DS9 Stories/News: Some ‘Deep’ Talk with Alexander Siddig (3)

Cont.

Cairo Time

Jordan Hoffman: So let’s talk about the new movie Cairo Time, which I think is the first time you’ve played a romantic lead, is that correct?

Alexander Siddig: It is indeed, it is. Since I was at school, that’s the first time I’ve played a romantic.

Jordan Hoffman: How much fun is it to woo the hearts of audiences like that? To lay on the charm thick for the sake of the audience?

Alexander Siddig: It’s pretty great. It wasn’t so much, I have to confess I wasn’t really thinking of the audience when I was in Cairo but I – to gaze into that lady’s eyes [Patricia Clarkson] is quite thrilling.

Jordan Hoffman: Your character sort of welcomes this woman into the Egyptian culture and the city of Cairo; how much familiarity did you have with Cairo prior to making the film?

Alexander Siddig: Well, you know it’s one of the places that’s sort of been in my reference library all my life in the sense that I was born in the Sudan which is the neighboring country and up until – I mean forever we’ve had a treaty with Egypt and immigrants come and go; my whole family lived in Cairo for years. And so it was a familiar place and I’d been there in the 80’s as a kid really, so I knew my way around and I felt very comfortable and relaxed there. So it was easy to make the little leap from a Sudanese man to and Egyptian man which I had no problem doing.

Jordan Hoffman: So you didn’t have to think it too much.

Alexander Siddig: No, I really didn’t. It’s a really honest city for all its evils. It can be quite filthy – that’s not exactly an evil is it by world standards. But it lays itself out to you as a tourist. London for example, is an impossible city. You need to know people in London to find out where things are and what’s going on and you can’t make friends here unless you were kind of born here. So, Cairo is much more friendly and available to people.

Jordan Hoffman: So when you were shooting this film, it was a Canadian production, but it’s still a large western production and there isn’t too much of that on the streets of Cairo. How were you treated by the general population?

Alexander Siddig: They were completely puzzled by us. They were like, ‘what the Hell is that?’ they just couldn’t quite make out what weirdness we were doing. This was bigger than an ordinary video camera, we weren’t just saying hi in front of a landmark we were doing scenes, so when they could they would sort of jostle into the frame to get involved. Which was fine on some levels, but as soon as they started looking into the camera and stuff it was a total nightmare.

Jordan Hoffman: So that shot of nearly getting hit by a motorcycle, was that actual?

Alexander Siddig: We really did – well it was a stunt, but the interesting thing was that the stunt guy had never done a stunt in his life – was not a stunt man. He literally tried to run her over. And I must have buried my nails deep into her arm to get her out of the way she was absolutely – she was shaking afterwards. She wasn’t used to that.

Jordan Hoffman: Was it all Egyptian crew? Or was it Canadian crew?

Alexander Siddig: It was a beautiful mix actually. It was a whole jumble of different people. The Egyptians were brilliant, I mean really brilliant; and kind of cool and cosmopolitan and wanted to take us all out to cool places to hang out in the evenings. Egyptians – thank God you know Cairo is not a dry city and is not massively fundamentalist.  It’s got fundamentalist aspects, but you can still have a really swingin’ time.

Bashir and O’Brien

Jordan Hoffman: Who from the old days that you don’t get to see do you like to hang out with the most at conventions?

Alexander Siddig: You know I love hanging out with Nicky deBoer.

Jordan Hoffman: I see.

Alexander Siddig:  She is just hilarious; great, great girl. And um if I see Colm Meaney we’ll have a drink and bitch at each other. That’s all we do. I realize looking back at my history with him, I went out with him twice a week every week for seven years – drinking. Boy, he can pack em away.

Jordan Hoffman: I would imagine.

Alexander Siddig:  And all we did was fight. And I guess that’s what they did on the show too. But we fought in real life all the time. He would set me up, he’d take me to Irish bars where they hated English people. I would think they were being racist about the fact that I’m black and they weren’t. The just hated the English people, they would just hear my accent and they’d – and he just laughed his head off.

Jordan Hoffman: Did you ever actually play darts, though, is the real question.

