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March 28, 2024, 09:44:44 AM

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Rewatch

Started by Lemming, August 01, 2022, 02:25:41 AM

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My incredibly important research has found that Bajor is about noted as 3 to 5 hours away from DS9 by crappy Bajoran shuttle. There seems some confusion as to whether the wormhole orbits the sun or not. If it doesn't neither does DS9 and the distance from the station to Bajor changes constantly: even if it does Bajor and the station wouldn't be in the same orbit.

Zero Gravitas

I'm trying to compile my thoughts but I keep coming back to Sisko and a 60 year old Curzon getting thrown around like empty tracksuits.




Chairman Yang

Quote from: Lemming on August 06, 2022, 03:58:10 AMPrepare yourself for agony - SEASON ONE BASHIR is approaching Dax with amorous intent! Dax is busy dicking around with a CGI SPHERE.

God, Jesus, longest two minutes of my life. Let the girl play Big Orb, you freak! A Man Alone of course refers to Bashir, who will never have sex.

QuoteODO: Killing your own clone is still murder.

Thank the Prophets that Bajor apparently has some laws regarding clones because it's completely bonkers that the Feds grow a man and then I guess let this adult childmind just cut about on Bajor. I'm going to assume he gets a whole series of spin-off books.

This is a bog standard whodunit with the addition of clone stuff to make it Star Trekky. It's pretty slow viewing. A bunch of Bajorans go rabble rabble. Ibudan is a sort of limp bag whose life peaked at wearing a cloak. Keiko... opens a school? It'd be honestly more interesting if Odo had murdered the guy.

4/10


Zero Gravitas

#93
A Man Alone

Dax is playing with a big soap bubble on the holosuite set, Julian comes in and is a cringe little shit, Dax feels him up with her cold hands doesn't seem to bother him as after just a few seconds he pops.



Everyone is speculating that Sisko and Dax are shagging, but in reality they're just laughing and joking about ridiculous made up cooking methods and disgusting health foods



Odo gets into a frikase because he's still angry that some dude did some Harry Lime shit during the occupation.

Keiko is rightly feeling as if she's shit and an insufferable nag.

The guy who Odo got into a rollop with earlier is just about to be flipped over when Armus comes in and stabs him in the back.



Hard to tell if she's a simulation or not, she seems to be pushed away and display levels of surprise unnecessary in a holo-rub-and-tug-3000 but whatever she was just about to use those disgusting webbed hands to make the milky come out of a man who's at most 3 hours old, and this is a paedophile, or a hologram of a paedophile.

Goblin child Nog and black child Jake are committing crimes, some kind of tiny crawling dust with a made up name, the effect is to cause furious itching and turn your skin all sorts of flashing colours, the unleash it on a couple of Bajora who get rightly panicked but then within seconds calm down all sheepish like, I'd have longer lasting concerns.



Cute scene with Quark defending the puddle cop, also a great shit eating smile from Zayra.



Turns out Ibudan had smeared his DNA all over the waste disposal unit in his shuttle quarters, rather than seeing where the theme of the episode is going, they stick the residue in a vat and try to grow it.

Sisko tries to reassure Bashir that he and Dax are a couple of horny old friends who definitely don't fuck, telling a lovely story about how they got snu snu from some twin giant runners, sadly he cuts off before getting to the meat, imagination is more than enough for Julian though who nearly produces complex proteins that break down into DNA fragments in his pants.



Oh wait yeah Keiko has zero qualifications as a teacher but manages trick an early and weird Mr. Rom into sending Nog to sit in front of computers in a room while she has her power trip.

A mob corners Odo shouting stuff like "Shape Shifting Freak!" and "Shifter" which are both accurate, Zayra is back being a shit stirring little shit.

The results of the goo they found in Ibudan's quarters are shocking enough to distract Bashir from the mob baying for Odo's goo just across the promenade but we don't find out why.



Sisko faces the mob and uses the word 'Justice' for the second time in the episode so it must be a theme I guess, bashir distracts from this tense standoff with important news, the mob must realise they're interfering with the plot as they just wander off muttering and we get the clone reveal:



There doesn't seem to be any great concern that they've very simply created human bajoran life from a few flecks of cum, and there's the implication that anyone who had gone to prison with a scientist could cook up an adult clone that loves holo-massage in a freighter in the time it takes to travel from Bajor to the station.

Turns out it was Ibudan all along! and he would have gotten away with it too had they not reproduced his cloning process in full, checked his prison co-inmate records and...meddling odo.



Solved.

They let the new clone wander off, who is either a child-like imbecile or a perfect replication of Ibudan's memories or has been genetically programmed to get sexy massages. Hard to tell as he's just shrugged off.

They mention Justice twice, Odo's justice is a genetic drive of some sort all, his yearning for justice he feels is his sole connection to his race but it's not within the real rule of law on the station, it's justice feelies in his goo, here it's framed against the mob's lynching justice so it seems the better side of the tri-coin but pretty disappointingly concluded. It's a continuing theme how valid this is for Odo, tied into is occupation conduct or here being above the whims of administration not sure it's ever convincing that he's right as much as he's effective.

Perhaps I'm still focused on those 7ft twins but a moderately horny episode, also a good old standalone murder plot if you remove the paper thin occupation framing, and cloning exists, Zayra saved the episode for me with his bar and mob scenes.

