Just a quick update:

There is a real life Miles O’Brien, and he is a reporter who writes about space.  Fantastic!

When I started this blog, I thought it would be similar to the way I used to make little entries about episodes of TNG on my personal blog while I was watching that, but it’s a bit different.  With TNG, I had seen most of the episodes already.  It used to be on every night at 6 or 7 when I was a kid, and I used to try to watch it as often as I could.  I saw the last episode the first time it was broadcast in ‘94 and I remember being totally crushed that there would be no more TV adventures with the NCC-1701-D.

DS9 was different - new episodes were on late at night, 10pm on Sundays, I think, and the rebroadcast the following Saturday interfered with whatever youth sport I was being roped into at the time, usually swimming.  I saw episodes here and there, but I didn’t even find out the show was over until well after its final episode had aired.

I caught a few episodes when I briefly had cable from 2002-2003, but other than Emissary, everything I’ve seen up to now has been unfamiliar.

In fact, this is the first episode where I actually remember what is going to happen in each storyline.

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The Forsaken at Memory Alpha

• Poor Bashir.  Dude gets stuck with the bad jobs just because he’s an extremely junior officer.

• Considering this is an episode where the main plot involves computer trouble and one of the secondary plots involves Lwaxana trying to get into Odo’s pants (which, grossly enough, are part of his actual body), this episode could have been called HEY LOOK, IT’S MAJEL BARRETT.  I really don’t think anybody would have complained.

• Constable Odo does not have time for romantic interludes.

• In Odo’s humble opinion, most of us humanoids spend far too much time on our… respective mating rituals.

• ODO’S IMPORTANT DS9 LIFE LESSON: Procreation does not involve changing how you smell or writing bad poetry or sacrificing various plants to serve as tokens of affection.  This is good news and it will save us a lot of time!

• A bi-polar torch has its good days and its bad days, you know how it is.

• BONUS LIFE LESSON from Lwaxana: When it comes to picnics, the only thing that really matters is the company.

Federation ambassadors on DS9!  Obnoxious ones!  They’re here to go on a fact-finding mission to the wormhole.  Totally sensible!  Look how well that turned out for Count Opakula.  One of them is Lwaxana Troi, too, so sending them to the Gamma Quadrant might be considered an act of war.

Here’s a Star Trek character being uptight about sex.  Apparently it’s only some races that are comfortable with the idea of ugly-bumping.  Others consider it an extremely impolite topic of conversation!  The trick is guessing which ones are which.  The ones that think it’s a big deal are usually the ones who have been hidebound and uptight the whole episode, or, if it’s still early in the episode, it’s a sure sign that they will be. In this case, it is the lady ambassador who isn’t a proscribed weapon in the war between the sexes, i.e. not Lwaxana.  Dr. Bashir suggests they visit a holosuite (not intending anything sexual, although the holosuites on DS9 usually get put to naughty use) and she gives him a look like he just suggested she kill her own clone.

When Lwaxana’s fancy comb is stolen at Quarks, Odo finds it for her. Ambassador Troi immediately develops a crush on our dear constable.

Speaking of crushes, Miles is having trouble with the computer on the bridge - Cardassians apparently operate like Microsoft in the protecting-users-from-themselves (whether they like it or not) department.

Lwaxana Troi’s crush on Odo is completely delightful.  When I was a kid, I used to hate the crap out of Lwaxana Troi, but as an adult I find her to be more fun than a barrel of extremely fun monkeys.  I’ve heard that the set was always a party when Majel Barrett was around, and I can believe it.

The other ambassadors, meanwhile, are making a nuisance of themselves at Ops when an unexplained alien probe comes through the wormhole (like there could be another kind of probe coming through the wormhole, come on).  Uncharacteristically for a Starfleet officer, Sisko does not want to bring it immediately on board and rub his face all over it.  His caution won’t do him any good, but it’s nice to see.

Troi and Odo get stuck in a turbolift at the start of a series of system failures (system failure number two: transporters).  There seems to be no explanation for the system failures, but since the Cardassians run technobabble through their other technobabble, Odo can’t even escape by shapeshifting.