Alexander Siddig:  No. No. That would be very weird.

Jordan Hoffman: There needs to be a separation between art and life.

Alexander Siddig:  Yes, because that was the only separation, the dart game.

DS9 Stories/News: Goodbyes

Source: http://deflipside.com/?page_id=1693

by Christopher DeFilippis

DeFlip Side, Vol. 1, No. 6
(First Appeared: June/July, 1999; First Light E-zine, Issue #82)

This is going to be short and sweet, folks. My original plan for this month’s column was to bid a fond farewell to Deep Space Nine, until recently the best show on television. I was going to do an in-depth review of the final episode, exploring whether or not it brought the Dominion war arc to a satisfying conclusion, as well as if it proved a fitting send-off to the best Trek series ever; my swan song to the swan song, so to speak. But those ne’er do-wells at Paramount took the wind out of my sails. After watching the finale, I came to only one inescapable conclusion: It’s not over.

After all, Sisko left his baseball behind.

Of course, there’s also the question of his unborn child, his career in Starfleet, a new Defiant that needs to be broken in, an unfinished real estate transaction on Bajor and his promise that he would return “in a year from now or yesterday.” But the baseball is the cincher. He doesn’t leave home without it, much less take up permanent residence in Prophet limbo. We haven’t heard the last from him or the rest of these characters. I don’t know when or in what format, but we’ll see them again. Bet on it.

This fact colors my opinion of the two-hour series finale. As a final good-bye, it would have left too many loose ends. But as a “so long for now” it was perfect. It brought enough closure to satisfy, but egged us on just enough to keep our expectations for a return simmering on a low frame somewhere in the back of our brains. Like Kira and Jake, we’re all gazing out of a portal on the Promenade, waiting patiently to see what happens next.

I’ll spare you all a long-winded essay on what I liked and why. Different parts of the finale will have appealed to different people for different reasons. But there is no call for excess exposition. After all, we’re not talking about “Mirror Image” here (the legendarily confusing finale to the TV series Quantum Leap). Instead, I’ll be as succinct as possible:

The Good Stuff:

• The death of Kai Winn.
• The kick-ass battle scenes.
• Kai Winn’s unfortunate demise.
• Garak’s revenge on Weyoun.
• Barbecued Kai.
• Nog’s promotion.
• Pah Wraiths 1, Kai Winn 0
• Kira’s ironic role in the liberation of Cardassia.
• Kai Winn all gone.
• Ezri’s nearly exposed breasts.
• Bye bye Kai.
• Sisko plowing Dukat over the cliff’s edge in a flying tackle.
• The old bag bites it.
• Martok’s self-satisfied belt of blood wine while standing on bloated enemy corpses.
• She’ll finally shut up.
• The faint hope that once O’Brien accepts a teaching position at the academy, he’ll attain some kind of rank (Where does “Chief” fall, anyway? As far as I can tell, it’s somewhere between ensign and lieutenant. So Nog outranks him now? Not a proud legacy for more than a decade in uniform…).
• Winn-kabob.
• Damar’s last stand.
• Burn Winnie burn.
• Worf’s new-found honor and influence with the Klingon council.
• Are those Kai burgers I smell?
• Bashir finally gets some.
• Armagedd-Winn.

The Bad Stuff:

• Vic Fontaine’s schmaltzy send-off.
• A too-short stand-off between Dukat and Sisko that smacked of the
• Kirk/Mitchell showdown in “Where No Man has Gone Before” (“Get on your knees and pray to me, James”).
• A tuxedo-clad Odo melting into the Great Link.
• The use of stock footage of a Klingon getting blown down a corridor on a wave of fire (from The Undiscovered Country, I think).
• Worf’s flashback sequence that held not a smidgen of Jadzia memories. (I guess Paramount didn’t want to have to pay residuals to Terry Farrell.)

 

As you can see, the good clearly outweighed the bad. I think the very best thing about the episode, and the series over all, was that I could never tell exactly how things would turn out. And even when I did have a pretty good idea of where things were going, the characters would reach their destinations via completely unexpected routes.