But didn't save it too well, 4 Nanas short (long) of a grandma (10).



A Man Alone - 4/10



Blumf

Quote from: Endicott on August 06, 2022, 11:31:08 AMHaha it's quite clear from the end of ep 2, the station is still right by the wormhole. What a daft thing to forget!

Leaves the question of how the orbital dynamics work. Are they forever having to boost the station to keep it near the wormhole? Are they so far out, Bajor is not a gravitational issue? What is the wormhole's position to the Bajor system as a whole? Does it orbit Bajor's sun?

Endicott

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Denorios_belt

The Denorios Belt is 160 million km from Bajor which is just over Earth Sun distance. I'm hazarding that it's further out from Bajor's sun than Bajor as it's described as splitting the system into inner and outer, a bit like our asteroid belt.

That's about as much as I can find.

The Bajoran system must be moving through space. My gut feeling is that a wormhole entrance would be fixed, but I can't back that up. Maybe it would fit in with the first orb being found 10,000 years ago, maybe not.  Maybe the Bajoran system is slowly drifting past the wormhole, or maybe the wormhole is moving with the system, or orbiting the sun.

Endicott


Blumf

#97
Having the wormhole entrance orbiting Bajor's sun (which appears not to have a well defined name? Just "Bajor"? "Bajor-B'hava'el"?) as normal would help with stuff (DS9 itself, other items they litter the area with) staying nearby. But that demands that Bajor (the planet) would have a variable distance to DS9. Not really a problem in an Impulse Drive universe.

I dunknow, having realistic characters and political settings with depth and development is all well and good, but the writers really phoned it in when it comes to celestial mechanics. Do they even inverse-square law!?

elliszeroed

Is it in the pilot we find out that Sisko knew Curzon, or later?

Zero Gravitas

Quote from: elliszeroed on August 06, 2022, 09:02:45 PMIs it in the pilot we find out that Sisko knew Curzon, or later?

Yes in emissary: "I wonder if he'd been as fascinated if you still looked the way you did the last time I saw you."

Blumf

A Man Alone - S01E03 (yes it fucking is, Netflix!)

(watching live)

Oh boy, this episode is already looking bad. Even when I was a dumb teen watching this, I knew Bashir was a fucking idiot.

Quark/Odo chit chat. Is Odo speaking from experience? Which Klingon opera fan was he dating?

Everybody's gots the hots for Jadzia. Yuck.

Well, Seymour, you steam a good hamazna.

Odo's the Sweeney, and he hasn't had any dinner.

The O'Brien's, living the dream.

"Huu-mon"

Already here, were getting the feeling that Odo is a bit too attached to his job.

The music says this stabbing is bad.

Fucks sake Bashir! I have the social skills of a brick, and even I would pick up on this not working.

It's weird, but both those Bejorans getting the itching powered treatment remind me of Jerry Seinfeld. Like, if you combined them, you'd be spot on.

And now Odo sounds more like Patrick McGoohan, describing the murder scene.

Miles gets an idea how to get 'Er Indoors off his back.

Dead man's computer terminal has VGA 'ringing' issues. Needs a new cable.

Sisko going to give out a spanking.

Odo's voice is off again, not as gruff.

Rom's wrong! But I think he's better like this, rather than his dopey later self.

Shady bar goings on. Never trust a guy in a cloak with his hood up.

This Zayra fella kinda works. Could have been nice to see more of him, get some Bajoran civilian perspective.

Odo lives to work.
Like how they must have used some kind of energy weapon to write the graffiti on Odo's office. a) why no security alerts to that? b) no spray cans in the future?
Quark being a bit too helpful?

Hurry up and be better, Bashir. You suck right now.

Sisko's Snu-Snu reminiscing.

Morn!

Molly!

She's a teacher not a town crier, Miles you fool!

Rabble rabble rabble!... of about 12 people. Just set the phaser on stun with a medium wide field. Or, you know, beam Odo out.

Phaser on the promenade, against the rules, mate.

They've just brewed up a clone like it's no big deal. Push him out into society, not our problem any more.

Zoinks!

First day of school. Those other kids looked human. Every other species shunning the place for now.



You know, I don't think I'm as down on this episode as some of you. It's good that they switched it out for Past Prologue, which was much stronger. but this one pulls together some of the current tensions the characters are dealing with, everybody unsure of each other.

Still, it's only a 6/10, could maybe be a 7, if not for Bashir the creep.


Lemming

S01E04 - Babel

A virus spreads through the station, disrupting people's ability to speak. The race is on to find the one person who can discover the antidote.

- O'Brien is, to use pre-y2k American office lingo, up to his ass in alligators. Shit's breaking down all over the station, and he's racing around getting shirty at anyone who asks him for help. After messing about with a snazzy Cardie replicator, he accidentally activates THE DEVICE. Arma-fucking-geddon is upon us. Nice job O'Brien.

- At Quark's bar, business has been destroyed by the shit glitchy replicators (I never got this - do people come in and pay to use the same replicators that can be accessed for free elsewhere on the station?). A dissatisfied patron force-feeds Quark his own shitty food, and Odo pacifies him with the IONIAN NERVE GRIP.

