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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
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Drama being added
I was told that making your own write up, even biased will make a post more of an effortpost compared to just copy pasting dramatic comments before the link
FDS never existed, and even if it did it was mostly male incels pretending to be women part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Toxic masculinity and not gender wars and astroturfed hate is the reason of men failing
Men can't say women bad, but women can say men bad
I don't understand why mayo moids are crying, mayo moids can't have issue + plus lots of self flagellation over being mayo moids
Equality to an oppressor feels like prosecution?
Straight white men can have issues, for example if they are poor or ugly...
No they can't mayo, I tell you this as a mayo!
You know, that with posts like these, you only giving ammo to chuds and make it easier for them to attract young men?
if a man feels like shit because gendered issues are brought to light, they need to work through that themselves instead of expecting women to sugar coat everything for them.
White men do not deserve compassion because majority of them voted for trump. Cool, but white women did too. That's different
Moids are the destroyers of the universe copypasta
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(Reply to this post)
@Redactor0 grandpa confirm what I got wrong
Nothing fam. Just like I expect from you. Let's see if there's a few points I can elaborate on slightly.
USA Navy forces were not immediately aware of the ramifications the Battle of Midway would have upon the momentum of the Pacific Theatre
Keep in mind that both sides didn't even know how what ships the other had. They were getting bullshit intelligence from their own pilots all the time, so for example the Japanese were overestimating how many carriers they had sunk and had no idea we still had 3 left in the Pacific at that time.
the sheer dominant magnitude of the influence an aircraft carrier would as a weapons platform would supercede even the wildest prewar speculations
I gotta push back on this just slightly. Battleships were going obsolete but it wasn't completely over quite yet. Notice how important they were at Leyte Gulf on both sides and that was near the end of the war. This is one thing where I actually got some insight from computer games. Like so often, that comes in the form of actually getting the geometry involved. A battleship at flank speed could get about as far overnight as a carrier-based plane could fly (I'm oversimplifying here, but you get it). So you could actually dash in and catch them with a little luck. Especially if there were a few clouds out.
But it was really marginal. At the end of the war the proximity fuze for AA shells came out which helped the battleships a lot but also jet engines and guided bombs. And just planes that could fly farther. So it was really obvious by 1945 that within a few years they would be totally useless for fighting other ships.
the Royal Palace in hue
The bastards got there before Old Man Redactor could take pictures of it. But there was a lot of beautiful stuff left in Hue even after the battle.
this upcoming deafeat would be the greatest blow dealt to the US for the entire war
That's a really good way of putting it. You must have some angloid DNA.
It was the single greatest massacre of VC forces to the extent that they literally ceased to fricking be a political power within the communist sphere in Vietnam entire and Cambodia. From then on the North Vietnamese had near absolute control of military operations.
The VC were never really an independent force. At least not at the top level. There were lots of commies in South Vietnam at the beginning of the war of course, but the leadership was always directed from Hanoi. What was really changed by Tet is that all these low-level commies native to the South got killed off. After that, there was no longer any pretense that this was a guerilla war. By the time the old man got there (I think 1970) it was completely a conventional war between the North and the South fought with advanced high-tech weapons. He wasn't hauling an M-16 around when he was on his photography trips to old historical buildings in Hue because there weren't any guerillas to be scared of. Those people were all dead.
The Phoenix Program was also very helpful here. Just using basic 1960s police and office work they rooted out the commies in the villages. This was basically just turning the tables on them. Going after everyone who is on the enemy side. Except we didn't use terrorism the way the VC did, chopping off the head of the mayor's kid and shit like that. The cops just arrested people in 90% of cases. (Statistics on the Phoenix Program are quite interesting, something to go into more detail about someday.)
The US and ARVn performance was absolutely spectacular, perhaps one of history's great battles like fricking Cannae or Waterloo or something
Let's not suck our peepees too hard here. Old Man tells me a story second hand of a guy who had been in some big base around Saigon during Tet. He complained that he never got to shoot anybody because they were all slaughtered by .50 cal machineguns before they even got close enough. This wasn't Hannibal or Wellington we were dealing with.
us Air Cavalry (helicopter troops)
My dad will swear up and down that he hated everything about the Army but this is exactly the kind of comment that would draw him out. The 101st was airborne, it was NOT cavalry!
the lies and deception of the military a and 2 administrations about how good the war went
That's what the real crisis was. If it wasn't Tet it would have been something else to trigger it. They kept saying the war is about to end and they were clearly lying. This is a generation that wasn't beyond sacrifices. Everyone's parents had been in WW2 in some shit job sweeping asbestos off the floor of a shipyard or on the side of the world fighting. A lot of them never came back. But there was a purpose. People will sacrifice a lot for a purpose, but if they're getting jerked around, they notice real fast.