This rule holds true for the future of Deep Space Nine. It’s a foregone conclusion that Sisko will come back. Just watch; he’ll soon get tired of playing pinochle with Wesley on the astral plain and shuffle back into his mortal coil for a return to his old life. But to what effect? Will he be considered a lord on Bajor? Will his new found Prophet wisdom cause a rift between him and his all-too-human friends and family? Will he have hair? I can’t even guess at the possibilities.

Of course, we’re most likely to be hearing from Worf the soonest. I just hope the powers that be use the opportunity they’ve created to full effect in the next movie. Worf’s position as Federation ambassador to Qo’noS lends itself to a sweeping story that could encompass the Federation and Klingon Empire and propel the franchise forward, something it sorely needs after the disaster that was Insurrection.

The one thing I do not want to see is a feature length film that combines the Next Gen and DS9 casts. The writers have a tough enough time as it is finding useful roles for the entire Enterprise-E ensemble with each outing. If they tried to add the DS9 crew as well, the screen would be packed tighter than Seven of Nine’s Wonder Bra, but with a far less marvelous result. I’ll pin my hopes on a small-screen reunion that will give the DS9 characters and plot lines free reign.

In the meantime, I guess I still have Voyager to give me my Star Trek fix, though it’ll be like going from heroin to methadone. Now that the DS9 writers are freed up, maybe they can help put Voyager on the right track and raise it to the standards we’ve come expect from Star Trek. But I’m not gonna hold my breath. I don’t have to anyway.

When DS9 premiered, I still had a maniacal hatred of new Trek. I wasn’t sucked over the Next Gen event horizon until Generations hit the theaters. And by the time I got into DS9, it was well into its run. So I ask you to pray with me now that channel 11 in NY soon starts rerunning the series from the beginning. There are three years worth of episodes I’ve never seen. It’s a little something extra to look forward to.

See Pop? Sometimes it works to your benefit to be a day late and a dollar short…

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: 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: Deep Space Nine’s Autographed Pictures

Michael Dorn as the Klingon Worf, were a regular in all of The Next Generation, and joined Deep Space 9 in season 4.

Casey Biggs who played Damar in Deep Space 9 brought some pictures that Nana Visitor (Major Kira) had signed, and being a fan of her, I had to get me one of those!

Vaughn Armstrong, in all the roles he’ve played on Star Trek, so far it’ve been 14!! The most for a single actor.

Robert O’Reilly was the man behind the Klingon “Gowron” in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine.

Patrick Kilpatrick have had at least three different roles in both Star Trek: Voyager and Deep Space Nine.

Source: http://www.kennl.dk/pictures/Galileo7/Loot/loot.htm

Nana Visitor, the actor who portrayed Kira in Star Trek: Deep Space nine.

J. G. Hertzler is the Klingon Martok in Star Trek: Deep Space nine.

The Ferengi Family Hour, is a show preformed by three actors from Deep Space Nine, and a member of the staff (Lolita Fatjo).

Chase Masterson who played Leeta in Deep Space Nine. This is the cover from a CD she have released.

Mark Allen Shepherd plays the character Morn on Deep Space Nine.

The Auction
They had an auction where it was possible to bid on different items, from signed pictures of the whole cast of The Original Series, to a few props that had been used on the show, like Captain Janeway’s communicator (which was very expensive!). I managed to get two items on the auction, one was a autographed picture of J.G. Hertzler as the Klingon Martokin Deep Space Nine. Unfortunately it didn’t scan very well, so I can’t put it up here for you to look at. The second item I acquired was a synopsis to the Deep Space Nine episode Shadowplay. It contains a two page description of the episode, and a sheet with three pictures from it as well. One of the pictures is signed by Cirroc Lofton, across the character he played on the show (Jake Sisko). Again you can click on the image to view a larger version.

Page one of the synopsis.

Page two of the synopsis.

Pictures from the episode.

This is the picture that was in the package with the synopsis to the Deep Space Nine episode Shadowplay, that I bought on the auction at the convention.

If you move the cursor over the three pictures, you can read a more detailed description about them. And notice that the top right photo is signed my the actor Cirroc Lofton.