DS9 Stories/News: The Magic Of Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Ritual Magic and The Storyteller

Source: http://bajorron.blogspot.com/2012/02/magic-of-star-trek-deep-space-nine.html

The Sirah and the Dal’Rok:

Deep Space Nine’s First season episode The Storyteller is an interesting one for several reasons. Characterwise, this is the first episode which sows the seeds for Bashir and O’Brien’s future friendship. The main storyline happens on Bajor, but rather than showing us a Bajor under the guidance of the Prophets, it depicts a rural Bajoran village where perhaps older customs survive of what could be called a more Pagan past.

The storyline in brief: Bashir and O’Brien beam down to a village which is in trouble: it is under attack from a creature called a Dal’Rok and the only way to fight this entity is under the leadership of the Sirah, a Storyteller. Bashir and O’Brien witness an attack and the defense, upon which the Sirah collapses, but not after naming O’Brien as his successor. The next evening, the Dal’Rok returns and O’Brien sets out to fight it as he has seen the Sirah do it, but he fails in his attempt. Then Hovath, the young original apprentice Sirah takes over and succeeds in chasing off the entity and is thus appointed as the new Sirah, letting O’Brien off the hook.

The Sirah in action:

This story has a number of interesting Ritual Magic concepts weaven into it. For example: why does O’Brien fail? There are several reasons for that. Yes, he does not know the entire story, although that seems hardly necessary: all we see the Sirah and Hovath do is tell the villagers that they can defeat the creature. But in their cases, they speak with conviction and in magic as well as anywhere else, Words have Power proportional to the conviction with which they are spoken. Magic is not about ‘just speaking the right words and then something will happen, Harry Potter style’, it is about giving words as much power as possible, and that power comes from the conviction of the speaker and from his or her energy. We see O’Brien struggling to speak out the words while he himself barely believes it is going to do any good (nicely played by actor Colm Meany as well!). And his words dissipate into thin air, nothing happens, the magic does not come about and the Dal’Rok keeps attacking.

Incidentally, what is this Dal’Rok? We are informed that the tricorders do not register anything, yet we see something happening, and what is more, we see some attacks that are convincingly real. So what is going on here? My guess would be that we are dealing here with a thought form that has gained a more or less corporeal existence. Probably as a result of repeating this ritual over and over again for many years- a sure recipe to increase the power!- the image has gained so much energy that not only has it become visible to outsiders, it is also found to be interacting with the material environment. Our magical literature abounds with examples of the very same thing: elementals, golems, homunculi, etc. all “conjured” up by the imagination and subsequently energized to such an extent that it gets a “life of its own”.

Hovath (played by Lawrence Monoson):

The fight against the Dal’Rok indeed looks very much like a time-honored ritual, with certain fixed stagesin it, the use of certain words of power and with a more or less hierarchical structure: it is the Sirah and the Sirah only who leads this ritual and is able to direct the energy of the villagers into a concerted defense against the Dal’Rok. He is the High Priest in what looks suspiciously like a ritual to reinforce the village identity by defeating a common foe. In order to become Sirah, a candidate has to undergo a test: he (or she?) should be able to direct the ritual and direct the power single-handedly. Miles O’Brien clearly fails at this test: he does not have the necessary training, he does not have the faith and as an outsider he is also not connected to the village’s group mind. Hovath is and has all those things, so at the end we see him take charge of the ritual and bringing it to a good end, thus finalizing his own initiation as a Sirah. Which brings a final question to mind: what if the old Sirah had staged all this as an initiation ritual for his successor, with O’Brien as the unknowing catalyst? We’ll never know…

DS9 Stories/News: Design Appreciation, The Costumes of Deep Space Nine (4)

Cont.

Klingons

Deep Space Nine also featured some of the best-dressed Klingons across the series, not least because the station was the setting of a traditional Klingon wedding in all its regalia.

With hardly a stitch missed, the extent of detail is impressive in the costumes on show in every episode – even down to the shoes. Though rarely ever seen (and then for only fractions of a second), women’s shoes almost always matched the leggings or stockings of their wearer, a visual trick that gives women an extra long legged look. When they were on show, shoes were something very special.

Finally, for fun, we’ll point out that among the 176 DS9 episodes there were the few threads that unraveled in the costume department. Observed: catsuits are not for everybody; there’s a fine line between gutsy and goofy; and for some of the young man’s appearances, Jake Sisko was an active member of the Wesley Crusher Crimes Of Fashion Fan Club.