Old Man's story about this is listening to the radio where Nixon is saying that we're not bombing Laos and he's looking up in the sky and there's planes above him heading west. It didn't take fricking Descartes to guess where they were going.
unexpectedly brought low USA civilian morale to continue to send their sons overseas into the meatgrinder
A lot of the conventional wisdom about this isn't always right. We had something like half our casualties after Tet. (One third, I dunno.) And popular support for the war wasn't really eroded all that much if you look at the polling data.
Keep in mind that there's a certain class of people who dominate the discussion of the Vietnam War. Specifically: Guys who dodged the draft so they didn't have to go there and know anything about it. There's an extreme level of self-serving bullshit they claim. Like that the "Anti-War Movement" (lol you sure cared about the Vietnam-Cambodia war) had any impact at all on anything other than being so disgusting they helped get Nixon elected in 1968. These are the last fricking people on Earth you should ever believe. I trust the guys fighting on the other side 1000x more than them.
By the time 2023 arrived the most critical munitions would be basic artillery shells
So my two things I was saying going into this is ATGMs are gonna be important (because of experience in the Middle East in previous decades) and basic b-word artillery shells. There was this cult of precision munitions from Desert Storm. The thing I never heard anybody explain is: What if you don't know exactly where the enemy is tho?
Unironic WW1 bunkers and trenches also came to dominate the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine from Donbass to Crimea, with static artillery war and massed charges for both sides being the most popular strategy, on a grinding stalemate similar as to the ending phase of 1952s Korea War.
The last full-scale war we had between two opponents that was a fair fight was the Iran-Iraq War and it was a heck of a lot like this. I keep telling everyone, but nobody believes little old Redactor. I guess I gotta post more Chronicles of Victory.
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- NotMichaelDouglas : I thought the title was a joke, but the post actually contains photos of white women
- Lv999_Slime_God : I do not like white women
- Kotj1224 : No white women on Christmas. Please. Thank you.
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MERRY CHRISTMAS
Especially to white women, without whom we would have almost no drama please let the white women in your life know that you love and appreciate them
Previous White Woman Wednesdays
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On tonight's episode:
We begin the NewJeans Saga. Join us for a brief look at the history of the major players in the scandal, as well as the opening volleys of a feud that could alter the landscape of pretty ricefoids shaking their hips on stage for ever.
Who is MHJ?
What exactly is, a NewJeans?
Why do I keep using Twice for the OP?
Find the answers to all of this and more, right after these messages from our sponsor:
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programing.
Christmas Thread Theme
Introduction
On the morning of November 28th, 2024, an official representative of the superstar Kpop group NewJeans announced that the members would be holding a press conference to address the ongoing dispute with their record label, ADOR. Two weeks prior, on November 13th, the group sent a letter notifying ADOR of numerous issues that they considered to be breaches of their contract. Per a (standard) clause in the contract, ADOR had 14 days to respond to and ameliorate these breaches. If it failed to do so, NewJeans would have the option to terminate their exclusive contract, without penalty. With the 14 day deadline set to pass at 12:00 AM KST, November 29th, it seemed premature to call a press conference. However, the group was planning to board a plane to Japan in preparation for promotional activities later that evening, and expressed their wish to update their fans on the situation before ADOR could take advantage of their travel to control the media narrative.
They know what they did
And so, at 8:30 PM, the members of NewJeans and a PR representative met with the press to announce their response to ADOR's failure to rectify the alleged contract breaches. What followed was a bizzare press conference that saw members claim their contract was terminated and that they:
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were no longer under contract with ADOR after midnight
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would not need to pay a termination penalty
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would begin seeking other oppurtunities while finishing scheduled events with ADOR
And the really bizarre part...
- would not seek to confirm the termination of their contract via legal action.
