Hey - it’s Will Riker flirting with all the girls on DS9, yakking with Kira Nerys, her showing him the Defiant and - OH SNAP! He’s gone crazy! Wait, no, it’s not Will Riker at all. It’s Tom Riker. And TOM Riker’s gone crazy! He’s with the Maquis (okay, maybe not crazy crazy) and he’s on a suicide mission (he IS crazy!)
Sisko has to join forces with Gul Dukat (ewww) and find the Defiant. Damn the Defiant!
Turns out Dukat uncovers some shenanigans in the Obsidian Order (Riker’s plan all along? Kinda, but not really, but okay) that’s something of a reverse-Maquis. The plot thickens. Plus Dukat has feelings. What-ev. Great episode.
I remain very much in the minority, but I still feel that this is a pretty damned good movie.
The first 20 minutes - the Enterprise-B prologue - remains fanfuckingtastic. On its own, it is the greatest short film of the 1990s. The two big problems everyone’s got with this film are real, however.
1) The Nexus - it makes no sense. How is Guinan there? How does Picard find Kirk? How do Picard and Kirk leave? Why don’t they stop Soran at a different time, if they can go anywhere, instead of when he is armed and about to do damage? Why must Soran divert the energy ribbon to the planet and not fly a ship into it (he was in the El Aurian transport the first time, right?) Data says that the ribbon would destroy the ship but a) what does Soran care? and b) he was on a ship the first time - WTF?!!?
2) Kirk’s death. Sledding down an incline on a footbridge? Fuck you. You wanna kill Captain Kirk he better be at the epicenter of a supernova. Come on.
Okay, with that out of my system, it is a good movie. It keeps moving and has lots of nifty effects that hold up 14 years later. And poor Malcolm McDowell - he does a good job here and no one ever bothered to thank him.
Jadzia shtups some guy from a planet interphasing in & out of our corporeal dimension. They figure out a way to stay together. But it doesn’t work. Kinda like this episode doesn’t work.
This is one of those dreams where no matter how much you climb you just keep falling in deeper. O’Brien accidentally sets off a Fail Safe defense system for “Terok Nor” that, one screw up after another, leads to the whole station about to blow up. Garak tries to help out - to no avail. Gul Dukat comes by to twiddle his mustache and then - d’oh! - he’s stuck there too. Only Sisko and save the day with his kick-ass-itude.
Very fun stuff.
Quark accidentally smuggles a Jem’Hadar infant (they grow up so fast!) onto the station. Kira wants to kill it, Sisko wants to farm it out to Starfleet for study, but Odo (bristling at the idea of it living in a lab) uses his status as a “Founder” to try and domesticate him.
Not a lot of luck.
Sisko allows Odo to drop him off in the Gamma Quadrant, like throwing a fish back in a pond. Not a smart move, maybe, but for Odo sometimes you bend.
DS9 goes into the WTF mode with a highly Philip K. Dick-inspired story. Kira is kidnapped by Cardassians and awakens to find herself…one of them? Hw-hwhat?!?!?
The story is that she is not Kira Nerys, Bajoran freedom fighter, but actually a deep cover Cardassian agent who agreed to have her memory wiped for heavy infiltration. And all her memories are implants, etc.
Further twists occur when we discover that this new Nerys’ “father” is actually a Cardassian dissident. Things go around in circles a few times til we wind up where we started, but not without a good load of fun along the way.
Although I generally find further inquiry into the mechanics of the Trill race fascinating, this episode takes as many of its cues from the odd episode of Scooby Doo than anything else. The upshot is that the Dax Symbiote was hosted, for a brief spell, by someone that Jadzia (and the other Daxes) didn’t know about. Indeed, these few months have been blocked from her memory, lest a horrible secret be learned. Of course, the system that is blocking the memory (a drug?) is wearing down, causing Jadzia to go all goofy. Sisko & co. learn this - it ain’t as hard to be a Trill host as you might think. But keep that on the d.l., lest there be a panic in the streets. In exchange for Jadzia’s life, they agree - something Picard would probably not have done. (Not that he would have let Jadzia die, he just would have moralized for so long that the Trills would have relented.)
I make this episode sound better than it is. It is mostly bad Terry Farrell acting.
Some months back I read collection # 3 and thought, man, this is such utter crap I won’t ever read another of the Gold Key collections. Yet, here we are.
There is a rare level of enjoyment in these dated, completely un-Trek like first comics. I mean, even the GOOD comics have their ridiculous qualities. Take the rather artfully painted TNG graphic novel The Gorn Crisis. Who can deny that part of its pleasure is that the baddie is named Captain Slesssh?!?
Anyway, with these early stories you get a crew that says things like “Holy Asteroids! What in Blue Blazes IS that thing?” The bridge looks like the inside of a submarine with planetarium equipment. Away teams beam down in teleport chambers, sending “radio TV transmissions” (read on reel-to-reel tapes.) Warp drive takes a back seat to “rocket power” and various nebulae are known as “space walls.” Spock only acts like a Vulcan when the writers seem to remember, the rest of the time he is quaking in fear or shouting.
