Rewatching ST:DS9 At the bar, Quark and Odo bicker expositionally about this week’s guest stars, one of whom is killed by another in the very next scene. The victim’s twin brother swears vengeance against the shooter Croden. Odo suspects that Quark arranged for Croden to interrupt a surreptitious business deal and steal the macguffin, but…
Rewatching ST:DS9 In an episode focusing on father-son dynamics, Jake declines the chance to spend time on Bajor with Sisko, Nog bears the brunt of punishments heaped onto his father Rom, and the visiting Ferengi leader Zek expresses dissatisfaction with his son Krax. I give credit to actor Wallace Shawn and the make-up team and…
Rewatching ST:DS9 I was kind of dreading rewatching this “trapped in a board game” episode, but it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. But that’s not saying much, because I remember it as a cringeworthy mess. I liked Sisko’s attempt to bring up “the talk” with Jake by likening a first contact to a first…
Rewatching ST:DS9 In a runabout, Kira reluctantly expresses admiration for Bashir’s medical skill. Instead of humbly accepting her praise, Bashir monologues about his own giftedness. A distress call brings them aboard a burning ship, where the pilot is dead, and a semi-conscious woman warns Bashir not to rescue a prisoner who started the fire. That…
Rewatching ST:DS9 In the teaser, Bashir is monologuing for an evidently awestruck Bajoran woman, while O’Brien looks on scornfully. A barely functional runabout has just made it back through the wormhole. Dax has picked up a passenger, whom O’Brien recognizes as Vash. I enjoyed Vash’s chemistry with Picard in her first appearance (TNG s3e19 “Captain’s…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Sisko is listening to a sexual harassment complaint from one of Quark’s employees when an unexpected ship arrives through the wormhole — the Alpha Quadrant’s first visitor from the other side. The ship’s pilot is jumpy; O’Brien gets him to relax a bit, but when asked his name, species, and job, the new…
Rewatching ST:DS9 Overworked O’Brien is fixing all the things. (The scene in Dax’s lab is great comedy). As he tinkers in a crawlspace, we see an ominous little hidden blinking thing. Various brief character scenes (is Odo gloating or commiserating over the slow business at Quark’s; Sisko thanks the overworked O’Brien and we get a…
Rewatching ST:DS9 After threatening a man who later turns up dead, Constable Odo becomes the prime suspect. The episode takes its time getting started, with character-driven bits developing Bashir’s one-sided interest in Dax, Sisko’s adjustment to his former mentor Curzon Dax’s new identity as Jadzia Dax, Sisko’s insistence that the Javert-like Odo play within the…
Rewatching ST:DS9 The pilot of a Bajoran ship under Cardassian fire requests asylum. Tahna is a former resistance colleague of Kira’s. Kira sees Sisko’s level-headed reaction as a sign of weakness, and on her own she works with Bajor to secure amnesty for her former comrade. A camouflaged Odo observes a clandestine meeting between Tahna…
Rewatching ST:DS9 The episode begins with a slide of text about Picard being assimilated by the Borg and forced to lead a devastating assault on Federation forces at Wolf 359. During that battle, Benjamin Sisko, first officer on the USS Saratoga, gives the order to abandon ship. He rescues his young son Jake, but is…
In March 2020, just as the lockdown closed down my daughter’s production of The Outsiders and the next couple of shows she had already lined up, and my school went to virtual teaching, my wife got a call from the Nielsen Ratings company. My household had been selected as one of the representative families whose…
Rewatching ST:TNG When we all first met the crew of the Enterprise-D, I was an undergraduate living in a dorm at the University of Virginia. Seven years later, I was a Ph.D. student in a dorm at the University of Toronto. I saw the series finale on a channel that was hosting a huge live…
Rewatching ST:TNG The newly promoted Lt. Ro, overwhelmed at a surprise “welcome back from tactical school” party, is disappointed when she sees Picard leaving. When it turns out he did so only so he could order her to report to him (and thus give her an excuse to leave the party), she’s grateful. After a…
Rewatching ST:TNG When I first read a blurb about this episode, I thought maybe the ship’s computer would develop an attitude and say, “I’m tired of taking your orders and shutting down systems and whatnot; I want to star in an adventure all about me!” In the cold opening, a costumed Data delivers Prospero’s speech…
Rewatching ST:TNG The Ferengi whose revenge scheme (s1e8 “The Battle“) involved planting a large thought-control device in the cabin of the starship Picard abandoned 15 years ago in order to force Picard to relive flashbacks of a battle is back, this time using a probe to announce his plan to kill a young man he…
In March, 2002, I was blogging about The coming era of participatory news The “Worst Manual Contest” Ancient “Domesday Book” outlives electronic version (that article is also gone… but here’s contemporary coverage from Slashdot) My own text-adventure game “Fine-Tuned: An Auto-mated Romance“ PBS special “Merchants of Cool” (early observations about the cultural feedback loop as…
I really enjoyed seeing the first workshop performance of SHU alum Greg Kerestan’s original horror-comedy musical, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” based on the classic 1920 German expressionist silent film. The music is powerful, and the cast is hilarious and creepy, in all the right proportions. The daughter plays a ballet mistress socialite (and…
Rewatching ST:TNG After Worf loses a photon torpedo. Picard takes Data with him on a three-day shuttle jaunt to find it. I realize so far that probably sounds like a joke, but it’s accurate. They return to find the Enterprise-D adrift, and the corridors filled with animal noises. (I was listening with headphones, and the…