Pre-amble. I like some sci-fi. Star Wars, the occasional cape comic (which I'd say is more modern fantasy, but whatever), Blade Runner was pretty cool just cause it was pretty, various video games that take place in sci-fi universes, etc. Compared to Dala, who has bookshelves from guys like Ben Bova, Peter F. Hamilton, sci-fi short story anthologies, and who knows what else, or my bud who is really on a cyber punk kick right now, I'm a fucking peasant. A few years back, I gave the OG Star Trek a shot because it was on Netflix and why not? I watched all of the first season and gave up shortly into Season 2 because by that point, it got boring. He's been telling me for years to give DS9 a shot because it touches on various themes and after it gets going, it really gets going. He did warn me that it does suffer from Season One Syndrome and boy howdy, does he seem to be right about that.
But onto this episode. Straight to the story.
The DS9 crew comes into contact and makes a friend with a mysterious alien. Mysterious alien is being extremely cryptic about his past. The mystery about who he is, what he wants, and what he's doing is not driven by subtly or any mechanism that makes the viewer genuinely curious, but instead driven by a character that is deliberately opaque because that's the only way the writers can seem to create a sense of mystery. Mix in the show's protaganist who befriends said alien, is forced to communicate cultural differences that also force an air of awkwardness onto the viewer. Towards the end, the mystery of the alien comes to light not through any detective work of the protagonist, but by the introduction of more of the mysterious alien's race who basically explain everything in the span of a few minutes. Their introduction and the whole explanation for the mystery brings about what could be some very interesting moral dilemmas that never get explored. Finally, we have the episode's protagonist act irrationally and against his own self interest to help his new alien friend, everything works out in the end, with the exception of the moral dilemmas being completely ignored.
Now, I'm not a writer or a critique or anything of the sort, and I love schlock (Kaiju films, western TV shows, and comics people), but seriously, fuck everything about all of what I just wrote. There's no subtlety or nuance that shows the writer respects me as a viewer. I understand that the writers are trying to make a story that fits into the time constraints of a single episode. Fine. But either make the story a multi-part story so it can unfold more naturally or write a story that can unfold naturally in the length of time that you're alloted. None of this chopped up shit.
You know what I love about Westerns? Same thing is true for Usagi Yojimbo comics by the way. Near the very beginning, the viewer is given all of the information needed. You know who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, and the conflict that is going to exist between them. The anticipation doesn't come from trying to figure things out, the anticipation comes from trying to see how things unfold and how our protagonists are gonna see things through.
I've seen bits and pieces of the various Star Trek Shows. Every now and again I'll watch Stargate because it's the only thing on TV that's worth watching at the moment. I've sat through episodes of Battle Star Galactica (the new one, not the disco chrome one), Farscape, and weird random shit I don't know the names of. Literally, over half the episodes I see do shit like this and it's so fucking annoying.
If your plots depend on being deliberately opaque or being resolved through hand waving and shit, I'm not being entertained because I don't feel like I'm being a willing participant because I have a genuine interest in the resolution of the episode. I feel like I'm being an unwilling participant because I wasted the first 20 minutes trying to see how everything adds up that I become so invested that I might as well spend the next 25 minutes seeing how they'll awkwardly be resolved.
I don't care if it is schlock. I still want some damn sophistication here.
Untrue for: - The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly - High Plains Drifter - High Noon - Tombstone - Unforgiven - Pale Rider I mean, you can slag on Star Trek all you want but you don't get to argue against it comparatively by making shit up about Westerns. Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek as "Wagon Train in space" and that's exactly what it is. Deep Space Nine is Bonanza in Space. The tropes you're bitching about aren't related to sci fi or anything about sci fi, they're related to poor writing and an unsettled production team, which your friend explicitly warned you about. The moral dilemma you're griping about is directly confronted: How do you respond to an ethical situation that does not match your ethics? It's the precursor to every single tedious tawdry female genital mutilation storyline we've been dragged through for the past ten years (lookin' at you, Call the Midwife). The "hand waving" you're bitching about is called a "reveal" and it happens at the midpoint. That's so structurally conventional it might as well be in the style guide. You do this thing where you see something that makes you uncomfortable and then you refuse to confront it and you spin around and slag an entire genre because it's easier than confronting the thing that makes you uncomfortable. Knowing you, your beef with "sci fi" is that in this particular episode you vehemently disagree with the choices of the characters and you refuse to confront the issue presented because you do not see it as a choice. For the record: Season 1 of DS9 is shit. Season 2 has some moments of brilliance. Season 3 is really good for about half of it, then it descends into shit. Season 4 and beyond are a waste of time. But I'll say this: If you do not have the fortitude to explore moral ambiguity, thought experiements and social metaphor, stay the fuck away from science fiction. Science fiction, done correctly, is fable, is a substitution game whereby sensitive cultural issues can be examined in an environment where they are less raw. Star Trek leveraged this substitution in culture-changing ways. Kaiju films? Those are about the predation of Japanese culture and society by Western imperialism. They are the loser's lament for the end of the Meiji Restoration. They are morally simplistic because that which is old is good and that which is new is bad and the exploration of anything - society, culture, science, knowledge - leads to catastrophe. They are Confucianism as entertainment with dudes in rubber suits. But if you're gonna come, come correct.You know what I love about Westerns? Same thing is true for Usagi Yojimbo comics by the way. Near the very beginning, the viewer is given all of the information needed. You know who the good guys are, who the bad guys are, and the conflict that is going to exist between them.
