DS9 Stories/News: Boss Chicks: Kasidy Yates

Source: http://www.amaya-radjani.com/2011/10/boss-chicks-kasidy-yates.html

Kasidy Yates is the captain of the freighter Xhosa.  She is played by Penny Johnson (a woman whose lips I’d murder to have), and she is a strong, practical woman who plays Captain Benjamin Sisko’s love interest.  Jake Sisko, Benjamin’s colorful son, plays matchmaker and hooked them up. At first it seems like there is nothing between the two, until Kasidy expresses a love for baseball, which is Captain Sisko’s favorite game.  They hit it off and start a serious relationship.

Kasidy is a smuggler for the Maquis, an enemy of the Federation and Starfleet.  Clearly, she had her reasons for being a collaborator, and when she had to go to jail, she did so willingly and alone so that her crew could be protected.  It is never revealed why she chose to collaborate with the Maquis.  In fact, other than a few minor details, nothing is known about this beautiful, strong woman who becomes Captain Sisko’s wife.  It’s a complete injustice, as Kasidy is a very interesting character.  I’ve always wanted to know how she became a freighter captain, the relationship she had with her crew, some of their adventures, and details about her year in prison.

You already know my feelings about DS9’s wardrobe.  They attired Kasidy in some of the ugliest, most hideous, velveteen uniforms I’ve ever seen.  I felt like Penny should have argued with the costume department and fought tooth and nail for a decent uni.  Also, her hairstyles left a lot to be desired.  Somebody should have been punched in the face for that mess.  The only time she looks decent is when she sports a beautiful teal dress and her purple robe.

One of the writers, in a case of epic failure, thought that it would be good for the Captain to knock up his wife at the end of the series, give her a bullshit ass first trimester, and then forget that she was pregnant.  I scoffed at this, because Kasidy never struck me as the housewifely type.  She didn’t cook, wasn’t a homemaker, and showed little interest in having children.  She loved her job and she fought for it when her husband decided to get up to some tomfoolery and convince her superiors to give her paid leave to keep her out of the shipping lanes during the Dominion War.  She dispensed with that shit quick, fast, and in a hurry.

Ankhesen said that Kasidy actually quit her job when she got pregnant, and had to take care of Jake after her husband went to be with the Prophets.  I call shenanigans on that bullshit as well.  The Kasidy that first appeared in Season 3 would not have done anything like that.  And Jake was an adult, so I know she wouldn’t have taken care of his grown ass.  But still, I liked the character, especially since she was the only black woman seen with any regularity on the show.  She had brains, style (in spite of her hideous wardrobe), grace, athletic ability, and guts.  Therefore, this makes her worthy of Boss Chick status.

Kasidy Yates with Tholian Silk

DS9 Stories/News: Of Trek and War (1)

Source: http://www.goth.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14138&f=20

This is based on an idea from DarklyInclined, who was wondering how I might rate the rather protracted Dominion War featured in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine versus the one-season Xindi conflict (a subset of the much larger Temporal Cold War) as shown in Star Trek: Enterprise. I thought I’d also open the topic up to other wars in Trek, since those two weren’t quite the only wars shown in all of the series.

This will be a lengthy post. I’ve been working on it for a while now. I tend to write essays instead of simple replies; apologies in advance. Non-Trekkies who don’t really give a shit might want to head for another thread. For those Trekkies not well-versed in the subject matter, I will include links to pertinent data where applicable. Those who do choose read this, please bear with me.

You could make it more fun by taking a shot of your favorite alcoholic beverage anytime I bash Rick Berman & Brannon Braga (two of Trek’s longtime writers/producers, both of whom were blamed for Star Trek’s demise and the early cancellation of Enterprise, if not the near-total downfall of UPN itself) or anytime I mention Ronald D. Moore and Ira Steven Behr (two longtime Trek scribes who later moved on to Battlestar Galactica on SyFy) in a positive light. You’ll be happily plastered by post’s end.

Which did you think was done best: the Dominion War from DS9 or the Xindi conflict from Enterprise (or a different conflict featured in one of the other series, like the Klingon/Federation Cold War from TOS or the brief war against the Klingons in DS9 that served as a prelude to the Dominion War)?

Or, for a much more broad, open-ended question (if it suits you): do you think Star Trek handles a mature subject such as war well or poorly?

Dominion War

If you really don’t care about my lengthy diatribe on the Dominion War vs. the Xindi conflict (maybe because you didn’t live your entire life in your parents’ basement and you actually did have a social life), just skip past this and post your response already. Otherwise, feel free to keep reading.