- O'Brien is going to absolute fucking pieces and has completely lost the ability to speak. "Let birds go further loose maybe... shout easy play!" he says to Kira. Her eyes light up at the prospect of this being some kind of speaking-in-tongues Bajoran religious revelation, but it turns out it's just gibberish and O'Brien's having a goddamn stroke. He goes for a BASHIR CHECKUP (phwoar), and Bashir reads the Simple English wikipedia article for aphasia out to Kira.

- This is reported to Sisko in one of our now-daily EMERGENCY CRISIS MEETINGS in Ops. Dax starts to go fucking weird as well, and soon joins O'Brien in talking bollocks. Contagion! Epidemic! Fucked! Doomed!

- Bashir's on the ball today and has pinpointed this to a virus that mimics aphasia without damaging the brain. Sisko tries to think of the most ridiculously incorrect possible word to refer to tricorder, and comes up with "window". Yeah, to be fair, that's like, as close to a polar opposite of "tricorder" as its possible to get.

- Sisko introduces LOCKDOWN. Quark ignores it because he's an essential worker, and his patrons are here for their substantial main lunchtime meals, and so are exempt. Jake's panicking, so Sisko assures him that it's just two weeks to flatten the curve. Afterwards, Sisko's accosted by an alien captain who asks to leave the station. REQUEST: DENIED.

- Turns out this shit is all Quark's fault, he's been getting stock from the DODGY REPLICATOR that screwed O'Brien over earlier. He's caught when the cargo trolley he brought down to steal stock for his bar was ACTUALLY ODO. Odo really loves to turn into things that Quark will end up touching, doesn't he?

- GREAT NEWS: Bashir's figured out exactly what this is and how it spreads. BAD NEWS: We're all infected already and we're going to fucking die. Sisko's wondering if it's too late to call Picard and quit Starfleet again.

- Kira goes poking about and finds THE DEVICE. She reckons the devious Cardies placed it here when they abandoned the station. Before she can go off on one of her classic racist rants, Sisko gets called out to sickbay, where Jake has succumbed to the disease. Got a genuine laugh out of Quark trying to demand money from the aphasia victims.

- Bashir, who is absolutely fucking slaying today, finds that the virus is synthetic and is not Cardie in origin - it's Bajoran. Typical! Kira, who now absolutely has egg on her face re: earlier comments, calls some OLD CHUMS to ask around and see if anyone knows the terrorists who put this virus together so we can beg them for an antidote. Oh, and by the way, O'Brien is about to die - turns out the virus is lethal.

- O'Brien is rushed to """the infirmary""" (I refuse to refer to it as anything other than "sickbay"), where Bashir injects him with a ton of shit that does nothing. The race is on - 12 hours to save O'Brien's life, and by extension, everyone else's. Kira's EXTREME DEEP DIVE leads her to check out Ren, of "And Stimpy" fame, who is the only tenuous link to the virus she can find. He brushes her off over a zoom call, and so she begins to plot his downfall.

- It was all going pretty well, but Bashir's gone fucky at last. Absolutely doomed. Pretty much down to Sisko and Odo now. In this crisis situation, Sisko takes the opportunity to sprint to Jake's last reported location and have a Fatherly Moment with him.

- The alien captain from earlier is about to force his way out of the station. Time for another of Sisko's trademark diplomacy attempts! Miserable failure as always, and the guy wrecks his ship trying to get free. It's about to blow, and when it does, it'll take out half of DS9!!! Hahaha! As if we needed any more tension!

- Kira TRANSPORTER-NAPS Ren and brings him onto her shuttle while Sisko and Odo absolutely shit themselves over the incoming explosion. Avery Brooks manages the most intense reading of the word "bread" ever put to the screen.

- Odo's about to cry like a child over being the only one left when, suddenly, Quark swaggers in to save the day. Kira returns with Ren who manages to pick up from where Bashir left off. Kira finally succumbs to the BRAIN-WRONGERY, the last member of the DS9 crew to fall.

- After being beamed onto the DOOMSHIP by Quark, Odo rescues the alien captain and jettisons his ship while Quark gives a "We're Fucked Countdown". He fails and the station explodes with all hands lost. Nah just kidding.

- Everything worked out just off-screen, Ren made an antidote and we gave it to everyone. No casualties, yes!!

Obviously a very standard boilerplate Star Trek story but it works quite well thanks to the characters, who already feel quite vivid and well-drawn. Everyone getting pissy with each other, Kira going all renegade and kidnapping the guy, the virus coming as a result of an attempted bit of wartime terrorism, O'Brien being absolutely shattered at all times, etc.

The order in which everyone gets fucked is interesting - O'Brien gets it first because it's funny when bad things happen to him, Dax gets it second (and if I were being cynical, I'd say it's because they couldn't think of much for her to do). Kira being the last one standing feels quite convenient, but I can just about believe that she managed to hold off the virus through sheer anger.

Nothing particularly exceptional here but good fun to watch. I suppose it makes sense to do a story like this very early on, to test how the new crew work in a typical Star Trek plot. 6/10, could go to 7/10 on a good day.