This collection is pretty massive - 200 or so pages - and there’s a moronic chuckle on each on.
A thorough graphic novel based on a book “written by” William Shatner (with not one but two credited aides.)
Set between the events of Star Trek VI and Generations, this is a mostly cool story that, frankly, would’ve been better than some of the upcoming TNG films.
Kirk, feeling old (hasn’t that been a plot point since Wrath of Khan?) retires from Starfleet but is whisked away Johnson-first by a sexy Klingon-Romulan halfbreed whose planet “needs his help.” The planet is some sort of Fountain of Youth (echoes of cheesy Star Trek V - I guess Shatner was involved in the story after all) and the rogue elements in the Federation (not all wiped away from the end of The Undiscovered Country I guess) are setting him up for a big fall. Sulu and the Excelsior must save the day. Chases ensue.
I can not deny that I found this book a pleasant diversion on the 1.5 subway rides it took me to read.
Quark defeats the Klingons! With his accounting prowess!
A drunken Klingon falling on his own sword mixes Quark up in a tale of battling Klingon houses, nets him a temporary bride and also affords him an opportunity to do something noble. Something he seems to be doing more and more of lately.
Odo is having fun changing into eagles, Kira, while happy for him, can’t get off the hidden Shapeshifter planet and Sisko & co are all miraculously saved and brought back to DS9. And that’s when Admiral Nechayev seems even bitchier than usual, ready to commit to an unusually hasty treaty with the Dominion. The treaty will leave Bajor for dead and piss off the Romulans something fierce. Even Garak thinks it is a bad idea.
So what’s going on? Actually, a Jem’Hadar/Vorta run Matrix-esque test simulation. Our heroes are saved though when Kira and Odo discover the shenanigans are being run in a secret underground lair on the Shapeshifter planet. Why there? Because the Shapeshifters are the Founders. Whaaaaaaat?
What starts as a goof in the Gamma Quadrant with Sisko, Jake, Nog and Quark on a camping trip (?) turns ugly when we meet (finally, after many passing references) emissaries of the Dominion. Rescues lead to battles lead to some crazy-ass suicide runs to blow up a Starship for no real reason. Sneaky twists and a pall of ominous death hovers over the fade out.
Trek once again shows its precience for having its unstoppable, unreasonable terrorist force have a somewhat Islamic sounding name. Or is that just me?
And that’s it for Season 2!
Our first visit to Cardassia Prime! And it ain’t fun for Chief O’Brien.
A Josef K. scenario gives us some good insight into Cardassian culture, meanwhile the Maquis and factions of the Central Command conspire to cause mishigoss with the treaty. Been a trend lately…
Avery Brooks directed this one; maybe he’s a better director than actor?
I remember May 23, 1994. In some ways it feels like 14 lifetimes ago, in other ways it feels like this morning. Kind’ve Q’s point about time (and anti-time!) and us puny humans and our inability to think outside of our precious little understanding of the Universe.
I remember being truly stumped right along with Picard - unable to solve the riddle of the reverse-time expanding gray glow-y primordial goo-killing thing.
In addition to that, it is just so cool to see the beginning of the show again from the end’s point of view, as well as a glimpse into 25 years down the line. Picard and Crusher married? And divorced? Oy vey!
It’s tough to wrap up a 7 year run of a series but All Good Things… does it just about perfectly. Four features are to follow - only one of them any good.
The dust is still settling from the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. An old member of the Petain-esque government wants to come home despite his exile. He’s able to do so by sharing information on Vedek Bareil who, wouldn’t you know, is this close to being elected Kai. But mean, nasty Vedek Winn is able to use this information.
I like this episode for two reasons. One, if this was the first episode of DS9 you watched you would really have no idea what was going on. Two, there is a twist ending and I must admit to you that I totally didn’t see it coming.
Starfeet’s favorite duffel bag full of damaged goods, Ro Laren, is back in town. Picard is beaming that his protoge is in some sort of special ops program. She is sent to infiltrate the Maquis and, wouldn’t ya know it, winds up joining forces with them.
Michelle Forbes, better known to the kids as Admiral Cain on Battlestar Galactica, is really a terrific actor. She has this amazing ability to appear both really strong and yet somehow unsure of herself at the same time. It’s kind’ve in the way she holds her neck. Hard to describe - you have to trust me. Anyway, this is fantastic stuff.
The Mirror Universe is back! And while the double Deus ex Machina to get ‘em in and out may be a drag it is sooooo much fun to play around in this setting.
The Terran Empire has fallen to a Cardassian-Klingon Alliance and Bajor is on a most favored nation status. They control the station and Kira Nerys rules the roost. She is tough as nails and when she isn’t forcing Sisko to service her she is sending Terrans down into the mines. The only good person here is Quark and Odo is still basically the same. “Oh, how our lives would be different if history went a different way.”
Oh - and Mirror Spock DID use the Tantalus to bring down Kirk. That was the whole problem. D’oh!
