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DS9 so far
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eponymous_rose finally convinced me to give Star Trek: Deep Space 9 a try. I'm almost to the end of S2 (I watched "The Maquis" last night), and I'm enjoying it, although I don't think it's going to become my favorite show ever.
DS9 mostly avoids the "everyone learns a valuable lesson" preachiness that I associate with The Next Generation (and TOS, although TOS at its best had, for me, enough good or at least wacky stuff to compensate). The only episode that has really hit my "this is why I couldn't keep watching TNG" button is "Melora," which was well-intentioned but unspeakably bad.
On the whole DS9 is shades-of-gray without being bleak and ethically complex without falling into the trap of false equivalencies. The Bajorans are far from perfect, but that doesn't mean they were wrong to fight against Cardassian occupation; the Cardassians aren't OMG EVIL, but that doesn't mean their military government isn't fucked up or their murder of ten million Bajorans should be forgotten. And, yes, my favorite episodes so far have been the political ones. (Why does this show have a reputation for being right-wing? I can't tell you how happy I was when the Bajoran priest who was all "teach religion in the schools!" turned out to be a power-hungry murdering hypocrite.)
Although I know there won't be any actual LGBT characters, at least there's an acknowledgement of the possibility of same-sex desire: In "Rules of Acquisition," Jadzia Dax figured out that the Pel was in love with Quark, but had no clue Pel was a woman until Pel said so. It's not much, but it's something. And of course there's Jadzia Dax herself, whose gender identity is interestingly complicated.
Speaking of gender, DS9 is refreshingly free of the ingrained sexist storytelling that mars so many genre (and not only genre) shows. The women characters are fully as three-dimensional as the men and their storylines are as interesting; more so in most cases, in fact. And the kinds of stories the women get are the kinds of stories typically given only to men--stories about loyalty, the consequences of past actions, how to make ethical choices, etc. In contrast, storylines traditionally seen as "feminine"--about family and romance--are tending to go to the male characters.
Kira Nerys is 300 flavors of awesome and I hope she starts getting screen time again soon--she's been rather sidelined for a while. Sometimes her regret over her actions during the war is played a little heavily for my taste, but it's never carried to the point where she regrets the fact of having fought (which would imply that the Bajoran resistance was the moral equivalent of the Cardassian occupiers). Unrepentant freedom fighter FTW! Now, in the ongoing post-9/11 terrorism panic, I can't imagine that a U.S. show will ever be so gutsy again.
My other favorite character is Odo, although the development of his character hasn't lived up to the possiblities. He's tending to get the "learning to be human" storylines that TOS gave to Spock and TNG gave to Data, the ones that are about cute moppets befriending him or him having awkward confrontations with his pseudo-father. (I wanted that episode to be much more bitter, because we know that Odo was required to perform shapeshipfting tricks to amuse the Cardassian occupiers, which to me doesn't exactly suggest paternal care on the scientist's part.) I'd love to see stories about Odo's intractable differences from human(oid) beings, about the fact that his whole self-presentation is a somewhat unsuccessful imitation of something he is not. His mouth is not a mouth; he doesn't eat or drink or have a sense of smell; he can imitate rats and drinks trolleys perfectly but he can't get his face to look like any known species (perhaps he secretly doesn't want to?). And he's apparently asexual, which the other main characters persist in Not Getting. They keep encouraging him to be more like them; I'm hoping for episodes that shake up those assumptions and allow Odo to assert difference as something other than lack or deficit.
Other topics: (1) I'd like Sisko better if Avery Brooks would stop declaiming. Some of it's probably deliberate (I laughed when Gul Dukat called Sisko "joyless") but all too often it comes across as Brooks showing us that he'd really rather be playing King Lear. (2) Garak and Bashir are indeed slashy, but so far I'm finding Bashir terminally dull despite his beauty. Hopefully he'll get more development eventually. (3) Quark, although not my favorite, is probably the most vivid and intriguing character on the show, in part because even under all those prosthetics Armin Shimerman can act rings around the rest of the cast. And how cool was it that Quark got to have the Passionate Tragic Romance in "Profit and Loss"? Okay, I rolled my eyes at the actual story, but I adored the fact that it took place between two characters who are kind of ugly by human standards.
So does anyone have fanfic recs for stories that don't contain post-S2 spoilers? (My definition of "spoilers" includes post-S2 revelations about character backstory.) Preferably Kira-centric or Odo-centric and character-focused. Stories that include a component of romance or sex are fine, but I'm not particularly looking for shippy/romantic stories at the moment.
And finally, please avoid mentioning post-S2 spoilers in comments. I'm spoiled for some stuff, but I'm trying to keep further spoilers to a minimum. Thanks!