Now, I'm not a writer or a critique or anything of the sort
Man. This is a tall order of a response to go through. So let's get a few things out of the way. So, to clarify some things. I kind of shot myself in the foot by not comparing focusing on Western TV shows. The movies you mentioned are more complexed and nuanced, and if I don’t get derailed in thought, I'll get to that in a bit. Similarly, in regards to Kaiju films, I bring those up not for the sophistication in the story telling, but the lack of sophistication in presentation. With Kaiju films, things like scientific accuracy and special effects are put on the back burner a little bit, because first and foremost the creators are worried about the story they want to tell. When I watch Kaiju films, I know I'm not gonna get scientific accuracy, I know I'm gonna get cheesey special effects, and I'm okay with that because the stories are so damn fun and there's a charm and earnestness in the execution that make them great. Now, humor me for a second because I want to go back here and try to rephrase what frustrates me about sci-fi television and expand upon it a bit. In a nutshell, what frustrates me about sci-fi television is that it is often strikes me as poorly written and I feel like that shouldn't be the case. I love TV. I watch a lot of TV. I love everything from classic sitcoms like The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show to I Love Lucy to Andy Griffith. I like M.A.S.H., Barny Miller, Night Court, Grace Under Fire, That '70s Show. I like modern sitcoms like Superstore, Brooklyn 99, the first two seasons of Community before it got boring. I like old school westerns like The Rifleman, Gunsmoke, The Big Valley, and Laramie, though I could honestly never get into Bonanza. I like children's animation shows like Looney Toons, Animaniacs, The DC Timmverse, Samurai Jack, Adventure Time, Clarence. Some of the more serious dramatic stuff I stay away from, just because it's not my cup of tea, but I've seen good episodes of NYPD Blue, ER, House, and once I found myself stuck at a friend's place watching N.C.I.S. for about three or four episodes though it could have felt like all day. I can go on and on, but you get the idea. My standards for entertainment honestly aren't that high. If I came to your place and said "Hey man, I got bad news. I'm babysitting this kid all day and as a result you're stuck here watching Airwolf with me and him all day," I'd say "Cool as shit, bro. Bring it." I like a good story. I want a good story. Here's the thing. In all of the shows I listed, and tons I didn't, a large reason they’re at least passable, if not good, is because the writers are very aware of the constraints they’re working with. They know they have 10, 25, or 50 minutes to tell a story or double or tripple that if they are willing to work with a cliffhanger. They understand the pros and cons between telling stories that reset their universe to the status quo at the end of every episode versus having consequential story archs that might take multiple episodes if not a whole season to resolve. They understand their budget constraints, their target audience, what networks and censors will and will not allow, what advertisers do and don’t like, and on and on. This is an industry that’s been going on for almost a century now and sometimes it feels like these guys have shit down to almost a science. It’s formulaic. Yes. Some people use that as a pejorative when it comes to story telling. But when you’re working with something constraining like television, understanding those constraints and why they’re there and understanding the formulas and why they work, gives the writers the tools they need to tell the stories they want to tell. Then we get to science fiction television and all of the sudden a lot of that knowledge and experience just seems to go out the window. If we go back to how I described the episode and my frustration with it, I talked about it feeling awkward and forced, irrational and unfulfilling and it seems to happen in a lot of the sci-fi episodes I watch (though what I’ve seen of both Cowboy Bebop and Firefly were actually pretty well done). To put things metaphorically, I may not know how to sing, but I know when a singer is offkey, and if sci-fi television was music, a lot of it sounds off key to me. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I was talking to my friend last night, the one that is currently rediscovering his love for guys like William Gibson (I had to look him up to make sure I was getting that right) and who gently prodded me over the years to check out DS9 and we touched on a few other points that may or may not play a role in those whole thing. We talked about how sometimes it feels like by resolving conflicts through feats of science, a lot of the times the conflict suddenly seems trivialized and it robs the protagonists the satisfaction of an earned victory and/or robs the situation of the seriousness it deserves. To put things in comic book terms for example, in the hands of the wrong types of writers super heroes like Superman could get boring real quick because their arsenal of powers allows them to overcome almost any threat without a real sense of peril. We talked about how sometimes writers are more concerned with world building and it bogs them down in terms of story telling. He actually did an amazing job comparing and contrasting Tolkein and George Lucas to me. He said that Tolkein had made a world full of languages and history and to show it off, he decided to make a bunch of people go for a stroll in the woods. As a result, sometimes instead of character development, you’re gonna have to read a page and a half about the history of yet another sword. George Lucas on the other hand just wanted to tell a story and was making a world up as he went along. As a result, you get an easy to absorb story at first, but as things go along, there’s a bunch of back tracking and side explanations to try and fill in the gaps. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Yeah. I kind of get your point. There’s a ton of stuff I won’t touch for the reason that it does make me uncomfortable and I think as a consumer, I have that right. If something makes me uncomfortable, I’m not going to enjoy it. If I’m not going to enjoy it, then why would I pursue it? That said, I don’t think I’m slagging on sci-fi because I keep on wanting to try and explore it more but just find it so emotionally unfulfilling sometimes. In a lot of stories, I don’t see myself connected with the characters presented, moved by the dilemmas that they’re in, or find the rules of the worlds that the stories take place in as sensible. Nothing about this episode or all that I’ve seen of OG Start Trek or GS9 made me uncomfortable though. In fact, going back to said friend, to kind of paraphrase a conversation we had a few years back, he said “You’ll appreciate GS9 for the grey areas that come about in later seasons. We’ll have some good talks about them.” That said, you did kind of touch on something I haven’t considered, in that I am much more of a moral absolutist than I am a moral relativist so that might color how I receive the stories presented. I mean, shit, in my OP I almost blantantly said “Part of the reasons I love westerns is because a lot of times, there’s no moral ambiguity.” So, you kind of got me in a box there, huh?You do this thing where you see something that makes you uncomfortable and then you refuse to confront it and you spin around and slag an entire genre because it's easier than confronting the thing that makes you uncomfortable. Knowing you, your beef with "sci fi" is that in this particular episode you vehemently disagree with the choices of the characters and you refuse to confront the issue presented because you do not see it as a choice.
