Discover Top Posts Tagged with #ds9 lb

putting julian bashir in the microwave in my brain on the popcorn setting

star trek update time. wednesday we did ds9's "wrongs darker than death or night" and "inquisition," both of which knocked my tits clean off, and thursday we did voy's "the killing game" parts i & ii, which were fucking awful.

wrongs darker than death or night (ds9):

man. man. MAN. have you ever just sat after a ds9 episode to go "holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck"

like, when i went into the tag to hunt gifs i saw some complaints about this episode which i partially agree with (more on this in a sec) but overall...jesus FUCKING christ

like you always have a good time with kira. and i think someone warned me about this episode having Dead Parent Content (thank you, whoever you are, for being a real one) and i read the summary/background information section on memory alpha ahead of time so i'd be braced, so like, i KNEW it'd be serious, but even so

ok so even though the summary says "comfort woman" i did not expect them to STRAIGHT UP SAY IN THE EPISODE. COMFORT WOMAN. this is almost as shocking as when they allowed jake to drop the n-word in far beyond the stars. jaw on the fucking ground

i also like...the way gul dukat isn't just a mass murderer, imperialist, slaver, and rapist, he is a SERIAL RAPIST with a PATTERN of predatory behavior with which he lures in his victims. do you think he did that knight in shining armor bs on leeta? on ziyal's mom? do you think they had any more choice than kira's mom has? FURTHERMORE THE FACT THAT DUKAT TRIED MULTIPLE TIMES TO GET WITH KIRA WHEN HE HAD RAPED HER MOTHER. LIKE HELLO???

and he doesn't even think of it as rape! he think he's soooo niceys and such a perfect gentlemen and that all his victims are MADLY in love with him! he is INSANE. having him go crazy was SUCH a good character move actually because it highlights his fucked up thinking which was always there yk

i love also that when kira is upset and feeling powerless the bomb is the sacred and trusty old standby. what's that molotov cocktail quote...you throw a molotov cocktail and then you have an ENTIRELY different set of problems. kira's like yeah i'm a terrorist and i'm proud of it. i'll bomb anybody. i'll bomb you, i'll bomb the cardassians, i'll bomb my own planet, i'll bomb my own space station, i'll bomb the defiant and bomb myself too since i'm on it, i'll bomb dukat, i'll bomb my own mother and she'll have it coming. kira is never truly powerless when she still has access to explosives. can't fucking cross her bc she will blow your ass to kingdom come.

also, kira was in the past for WEEKS...imagine how horrible it was to be back under the cardassian occupation for that long!!! like no wonder she reverted to old behaviors and old thinking yk

i did see some complaints that it's sexist. and like, yes, obviously, but that is kind of the point? i think it misses the larger problem with this episode, which is that kira went back and forth on whether or not her mother is a collaborator when her mother DID NOT HAVE A CHOICE. she didn't have a choice in whether or not to be taken from her family - it wasn't like she could ask to be sent back. she'd just get thrown in the ore processing. she couldn't stop dukat from fucking her, but if she smiled about it instead of "kicking and biting" as she put it, her kids got medical care and food

there is also a delicious irony by the way that BECAUSE dukat chose kira's mom as his comfort woman, BECAUSE he had food sent to her children, kira grew up to be the terrorist stalking the hills of dahkur province making his life hell. he had that coming so bad.

but like back to kira's mom at no point in any of that did she have a choice, except in how well she accepted her circumstances. screaming and crying = a life of misery for her and her family and playing nice = a life of luxury for her, yes, and not her family, but they do still get food and medical care. they live. you know? it's not like meru was giving them rebellion intelligence or helping them make weapons or anything. she was letting dukat fuck her, and believe me, he'd have found someone to fuck anyway. so the central question the episode asks, which is it "can we/kira forgive meru for collaborating?" is a flawed one, because she was a victim, not a collaborator. i think we could have beefed up the issue by having her do something actually bad vs "didn't kick dukat when he raped me" OR by having the central question be "did meru have a choice in what happened to her?" and have the reveal that she didn't come only at the very end, before the bomb went off. and i get sexism in the writing room is potentially at the heart of that problem, but like...aside from that small plot change, how can i complain? every scene was crackling with tension, we pulled zero punches (they SAID the words COMFORT WOMAN), the kira lore was incredible, and nana visitor always knocks it out of the park. mwah

inquisition (ds9):

