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Kibayasu posted:That’s a pretty big exaggeration based on a single episode that arguably makes the case that what happened was a bad thing. My post had more than one example in it. And there were others I just didn't bring up.
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Aug 8, 2021 18:55
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Kibayasu posted:That’s a pretty big exaggeration based on a single episode that arguably makes the case that what happened was a bad thing. Also, considering other horrible things Sisko's done before that episode, including destroying the ecosystem of an entire planet just to get his nemesis to surrender, it's a laugh that this is played as his lowest point.
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Aug 8, 2021 18:58
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CainFortea posted:My post had more than one example in it. And there were others I just didn't bring up. I don’t quite understand what you mean with the Maquis though. Just because a character in a piece of fiction is allowed to present their case doesn’t mean that the fiction endorses them. Even assuming the Maquis are fundamentally wrong at their core and are always wrong about everything should the Federation just gone in and attacked them? If not what other options were there? They weren’t going to leave willingly and stop (what they consider) defending themselves. In the very early episodes of the Maquis they were presented as much as much closer analogue to the Bajoran resistance. They were only interested in fighting the Cardassians to defend their homes. Could they have just packed up and left? Of course they could have, the Federation alone is a seemingly endless expanse of planets people can live on happily, but if you’re going to take Star Trek at face value only then you are going to quickly lose sight of the forest for the trees. The entire setting is simply too self contradictory episode over episode. The Maquis don’t want to leave and why should they be forced to? That’s as far as the show ever wanted to take the idea. Would it be fair to guess that one of your other examples would be Sisko gassing an entire planet with an anti-human-only magic chemical? Because that kind of retaliation would have been the only way to permanently dislodge the Maquis (see the Jem’Hadar a year or two later). But since that attack was against the Maquis and Maquis are wrong then that attack must have been a good thing? I would also point out that the Maquis and their cause came up in TNG, which is what I’m assuming you’re comparing DS9 too, as well. There was a whole episode in TNG dedicated to a Starfleet officer sympathizing with and then defecting to the Maquis. There’s another related episode where the Enterprise is forcibly relocating colonists out of the area the Maquis started in and which ends with the Federation people renouncing their citizenship. Is that TNG endorsing the Maquis cause? Star Trek has always been messy and full of bad things happenings and compromises being made.
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Aug 8, 2021 19:38
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Kibayasu posted:Star Trek has always been messy and full of bad things happenings and compromises being made. You know, I had a whole response here but this is the B5 thread and I forgot.
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Aug 8, 2021 19:47
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Did it leave a hole in your mind?
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Aug 8, 2021 20:08
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Zorak of Michigan posted:Did it leave a hole in your mind? The knowledge of my rebuttal is a 3 edge sword.
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Aug 8, 2021 20:09
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I do feel like the writing seems to sympathize with Eddington, since on top of that anti-federation monologue, he has a whole spiel about how Sisko is only chasing after him because of a personal vendetta, and Sisko doesn't really seem to have a comeback to that. I think the writing portrays Sisko in the darker moments of the show as just kind of bumbling through others' belief systems and awkwardly accepting their judgements instead of asserting his own.
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Aug 8, 2021 22:14
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Grand Fromage posted:As a big DS9 fan, I just reject your premise that it's not hopeful and idealistic. I think DS9 is every bit as idealistic as TNG, it just is willing to explore that a better future isn't perfect and requires work, rather than simply having an assumption that "everything's fixed now, yay!" and moving on. The arc of Changelings on Earth I think is a perfect example of how the show makes things more complicated than TNG ever did, but at the end it's still a hopeful view of the future, with moral characters making the right decisions. I'll try to restate what I'm saying in less strident terms, and I acknowledge that I'm sure you know DS9 better than I do. (I've watched it through once, as I mentioned, compared to ... four or five for B5? And, despite my avatar, I think at most three runs of Farscape.) One aspect of, or one interpretation of, Star Trek, is what I said before about how it is depicting an idealized future society in which we have overcome so many of the failings of modern humanity. You're quite right that it's not all of it, and that the Federation and Starfleet always had flaws. (Are there any non-evil Admirals in TNG?) But it's one way of looking at it, and I think it's a way that Roddenberry intended at times (I've heard weird things about how he didn't want the crew of the Enterprise-D to have interpersonal conflicts. Like, at all.) And, importantly for my point, it's something I've heard Star Trek criticized for, with DS9 held up as an exception to that, being a series that actually "gets it", whatever it is. I don't mean to say that DS9 is not hopeful or