You devote twelve paragraphs to arguing that sci fi writers are incompetent. You use a lot of words because you know you don't really have the standing to do so and you hope that rhetorically, you can bury the lede on that one but fundamentally, you are arguing that science fiction writers don't know how to write. Then you hide behind Maybe you just don't like pentatonic scales. You're slagging on sci fi because you don't like unanswered questions. That's fine. But it's about you, not the medium. More evidence of the assertion that you're not willing to extend suspension of disbelief to science fiction... especially as you started down this road by singing the praises of Godzilla movies. It made you uncomfortable enough to write a thousand-word rant on how much you hated it. And then try to justify that rant with another 800-word rant about how sci fi writers suck. I didn't touch on it, I hit you over the head with it: BTW, your friend is mistaken. By the time Star Wars (episode IV) had been green-lit, Lucas had written Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, and about five drafts of Episode IV. However, market forces forced him to revise and rewrite and revise and rewrite and revise and rewrite Episode IV, while Episodes 1-3 were unleashed on the world 25 years after the fact at a point where Lucas' fortunes were in the billions. Tolkien, on the other hand, crafted his own little world in his own little head and dripped the stories out as he fought in WWII and such. The Star Wars extended universe occupies millions upon millions upon millions of words and story lines and through lines and very little of it was directly crafted by Lucas; what consistency it has is a bit of a miracle. On the other hand, Tolkien's entire ouvre is about as long as a single volume of George RR Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire." It's a lot easier to be consisted across 500k words than it is across eight movies, two TV series, however many Lego spinoffs there are and the star wars books. A great screenwriter (one of the most famous) once told me that the most efficient nine words in the history of screenwriting was "he fought with your father in the Clone Wars." There it is, 1977, and with those nine words, Lucas conjured an entire history that sits out there, evocative, buttressing up what you know with what you don't. HIs writing partner used the example of the letter Tolkien received from a fan once, asking what was beyond the mountains of Mordor. Tolkien explain that if he told her, she'd ask what was beyond that and the only thing that mattered was that he knew. Tolkien died before anyone made him write about what was beyond the mountains of Mordor. Lucas? Lucas made millions elaborating those nine words out into a mediocre and uninteresting conflict. It's okay to want the mediocre conflict instead of the mystery. But that doesn't make science fiction inherently flawed.I may not know how to sing, but I know when a singer is offkey, and if sci-fi television was music, a lot of it sounds off key to me.
That said, I don’t think I’m slagging on sci-fi because I keep on wanting to try and explore it more but just find it so emotionally unfulfilling sometimes.
In a lot of stories, I don’t see myself connected with the characters presented, moved by the dilemmas that they’re in, or find the rules of the worlds that the stories take place in as sensible.
Nothing about this episode or all that I’ve seen of OG Start Trek or GS9 made me uncomfortable though.
That said, you did kind of touch on something I haven’t considered, in that I am much more of a moral absolutist than I am a moral relativist so that might color how I receive the stories presented.
You do this thing where you see something that makes you uncomfortable and then you refuse to confront it and you spin around and slag an entire genre because it's easier than confronting the thing that makes you uncomfortable. Knowing you, your beef with "sci fi" is that in this particular episode you vehemently disagree with the choices of the characters and you refuse to confront the issue presented because you do not see it as a choice.
Let me say it outright then. In comparison to their peers in the media, IE, television, I do not see strong writing skills from the writers of the sci-fi episodes I have seen. I see flaws in pacing, logic, and execution. The fact that those issues come up a lot less in other genres in the same medium means that, comparatively speaking, television sci-fi writers are weaker. But only television sci-fi writers in this instance. Not novel writers. Not movie writers. Not comic book or short story writers. Only sci-fi writers. I get the sense it's because they have a hard time finding ways to adapting their stories to the medium. Just because I don't know how to qualify or quantify it in an intellectual manner, it does not mean that assumption of mine is wrong. It just means I lack the skills to accurately convey what I'm experiencing. I can suspend disbelief, I'm willing to suspend disbelief, but I need good writing and something in the execution to make the suspension of disbelief worth while. If it's not there, I feel like I'm being cheated because I don't think I'm being respected by the writers. There's a difference between suspending disbelief, enjoying something that's somewhat silly for the sake of its charm, and being expected to enjoy a sub-par product. Why are you being harsh? Because we're in disagreement? How many conversations have we had on Hubski over the years? Hundreds. How many times have you ever seen me try to play a game of rhetoric, misdirection, or some other kind of debate "gotcha?" Never. I come to these conversations always honest and as open as possible, even when we're in disagreement. Knowing that, if I say "That's not why I didn't like this episode" what I am saying is literally "That's not why I didn't like this episode." I am not trying to trick you. I'm not trying to pull a bait and switch. I am having a conversation about an episode of a television program that I thought was frustratingly sub-par. Let's be fair here. I'm trying to have a conversation where at the end of the day, I express my views, maybe learn something, and it all takes place on the internet. There is nothing for me to win or lose, so there's no reason for me to be conniving about what I'm trying to say. Well, I think in regards to Star Wars, both he and I knew he was talking about the original core six films. We both know that extended universes add a lot. By Return of the Jedi, there already was some pretty big back tracking and side explaining in regards to Darth Vader being Luke's father, Leiah being his sister, etc. Regardless as to the mechanisms that lead to it, they're still there. Could he have used better examples? Probably. Does he still have a point in his explanation? I think so.You devote twelve paragraphs to arguing that sci fi writers are incompetent. You use a lot of words because you know you don't really have the standing to do so and you hope that rhetorically, you can bury the lede on that one but fundamentally, you are arguing that science fiction writers don't know how to write. Then you hide behind
More evidence of the assertion that you're not willing to extend suspension of disbelief to science fiction... especially as you started down this road by singing the praises of Godzilla movies.
It made you uncomfortable enough to write a thousand-word rant on how much you hated it. And then try to justify that rant with another 800-word rant about how sci fi writers suck.
BTW, your friend is mistaken.
I'm being harsh because you didn't come into this saying "I don't get why I don't like science fiction, somebody help me out here" you came into this saying "Star Trek sucks, fight me." You literally held DS9 to be worse than Brooklyn 99. And your justification is "the writing sucks and the writers suck." You're not wrong. The bar is generally lower for science fiction. Much like a certain segment of the population likes music better if you replace "baby" with "jesus", as Cartman would say, there's a segment of the audience that just wants their tropes and doesn't care about the rest. ‘Needs more NaCl-based SupaFlav flavour enhancer,’ he muttered to himself. The meal had been prepared to his exacting standards by the ship’s Cyber Hospitality Electro-Famulus, but there was always room for improvements to the AI’s food preparation algorithms. He made a subconscious neural-jack-formatted mental note to update the C.H.E.F. unit’s programming. Just then, the A.A.A. (Audio Alert Alarm) began emitting the high-pitched ringing noise known as “spidiffling.” ‘Zakradav grakhl!’ swore the Colonel. But at the same time, the arena of science fiction exists to explore concepts in ways that conventional literature or television cannot. Given an hour in which everything about the world is known (Brooklyn 99) or an hour in which a new concept must be explained, explored and then resolved (DS9), much less of the hour can be devoted to the decorum you so crave. You see this as bad writing. I suggest you go watch Philadelphia again, in which 70% of the film is given over to "Here is your AIDS F.A.Q." Two Oscars, five nominations. The biggest beef the intelligentsia had with Philadelphia? It spent way too long on AIDS 101. Yet for Middle America it was the movie that made that whole Magic Johnson thing make sense. I don't think you're being duplicitous. I think you're blind to an aspect of your personality, namely that some things just straight-up make you uncomfortable. And that's fine. At the end of the day most people would agree that science fiction is sub-par and not worth their time. There's a reason 99% of it these days is fuckin' superhero dreck. But most people wouldn't accuse science fiction of being crap but Kaiju films of being great. That's all you.Lifting his vibro-fork to his mouth, Colonel Daringman watched the exquisite spectacle of planet-rise through the plexi-viewport. He took a bite of his lightly marinated nutribeef simsteak.