Eh..?

I’ll open the discussion with my response…

…

I think Deep Space Nine handled the Dominion War fairly well. They didn’t just rush into it head-on. The writers gave it a great build-up, slowly tip-toeing into it, mentioning the Dominion here and there throughout Season Two (the Dominion were first mentioned in “Rules of Acquisition“, a Ferengi episode, no less!) before introducing us to their foot soldiers, the genetically-grown Jem’Hadar, in the Season 2 finale. Even after that, the Dominion didn’t quite take center stage yet, opting instead for a Cold War against the Alpha Quadrant powers, during which they covertly started two wars involving the Klingons – a war between the Klingons and the Cardassians (which the Maquis would get involved in) and renewed hostilities between the Klingons and the Federation. After destabilizing the Alpha Quadrant’s major powers, the Dominion finally invaded. Brilliant tactic! By then, the Federation was so shell-shocked from having to deal with wars on all borders (save the Romulan Neutral Zone) that they barely had the resources to fight the Dominion, a nigh-unstoppable force compared to the Federation.

Jem’Hadar

The Dominion seemed militarily superior in all respects: non-stop construction of warships while the Federation was still trying to convert aging exploration vessels into battleships; they could grow Jem’Hadar at an exponential rate (and even tailor-make them for warfare in that part of the galaxy) while Starfleet couldn’t recruit new officers fast enough; the Dominion were united while Starfleet was divided between the pacifists and the war-mongers (usually represented by a shadowy “rogue” group of Starfleet Intelligence called Section 31, a sort of Starfleet “Men in Black” that utilized very dirty tactics like assassinations, cover-ups and even genocide to preserve the Federation; this was the series’ attempt at exploring a darker side of Starfleet that I, for one, appreciated). Good mix of drama, tension and action all around, plus it was an interesting examination of the Federation through darker lenses than we’re used to.

Section 31

While Deep Space Nine’s executive producer, Rick Berman (Roddenberry’s hand-picked successor), wanted the Dominion War to last only three or four episodes tops, DS9′s lead writers – Ira Steven Behr and Ronald D. Moore (themselves chosen by Berman for their outstanding work on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, both of whom would later helm the Battlestar Galactica reboot and create its prequel series Caprica) – conned him into allowing the Dominion War to play out until its “natural” end, which came during the final episode of the series. Say what you will about the Dominion War as a storyline and how it diverges from Roddenberry’s utopian vision of the future or about Deep Space Nine as a series, I think the Dominion War worked successfully (mostly), given its purpose as a method of deconstructing Roddenberry’s notions of the Federation as a utopian society. Ira Steven Behr re-imagined Deep Space Nine as a darker, grittier version of Roddenberry’s vision, and given how the series was written before that (set aboard a Cardassian space station by Michael Pillar – the brain behind some of the best TNG episodes ever, including “The Best of Both Worlds” – who imagined the series as a “frontier town in space” filled with broken individuals, former terrorist “freedom fighters”, orphaned aliens and unscrupulous bartender/merchants), the series worked well as such. The Dominion War, while I admit it was rather protracted (and ultimately weakened the hell out of Season 7, when the writers had to figure out a quick way to end the war in only one season after building the story arc to be a lengthy epic), worked overall as the ultimate test of Roddenberry’s dream.

When such a dream – the notion of humankind striving to better itself through peace and cooperation – is threatened by outside forces, what will humanity endure to protect it? The approach to this was very realistic, from the major portions of the story (“Operation Return“, the re-taking of DS9 after it was taken over by the Dominion) to the humdrum day-to-day stuff (Sisko’s grim ritual of posting casualty reports from the war every Friday). Ultimately, the war took a bitter toll on everyone involved, especially Captain Sisko; he would later commit acts that many Trek fans consider cardinal sins against Roddenberry’s lofty ideals – specifically helping a former Cardassian spy murder a Romulan senator in cold blood and blame the Dominion for it in the masterpiece episode “In the Pale Moonlight” – just to bring a quicker resolution to the war by bringing the Romulans into it. By the series’ end, the Federation is saved, and all the major goals of the series – bringing an end to the Cardassian threat and putting Bajor on the fast-track to membership in the Federation – have been met, along with the added bonus of creating a tentative peace between the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans. Additionally, Ira Steven Behr was able to inject a bit of Judaism into the story through the Bajorans and their Emissary (messiah figure), Benjamin Sisko, whose story arc Behr based loosely on Moses.

