Following the much-anticipated Netflix-uploading, I recently finished a DS9 rewatch – skipping maybe 15% of the episodes, ones that either sounded particularly unpromising or turned me off in the first 10 minutes. Admittedly, I was in a rush to get to the happenings with the Dominion.
Anyway, while there were some growing pains, I think they were comparatively minor (probably b/c some of the creative staff had been working on TNG for so long). I was, however, surprised to see how much the writing declined in the last two seasons. The long, final arc of episodes which ended the series was quite strong, but leading up to that there were a lot of cringe-inducing moments, which surprised me – I had long-since decided that DS9 did a good job of avoiding those, with the tradeoff that it couldn’t really match top-flight TNG.
Especially liked: Quark, Garek, post-goatee Sisko, Weyoun (and the Vorta in general), Kai Winn as antagonist, Dukat when he’s feeling his oats, Worf as a source of humor (Michael Dorn just killed it in that role, I thought).
Generally disliked: The mirror-universe (excepting the first such episode), episodes that focused on non-DS9-based Ferengis, much of the Oda/Kira stuff (just didn’t buy the overall concept, though it was frequently well executed).
Add any episode with Vic Fontaine. Okay, it was cute once or twice, but they ran it into the ground in the last season.
I also recently finished Netflixing the whole series. I hadn’t seen it since the first run, and I never saw the last season. Took me forever to catch on that Weyoun and Brunt were the same actor.
Doesn’t matter. Sisko had his crowning moment of awesome in the Q moment.
Q: C’mon! Fight back!
Sisko: WHAM! and Q falls to the ground.
Q: You hit me. Picard never HIT me!
Sisko: I’m NOT Picard.
Totally changed the dynamic of Q-Federation right there. Apparently Picard should have kneed Q in the balls in Encounter at Farpoint and things would have gone more smoothly ever after.
The ending. This woman sabotages their ship, crashes them on an uncharted planet, actively works to prevent their rescue, deliberately withholds life-giving medical aid, leading directly to the death of several members of the community (one of them on camera), and when they find out about it, their reaction is, “We don’t agree with her methods, but she has some good points?” Fuck that. The episode should have ended with her being stoned to death.
Also: they’re subsistence level farmers who have eschewed all technology - put they’ve got a printing press so she can write her stupid books?
Also also: one of the villagers is described as being a petty thief in his life before they were marooned. How does this work, in the Federation? They have no money. They have unlimited energy. And they have magic boxes that can make anything in the world, with a press of the button. What the hell is there to steal?
There is actually a lot of good stuff in the episode, particularly from Sisko, but the villain in the episode was an absolutely reprehensible monstrous hypocrite, and the episode tried to pass her off as a misguided idealist, when in fact she was clearly a sociopath.
Thanks for the warning. I vaguely recall this episode and will likely watch it again as I like to watch both good and bad of an entire series.
It has been at least five years since I went through all the ST series. Maybe even longer. It’s funny how you forget some episodes completely whereas other episodes just jump right back into your memory.
I’m actually back on season 1 again. For some reason I completely missed the last four episodes when I jumped into season 2. Realized today that I had skipped four episodes, so a bit of a jump back. Will jump back to where I ended up in season 2 after watching these. Don’t have many episodes to go before I hit “Paradise”. From your description, I vaguely remember it. Can’t remember getting angry about it though. Will let you know how I felt after watching it.
Ok, so I watched “Paradise”, and although I agree there were some weak points, it didn’t upset me that bad. Sure, I would have expected at least someone from the “Community” to want to leave. If I had been a member of that community and had found out I had been lied to for 10 long years, I’d be seriously pissed off and want to leave right away. They were way too forgiving and it was unrealistic that they all chose to stay. So yes, that was weak.
If anything, I was more disappointed in the preceding episode “Whispers” where everyone on DS9 are aware that it wasn’t the real O’Brien and they don’t do anything about it and even let the clone O’Brien escape. If they knew it was the clone, they should have just locked him up right away. Why the need for the charade until they could find the real O’Brien? But then, I guess there wouldn’t have been a story I suppose.
So I love the story line about the dominion, but one thing bothers me a bit.
I always thought Odo and his kind were androgynous.
But apparently they have males and females. They even have breasts! Wouldn’t have thought a changeling would need a teat.
When Odo was found, he took the male form from his Bajoran scientist who he “copied” so to speak. At least that was my impression. Then when he runs into his own kind, there is a female changeling. Hmm.
Again I am being too knit-picky and I have to admit, this is just a minor one.
Well, to be fair, nothing about Changling biology makes sense (although Odo’s a great character). I want to know where Odo’s extra mass goes when he changes into something small (we’ve seen him fly in bird form, so we know his mass is less in a smaller form, or bird!Odo woudn’t be able to take off), and how his body obtains the necessary energy to stay alive, since he doesn’t eat and doesn’t seem to be photosynthetic.
I don’t think the Female Changling was really female any more than Oda was male. She just chose a female version of Odo’s form in order to put Odo at ease; she was perfectly capable of perfectly duplicating humanoid forms (also it was convenient visual shorhand for the viewers). Then she got stuck in that form because of the morphogenic virus. The real question is what exactly did she write when she signed the Treay of Bajor.
Hutts on Star Wars are also supposedly hermaphrodites, but when they are off their home planet they choose a gender to present themselves as. That was what I assumed was going on with the Changlings. Both for the comfort of sexed species and for the simple fact it has got to be hard to remain sexless in the company of other humanoids, I bet they begin leaning one way personality wise and go with it.
DS9 is a great show. A far better excellent:suck ratio than later incarnations of ST.
I remember liking “Paradise” at the time, although I haven’t seen it since. I liked that we saw Sisko under some major pressure and bearing up stoically, and we saw that not everything in the Federation is sweetness and light. Sometimes the freedom to start your own colony is the freedom to be a petty tyrant and to make some bigass mistakes.
As to where Odo’s excess mass went when he transformed… I wish I knew. They never really explained it. I suppose he could have the innate ability to push it into subspace or something. He once transformed into a mouse, which would be even smaller (if not less dense) than a bird.
Dr. Bashir and zero G - totally agree. You wouldn’t be able to get through Starfleet Academy without having extensive zero G training, I should think. (For that matter, I hated it in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country when the Klingons aboard the Chancellor’s ship seemed totally helpless in zero G. Come on - these are Klingons! They’re all about space combat. They should be able to fight just as well, if not better, in zero G than in full gravity!)
The official explanation (which never showed up onscreen) is that Odo’s mass goes to subspace–the same place the Warp fields send the excess mass. He’s a multidimensional being–think of it as how the Sphere in Flatland can be different sizes depending on how much of him intersects with two dimensions.
It is revealed by Geordi in the episode where Q loses his powers that this is how warp fields work. Though how reducing the mass of the ship allows it to cross the lightspeed barrier, I don’t know.
The extra mass I could live with. For all we know, he could be hollow in human form. Also, if he is controlling mass on a cellular or a molecular level, he should be able to expand or contract his “liquid” to fit the form. However, the greater the form, the less detailed it would be which would even explain how he appears to be more detailed in a small form, (like a mouse or a cat, both of which I have seen so far), but apparently can’t quite get the details of a humanoid face.
Having said that, there would necessarily have to be a upper and lower limit to the size of his form. The lower limit being the mass of whatever fits in his bucket when he’s at rest and the upper limit being where he would get too big to be able to maintain a recognizable form.
Taking a break now. I was close to taking a day off, just to continue the marathon, but decided against it.