I mean, I kind of want to avoid further arguing, but yeah. I really feel that. I could have sworn I talked about that, but looking back at my ranting, I must have left that out. So I'll say I completely acknowledge that westerns and sitcoms and dramas and the like have the luxury of not being bogged down by world building. They have both a visual as well as a literal vocabulary that we're all familiar with so the ball can get rolling much quicker. That said, maybe part of the flaw in sci-fi writing is that the writers are a bit too worried about world building sometimes? I mean, how hard is it to say "It's a fucking spaceship with anti-matter engines. We're not going to take the time to explain it because that's what it is and fucking deal with it so we can get on to addressing whether or not it's morally acceptable to tell this stone age civilization that gladiatorial combat is immoral." I mean, at this point, I'm beating a dead horse but I'm honestly not concerned about space ships. I'm concerned about characters being compelling and realistic. Dude. Maybe it's because DS9 is literally brand new to me, but I would easily watch it, frustrations and all, over the majority of the shit being pushed by Marvel and DC right now. Shit, it's getting to the point where I think I'm gonna stop keeping track of The Valiant Universe. I don't know if you're actively reading anything right now, I'm assuming you're not, but let me tell you, it's baaad. That's all you. I know what tickles my imagination. :)You literally held DS9 to be worse than Brooklyn 99. And your justification is "the writing sucks and the writers suck."
Given an hour in which everything about the world is known (Brooklyn 99) or an hour in which a new concept must be explained, explored and then resolved (DS9), much less of the hour can be devoted to the decorum you so crave.
There's a reason 99% of it these days is fuckin' superhero dreck.
But most people wouldn't accuse science fiction of being crap but Kaiju films of being great.
So long as we're clear that we're talking about your imagination, not an objective assessment of science fiction as a genre, we're all good. You have to worry about the world-building. You need to build enough of a universe where aliens have been bred to relish their role as prey for a hunting species for the audience to accept it and confront the implications thereof. You? You get wrapped around the axle on O'Brien the military man who Would Never Do That (perhaps that's part of the world they're building...). You also come into this with a hell of a detriment: nobody watched DS9 without having been sheep-dipped in two series of Star Trek before hand. There is literally no one on the planet except you who said "you know what? I think I'll ignore the two series that the nerds actually like and focus on the one in the universe that people think is ehh at best before moving on to Voyager, the series most people hate so I can talk about how much sci fi sucks." There are great swaths of TNG that suck. There are many episodes of the original Star Trek that fans would rather forget. But DS9 will always be "another series in the Star Trek Universe" that completists watch and nobody else cares about. If you really wanna get your dork on, go sit through The Animated Series and try and wrap canon around that. The Federation vs. Kzin. "Any script in a storm."
Complaints about those two episodes aside, I don't think I'm struggling too much with DS9 just because I've learned from comics to just take shit as it's thrown at you. The major reason I'm watching it is because I've been told it's gonna explore themes that interest me as an individual (war and religion apparently, from what I can gather). I have no intention of watching Voyager or Enterprise because if they're series that even the fans of the universe don't like, then there is no way, I as a non-fan, can expect to appreciate them. That said, one of my work friends said, in terms of OG and Next Gen, that if you just watch random episodes at random times, with no schedule commitment, and not binge watch them, they're much easier to appreciate. What are your thoughts on that? Oh. Wow. A Star Trek cartoon. What is the consensus on that? I have to know. I can't imagine I'd enjoy it. As for watching the rest of the series of DS9, I promise to try my best to be more malleable and not let my complaints draw me out of the fun. If you really wanna get your dork on, go sit through The Animated Series and try and wrap canon around that.
I have to head out for the rest of the day. As usual, I'll be mulling over your response and I'll try to respond thoughtfully as soon as I can. I will say, really quick though . . . Every time he brought the series up, he had that caveat. I have been thoroughly, thoroughly warned. :)which your friend explicitly warned you about.
What would you like them to explore? Disclaimer: I'm a big Star Trek fan, and my favorite series is DS9 because of the moral ambiguity. To me, that episode was about hunting and the moral dilemmas of hunting animals. But it could be about any situation where the prey has accepted their fate, even in a human context because of social acceptance. That episode first gave the perspective of the hunted, their actions and motivations. It opens the question. How would you behave if you were in a class that was hunted? Tosk was skittish, distrustful, secretive and non-assertive except when the Tosk thought it might get in more trouble. Those are probably traits many would adopt if they were hunted. Then it gets revealed why the Tosk was behaving that way. Another class of the aliens was hunting Tosk. That custom was foreign to the crew of DS9 because class and species differences were supposedly eliminated by that time. It's still common in our time though. People hunt animals and marginalize other people. It didn't seem at all odd to me that O'Brien acted against his interest to help Tosk. People sacrifice their self-interest to help animals all the time. They sacrifice even more if the hunted class are people, like the Jewish people in the time of the Holocaust. O'Brien saw Tosk as another person, not a dispensable creature because he wasn't in a culture that saw hunting as socially acceptable. The ethical line that gets drawn when people see other beings as animals or beings like themselves is also an ethical question. It's an interesting thought experiment to wonder why more people didn't hide Jewish people during the Holocaust. It has implications for what happens today. If people can see other people as enough different from themselves, they can care less about them. People of different religions or races can be marginalized or treated differently. The writers of DS9 couldn't explore those moral ambiguities explicitly because once a real life context was given, not in the form of a metaphor, the viewer is likely to revert to their view of the socially accepted view of the moment and not explore the possibility that there might be other ways of looking at things.Their introduction and the whole explanation for the mystery brings about what could be some very interesting moral dilemmas that never get explored. Finally, we have the episode's protagonist act irrationally and against his own self interest to help his new alien friend, everything works out in the end, with the exception of the moral dilemmas being completely ignored.
