i cannot stress enough what a miserable slog every single fight scene is. they have no concept of action storytelling. nothing would be lost if every single one was 1/5 the length.
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I thought the Section 31 eps in DS9 said all there needed to be said, really.
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Disco’s approach to section 31 undoes everything DS9 had to say, and its so irritating
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What is maddening about Disco and S31 is that literally all they want to do is have this be a mindless action Star Wars adventure series, but unlike the SW shows, they can’t imagine making a fight scene have some sort of progression or central idea or gimmick or whatever to keep it interesting. The way they do action is so fucking boring, as if trying to keep a dialogue going about nothing, which is also a thing they often do.
I’m watching Xena at the moment it makes a point to have something fun or funny or unique happening in the action, and once that gag is delivered or that idea is executed, the fight is over. I was watching one where Xena escapes from a dungeon and literally fights an entire town, it’s insane and extremely fun and it does not take the totality of the time such a thing would imply, she powers through these people like they’re tissue paper and you get the main gist of the scene, “these are shit-farming peasants against Xena: Warrior Princess”, AND THEN IT’S DONE. And that’s an action show 100% about the fight.
This is probably the reason Trek’s always been bad at fights, the show isn’t interested in them, they’re just a means to change up who has what power in a given room when the script needs it.
In S31, the fights could literally end 10 seconds in, because the status quo they achieve at that point will be what it ends up being 7 minutes later. Either make the character earn the change or be done with it.
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the fact that TOS western style stage fights with shatner doing that one sweet drop kick move are shot better than something involving Literally Michelle Yeoh is a crime
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season 4 of ds9 has a shocking number of clunkers for such a good show. The Visitor, Little Green Men, The Sword of Kahless, Homefront / Paradise Lost, Sons of Mogh … all examples of writers having a cool idea but failing to take it anywhere other than ‘wouldn’t it be cool if’. i expected some themes but the ones that do do themes (The Sword of Kahless, Homefront / Paradise Lost) carry them out in a hamfisted way and express basically conservative beliefs about the nature of power both military and political
Little green men is great tho, prob my second favorite ferenghi episode (behind the one about unions)
What did you dislike about the visitor? That was another one that I thought was very good
I do find the klingon focused eps to be the weakest ones on rewatch, never got why they were such a big deal with the 90s fandom
Homefront/paradise lost, in isolation, certainly reads conservative, but I feel like they are essential in establishing the ongoing theme of the show that an overwhelming focus on war can erode even something as utopian as the federation. Its one of those episodes that makes me want to say “depiction is not endorsement”. A show where all the best intentioned, well meaning experts, the neoliberal fantasy, can still turn themselves into paranoid reactionaries
It might not be especially clear that this is how the show will go yet but trust me, the writers knew what they were doing. “In the pale moonlight” in season 6 will reveal how critical of american hegemony ds9 always was.
i have kind of always felt this way from afar, but now that i’m just watching TNG all the way through for real I gotta say I get it. There are a lot of really interesting details about how the Klingons are portrayed that are subtle but excellent. There are some missteps–Like I really think Redemption I/II would have worked better as a movie and not a 2-part episode since the conclusion is really rushed and, after doing a lot to establish the Klingons as an actually very sophisticated and complex culture, having the climax of the episode being Worf rejecting the apparently sacred Klingon tradition of child-murder in favor of Strong Human Values feels very weak
It would take too long for me to spell out all the things I like about the Klingons now, but I think the best moments are basically the ones where Klingon culture is represented as an actual culture, not just like a set of traits and characteristics that are basically biological. By that I mean the idea of “Klingon values” is discursive, something individual Klingons disagree about and fight over and use to establish expectations for themselves and others, it’s negotiable and contestable, which I think is interesting, whereas just making them completely flat “warrior culture” stereotypes in contrast to the federation is boring.
BTW the more I appreciate this the angrier and angrier I get about how stupid the Klingons in Discovery are. IMO Star Trek adversary aliens are always best when they are designed as mirror-images of “us,” rather than flat stereotypes of whoever the perceived enemies of the state are in any given historical moment. To me the interesting thing about Klingons is the way they are able to be both at the same time, I think some times probably thanks largely to the good, empathetic performances from people like Tony Todd rather than because of the writing alone, which sometimes seems kind of at war with itself
I do kind of want to revisit the Klingon parts of DS9 again after this, because at the time I didn’t really “get it” so those eps all kind of lacked impact to me too
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For example, I have no idea what the writers had in mind when they came up with this plot, but watching the Klingon/Romulan secret alliance and ensuing succession dispute/civil war stuff is definitely very uh… meaningful to me as an observer of american politics in the 2020s
I like the tng klingon episodes more because they lean SF shakespearean. Like, they’re structured as tragedies that result from the structure of society presented. You know the famous anthropology paper, Shakespeare in the Bush, which reveals all the cultural assumptions needed for the tragedy to play out? Tng klingon episodes put the audience into the position of the Tiv trying to make sense of hamlet. Its a good sort of alienation technique
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I think this is why the dominion war in ds9 works so well. The federation begins to resemble the dominion and vice versa. Its peak SF as criticism of the present, just as pertinent today as 30 years ago
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Yeah it’s really good. I also think this is kind of why the Cardassians are the best antagonists, that is until the end when what was once a really careful examination of like colonial exploitation and its legacy becomes two guys flying around a wormhole shooting fireballs at each other
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i still cannot believe they spent an entire episode establishing the completely insane cardassian justice system and then never mentioned it again. I THINK ABOUT THEM FILING AWAY PEOPLES MOLARS ALL THE TIME. there’s a building on cardassia just full of peoples fucking teeth!!
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i agree so much that when i played star trek online i made a cardassian from scratch in the character editor since you couldnt pick one initially and spent a lot of time thinking about how funny and alienating it would be to be a cardassian and join the federation
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operation paperclip but for cardassian torture specialists
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i ended up flying around in a defiant too so it’s like cool thanks for giving me a command of the ship that ran around owning my peoples ass for years. starfleet microaggressions
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I liked all of these episodes.
Little Green Men is just really funny (the constant smoking…) and the way the Ferengi look down on modern capitalism as barbaric (they nuke each other?! we never did that!) is a fun little touch.
The Visitor is tied with Far Beyond The Stars for my favorite episode of DS9 probably. A hard look at a family whose parent is yanked out of sync with life by forces beyond their control. Clearly aiming at the heart of the American carceral state. I know Brooks and Lofton number it among their favorites.
Homefront / Paradise Lost, I like them because they give us a good look at the interior of the Federation, which we rarely get in the shows, because they follow starship captains and frontier station administrators, not people living on Earth or the more populated planets of the Federation. The way the paranoia the changelings promote amongst the people, the fascistic security state that begins to arise out of that, and how that’s ~entirely the objective of the changelings~… it’s both a good commentary on the terrorism scares of the 90s, and a nice in-universe exploration of a society potentially falling to nationalist fever.
The Klingon episodes aren’t so strong allegorically, but they offer really good character moments for Worf and Jadzia, and I like the way they tie back to the original Klingon depictions. We get some complex thoughts on culture and duty and friendship!
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I think what the defiant was doing constitutes a macroaggression
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The Visitor is my favorite episode of Trek period. I love it so much, and it hits that much harder having lost a parent.
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