DS9 Stories/News: Birthday Alert – Colm Meaney’s 3 Day Birthday Special

Cont.

Miles Edward O’Brien, played by Colm Meaney, is Chief of Operations in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Before DS9, he appeared as a recurring transporter chief in Star Trek: The Next Generation. O’Brien is the only major Star Trek character described as both ethnicallyIrish and born in Ireland.

The character of Miles O’Brien was transplanted from TNG to DS9 at the beginning of the latter show. In the story, Miles O’Brien transfers from the Enterprise-D to Deep Space Nine, in the DS9 premiere episode “Emissary“, to serve as the station’s chief of operations. With the help of Jadzia Dax, he devised a way of moving the station from orbit around Bajor to the site of the newly discovered wormhole, allowing Bajor to take possession. He would later assume an additional role as chief engineer of the USSDefiant, which is assigned to Deep Space Nine in the episode “The Search“.

Here he meets Dr. Julian Bashir, who initially irritates O’Brien (Episode: “The Storyteller“), but the two characters eventually become best friends. In particular, they frequently play darts and fight historical battles in the holosuites.

Miles was reprimanded for violating the Prime Directive when he helped an alien from the Gamma Quadrant referred to as “Tosk”, escape from other aliens who had been hunting him in “Captive Pursuit“.

In 2370, he is arrested by the Cardassians and charged with supplying weapons to the Maquis. The charges were dismissed when it was revealed to be part of a conspiracy to discredit the Federation (Episode: “Tribunal“).

After an accident aboard the station in 2371, O’Brien was temporarily shifted forward in time by a few hours. He died when he deliberately contaminated himself in order to determine the cause of events he had witnessed. He sent his future counterpart back in his place “Visionary“.

Miles was temporarily relieved of duty after a visit to the planet Argratha. O’Brien had been falsely accused of espionage and was given the simulated memory of a 20-year prison sentence. O’Brien became paranoid and emotionally distressed upon his return to the station and attempted suicide “Hard Time“.

In 2373, he has a son, Kirayoshi, delivered by surrogate Kira Nerys in episode “The Begotten“.

At the end of Deep Space Nine, O’Brien and his family depart the station to move back to Earth, where Miles is to serve as an engineering professor at Starfleet Academy. The soundtrack accompanying these moments on screen is to the tune of “The Minstrel Boy“.

DS9, in particular, makes mention and the use of Miles many years of experience within Starfleet as a device to allow the character to play a major part within various storylines and as further justification for his holding what is, essentially a command level position while still being a non commissioned officer. Indeed, it is shown that Miles has as much, if not more command experience then those officers he works with. For instance, during a formal extradition hearing regarding Lt. Commander Worf, he is declared an expert in starship combat due to his experiences and asked to critique Worf’s actions. Additionally, Miles provided Worf with some guidance about commanding and managing others during a crisis. Miles style of command can be classified as generally hands on with an emphasis on “thinking on your feet” when solving problem. Although, Miles is not above asserting his authority when required. All of the above having been said, Miles uses a straight forward and common sense approach towards the issues he faces.

DS9 Stories/News: Birthday Alert – Colm Meaney’s 3 Day Birthday Special

Cont.

O’brien Must Suffer

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O’Brien Must Suffer

http://www.stick-online.com/boards/index.php?topic=2151.0

But you gotta admit, this guy has life tough!

It’s montage of different scenes from different episodes, but it’s suprisingly representative. He didn’t actually commit suicide though.
The funny thing is: the producers deliberately put in at least every season, an episode themed “O’Brien must suffer”
-He gets cloned and his clone is the victim of a conspiracy while he’s held captive on some desolate planet in a cave.
-He is arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and tried for a crime he didn’t commit by a culture whose verdicts are decided before the trial.
-He starts randomly time-warping around during one instance of which he witnesses his own death.
-He is falsely convicted of espionage and in a Matrix/Inception-esque way, he experiences a 20-year prison sentence in a matter of hours by having the experience, stimuli, and such scanned into his mind.
-His wife is possessed by an alien entity who forces him to commit sabotage to his own station, lie, frame one of his friends, and attempt to kill some other non-corporeal beings.

