DS9 Stories/News: Design Appreciation, The Costumes of Deep Space Nine (2)

Cont.

Ferengi

Nowhere is the breadth of pattern more evident than in the Ferengi costume. Used as the comic element of the show, every Ferengi was always dressed in formal suits of at least three layers with metal clasps, buckles and ornimentation. You might guess that the vest and shirt were abbreviated, but Quark was sometimes shown without his jacket and you could see that each piece was fully tailored. The Ferengi are such a great example of the excellence of the DS9 costume design that we’ve devoted a gallery of enlargeable images to their genus.

Black and white

Even without colour in costumes, pattern was used extensively, often with numerous designs within a monochrome outfit, sometimes so subtly, it’s hardly perceivable in the seconds they’re on screen. But colour itself was often used to convey clues about the alien or humanoid’s true nature. Many characters were costumed from head to toe in black, indicating their evil intent without speaking a word.

This ‘good guy – bad guy’ costuming tradition was cultivated to its natural culmination in Necessary Evil (Season 2, Episode 8) when a woman believed to be a widow in need of a favour starts off clothed entirely in white. Midway through the episode she wears a purple costume and by the end, when she’s revealed to be a deceptive extortionist, she’s wrapped (and arrested) in black.

A similar costuming tactic was used for characters of ambiguous moralities and confused principles or those who were tied to evil-doers, like the daughter of a Cardassian dictator or a father who had his son genetically altered illegally, out of love for his child.

Heads

Religion played a big part on the series and the clergy were given very brightly-coloured outfits, often with flowing robes and wraps and shaped headwear that denoted their rank.

Extremely ornate headpieces, often a part of elaborate wigs, were also often seen on the show.

DS9 Stories/News: Sci-Fi Lessons – Crazy things I’ve learned from years of Sci-Fi

Source: http://scifilessons.wordpress.com/

Lesson #11: How to tell if someone is a vampire.

Lesson #10: In space, no one can hear your explosions.

Lesson #9: Most aliens are bipedal.

Along with speaking English, most intelligent aliens look a remarkable amount like humans.  It is amazing that creatures developed so similarly, even though we lived in different planets and different galaxies.  Even the Breen, a species in Star Trek whose bodies are never seen except completely encased in suits, are bipedal.  The Breen are mysterious, with only guesses regarding why they wear the suits and what they look like underneath.  They seem so foreign, yet at the same time, so similar in their two-legged-ness.  Not only are they bipedal, but like humans, they also have two arms and one head.  I know that the Alien Actors Guild (AAG!) only allows bipedal aliens to join, making it extremely difficult for film or television to employ non-bipedal creatures.  However, producers could make more effort towards equal representation of the non-bipedal variety.

Farscape does the best job so far on Earth at including aliens with multiple extremities in major and positive roles.  Pilot is one of the few non-bipedal aliens to serve as a main character.  Moya, the spaceship, is also without legs, although with great propulsion, and is a major element in the show.  Indeed, the series could not exist without some form of Moya.  I hope she asked for a raise.   Although Rygel XVI isn’t exactly without two legs, the fact that the deposed Hynerian leader flies around on his Thronesled most of the time, rarely walking or showing his legs, makes him appear non-bipedal at times.

Shows are making progress towards the inclusion of more or less legs.  However, it will be a long time before the leggy or leggless creatures feel accepted in the hearts of earthlings.

Lesson #8: Zombies come in two speeds: slow and fast.

Lesson #7: The cuter something is, the more dangerous it may be.

Lesson #6: Sci-Fi has a complex relationship to black leather.

Lesson #5: What to do when I accidentally become invisible.

Lesson#4: Mutants are hip.

Lesson #3: Red blinking lights are generally bad.

Lesson #2: Looting corpses is a crucial survival skill.

Lesson #1: Most aliens speak English.

It may be British English, American English, or Australian English, but indeed, most aliens speak English. Perhaps this all began because “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” many spoke English. Maybe that’s where we learned the language from. At the time of the Stargate film in 1994, aliens in the Stargate universe did not in fact speak English. Between 1994 and the beginning of 1997 series, aliens in multiple galaxies had all learned English. Perhaps Daniel Jackson taught them while he was living on another planet or they simply heard Earthlings were coming (just the American English speaking kind) and they wanted to be prepared. I appreciate the effort, especially in such a short time.

There are a few aliens out there who don’t speak English, such as all sorts of species in Star Trek and in Farscape. Apparently those crews were able to travel far enough to find areas of space that English hadn’t pervaded, at least until a wormhole brought Ben Browder and Claudia Black to Stargate Command and the world of English-speaking aliens. Oddly though, the translator microbes in Farscape gave an Australian accent to those speaking, even though the listener spoke with an American accent. What an odd translation quirk!