This, of course, raised numerous questions amongst the entertainment reporters present who have a solid grasp on how contract terminations work. I'm sure the dramatards in the audience who understand contract law, or are capable of tying their own shoes, have many of the same questions. Thankfully, the girls took some time to take questions from the press.
An excerpt from the press conference. Did you understand?
Always a good idea to check the specifics after terminating the contract
Leaving the world with more questions than answers, the members of NewJeans boarded a plane to Japan to resume promotional activities, setting the internet ablaze with discussion of what was in the future for NewJeans. Well, in order to predict the future, one must first understand the past.
And that past can only be found...
...In the K-Hole.
The Main Players
HYBE
The illegitimate love child of Kim Jong-Un and Xi Jinping Bang Si-Hyuk
HYBE Corporation, initially founded by Bang Si-hyuk in 2005 as Big Hit Entertainment, is the largest of the big 4 record companies in Kpop, with a market capitalization almost 4x greater than that of their next largest competitor, JYP Entertainment. Their success is directly tied to that of their most popular group, BTS, who during their heyday, generated more GDP for South Korea than the Korean domestic airline industry. This great financial success provided Big Hit Entertainment with the opportunity to acquire numerous smaller record labels including Source Music, which would later go on to debut the girl group Le Sserafim, in 2019 and Pledis Entertainment (Seventeen and Formis9) in 2020
With these new labels under their belt, Big Hit Entertainment restructured itself as HYBE Corporation in 2021, structuring all of their various sub-labels underneath the new Hybe Label division. During the years proceeding the re-structuring, HYBE developed plans to debut numerous gril groups, and leading these plans was the former Visual Director for SM Entertainment, Min Hee-jin (MHJ).
Min Hee-Jin
Born in 1979, MHJ began her career in Kpop as a graphic designer for SM Entertainment (one of the other big 4 companies in Kpop) in 2003. Eventually she was promoted to creative director, where she oversaw all visual branding for a number of SM's gril groups, including Girls Generation, Red Velvet, and f(x). Her impact on the industry in this role was massive, as she shifted artistic direction within the industry towards the idea of more experimental "concepts".
You can think of a group's concept as the overarching theme of the group, impacting everything from album art, photoshoots, music videos, and costumes to public behavior and even the type of music the group produces. The concept of an artist can remain static for years on end (think of how Motley Crue have always been party boy rockstars), or change over time (compare the early music and style of The Beatles to their later work.)
Leaving SM in 2018 due to burnout, it wasn't long before she found herself hired by Big Hit Entertainment to oversee the rebranding to HYBE Corporation. It was also announced that MHJ would be the creative lead for multiple new girl groups, as well as the producer for a label that HYBE would launch in the next few years. MHJ took part in initial planning for a new girl group with Source Music, but in 2021 HYBE established the ADOR sub label and named her as the CEO. The first act to debut under ADOR would be the girl group MHJ had begun developing with Source Music, NewJeans.
NewJeans
Upcoming January 2025 Vogue Korea cover featuring NewJeans
Auditions for Mhj's new girl group began in 2019 under Source Music. Initially planning to debut in 2021, this was pushed back to 2022, ostentibly due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Officially debuting on July 22nd of 2022, NewJeans quickly became one of the biggest acts in all of Kpop. Their achievements speak for themselves:
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First idol group in history to occupy the #1, #2 and #3 spot on every chart in Korea for 3 consecutive months with Ditto, OMG, and Hype Boy
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NewJeans surpassed 5 billion total points on Circle Digital Chart in only 64 weeks, second only to BTS (53 weeks)
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First girl group to ever chart 5 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 in the same calendar year in K-Pop history
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Set a Guinness record for fastest artist to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify and also became the fastest Korean act in history to reach 3 billion streams
Newjeans debut single and MV, Hype Boy, released July 22nd, 2022.
This groups massive success on the charts led them to become one of the most sought after brand endorsements in the advertising industry , with them eventually going on to work with Nike, Coca- Cola, McDonald's, Apple, Levi's, and Calvin Klein. NewJeans was so successful on this front that In April 2024, Forbes Korea reported that the group had earned β©30 billion (~$20 million) in advertising in the course of a single year. to put this in perspective, Patrick Mahomes had total estimated off-the-field earnings of $25 million in 2024.