I think the turbolift breakdown plot is just a way to isolate Majel Barret from the rest of the cast (except the sacrificial shapeshifter) to allow her to happily and charmingly devour as much scenery as she would like without derailing the rest of the show.

Back at Ops, O’Brien can’t figure out the problem, but he is starting to realize that the computer doesn’t want him to leave it alone.  Computer, I know how you feel!  Miles thinks downloading data from that probe that just showed up might have something to do with it.

Trying to get rid of the data proves problematic, too.  The comms and the lights are the next victims of this attention-hungry invasive program.

Meanwhile, several hours later, Troi has finally finished talking about her and would like to hear about an oddly damp-looking Odo - damp because he’s running up against the outer edge of his 16-hour being-solid cycle.  He doesn’t want to change because, as he says, it is a personal matter.  Odo is a man’s man and does not want to display weakness in front of a known lady.

Attempting to distract the computer causes it to sound like GLaDOS from Portal and then to try to blow up part of the habitat ring where the ambassadors and doctor happen to be.  Fortunately, having compared it to a puppy, Miles is able to “build a doghouse” for it.  Most technical problems in Star Trek only exist until you find a metaphor for them that, when extended, provides a metaphor for a solution (the solution itself does not necessarily need to be found, just the metaphor).

In the turbolift, Odo and Lwaxana share a touching moment of friendship before he becomes a puddle in her dress.  That sounds a lot dirtier than it actually is.

The ambassadors, having been hidden away in a Jeffries tube (or the Cardassian equivalent) by Dr. Bashir, got sooty but were not harmed by the explosion, and have all gained a new-found respect for Julian.  Whether any of them learned a lesson or not is unclear, however.

Nobody ends up going through the wormhole and Miles, in the end, gets to keep the puppy.

I admit to the worst kind of infidelity:  I have been putting off watching any DS9 (and hence putting off updating the DS9 blog) so that I could watch some Babylon 5.  But come on, Bruce Boxleitner - in SPACE!

Sometimes a man has gotta change up his sci-fi TV shows about the lives of the crew and political activities that occur on and around a space station.

There will be several DS9 updates over the coming days, though.  BE PREPARED.

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Battle Lines at Memory Alpha

• Miles right off the bat! I already feel back at  home.

• The Kai has a gift for Miles’ daughter, which shows us that the Kai is an old sweetiepie who can tell when someone has a child just by looking at them.  Wait, did I say sweetiepie?  I meant vaguelycreepypie.

• Dr. Bashir (space… um… doctor) treats a broken spine with… CPR?  Man, heck, what kind of low-ass standards do they have at Starfleet medical?

• Kira drops some negativity about death on Kai formerly-slightly-dead Opaka without realizing it.  What a vitalist pig!

• Miles names gadgets BEFORE he invents them.  That is how confident he is that they will do what he intends and do it well.

• I still think it’s just so great that the DS9 uniforms are designed in such a way that they look better when someone rolls up their sleeves.

• Why they didn’t call this episode WAR ZOMBIES (IN SPACE!!!) instead of lame old “Battle Lines” is beyond me.

The Commander, Dax, and sweet Miles have discovered some of the old Cardassian station commander’s files.  Kira’s file is somewhat less impressive than she would have liked.

But today is a specail day!  Kai Opaka, everyone’s favorite short, late-middle-aged, slightly doughy Bajoran spiritual leader is visiting the station.  And what better way to celebrate than a trip through the wormhole?  Taking a civilian dignitary who has never left her home planet through a rupture in spacetime that you don’t fully understand: What could possibly go wrong?

Whilst crusing the Gamma Quadrant (if you say “the GQ” they all say, “Please, don’t call it that”*), they pick up a signal containing a bunch of “statistical data” that the Kai asks them to investigate. So obviously, they get shot down.  The sattelites that were sending each other the data apparently don’t love people listening in on their conversations and can be real jerks about it.