-His daughter was aged(in a time warp, of course) to the age of 18. Without her parents or human contact. She basically becomes this feral monster girl, though they manage to de-timewarp her.
-His other child has to be transplanted into some alien’s womb in order to save his wife and baby after their ship is attacked. The woman happens to be his superior officer.
-On that note, he’s one of the only enlisted people on the entire show who actually ever does anything(besides guards and stuff) so he has to call everyone sir. Including a punk 22 year old ensign.
-He gets stuck in a little metal cargo box for violating some obscure law on an essentialists planet…for over 24 hours.
-The station of which he is the chief engineer has at least 3 minor malfunctions which only he can resolve at any one time and a major failure at least every 3 episodes.
-He’s a direct descendant from one of the High Kings of Ireland…and nobody, fate included, cares.

The woman who falls off the bridge is his wife.

Luck O’ the Irish? Hmmm…this guy is in need of some.

O’Brien Must Suffer

According to DS9 executive producer/writer Ira Steven Behr, “O’Brien is everyman. In a show about humans and aliens, he’s as human as you get.” Similarly, Behr’s writing partner for the first four seasons of the show,Robert Hewitt Wolfe, says, “He’s just a regular guy, a guy doing his job. He’s just the most unlikely of all heroes because he’s a family man with a daughter and eventually a son and a wife and they have arguments and a real relationship, and he’s just a working class schmo, I mean obviously he’s a really bright guy and very good at what he did, but basically, a working class schmo just trying to get through his day.” (Crew Dossier: Miles O’Brien, DS9 Season 5 DVD, Special Features)

The DS9 writing staff had a running joke with a semi-annual “O’Brien Must Suffer” episode. Among these were “Whispers“, “Tribunal“, “Visionary“, “Hard Time“, “Honor Among Thieves” and “Prodigal Daughter“. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion) According to Ira Behr, “Every year in one or two shows we try to make his life miserable, because you empathize with him.” Robert Hewitt Wolfe further explains, “If O’Brien went through something torturous and horrible, the audience was going to feel that, in a way they wouldn’t feel it with any of the other characters. Because all the other characters were sort of, I wouldn’t say larger than life, but nobler than life, but O’Brien was just a guy, trying to live his life and so if you tortured him that was a story.” (Crew Dossier: Miles O’Brien, DS9 Season 5 DVD, Special Features)

Those Episodes Were:

Whispers

Episode 2×14

Upon returning from a mission to the Parada system, O’Brien begins to notice the crew acting strange around him and suspects there may be some unknown influence at work.

Tribunal

2×25

When Cardassians arrest Miles O’Brien for working with the Maquis, he’s put on a Cardassian trial, where the verdict is known before the trial begins: guilty.

Visionary

3×17

After receiving a minor dose of radiation poisoning, O’Brien inexplicably begins experiencing a series of jumps into the near future. Meanwhile, a Romulan delegation arrives on the station, expecting an intelligence report on the Dominion.

Hard Time

4×19

Convicted of espionage, Miles O’Brien is given the memories of twenty years in prison in a matter of hours. Returning to DS9, O’Brien finds he cannot shrug the memory of his awful experience or rid himself of the guilt he feels over the death of his cellmate.

Honor Among Thieves

6×15

O’Brien, working undercover for Starfleet Intelligence, befriends the man he will have to betray.

 

& Then, there is “Time’s Oprhan”

An accident on the planet Golana sends Molly O’Brien through a time portal three hundred years into the past into an uninhabited world. Beamed back too late, Molly returns to the present eighteen years old with no immediate recollection of her life or her family.

DS9 Stories/News: Deep Space Nine is the best Star Trek series

Source: http://www.fearfulsymmetry.net/?p=1411

Over the summer, Netflix added all of the Star Trek series to it’s instant service–well, all but one: Deep Space Nine. This made me sad, because DS9 was my favorite, but I figured it would be a good opportunity to catch up on Voyager and Enterprise, which I watched some of (two seasons and one season, respectively) but never really got into. I tried, and quickly remembered why I’d stopped watching those shows (Neelix and implausibility, respectively). I was already in a Star Trek mood, though, so I went back and started watching The Next Generation. I really enjoyed this series while it was on TV–it’s final season ended my senior year of high school, and my friends and I were all Star Trek nerds–and in rewatching some of the old episodes I was delighted to see that they held up over time. It wasn’t just nostalgia that made me like them in high school, and in fact many of the episodes I remember as kind of boring turned out to be pretty great once I watched them with a more discerning eye.

