DS9: Looking For Par'Mach In All the Wrong Places

There's a story about Steve Martin going in to the studios to pitch Roxanne (a kickass film and if you haven't seen it you really ought to) and he would say, "It's an update of Cyrano." And then the studio guys looked at him blankly and asked, "Sound's great Steve. What's Cyrano?" And then Steve Martin would have to pitch a hundred year old play about a guy who died three hundred years before that. Of course, the movie got made and we're all better off for that.

We're also a lot better off for Michael Dorn either knowing all about Cyrano or having recently seen Roxanne himself because he went in and pitched the story to the DS9 writing team and their update on the old play is the pretty much perfect episode, "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places."

Basically, Worf sees Grilka coming aboard DS9 and instantly falls in love. Remember Grilka? She's Quark's kind-of-wife and a serious Klingon hottie. Work and Quark are both in love but Worf agrees to help Quark master the art of Klingon courtship so he can pitch sufficient and (rather growly) woo at Grilka. Hilarity ensues.

Shimerman spent nearly two weeks working
with the Bat'leth and it totally pays off. 

Between Worf pining after Grilka, Jadzia pining after Worf, and Quark doing everything he can to keep up (including quoting Edwin Starr songs) this one is crammed full of great stuff. And the nice thing is that the B-plot here is also really lovely. Kira's knocked up with the O'Brien baby and the more time she and Miles spend together, the closer they get until they accidentally realize a mutual attraction. What plays out is realistically awkward and innocent and plenty funny while giving a little more depth and humanity to the characters.

As far as things go, this is actually not the
weirdest thing that's ever happened to us.

DS9: Season 4 Essentials

Hey look, it's an Essential Episode post! Hooray! Basically, at some point, I felt like the Weekend Round Up and Season Essential posts together were redundant. Instead of deciding which one to keep, I just gradually stopped doing both. Ridiculous. Anyway, I missed these posts and (according to your comments and emails) so did you. This is a tough one since Season 4 is AMAZING but here goes:

Episode 4.3: The Visitor
-There's a whole post about how awesome this one is.
-Basically this is DS9's equivalent to TNG's The Inner Light and it is 100% amazing.
-From watching Jake grow up and then grow old to seeing Nog as a Commander in Starfleet and super-old Dax and Bashir, this one is great fun. (I really think we should've seen Dax in a new host instead of just old Jadzia but whatever, it's still cool)
-Oh, also it will make you cry. LIKE A BABY.

Episode 4.8: Little Green Men
-Like Humbug was for The X-Files, this one is DS9's very first real attempt at comedy and it's totally successful.
-Watch this one to see how Ferengi antics mesh with the 1950's B-movie vibe.
-Meta jokes abound along with a hilarious Worf tooth-sharpening bit.

Episode 4.10/11: Homefront/ Paradise Lost
-Political intrigue, alien spies, crazy changelings--this is the stuff DS9 is made of.
-Check this one out to witness a conspiracy plot unfold into an astounding loss of personal freedoms, suspicion among friends and family, and lots and lots of talk about cajun home cooking.
-Bonus: Lots of Nog in this one.

Episode 4. 24: The Quickening
-Nope, this is not about a group of immortals lopping each other's heads off with swords.
-It's actually a super-solemn but don't let that put you off because it's also a great "we are a beacon of hope" episode.
-Bashir has to come to grips with his own limitations on a planet beset by a deadly plague. It's well-written and acted (and perfectly directed by Rene Auberjonois) and bursting with heart.

Episode 4. 25: Body Parts
-Ferengi Hijinks!
-Quark thinks he's dying and, realizing he has no assets with which to pay off his debts, starts auctioning off his own vacuum-desiccated remains.
-Rom and Liquidator Brunt are both fantastic here.
-Quark learns a lesson... kind of.