So we have a split cast.  On DS9: Odo, Dax, and O’Brien.  On this week’s peculiar planet out beyond the wormhole we have Sisko, Bashir, Kira, and dead-ass Kai Opaka who died either from the crash or from Dr. Bashir’s ridiculous-ass medical attention.  It will split again when Dax and dear delightful Miles go looking for the Commander.

The GQ** Crew end up getting captured almost immediately by some of the planet’s crazy army-type denizens.  Said denizens (and our heroes) are set upon by another group of folk from the planet.  After some dashing heroics, the Kai approaches!  A zombie?  A vampire?  Or just the regular old Kai with some extensive but extremely vague physiological changes?  Come on, guys, it’s Star Trek.  She’s probably a vampire.

Oh, ha ha, no, wait.  It’s the regular old Kai.  Neither side of this planet’s very Trek-y unending war over a forgotten cause has any skill at all when it comes to staying dead, and apparently it rubs off on anyone else who comes by to visit, such as the little round Kai.

The crew, of course, see this as a breakthrough despite all the obvious disadvantages of immortality, many of which are spelled out explicitly by the local immortals.

The crew try to mediate a peace, but their peace talks turn into a good ol’ fashioned bloody melee right around which time the Doctor conveniently discovers that if you are resurrected on that planet, you pretty much have to stay there.  As a WAR ZOMBIE.  In SPACE.  So Count Opakula is stuck there whether she likes it or not although the show dodges this handily by having Opaka decide to stay there on her own, before being told.

And then Miles saves the day.  Because he is awesome.

* I mean I assume this is what happens.
** Please, don’t call it that

I’m back! Sort of! I am not going to lie about regular schedules, but I have started watching DS9 and blogging about it again. Ok!

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Vortex at Memory Alpha

• The idea of Odo disguising himself as a glass that someone might actually drink out of (with their mouth) is pretty much totally gross.

• The Ferengi build their phasers in the same shape as their ships. Could it be a species-wide copout, or are Ferengi just the worst designers in the galaxy? Their clothes imply that the latter could be the case, but then again, everybody in the future dresses bad.

• I don’t remember yellow highlights on the station before - did they doll it up because they are planning to enter it in illegal space station racing?

• The constant blip-blipping of Star Trek computers would make my brain kill my ears if I had to work with them regularly.

• I had missed Miles.

• The Miradorn apparently fly the same super-advanced warship that the pirates/paleo-bandits who were after the Tox Uthat had, only these days it’s not seen as being quite as super-advanced as it was a short couple of years ago. Or: the company is reusing an expensive model. Either way.

• That Odo can get knocked out (particularly by falling rocks) is just silly. He’s basically jam.

A new arrival from the mysterious Gamma quadrant seems to be tied up with some Miradorn twins, and a fancy-pants-y egg-shaped object they apparently stole. In a backroom deal at Quark’s, this new guy (Croden), kills one of the twins before Odo arrests everyone.

So now the other twin wants to kill Croden (obviously).

Croden’s got a little story about knowing changelings in the Gamma quadrant. At first, I thought this was an early lead-in to the whole Dominion arc. I mean, the episode is young, it might still be, but based on the stories Croden is telling, I suspect that it is not.

DS9’s longer arcs are what made it memorable when it was on TV, but I never really got to follow one all the way through, so I’m pretty eager to see one started.

Miles is on hand to help plan a way to extradite Croden to his homeworld without the Miradorns simply blowing him up.

Turns out Croden’s Changelingbury Tales were just a dodge so he could get to the stasis pod where he keeps his kid. Why he keeps his daughter in a stasis pod instead of in his company is not entirely clear.

Croden never stands trial for any of his crimes, because Odo is a sentimental goofball. Instead, he’s transported to a Vulcan science ship that has no idea that Croden is a murdering thief. Oh, Star Trek! Today’s lesson is that murder is ok, as long as you’re cuddly (whether this applies to your own clone or not is a grey area that this blogger is not prepared to discuss at this time).

The above shot is the runabout and the Miradorn ship inside a gas cloud. It’s not especially important, I just think it’s pretty.