optimistic. DS9 is, I think, a lot more grounded and realistic than the caricature of normal Star Trek I was contrasting it with. Hope and optimism are directions, though, not places. What bugs me about it, as much as I enjoyed watching it and I'm sure I would enjoy it a second time, is that it's not about being in that place of the caricatured-idealized-future-society. It's instead about what it's like when that's the goal. A totally valid criticism here is, you know, that point about no non-evil Starfleet admirals ever showing up in TNG, and how the show was never actually about what I'm saying it was about. But, a sort of contrast: last year, I rewatched all of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, and was thinking of recommending it to my folks, who I knew to be rewatching TNG at the time. And I described that it was, you know, an action show, in that the resolution to a problem in TNG is "everyone comes to an understanding" while a resolution in SG-1 is "we find the bad guy and shoot him." I probably enjoy SG-1 more than TNG, but I really appreciate a show where the ideal is always a friendly and respectful understanding. One thing I appreciate about some works of fiction is not that it's showing me some picture of a world that I can directly empathize with because it's similar to the nature of my own life, but that it's showing me an alien and different and better world that I can imagine what it might be like to exist in. Like I said, it's not that DS9's not hopeful or optimistic on its own, it's that within the realm of Star Trek, it focuses on where that idealistic picture breaks down or falls short. As you said, "DS9 is every bit as idealistic as TNG, it just is willing to explore that a better future isn't perfect and requires work," and that runs counter to my caricatured picture of Star Trek as being stories about the world after that better future has been attained. (Whether that better future requires continual work is an important question, and probably requires answering important questions about human(oid) nature, how much of a person's psychology comes from the environment in which they're raised, etc., and at some point I think it can start to sound very New Soviet Man-ish.) I hope my ramblings have made clear what it was I was actually trying to say / actually think. Disagreement's fine so long as it's based on what I actually mean. edit: I just hit Post and then thought of a good way to phrase this. DS9 would be not hopeful or optimistic if it looked at the idealized future and said "This is never attainable, this was always a lie." DS9 would be and is hopeful and optimistic if it looks at that idealized future and says either "We have not attained this, but we can with work," OR "We have attained this, and it requires continual work to maintain." The fundamental thing that bugs me is probably just the change in depiction from a more TNG-style "We have attained this, and now it is self-sustaining." By making that shift, it feels like DS9 is saying either that TNG was lying in their claim to have attained this, or concealing the work done to maintain this. It's a step backward on the Road To The Perfect Future. And you're right that this can lead to a lot of interesting stories! But having it be in the same shared fictional universe makes it feel like it's an invalidation of what TNG was saying. It's an incredibly tiresome canonicity timeline complaint, more than anything much about DS9-as-DS9. I wouldn't have had any issue with Enterprise focusing on exploring that exact question of how do you go from glimpsing in dreams your idealistic future to actually embodying it, instead of focusing on ... whatever Enterprise was about. CainFortea posted:-In The Pale Moonlight Vavrek fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 03:57
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Holy poo poo you guys scared me. All those posts, and I was sure someone kicked the bucket.
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Aug 9, 2021 13:08
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That's why something to that effect was the thread title for a while.
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Aug 9, 2021 15:33
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Vavrek posted:
I'd say it's very good and in-universe context of utopian UFP world of 24th century his actions are very bad but for ultimately a good motive. It shows that they are way away from ideals they think they are living if they have to resort to do such things. Also, a great Garak episode, these are automatically good.
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Aug 11, 2021 11:58
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Pale Moonlight is an episode about how small compromises in the name of a “greater good” will inevitably lead to larger and larger compromises until you’ve forgotten what that greater good even was. It ends with a man desperately trying to convince himself that the ends justify the means and failing. It’s also a Star Trek episode so everything’s back to normal next time.
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Aug 11, 2021 15:00
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Kibayasu posted:Pale Moonlight is an episode about how small compromises in the name of a “greater good” will inevitably lead to larger and larger compromises until you’ve forgotten what that greater good even was. It ends with a man desperately trying to convince himself that the ends justify the means and failing. That's the way I always read it. There is a poo poo tone of television that narratively frames the terrible poo poo its heroes are doing as justified and at least to me, this episode sticks out because it doesn't do that. It is probably one of my favorite episodes of any series, simply because it is that rare to me. Doesn't change the fact that the series doesn't do it for a lot of the other hosed up poo poo Sisko does and that it has zero consequences for him personally, but this episodes by itself is a pretty great contrast to the typical "Hard men making hard choices".