You’re kind of touching on good points here and I feel you, so I’m gonna talk about what frustrated me about this episode first. Oh, my. There are so many things they could explore I don’t think I could list them all. Here we go though. Is the hunting of non-sentient beings okay? What makes sentient beings different? Where can we draw the line on the values of life and why? If Tosk was raised to be prey, what does that mean about social stratification? If Tosk was raised to be prey, what does that mean about our rights to pursue our own desires versus the desires of society? Tosk felt that his role as prey was a role of honor and that his honor meant more than his own life. What does that say about the expectations society imposes on us? What would have been the right decision for the DS9 crew? To value the wills of a society or to value the rights of a single creature? They’re there for diplomatic reasons, how can they be sure that their overarching mission isn’t going to color their choice? If they decide to value the wills of a society over the rights of a single creature in part because of their diplomatic mission, doesn’t that make them just as oppressive? Fuck. Those are a ton of questions. Those questions are deep as fuck. Yet none of them were adequately addressed let alone resolved. Tosk went free. For them, the hunt continued. For me, I’m sitting here with philosophical blue balls. It seemed odd to me for two reasons. One, O’Brien is a military man. The military has a chain of command and its instilled in its members that the chain of command shouldn’t be broken for a whole slew of reasons that can be boiled down to “The shit that is going on is bigger than you, and if you don’t follow the chain of command, shit can go sideways real quick and the big picture can become jeopardized.” I mean, the dude should know better. In fact, he did know better because he set aside his com-badge. He didn’t want to face Sisko until after the fact because he knew that if he had his com-badge on and Sisko told him to quit fucking about, he’d give back into the chain of command. It was also odd because, man, they’re in the fucking military. Disobeying orders and shit has consequences and the bigger the crime, the harsher the consequences. I will admit that’s personal perspective and O’Brien might be a much braver and nobler person than I am. Me personally? It could be the middle of the night, no traffic, no cops in sight, and I still wouldn’t jaywalk across the street for fear of getting a ticket. That said, he and the DS9 crew know almost nothing about this foreign culture. For all we know, liberating Tosk could be the biggest faux pas ever and now he’s completely fucked up diplomatic relations with an alien species possibly forever. I mean, that’s not the only risk. What if he started an interstellar war and those guys had a fleet so fucking massive that they could basically steamroll the entire Federation like some kind of sci-fi blitzkreig from hell? Then he’d go from “O’Brien the guy who fixes replicators and turbo-lifts” to “O’Brien, the guy who fucked everything up for everyone for fucking ever.” - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I mean, I’m completely fine with sci-fi writers exploring things through metaphor. Hell, I’m fine with the fact that metaphors sometimes go over my head. I’m just saying though, if you’re gonna bring up shit for the sake of exploration, fucking explore it. For the record, my favorite episode so far is a draw between the Aphasia Virus and the former rebel conspiring with Klingons to make a bomb because he didn’t like the way the war ended. kleinbl00, I don't want you to feel left out of this discussion. So feel free to chime in with your thoughts.What would you like them to explore?
It didn't seem at all odd to me that O'Brien acted against his interest to help Tosk.
You missed a piece in this. When O'Brien went in for his dressing down with Sisko, O'Brien wondered out loud why the transporter wasn't shut down and isolated to O'Brien's com badge location when Sisko realized that O'Brien and his com badge weren't in the same place. O'Brien could not have carried out his plan without assistance from Sisko. Sisko gave a blustery non-answer. O'Brien wasn't a rogue player here. They all held the same values but were constrained by the Prime Directive. The Prime Directive was the rule that they didn't interfere with other cultures. The Prime Directive is a metaphor of people who go into other cultures and change their cultures for the worse, as was blamed on the Christians in the case of some native cultures. If Sisko knew about and could stop O'Brien in a second but allowed his actions, was Sisko complicit in the crime? I don't think it's very unrealistic If Flynn (a military man) committed an illegal action, and Trump knew about it but allowed it anyway, was Trump complicit in the illegal action? Those are some of the questions the US is now asking. I think those scenarios get played out in a lot of ways. In DS9, there's a recurring theme of exploring the point at which inaction or blindly following orders becomes immoral in itself. Picard struggled with it and so did Sisko. They both took actions or inactions they felt were more moral than blindly following orders. [Edit: removed a possible spoiler] I'll just say here that your questions about what happens when military orders aren't followed is explored a lot. About the hunters, I just saw a post on reddit yesterday about a hunter who was killed when the elephant he killed fell on him. The hunter and anti-hunter discussion turned so vitriolic that the thread had to be shut down due to death threats. It doesn't seem like the hunter question is very settled. There's not much more to explore. I've read that when a piece of fiction stays with you, it's a great piece of fiction. This piece made you think and question. I rarely see that when people watch things. I think that's a great achievement for a piece of fiction.It seemed odd to me for two reasons. One, O’Brien is a military man. The military has a chain of command and its instilled in its members that the chain of command shouldn’t be broken for a whole slew of reasons
Those are a ton of questions. Those questions are deep as fuck. Yet none of them were adequately addressed let alone resolved. Tosk went free. For them, the hunt continued. For me, I’m sitting here with philosophical blue balls.
I did not miss that part. However, 1) O'Brien had no way of knowing that Sisko and the rest of the DS9 team would aid him in his crazy scheme (and I'd like to point out that this is once again illustrated by him taking off his badge) and 2) Sisko, through his position of power and authority, is in better position to smooth things over. That's not to say Sisko's decision was right or wrong, just that Sisko was risking less with his choices than O'Brien was with his choices. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, just because I think of the idea of risking the big picture for a small event is unrealistic behavior. I'm not saying that it's the right decision (and depending on when you talk to me I could go either way and I really hate moral quandries), but I'm just saying that I don't think the whole DS9 crew would be willing to take that risk. Dude. Tell me about it. I love animals. I love nature. I believe conservation efforts are extremely important. That said, I don't think hunting is immoral and I do think there's a lot of validity that the act of hunting contributes to the conservation movement and hunting/fishing for your meat is more moral than factory farmed meat and there's all sorts of caveats to all of those statements and blah, blah, blah. That said, holy shit, it's a contentious issue and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that a conversation about it got out of control on a place like Reddit. Damn.You missed a piece in this. When O'Brien went in for his dressing down with Sisko, O'Brien wondered out loud why the transporter wasn't shut down and isolated to O'Brien's com badge location when Sisko realized that O'Brien and his com badge weren't in the same place. O'Brien could not have carried out his plan without assistance from Sisko. Sisko gave a blustery non-answer.
