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I'm watching Deep Space 9 for the first time. Seems like good timing with a new thread. I just finished the Tosk episode. This is a pretty strong first season so far.
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May 28, 2023 12:39
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 20:10 |
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Every time Odo reveals himself to be a drink cart or a painting I go full Lucille Bluth.
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May 28, 2023 12:55
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I gotta admit I wasn't such a fan of the two part opener. There was something just off about it. Maybe weird direction for line delivery. Maybe poorly done ADR. I dunno, but it was like uncanny valley practically.
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May 28, 2023 13:10
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First Q appearance. Him ranting about Base. Commerce. is loving amazing.
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May 28, 2023 15:32
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So I'm thinking about the aphasia episode and there's that whole subplot with the space freighter alien and his cargo. I can't tell if it's hilarious or dark or both. Dude really needed to go before his goods spoiled, but O'Brien was too busy to fix his ship, then everyone got put into quarantine, then the dude tried to leave on his own but the docking clamps were in place, then his whole ship detonated. The guy was absolutely ruined because O'Brien was overworked.
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May 29, 2023 00:19
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Beeftweeter posted:and he got the aphasia virus anyway, lol If this were a modern show, he'd become a reoccurring character every season where dumb poo poo happened to him over and over again and he'd get increasingly paranoid and irate.
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May 29, 2023 02:32
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"I'll get you next time O'Brien!" he says as he's transported onto a Klingon cattle freighter that is on a 6 month long haul trip.
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May 29, 2023 03:31
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It's kind of funny how well The Orville used school and teachers compared to how Star Trek handles it. Like you have Captain Picard Day and then you have a teacher radicalized to begin a genocide against humanity because of what happened to her students.
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May 29, 2023 05:44
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Having only seen about 6 episodes myself so far, her first complaint was that she's just not happy on DS9 and feels like O'Brien is putting his career first. My guess is that a lot of Star Trek nerds in the 90s hadn't really had to deal with that problem, but it hit very hard for me given that I'm an expat and it's the kind of conversation I've had to have with my wife and previous romantic partners over the last decade and a half. She came across as entirely reasonable and even found a solution to the problem, which O'Brien was supportive of. It seems like an entirely normal relationship to me so far.
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May 29, 2023 05:53
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I haven't seen the episode yet, but Keiko refusing to eat Irish food doesn't really bother me at all. I'm also weird about being forced to eat food myself, and while I respect when other people are flexible, it's just not something I'm very good at. Again, pulling from my own experiences, my wife is Taiwanese and while there are Taiwanese dishes that I like, there are some I will outright refuse to eat.
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May 29, 2023 06:00
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Ah, I've mostly only seen the highlights of TNG so it didn't ring a bell.
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May 29, 2023 06:24
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I watched "Dax" last night. Great episode. I like that on the one hand, it's a classic "debate the legality of your humanity" episode that Trek does better than any other show in history while on the other hand it's a clever way to do exposition on the Trill.
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May 30, 2023 00:54
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I read a fun scifi spec idea where Earth was the unique biome with liquid water and everywhere else in the galaxy was life adapted to living on ice. Thus, we were the equivalent of lava monsters.
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May 30, 2023 01:09
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FlamingLiberal posted:I'm not a huge fan of this episode, mainly because even though ostensibly it is supposed to be about Jadzia, she is barely involved through a lot of it because she's trying to keep something secret A fair complaint, but I think it does enough else well that it makes up for this shortcoming.
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May 30, 2023 06:26
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Oh my word I just watched Dax Black Mirror a guy by transporting his consciousness into a storage drive.
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May 30, 2023 15:51
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I decided to eat a brownie and watch some more DS9. This episode is called "Move Along Home". Oh my goodness what is happening.
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May 31, 2023 14:16
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Boy that was an episode. loving Quark. Best quote so far though: Oh, no. I'm sure all you Starfleet explorers find this fascinating, but I'm a Bajoran administrator. This is not what I signed up for!
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May 31, 2023 14:51
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:A good episode Well I certainly liked it better than Nagus.
