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Although it's technically a holiday in Hong Kong I am in the office, albiet with nothing to do so I have been watching DS9. Here are my thoughts...
Emissary
The best Star Trek pilot, both in terms of entertainment and setting the scene and establishing the main characters for the subsequent series. Quark and Odo aren't given much to do but nevertheless we get an impression of who they are and their relationship to one another- Quark's nephew BIPOC is presented here as more of a hardened delinquent rather than the naughty kid he would later appear as and BIPOC's father Rom only appears in the background. Kira is pretty annoying tbh and it took most of season 1 to let her calm down and stop being angry and unhinged about literally everything. Everyone else is pretty much as they would be throughout the show, including Gul Dukat who has a brief appearance.
The story revolves around the immediate aftermath of the Cardassian withdrawl from their 50-year occupation of Bajor and the uneasy new alliance between the Bajorans and the Federation, who the Bajorans fear might just be a new occupation force. The Bajoran gods, the Prophets, are revealed to be aliens who exist outside of time and space in an artificial wormhole which connects the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants of our galaxy. By the end of the episode the Prophets have agreed to allow transit to the new frontier through their wormhole after a lengthy extrapolation between themselves and DS9 commander Sisko on the nature of linear time.
This focusses on why Sisko- who insists we temporal beings are always moving forward- continues to dwell on the death of his wife during the Borg invasion, rather than moving on which he has argued is what we do. This is very smart writing- taking the very out-there concept of aliens who exist at every point in time simultaneously and linking it to the very relatable experience of grief. It would have been better without Avery Brooks' profoundly uneven performance. I think he is capable of acting some scenes very well- the relationship between Sisko and his son Jake is one of the best father-son combos in tv history- but he cannot play strong emotions and resorts to this odd staccato shouting which just seems weird.
Why exactly the Prophets- who experience past, present and future as one- would seem surprised or even threatened by Sisko deserves some exploration. Especially so since later seasons will reveal he has a very close relationship to one of them. I hypothesise that they are, to some extent, playing along with the scene but, at the same time, this actually is the beginning of a linear cause and effect series of events for them. They use Sisko's description of linear events as a template to create their own, deciding to interract more closely with the temporal universe beyond their own wormhole- that these events occur in the past from our perspective is irrelevant as the Prophets can leave their own dimension at any point along the timeline. From their perspective the line of cause and effect is- meet with Sisko, realise he's 'one of them'; send one of their own to create him; take a greater interest in Bajor and the greater galaxy (including abducting an ancient religious extremist to act as an alternative emissary- a wake-up call to goad Sisko into taking his role as emissary seriously, and saving the Alpha Quadrant from a Dominion fleet); and latterly suffering a schism among their ranks which creates the Pah-Wraiths. This happens all over our timeline but is a series of one-after-the-other events to them and is their exploration of linear existence. Of course, to some extent, they always knew they would do this as they always had knowledge of past, present and future as one- in the words of Dr. Manhattan; "We're all puppets, but some of us can see the strings".
Past Prologue
The first regular episode of DS9 introduces possibly the greatest reoccuring character in Star Trek history- challenged only by his fellow Cardassian Gul Dukat- Elim Garak (or "plain simple Garak" as he prefers). He is the only Cardassian to remain on the station and is suspected of being a spy, which is half true (but of course, the truth is just an excuse for a poor imagination). Andrew J. Robinson (who also played the Scorpio in Dirty Harry- he was wrong to feel lucky- and the heavy-bleeding father in the original Hellraiser) plays Garak a little too creepy and gay and apparently Rick Berman told him to cut that shit out, so Garak straightens out quite a lot in subsequent appearances. Garak is the best part of the episode, the rest of it is some guff about Bajoran extremists- whom we never hear from again- and another appearance by the utterly tiresome House of Duras in the form of the sisters Lursa and B'Etor (in their defence, they do seem to have nice tits) who are smuggling bomb parts for the extremists. Lets just remind ourselves of what eventually happened to them:
Anyway, none of this goes anywhere and Kira ends up looking like a bit of an idiot for initially supporting the nice-haired extremist leader- to be fair she does redeem herself towards the end. All anyone cares about in this episode is Garak and it's worth watching for him.