You know you've made it big when even your slop meal gets to go on tour.
Hanni
The Vietnamese-Australian member of a Korean girl group's English male name is Harry.
Born to Vietnamese parents in Melbourne, Australia, PhαΊ‘m Ngα»c HΓ’n's (20) first experience in the entertainment industry was as a member of the Australian kpop dance cover group AEMINA. In late 2019, she was the only person to pass the Plus Global Auditions, the first set of auditions for the girl group that would become NewJeans. Hanni is widely considered to be the best vocalist in the group
Minji
Marcus the Cleanup Queen
Born in Chuncheon, South Korea in 2004, Kim Min-ji began training with Source Music in 2017. She was likely the first member selected for NewJeans, as she was the anonymous face of the Plus Global Auditions that selected Hanni. Often acting as the de facto leader, Minji is the oldest member and one of the best dancers in the group.
Dani
Her male English name is Demitree.
In 2005, Danielle Marsh was born to an Australian father and Korean mother in Newcastle, Australia. Moving back and forth between Australia and South Korea as a child, Dani's first experience in show business was as a child actor in South Korea. She began her kpop career as a trainee at YG Entertainment ( the last of the big four Kpop companies), leaving the company and joining Source Music in July 2020. Probably the most popular member internationally, Dani is a talented vocalist who provided the Korean dub of Ariel for the live action Little Mermaid movie.
Haerin
This Kang's name is Stephen
Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Kang Hae-rin dropped out of middle school in 2020 at the age of 13 to begin training with Source Music, later earning her GED. A taleented singer and dancer, Haerin is also a global ambassador for Dior.
Hyein
(Male name) Collin is the reason we need pedobear.
Lee Hye-in was born in Incheon, South Korea in 2008, making her the youngest member, or maknae, of NewJeans. Getting her start as a child model, she also was a member of a kid's group called U.SSO Girl from 2017-2018. She later went on to star on a YouTube children's channel called PocketTV. She eventually joined ADOR as a trainee in 2021. Despite being the youngest member of the group, Hyein has the most showbiz experience in the group.
Now that we've had a chance to meet the stars of our story, we are finally able to see where the NewJeans/ADOR drama truly began. But first, it's time for a...
Cookie Break
After the success of their debut single Hype Boy, NewJeans quickly followed up with the lead single of their self-titled debut EP, Cookie. As @0BS3SS10N mentioned in the comments of our previous episode, there was something a little off about this song.
With most of the song in Korean, the lyrics, once translated into English, are something else:
Now, these lyrics wouldn't be too bad in and of themselves, at least compared to western music, save for one small problem; the majority of the group was underage when the song was released. At the time of release, Dani and Hanni were 17, Haerin was 16, and Hyein was 14(!). Only Minji was over the age of 18 at the time. This generated a great deal of controversy in western markets due to the sexual tone of the lyrics.
https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/wdclrx/newjeans_cookie/
A solid summary of the drama
As @ftincel touched on above, the scandal was complicated by a report of a pattern of weird, borderline pedophilic behavior surrounding MHJ. She had numerous pictures of underage girls and a 15 year old Brooke Shields on her Instagram, and had also been accused of over sexualizing underage idols while at SM Entertainment.
HYBE, ADOR, and NewJeans themselves argued the song was actually about burning a CD for someone (to bake a CD is a euphemism for burning a CD in Korea) and that the translator who worked on the MV above had mistranslated the lyrics. Most Westerners didn't buy this, pointing out that two of the people in the group (Dani and Hanni) were native English speakers. However, as is common with scandals related to Kpop idols, there were plenty of fans who were ready to eat up the cover story.
https://old.reddit.com/r/NewJeans/comments/wkle0q/serious_discussion_thread_the_cookie_and_min/
Let's see what /mu/ had to say at the time:
You know it's bad when even 4chan thinks you've gone too far
I think this is a compilation of translated comments from Korean sites. If not, someone needs to investigate this guy.
With all of that background info and the Cookie drama out of the way, we can begin our story in earnest.
The Beginning of the End
The Audit
On April 22nd, 2024, bombshell news dropped that HYBE would be launching an internal audit of ADOR and it's executives, due to concerns that MHJ was trying to attract investors to take the label independent. At the time, HYBE owned about 80% of ADOR, with the remaining 20% being held by ADOR executives, predominantly MHJ.