Zero Gravitas

They actually had to learn their gibberish lines and their intended non-gibberish meanings, retribution for every time an actor complaints to a writer about technobabble.

daf

#103
4 | "Babel"



Deaf Brain's Confusical Inversion of the Core of the Words

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Highlights
• Crankypants O'Brien #2 : The Jammed Airlock Sketch
• The Quark Consuming Stinky Stew Sketch
• Quark's Repaired Replicator Roaming Ruse
• O'Briens Brain-Baffling Blarney Blather
• Sherlock Bashir Investigates : "The Aphasia Virus Mystery"
• Odo Disguise #4 : Drinks Trolley
• "Rom's an Idiot!"
• The Quark Hospital Bed Begging Sketch
• Odo's Debut Dabo Discussion
• Sneaky Kira's Reluctant Ren Removal Ruse
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other Bits :
• Crankypants O'Brien #3 : Food Machine Foul-Up Frustration
• Space Nosh #1 : Double Whipped Idanian Spice Pudding
• Captain Jaheel's Departure Appeal
• The Airbourne Virus Variation de-Velopment
• Bajoran Boobytrap Bombshell
• O'Brien's 12 Hour Death Countdown
• Bashir's Screen Scramble Surprise
• Quark to the Rescue!!
• Dodgy Docking Clamp Explosion Ejection
• Rubbish Replicator Reprise
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

4/10

Endicott

• Major Bajor Planet Spot : #2

This time it's near the end, when Kira is going to collect that guy. The planet is not so dark now, and is more recognisable as a class M.

Blumf

Quote from: Lemming on August 06, 2022, 03:58:10 AMKeiko becoming a teacher is a nice plot, though I'm not sure why O'Brien's initial idea of creating a botanical garden for new specimens from the Gamma Quadrant was dismissed so easily, because that sounds wicked. It feels a little bit like the writers were hammering her into a role that there's no prior indication she'd fit into. She has an existing career as a botanist which gets totally thrown out the window because the writers want her to be a teacher for some reason. Feels weird.

Just wanted to note this. She's got a whole new sector of the galaxy to explore for unknown plants, should be a botanist's dream. Even if she wants to settle a bit whilst Molly's young, she could still curate returned samples at DS9, become the leading expert on Gamma Quadrant flora. But nope, she wants to give Miles a bit of GBH of the ol' earhole.

She might even find another plant that looks suspiciously like a glove with pink fluff glued to it:

Chairman Yang

After Dr. Crusher almost fucked the flagship into the bin for the sake of pedantry in the Naked Now, it really is refreshing to see a doctor who that actually understands the importance of a quarantine in the face of an unexplained case of Irish Madness.

Quote from: Lemming on August 08, 2022, 03:20:17 AM- The alien captain from earlier is about to force his way out of the station. Time for another of Sisko's trademark diplomacy attempts! Miserable failure as always, and the guy wrecks his ship trying to get free. It's about to blow, and when it does, it'll take out half of DS9!!! Hahaha! As if we needed any more tension!
This has to be Odo's fault, right? This dickhead has literally no other policing to be doing at the moment and he can't stop one person from getting on board a ship? Those people on Glorbax 5 are never going to get their precious shipment of Bolian Beans now! Thanks, Odo.

Quote from: Zero Gravitas on August 08, 2022, 05:18:11 AMThey actually had to learn their gibberish lines and their intended non-gibberish meanings, retribution for every time an actor complaints to a writer about technobabble.
The irony is all the medical nonsense that Bashir hits out with is slightly less comprehensible than the plaguespeak. This story feels like watching an episode of Columbo where the killer is a workplace accident.

It's retroactively funny that in the beginning Rom is just called Quark's 'assistant', like he can't even bring himself to call him his brother until pushed.

This episode suffers from being a far more annoying version of the stock Star Trek disease episode, however it's actually pretty pacy. I wish the episode made more of the fact the Bajorans were responsible for the bioweapon. In the early seasons the murky Bajoran history is the most interesting thing they've got going on.

QuoteSISKO: Bread!
Says it all, really.

4/10


Lemming

Quote from: Chairman Yang on August 08, 2022, 07:59:13 PMThis has to be Odo's fault, right? This dickhead has literally no other policing to be doing at the moment and he can't stop one person from getting on board a ship?

He's definitely got a Worf-esque repertoire of security fuckups, even at this early stage. Loved the bit where they're examining THE DEVICE and Odo quickly asserts that it's not his fault because it happened before he was brought aboard as head of security. Got made security chief and didn't bother to give the place even the most cursory checking out. God only knows what else is lurking around on the station from the war. Made even funnier by the fact that Kira managed to find THE DEVICE in about thirty seconds.

Zero Gravitas

#108
Babel

Some sci-fi author I forget who (probably now outed as a pervert or enabler of perverts) said that sci-fi isn't a genre but a flavour that can be applied to any story.

In turn we can strip off that flavour and reveal the plain broth, what's the broth here? A debilitating mystery illness? That doing a terror gets you kidnapped and forced to undo the terrorism? Not to use culinary equipment without authorization? Not to make bad broth?



The good parts of the episode are all flavour, the gibberish is initially amusing and then vaguely intriguing as to what they're trying to really say.

This is one of the paper-thin plots spun out on a weekend retreat after they realised "fuck we've got emissary, what comes after that!?" a story written by old hands no doubt but still pretty thin.