I am putting the DS9 blog on hiatus for a while, because of life things that make it hard to find the time and drive to write about Star Trek.  Sorry, guys!  I’ll be back eventually because I’m not going to let myself watch any episodes of DS9 without blogging them.

I have realized that as long as I am as busy as I am, blog schedules are for suckers.  Besides, we live in the era of RSS!  Nobody checks websites anymore except for boring old-fashioned fossils like me.

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The Nagus at Memory Alpha

• In an era where technology has advanced as far as the tricorder, Jake Sisko should absolutely not need more than one book-sized computer in his school bag.

• The Grand Nagus’ laugh is creepy and weird and I don’t like it.

• I am so glad Miles is back!

• Colm Meaney has spent a good 20% of the season so far under the same maintenance panel at ops.

• I’m not sure why the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi has a huge alien servant, but since the Ferengi are so tiny, it’s kind of hilarious.

In the teaser before the main title sequence, we learn three things. One thing we learn is that Jake is a way obnoxious kid who would rather hang out on the station and maaaybe see a new model of anti-gravity tractor than go to some place called the Fire Caves. I mean, on. The Fire Caves. That is awesome.

Another thing we learn is that the most important Ferengi ever is the Grand Nagus. The third thing we learn is that the Nagus is all pervy.

After the main titles, we learn another important fact: Miles teaches class for Keiko sometimes, like now. Keiko is apparently still on vacation, but Chief O’Brien had important duties to attend to back on the station.

The titular Nagus is in town to hold a conference at Quark’s on extremely short notice, regarding the future of Ferengi business interests in the Gamma Quadrant. And to name Quark as his successor to Nagusdom or whatever you call it.

In a way-too-feel-goody subplot, Jake’s Ferengi friend Nog is banned from attending the O’Briens’ school. Friends despite their differences! Their fathers don’t want them to be friends. Is it too much to hope that the two adults will find common ground in their distaste for their sons’ friendship?

The Nagus also apparently came to DS9 to kick the bucket. This is convenient, because he doesn’t have to listen to Quark whine at him about the attempt that someone else makes on Quark’s life.

It also saves him from having to see Quark get all obnoxiously mad with power. I’m still not clear on what position, exactly, the Nagus occupies in Ferengi society, but he appears to be somewhere between a CEO and a financial advisor.

It turns out that the Jake/Rom subplot is even worse than I thought. Jake is secretly teaching Nog how to read. My teeth are starting to hurt. Seriously, it’s totally gross.

The culprits behind Quark’s attempted murder were apparently the son of the former Nagus and Quark’s own brother Rom. They plan to throw Quark out of an airlock. Not the most original plan.

Luckily (maybe?), Odo stops it, and the old Nagus reveals himself to be STILL! ALIVE! He was in a sleep trance he had learned from his enormous alien servant and was just testing his son’s abilities in the areas of treachery and cunning. At first, before he explained about the sleep trance, I suspected that maybe he had cloned himself and then killed his own clone, but that was incorrect. He may be devious and greedy, but he is not a murderer. So Quark is unNagus’d and things go back to normal, except that Rom gets a promotion in reward for his devious treachery in the name of profit.

Dabo!

This week is a travel week like last week, but unlike last week I didn’t make a buffer of posts for myself the week before. Because I was traveling. Very smart. So: There wasn’t a Wednesday update and there may not be a Saturday update either this week.

Regular O’Brien Update and Important DS9 Life Lesson posts should resume by Wednesday at the latest. Try not to kill any of your own clones while I’m gone, ok?

UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me by an astute reader that it might look like I’m talking about Ellen here (Spoilers!: Ellen was the astute reader). I’m not. I’m talking about me. You know, that guy who wrote the really boring summaries to the first two episodes of DS9? Yeah, that guy.

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Looking back on my first two posts, I’ve realized that 1) writing plot summaries is as boring as reading them and throwing plot information in that isn’t relevant to what I want to talk about it a pointless waste of everybody’s time 2) the feeling that I am not writing enough about each episode of a television show that has approximately 90 jillion episodes is madness and 3) I have to force myself to admit that sometimes an episode is going to be boring.