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Aug 11, 2021 23:44
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Babylon 5 rewatch: Swedish meatballs are the one universal constant. Vir apparently lost a lot of weight in the week after Sheridan went to Z'ha'dum. It's amazing how Londo manages to portray himself as the victim. Marcus Cole is basically a space samurai and yet he's the biggest dork on the show. Did you know that Ivanova is russian? Because she will bring it up constantly. It must be infuriating to work in a place where everyone answers even the simplest question with a vague philosophical parable. Alhazred fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Aug 15, 2021 |
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Aug 15, 2021 12:08
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crosspost from the simpsons meme thread:
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Aug 22, 2021 00:31
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Alhazred posted:Marcus Cole is basically a space samurai and yet he's the biggest dork on the show. "And yet"? He's literally "While you were getting laid, I studied the
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Aug 22, 2021 01:00
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Second biggest dweeb at best. Lennier has enough Incel energy to power a loving jump gate.
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Aug 22, 2021 03:42
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CaptainPsyko posted:Second biggest dweeb at best. Lennier has enough Incel energy to power a loving jump gate. "DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!"
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Aug 22, 2021 04:44
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Jedit posted:"And yet"? He's literally "While you were getting laid, I studied the I always describe him as "A theater kid with special forces training."
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Aug 22, 2021 06:14
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Babylon 5 rewatch:
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Aug 22, 2021 10:04
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There's a bit of a discussion of B5 in the Traditional Games as an Industry thread of all places, in the context of sci fi aging badly (mostly Star Trek). Sort of starts here:TheDiceMustRoll posted:Babylon 5 is great, but it's not progressive except in that it manages to do fascism above a fifth grade reading level. There's an episode which is basically the counter-trek where a family wants to refuse a medical procedure which would save their kids life(basically think an appendectomy) for religious reasons and they do the whole star trek thing where they discuss a few angles of it, and then the Starfleet analog doctor guy just says "nah, gently caress you" and does it anyway. The parents seem to be placated, but then they kill him because they believe anyone who has had surgery done on them causes that person to become a demon with no soul. The moral of the episode isn't about how religious people are loving stupid, it's about cultural imperialism and the captain calls them out on their blind arrogance. TNG was an extremely arrogant show, so it had to have been a dab on them.
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Aug 25, 2021 19:09
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B5 was progressive in the 90s simply by virtue of how strongly center right perspectives dominated the mainstream discourse back then. I'm not surprised that it doesn't look that way to a modern viewer, as a lot has changed in the past 25 years.
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Aug 25, 2021 19:29
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B5's impression of fascism seems a little ridiculous and cartoonish, a lot because of JMS's weird style that doesn't quite line up with how people talk, but with current perspective after the last few years and also a bunch of experts popping out to explore comparisons between the present and various nazi and fascist movements, it turns out that fascism is actually really stupid and cheesy. A lot of people like depicting it as smoother, or subtle, or conniving, but people motivated by mass hate aren't clever or calm. It feels worse and it seems stupid to be taken advantage of something so stupid, but that's what it is. I don't know if JMS particularly has that detailed of an ideological outlook that shines through the show, there's the order v. chaos thing or the "ages" of civilization, but those are more abstract than most ideologies get. There's a lot of really interesting things, like Londo being an insight into how people can be driven to war for domestic concerns or career ambitions, but I'm not sure there's much that the show actually preaches other than just being pro-foreign relations. There's a strong pro-cop sentiment (although I think that gets drowned out in later seasons) that might have something to do with the 90s being very harsh on crime at the time because of a crime wave. It examines people living in slums every so often, which Star Trek has a really awkward time trying to justify whenever it tries to dive into issues relating to that. But I think most uniquely, it has a generally positive view of religion. Even if it criticizes some extremism, that's not the only instance of religion. It's not all just a plot to enslave the masses, it's not barbaric superstition that any true civilization will have overcome, it's not pertaining to some necessarily literally true and physically present phenomena (although that may influence it), it's just something that's around and can inspire people. It's weird how seldom media wants to grapple with religion on more realistic terms.
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Aug 26, 2021 00:13
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I also thought the fash in B5 was over the top and absurd at the time. The past few years have changed my perspective on it to "oh he understood this better than I did".
