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Yeah Dukat does limda ping pong back and forth as the writers figure out what to do with him, iirc at one point they wanted to set him up with Kira and Nana Visitor told them to gently caress off lol I think the thing with Dukat is that he's basically just psychologically incapable of admitting he's wrong much less making amends for it. The closest he comes is deciding not to kill Ziyal but it says a lot that his most gracious act is not being able to pull the trigger on his teenage daughter begging for her life. He's genuinely convinced he's the good guy and the Bajorans just don't understand what they're missing (also not sure if the creepy fetishism is a cause or effect here); but in the end actually doing what's right for Bajor would have been giving up on the occupation, and his ego, patriotism, and racism just wont let him admit that.
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Mar 16, 2021 04:03
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StashAugustine posted:He's genuinely convinced he's the good guy and the Bajorans just don't understand what they're missing (also not sure if the creepy fetishism is a cause or effect here); but in the end actually doing what's right for Bajor would have been giving up on the occupation, and his ego, patriotism, and racism just wont let him admit that. Not to drag this down to real world stuff here, but you saw that sort of stuff a lot in a bunch of the Nazi Holocaust trials. Like, the psychologist who interviewed Rudolph Höss , the commander of Auschwitz before his trial, said of him: quote:In all of the discussions, Höss is quite matter-of-fact and apathetic, shows some belated interest in the enormity of his crime, but gives the impression that it never would have occurred to him if somebody hadn't asked him. There is too much apathy to leave any suggestion of remorse and even the prospect of hanging does not unduly stress him. One gets the general impression of a man who is intellectually normal, but with the schizoid apathy, insensitivity and lack of empathy that could hardly be more extreme in a frank psychotic. And, like, at the trial of Josef Kramer, who was the commander of Auschwitz-Birkenau, he testified that, yeah, he had Jews put in gas chamber, and saw them die, and so on, but he doesn't think he did anything wrong or committed mass murder. quote:What did you personally think about the whole gas chamber business? - I asked myself, "Is it really right about these persons who go to the gas chambers, and whether that person who signed for the first time these orders will be able to answer for it?" I did not know what the purpose of the gas chamber was. . . . In a lot of ways, Dukat wasn't very different than a lot of real world villains.
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Mar 16, 2021 04:26
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Yeah definitely- I was thinking of American slavery and how it was constantly justified as being either a regrettable necessary evil (that, of course, the owners profited from) or actively good for the slaves. And of course there's similar dynamics in all sorts of imperial occupations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZKHKDGQ7co
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Mar 16, 2021 04:43
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cardassians are good villians because they're honestly the closest to human. I'm glad klingons stopped being the main antagonist after TOS as they were just sorta the racist caricature of the imperial Japanese but in space.
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Mar 16, 2021 04:57
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Isn't the irony of that scene that Garak is right? He's talking about the Bajorans being more interested in their own myths and legends about the occupation, and Odo is uncomfortable because he's one of those legends, and he knows that it's heavily exaggerated.Vasukhani posted:cardassians are good villians because they're honestly the closest to human. I'm glad klingons stopped being the main antagonist after TOS as they were just sorta the racist caricature of the imperial Japanese but in space. I kinda liked it in the movies when they were supposed to be the Soviet Union, but yeah the whole emphasis on Klingon culture being so alien and unique and different from humanity isn't good for understanding people in stories.
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Mar 16, 2021 05:07
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Garak is the best
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Mar 16, 2021 05:14
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SlothfulCobra posted:Isn't the irony of that scene that Garak is right? He's talking about the Bajorans being more interested in their own myths and legends about the occupation, and Odo is uncomfortable because he's one of those legends, and he knows that it's heavily exaggerated. Yeah, I hate it when sci-fi relies on good and bad races, kinda an issue with ENT, every race was basically shown as cruel except humans, who invented empathy apperently
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Mar 16, 2021 05:16
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Easily one of my favorite episodes of DS9 is when they first go to Empok Nor and release the Cardassian soldiers high on racism drugs from their cyrochamber and Garak gets exposed to it and shanks Amaro. Later on back on DS9, Garak to O'Brien: "tell his wife...i'm sorry" hahahah. Looking back it was easily one of the most brutal and suspenseful of entire show.
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Mar 16, 2021 05:28
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It was a great episode, but IIRC Andy Robinson hated it because he really didn’t like being typecast as a crazed murderer, and was disappointed they were doing that with Garak - drugged up or not.
