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.