DS9: Profit and Lace

... did they run out of ideas this season and hire fanfic writers?
I mean this had a lot more plot than the typical sex swap fic, but it also hit most of the usual points.
Since the usual are all the ways said fics irritate me...
*facepalm*

I know it's meant to be funny - but that's part of the problem.



... okay, I can't be bothered to complain in detail.

That was just bad.

DS9: Time's Orphan

That was absolutely foul.

Plot from their point of view: 8 year old Molly falls through time portal, they try and save her and get 18 year old Molly, there's an episode worth of Complications, then they send 18 year old Molly back into the past and she sends 8 year old Molly back, thereby destroying the 18 year old so there's no dangly unresolved bits.

Plot from my point of view: An accident results in their pretty-perfect little girl having a disability: language and behavioural problems. It's treatable, but they'll never get their original little girl back that way. They make sure she doesn't get treated. They throw her back into the past where they know she'll never be rescued, never see another human being again, and probably won't live very long by modern standards. But hey, out of sight out of mind, no problem! And then - because clearly this action *deserves* a magic reward - the disabled girl commits suicide, possibly accidentally, and that results in them getting their original little girl back.

I feel *sick*. What the hell were the writers thinking? They just decided that option B had no worth as a person and only option A was acceptable and just arranged it so it wasn't the choice of the parents, oh no lookit the disabled kid wanted it too. *Fuck* that. So early on they had the option to try and retrieve the 8 year old Molly but rejected it because it would mean destroying the 18 year old. That doesn't absolve them of responsibility when they go and *do exactly that* later!

They killed their own daughter because she had become unacceptable. Sending her back to a place where she will inevitably die alone is in fact killing her, even if the kid seems happy about it. They're deciding that she can't have a useful life with them so they just throw her away.

It's not like those were the only options! So she's claustrophobic and needs a holosuite to transport her safely to her long term care place - so what! Are they seriously suggesting that the mighty Federation doesn't have ships suitably equipped? We know there's nice mobile holodecks on some Federation vessels. Maybe with the war on they can't divert a whole Enterprise size ship to make the delivery, but they didn't even mention the possibility of arranging such transport. They set up this entirely false binary where the options were being confined and risking death through stress or being set free on a planet 200 years away from humanoid habitation. If the girl couldn't travel conscious she could travel in stasis! There's absolutely no way those were the only options.

If they were aiming for 'kid decides to go home and live on her own' then they have a double problem - although they'd made her physically 18 they'd taken away her language and understanding so she couldn't make an informed choice or communicate it properly, even at an 8 year old level. *And* after she made the choice, it destroyed her! Can't be the right choice there.

So it's deeply, deeply wrong. They just threw away the bad behaviour kid so they could get a tidy one back. Wrong.

DS9: End of season 6

"I'm sorry. Our baby would have been so beautiful."

... you know, I knew it happened. But I didn't know exactly what they did to her.

You know Jadzia Dax? Science officer, warrior, Klingon expert, multiple lifeties of experience, brilliant and accomplished woman?

How the fuck did they turn that story into "I'm sorry. Our baby would have been so beautiful."


Why be apologetic about dying???

And why oh why did her story suddenly turn into a baby thing???


The soap - action balance in this season has been far to the soapy. Lots or relationship stuff, shortage of plot developments, is the feeling I'm left with. So the way Jadzia and Worf got all snuggly didn't stand out particularly. But now I'm looking back on the one where she gets shot and he has to rescue her and... put them all in a pattern and... is she existing to motivate him? Just maybe? Was the story no longer about her character development and focusing on him?

I don't know.

She was a scientist who hasn't done any science lately, a warrior who didn't do a hell of a lot of fighting, and a starfleet officer who was mostly used for gossip. WTF?

She didn't get a heroic exit, doing something practical or productive. She didn't get promoted and have to choose to move away - because they've tied her so closely to Worf she couldn't choose that without messing up that 'Klingon Heart' stuff, ie because it would mess up her husband.

She got an utterly pointless death, brought about because she was trying to have a baby.


I *facepalm* in a big way here, I really do.

I am also left with the niggly feeling that if that's the best they could do for her... well, maybe getting gone isn't entirely a bad thing.



She died because she went to chat with the 'Prophets' that she didn't actually believe in, because she decided that it wasn't science it was miracle that looked like science. Which I find really rather freaky thing to do to a science officer. But if it's *meant* to be weird...

This whole thing where Prophets-go-bye-bye - bad guys said that without the Prophets then Sisko is just another Starfleet Captain. Which is a pretty good story reason to do this - if there was any victory for the Emissary it would be because the Prophets made a victory. Without the Prophets he'll have to make it for himself. Story reason, don't rely on fuzzy gods.

That works.


There's only a few episodes this season that I didn't like much, but they're clustered together near the end. I felt kind of like the season stalled, with a whole bunch of little personal stories in a row as the only follow up to the twisty political stuff I was enjoying in "In the Pale Moonlight" or "The Reckoning". And then it went out with a bang, "Tears of the Prophets" being definitely a large scale spectacular with big knock on effects, but the exact details of how they killed off Jadzia just took over the episode for me so it really irritates. So even though I liked most of the season, I'm left with a didn't-like feeling, because it was all hanging around at the end.

Meh.

(no subject)

Okay, two episodes into season 7 and my theory of prophet disappearance go boom cause they're back.

So that was kind of pointless.

Worse, they made him a magic baby. Made by prophets. Blah.




What they've done with Ezri is interesting, making her not a volunteer, not planned. They put so much work into setting up the symbiosis comission and how everyone is carefully chosen and suchlike that this takes it in a whole different direction. Just don't know what they're going to do with it.

Dealing with changing hosts is a good big story source though.




Also - sun go boom, yaays!
... I like boom. Boom is fun.