I was feeling like I had to write a lot because the page looked so empty, which is silly. Of course it did - we just started! So I need to relax a bit.

I’m also not going to try to write and watch at the same time. I’ll collect bullet points as I go, and then if I want to write anything more or expand on any of them, I’ll do so afterwards. Unless there is something I want to comment on because I am a NO RULES REBEL and this is my DS9 blog and I do what I want.

Last entry, I said I didn’t think the show would be picked up anywhere today and left it at that, but I wanted to explain that the Bajoran terrorism aspect wasn’t the only reason. It’s just not ’00s television. For example, here we are, three episodes in already and nobody has had any sex at all yet. We’ve seen a marriage destroyed by war, but that’s the closest we’ve gotten to romance. There’s been hardly any violence, either. Nobody has violently interrogated anyone yet, hardly any shooting has occurred, and if my math is right, nobody died at all in the first two episodes (excepting only those who died in flashbacks). I guess what I am saying is that I’m sad about how television sucks now, but I think there are enough blogs on the internet about how much television sucks now (and probably about as many about how it’s awesome because personal opinions are complicated things) so I think I’m going to leave that particular point alone from here on out.

And lastly, before I start this episode, I want to note that this is the last episode on the first disc and that makes it the last episode that I have seen recently. I have to admit that I was not coming into these three episodes fresh, because I had gotten it early (I use Netflix for watching TV series, and the first disc of DS9 showed up sometime during the second season of TNG through some weird hiccup that has never been repeated) and watched it long before I had the idea to write about each one.

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A Man Alone at Memory Alpha.

• The DS9 theme music reminds me of Fanfare for the Common Man.

• I don’t know if it says more about me or Trek, but I find the O’Brien family to be one of the more believable relationships in Trek

• One of the others is the love/hate friendship/rivalry between Quark and Odo.

• If I had some sort of itchy color-changing prank substance, I don’t think I’d ever actually use it. I’d be too embarrassed to pull a prank that stupid.

• Our first murder! A mystery!

• People have to push buttons to open doors on DS9. That is awesome.

Another thing, in addition to whimsy and intrigue, that Star Trek has traditionally been pretty terrible at: games. The “brain teaser” that Dax is working at is just about the worst idea for a game since that supposedly super-addictive put-the-thing-in-a-tube game in TNG. We’re talking silly to a degree that science has difficulty measuring because silly computing technology hasn’t advanced to the level of these game ideas yet, and may never do so in our lifetimes. I’m glad we never got to see Parrises Squares played, because at least we can still pretend that’s awesome.

The murder mystery is a sci-fi locked room puzzle. This is so much better a puzzle than the brain teaser that it should probably be embarrassed to be in the same episode. The victim, a particularly ridgy (and therefore clearly eeevil) Bajoran criminal named Ibudan, was murdered in the holosuite. The door was opened only twice, and nobody but the victim went in or out. The victim was staying alone BUT! SUSPICIOUSLY! he was staying in double quarters. The only DNA that was found in the holosuite was that of the victim and the investigators. So the only person who could have done it is a shapeshifter, and the only one around is Odo, but the viewers all saw the actor’s name in the opening credits so even though the victim’s personal itinerary showed a meeting with Odo scheduled for the time of his murder, we know that since he’s played by René Auberjonois he cannot possibly be guilty.

This is the kind of plot that couldn’t find real resolution outside of science fiction, despite the lack of space ships and legitimately alien aliens. Star Trek is often classified as “hard” sci-fi, even though it’s more of a space opera, but when it does try to kick it old school it tends to do very well. The episode where Dr. Crusher is the only on on the Enterprise to notice that other people keep disappearing is another example of a good sci-fi story that couldn’t really be another kind of story. I really enjoy these episodes, and I’m hoping that the stationary nature of the setting will deliver a lot more of them.