ETA: I've just watched "The Wire" and now I ship Garak/Bashir much more than I did. And I'm in love with Garak, largely because he seems to have wandered in out of a John Le Carré novel. (Now there's a cracky crossover possibility!)
eponymous_rose finally convinced me to give Star Trek: Deep Space 9 a try. I'm almost to the end of S2 (I watched "The Maquis" last night), and I'm enjoying it, although I don't think it's going to become my favorite show ever.DS9 mostly avoids the "everyone learns a valuable lesson" preachiness that I associate with The Next Generation (and TOS, although TOS at its best had, for me, enough good or at least wacky stuff to compensate). The only episode that has really hit my "this is why I couldn't keep watching TNG" button is "Melora," which was well-intentioned but unspeakably bad.
On the whole DS9 is shades-of-gray without being bleak and ethically complex without falling into the trap of false equivalencies. The Bajorans are far from perfect, but that doesn't mean they were wrong to fight against Cardassian occupation; the Cardassians aren't OMG EVIL, but that doesn't mean their military government isn't fucked up or their murder of ten million Bajorans should be forgotten. And, yes, my favorite episodes so far have been the political ones. (Why does this show have a reputation for being right-wing? I can't tell you how happy I was when the Bajoran priest who was all "teach religion in the schools!" turned out to be a power-hungry murdering hypocrite.)
Although I know there won't be any actual LGBT characters, at least there's an acknowledgement of the possibility of same-sex desire: In "Rules of Acquisition," Jadzia Dax figured out that the Pel was in love with Quark, but had no clue Pel was a woman until Pel said so. It's not much, but it's something. And of course there's Jadzia Dax herself, whose gender identity is interestingly complicated.
Speaking of gender, DS9 is refreshingly free of the ingrained sexist storytelling that mars so many genre (and not only genre) shows. The women characters are fully as three-dimensional as the men and their storylines are as interesting; more so in most cases, in fact. And the kinds of stories the women get are the kinds of stories typically given only to men--stories about loyalty, the consequences of past actions, how to make ethical choices, etc. In contrast, storylines traditionally seen as "feminine"--about family and romance--are tending to go to the male characters.
Kira Nerys is 300 flavors of awesome and I hope she starts getting screen time again soon--she's been rather sidelined for a while. Sometimes her regret over her actions during the war is played a little heavily for my taste, but it's never carried to the point where she regrets the fact of having fought (which would imply that the Bajoran resistance was the moral equivalent of the Cardassian occupiers). Unrepentant freedom fighter FTW! Now, in the ongoing post-9/11 terrorism panic, I can't imagine that a U.S. show will ever be so gutsy again.
My other favorite character is Odo, although the development of his character hasn't lived up to the possiblities. He's tending to get the "learning to be human" storylines that TOS gave to Spock and TNG gave to Data, the ones that are about cute moppets befriending him or him having awkward confrontations with his pseudo-father. (I wanted that episode to be much more bitter, because we know that Odo was required to perform shapeshipfting tricks to amuse the Cardassian occupiers, which to me doesn't exactly suggest paternal care on the scientist's part.) I'd love to see stories about Odo's intractable differences from human(oid) beings, about the fact that his whole self-presentation is a somewhat unsuccessful imitation of something he is not. His mouth is not a mouth; he doesn't eat or drink or have a sense of smell; he can imitate rats and drinks trolleys perfectly but he can't get his face to look like any known species (perhaps he secretly doesn't want to?). And he's apparently asexual, which the other main characters persist in Not Getting. They keep encouraging him to be more like them; I'm hoping for episodes that shake up those assumptions and allow Odo to assert difference as something other than lack or deficit.
Other topics: (1) I'd like Sisko better if Avery Brooks would stop declaiming. Some of it's probably deliberate (I laughed when Gul Dukat called Sisko "joyless") but all too often it comes across as Brooks showing us that he'd really rather be playing King Lear. (2) Garak and Bashir are indeed slashy, but so far I'm finding Bashir terminally dull despite his beauty. Hopefully he'll get more development eventually. (3) Quark, although not my favorite, is probably the most vivid and intriguing character on the show, in part because even under all those prosthetics Armin Shimerman can act rings around the rest of the cast. And how cool was it that Quark got to have the Passionate Tragic Romance in "Profit and Loss"? Okay, I rolled my eyes at the actual story, but I adored the fact that it took place between two characters who are kind of ugly by human standards.
So does anyone have fanfic recs for stories that don't contain post-S2 spoilers? (My definition of "spoilers" includes post-S2 revelations about character backstory.) Preferably Kira-centric or Odo-centric and character-focused. Stories that include a component of romance or sex are fine, but I'm not particularly looking for shippy/romantic stories at the moment.
And finally, please avoid mentioning post-S2 spoilers in comments. I'm spoiled for some stuff, but I'm trying to keep further spoilers to a minimum. Thanks!
ETA: I've just watched "The Wire" and now I ship Garak/Bashir much more than I did. And I'm in love with Garak, largely because he seems to have wandered in out of a John Le Carré novel. (Now there's a cracky crossover possibility!)
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That's a good way to put it. So far I've found a lot--probably the majority--of the episodes to be mediocre, but when it's good, it's amazing. And the characters would keep me watching even if the amazing episodes were fewer.