DS9 Stories/News: Michael Westmore’s Aliens (2)

DS9 Season 2

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The Skrreea from “Sanctuary“, whose ‘bumpy skin’ design was created by combining little bags of pumice, found in a hobby train shop, with a liquid latex, which was then stippled onto the actors faces and dried. Westmore also discusses how when the makeup was applied to one single individual, it simply looked like someone with a lot of pimples, but when applied to a group, it became an alien race

The Dosi from “Rules of Acquisition“, whose facial art designs are based on colorations found in tribes from Borneo and in the South Seas. Westmore also discusses the continuity problems that arise when using elaborate paint designs

Melora Pazlar from “Melora“, whose makeup was designed under the guideline to keep the actress beautiful

Cardassian women, specifically Natima Lang from “Profit and Loss“. Westmore explains that the blue coloration of the ‘spoon’ design on the forehead of Cardassian females came about due to a concern that people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the males and the females. He also discusses that because the producers wanted some of Mary Crosby‘s chest exposed, a large breast plate had to be designed which Westmore says must have been uncomfortable for Crosby to wear, but he never heard her complain once. He also discusses how the love scene between Lang and Quark is one of his all-time favorite Star Trek scenes, because despite the heavy makeup, it is still just a simple, touching romantic scene, and the makeup is completely unimportant

The Cardassian voles from “Playing God“, which were mounted on radio-controlled cars. Westmore explains that the teeth are made from acrylic, and the eyes are glass, and he notes that it was more complex to build a vole than a facial appliance. He also points out that because the voles are Cardassian, they too have the spoon design on their foreheads

Fenna and Nidell from “Second Sight“, with their unusual ear designs, which was again, based upon the desire to have the actress look alien, but not compromise her beauty

Maihar’du, whose makeup was based upon that of Pruneface from Dick Tracy

Fallit Kot from “Melora“, whose makeup was based upon the fact that Westmore had never had the opportunity to bridge the face of an alien

DS9 Stories/News: Quick question about Ira Steven Behr

Site: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=73255

Does anyone know why he always wears sunglasses? Does he have problems with his eyes, or is it just a fashion choice? I’ve always wondered about that. Indoors or out, day or night, he always seems to be wearing sunglasses.

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Hmmm. I never see pictures of him, but I have a massive light sensitivity and have to wear the darkest sunglasses I can find. I don’t know about him.

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His dark glasses are conspicuous on the DS9 extras dvd’s. Who knows. Maybe he is trying to look cool…

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Behr has always said he never wanted to like the majority of Hollywood producers. Witness the blue beard he has now.

DS9 Stories/News: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Crossroads of Time (Genesis/Mega Drive) (3)

Shit! I’m not liking this inventory. I have to hold down the A button to bring it up and assign an item to my hand, and tap it to switch between assigned items. There’s two problems with this:

1. I can’t quick draw my phaser and gun down my enemies if I’ve forgotten to assign it to a hand.
2. I have to hold down A to use the lifts too. So half the time when I’m trying to move a lift around, I end up bringing my items up instead. And I can’t make a quick escape when my inventory screen’s open.

And every time I get killed I’m thrown back to the password screen and have to reassign my items.

Seven seconds left. Damn, I’m really cutting it close on some of these grenades. Plus I’ll probably have to spend three seconds trying to line him up with the ejection tube correctly so he’ll flush the thing.

Still, I’m just glad I found the damn tube for once. Half the time I end up totally lost and get blown up by the bomb in my hand.

On the next section they start throwing these tricorder jammers in too. I can’t tell where nearby bombs are on my radar until I find and break the jammers.

Yeah, the inventory popping up when I’m on a lift isn’t getting any less annoying. I’ve got a time limit here!

Okay I admit, it’s my fault. If I was properly centered on the lift the menu wouldn’t come up. But I don’t have time to properly center myself on every lift, I’ve got a time limit here!

I’ve finally reached the third section of the level, and it’s getting very Prince of Persia now. There’s no lift to ride here, so I have to jump from ledge to ledge to reach the bombs. Then back down again to flush them.

And every time I miss a ledge and fall I’m put all the way back at the start of the level again. Crap.

A FEW DEATHS LATER.

