Sisko knows that they can, and that Starfleet don't really care about this, so fine, whatever. It's obviously completely premise-busting shit but let's just accept what the episode wants us to go with.

But the whole point is for Sisko to become a melodrama villain, right? To give Eddington, who is basically deluded, a great evil to heroically sacrifice himself to prevent? So... wouldn't it have been way more interesting - and fit far better with the Star Trek setting and what we know of the Federation - if Sisko launched dummy warheads, and Eddington bought that they were real because his impression of Starfleet, and of Sisko, is so one-dimensional and caricatured that he'd believe that they'd do this? And then after Eddington turned himself in, Sisko could be like "ha, sike" and Eddington would have been truly brought down by his own obsession with being a "hero" character and his unwillingness to see the humanity in his "enemies"? Yeah, it would have been a pretty standard plot, but to be honest I'm not sure you could wring a winner out of this premise to start with.

The fact that the writers could've had Sisko bluff poisoning the planet ("Ha ha ha! I didn't really use trilithium resin, I used bollocks resin which dissipates in a couple of hours. The people can beam back down now. Too bad you already surrendered, dumbass. You actually believed a Starfleet captain would do that? Christ above.") instead of committing what I'm sure what has to be an actual war crime, whilst neither of his Lt. Commanders or the equivalent rank from the Bajoran Militia bat an eyelid makes it worse. I literally cannot imagine any other First Officer just not saying anything the way Worf and Kira do here (Worf says he's FO on the Defiant in Apocalypse Rising, but they ignore that in the season 6 finale, so idk who it's supposed to be). Spock stops Kirk from doing this, unless the regulations allow Kirk to engage in chemical warfare for some reason. Riker stops Picard. Chakotay definitely stops Janeway. Not that any of those captains would be off their heads enough to try this, of course.

Then the episode compounds it by trying to sell us a nice happy solution whereby the Cardies and Maquis go to each others poisoned planets, everything is okay, and no one involved is court martialed and put in prison for 400 years. And ultimately from a narrative standpoint, it's fucking awful cos in poisoning the Maquis colony, Sisko proves Eddington to be completely right.

It feels like an occasion where the writers room thought "well it'd actually happen like this, ah-hah" and that a bluff would be a cop out. Leaving aside the fact that this ignores the "people are more enlightened in the 24th century" element, cos they've already thrown that out the window, there's the obvious question of why have the chemical weapons plot in the first place? Why do you write your hero, your literal Bajoran Jesus, into a position where he has to poison a planet and potentially kill thousands of people if they didn't just happen to have the requisite number of ships to evacuate the planet within the time limit he set, just so you can say things are "realistic"?

Spoiler alert

I was also going to point out that, even nowadays in the unenlightened 21st century, if the IRA did a chemical weapons attack on the London Underground would the British government respond by nuking Derry? Probably not. Then it occurred to me that a potential reason they wouldn't do that is the IRA are white. Might be different if Brown Muslims like ISIS did a chemical weapons attack. At least one Middle Eastern country would be invaded, one suspects.

[close]

It's not as blatantly painful to watch as something like "A Night in Sickbay", "These Are the Voyages" or that Godawful Mirror Universe two parter in S3 of Discovery, but it's pretty fucking poor if you think about it for more than 3 minutes.

[Chairman Yang]

I mean it's getting a zero.

[Mr Trumpet]

Even the episode title is annoying, they should have gone the whole hog and called it Brotherhood of Honor or something.

[Chairman Yang]

The notion that the Maquis would have bothered to steal the stupid new holo-communicator gimmick is far and away the least reasonable proposition in this story. A story that includes Starfleet endorsing the use of chemical weapons on a civilian population.

Here's a free second draft for you: Eddington is snooping on normal subspace transmissions so the only way to coordinate ships is using the shit new holo-communicator. That took me 30 seconds to come up with. Although, that is 30 seconds I could have spent wanking myself off about how morally grey my story is.

[Chairman Yang]

Imagining the end of The Defector if Picard just shot the shit out of the Romulans and started a galactic war and the episode just ended.

[Chairman Yang]

OK, positives: I quite like the submarine stuff, relaying orders and narrating what all the buttons do etc. It's what I call Ship Business, the fluff that fills up good episodes. Of course it can't be the whole episode, which it is here.

For the Uniform would be shite even if it wasn't hitting out with the ultraliberal 'ahhh but both sides, you see?' patter. Everyone is acting out of character, we're laden with Baby's First Literary Allusion, and the sparse plot amounts to little more than a series of phone calls.

Zero is a score that I reserve for episodes which are so bad that they're actually morally offensive. My last 0/10 was awarded to Paradise for tacitly endorsing a fucking cult leader and this episode is way more poorly executed than that was.

It's one of those episodes like Homeward or Dear Doctor where you just have to say "This one didn't happen", so... BWOOP! I've zapped it away with my CANON CANNON. This episode is erased from all future consideration you fucking moron writers.

0/10

[Lemming]

Thinking about this episode more (in an attempt to give myself brain damage), the most interesting thing about it is that I can't actually tell how the writer feels about Eddington. DS9 generally seems smitten with him, giving him all the "coolest" speeches and not letting other characters respond, and this episode gives him superpowers like shutting down the Defiant and becoming Starfleet's no 1 criminal because he's just too cool, and yet the episode seems entirely on Sisko's side at the end.

The whole ending sequence is so puzzling; I genuinely can't tell if we're meant to be horrified by Sisko or in full support of him, and I can't tell if we're meant to find Eddington's surrender heroic and noble or pitiful and egotistical. Sisko and Dax laughing about it and seemingly telling the viewer directly that there'll be no consequences for any of this is the icing on the cake. Apparently Peter Allan Fields came out of retirement to write this one and I'm forced to wonder if he just thought he'd stick it to the show one last time. Make Eddington a laughing stock, make Sisko essentially irredeemable, shit on Starfleet, shit on Worf and Kira and Dax, and then have the characters openly acknowledge how insane the whole thing was at the end while chuckling about how little it mattered. If the goal was to take a dump on the show then it's a master stroke.

[daf]

109 | "For The Uniform"



It means nothing to me . . . Ohhhh, Vendetta!

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Highlights :
• Sisko's Testy Traitor Trackdown Talk
• Eddington's Cunning Cascade Computer Virus Vandalism
• Sweaty Sisko's Psychotic Punchbag Parley
• Crankypants O'Brien #69 : Conked out Communication Catastrophe
• The Cups and a Long String Sketch
• Calling Cadet Nog : Emergency Message Middleman
• Baffling Breen Nursery Rhyme Ruse
• Dax' Victor Hugo Slag-off Session
• Shamming Sisko's Biogenic Blanet Boisioning Bluff
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Other Bits :
• Stardate : 50485.2
• Space Place #147 : Marva 4 (planet near the Badlands)
• Space Place #148 : Gamma 7 (DMZ outpost)
• Space Place #149 : Veloz Prime
• Space Place #150 : Portas 5
• Space Place #151 : Quatal Prime (lucrative mining operation)
• Space Place #152 : Panora almost helpless
• Space Place #153 : Solosos Three
• Space Place #154 : Tracken Two
• Space Book #2 : Les Miserables ("I've read it")
• Space Stuff #16 : Selenium (several thousand tons)
• Space Stuff #17 : Rhodium Nitrite (several thousand tons)
• Space Stuff #18 : Cobalt Diselenide (biogenic weapon)
• Space Stuff #19 : Trilithium Resin
• Upper Decks #14 : Captain Sanders (the Malinche)
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3/10