I don't think it's very unrealistic.
About the hunters, I just saw a post on reddit yesterday about a hunter who was killed when the elephant he killed fell on him. The hunter and anti-hunter discussion turned so vitriolic that the thread had to be shut down due to death threats. It doesn't seem like the hunter question is very settled. There's not much more to explore.
I apologize for assuming that you missed the part about Sisko being complicit. I thought that your conclusion would have been different had you taken that into account. I shouldn't have assumed that. Maybe this series isn't your cup of tea? Since I like moral quandries, the writing seems fine to me. In fact, for me, it's better than most since most series don't even try to contain any moral ambiguity. I do think the whole crew would be willing to take that risk. I base that on other episodes where the whole crew go on a mission, risking everyone's lives for one person's project or experiment or even their mistake. I pondered whether that was realistic or not while I was watching it. I think there are a couple factors that make it more believable, after thinking about it. This group of people are self-selected to be interested in exploration. They're willing to risk their lives for what they find. Banding together to protect everyone equally is also a survival technique. They're more powerful as a group than individually. If that means defending a bone-headed mistake of one crew member, it's still the guiding principle. Also, while life is still fragile, medical technology is so advanced that dying is less likely. That makes risk-taking slightly less risky. An episode from TNG had me thinking about the mindset of the crew a lot. In that episode, the crew found several people in cryogenic stasis. One person revived them through one of those bone-headed errors by a crew member, then the rest of the crew had to deal with it. After the doctor fixed all their medical maladies, she said something about them that stayed with me. "Too afraid to live, too scared to die." or words to that effect. To me, it meant that the people on the starship had decided what they were willing to die for. It gave them purpose and meaning. They were willing to risk their lives for what they believed in, and that included each other.I really hate moral quandries
I don't think the whole DS9 crew would be willing to take that risk.
To clarify, I hate moral quandries when people expect me to have some kind of answer to the quandrie and the stubbornness to stick to it to instead of the flexibility to change my mind or appreciate the fact that there's no easy answer. Now that I'm in season two, I'm liking it a bit more, if only because I'm having so much fun being a sour puss and picking it apart. I've already had one good discussion with a friend about how Starfleet is too lax in its vetting process for recruits and we talked about how having a cultural history of breaking rank isn't healthy for a military institution. We argued briefly, over text, whether or not the Star Trek Universe is indeed a post scarcity society (I hold that it isn't and there's a ton of evidence in DS9 alone to support that) and he made the claim that apparently Earth is a paradise, which until I get more information, I'm actually gonna assume that that's a red flag as absolute claims like that tend to be made by cults, authoritarian governments, etc. So, I'm having fun, but not in the way some people would want me to have fun I think. As to the whole risk taking thing, I kind of see where you're coming from, but I kind of disagree too. I'd hold that while individualism is important, the structure of the organization their in and the values they seem to discuss hint towards a focus on big pictures and greater good. With that in mind, some of the little risks they seem to take puts the greater good in jeopardy and yes, I know life's not that simple. I'm not really a huge fan of any of the characters on the show, but I will say I'm kind of enjoying the evolution of Kira's character, only because she slowly seems to be coming around to understanding that the life she used to lead doesn't have the behavior and values that's conducive to the future she's fighting for and so she's learning on the go. Quark is kind of cool too, if only because he's one dimensional to a fault, so even though he's a character, his role strikes me as more mechanical. Everyone knows what Quark wants and what he's gonna do, so it's all about how they navigate around him.Maybe this series isn't your cup of tea?
A moral quandry is uncertain by definition. They don't have definite answers. People expecting you to have answers are not understanding what a moral quandry is. Glad you're having fun. Maybe these people who are supervising your method of fun can be given a different role in your life? Unless you're hurting someone, you get to enjoy what you enjoy. I'm pretty sure there are entire forums where people analyze and criticize the inconsistencies in the Star Trek shows by episode, by series and across series. As the series goes on, Quark gets a bit more 3 dimensional with a bit of back history. A few of the other characters have some interesting back history as well.To clarify, I hate moral quandries when people expect me to have some kind of answer to the quandrie and the stubbornness to stick to it to instead of the flexibility to change my mind or appreciate the fact that there's no easy answer.
So, I'm having fun, but not in the way some people would want me to have fun I think.
Everyone knows what Quark wants and what he's gonna do, so it's all about how they navigate around him.
And there it is. Science fiction isn't supposed to give you the answer. It's supposed to give you the question. It's not their job to resolve the issues they raise, it's their job to give you a new insight or perspective into an existing societal problem masquerading as a sentient alien bred for hunting. It is not the job of the author to tell you what to think, it is the job of the author to give you new insights into the way you already think. The purpose of science fiction is to question assumptions, not deliver platitudes. This comes to the fore in your frustration over the way O'Brien acted - he didn't meet your expectations. He didn't fit into your preconceptions. All the questions this raised for you are there by design - that is the function of the narrative, to get you spooled up and thinking about all this shit. Not to sit back and go "yep, my prejudices are confirmed for the day! Let's watch SportsCenter!"" You're not, though. You're saying "if you're gonna ask questions, fucking answer them" and that's most decidedly not the point.Fuck. Those are a ton of questions. Those questions are deep as fuck. Yet none of them were adequately addressed let alone resolved.
I’m just saying though, if you’re gonna bring up shit for the sake of exploration, fucking explore it.