But for the rest of the many hours in the seven seasons of Star Trek:Deep Space Nine, the costume design excelled and equalled or surpassed the wardrobes of many similar shows and even films.

We salute the craftspeople who played a part in costuming the crew and extras so expertly.

Deep Space Nine costumes: Dabo girl gallery

Gaye Birch

A companion page to Design Appreciation: the costumes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

We thought those hard working Dabo girls of Deep Space Nine deserved a space of their own, away from Quark.

A Niner’s World: Sisko’s Baseball

Source: http://www.trekprops.de/siskos-baseball

Posted on Feb 5th 2005 by trekprops.de.

I admit, Sisko’s Baseball is a rather obscure prop. But since it took on a quite important role in the course of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” – even to an extent of a character of its own – I found it appealing to have it on my desk.

To find a “common” baseball in Germany wasn’t as easy as you might think. I had to look in several places until I found a small store in my area which sells foreign sports articles. This was where I got my baseball. Unfortunately, it had several logos printed on its surface. In order to get them off, I had to scrape the surface of the ball using a sharp knife, thus removing the colorful graphics. This damaged the ball slightly, which is however not a big deal, because the original baseball on Sisko’s desk is not exactly clean either.

The desk stand was a gift from my brother which I got for Christmas in 2004. He built it himself and went quite professionally about it too! He became aware of the fact that I wanted to build one like this myself since I got the baseball but never got around to it, so he collected reference pictures (see below), drew up a blueprint, chose the materials and began construction. And all this at the age of 14!

I’m proud to say that I now have a true piece of Star Trek history on my desk, although this is of course not screen-used in any way. However, Sisko would not have been able to free the Prophets from the celestial temple and their fight with the Pah Wraiths…

Reference pictures captured from DVD.

The baseball on his stand.

Baseball and desk stand separately.

DS9 Stories/News: Learning to Love Star Trek, Part 45: “Q-Less”

Source: http://scifiblock.com/features/blog/learning-to-love-star-trek-part-45-q-less.htm

By Robert Ring, Mon, 11/15/2010 – 20:43

“Learning to Love Star Trek” is a weekly blog series by Sci-Fi Block Editor in Chief Robert Ring, begun January 1, 2010. In this series of blog posts, Robert is endeavoring to determine whether he can make a Star Trek fan out of himself through an exposure to a combination of episodes from Star Trek the Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation (Update: TNG has now been replaced with Deep Space Nine). Click here to read his introduction to the experiment.

Coming off two disappointing episodes, I sat down to watch “Q-Less” this week, and I have to say I view it as another disappointment. This episode is slightly famous simply for having Q in it, but I find the story to be scattered and pointless. When it ended, I caught myself wondering what had just happened.

The archeologist Vash shows up on Deep Space Nine after a two-year stint acquiring artifacts from the Gamma Quadrant. One of these artifacts is a mysterious and very valuable crystal, which, unbeknownst to everyone, begins draining the station’s power. Also unbeknownst to everyone (except Vash), Q has followed Vash back to the station, as he seems to be in love with her — or something like love, at least. Vash finds him annoying, though (don’t we all?), and will have nothing to do with him. Eventually these elements lead to Vash and Quark auctioning off her artifacts, and Q playing his trademark pranks on the crew of DS9 while the increasingly powerless station drifts toward the wormhole.

An invaluable energy-sucking crystal, or a beehive from the year 5000?

I hardly know what to say about this one. There’s almost nothing interesting or dramatic about it whatsoever. We know the station isn’t going to be swallowed by the wormhole, so we just watch the crew run around nearly mindless trying to figure out what to do. Q presents something of a dilemma, but he hardly does anything other than pester Vash and force Sisko to box him. Usually you at least have the question of, “How do we keep this omnipotent being from causing us problems?” but the problems here are minor, so if we just go along with it, we come out okay. As far as the “Deep Space Nine might be destroyed!” plot, we can’t find excitement in trying to figure what the characters should do because it’s all crew members trying to do things that we can hardly even understand, and we know it’s going to turn out alright anyway. It’s pretty much wasted time.

Incidentally, there are two things I find interesting in this episode. Both are small. I like how when Odo tries proving to Quark how little he cares for material items, Odo is caught off-guard by Quark asking him how he would like a latiunum-plated bucket to sleep in. It is as if the writers are saying, “Yes, Quark’s extreme materialism may not be healthy, but we all value material items to some extent. ” Second, Q’s explanation as to why he is so infatuated with Vash is thought-provoking. You’d think a godlike entity would have little need for a human companion, but through her, he explains, he is able to experience feelings like wonder — things he can’t experience himself as an all-knowing being. I had to stop and give some thought to the concept of an omnipotent being lacking the ability to understand something that is uniquely human (or, in the terms of a world populated with hundreds of intelligent species, uniquely mortal).