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Aug 26, 2021 00:18
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"I don't watch TV. It's a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate metaphors and an unrealistic portrayal of life created by the liberal media elite." Babylon 5, 1997 Babylon 5 didn't explore all of the media-cultural tropes of fascism, but the destruction of ISN and how the "media liaison" acted with Sheridan in private vs. public captured at least a part of it. I've always seen it as Earth turning violently inwards, and what we as the audience can see from Babylon 5 or Mars are just snippets of what is happening at large "back home". And then there is the positively Orwellian bit with Sheridan's interrogation, and you get at least a decent glimpse of how the bureaucracy (that's what the mustard man is, after all) has responded to Clarke's ideas. Portrayals of fascism don't have to be Star Wars-style Stormtroopers, banners and other parodied Nazi iconography, because that's sort of buying into the Nazi idea of "we look great in Hugo Boss suits and big honking buildings". Fascism doesn't have a core other than "might makes right", and the Clarke regime certainly played that up, and arguably even the Psy-core - Edgars - conflict relies on those motifs; Bester is a eugenicist monster and Edgars wants a genocide based on genetic lines. And Zack's story-line of first being seduced into the Nightwatch as an everyman who just "wants to do right" by what he perceives as his in-group, only to be disillusioned and turn against the fascists, well. 
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Aug 26, 2021 00:43
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Hard right jay from letterkenny is a far more accurate tv fash representative than anything else except b5 because of the redicoulusness
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Aug 26, 2021 01:35
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Rappaport posted:Psy-core  (That was a good post)
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Aug 26, 2021 01:36
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CainFortea posted:Hard right jay from letterkenny is a far more accurate tv fash representative than anything else except b5 because of the redicoulusness There’s also 30 years of real world experiences and TV evolution between them. If anything, JMS doesn’t go far enough since his version pales in comparison to today’s examples.
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Aug 26, 2021 03:41
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SlothfulCobra posted:But I think most uniquely, it has a generally positive view of religion. Even if it criticizes some extremism, that's not the only instance of religion. It's not all just a plot to enslave the masses, it's not barbaric superstition that any true civilization will have overcome, it's not pertaining to some necessarily literally true and physically present phenomena (although that may influence it), it's just something that's around and can inspire people. It's weird how seldom media wants to grapple with religion on more realistic terms. It's one thing if you're purposely stirring the pot and sticking it to those fools, those rubes, who haven't given up their faith - or the reverse for explicitly religious media. That's easy to write, and the people you care about pleasing will cheer you on. But it's pretty easy to get it wrong, even in the '90s or probably just about any other time, if you're trying to have a real dialogue without pushing one side or the other.
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Aug 26, 2021 04:14
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Goblin Craft posted:It's one thing if you're purposely stirring the pot and sticking it to those fools, those rubes, who haven't given up their faith - or the reverse for explicitly religious media. That's easy to write, and the people you care about pleasing will cheer you on. But it's pretty easy to get it wrong, even in the '90s or probably just about any other time, if you're trying to have a real dialogue without pushing one side or the other. There's a line I find very interesting, from ... probably Catherine Sakai?, referring to Sinclair's belief in God. Jeffrey Sinclair, the Martian. The fighter pilot. The guy who started a celebration of Earth's religious traditions by introducing an atheist. The prophet Valen. As you say, either pro- or anti-religion/theism stories are easier to write. In another show, Sinclair's religious beliefs, his relationship with the divine, would be put in the foreground in some way. Here, it's a background detail. Not unimportant, given the character's story, but not what his story is about, not the defining mark of who he is for the overall story.
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Aug 26, 2021 05:39
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Doctor Zero posted:There’s also 30 years of real world experiences and TV evolution between them. I know, my point is that I think b5 still managed to do a better job than something filmed a few years ago.
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Aug 26, 2021 06:21
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When it aired in the 90s the whole Earth fascism thing seemed like a fantasy of how quickly and easily it goes from "normal govt" to "fascist dictator rule" complete with tons of ships and soldiers perfectly willing to just mass kill tens of thousands of civilians and bombing definite civilian targets and uh....yeah. The last 25 years have basically made it look practically modern. Even the whole thing with Edgar Industries aged like wine, as the fascist figurehead leader slipping the leash of capital and getting too much power to be dealt with normally becoming a problem is literally what is happening again.