I understand that to some extent. However, I think if we focus on the Tosk episode a bit, I think the story would have both flowed better and been more satisfying if his purpose in life was revealed earlier and the protagonists had time to dwell on the issue and questions. I don't necessarily want answers, I mean, hell, I listen to fucking NPR Talk Radio for fun sometimes and answers they don't have and I dwell on my own inner conflicts about classism and materialism and spirituality and equality and I sure as fuck don't have answers. But taking the time to really dwell on the questions, to get the conversation ball rolling, adds so much to the satisfaction. The frustration comes not from the fact that he didn't meet my expectations. The frustration comes from that he acted unrealistically. If it was a civilian that met Tosk and did what O'Brien did, I wouldn't have been frustrated because shit, civilians do what they do and sometimes that means fighting the power and not regarding the bigger picture. There's this unrealisticness that comes in a lot of the Sci-Fi episodes that I've seen. Like in OG Star Trek, Captain Kirk goes away on dangerous missions away from the ship. That's unrealistic. Grunts get to grunt and command gets to command because command is too valuable to risk losing. Star Trek, again, has what I understand to be non mission essential civilians on these ships that are gone for years at a time in dangerous territories full of unknown enemies and cosmic phenomena. I don't think I've ever heard a conversation from anyone to where society evolved where it's socially acceptable for groups of people to take risk like that in masses. I mean, they're not the space equivalent of homesteaders going to settle the west. They're a bunch of spouses and children along for a very dangerous ride. If we were to talk in terms of more specifics. The very last episode I saw of DS9 was even more unrealistic to the point I thought all day about everything that was overlooked. It made the Tosk episode seem better in comparison. To narrow it down to just thing though, to avoid another rant, they found a woman who was on the other side of the wormhole for two years, the only known human to do so. To the Federation, that part of the galaxy is a massive question mark. There was no military debriefing to discover and record where she had been, who she had met, and what she had learned and there was no quarantine period to make sure she was in good health. I mean, yeah, Doctor Bashir did give her a check up to find out that she was in amazingly good health, but that was after she was already let on the station that has circulation air and population and water and all. Don't even get me started on Quark trying to bribe Odo so he could hold an illegal auction to sell off alien artifacts and the overlooking of the moral implications of selling cultural artifacts to a bunch of shady rich people to begin with. I think the best analogy I can come up with so far is if the Brooklyn 99 team found a time bomb in their office, acknowledged it was there, and then left it as a central part of the plot without actually trying to figure out where it came from, how to get rid of it, or anything of the sort. That strange woman from the other side of the wormhole is like a time bomb not being addressed. It's unrealistic not because it takes place in outer space and not because there are aliens and wormholes and things of the like. It's unrealistic because to me, that's not how rational people operate. So yeah, I'm still saying, if you're gonna bring up shit for the sake of exploration, explore it. I never said anything about answering it, because resolutions don't necessarily mean concrete answers. But in addition, I'm now also saying, explore things realistically.It's supposed to give you the question.
This comes to the fore in your frustration over the way O'Brien acted - he didn't meet your expectations.
- food comes from replicators - people travel faster than the speed of light - you get to the planet by "beaming" ...and it's the org chart that has you upset? Nope. Sorry, bud. Sticking to my guns on this one: you have a preconception of the way people are supposed to act and you refuse to extend suspension of disbelief to the show because of it. The USS Enterprise may be a big goddamn space ship but it's run a lot more like the PT109. There's a crew of about eight people who matter and then assorted fillerfolk who tend to die. It's literally Wagon Train. That you've got your head wedged about "captains don't do this" or "military men don't do that" says more about you than it does about the show - did you miss the part where O'Brien's wife and kid are there on the space station with him? And how is it that an alien space station tidally locked next to a wormhole gives you no pause, but a shift in military doctrine over the space of 500 years is the Rubicon you will not cross? That's all you. You're not, though. You're saying "I want to talk about the loopholes you're invoking that make me uncomfortable, not the stuff you wrote the show about." And that's typical of sci fi fans, by the way: god help you if there's sounds in space but of course aliens have boobs. This is why they are largely ignored by the market; fans of television will consume television. Fans of sci fi will consume stuff if it's only just so and then bitch about it on internet forums about how inaccurate it is. Actually, that's a lie. Hollywood knows the nerds will watch anyway and doesn't give a fuck if they bitch. A better analogy would be to state that the Brooklyn 99 team found a time bomb and determined it was harmless and then moved on to other things. Remember - it is accepted as the fundamental basis of the universe that people can be constructed out of mutherfucking light with exquisitely perfect accuracy. If you're willing to accept transporters and replicators, you have to accept the notion that a medical scan is fuckin' final. Those are the storyworld rules. This is a big part of writing - determining the storyworld rules and working entirely within them. This gives your narrative the consistency your audience demands: generally, if you say "elves live forever, a palanteer allows you to see across the land and orcs are half-men, half-goblin" people accept it and move on. Platform 4 3/4 or whatever gets you to Hogwart's and if your wand breaks you lose your mojo. You're not accepting the storyworld rules. That's fine. Sci fi probably isn't for you. But stop trying to justify it as a problem of the writing rather than a problem of your enjoyment. Again, Season 1 DS9 ain't great. But it ain't great for reasons utterly unrelated to the justifications you're pulling out of your ass.There's this unrealisticness that comes in a lot of the Sci-Fi episodes that I've seen. Like in OG Star Trek, Captain Kirk goes away on dangerous missions away from the ship. That's unrealistic.
So yeah, I'm still saying, if you're gonna bring up shit for the sake of exploration, explore it.
I think the best analogy I can come up with so far is if the Brooklyn 99 team found a time bomb in their office, acknowledged it was there, and then left it as a central part of the plot without actually trying to figure out where it came from, how to get rid of it, or anything of the sort.
