It’s been a while since something got me into a movie theater. Obviously I wasn’t in a rush. I recently rewatched 1-4 with my son, to get ready, and I took an afternoon off in order to catch a matinee. I enjoyed it. There was no standout scene that in my opinion quite matched the…
Rewatching ST:DS9 A plot contrivance particle field sends Quark, Rom and Nog to 1947 Earth, where they’re mistaken for “Martians.” In the teaser, Nog auctions off his childhood belongings as he prepares to leave for Starfleet Academy. Quark makes an apparently magnanimous offer to bring Nog to Earth “in style” on a shuttle his cousin…
Rewatching ST:DS9 An enjoyable “crisis creates unusual/dramatic parings” ensemble story. Quark is on the Defiant to mediate a trade agreement between the Karema and the Federation, but Sisko is annoyed to learn Quark has been adding surcharges and blaming them on the Federation. Kira tells Dax she suspects Sisko scheduled these trade negotiations so that…
Rewatching ST:DS9 At the bar, Dax performs magic tricks that amuse Bashir and annoy Quark. Sisko lets Dax know a Dr. Lenara Kahn is coming to the station with a Trill science delegation, and suggests Dax use her some of her personal leave. Clearly troubled, Dax says she won’t let her past lives interfere with…
Rewatching ST:DS9 New-to-me episode in which Kira teams up with an enemy to solve the mystery of a Cardassian ship that disappeared six years ago, along with its Bajoran prisoners. An old friend from Kira’s resistance days has found a chunk of metal from the Ravinok. Knowing that Kira knew someone aboard that ship, Odo…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Worf grumbles to Kira that Odo seems permissive about Quark’s shady doings. On a runabout, O’Brien stops himself just before saying he wishes Keiko were more like Bashir. Plot contrivance particles get the runabout crashed on a planet and the spacebros captured by Jem’Hadar ground forces before the opening credits roll. The leader…
Rewatching ST:DS9 On a dark and stormy night, a man gives himself an injection, and a rain-soaked young woman shows up at his door, on a quest to ask the famous writer Jake Sisko why he stopped writing years ago. We flash back to young Jake tagging along on the Defiant ostensibly to see a…
Rewatching ST:DS9 We cold open into an action sequence, as security teams sweep the station with phaser rifles, looking for a Changeling. Sisko, now with a shaved head and goatee (actor Avery Brooks’s preferred personal style), enjoys a dinner with Kassidy Yates in his quarters, until he’s interrupted by a vague message from Dax. A…
Rewatching ST:DS9 The cold opening has Jake gearing up to say something dramatic, which turns out to be celebrating his dad’s promotion to captain. During the festivities, Ambassador Krajensky injects some exposition about joining the Defiant on a patrol of the volatile Federation-Tzenkethi border. In the Defiant engine room, O’Brien hears a noise, but dismisses…
Rewatching ST:DS9 The lead characters channel the personalities of Dax’s previous hosts, in a low-stakes episode that gives the cast some acting challenges and advances Nog’s character arc, but as a stand-alone episode this was just okay. I hadn’t seen it since it originally aired ~30 years ago, and I think I must have bailed…
Rewatching ST:DS9 After losing to O’Brien at darts, Sisko visits Kira in her quarters (where she is praying before a memorial for Bareil) to report that the scheming Kai Winn, already the spiritual leader of Bajor, has been elevated to First Minister. During a routine meeting with Odo, a distracted Kira vents about her recent…
In October, 2002, I was blogging about The stupidity of explosions in space movies The Chronicle of Higher Education rescues the briefly defunct Arts & Letters Daily The superiority complex An anti-telemarketing script An “I Love Lucy: bible study Why whitespace matters when creating a sign The coming air age of 1955 (as envisioned in…
Arrgh! This is sooo stressful! (Some great visual gags as the intro drags on.) No, it is not worth it to watch the whole thing. But that’s the point.
Rewatching ST:DS9 The opening acts remind me why I cringe at all the Fergengi-focused episodes, and the great writing, the mix of comedy and drama, impressive performances, and the plot twists remind me why I end up admitting that yeah, that Ferengi-focused episode was pretty good. A humming Sisko cooks up an analog dinner for…
Rewatching ST:DS9 With a come-hither glance and an obviously fake cough, the dabo girl Leeta introduces herself to Dr. Bashir. A very amused Dax interrupts with news that the valedictorian of Bashir’s medical class will be visiting the station soon. (Bashir was salutatorian, and he’s not bitter about that, no, not at all.) Sisko returns…
Rewatching ST:DS9 After the recap of S3E20 “Improbable Cause,” we see Bashir, clearly missing Garak, holding forth on the decline of modern theatre during lunch with O’Brien, who kinda sorta pretends to listen. But this is the teaser for the second half of a two-parter, and there’s a plot to jump-start. A fleet of Romulans…
Rewatching ST:DS9 During his usual lunch with Bashir, Garak dismisses as farcical the notion that Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar would be surprised that his best friend betrayed him, in a literary reference that is definitely random and will certainly have nothing at all to do with this week’s plot. Garak departs with a promise to deliver…
Rather than wanting to make a film about Tetris the video game as such, Baird was fascinated by this human story that pushed the game into existence. “The original title of the film was actually Falling Blocs, just like the Eastern blocs that dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. I thought it was a really…
In September, 2002, I was blogging about “The Science of Scientific Writing” (1990) from ‘pong’ to ‘pac man’ Michigan Police fall for The Onion satire about terrorist telemarketers “Ebonics” (ebony + phonics) Silly alarmist story about recessive blonde genes A scientist undone by plagiarism Google News (when it was new) Mel Gibson’s plan to film…