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May 31, 2023 15:35
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I just smoked a big bowl in my bong or maybe three, but I keep thinking about "Move Along Home" and it's really gotten under my skin. I don't hate the episode, and there's actually quite a bit about it I like. Quark's performance is exceptional. I think it's a great character moment for him and shows that his greed does have a limit and there is a genuine conscience within him. They're obviously going to build on this throughout the series. Odo as always knocks it out of the park, and his relationship with Quark is peaking with this episode. I even like the concept. We can assume that in an early season 1 episode even at the time of airing that the stakes were going to be low, but it's still a fun adventure that could have presented some really thrilling set pieces. The issue is that it fails to deliver on that promise. The game itself is so abstracted that you can't really tell if the player is making substantial decisions or just a bystander. It also seems weird that this could at all be interesting within their own society. They'd know how to get through each challenge and they wouldn't be afraid of taking risks. It only works in first contact scenarios where the opposing player doesn't know what the actual threat is. Worst of all, the scenarios themselves are deeply lame. When you say, "Only children start on [level] 1," you better throw something at me that's genuinely a threat right away. loving hopscotch? I get the show had budget constraints, but there must be any number of high concept scenarios they could have come up with and done on a limited set and effects budget. Also, when they took the sticks out, I thought for sure they'd be an integral part of playing the game, for like making barriers, attacking enemies, or moving pieces chopstick style. Quark would have realized his folly of being obsessed with hard currency and not taking a keener interest in important cultural items. He'd then have to start making side bets with the other aliens to win some of the sticks at a crucial moment to save them from a challenge. He'd still be caught out without a stick on his last roll and he'd still have to beg for mercy, but it would have given him more to do than waffle between playing and ending the game. Anyway, it would have been interesting to see if they kept DS9 as an episode of the week kind of a show where each episode was a different first contact scenario. I'm not sure how long that could have sustained itself though.
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Jun 2, 2023 15:22
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The Starfleet security officer being a complete doofus and getting owned by Odo in the episode lends credence to that idea.
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Jun 2, 2023 16:33
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I am the nerdiest of nerds.
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Jun 3, 2023 11:17
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I have a bunch of the Federation Commander packs, but I haven't yet had an opportunity to play them. My son is way more interested in Battletech and there are only so many hex and chit games a 7 year old can keep track of. Maybe when Strange New Worlds season 2 starts he'll start to get excited about it. Anyway, this card game looked like an interesting entry point for Star Trek gaming. I've glanced through the rules and it's more or less an elaborate game of paper-scissors-rock where you hope you have a ship in your fleet with the ability to hurl the rock you have in your hand or another than can wield the scissors when someone comes at you with paper. The Star Fleet Battles universe is pretty whacky though. Their license is incredibly restrictive about what they can and can't say and what references they're allowed to make. I'm amazed that they've managed to keep it going and that Paramount hasn't tried to kill it off because it's weird legacy media at this point.
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Jun 4, 2023 11:44
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Also, I just watched Vortex. That was a great way to introduce the mystery of Odo's origins.
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Jun 4, 2023 11:56
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I'm watching the Storyteller. Did they have two half finished scripts and rather than developing them they just stapled them together? Mind you, I don't really hate either plot, they're just both thin and don't feel connected in the slightest.
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Jun 4, 2023 15:31
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Nog clearly not a fan of fetch quests. Edit: Wait, do we think he paid off his father's debt, or is that just a Rom problem from now on? Atlas Hugged fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Jun 4, 2023 |
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Jun 4, 2023 16:23
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I can't tell if "eat a pile of edibles before binging episodes" is working exactly perfectly or not, but holy gently caress "If Wishes were Horses" was another out there episode. I kind of figured it was a first contact scenario, and then the conference between the imagined creatures confirmed it for me before the reveal at the end. This is another episode with a really unique premise but come the gently caress on with this Rumpelstiltskin poo poo.
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Jun 6, 2023 11:47
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Duet is pretty fun. Watching that now. Dramatis Personae had a good premise, but it's tough to do an episode where everyone is acting out of character when the actors haven't quite nailed down the base personalities. B for effort. And it's weird because Kira's accusations in Dramatis Personae are meant to be wildly out of line and paranoid even though she could have been completely correct. Then she does the same thing in Duet based on a strong hunch and everyone takes her seriously. It's just weird how they both have Kira jumping to conclusions but treat it entirely differently and also aired them right after each other.
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Jun 6, 2023 15:34
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I have finished season 1. I could have done without the slow motion "Noooo!" from Sisko, but overall very satisfying first season.
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Jun 7, 2023 00:06
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There were a lot of great Odo moments and episodes in season 1, but my biggest problem with them is that the more time we spend with Odo, the less impressive his makeup is. I'm sure this is one of those things that wasn't such a big deal when it was on broadcast TV in the 90s, but it really stands out here. Quark, the Klingons, and the other aliens have looked fantastic in their prosthetics, but Odo looks like a Muppet, I'm sorry. On the SD note, I was watching an episode last night with my wife and she was curious about the extras walking around the promenade, which got me to pay a bit more attention to them, and yeah you can see Morn on a loop in the far back, popping up every couple of minutes while Quark or whoever are talking. It'd be less obviously him if it were a vaguely alien smudge in the mid-90s, but on Netflix it's very clearly the same guy.