The tenacious Star Trek crew was able to understand alien-speak via the “universal translator.” The universal translator worked on the basic scientific principle of magic. With a click of a button, magically everyone could understand each other and the camera could record English-speak. For the uninitiated, “universal translator” is code for “writers’ pitiful attempt to deal with alien communication problems.” At least they made an attempt, albeit a sad one.

The influence of English across the universe is amazing and unbounded. With this sort of power, I don’t see how non-English speaking cultures here on Earth have any hope.

DS9 Stories/News: Learning to Love Star Trek, Part 43: “Captive Pursuit”

Source: http://scifiblock.com/features/blog/learning-to-love-star-trek-part-43-captive-pursuit.htm

By Robert Ring, Tue, 11/02/2010 – 08:45

“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.

Another below-par episode for Deep Space Nine. However, this one’s not as bad as “Babel,” and, to be fair, the first few episodes set the bar pretty high. This one examines the Prime Directive under a unique and challenging set of circumstances, but it spends too much time on stuff that just isn’t interesting. On paper, its plot sounds like the premise for a solid episode, but it wasn’t pulled off as well as it could have been.

When the first life form from the Gamma Quadrant comes through the wormhole by Deep Space Nine, O’Brien befriends the visitor, named Tosk. Or he’s a Tosk. Or the word “Tosk” describes him in some other manner. He never fully explains. Anyway, this Tosk seems a little too secretive and on-edge. His arrival is a great occasion for the Federation, but unfortunately he is uninterested in chatter and seeks only to get his ship up and running as quickly as possible. Eventually, we learn why: he comes from a culture in which his race is bred and trained for hunting by those in power, and it was during this hunt that his ship was damaged and he ended up on DS9. Though he could seek asylum on the station if he wanted to do so, he views such action as an abandonment of his life purpose. All he wants to do is continue the hunt as prey. As much as Sisko and the others don’t like the idea, the Prime Directive demands that in these conditions they allow the hunt to continue. Queue a heroic action sequence, and curtain.

Hey Tosk, do you happen to know a guy named Bossk?

While the Prime Directive bit is interesting here, it comprises a small portion of the episode. Still, it’s absolutely worth looking at. We’ve had a difficult call in The Next Generation, where following the Prime Directive would have meant allowing someone to die, but here we have to bring an entire culture’s way of life into question. No doubt, to us this custom is deplorable. However, even Tosk is fully given to the morality of the hunt. He believes he’s fulfilling his life’s goal. There hardly seems a way to justify this on the part of those who arrange the hunt system, but if everyone’s happy with it, what are we to do? Tell them they’re wrong? Good luck with that. So, because of the Prime Directive, we have to allow the culture to keep doing its thing.

I like this in part because it forces us to acknowledge a seemingly universally heinous custom as possibly morally acceptable from a certain perspective. To me what’s even more interesting about it, though, is the idea of actually finding meaning in a life in which one is bred only to serve as the prey in a hunt. It is as if these people have to create their own meaning in life, and they do so without apology and without reservation. They just need a purpose, and they’re happy to serve that purpose even if it means their death. After all, who needs life if it’s meaningless? I would like to learn more about this society. Is it totally absent of religion? Their need to create purpose in life would suggest that it is.

So, there’s some good stuff here, but I remain disappointed that so much of it consists of establishing the mystery of what Tosk is running from, why he’s in such a hurry, and, eventually, why aliens in space suits are trying to capture him. We don’t actually learn what’s going on until over halfway through the episode, as if the mystery is somehow more rewarding than the pondering of the morals of the situation. Then we learn what’s going on and get to watch the characters talk and think about the problem for about ten minutes, at which point we get an “O’Brien saves the day” escape scene that lasts pretty much the rest of the episode. Yawn.

At the least, I can say that DS9 still seems to know what it’s doing a lot more than what I’ve seen of TNG. Plus, at this point the series is still very young. Every good show has its missteps. Right now I’m just hoping these indeed are its missteps. From what I can tell based on the first three episodes, I’m still in safe territory

DS9 Stories/News: TV’s Best Characters (That You’re Not Allowed To See)

Source: http://www.ugo.com/tv/unseen-tv-characters

There are some legendary folk that live-action just can’t do justice, and UGO’s got your guide to TV’s Best Unseen Characters.

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By Kevin FitzpatrickDecember 8, 2010 Follow

17

The Breen

(Didn’t) Appear On: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

How Close We Came: Technically we’ve never seen anything of the Breen beside their snazzy outfits.

Many a yarn have been spun on the true appearance of the Breen, but all we really know is that their menacing Boushh-like suits keep their forms in pristinely cold conditions, as on their homeworld.

The shape of their masks may represent the presence of either snouts or beaks, but as Worf puts it, no one who’s seen under the suit has lived to tell the tale.