I don't have a problem with replicators. I think the idea is nifty. I'm willing to suspend disbelief about faster than light travel because it's a familiar sci-fi trope and it allows writers to easily tell stories about space exploration. I don't even mind the whole teleporters because it's just another piece of technology and I know it was in the original series because it was easier and cheaper than having scale models of ships landing and taking off. I am lost at the whole organization chart because it does strike me as unrealistic and counter to logical structures and human behavior. I didn't miss the fact that O'Brien's wife and kid are on the space station and that makes a bit more sense because it's a space station on a planet that's trying to rebuild its government after occupation. To me, that's a lot more realistic than flying into the unknown where literally anything can happen, because at least on the space station, the majority of the risks are known. As for the space station next to a worm hole, they have loopy sci-fi ways of explaining how that works if anyone asks the question. But I think I am. We have spaceships and aliens and a government that's trying to rebuild itself and there are gonna be political and personal conflicts about it. I just don't think that unrealistic behavior can be explained by story world rules. I do think it can be chalked up to bad writing. I think I'm fair in that assessment because if I said the same thing about Arrow or Iron Fist, the majority of the comic book loving community would do the internet equivelant of murmuring in agreement. Can I go back and say I enjoyed the episode with the Aphasia Virus? I thought it was a good medical mystery. I enjoyed how the solution to the conflict was the result of a doctor knowing about the origins of the original virus working with Dr. Bashir's research to come up with a solution. I'm willing to ignore the fact that no one actually died even though that's unrealistic. It had pacing issues. It had dialog issues. It didn't have nearly as much forced drama issues. It was an okay episode. Can I go back and say I enjoyed the episode with the "former" terrorist and the bomb? I thought it was a good way to illustrate how some people have a hard time accepting the outcomes of political events. I thought they did an okay job in showing how new situations and new relationships can put a strain on and even break old friendships, creating frustration and doubt. I thought the tailor as a spy was weird. I wish they focused more on the relationship with Kira and the "former" terrorist. I think it ended too cleanly. But it was an okay episode. What both those episodes had in common though, despite their flaws, was that unlike the episodes with Tosk the guy being hunted and Vash the archaeologist who is totally a villain is that everybody acted on the more rational and realistic end of the scale. Back to the Vash episode, I totally didn't like that O'Brien used a battery to help Vash and Dax escape from being trapped in the shuttle. That goes back to the whole using technology as a crutch that takes away the satisfaction from dramatic resolution problem I have. Also, I knew who Q was through cultural osmosis. Seeing him in a show though, I don't think I like his character.You're not accepting the storyworld rules.
In other words, you're willing to accept conventions you already know, but deeply uncomfortable with new concepts you are unfamiliar with. It's entirely possible that the concept of duty, and what it requires of us, is a through-line explored via O'Brien through the course of not just many seasons of DS9, but several seasons of TNG. It's almost as if this were a narrative thread revisited throughout the course of the series. But you didn't know that Vash is Picard's erstwhile girlfriend. You can have it one way or the other: you can be mad that the shows are all self-contained or you can be mad that they don't have any continuity from episode to episode. You can't have it both ways.I'm willing to suspend disbelief about faster than light travel because it's a familiar sci-fi trope and it allows writers to easily tell stories about space exploration. I don't even mind the whole teleporters because it's just another piece of technology and I know it was in the original series because it was easier and cheaper than having scale models of ships landing and taking off.
I am lost at the whole organization chart because it does strike me as unrealistic and counter to logical structures and human behavior.
thought the tailor as a spy was weird. I wish they focused more on the relationship with Kira and the "former" terrorist. I think it ended too cleanly. But it was an okay episode.
Also, I knew who Q was through cultural osmosis.
I mean, I can go either way. Part of the reason I'm watching DS9 from the beginning is because I'm told that the continuity matters down the road. The Vash episode was frustrating to me for a different reason. I think it could have been stretched out to three episodes and as a result not only tell a better story, but also take the time to explore some of the moral quandries brought about by the story and resolve some of them. Some of the resolutions I'd agree with, others I wouldn't, and others I could go either way about, but all of them would have left me satisfied.You can have it one way or the other: you can be mad that the shows are all self-contained or you can be mad that they don't have any continuity from episode to episode. You can't have it both ways.
KB probably has better insight on how this happens but I find that there are often a lot of terrible writing in the in-between episodes. Usually the first episode in a season is great, there is a great mid-season one and then the final 1-2 episodes are great. It seems to me that often the episodes in between are filler. Depending on the show the in between episodes either feel like they are written by people not familiar with the show, or have other inconsistencies that require too much buy in.
Schedules and budgets. Berman-era Star Trek was written as "we start the season here, we end the season there." Some actors had prior engagements and were unavailable for all the episodes; some actors had conditions in their contract that said "at least one episode in this season is gonna be about me." The main throughline had certain set-pieces built in; this was where most of the money for the season was gonna go. So you take all that, you put it in a Gannt chart and you recognize that you've got seventeen of the twenty-six episodes you're contractually bound to make, and you've got four million dollars left over (TNG was infamous when it came out for being the first syndicated series that cost more than a million dollars an episode). So now you've got nine episodes and half your average budget and Patrick Stewart is playing Scrooge on TNT and Gates McFadden is outtie because she's sick of Maurice Hurley rubbing his dick on her in the dressing room which means when you go to the pile of spec scripts you have from writers on and off the show, you can cross out everything with Picard or Crusher. And what you're left with might be great, might be terrible, but can certainly be executed in a way that doesn't fuck up your through line. Not all shows are done like this. I got to talk to David Kring right as Heroes Season 1 wrapped. I asked him how much they knew about the end of the series when they started, because S1 is fuckin' intricate. He blew me away - they knew nothing. They fully intended to kill the cheerleader three episodes in. HRG was a bit-player. They thought it was going to be a show about the Patrelli brothers. But as they wrote, they came up with this thing and they rolled with it. But they ran out of money - in the finale, Patrelli was supposed to throw a bus at Sylar but they didn't have any money for that level of SFX so it ended up being a bus stop sign.
I was talking to my cyberpunk loving, DS9 suggesting friend again last night and he told me Voyager can be a hard watch if you care about consistent characters. He said the Captain seems to have a new personality every week. Sometimes she's all about the rules, sometimes she says damn the rules. Sometimes she's very encouraging, sometimes she's cold and harsh. From what he described, and from what you're describing, it sounds like either writers are being rotated in and out and don't understand the characters or the producers solicit scripts and then try to mold them to fit the show. I hate to compare and contrast westerns again (but hey, I'll stick with what I know I guess), I have a theory that the people in charge of the shows would often just buy scripts and then re-write them a bit to fit the characters and scenery of a show. A lot of the times plots would be so simplistic and stereotypical that anyone could easily take place in The Rifleman or Gunsmoke or Laramie without much adjusting.
Voyager is fucking terrible. Tupac the jive-ass Vulcan and Chipotle the Space Navajo. Rick Berman is the fucking worst. In many cases, it's the personality of the showrunner. Gene Roddenberry was a serial sexual harasser and his wife was always on set (Nurse Chapel, the Computer, Troi's mom). he was bad enough that when he offered Michelle Forbes her own show (DS9) she quit rather than work with him again. But as bad as Roddenberry was around women, apparently men did better. Berman, on the other hand, drove away anybody of any real talent and ran the franchise into the ground. Roddenberry had a great group of writers around him but there was a hell of a diaspora when he died. Rene Echevarria left. Naren Shankar left. Ron Moore left. They were pretty much left with Brannon Braga and DC Fontana.