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Jun 7, 2023 01:57
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Sir Lemming posted:Not that I need to constantly defend DS9's honor, but both of those things sound like they're supposed to be that way? With Odo, it's a fine line between wanting to embrace uncanny valley because he's only imitating what he thinks a human is supposed to look like, and he only does so imperfectly after having spent years practicing, and also just looking like a guy in makeup. The makeup works best when he's only in a scene briefly and the camera doesn't linger on him too much, but the more time he's on screen, the more obvious it is that he's not a Changling struggling to appear humanoid, but a dude in makeup. For the second, it's very much "The Truman Show" where you have the same people walking the same loops in the background. You don't notice it because it's not a detail you're supposed to focus on, but when you start counting the faces and looking to see if anyone repeats, it becomes more obvious that there are only 20 people on this station, not the hundreds that the show wants you to believe. I figure they use Morn because the makeup is pretty intense and they want to get as much use out of him as they can, but watching him walk the same direction more than once in a scene is funny when you start looking for it. I'd like to stress that these are not major criticisms of the show. They're artifacts of being 90s television. They stand out to me now in the context of 2023 and HD televisions, but they're not deal breakers and are in fact kind of quaint.
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Jun 7, 2023 04:19
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Beeftweeter posted:they do change odo's makeup at some point, although i don't remember when exactly. you get used to it, and the later iterations look better For Morn, it's not that I see him in Quark's a lot. I mean specifically, he's a background character walking around the promenade on a loop with the other extras. Him being a barfly and in shots at Quark's is fine and we've already established that about his character by the end of season 1. My point is more that as a random alien extra walking around the promenade, it wouldn't be so obvious that it was the same dude walking in the same direction in SD, but in HD he's clearly on a track and in the scene because they want the promenade to look diverse and lively.
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Jun 7, 2023 06:42
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Farscape had sentient plants, so Star Trek is already behind the curve. Edit: Huh. I guess they're a thing in TAS and LD makes a reference to them. Atlas Hugged fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Jun 7, 2023 |
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Jun 7, 2023 08:42
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Season 2 opens with the strongest episode of the series so far. O'Brien with a phaser is loving solid poo poo.
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Jun 7, 2023 14:32
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Solid first two episodes of the second season, and I'm excited to watch episode 3 tonight after work to hopefully wrap up this little civil war. If this is what I have to look forward to for the next 6 seasons, I'm a happy camper.
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Jun 8, 2023 01:33
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disaster pastor posted:The Circle trilogy is not the best DS9 multiparter (you could even argue it's the worst), but it works on such a fundamental level that you totally get why everyone looked at it and said, "hey, we can do this a lot more, and lean on our recurring characters instead of highlighting one-offs," and that's the one major piece of DS9's structure that season 1 didn't have yet. It's not perfect, but my complaints are basically quibbles. Like if you put Li Nalas next to Vedek Bareil in casual clothes, I don't think I could tell them apart. They are the two most dour men I have ever seen in a TV show. You get the impression that neither really wants to be there, and I don't really mean the characters, but the actors on set. I assume this has something to do with the direction they want to take Bajoran men and their characterization. Jaro also has a certain dourness to him, but he feels far more distinct than Bareil and Nalas do, like the actor has a clearer idea of what the purpose of his characterization is. Also this show is so weirdly horny. What was up with that 90s TV?
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Jun 8, 2023 02:58
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Grand Fromage posted:The thread title was once "He puts the beige in Bajor" in reference to Bareil. I always wonder with retro watches like this if the viewer (me in this case) is going to land the hammer on the head of some controversial nail or in-joke that fans have discussed to death for ages. I'm glad in this case, it's an in-joke and not some highly controversial point about the subtle portrayal of the characters.
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Jun 8, 2023 07:24
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"Off the hook, after all." That landed pretty well if I'm being honest.
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Jun 8, 2023 14:15
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Keiko scolding O'Brien for racism and then doing a racism herself is loving great writing. Also my wife thinks O'Brien looks like Chandler. I can see it.
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Jun 8, 2023 16:04
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Did Quark face literally no consequences at the end of "Invasive Procedures"? Everyone made such a big deal about him having gone too far that time, but the episode just sort of ends. Starfleet justice is practically incoherent. Did they just like let the Trill go? The episode just kind of ended.
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Jun 9, 2023 00:08
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 20:10 |
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You can tell this show is fantasy because as soon as a villain is confronted with their own lies or evidence of wrongdoing, they immediately backdown even if they don't admit guilt. Gul Dukat leaves DS9 when his conspiracy around Rugal is revealed. Jaro immediately caves when Kira presents the log with the Cardassian thumbprint. I know they have to wrap the episodes up at the 45 minute mark, but it often comes across as cheap and unsatisfactory, plus a little naive. Like I don't expect the Federation to behave like Trump, but a Bajoran supremacist who just attempted a coup would probably put up more of a stink about "false news" and "Federation conspiracies" but it appears that the character never shows up again so it's just neatly resolved. The Bajorans who really bought into the Circle's narrative aren't suddenly going to reflect on how they were easily misled and used by the Cardassians anymore than your average Republican is going to admit that Trump attempted a coup on January 6th.
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Jun 9, 2023 02:15
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