The DS9 crew find intel files kept on all station personnel and sundry by the previous owner\/occupants, the Cardassians. Shockingly, they don\u2019t think very highly of the people who stuck around and are now living and working on DS9. This is what Kira-the-Needlessly-Defiant gets upset about. They seemed to think she was a messenger girl at best, a mook, a minion, a flunky. She\u2019s quite indignant about this, but as the case with most of these opening scenes, this goes nowhere. It is just a fun little cookie to throw out and provide a sense of depth and other events taking place on DS9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bajoran Pope-ette (I can\u2019t remember the name now) comes aboard DS9 for diplomatic nicety. She spends some time looking out the viewport towards the wormhole, which is not visibly present, as there is no traffic today. She makes a wistful comment that she\u2019s never seen it, so Kira and Sisko make it a point to put her in a Runabout with them and take her out to see it. Of course, this means they are going through the wormhole. They have the doctor tag along for good measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While on the other side, somewhere in the gamma quadrant, they pick up a strange signal. That never happens on Star Trek! Sisko, keeping in mind his passenger, decides to send a probe in to check it out. They can follow up on it later. But the Pope-ette convinces them to not change their normal procedures on her account, so they go in closer to take a look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Roundabout gets shot down by a satellite system, and they crash on the planet. The Pope-ette is killed during the crash, and Kira-the-Needlessly-Defiant is, of course, defiant towards death in her overly dramatic scene. It is unintentionally amusing in what should be a moment of high drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The party encounters a group of humanoids who behave aggressively towards them. They\u2019ve been marooned on the planet as criminals and have no way off. There is another band also marooned on the planet, and they fight a meaningless war against each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The leader of this new band is played by Mike Erhmantraut from Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad (actor Jonathan Banks). I LOVE this guy. He\u2019s one of my favorites. He plays the same character here that he always does, same vocal intonations and speaking patterns, but all Star Trekked up with long hair and such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Pope-ette gets resurrected, and Kira-the-Needlessly-Defiant loses her shit again for the third time this episode, letting Mike have it for not setting sentries, utilizing scouts, and fighting the war appropriately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mike points out that when you lose your fear of death, there\u2019s not much point to a lot of caution or other survival tomfoolery, and we find out that they\u2019ve been marooned here for a long, long time. They\u2019ve fought an endless war with their rivals, nothing ever changes, and this is basically a living hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sisko decides to try to help and offers them refugee status when they get rescued. Mike takes the band to meet with their rivals, letting them know they can have peace and will be settled on different worlds, if they can work together to get rescued now. The rivals think it is all a trick, things escalate quickly violence ensues, and everyone dies except for the DS9 crew thanks to some fast intervention by the doctor. He\u2019s determined that there is a bacterium that patches everyone up after they die, but if anyone who has died and been resurrected by the bacteria they become completely dependent upon it. If they leave the planet, they\u2019ll die, as the bacterium can\u2019t survive or work there magic anywhere else, for reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hero O\u2019Brien engineers his way around the satellite defense system and comes to rescue everyone. The Pope-ette decides to honor prophecy and stay behind, ministering and teaching and helping these people. That\u2019s lucky, \u2018cause she couldn\u2019t leave anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kira is forced to confront her needlessly defiant behavior and has a confession of sorts with the Pope-ette. The doctor breaks the bad news to Mike about their status and offers to try to find a way to reprogram the bacteria to help out. Mike wants to use that to deprogram the bacteria in his enemies and finally win the war, and everyone just bails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is an interesting, albeit probably unintended, illustration that those mired in sin will remain in sin and need a savior. Those in Hell find themselves in Hell because of their choices, and once in Hell cannot choose to leave it. They remain chained and enslaved to their sin, having lost all charity and grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best thing Star Trek ever did was coming up with their standard User Interface that they started in TNG and used in everything else since. It is attractive, unobtrusive, elegant, and most importantly, it prevents the effects team from having to make something up and produce it every time they want to show something on a monitor or panel. Consistency is great for both the audience and the design\/execution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The effects team just has to plug in whatever doodad or gizmo effect or overlay they want to show, and then move on. It looks nice enough and everyone can pretend in the same manner that they\u2019re manipulating the same sorts of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was a fairly good episode, even though it was mired and chained by some writing and execution issues. It was thoughtful and provoking, and Kira got some good character development. Things seem like they are really starting to look up for DS9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welcome to this week\u2019s DS9 WatchParty. We are watching the episode wherein Kira-the-Needlessly-Defiant gets needlessly defiant about someone else\u2019s failure to perceive her as sufficiently defiant. She is then defiant some more,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26017,"featured_media":1946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,43,2,21,33,20],"tags":[28,27,24,29,32,31,30],"class_list":["post-2530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deep-space-9","category-phil","category-reviews","category-sci-fi","category-star-trek","category-tv","tag-deep-space-9","tag-ds9","tag-reviews","tag-sci-fi","tag-star-trek","tag-television","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26017"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2538,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2530\/revisions\/2538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assend.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/S01E12-effects-2.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assend.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/S01E12-Kira-overacting.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assend.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/S01E12-Mike-1.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assend.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/S01E12-Kira-defiant.png\")
Other Thoughts<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/assend.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/S01E12-UI.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nFinal Grade: B-<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n