Deep Space Nine Reviewed! (by a pedant) S1E14: THE STORYTELLER
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- Опубликовано: 17 июн 2024
- The debut Bashir/O'Brien episode.
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Развлечения
Today's Thought Experiment: So what's the plan if that bracelet gets lost? And what does the designated Old Lad do for the rest of the year?
If the bracelet gets lost, people have to deal with their differences like everyone else in the world. _somehow_
Pretty sure the storyteller spends the rest of the year eating ice cream. Or hosting a show for Jim Henson.
The villagers.
If the bracelet is lost, the prophets broken fragment will eat the village. The old lad has to exercise the rest of the year to try and stay living.
The bracelet makes the villagers emit a vibe cloud. It gets lost, Old Lad takes a search party and sees who starts emiting. Maybe the girls had a more noble intention. And knowing what to do in-between Five Nights With Space-wibbley, he might be moral officer in charge of making people stay instead of moving AWAY FROM A KILLER SPACE MONSTER!
O'Brien giving the failed storyteller a second chance so quickly after an attempted murdering is what we term in Ireland "An Irish solution to an Irish problem"
Nice one. I like that. Would that be Northern Ireland, or Eire?
O'Brien does better with Molly than large crowds.
Ah the seeds of the greatest bromance in Trek is planted
The friendship between Bashir and O’Brien is one of my favorite parts of DS9
Bashir is so great because the general first impression to spending any time with him is terrible, and then he grows on you. Like mold.
It really is worth the watching :). I wonder if the rocky start isn't part of what makes me feel so invested in it - seeing work put into forming that friendship makes it feel more valuable, perhaps?
On the other hand, Geordi and Data from TNG are also a great friendship and every indication is that they hit it off from the word 'go', so maybe it's just nice to watch people looking out for each other.
The first torture O'Brien episode
The old geezer understood a universal truth: O'Brien is the most important man in Starfleet.
This is how we know he was a wise man.
That girl should have been a recurring character. IMO they never did enough with the local politics on Bajor. I mean that could have been a show in itself. I think she could have been a sparring partner for Kai Winn.
Yup. She does good work, but casting her as the leader of a middle-of-nowhere group sadly limits her return potential.
@@Unlimited_Liveswhen the show does touch on local Bajoran politics it's apparent they aren't just returning to the pre-occupation status quo though. They could have easily made her a rising star in the new political system, even had her a pivotal figure (or just a figurehead) in "fighting" the conservative element.
Audiences at the time apparently didn't like the extended focus on Bajoran plots, so they pivoted away to making them more infrequent. Unfortunate really.
Never, ever, draw a treaty along a river. They shift on their own accord due to erosion.
As an FYI the human heart is also located in the center of your chest, in the identical position they depict the Bajoran heart. There are 4 chambers in a human heart. The right two chambers are responsible for pumping de-oxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs, then back to the heart muscles, and into the left side of you heart. The left chambers are then responsible for pumping blood to the entire rest of your body all on its own. This is to provide the cardiac muscles with the richest oxygenated blood supply when compared to all your other muscles and organs because one pump of the heart is equal to the force it takes to crush a tennis ball hard enough that two polar opposite points touch each and every time. And cardiac muscles never get a break. Ever. So when a heart fails it is going to be the left side because for your literal entire life it has been working way harder than the right half. This is why a person having a heart attack grasps the left side of their chest because the muscle failure is not unilaterally symmetric. Regardless though the human heart is still located dead center, no pun intended, of your chest in the exact middle. This is where the Bajoran heart is also. A human will grasp their left side during cardiac failure. A Bajoran would also grasp their left side in a similar manner just like the old man did. This episode is not in error actually. They actually got this one right whether they intended to or not.
Your statement is correct, though I would like to add that there is some variation in the heart position in humans. I, for example, have a heart that sits much more left thzan the typical persons's. There is wiggle room of up to 2,5 to 3 centimeters.
Funny thing is the Human Heart is also basically in the middle. Sure, it's slightly left of center, but it definitely is not where most people place their hand when "putting their hand on their heart".
Bashir might totally be pulling a Bruce Wayne / Clark kent this entire time so nobody figures out he's an augment.
An augment? Doesn't sound very likely
Nog saying 'beautiful thing' and 'mine' all match with how he differs from "WE LIVE IN A UTOPIA EARTH" Jake.
In retrospect it's super cool to see how much he grows over the series, too.
@@Scerttle the guy is a lighthouse to what you can be from what you are. Smarter people might see the new over the old ideas his people hold, or see Star Fleet rewriting ourselves on to another. But because this all came down by a non-star fleet citizen, "humanity" was able to grow.