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Mar 16, 2021 05:33
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SlothfulCobra posted:Isn't the irony of that scene that Garak is right? He's talking about the Bajorans being more interested in their own myths and legends about the occupation, and Odo is uncomfortable because he's one of those legends, and he knows that it's heavily exaggerated. He always tells the truth... especially the lies.
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Mar 16, 2021 06:05
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Martytoof posted:In the DS9 episode where Garak and Worf go to the Gamma Quadrant to find Tain, Sisko says something about Starfleet being spread thin between the Klingon war and recent Borg attacks. I don't remember any Borg attacks in DS9 -- is this referencing something in a concurrent Trek series or did they just make up something for him to say? The attack on Earth is only six years after Wolf 359. MA says roughly 60 ships were lost between both battles, which at the time I doubt Starfleet was cranking out that many ships per year. So yeah I imagine Starfleet was mighty thin.
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Mar 16, 2021 07:24
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how does starfleet not have like tens of thousands of ships at this point. they have the membership of probably over a hundred billion people
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Mar 16, 2021 09:13
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SlothfulCobra posted:Isn't the irony of that scene that Garak is right? He's talking about the Bajorans being more interested in their own myths and legends about the occupation, and Odo is uncomfortable because he's one of those legends, and he knows that it's heavily exaggerated. they use garak for this kind of non-sequitur foreshadowing multiple times - my favourite being in improbable cause/the die is cast. the start of the episode is bashir and garak just chatting about julius caesar (the play) and how garak thought it was totally unbelievable that a man of his capability and stature could be so easily deceived so what happens? his father, mentor, and probably the best spymaster of the obsidian order ever is exquisitely outsmarted and lured into committing probably the biggest blunder in obsidian order history by getting basically the entire thing loving wiped out (along with the tal shiar). its great because it seems like such an arbitrary conversation for bashir and garak to have until it hits home for my money, improbable cause is the best written episode of star trek period. its basically 40 minutes of extremely tight, zero-waste writing. it even uses odo in a way that makes him actually look like a loving genius investigator rather than "a guy who can ask a useful question ocacsionally"
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Mar 16, 2021 09:22
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SlothfulCobra posted:They write offhand references to the atrocities of the occupation, but the show never goes deep and direct on it, so it's easy to forget about. There's a lot of background details that get offhand mentions that never have an impact on anything in the show and the writers themselves often seem to forget about them. Yeah, implications and allusions clearly weren't enough in this case. DS9 needed an episode of Dukat doing something as sinister as Gul Madred did in "Chain of Command", except with the caveat at the end that this is just another day at the office for him. He's simply wielding a tool in the State's toolbox, not with Madred's sadism as a matter of professional pride or self-imagined nobility, but he does indeed find it necessary and useful and has no moral conflicts with it at all.
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Mar 16, 2021 12:08
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I mean, they could have gone the other way - emphasized that even if Dukat was the nicest colonial administrator he could possibly have been, the Occupation as a whole was a crime, and that you can't have clean hands while being part of an imperial system. But, hey, I guess "Oh poo poo, he's been possessed by demons and wants to burn down the galaxy now!" works too...
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Mar 16, 2021 12:46
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In the TNG episode "Chain of Command", why does Starfleet send an elderly starship captain and his ship doctor to go on a commando mission? Doesn't Starfleet have an equivalent of the Navy SEALs for this sort of job? And just because Picard is familiar with a tech thingy that the Cardassians are using? Surely there must someone else, someone younger, in the fleet who knows about it too.
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Mar 16, 2021 14:26
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I thought Picard was in his 50's in TNG and humans live over 100 years. But your other points still stand.
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Mar 16, 2021 14:33
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My biggest issue with the ending for Dukat and Winn is that after Winn talks to Kira about the pah wraith vision, their plotline does not interact with the main characters or Bajor as a whole at all until Sisko tackles him. No reports of the Kai acting strangely or a pah wraith cult causing trouble or any supernatural occurrences on Bajor, just these two characters sequestered off in a corner doing something together that doesn't impact anything along the way and ends up only being there to give Sisko the ending someone on the writing staff wanted. I know season 7 had a lot of establishing Ezri to do, but that whole storyline is just a bunch of nothing that ends up with Sisko abandoning his family for nebulous reasons.