A Man Alone
Cut to: Bashir and Quark lusting after Dax (Jeets and Jews being notorious for this kind of shit). Everyone assumes that Sisko is going to feed her a length but he insists they're just old friends. For some reason I startrd imagining the noises Avery Brooks makes when fricking while writing this.
Anyway- none of this is the point of the episode and Odo harrumpfing and admitting to being a vocel before jumping up and slugging a guy at the dabo table and telling him he's got 26 hours (one Bajor day) to get off the station cues us to the focus of this episode. The guy he hit was some kind of smuggler but not the good kind- he let a kid die cos her family couldn't pay for the medicine she needed. He then killed a Cardassian for which Odo arrested and charged him. Later on he's seen getting a massage by a web-fingered holo-whore when's he's stabbed in the back and killed.
The tale requires us to go along with the notion that Odo might actually be the killer- after all, we don't know him that well. However Rene Aberjoniois is a fully paid up regular cast member contracted until at least the end of the season. I suppose, back in the 90s, there were still a lot of people watching who didn't understand how TV gets made but the whole thing never gets resolved and a bunch of threads get left hanging- most notably the motivations of Chudd McWrinklenose...
...who leads the witch hunt against Quark when he gets relieved of duty. I'm going to spoil the ending cos it's not very interesting. The suggler guy cloned himself and then killed his clone. Bashir demonstrates this by growing a clone of the guy revealing that, when it's grown, it will be allowed to leave medbay and go have a life- Odo states that "killing your clone is still murder". Now, I grant you that this might just be Bajoran law but lets just recall how Riker and the awful Pulaski reacted when someone cloned them:
The B-plot is about the O'Briens and Keiko being unhappy with nothing to do on the station. The woman was a botanist on the Enterprise (I assume she and a bunch of other civilians worked in specialist jobs like than somewhere among the huge and echoingly- empty halls of that ship- seriously, the Enterprise-D had a compliment of less than a thousand people -including civilians- and had literally millions of square feet of floorspace- place must've been empty as frick) and now she's sat at home with the kid. So she decides to become a schoolteacher because, when all other career choices dry up, that's what you do. She goes to persuade Rom to send his son to the school. Rom is... very different to how he'll be later. Of course,nobody likes Keiko so anything about her is unpopular. A lot of this is for the same reasons that nobody liked Skylar in Breaking Bad- male writers project onto wife characters and make them drag-wheels for the male protagonists... their feelings and ideas an obstacle to be overcome. Nevertheless, here's a compilation of Keiko being an annoying c*nt:
In summary: meh.
I really want to know why Odo doesn't just turn his arms into tentacles and wrap up perps when arresting them or why he grunts and gasps while he's fighting considering he's a changeling who doesn't breathe.
Babel
Cold open on something I've never seen before: a hard working Irishman. Potatoneighbors usually only put the effort into three things- drunkeness, spousal abuse and the glorification of heinous acts of terrorism. But Chief Miles O'Brien will do anything to avoid having to go home and talk to his wife so he's personally taking charge of literally every actof maintenence on the station. DS9 was a shoddy rush-job, it seems and Cardassian technology is a bit shit compared to the Federation stuff. After fixing yet another anus-juice-producing replicator we see a mysterious object within release a strange gas...
The station becomes Wuhan to an aphasia virus which makes people spount gibberish. This is never funnier than when it's O'Brien- Colm Meany (an actually legitimately great actor) delivers this stuff wonderfully and it's an incredible shame that he's removed from the episode so soon. I could watch this shit for 40 minutes no trouble:
This episode is actually quite good and benefits from having no real b-plot. The closest you get is that Quark inadvertently spreads the virus further by breaking into the crew quarters on the command decks to use the replicators after the ones in his bar break and O'Brien's too busy having his spazz to fix them. Now this begs a question: what the frick are people paying Quark for if he's just using the same ship replicators as everyone else to make his food and drink? Is it ambience? I considered the idea that maybe Quark has licences to replicate stuff you can't get at home but then how's he doing it from a crew replicator? Maybe everyone only gets a certain ration of replicator credits and Quark's takes latinum for more but then that really raises the idea that his patrons are gluttons. I suppose the gambling and holo-whoring is something you can't do in your quarters but everyone acts like the food and drink is something special too.
Quark and Odo are the only two main cast members who don't get affected by the virus by the end of the episode which actually makes a lot of sense as Odo's a changeling and numerous TNG episodes established that Ferenghi brains don't work like goyim brains do.