Unfortunately, for the other forty-four minutes of the episode (commercial-less), I’m left with one question: What’s the point? Some bad stuff happens, they figure out what the problem is at the last second, and everybody comes out safely. Q isn’t the only similarity this episode shares with what I’ve seen of The Next Generation.

DS9 Stories/News: Key Odo & Kira Moments Part III

Source: http://www.freewebs.com/laurelgirl120/keyodokiramoments.htm

The following scenes are pivotal in depicting the evolution of the relationship between Odo and Kira, as their friendship deepens, survives crises, hits rocky patches and generally follows the path many of us are familiar with as they find their way eventually to love.

It is, IMO, the most intelligently written, natural and believable relationship, not only in the world of Star Trek, but in television. The fact that their friendship and romance captivates us, 15+ years after the debut of DS9, is a testament to the enduring nature of their love.

Enjoy The

Journey!

    

You are Cordially Invited…

Notable for what we *don’t* get to see. After the events of the Dominion Occupation of DS9 and Odo’s temporary defection to the Founders, the question of how – or even if – our friends can find a way to repair the enormous damage to their relationship is clumsily handled off-camera in Jadzia Daxs’ bedroom closet. This enormous gaffe by the DS9 writers left Odo/Kira fans in the dark about their relationship for a dozen episodes, until events finally resolved themselves.

 His Way

After six long, frustrating years, Odo and Kira FINALLY become a couple. After years of blind obliviousness, the scales finally fall from Kira’s eyes during their holosuite dance, as she is struck by a “moment of clarity. . .”         . . . Which is followed up the next day by what has become known simply as . . . The Kiss. . . Perhaps the most passionate, intensely romantic moment in all of Star Trek.

 Chimera

TPTB kept their promise to Odo/Kira fans. They wrote their romance as mature, adult and serious. Which is saying a lot, given Star Trek’s dismal track record when it came to couples. Either one of them was killed off in the classic “one episode wonder” romance, or the couple, once together, was ignored from that point on, or the relationship was used for comic relief. While Odo and Kira weren’t the central characters in many episodes following the landmark “His Way,” they did get ”Chimera,” one of the most beautiful, powerful and emotionally satisfying stories in the series. Odo and Kira finally tear away the last barrier between them, allowing them to consumate their love in the way nature intended, with Odo as “himself.” A wonderful, rich story full of the deep love and passion between these two.

 Tacking into the Wind

Viewers were seldom privileged to see into Kira’s mind when it came to her feelings about Odo. One of the rare exceptions was in this episode. Odo, Kira and Garek have been sent to Cardassia to assist the fledgling Resistance effort there. But Odo has contracted the deadly Founders disease. When Garek confronts Kira about the extent of Odo’s illness, Kira’s reply leaves the viewer with no question about the depth of her love for and her complete understanding of Odo. She tells Garek that of course she knows how sick he is, but because he wants to spare her feelings and she wants to preserve his dignity, she will pretend up to the bitter end that he isn’t sick. It’s a heartwrenching, emotional scene that shows us so much about Kira. Her strength, her compassion and her love.

 Extreme Measures

The death-bed farewell (we thought, anyway), that again reveals so much about how well these two people know each other. Odo wants Kira to leave because she witnessed Bareil, a previous lover, die in the same room, and he knows how much that’s haunted her. His not wanting his last memory to be pain in Kira’s eyes. Kira’s assertion that she can hide her feelings and Odo’s simple “Not from me, Nerys.” In the end she agrees to leave as they proclaim their love for each other, for the last time (so we’re led to believe). Powerful and touching.

 What You Leave Behind

The heartbreaking farewell, a subtle mixture of pathos and tenderness. As depicted so often in their relationship, there’s a poignancy in their farewell that reveals the depth of the love between these two people.

Deep Space Nine ends it’s seven year run with Odo leaving Kira and the station to rejoin his people in the Great Link, heal them of the deadly Founder’s disease, and teach them about living in harmony with humanoids. While some can argue that it is the right way for things to end, to many Odo/Kira fans, the idea of our two lovers forever separated was devastating.   Is this ‘goodbye’ forever? The series canon would have us say yes. . . . . .Fanfic authors beg to differ!