The solution turns out to be that Ibudan, the victim, was actually the murderer, and killed his own clone. But as Odo so helpfully points out, killing your own clone is still murder. This is an important lesson, so I’ll repeat it: Killing your own clone is still murder. Are you listening, science? This is important.

This entry is about as long as the other two, but that’s ok because it was mostly navel-gazing instead of episode summary. Navel-gazing is what blogs are for. I’m not sure I’ll be able to update at all next week, but starting as soon as I can I’m going to try for two updates per week. That way I won’t have to be at this for another three and a half years.

If I sign off with “peace and long life” every time, would that be too lame? Or would it be just lame enough?

Hi, I’m Ellen, one of the other bloggingstartrek.net writers. If you’re unfamiliar with what we’re doing here, I recommend reading Drew’s first post. Me, I’m taking on The Next Generation.

I haven’t started yet, but I wanted to place myself within the larger framework of Trek as a whole first. I love the Original Series very much; it brings my dual loves of mid-century science fiction and 1960s television together in a glorious and absurd singularity. I haven’t watched the entire series, but I have watched large swaths of it, and I’d be watching it twice a week in syndication if I weren’t at work when it’s on.

I’ve seen an episode or two of TNG here and there, and the only movie that I sat down and deliberately watched was The Wrath of Khan. I’ve also seen parts of The One With The Whales. So, I can see where the TOS mission was to explore the edges of space, visiting colonies and unexplored planets. And I can see how Voyager stumbled into all their wacky adventures in the Delta Quadrant (yes I watched and enjoyed all of Voyager shut up) while trying to get home, but I actually have no idea what the TNG crew’s underlying mission is. For someone involved in a Star Trek-related blog, I am perhaps shockingly ignorant. My impressions, then, will be extremely fresh.

I’m looking forward to starting this whole endeavor, which I will be doing quite soon!

Hello, Internet! My name is Drew. This is bloggingstartrek.net, which is a blog about Star Trek. The premise is that several of us will be watching Star Trek series with which we are mostly or entirely unfamiliar and blogging about them, episode by episode, in order, right here. I’ll be blogging Deep Space Nine.

I remember watching DS9 when it started and thinking it was just amazing. I was around 11 when Emissary was broadcast for the first time, and I thought TNG was just the coolest show ever, so I stayed up and watched the premier of its new buddy (I didn’t know it was meant to be a successor, because I didn’t expect TNG to end). I liked it a lot, but it was on late at night and the rebroadcast conflicted with my Youth Sport Activity (the swim team, of all things), so I only saw a few episodes here and there during its initial run. It wasn’t until I was almost 20 that I started seeing it again on television which, coupled with the discovery that no nerd is alone on the internet, rekindled my interest in Star Trek.

Since I have a job that involves a good amount of solo downtime, I signed up for NetFlix and started watching TNG. Midway through, I found myself wanting to write about some of the episodes, and did so on my personal blog. Since I enjoyed it, I considered starting out right then to blog my way through the rest of the series, but ultimately decided to wait until I’d finished it and then start fresh with a new series. I also decided to ask some of my friends if they were interested in taking on some of the other series. Surprisingly enough, they were!

There’s no real official format, other than that we blog about each episode in order. Whether it’s strictly Trek or whether Trek is a jumping-off point is up to each blogger, and it might vary from episode to episode.

So here goes:

Today I’m watching Emissary, the first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

The start is kind of inauspicious: Flat scrolling text reminds us of the basic plotline of the TNG two-parter The Best of Both Worlds.

Fortunately, it almost immediately jumps to a new perspective on Wolf 359 - the bridge of one of the Federation destroyed by the Borg in the battle. I have to say, this does a far better job of making the Borg scary than TNG ever did. It also establishes right from the jump that DS9 is grittier and far less utopian than TNG - the ship is on fire, people are dirty and crying, uniforms are torn, and nobody is really staying calm. I think this is what appealed to me most, originally. It seemed more real.