Anyway- first objectively good regular episode of season 1. The next episode will be even better...
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There is also a free trial on Patreon www.Patreon.com/worldaroundewe/redeem/357DD
VERY different content on each of those!
Thanks for being so welcoming of my dead stuff.
There's no nudity on my OF it's mostly me in grey sweat pants and boxers showing off my things I've made from rats.
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Your understanding of the situation is upside-down and backwards.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 25, 2024
OF COURSE my companies and I would prefer to hire Americans and we DO, as that is MUCH easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process.
HOWEVER, there is a dire shortage of extremelyโฆ
Rightoids not happy
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Excerpts:
[โ]LibertyOrDeath-2021 55 points 1 day ago
I used to work at a software/tech company and I hated the H1B staff. Some of the managers were ok, but nearly every single low level staff was a lazy prick or creepy fricking pervert. Give me good old hard working DACA all day and they can all have green cards in my book.
SethMatrix 4 points 1 day ago
The Latinx workers I've met don't say a word and do their fricking work.
Can't say the same for H1B workers.
[โ]superzimbiote 4 points 8 hours ago
Do you think there's no H1B visa holders that are Latinx? Are you guys fricking stupid?
[โ]OkIndependence188 1 point 4 hours ago
Yes
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Good to see Trump embrace Elonโs position.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) December 28, 2024
Hardworking immigrants should continue to be part of our great nation.
From Silicon Valley to the Central Valley, we are better off when we have competition and top talent โ from farmworkers, construction workers, CEOs, and beyond. pic.twitter.com/PGDPP40dbv
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/u/Not_a__porn__account just deleted as I'm typing this. Here's pullpush
https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/baseball/comments/1hm1euc/_/m3qslwt/#comment-info
Some of y'all are just bigots. Inbox disabled. Merry Christmas.
Get fricked if that somehow has triggered you.
Why is every sportsball sub filled with this exact type? Because it's reddit. Yea
I do want to point out the first dude to reply to this while pooping on women has not only openly admitted to paying for s*x with a very young man in his recent comments,
What did xe mean by this
Oh Of course it's a gay guy taking the anti foid stance
/u/Secret_Ambition_1188 is also chimping out all over the thread. This guy hadn't commented in 10 months. He's made 26 comments in there in the last hour
!baseball discuss
- FormerLurKONG : He banned me
- Holly_Jolly_Kong : I'll ban you again the moment you're unbanned cute twink butt BIPOC
- Homoshrexual : Mom, dad stop fighting!
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That pretty much sums it up.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 27, 2024
This was eye-opening.
How will things shake out for our African friend? He's nervous posting like crazy
Post he is responding to
So basically the right split into two factions, tech right and right right, and the tech right is like "hey we need h-1b visa people to do the jobs," and the right right was like "no you need to hire americans," and the tech right is like "but you guys are r-slurred," and theโฆ pic.twitter.com/KatlmN6BuX
โ Autism Capital ๐งฉ (@AutismCapital) December 26, 2024
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It seems there is a certain magic on christmas after all After his mysterious withdrawal, it looks like @Dramamine came back for the last laugh, and built the courage to post again. Congratulations Champ.
And a big thank you to everyone who stuck around Merry Christmas Everyone.
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i lvoe u all, thnak u for usnig the fukcing stie
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To my Jewish friends and neighbors, I wish you a joyous celebration filled with love, family, and blessings.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene๐บ๐ธ (@RepMTG) December 26, 2024
Happy Hanukkah! pic.twitter.com/Uw6Zrsmx5q
Like starving trout to a fly
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Most Based Comments
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I've already messaged Coulthart as well (107)
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Right? I wouldn't touch that with a bare hand (or sleep with it under your pillow), before seeing if it was putting out any excessive Rads. Amazing sighting, I believe you. Maybe I'm an Idiot, but I believe you. (434)
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I can put them in touch! Please OP! Reach out to Garry! I'll send him screenshots of this (322)
DO IT (72)
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Biggest Lolcow: /u/LordFlarkenagel
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Vivek literally got rich by doing a rug pull on the stock market using his momโs medical certificates to push a fake drug.
— Right Wing Cope (@RightWingCope) December 27, 2024
Vivek and his entire family are leeches on our country. They should be DEPORTED back to India. https://t.co/0n2hI0ckrE
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