Kira comes off best in this episode, not just for doing the 60 seconds of work Odo should have done but also in spunkily working outside the system with her scientist-napping solution.



But so much of it is just padding and padding around not much, Quark is used a few times as overt comic relief I think that's the first instance of this rather than the scheming sneaky face that had been kept up previously.



I had good memories of this episode but had completely forgotten the Odo & Quark saving the station bit (I do notice that Odo's eye holes and far side of his mask has gotten fucked up at the end of the sequence where he's crouching by the airlock) but other than the passing fun of gibberish, not much doing.

Only gets a triplet of Daxes and that more for core concept than the execution.


Babel - 3/10

Blumf

Babel - S01E04 (Hah! You tried to send me back to Past Prologue. I'm on to you, Netflix!)

I've always enjoyed this one. Could work as a stand alone story in TNG or anywhere else, and it's just fine here in DS9 land.

Everybody seems to be a bit more friendly with each other now, more trusting, and we see things like Odo backing up Kira.

I like the idea that the virus was planted by a Bajoran, rather than a Cardassian. Makes for a nice rug pull, and adds a shade of grey, which this show does so well.

Usual development of the Quark/Odo ship, and what's that? Is that the first hint of The Rules of Acquisition? An old Ferengi saying, "Never ask when you can take", which turns out to be the 52nd rule. At least according to some spin off novel.

Rest of the story ticks along as you'd expect, with the dumbass freighter captain nearly twunting the whole thing for a bit of extra flair. You couldn't really accuse the episode of being gripping, it's true. But, as said, I do enjoy it, a nice idea decently done.

6/10

Chairman Yang

I'm fear I'm going to be giving out some truly miserly scores for this season so I'll just say this: I've been blasting through these episodes.

I find Deep Space 9 really easy watching compared to other Star Treks and really like all the (main) characters. So while I will be public debollocking the series, it does come from a place of love.

Lemming

Indeed, it's very smooth watching - I'm a couple of episodes ahead and I really like the feel of the first season, even if the quality of the scripts is often a bit dodgy. It's so much more high-stress than I remember, in a good way - half the characters seem to hate each other, and while there's clear development towards them becoming friendlier and more professional, every interaction still feels strangely tense, like everyone's stressed and tired (still laughing at poor Bashir getting a Kira-rant directly to the face in the pilot episode). Plus the station itself seems to be perpetually on the brink of falling to pieces. Even objectively middling/poor scripts feel like a lot of fun to watch.

Lemming

S01E05 - Captive Pursuit

The first visitor from the Gamma Quadrant arrives, and O'Brien befriends him despite his suspicious behaviour.

- The big joke in this opening scene is that Quark is trying to coerce employees into sex and harassing them when they refuse. I think it's meant to be a bit of a laugh, ho ho ho that's our Quark! Doesn't land at all and comes off horribly. Sisko is, at least, genuinely outraged.

- A ship's coming through the wormhole! Our first visitor from the Gamma Quadrant, hooray! Sisko is buzzed to give the full "welcome to the Alpha Quadrant" speech, but the guy's ship is fucked, so Sisko's big prepared speech has to be cut short while O'Brien tractors it in.

- O'Brien goes down to make a good first impression with the alien, who's gone invisible to hide in the corner. He's called Tosk, and he's got levels of anxiety normally only seen in people accosted in car parks by nonce hunter squads.

- Tosk ignores O'Brien's chirpy tour of the station and insists that his ship be fixed ASAP so he can get flying off again. After O'Brien leaves to have his nightly blowout argument with Keiko, Tosk starts asking the computer where the weapons are stored - and, because Starfleet has enlightened its way up its own rectum, the computer just tells him!

- Sisko reckons it'll be fine if O'Brien and Odo keep an eye on things. Tosk and O'Brien go to Quark's bar, where Tosk bemoans the amount of workshy scroungers in the Alpha Quadrant, lounging about with their DOWNTIME. Quark tries to get him to play a holo adventure game, but Tosk ALREADY LIVES THE GREATEST ADVENTURE ONE COULD REQUIRE. Can't tell anyone about it though, of course.

- Because of this absolute shadiness, O'Brien is convinced that Tosk is deeply trustworthy, and reports as much to the Ops staff. Laughed out loud at O'Brien just cutting Bashir off mid-sentence, what a dick! While O'Brien talks up Tosk's supreme trustworthiness, Odo catches him hacking into the station's computers. Is Odo bound by like, any law at all? Is he allowed to just change into furniture in random people's rooms and spy on them without repercussions?

- Odo arrests Tosk, who lets himself be taken in peacefully. Still can't figure out what the hell's up with him, but luckily, we don't have to - another ship's coming through the wormhole and ignoring all hails. It shoots the station with a BASTARD RAY that bathes it in radiation, destroying the shields. Armed soldiers beam into the promenade, and Sisko decides to personally lead the ACTION TEAM to confront them. One of them knocks a stuntman in an Odo wig out, and then a big phaser shootout starts. Kira's dual-wielding for some reason.

- One of the soldiers blows the door off the brig and goes to look for Tosk, using the special TOSK GOGGLES that see through his invisibility. Sisko fancies trying his luck at diplomacy despite a history of awful failure, so holsters his phaser and tries to talk to the guy.