Most of the episode is spent in set-up, and I think it would be cheap as hell to try to pad out my first post with plot summary, but I do invite you, gentle reader, to look at the helpful links to your left. One of them is to Memory Alpha, a huge Star Trek wiki just waiting for you to plunge whole hours into its various plot summaries, character bios, technical descriptions, and so on and so forth. I have been too scared of what goes on behind the scenes there to ever click one of the discussion pages, but the content that ends up getting published is pretty exhaustive. In fact, you know what? Here’s the episode summary.

Oh, incidentally, I am trying to watch the episode and blog about it at the same time, pausing as little as possible. This is an experiment that I am not sure will be successful, but I’m trying it all the same.

(Another thing I liked about this series: Miles O’Smiles O’Brien is a major character in this show.)

I find myself wondering whether Kai Opaka will become the Guinan of DS9, and whether that would be a terrible thing. I always thought Guinan was kind of a fun character.

Another thing I’m wondering is how Avery Brooks is so good at being Sisko in the present (ok, in the deep imaginary future, but we’re going to call it the present so that things don’t get all complicated) and so bad at being Sisko in his own memories with his dead wife. I’m not sure if it’s his halting delivery or the fact that he looks completely absurd in his beach clothes. It could be both - perhaps the latter caused the former.

The discussion of linear life vs. nonlinear life reminds me of a video a friend posted on a messageboard recently. It’s the philosophical flipside of the description of how a notional 4th-dimensional entity (given that the 4th dimension is time) would see one of us 3-dimensioners. I quite like it, actually, especially the part where the aliens don’t understand the point of baseball, although I think I like that part more when it’s out of context.

The basic premise is that the aliens they discover during the episode (inside a stable wormhole that will become a major plot point for the rest of their series) aren’t limited to linear time, and have no concept of a past or future. It’s fun to see Star Trek try its hand at Big Ideas, and this episode is no exception. They always do it at least pretty well, from a dramatic perspective, at least in my opinion. Things might get a little cheesy, but if you suspend enough disbelief, things can get pretty touching. This episode doesn’t get me as much as some TNG episodes (Family, Lessons), but I’m also not as invested in these characters as I was in the TNG characters. Yet.

An odd thing about how watching a show for a long time can get to you: I haven’t even finished TNG yet, but seeing the Enterprise arrive at DS9 when she returns at the end of the episode gave me a wave of nostalgia. It’s strange, because it’s been perhaps four days since I last watched an episode of TNG (I started DS9 early to kick the blog off). I also got a smile out of the group of wedge-shaped ships with the vaguely X-shaped wings that arrive at the very end of the episode. They’re science vessels this time, but during the run of TNG, that design has been all manner of things. I don’t know if that was a nod to Trek fans in general, or just a conveniently available model. Either way, I’m ok with it.

A few excuses to use WordPress’ bullet point feature:

• They drop the religious overtones in your path very early on, almost as soon as Sisko is on the station.

• Avery Brooks has enormous hands

• A lot of time is spent reminding the fans that Sisko is not just like Picard: he is hands-on, gets angry, has hair, etc.

• Dax isn’t into the contractions so much. I don’t know if that continues through the series, but it makes me feel like they’re trying to make sure I don’t miss Data too much.

• “Never trust ale from a god fearing people” is a bad bit of advice, considering how Catholic the Irish are reputed to be and how delicious their beers are. Granted, the most famous is a stout, but I still tend to doubt Quark’s idiom.

• It seems like some scenes were shown out of order - Miles’ disembarkation is shown halfway through Emissary, but I suspect it was meant to be shown earlier. Otherwise, he decided to change his uniform just to go back to the Enterprise and say goodbye before leaving for the second time (it is established earlier that he’d been settled in already by the time Sisko arrived).

• Gul Dukat is a pretty fantastic villain. I am excited about learning to love to hate him all again.

I’m still working out how I want this blog to go, so if anyone (including any other bloggingstartrek.net writers) have any ideas or suggestions, feel free to post them in the comments! I’m looking forward to this project partly as an excuse to catch up on DS9, but also as a way to practice writing and keeping up with a regular schedule, so I’m open to input from basically anybody at this point.

Ok!