Deep Space 9 Livetweet, S2, Episodes 6-10
A mug Katy would not allow in the house.———
DS9 S2 Ep 6, “Melora”
– This episode is about a Shirty Disabled Woman, and it’s kind of uncomfortable. Once again, this script makes this seem like the first and only time anyone has ever been disabled, or a non-humanoid species, in the whole Federation.
– I take it back, this episode is so fucking uncomfortable. Bashir is now teaching a woman not to have workplace disputes about her accessibility arrangements and Starfleet’s apparent lack of structural support.
– Julian tells a weird story about how he watched a child die when he was ten. He then thought about being a doctor, but instead tried to be a tennis player, and wasn’t good enough.
Katy: She could do better. I enjoy how rubbish Julian is, but that doesn’t mean I think anyone should be with him.
– Dax: I have fucked everyone. And I’d do it again!
– Katy: Wow. Bashir is such a good doctor that no one on DS9 is disabled. Look, he’s already fixed her need for a wheelchair. Yaaaay. [image error]
– In normal, official medical circumstances, the person doing massive experimental surgery on you should not be fucking you. Just a thought that apparently has not occurred to Star Fleet, despite that already being an understanding that exists in the real world.
– Klingon opera occurs. The Klingon bloke who owns this restaurant should be this character of the week’s boyfriend, honestly.
– A very awkward ending. There was a ham fisted bit that kind of worked? Then we finished with something no one likes: being sung at. Potentially the worst of all human experiences.
– A lot of early DS9 episodes creak because the world needs to feel more lived in. Even if we’re on a ‘frontier’, people arriving there will bring their preconceptions and experience to problems. The consistent editorial note that should have been raised with these scripts is ‘this has happened before’. Either infrastructure should exist regarding the problems they’re encountering, or there should be specific reasons it doesn’t.
– Also, Quark’s fucked about with illegal trades that could specifically get Federation people killed three episodes in a row. You have to stagger these, so we’re not stuck wondering why Quark isn’t in jail. If you lack fine control over the episodes’ airing order, then you have to do more individually distinct episodes!
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DS9 S2 Ep 7, “Rules of Acquisition”
– The Grand Nagus offers Bajor some fertiliser. Why can’t Bajor just replicate this fertiliser, or indeed, food? If they can’t, why can’t or won’t the Federation? There could well be reasons, but it’d be valuable to explicate those for a couple of sentences.
– Ferengi foot fetishism is going strong this week.
– Quark thinks he’s gay for profits, but it’s a case of Shakespearean cross-dressing.
– My new catch phrase is absolutely ‘now I may have the weak lobes of a woman, but—’
– Looking forward to the plot development where the Grand Nagus fucks Quark’s mom. What a Concept.
– This profit4profit Quark/waitress romance is the realest thing in two seasons of DS9.
– Dax: Oh, you’re into Quark.
Waitress: Yeah, and I’m secretly a woman.
Dax: Oh and it’s het? Wow, wild.
– Ferengi latinum dildos are real, I’m just letting you know that.
– Nog: I have dirt on the interloper! He’s been using EAR enhancers, for his naturally shitty lobes!
– There was only one bed, in spaaaaace.
Katy: only one bed, cross-dressing—DS9’s coming back strong with this episode.
– Nog desperately wants to tell Quark that Quark can put off coming to terms with his sexuality for another year.
– What does the story vs teleplay distinction mean in US 90s script writing?
Like the fuck is this:
Story by : Hilary J. Bader
Teleplay by : Ira Steven Behr
– Rene helpfully informs me:
“I believe anyone who has the idea for a story gets the story credit. The teleplay credit goes to the person who writes the actual script that is shot. Often story credits go to people who pitched ideas or sent in spec scripts, even if many details are changed in the final version.
Like here, Hilary originally pitched it as a TNG story.
A bit of discussion of the writing history at 1:50 here.”
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DS9 S2 Ep 8, “Necessary Evil”
– We begin with a truly amazing cape jumpsuit dress, just fucking ace. Thank you, space Frederick’s of Hollywood.
– The dialogue so far is crisp, like someone gave a shit, or like they finally found the paddles last week and rez’d a gasping script editor.
– Do people make strange and charm Quark jokes? I hope they do.
– Dukat’s OG DS9 lighting scheme is very blue-cool, I’m not keen.
– How did Dukat figure out that Odo could have the horn for justice? Dukat tried to fuck Kira and her mom, he has the emotional intelligence of a lemon.
– Dukat’s not nice, but he’s decent at his job. Which is good writing.
– Kira’s flashback !long hair is super cute. Labour camp chic
– Odo is now additionally hornt for the dictaphone he was previously a little bitch about, and doing his best noir narration. Fuck off, Odo.