I FIGURED OUT THE PLOT TWIST. i figured it out early!!! not that early. i figured it out when he got beamed to weyoun's ship. like i knew within like a minute that he had been holodecked. delighted

this episode...whew. it's so good because all the facts add up to make julian look bad, and they dredged up every past episode they could to paint that picture

and for a second even i almost fell for it! i do have to admit that would have been fucking amazing. but i just Knew he was not a spy hence the ship cannot be real

julian was great in this episode, but i wished garak had been there. he could have coached julian on not FLUBBING the interrogation but of course he wasn't there because it wasn't REAL

i'll note that this is twice now he's been kidnapped and menaced when he simply wanted to leave for a few days to go to a medical conference or whatever...if i was him i'd start getting way more paranoid about traveling alone or just traveling in general. wow maybe big bad garak could be his escort <3

i love also what a discourse there is around section 31...like, i usually think that shit is stupid but i totally get it! like, is roddenberry's idea of utopia flawed? absolutely. he was a white guy in the 60s and to all reports maybe super horrible to women. BUT it was also an idea way way WAY ahead of its time, which is what made it so special. and i think it says something about humans beings, something damning, that we CANNOT accept utopia at face value. we immediately begin looking for the catch, the ugly underside, the child of omelas in the hole. it's not that i hated the addition of section 31, because that was a fucking banger of an episode and i think that a true utopia makes for boring tv (hence why ds9 deconstructing it makes for such great tv), but the fact that we can't leave well enough alone says more about humanity itself than any one episode of star trek, i think.

the killing game, parts i & ii (voy):

god, you wanna talk sexism...these episodes sucked so bad

i know tos also did a nazi episode. i don't forgive them either. but dear god

i think no one ever is allowed to put a swastika on any screen ever again without pitching their idea and getting a special signature of approval from at least 100 separate people who either 1. lived through ww2 and did not aid abet or agree with hitler 2. are jewish. world war 2 media is so tired but it's also so OFFENSIVE when you just...put it in star trek. like you're gonna use this as SET DRESSING for your HOLODECK EPISODE? this is almost as bad as when they used the confederate war. reading comprehension quiz for star trek writers do you remember why those wars were fought and which groups were at the greatest disadvantage during them? first person that answers the confederates is getting eaten. absolutely livid

worse: b'elanna being knocked up by some random nazi...like they were there for weeks. i assume she showed up in the simulation already pregnant but were they implying she fucked him during those 19 days too??

making seven sing. evil. worse: having everyone be suspicious of her, AGAIN. this is OLD NEWS seven is NOT A BAD GUY. i'm going to kill the next person who says or does anything mean to seven.

the klingon makeup was also pretty offensive. it usually is.

half of this whole plot involved a fake ww2 plot that didn't even fucking matter.................like, it was a plot that could have been interesting in, say, a ww2 movie. if i wanted to watch a ww2 movie you know what i would have done? TURNED OFF STAR TREK TO WATCH A WW2 MOVIE. this is why i hate holodeck shit

there were two and ONLY two points of merit in this episode. the first was that chakotay got to do something with his hair other than the usual nonsense. i swear he is SO fucking handsome when they aren't actively putting him in shitty uniforms and fucking up his hair. second point of merit was the tuvok and seven moment when he was like "girl SING it is LOGICAL" when she was about to get shot for not singing and she said "LOGIC IS IRRELEVANT" and also told the hirogen they would get assimilated one day <3 that was a fantastic moment in an otherwise totally horrible set of episodes.

TONIGHT: voy's "vis a vis" which BETTER be good we've had so many voyager duds lately and "in the pale moonlight" which i have heard a lot about and am v excited for

#personal #star trek blogging #ds9 lb #voy lb

nothing is funnier in all of deep space nine than jadzia manipulating julian into chaperoning her dinner date with her ex-wife

#nat.txt #ds9 lb #the look on his face when she kisses his cheek... he is so dead inside #she saw that he has one singular ounce of crush left on her and was like i'm about to do some emotional violence #and then made him third-wheel ALL NIGHT. she's my hero

Not only does julian confront tain like “you bastard you put this thing in his head and now it’s killing him so you’re going to help me fix it” but then he’s ALSO like “btw garak mentioned this other guy he used to know someone named elim you know where I can find this bitch?” like he really was ready to go fight ANOTHER member of this super secret super dangerous enemy spy organization all because he thought he was mean to garak once

#ds9 lb #the instantaneous ‘protect mode activated’ for someone he barely knows…… good god

loving the implications of winn saying to kira

"it's been over three months since bareil left us to walk with the prophets"

followed a few mins later by

"bareil used to tell me you could be quite persuasive... i hope he wasn't mistaken. walk with the prophets"

#ds9 #ds9 lb #i literally hate everything about her but shes such a good character #love how subtly it sounds like shes saying 'eat shit and die. also i knew your dead boyfriend better than you xoxo'#SHES THE WORST #kai winn #winn adami #deep space nine #yves originals

i can’t believe odo murdered all of romulus like that

#💀💀💀#ds9 lb #1k