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Mar 16, 2021 14:52
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Kurzon posted:In the TNG episode "Chain of Command", why does Starfleet send an elderly starship captain and his ship doctor to go on a commando mission? Doesn't Starfleet have an equivalent of the Navy SEALs for this sort of job? And just because Picard is familiar with a tech thingy that the Cardassians are using? Surely there must someone else, someone younger, in the fleet who knows about it too. yes its silly. It would make sense if they sent an away team with worf in charge if anything. The whole episode was just a set up for the patrick stewart interrogation scenes, which were good.
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Mar 16, 2021 15:00
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I recall that they say they need Crusher there because she is a metagenic weapon expert or something. But putting Picard on the mission is absurd.
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Mar 16, 2021 15:16
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Kurzon posted:In the TNG episode "Chain of Command", why does Starfleet send an elderly starship captain and his ship doctor to go on a commando mission? Doesn't Starfleet have an equivalent of the Navy SEALs for this sort of job? And just because Picard is familiar with a tech thingy that the Cardassians are using? Surely there must someone else, someone younger, in the fleet who knows about it too. I don't think Starfleet has officially dedicated spec-ops units, and in general they really respect seniority and don't seem to acknowledge ability slipping with age. So obviously the most important jobs should be done by the most senior of staff. I don't know if that was a conscious choice or if it was just an extension of the entire film and TV industry where they generally refuse to acknowledge 18-year-old soldiers and prefer to project the image of wars being fought by grizzled old mature men from 30-60 because obviously important jobs like soldiering would be done by older men and not dumb kids who barely understand what's going on. Angry Salami posted:I mean, they could have gone the other way - emphasized that even if Dukat was the nicest colonial administrator he could possibly have been, the Occupation as a whole was a crime, and that you can't have clean hands while being part of an imperial system. Well, I'd say that the nicest colonial administrator would be constantly clashing and fighting Cardassian Central Command over the exploitation of Bajor and the treatment of Bajorans, not just trying to be very cordial about the deathmarches and retaliatory executions. Although Dukat's personal accounts seem all over the place, like sometimes he says he was fighting central command and trying to mitigate damage, but there's really no direct corroboration or denial of his accounts. Maybe it was a delusion, maybe he genuinely did as best as was Cardassian-ly possible. Garak's account of the Cardassian side of the occupation is even more muddled from how he's constantly lying. I don't think the writers were very decided on the whole thing either, and I'm still not sure why the pop culture in the 90s was somehow really sympathetic to militant underground resistance movements, especially when all of that abruptly vanished.
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Mar 16, 2021 15:46
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Kurzon posted:In the TNG episode "Chain of Command", why does Starfleet send an elderly starship captain and his ship doctor to go on a commando mission? Doesn't Starfleet have an equivalent of the Navy SEALs for this sort of job? And just because Picard is familiar with a tech thingy that the Cardassians are using? Surely there must someone else, someone younger, in the fleet who knows about it too. Section 31 pulled the strings to get Picard sent in so he could get caught and learn about Cardassian interrogation techniques
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Mar 16, 2021 16:13
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't think Starfleet has officially dedicated spec-ops units, and in general they really respect seniority and don't seem to acknowledge ability slipping with age. So obviously the most important jobs should be done by the most senior of staff. I guess that's the same reason it's usually the highest-ranking officers who have to crawl through the 24th-century ductwork to make adjustments or repairs. Which leads us to wondering why they made the Jefferies tubes so drat cramped to begin with. Why not give them full ceiling height and make them into "Jefferies hallways" that the engineers can just walk through to get to the piece they need, instead of crawling long distances on all fours? (Yes, yes, I know that the real reason is because the Jefferies tube is a small set that doesn't take up a lot of soundstage space and can be used to add some visual interest and variety instead of another boring-rear end corridor shot, and can also be used to give characters a way to sneak around the ship when necessary.)
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Mar 16, 2021 16:16
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Powered Descent posted:Which leads us to wondering why they made the Jefferies tubes so drat cramped to begin with. Why not give them full ceiling height and make them into "Jefferies hallways" that the engineers can just walk through to get to the piece they need, instead of crawling long distances on all fours? Originally I think the idea was that they were crawlways to get into tight spaces through machinery, but then they made it so that every single engineering thing was accessed through the tubes, which... yeah, why not just have what you need, like, behind panels in hallways, or exposed in engineering hallways, for everything that's not actively cramped. The only time we see one that makes sense is that bigass back engineering hallway in Star Trek V.