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Aug 26, 2021 06:45
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Yeah, if you handle religion "normally" as just another aspect of people's lives, it's only gonna be just another background element. And it's a background element that can be a political hotbutton and has a lot of historical importance, so I can understand why a lot of writers shy away from just casually throwing it in here or there. But by the same token, if you only dare to breach religion when you have an entire plot focusing on it, then that only instance of religion sure is going to stand out as the one statement about the general concept of religion. So if that's every god that shows up being an evil scam, that sounds like a statement. Whereas when you have multiple instances, it's easier to say more broadly "maybe this specific type of religion is bad and not the general concept as a whole". Like if a whole show featured people walking around barefoot and then like one episode you have a bunch of people with shoes showing up and they're nazis and maybe another episode somebody gets strangled to death by a sock. Grand Fromage posted:I also thought the fash in B5 was over the top and absurd at the time. The past few years have changed my perspective on it to "oh he understood this better than I did". I think something people don't talk a lot about is that so many people are dorks driven very hard by the need to look cool, and then it turns out that fascism relies a lot on appearances and aesthetics, so they'll even willingly play up themselves. It's weird stuff. So when Ari Ben Zayn shows up with his ridiculously evil affectation and a scar on his face, it's totally plausible that the character himself would have put in a lot of effort into his deep voice and ferocity and making sure his scar was super visible, because people who want to abuse their power like that totally want to put up a big intimidating appearance, and would totally overlook what he seems like to normal people.
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Aug 26, 2021 07:19
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Vavrek posted:There's a line I find very interesting, from ... probably Catherine Sakai?, referring to Sinclair's belief in God. You don't even need to add the last, really. Sinclair was educated by Jesuits. Re: Ari Ben Zayn - it feels very on the nose to have the turbo-fascist with the Heidelberg scar have a Jewish name.
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Aug 26, 2021 09:38
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Jedit posted:You don't even need to add the last, really. Sinclair was educated by Jesuits. It specifically almost sounds like an Israeli name - and "zayn" means "weapon" and "ben" means "son/son of", so if you had a kind of archaic knowledge of Hebrew, that would be a way of saying "Ari Son of a Gun", but even funnier, at this point "zayn" in modern Hebrew is the colloquial way of saying "penis".
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Aug 26, 2021 15:42
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It specifically almost sounds like an Israeli name - and "zayn" means "weapon" and "ben" means "son/son of", so if you had a kind of archaic knowledge of Hebrew, that would be a way of saying "Ari Son of a Gun", but even funnier, at this point "zayn" in modern Hebrew is the colloquial way of saying "penis". Oh he’s very clearly and explicitly meant to be an Israeli caricature I think, British accent not withstanding. The Israeli military lifer as protofash trope was absolutely beginning to be a thing in the 90’s.
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Aug 26, 2021 15:51
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CainFortea posted:I know, my point is that I think b5 still managed to do a better job than something filmed a few years ago. Ah yeah complete agreement then!
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Aug 26, 2021 16:10
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CaptainPsyko posted:Oh he’s very clearly and explicitly meant to be an Israeli caricature I think, British accent not withstanding. He says he got his scar "leading people into battle" and the first location he rattles off is Israel. The second location is "New Jerusalem".
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Aug 26, 2021 16:55
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I think B5 does an excellent job of showing how fascism can take over despite being over-the-top and drat near cartoonishly evil. One only has to look at the rise of fascist conservatism in the west to see it in the real world. Far too many people are our Zachs: just going along with it because everyone else seems to be. Once they're in, it's hard to get out, largely because getting out means one has to face that one did (or, at the very least, enabled) bad things. And worse, one has to admit that one was dumb enough to fall for the cartoonish evil in the first place. There's a truly excellent quote by Sagan that goes: One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Also: SlothfulCobra posted:B5's impression of fascism seems a little ridiculous and cartoonish, a lot because of JMS's weird style that doesn't quite line up with how people talk, but with current perspective after the last few years and also a bunch of experts popping out to explore comparisons between the present and various nazi and fascist movements, it turns out that fascism is actually really stupid and cheesy. A lot of people like depicting it as smoother, or subtle, or conniving, but people motivated by mass hate aren't clever or calm. It feels worse and it seems stupid to be taken advantage of something so stupid, but that's what it is. I was gonna quote another post and agree with both, but it was also yours. Turns out we have very similar thought processes about fascism.
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Aug 26, 2021 17:18
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It's a shame that SA is one of the only communities online left with good ongoing discussion of B5. For all its flaws, it's such an incredible series. I haven't finished DS9 but in general it feels to me like it has a much more articulate message than Trek (even if that message is frequently conveyed somewhat clumsily)
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Aug 26, 2021 17:28
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