Last night, having just watched “Pen Pals” from season two (specifically because it was recently covered in Tor.com’s TNG rewatch), I decided on a whim to do a search for DS9, just in case Netflix had added it to the Instant Streaming options. TNG is great and all, but the episodic nature of it was really starting to get to me. I wanted the depth of an ongoing story, and the darkness and tension of DS9′s murky political minefield. What could it hurt? I pulled up the search window and…it was there! My sweet, precious Deep Space Nine! I went straight toward the end of season two, when the long-form story just starts to get going (a two-parter about the formation of the Maquis, a resistance/terrorist organization) and started watching.

I love this show so much. We start that episode by watching someone plant a bomb, and then instead of watching it explode, we jump to the control room and listen to Dax and Kira have a snarky, half-friendly-half antagonistic conversation about dating. Not only does this serve as a perfect example of the Hitchcock Principle (“Suspense is when you know there’s a bomb but it doesn’t go off”), its wonderful character development, and nicely humorous. Then the bomb goes off and a ship explodes, and the entire sequence is a perfect, representative slice of DS9: darkness, conspiracy, humor, character, and mundane life. These characters didn’t have time to catalog anomalies and dork around with the Prime Directive, because people were setting bombs on their ships. It was all they could do to keep their heads above water while the darker forces of the universe did everything it could to destroy them. And in the midst of it all they do their best to live a normal life.

The first two seasons of Deep Space Nine were still trying, albeit half-heartedly, to mimic a normal Star Trek show; you still got a lot of political stuff (I can’t even count the number of people I’ve talked to who hate the show based solely on its early preoccupation with Bajoran politics), but there was a lot of “Anomaly of the Week” type stuff. I’m not saying that the other Trek shows were frivolous–they’re well-known and well-loved precisely because they deal with weighty issues like ethics and responsibility. The difference with DS9 came in its tone, which was dark and tense and far more bleak than the others. Every Trek show has tricky questions, but DS9 has questions with no good answers–and, more importantly, consequences that come back to haunt the characters for years.

The TNG episode “Pen Pals” is a great example. Data accidentally contacts a young girl on a dying planet, resulting in a fascinating quandary over the Prime Directive: do they save her? Do they save her planet? If saving her will irrevocably destroy her culture, is it still worth it? If the only other option is death, does the Prime Directive even matter? They wrestle with this back and forth for an hour, and it’s great science fiction, and then in the end they choose to save her planet and–here’s the kicker–wipe the girl’s memory. They broke the Prime Directive by directly interfering with a developing culture, and then there were zero consequences, and then they flew away and never thought about it again. All of their deep, philosophical theorizing was interesting, but ultimately meaningless.

Deep Space Nine doesn’t have that kind of crap. If they mess with something and cause a problem, they’ll have to deal with it, probably several times. They’re a space station, so they can’t just fly away to a part of space they haven’t ruined yet. The Maquis I mentioned earlier were a resistance group forged by the events of a TNG episode: the Federation came to a political agreement with the Cardassians, resulting in a demilitarized zone that displaced a lot of people. Colonists in Federation territory suddenly found themselves, and the homes they’d given so much to build, under enemy control. TNG never really dealt with this, but DS9 used it all the time. The colonists felt betrayed, and when the Cardassians exercised what the colonists considered to be unfair control, they formed a resistance movement and/or terrorist organization. They blew stuff up and killed people, and the DS9 characters couldn’t just wipe anyone’s memorizes or reroute power to the deflector array, they had to hang around and deal with it and try to make peace in an impossible situation.

In season three, Deep Space Nine embraced its long-form nature and went whole hog, starting a massive war that consumed not only the Federation and the Cardassians, but the Klingons, Romulans, and a new alien nation called the Dominion. The one where the Romulans join the war is one of the best episodes ever: the Federation is losing the war and needs more help, so they order DS9′s captain to enlist the Romulan’s help as allies through “any means necessary”. If he doesn’t get their help, the Federation will be destroyed–but the only way to get their help is to break his own set of ethics in a profound and terrifying way. There are no easy answers on DS9, and the implications of his decisions in that episode haunt him forever.

I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this–I can’t convince you, objectively, that a piece of art is “good.” It’s on Netflix now, so watch it for yourself. Perhaps it would be simpler to say that DS9 has my favorite characters of any Star Trek show and leave it at that. Perhaps it’s enough to point out that DS9 was run, in part, but Ronald Fracking Moore, who also ran the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Whatever convinces you to try it, try it. It’s my favorite Star Trek show ever.

(And that makes it the best.)