- The soldier is pissed with Tosk for being caught and imprisoned. He has DISGRACED ALL TOSK. As punishment, he'll be taken back alive so everyone can laugh at him for being a shitty idiot, unlike the Noble Tosk who die in combat.

- Sisko takes the soldier aside and asks him what the hell's wrong with him. The guy explains that THE HUNT is actually really cool, and that Tosk are considered heroes for their participation as the hunted - they do it willingly and train for years for it. Prime Directive says you have to keep quiet about how dodgy you might think this is, so Sisko will release Tosk and allow the hunt to continue, unless Tosk claims asylum.

- Tosk hates the idea of asylum, because he's big into THE HUNT. O'Brien goes to mope at Quark's bar, and Quark's mention of the O'Brien's domestic turmoil leads O'Brien to briefly take his anger out on Quark rather than on Keiko for a change.

- As Tosk is being taken away in chains, O'Brien shows up and offers to be his escort to the airlock, falsely claiming he's got orders from Sisko. Sisko severely undermined AGAIN. Someone keep a count.

- O'Brien punches the soldier guy out and tries to rush Tosk to his ship. THE HUNT is officially back on, and fighting breaks out on the promenade while Sisko sits in Ops, thoroughly undermined. Tosk turns out to be some kind of combat-crazed madman who takes out like four guys and fatally shoots the main soldier guy from earlier.

- With Tosk gone, O'Brien gets hauled up to Sisko's office and yelled at for fucking up first contact with the Gamma Quadrant so badly. Slap on the wrist, no consequences.

This one was alright, really slow start though. I wish it had focused more on the Prime Directive side of things and examined what Sisko is and isn't allowed to do in the situation. O'Brien's solution of releasing Tosk so that the hunt may continue, satisfying both Tosk and the hunters, is really blindingly obvious.

It kind of has echoes of "Half a Life" (one of TNG's best, IMO) in that there's a culture of people who believe that something generally accepted as repugnant is actually an objective moral good. I think it'd have been interesting to get more of the hunters' point of view - the lead guy is portrayed as a dick, presumably so you don't care too much when O'Brien's big escape plan leads to him being fatally shot, but it would have been potentially a lot more interesting if he'd been a reasonable and amiable character, driving home the point that both Tosk and the hunters genuinely don't see anything wrong with all this.

I like the episode but just to whinge about it a bit more, it strikes me that the most interesting part of the story got the least screentime. We get ages of Tosk and O'Brien becoming friends and the "ooh what the fuck's Tosk up to" mystery, which is fine. Then we get only a fairly brief interaction with the hunters and a discussion about the morality of the hunt and the limitations Sisko is working under before moving quickly on to the big action finale.

I wonder how the aliens took all this - the first people they ever send through to the Alpha Quadrant don't all come back. Presumably they (or at least, those among them who accept the mainstream belief that the hunt is good) would actually be pretty thrilled and think highly of the Federation and the Bajorans for briefly hosting the hunt aboard their station. Who knows.

6/10


daf

5 | "Captive Pursuit"



Catch You Later, Alligator!

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Highlights
• The Sexual Advances Small Print Sketch
• The Empty Space-pod Mystery
• O'Brien's Head Banging Bit
• Tosk's Weirdly Correct Health Centre Deduction *
• Odo Disguise #5 : Hideous Painting
• Hunter Barge-in's Red Ray Revealer
• O'Brien's Glass Jaw-breaker
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Other Bits :
YELLOW ALERT!
• Graviton Field Tow-Rope
• Blue Bolian Bar Boot-out
• 17 Minutes of Sleep per Rotation
• "Piece of Cake!"
• Technobollocks : "Ionised L-band Emissions"
• Cardie Counduit Crawl
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4/10


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* [with not even a bottle of asprin or bandage to go on - could have been anything!]

Chairman Yang

This episode brings up an interesting point about first contact. They're going to be meeting a lot of freaks from the Gamma Quadrant and, DS9 being a Bajoran station aside, you'd think that the Federation would immediately begin ferrying diplomats out to establish a permanent embassy. How is this gateway to a fully unexplored section of the galaxy not Starfleet's new favourite frontier? They should all be rock hard for this fucking hole.

Anyhow, I like this episode mostly because I like Tosk.

QuoteTOSK: I am Tosk!
Thanks, Tosk.

Tosk being a person who's been engineered to be hunted but has developed an entire philosophy surrounding it is interesting and complicates the usual Star Trek 'Prime Directive lip service' ending. O'Brien isn't trying to save Tosk but honour him, I think that's neat. Not that I think people should be ceremonially hunted... in general.

Quote from: Lemming on August 11, 2022, 11:38:45 PM- O'Brien goes down to make a good first impression with the alien, who's gone invisible to hide in the corner. He's called Tosk, and he's got levels of anxiety normally only seen in people accosted in car parks by nonce hunter squads.
It's weird to see O'Brien as the standard bearer for Starfleet. Him using his 'welcome to the Federation' speech to pump Tosk for information is a lot more cunning than I'd expect from him too. Half of what I like about this story is that Colm Meany is allowed to take the lead in a story that isn't 'fixing things' or 'suffering'.