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Mar 16, 2021 16:18
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The real question is, why is the gravity turned on in the Jefferies tubes necessitating crawling?
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Mar 16, 2021 16:34
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Jeffrey was not a large man, so the the tubes were perfectly fine for him. Alternatively, he was a huge fan of Dickensian chimney sweeps and wanted way more child labour. The real answer is that there was no space left after they put in the turbolift dimension.
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Mar 16, 2021 16:34
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Eighties ZomCom posted:I thought Picard was in his 50's in TNG and humans live over 100 years. But your other points still stand. I think Picard is stated to be about 10 years older than Patrick Stewart is in real life, which led to a lot of jarring moments when the guy who seems like he's an old rear end man because PStew went bald and grey early in life, suddenly turns into a buff badass who kicks everyone's rear end.
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Mar 16, 2021 16:34
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Now with picard we get to see him winded to go up 3 steps. 
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Mar 16, 2021 16:41
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Powered Descent posted:I guess that's the same reason it's usually the highest-ranking officers who have to crawl through the 24th-century ductwork to make adjustments or repairs. It’s because they needed room for the turbolift metropolis, op
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Mar 16, 2021 17:13
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Also it would have been a boring episode if it was Picard and Riker sitting around a brunch table, Picard putting down a padd and commenting “So Will, did you hear about this section 31 team that was captured trying to destroy a supposed biological weapons plant? What a crazy time we live in!” as he shakes his head and sips some earl grey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EqRjY7Nkr8
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Mar 16, 2021 17:15
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Although now that I think about it, I’d be down for a My Dinner with Andre homage. My Brunch with Will
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Mar 16, 2021 17:16
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Martytoof posted:Also it would have been a boring episode if it was Picard and Riker sitting around a brunch table, Picard putting down a padd and commenting “So Will, did you hear about this section 31 team that was captured trying to destroy a supposed biological weapons plant? What a crazy time we live in!” as he shakes his head and sips some earl grey "Will did you hear about this Farpoint stuff? Glad our shakedown cruise was around the solar system and not to that weirdness" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EqRjY7Nkr8
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Mar 16, 2021 17:21
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Martytoof posted:Although now that I think about it, I’d be down for a My Dinner with Andre homage. You think you want that, but as Will makes breakfast you realize its just a Holodeck simulation seeking the advice of an old captain that committed war crimes.
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Mar 16, 2021 17:23
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And it’s all ‘Owon omelettes.
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Mar 16, 2021 17:40
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Delicious
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Mar 16, 2021 17:49
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Gul Madred: I was simply trying to teach Picard self confidence. I wanted him to see the fifth light, which was the light shining inside of him that inspires us all. I didn't want him to hide that light under a bushel.
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Mar 16, 2021 18:04
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Martytoof posted:Although now that I think about it, I’d be down for a My Dinner with Andre homage. We actually got that and he burnt the loving Pizza
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Mar 16, 2021 18:08
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V-Men posted:The attack on Earth is only six years after Wolf 359. MA says roughly 60 ships were lost between both battles, which at the time I doubt Starfleet was cranking out that many ships per year. So yeah I imagine Starfleet was mighty thin. Shelby says at the end of BOBW2 that "we'll have the fleet back up in less than a year," so I can't imagine Starfleet was that badly stretched.
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Mar 16, 2021 18:15
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HD DAD posted:It was a great episode, but IIRC Andy Robinson hated it because he really didn’t like being typecast as a crazed murderer, and was disappointed they were doing that with Garak - drugged up or not. I thought it played pretty perfectly with everything; mysterious Garak being drugged without knowing and seeing him go Predator mode taunting O'Brien was awesome. Just added to the mystique of his character as the Cardassian Jason Bourne.
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Mar 16, 2021 18:16
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knox posted:I thought it played pretty perfectly with everything; mysterious Garak being drugged without knowing and seeing him go Predator mode taunting O'Brien was awesome. Just added to the mystique of his character as the Cardassian Jason Bourne. I agree that Empok Nor is a fine episode, but I really can't blame Robinson for not being particularly fond of it. He was very badly typecast after his role in Dirty Harry (he says he got death threats for years because of how sinister he was) and he never had the breakout career he deserved, and for the episode to basically go "What if Garak is the Scorpio Killer" ... yeah, I can see how that would be disappointing, considering how much effort Robinson put into making Garak nuanced and layered.
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Mar 16, 2021 18:23
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