Runners Up:

Episode 4.1: The Way Of The Warrior
-This is the one where Worf joins DS9 and gets a pretty new uniform.
-Also, it explains a lot about what's going on with the Dominion/The Founders/The Defiant

Episode 4.22: For The Cause
-Watch this one to find out what happens with Kasidy Yates and Commander Eddington.
-It's kind of a heart-breaker. Just so you know.

Jadzia

I am way into Jadzia Dax lately. Part of it, I think, is that all of DS9 gets better in Season 4 and Worf brings a whole new life to the series. The whole Worf/Jadzia relationship... Jadziorf... Wodzia... anyway, it's great. Jadzia has always been a badass chick with science skills, computer hacking skills, bow hunting skills, Klingon fighting skills but for whatever reason, I just can't get enough of her lately. So, today I drew a little portrait: 

DS9: The Muse

My husband and I are both writers. When people discover this little factoid they invariably say something like, "Oh wow, what's that like?"

Well, I can tell you what it's not like. It's not like the DS9 episode, "The Muse." In this one, Jake runs into an alien chick who's basically a creative juice vampire. She sets up writers and other creative types with a comfy studio in which to work, sets them spinning like a top, and then feeds off their creative energy. Strangely enough, it's actually creepier than it sounds. Here's a picture that you will never get out of your head:

I actually ended up watching this one with Scott and we were both completely baffled at Jake's ability to write while someone's staring at him, massaging him, brain-sucking him, talking constantly right next to his ear. Ronald Moore said of this episode that only a writer would come up with a story about a beautiful woman staring transfixedly at you while you write. I contend that it takes someone who's categorically not a writer to come up with this. Maybe it's just me but if Scott suddenly plunked down behind me and started breathily babbling into my ear I would not only not be able to get anything done, I would probably get really snippy and take myself down to the promenade for a raktajino. Don't start thinking I'm all unappreciative either. Scott would do the exact same thing if I went all creepy alien creative vampire on him.

This episode shouldn't be dismissed though. Odo has a fantastic B-plot with Lwaxana Troi. She shows up on DS9 pregnant. Yes, PREGNANT. And it's up to Odo to help her.

Their friendship is one of my absolute favorite things about DS9. A better side of both characters instantly comes out when they're around one another. So... watch this one. It's worth it just to see Odo smile.

DS9: Hard Time

Obviously, on this holiday, because I'm a hermit, rather than going out among my thousands and thousands of neighbors in Los Angeles, I stayed in eating Chinese takeout and watching Star Trek. I'd expected it to be rather a pleasant evening but then I realized which episode was next in the queue: Hard Time. This episode features O'Brien being slung into a virtual prison where he makes twenty years of awful, irreversible memories (involving squirreling away food and beard growing) and then returns to DS9 a broken man.

Now, I'm not saying that this isn't a good episode. It is well-acted and well-directed. It's almost an exact parallel to The Inner Light, which I love except that it's mega-depressing. It even features the EXACT SAME ACTRESS because this chick apparently really gets around the "places that only exist in your jacked up brain."

If you see this woman, you've probably been inceptioned. 

I don't especially like Hard Time though. Actually, I kind of always change the channel when this one comes on. Actually, no, I don't like this one. It bothers me. 

Star Trek has always dealt in social issues. Always taking a compassionate (if sometimes heavy-handed) view, they have handled racism, sexism, slavery, war, homophobia, ailing elders, the sudden death of one's parents, and the stigmatization of those living with diseases like HIV/AIDS just to name a few. Hard Time feels like one of those except it isn't. It serves to make the audience angry about O'Brien's treatment but with nothing of substance to back it up. 

So it's not fun to watch because it's Star Trek (and basically episodic in nature--even though DS9 is more serialized than the others) and it's only mentioned in one or two more episodes so while you the viewer will remember it forever, O'Brien will pretty much just get over twenty years of awful circumstances, torture, and his own guilt. It makes me uncomfortable and mad but I don't have anything to really apply that to so I just stew and watch Adventure Time and try (like O'Brien) to forget all about the experience.

And here's the thing:  Do you remember Ensign Sito? 

Yep. Now ya do. She was awesome. 

