{"id":2545,"date":"2021-04-16T18:08:27","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T23:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/assend.net\/?p=2545"},"modified":"2021-05-06T01:26:36","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T06:26:36","slug":"deep-space-9-watchparty-phil-season-1-episode-13-the-storyteller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/2021\/04\/16\/deep-space-9-watchparty-phil-season-1-episode-13-the-storyteller\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Space 9 WatchParty (Phil) \u2014 Season 1, Episode 13 \u2013 The Storyteller"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Happy Friday, everyone! We\u2019re back with another DS9 WatchParty review, as Drake and I continue to pour through these old episodes of Star Trek. We\u2019re having a lot of fun doing these, and we have talked about potentially expanding the scope to include not just DS9, but also at least Enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will be a while before we\u2019re able to get to that, however, and will likely not happen until after the completion of our DS9 watch-through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Primary Plot<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are three plots to this particular episode, and the writers and directors did a good job of interleaving them. There are lots of cuts back and forth to prevent things from bogging down and getting too boring. This is extremely important, as none of these plots really held my interest. By cutting back and forth between them, the episode kept me more engaged than I otherwise would have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The primary plot is about Hero O\u2019Brien accidentally stepping into a savior role for a small village hounded by an angry monster, who comes once a year to destroy the village. The savior must confront the monster for five consecutive nights, the villagers are rallied and united together, and they all chant the monster away. The monster itself is a boiling cloud formation that appears in the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current savior is old and dying. Doctor Bashir is unable to save him, as he\u2019s just dying of old age. Even in Star Trek, they can\u2019t cure or prevent death. O\u2019Brien gets roped into \u201cassisting\u201d the old man in leading the village to unite their wills and common purpose to thwart the monster and is thrust into the role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the whole thing is rigged. It is a scam. A psyop. It is manipulation at the hands of the savior\/priest to keep the village united and prevent fights, fragmentation, etc. The scam is revealed by the apprentice who tries to murder Hero O\u2019Brien in order to take his place. He\u2019s stopped by the combined efforts of Doctor Bashir and O\u2019Brien. The two DS9 officers immediately hold no ill will against him, find out from him that it is all a scam, and Hero O\u2019Brien immediately just wants to give up the role to the apprentice who tried to murder him so that he can continue manipulating the superstitious, ignorant, and gullible villagers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The villagers prevent the role switch from happening, and O\u2019Brien has to instead go be a terrible savior and allow the apprentice to save the day, uniting everyone to once more thwart the evil sky-god monster by their ties of unity. The only thing they didn\u2019t do was chant \u201cdiversity is our strength.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondary Plots<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the other two plots going on in this episode is a land dispute between two Bajoran factions on the planet. They appear to be small stakeholders, maybe something at a county level, and the dispute involves the movement of a common border. The marker of the border has always been a river, but the river has changed its course and one side has lost a little bit of territory while their \u201cenemy\u201d has gained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A diplomatic pow-wow is held on DS9 to sort things out, and one side is represented by a teenage girl. She\u2019s been left in charge of one faction by the death of her father. She\u2019s a hardliner and ready to go to war to prevent the loss of the territory. Her position seems to be that it isn\u2019t her fault the river moved, the river is the border, and tough cookies to anyone who doesn\u2019t like it. Sisko tries to convince her that peaceful compromise is the proper way forward by letting her know her people may not be as eager to die over the land as she is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other plot involves Jake and Nog. They like to check out the Promenade by sitting at the railing and dangling their feet off the balcony, much to Odo\u2019s annoyance. Nog sees the teenage girl in the negotiations and is instantly infatuated, dragging Jake along to try to woo her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We see the two act like idiots, Nog literally, while Jake is more of a pompous ass. However, they show her around and eventually make friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Other Thoughts<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

All is well that ends well, I suppose. Nothing much of consequence happens in this episode. The technical aspects of the episode are pretty good. It moves well due to the good editing, but there just isn\u2019t much to work with here. No one really seemed to care or have any interest or urgency in the outcomes of anything, even Hero O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, it seemed like a placeholder episode where they were able to throw in some shade against religion as a mind-control device for controlling sheep, so that the evil elites can fleece the flock for themselves, and yet still keep the villagers aligned to their \u201cown best interest.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The episode may be a bit more revealing about elites running things than they may have wanted to be. Certainly, it has the ring of truth to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Grade:  D<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the episode just falls flat for me. I was uninterested in most of it. It was executed well as far as technical production. The editing was good, they did well with pacing, etc. It just didn\u2019t mean anything to me or move me. I was unpersuaded and rather bored throughout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy Friday, everyone! We\u2019re back with another DS9 WatchParty review, as Drake and I continue to pour through these old episodes of Star Trek. We\u2019re having a lot of fun doing these,…<\/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-2545","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\/2545","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=2545"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2550,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2545\/revisions\/2550"}],"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=2545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/assend.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}