Mark this moment down, friends: An O'Brien episode that isn't about his balls being in a vice.

So yeah, I really enjoyed this one although I couldn't exactly pinpoint why. I think it just has a bit more energy and life about it. It's a stock TNG 'weirdo of the week' story, but I found it genuinely quite exciting to meet the first Gamma Quadrant aliens. I think Lemming's got it right that this episode has the bones of a much better story.

7/10

Quote from: Chairman Yang on August 12, 2022, 06:13:35 PMThis episode brings up an interesting point about first contact. They're going to be meeting a lot of freaks from the Gamma Quadrant and, DS9 being a Bajoran station aside, you'd think that the Federation would immediately begin ferrying diplomats out to establish a permanent embassy. How is this gateway to a fully unexplored section of the galaxy not Starfleet's new favourite frontier? They should all be rock hard for this fucking hole.

None of Starfleets actions towards the wormhole make much sense. Stable wormhole to an unknown part of the galaxy from which anything could come through: let's just leave it with a barely armed knackered old space station. Leave at least one decent ship there! That way you might even stop the Cardassians rolling up whenever they feel like it.

We see it in this episode, some dossers pop out of the wormhole, blow up the station shields and run amok. Sisko's threats towards them seem a bit hollow when they've easily broken into the jail and busted someone out whilst barely breaking a sweat.

daf

Quote from: Chairman Yang on August 12, 2022, 06:13:35 PMHalf of what I like about this story is that Colm Meany is allowed to take the lead in a story that isn't 'fixing things' or 'suffering'.

One of the things that I was surprised about the TNG re-watch was how little use they made of O'Brien. I kept waiting for the O'Brien I remembered, but he kept getting given the square root of bugger all to do - totally wasted! *

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* (I think what must have happened is when both were on BBC 2 back in the 90's they sort of all blended into one big show for me. In my mind he was always popping up here and there getting up to all kinds of mad stuff in TNG - obviously 99% of those must have actually been DS9 episodes!)


Blumf

Captive Pursuit - S01E05 (Watched on a phone, as the living room is a furnace)

Loveable cheeky sex pest Quark. Doesn't Sisko have a PA or some other admin under him that should be dealing with this? Kira? She is the head Bajoran, so best suited for Bajoran law issues that this must fall under. I dunknow, this seems to be the same issue about why the Fed don't leave a decent vessel there to help protect what is an amazing discovery/opportunity. Why no embassy, Fed or Bajoran, with proper diplomats? Only 300 people on the station? The Enterprise has at least a thousand! Even an old Miranda Class could carry 300 with room to spare.

Anyway. Decent story, @Lemming has a point that it would have been more interesting if the chief hunter was a friendly chap, rather than an arsehole. And yes @Chairman Yang , nice to see an O'Brien story that doesn't involve eternal misery.

Another hint of The Rules of Acquisition too, with Quark getting cut off before he can expand on rules in Ferengi society.

Problem is, it's not an amazing episode, just good. I can't really rate it that high, it never left a big impact on me. Not much character stuff to work with, save for O'Brien. And, although the story idea is nice enough, in never felt like they were really playing with it fully. I suspect TNG might have done it better... maybe.

6/10


One point extra for treating poor old Miles with decency. Going to miss that.

Zero Gravitas

Captive Pursuit

It's Q! Nah the comet Q from Voyager as the lead hunter - Gerrit Graham!

Good to see the chief has gotten the insane backlog sorted and can now focus on fixing this chap's ship, perhaps this kind of assignment shit is the reason the replicators haven't been checked yet?

Equally good seeing him fleshed out though I don't recall him doing much more than singing songs and toadying to Picard about tiny boats in TNG.

For a minor race that fuck around with ritualised hunting they've got the capacity to blow the station to bits if the choose to, gotta ramp these things up my dudes.

The hunter-prey race works okay here, some questions if you'd really want the prey operating within an ethical system that allows for this level of creative escape and indeed killing of the hunters but meh.

Sisko lets slip how much of a pain in the arse Keiko is being off-camera.

Good all in all, a genuine sci-fi plot and a quandary below it, Tosk is a little wide eyed but it works within context.

Six goo gendarmes out of 10

Captive Pursuit - 6/10

Lemming

S01E06 - Q-Less

Vash visits DS9, trailed by an obsessive Q. When the station begins to experience systems failure, Q is the prime suspect.

- Bashir's hitting a spellbound Bajoran with a genuinely gripping retelling of his final exams. O'Brien's got nothing better to do than sit in the corner and scowl at him, jealous that he himself has no such tales of triumph.

- Airlock jammed! Shuttle stuck inside! Shit! Fuck!!! O'Brien plugs a 32X onto the airlock's Megadrive, which slides it right open. Inside the shuttle are Dax and Vash, of all people. And of course, she's brought Q with her.

- In the infirmary sickbay, Vash tells Bashir about her two years of incredible Gamma Quadrant adventures. She's the one person in the galaxy who doesn't find Bashir creepy, so cringeworthy flirtation commences.

- Some Bajoran bureaucrats go through Vash's shit. The main guy isn't wearing an earring! Is he meant to be like, the one atheist Bajoran?