She appeared in the episode where some cadets including Wesley and Not-Tom-Paris are lying about an illegal flight exercise that killed one of their friends. Later she shows up in the episode Lower Decks about a group of ensigns all trying to make lieutenant. At the end of the episode we find out that she (having been recruited for a dangerous, super-secret mission) was killed in the line of duty, turning a rompy, fun episode into one with a heartfelt, solemn finish. 

In researching Hard Time I found that its story was combined with another pitch which had been bought but not produced about Ensign Sito turning up on DS9 after having been incarcerated in a Cardassian POW camp since her departure from The Enterprise. She would have gone through much the same thing as O'Brien--only in her real life, after having actually done something tricky under orders from the Federation. The episode would have dealt with the effects of PTSD on a young servicewoman who dedicated her career and life to serving the Federation. She could have gone through all the stuff O'Brien goes through and then went off into the land of day players to further deal with it. The DS9 people apparently didn't want to rob the TNG episode of their great ending but I don't think that would've happened. I think I would've appreciated this one far more. 

Oh well, if I ever get inceptioned, I'll just try to make this episode happen in my head. 

Working Out Like A Klingon

Today I watched "The Songs of Mogue" which opens with Dax and Worf working out (and by working out I mean hacking at each other with bladed weapons) together in the Holosuite. It's not only cool and sexy, it's inspirational. Jadzia Dax is one of the many strong women of SciFi and the fact that she can hold her own with Trek's token badass makes me want to put on my fancy-shmancy Klingon workout clothes and head down to the gym.

"Let's french braid our hair and wear deep V-necks while we slash at each other.
I promise it'll be super  hot."

I said a while back that I feel like I'm half-Vulcan, half-Klingon. While the Vulcan part might seem a bit obvious, the Kingon side doesn't show as much on this blog. That part of me is more evident in my physicality, my workouts and my interest in combat sports. I lift weights like a maniac and I'm proud of that. If I go a week without bench press, dead lift, and squat, I get a more than a little grumpy and I've been looking into boxing and jiu-jitsu gyms in the area. I actually wrote a whole post about this which was featured today on The Nested Blog. Go check it out!

Six Months Down... Six Months To Go

Today is officially the halfway point in this blog. Hooray! I'm in Season 4 of DS9 and right on schedule to get everything finished by the end of the year. I can't believe the way it's flown by. I'm already dreading the year coming to an end but I'm trying not to think too much about it. Instead, I'm thinking about some of my favorite stuff from the year so far.

I'm thinking about how surprised I was by how amazing TOS was. Even though I re-watched most of the episodes just a couple of years ago, seeing everything in order, from the start, in the context of this blog made a huge difference.

I'm thinking about how much of my personal history TNG brought up, how much of my life is tied into that series, how well I knew the episodes, and how much I found myself not wanting to say good bye to those characters in the seventh season.

I'm thinking about how much I'm loving DS9. I didn't get to see much of this series during its first run. My life was in a constant state of flux for several years and between moving around at least once a year and my parents not having cable, I ended up missing a lot of the episodes. I caught up over time in reruns and a couple years ago made a concerted effort to watch as much of it as I could but it's still surprising to me how much this show has grown on me. It's quite different from the other Treks. Darker, moodier, and maybe it took quite a while for it to really find its voice (basically season 4) but it has what every Trek ultimately has: a good dose of wonder and curiosity, optimism, and heart.

I'm thinking about how some of my weekly posts have gone by the wayside. Should I bring back Weekend Roundup? Or the Season Essentials? Do you like things the way they are? Do you want more Captain's Vlogs?

I'm thinking about what I have left. Several movies, a couple seasons of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise are all waiting for me. There's also the unknown. I never anticipated creating a bunch of art. I also didn't expect my little project to develop such a strong, wonderful readership. It's caught me completely by surprise and I appreciate every comment, every bit of encouragement and enthusiasm, every conversation I've had about My Year Of Star Trek.

I can't wait to see what's next!