I don’t actually mind jumping between a maze of ledges over a fatal drop. I don’t even mind the time limit. The thing that’s really starting to annoy me though, is that I have to replay this huge level every time I fuck up. That’s two entire sections of bomb disposal I have to repeat, over and over and over.

I should probably quit now, but I can’t help being implausibly curious about what’s on the next level. It can’t all be bomb disposal to the end, right?

TWO AND A HALF SECTIONS OF BOMB DISPOSAL LATER.

Okay, made a jump. So far so good. I’ll have to keep throwing myself at ledges like this until I find the next bomb, and even a single missed jump is likely to get Sisko killed.

And then when I find the bomb I’ve got seconds to jump all the way back down again.

The SNES version’s still pretty similar, and no less annoying. Well I guess it doesn’t have the inventory/lift button problem, so it has that going for it.

The hero sprite seems a bit invisible in these shots, but he shows up pretty well in game thanks to the parallax scrolling background. These lift rails look way too much like platforms I can stand on though.

THREE MILLION MISSED JUMPS LATER.

I… don’t believe I actually did it. Hah!

Level complete and I NEVER HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN.

BUT THEN…

DS9 Stories/News: Some ‘Deep’ Talk with Alexander Siddig (2)

Cont.

Reaction On The Station

Regarding his reaction to the character’s change.

Jordan Hoffman: What did the other cast members think? Were they on your side or did they think you were being crazy?

Alexander Siddig: I had a reputation for being a bit of a crank, yeah. They thought I was being cranky. I had this – there was one time I got furious because none of us were being paid royalties on our – this is rubbish, not important for the real world – but, nevertheless, we weren’t being paid royalties on our photographs. So I changed my name for a number of reasons, but that was one of them. So that they would have to re-do all the photographs, all the press with all the right name on it.

And I didn’t turn up to the big photo call for the season’s photo. So there’s one season’s photo of Deep Space Nine – the cast, without me in it which is the one I didn’t turn up to. And being a naïve twenty-something year-old, I didn’t realize that they immediately turned around and fired the head of marketing. So there was a real significant impact for me being such a childish brat.

Jordan Hoffman: Wow. So did that wake you up a little bit? That move?

Alexander Siddig: It woke me up, yeah it woke me up to being naïve and stupid and that real people get involved in these things.

So, Yeah, What’s The Deal With The Name Change?

Jordan Hoffman: It’s funny, for a while you were Siddig El Fadil, then you became Alexander Siddig.  But your full name, is. . .

Alexander Siddig: It’s a mouthful; it’s not something you’d say on the street.

Jordan Hoffman: What is it, could you actually say it for me?

Alexander Siddig: Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abderrahman Mohammed Ah – I stumble a bit myself – Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi.

Jordan Hoffman: Wow, okay. And you sort of just picked Alexander?  Said Alexander works.

Alexander Siddig: Yeah, Alexander worked because it was, it’s Mesopotamian, it’s Arab, you know it’s pre-Muslim. The “Al” bit is a bit like, well, I suppose like Al-Qaeda.  Al-Isskandar is the actual name in Arabic. And it’s a pre – it’s not a Western name at all, it’s an Arabic name. Hence, obviously the great Mesopotamian Alexander who didn’t look much like Colin Farrell and all that jazz.

Jordan Hoffman: So it wasn’t just as random as everyone says.

Alexander Siddig: No, it wasn’t random, and, also my first best friend had a dog that was called Alex. And so I was already happy with that name.

Jordan Hoffman: Can we talk a little bit about your background more? You’re a descendant of Sudanese royalty? Is that correct?

Alexander Siddig: No. I mean, there are no royals in Sudan.  There are certainly religious leaders and I was – my family is a family called the Mahdi family, and these are direct descendants of 1880’s great religious leader. Mahdi loosely translated means messiah so you’ll kind of get the idea.

Jordan Hoffman: That’s a heavy burden!

Alexander Siddig: Heavy burden for him, not for me. I can be the naughty grandchild, great-great grandchild going off the rail. So yeah, the family ruled in the Sudan for many, many years. Even now Sadiq al-Mahdi is trying his hardest to get into power as an opposition party in Sudan.