– ‘I would have been executed’. Kira, you’re hot and Dukat was the boss at that point. I really don’t think Execution is the key threat, here.
– Cardassians have some fucking great interior design: like Vienna Succession, but evil. It interestingly and oddly overlaps with the palate of Bajoran influences.
– Why is Odo telling people about who he’s gonna arrest in an open bar, what the fuck?
– Interestingly they framed this shot so that Dukat didn’t see Kira’s face full on when they met.
– The flowers this assassin brought Quark look great.
– Rom’s got an amazing scream attack, like a shitty Jigglypuff.
– The Bajoran woman’s initial ‘say what you will about the Cardassians, they kept the power on’ comment makes a lot more sense now that we know she’s a fascist collaborator’s wife, as does the couple’s private room on the station during the occupation. But why did the wife say Kira was having an affair with her husband? How did she know Kira, or that Kira might be the culprit? Why wasn’t she upset about her husband’s death, if we’re supposed to have taken Odo’s shite deduction there seriously?
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DS9 S2 Ep 9, “Second Sight”
– Sisko remembers his wife’s super dead and stuff (thanks, Jean-Luc).
– I never know what age Jake is supposed to be. Neither, I suspect, do the writers.
– Sisko meets a really hot woman in an excellent dress. Wow, damn, hello.
– Oh no, it’s a jumpsuit and cape combination with an excellent neckline. Sisko, your wife has only been dead for two years, but consider it, my friend. Contemplate the opportunity before you.
– Sisko, typically a bitch, is super cheerful now that he’s spent ten minutes with a hot lady. This suggests that if only Sisko was regularly getting laid, he wouldn’t be such a pest. Thanks Jean-Luc!
– Sisko now deals with an annoying man who has such terrible womb envy he has turned to terraforming, and gotten very Mumsnet about it. Sad scenes, here in the science lab.
– Katy hates the triangular space mugs. “They must be so heavy!”
– Sisko looks at the hot lady like she’s a sandwich he’s confused by. It’s a performance Choice.
– Kira wants to escape dinner with this blowhard. Julian thinks the guy is fine! Kira is like, fucking of course you do. Kiraaaaa.
– Dax, horrified: Do you think that because I’m a woman now you can no longer tell me about your hookups?! B e n j a m i n the BETRAYAL, I—
– Julian was named for Julian Assange, which explains a lot. Not everyone knows that.
– Oh wow a psychic ‘mate for life’ trope that goes badly and causes huge backlash. And this woman kind of has Vulcan ears. It’s like a weird side K/S fic.
– This terraformer is the fucking worst. At least he knows he’s a fuckboi and erases himself from the narrative, as it were.
– The Netflix loading screen for S2 DS9 also suggests Next Generation, TOS and Enterprise, in case you’d prefer your Star Trek either better or a lot worse.
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DS9 S2 Ep 10, “Sanctuary”
– A random Star Fleet woman is so Moved by Bajoran beats that she feels compelled to hug Morn about it.
– Sisko yells at Kira for being Too Online while at work, shitposting furiously and getting no real tasks done. Kira sighs and admits that is fair.
– Any time you have to show people really appreciating art in art, just being blown away, it looks garbage.
– Kira is Uncomfortable with some random refugees feeling more at ease with her than with other people. The last time she did Emotional Labour, it was in a Cardassian camp—
– Everyone from Star Fleet is just baffled by what looks like a matriarchy. A nigh-universal failure to grok something really obvious, for the hurr-hurrs. Mediocre.
– Interestingly, I don’t think we’ve ever done the universal translators learning a new language family like this before.
– This ‘from a matriarchy’ lady seems to feel Kira is specially worth speaking to. More so than men. In a personal capacity. If you know what I’m—
– Quark is actually a fabulous uncle sometimes. He’s shown up to flirt with Odo and get Nog off the hook for petty crime.
– I rather like how all the women of this week’s alien race style their hair in a mantilla shape.
– I love that Quark and Nog hiss defensively.
– This Bajoran minister has excellent braids, they’re so good. I can’t be certain, but DS9 sometimes seems to do a good job of casting Jewish women as Bajorans, which provides a kind of internal consistency to Bajor’s status as a figuration of post-Shoah diaspora and Israeli Jewishness.
– Kira and her girlfriend of the week have a fight over the girlfriend’s refugee people’s desire to settle on Bajor. A quite well-written series of accidents causes a catastrophe that ought to have been avoidable, but happened nonetheless.
– There’s a recurring thread of a famine on Bajor. I need that better explicated, in terms of replicator technology.
