DS9: The Darkness and the Light
May. 24th, 2007 12:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI did not like this episode.
Quite a lot of it was fine. The same stuff with the resitance and morality that they've been poking at from all sides.
And while a very pregnant woman running off on a revenge mission is deeply stupid it is a kind of stupid they set up clearly, and plausible in character, and going to make me hide and hope it works out okay because veryvery bad: baby is in danger!
It also uses the pregnancy to look at the issues again, the whole thing with balancing responsibilities.
So that part doesn't suck.
But when she catches up with the bad guy?
He's hunched over, his hand is scarred and crooked, and he has extensive facial scarring. His idiosyncratic speech patterns are probably meant to suggest some kind of mental illness. And... why?
Okay, so there's the thing about victims, innocence, she hurt him so now he wants to hurt her, all that. Also that thing they had with Spike and Angel when Spike was waiting for his hands to reattach, how they were all innocent once. There was some good stuff layered in there.
But why did they choose disability as a way to show it?
Why scars?
What is it with trying to make evil ugly?
It's just really fucked up.
And utterly illogical in this 'verse - they have a level of technology that can change an individual's *species* - give them any face they want! How, how, how could he plausibly end up with scars???
So it just takes something that should be balanced on the personal edge of political and makes it all about the crazy (which distracts from the main questions) and moral flaws showing up as physical failings and
yuck.
It's like I can see what they were trying to do just enough that it makes me want to explain to them instead of just throw it away, but... no.
In my experience nice people and nasty people look pretty much like people. You can't tell by looking. Why does fiction continue to suggest that you can?
Quite a lot of it was fine. The same stuff with the resitance and morality that they've been poking at from all sides.
And while a very pregnant woman running off on a revenge mission is deeply stupid it is a kind of stupid they set up clearly, and plausible in character, and going to make me hide and hope it works out okay because veryvery bad: baby is in danger!
It also uses the pregnancy to look at the issues again, the whole thing with balancing responsibilities.
So that part doesn't suck.
But when she catches up with the bad guy?
He's hunched over, his hand is scarred and crooked, and he has extensive facial scarring. His idiosyncratic speech patterns are probably meant to suggest some kind of mental illness. And... why?
Okay, so there's the thing about victims, innocence, she hurt him so now he wants to hurt her, all that. Also that thing they had with Spike and Angel when Spike was waiting for his hands to reattach, how they were all innocent once. There was some good stuff layered in there.
But why did they choose disability as a way to show it?
Why scars?
What is it with trying to make evil ugly?
It's just really fucked up.
And utterly illogical in this 'verse - they have a level of technology that can change an individual's *species* - give them any face they want! How, how, how could he plausibly end up with scars???
So it just takes something that should be balanced on the personal edge of political and makes it all about the crazy (which distracts from the main questions) and moral flaws showing up as physical failings and
yuck.
It's like I can see what they were trying to do just enough that it makes me want to explain to them instead of just throw it away, but... no.
In my experience nice people and nasty people look pretty much like people. You can't tell by looking. Why does fiction continue to suggest that you can?