- When Vash is alone in her guest room, Q pops up. Cue a bit of a spat about how Vash wants nothing more to do with Q, because she's sick of touring the galaxy and seeing wacky shit. Quark interrupts to talk to Vash about something really unexpected - profit! She gives him the OO-MOX, forcing him to negotiate his terms with a massive, distracting boner.

- After Quark fucks off, Bashir suddenly swings by to invite Vash to dinner. Pain!!!
QuoteVASH: Could I meet you there in, say, twenty minutes or so?
BASHIR: Those twenty minutes... will seem like an eternity.
Agh! Gaaah! Aaaaaagh!

- Q turns himself into a Bajoran waiter and goes up to Bashir to warn him away from Vash. He deploys the Q MIND TRICK against him to force him to go to bed early (Q's powers are truly limitless). O'Brien witnesses this, recognises Q, shits himself, and rushes to tell Sisko.

- Everyone's like "what?" so O'Brien fills them in on the plot of "Qpid". A power outage suddenly interrupts, and Kira takes the chance to call out O'Brien's shoddy engineering work while he desperately tries to pass the blame onto Q.

- Sisko heads to Quark's bar where he encounters Q, and sees him harassing Vash. Sisko decides to threaten to kick Q's ass, so Q transforms the bar into a boxing ring and starts smacking Sisko around. With no alternative, Sisko responds with the SISKO HAMMER PUNCH, hitting Q so hard that he's permanently removed from the DS9 universe.

- Even though the station is going to absolute pieces and we've got a known maniac aboard, we're open for business, so more people come in through the airlock. Don't worry though - Odo's glaring at all new arrivals, so we're totally secure.

- Oop, all the atmosphere's getting sucked out of Ops, doing incredible things to Kira's hair. Microfractures appear throughout the station. O'Brien's fault.

- Odo transformed into a chair in the hopes that Quark would sit on him, under the flimsy pretense of "gathering intel". The conversation becomes even more erotically charged when Quark leans over Odo, stares deep into his eyes, and says "isn't there anything you... desire?"

- Vash is ready to leave, and she's wearing what appears to be one of the worst items of clothing ever created - the NECKLACE-EARRINGS COMBO UNIT. Q's still giving her stick over ditching him, and reminds her that he once saved her from having a shitty hairline. He shows her how bad things could have got without him, turning her into an average CaBber.

- 14 HOURS UNTIL WE ALL FUCKING DIE FROM THE POWER DRAIN (we're still open for business and letting people on board, as far as I can tell). Dax manages to out-engineer O'Brien. Q shows up to make fun of O'Brien, and warns Sisko of Vash's DODGY DEALINGS.

- Said dealings are taking place in Quark's bar. Quark asks Vash to partner up with him, but she tells him she's planning to just go chill back on Earth. Oh yeah, we can do that in the ambiguously-communist future! Anyway, no time for this, because DS9 itself is being SUCKED AWAY. We're running out of life support! The station is floating away into space! We're being pulled into the wormhole! Sisko's still letting new arrivals on board!

- The complete imminent destruction of DS9 isn't gonna ruin Quark's day, so he holds the BIG AUCTION regardless. Vash bores all the attendees with her lame archaeology blab.

- We've got 18 minutes until the station is torn apart by the wormhole. Sisko gets pissed off, but doesn't order the immediate evacuation of the station or anything. Luckily, Q shows up at the auction to warn everyone - though he insists that he's not responsible for the incoming MEGAFUCKING of DS9.

- Dax has got it - turn the generators back online. O'Brien says this is a COMPLETELY IMPROPER PROCEDURE, but since Dax is typically right while O'Brien is the chief of ops on a station already notorious for nearly blowing up every week, Sisko authorises Dax's plan. While O'Brien and Kira huddle in the corner and crap themselves, Dax pinpoints the source of our troubles - it's this weird shit Quark's trying to sell.

- Sisko beams Quark's SPECIAL ITEM into space - it turns into an alien manta ray and flies off into the wormhole. Cool. Quark loses out on SIX HUNDRED BARS OF GOLD-PRESSED LATINUM, and then, to make matters worse, pronounces "Daystrom" as "day-strome".

It's not really clear to me what the plot is here - there's Q on the station, there's Q and Vash's disintegrating relationship, there's Quark trying to lure Vash into becoming a SPACE BASTARD with him, and there's the station being torn apart by an embryonic manta ray that wants to return to the Gamma Quadrant. Pretty much all of these are treated in a cursory way and battle for screen time with each other.

Feels like it was an excuse for Sisko to punch Q in the face, which is obviously the main draw of the episode, with everything up to that point and everything after that point being essentially filler. It's not bad to watch but it feels fairly pointless. 3/10



Only other thing to mention is the insane mismanagement of the station here. We've just had a shuttle get trapped in the airlock, so we leave the airlock open for new arrivals. We've just lost all atmosphere and the hull is rupturing, so let's keep letting people in. We've got 18 minutes until everyone on board dies and the station is being hurled away into space, but let's not order an evacuation or even make preparations for it. The fuck are the senior staff playing at? I also like how nobody notices the station being pulled across space at a million miles an hour. People looking out of windows, seeing the stars whizz by and Bajor become a faint speck in the distance, and just shrugging and going "huh, that's odd. let's check out Quark's auction".