Jordan Hoffman: You steer clear of the political side of what’s going on over there?

Alexander Siddig: I do, because I’m pretty disgusted by it to be honest. It horrifies me. I happen to have had the privilege of growing up in the West, dictating my righteous indignation across to Africa where they have a much more difficult time and more nuanced existence than I could possibly lead. But I find it very abhorrent and very dangerous. I have problems with the far right. . .I went back in the ’80s and it was a gap between presidencies when my family I weren’t going to be arrested when we arrived and they were extremely condescending . . . Fundamentalist Islam terrifies me anyway, speaking as an Arab. And that’s not just because I’ve been brought up in a coveted western society, it’s because it is scary. That’s the end of that.

DS9 Stories/News: The Magic Of Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Joint Trill and the Higher Self

Source: http://bajorron.blogspot.com/2012/02/magic-of-star-trek-deep-space-nine_15.html

Jadzia, meeting her “shadow self” in “Equilibrium”

One of the more fascinating races in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are the Trill, a species of humanoids who share existence consciousness with a slug-like creature called a symbiont. Throughout the series, the psychology of such an existence is explored quite thoroughly, as several episodes are devoted exclusively to the special problems and challenges Trill science officer Jadzia (eminently portrayed by Terry Farrell) faces due to her ‘joining’ (as is the term) to a symbiont called “Dax”. These symbionts live on after the “host” dies, we are told, and Jadzia is just the latest in a series of joinings of the same symbiont to previous hosts.

So what is the exact relationship between symbiont and “host”? Early in the series it is established that for all practical purposes, Jadzia is a separate personality from all the previous hosts, and that due to the joining, a unique personality is established by a merging of host and symbiont. Yet, this is the outside world view, as Jadzia herself adopts a very different attitude and, in the episode “Dax”, seems to hold herself responsible for the alleged sins of her predecessor, Curzon. And later in the series, in “Blood Oath” she does exactly the same when upholding a Klingon blood oath that Curzon swore but that she herself feels obliged to fulfill.

Jadzia seems very much in touch with her ‘previous lifes’, especially with Curzon, as she is often quoting him and his wiles, sometimes ad nauseam. In one episode, “Equilibrium”, she even encounters a previously unknown host, Joran Belar, who turned out to be an unsuccessfull host and whose joining had been suppressed both by the Dax symbiont itself as well as by the Trill officials.

Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell)

This all seems to point towards an existence in which a personality is brought into intimate contact with a -more or less- immortal and ‘higher’ mentality. The symbiont seems to fulfill the role of the Higher Self, the Individuality, while the various hosts deliver the Lower Selfs, the Personalities, the mortal “incarnations” that throughout the ages allow the symbiont to discover Itself. The actual act of the Joining -which is shown in the episode “Invasive Procedures”- then becomes an initiation, in which the Higher and Lower Selves are connected to each other. In that particular episode, the actual moment of contact between host and symbiont is shown as an extatic moment of enlightenment. In fact, the candidates selected for joining are referred to as “Trill Initiates”. Those initiates have followed a rigorous regimen of training and study and are subjected to numerous tests in order to determine capacity for joining.

After the joining, the newly joined Trill need some time to establish and equilibrate their new existence. We witness this in Deep Space Nine’s final season when Ezri, Jadzia’s successor, needs to come to terms with her symbiont while being stationed at DS9 in the thick of the Dominion War.

What emerges is a new and stronger, and more balanced personality. Eventual character flaws are smoothed over, so we see the single-mindedness of Jadzia turn into the warm and versatile Jadzia Dax, and the insecure Ezri into an effective officer. The symbiont cannot be moved without killing the host; an interesting reference to the irreversible nature of initiation: one cannot undo it, it is a Rite of Passage.

I cannot help seeing this as depicting the initiation pathway that -in fact- aims at re-establishing the same kind of inner cooperation between the two aspects of our soul: the Higher and Lower Selves. The severe and sometimes tedious preparations, the tests, the discipline and dedication of the Trill candidates: it is all too familiar. Now, of course, the analogy is not exact, but enough parallels may be discovered to trigger a lasting interest in the development of the Dax character. More on this subject in due time!

The Trill Homeworld