HYBE alleged that MHJ and a VP at ADOR, identified only as Mr. L, were working in collaboration to "free" ADOR from HYBE. The scheme included Mr. L passing classified info about HYBE to MHJ. Mr. L had previously worked with HYBE, most relevantly during its IPO, before being transferred by the company to ADOR. Once HYBE became aware of the plan, the audit was triggered, executives electronics were examined, and plans to remove MHJ as CEO of ADOR were initiated.
Illit
For her part, MHJ released a statement alleging that the audit was an illegal attempt to oust her as CEO In retaliation for her accusing Illit, a new Kpop group under HYBE's sub-label, Belift Labs, and their producers of "copying" NewJeans.
https://www.koreaboo.com/news/min-hee-jin-official-statement/
April 23rd and 24th
The next day, April 23rd, HYBE responded that it had clear evidence that MHJ had been planning to take ADOR independent long before Illit had debuted. The main piece of evidence for this was an unreleased internal document detailing MHJ's plans.
https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20240423006400315
On the 24th, various ADOR executives tried to distance MHJ from the discovered internal document, but a report from Dispatch (basically the Korean TMZ) revealed that she had almost $73 million in put options on HYBE.
April 25th
The Next day, April 25th, HYBE made public it's initial findings from the audit and stated it's intention to report MHJ to the police.
A leaked conversation between MHJ and another ADOR executive, A
In response MHJ called her own press conference that day, which ran for almost 2 hours.
the entire press conference summed up by mhj lawyers pic.twitter.com/3qrfngiz3H
β πͺβ· (@JlNSONYEONDAN) April 25, 2024
During this press conference MHJ touched on a number of topics, including:
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Reiterating that the only cause of the audit was an internal complaint she filed over Illit's "plaigerism"
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Complaining that her shareholders agreement that she signed with HYBE was unfair and currently being renegotiated.
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Alleging that she was promised NewJeans would be the first of HYBE's new girl groups to debut. Instead Le Sserafim was allowed to debut first. (Remember this one, it will be important later on)
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Claiming that she would take legal action against HYBE for seizing her and other executive's electronics
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Stating that all of ADOR's internal discussions about seeking outside investors and breaking away from HYBE were merely jokes
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Tacitly admitting that she would consult a Korean Shaman to help make business decisions (again, more on this at a later date)
The entire press conference is a trip, and this all is just a snippet. We'll do a deep dive into the press conference and it's after effects next week, but for now, let's see how the internet reacted:
Reddit Reacts
Warning:: May contain spoilers for future parts of the saga.
https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/1ca2gc4/hybe_launched_audit_into_ceo_of_newjeans_agency/
https://old.reddit.com/r/popheads/comments/1ca90ty/hybe_initiates_audit_of_adors_management/
https://old.reddit.com/r/popheads/comments/1ca90ty/hybe_initiates_audit_of_adors_management/
/mu/ Reacts
That's all the time we have for this week, but I hope that I was able to whet your whistle for the drama we have ahead, because theres quite a bit of it.
On next week's "In the K-Hole"
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A deep dive into MHJ's April 25th press conference and auxiliary accusations!
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The parents of NewJeans speak up!
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New legal challenges!
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And much, much more, all next week!
I hope you enjoyed this episode, as well as your upcoming holidays. A very merry Christmas to you all and yours...
... From the bottom...
... Of the K-Hole.
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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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not on rdrama in IRL
post your bra size and BMI and I'll get back to you
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A very questionable appointment by @realDonaldTrump. @sriramkβs pet issue is expanding the H-1B visa program and removing country cap quotas for Green Cards.
— U.S. Tech Workers (@USTechWorkers) December 23, 2024
Not America First at all. pic.twitter.com/npWllWi62o
The Republicans are partly doing this as revenge against the bigtech anti-Trumpers but also because the VC douches that backed Trump want cheap labor.
Do you think the Democrats that work at all the bigtech are going to pivot right on immigration in the coming years after getting replaced?
Looks like it if you look at the coding subreddits.
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talkative moth
β guoh (@guoh.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T09:15:18.016Z
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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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Hope everyone has a great day!
Source:
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