@@Scerttle Nog's character arc is one of my favorites on the whole show, and a major part of Treachery, Faith, and the Great River is one of my top episodes. Nog's B-plot in that is like an amazing low-key essay on what strengths multiculturalism brings to the Federation, tucked in a mild comedy. (The other part of why I love that one so much is, of course, Weyoun 6.)
Justice for Space and Skull Dog! I imagine O'Brien would not have been too happy about being given *another* job.
Hurrah! A video to eat my belated dinner to.
The Daal Rock sounds like a great way not to deal with the problems within the village and enjoy all the benefits of this realy comfy job.
No wonder the Bajorans are super religious/superstitious. They have crazy stuff all around the planet. This thing, the tears of the prophets, fire wraiths; they are all real observable phenomenon. It's a wonder they aren't more cultish really.
Thanks for another great review💚🌹💚 you are appreciated
Fun behind the scenes fact. In this episode Bashir is shown eating a fruit during a scene talking to O'Brien. It was a kiwi fruit, and they had to do so many takes that his lips got burned and makeup had to put some stuff on them to make it stop. Siddig estimates that he ate about twenty kiwis, and never wants to eat another one ever again (not sure when he made that claim as it's been 30 years, but possibly this still stands).
Another season one episode that feels like a discarded TNG script.
Because... it literally was! memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Storyteller_(episode)#Background_information
@@Unlimited_Livesnot surprising really. It has the TNG smell on it. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but is not what DS9 does well.
I think it's telling that the script was passed over for multiple seasons, and even here got strapped to another idea.
@@Unlimited_Lives yeah, it's not a strong TNG style script, it doesn't feel like something the creative team worked much on.
@@Unlimited_Lives God, that explains so much, I was coming down to the comments to see if anyone else felt the same way lmao
I like this episode a lot. DS9 was already growing on me, but seeing the 'ultimate bromance' of Bashir and O'Brien actually started out rocky, and Bashir's introspection was a very welcome surprise. Personally I'd have liked to see more of the subplot too, a teenager thrown into a position of leadership and handling it messily combined with some Bajoran worldbuilding could've made for a solid episode on its own.
Funny thing about that River detail, it’s actually based on a true story on Earth.
There was a river in Europe that defined the boundary between two countries but it got redirected during World War 2
Honestly it’s still an episode I tend to skip, though I will agree the B plot was much more interesting to me. I enjoy seeing the casual life of DS9 and teenagers are basically the easiest way to show that.
I love the Nog/Jake hijinks episodes
This is one of those eps almost entirely worth it for things that come later: Miles & Julian's future brotp and the evolution of Nog's character. And, of course, the knowledge that next ep is Progress, one of the better S1 eps. (Ofc, after that is If Wishes Were Horses, which I find absolute misery.)
A few hours in a shuttle with season 1 Julian.... O'Brian must suffer!
Even with people misspelling his name!
@@joelellis7035 Totally on purpose! ;)
poop outing, but the seeds of the bromance between the doc and engineer have been placed. there is a tracker on the bracelet, the rest of the year the old lad reads Tolkien to them, having been gifted a contraband copy from the last runaway apprentice when he reached the mars outpost
i remembered that Kira hated Bashir, but I totally forgot about O'brian not liking him at first, either.
I think what maybe would have tied the plots together a bit more is if staby was a bit less staby and a bit more present and sulky before old guy died. Maybe with old guy hanging on through O'brien's stab and sorta showing he did set up O'brien to fail to give staby a chance to shine and regain the people's trust. So the young political leader has to back down from being a hero and the young spiritual leader has to step up to be the hero... the comparison is there but it could have been a bit stronger..
Interesting idea, and one that could have thematically linked them. An "everything in moderation" moral regarding confidence.
I view Bashir as being occasionally a sanctimonious jackass, but also being one of the most genuinely benevolent characters I've seen anywhere, so I forgive him when he is annoying. Yes, Kira saw herself as morally superior to him, but Kira saw herself as morally superior to literally everyone, so that's largely a moot point. Although I accepted her while the show was airing, in the intervening years, I've gradually developed mild dislike for Kira individually, and the Bajorans have always been my least favourite species in the entire franchise. I view them as Star Trek's answer to the Gungans.
Will each series get its own Space Dog? Will they form a Space Dog Shared Universe? Will the Time Police ever catch up to them? I look forward to the answers.
I'm torn between possibilities- Mirror Universe Space Dog, Jem'Hadar Space Dog, Infiltrator Changeling Space Dog, Odo...
I'd forgotten how strange DS9 handled crew roles. It makes very little sense to have your chief engineer play taxi driver and escort but rather than have the most flexible member of the crew role wise, Dax, do the odd jobs they always seem to have O'Brian do it. Every member of the crew except Dax has a role that should keep them busy all the time!
I believe it was because they were trying to show that Starfleet personnel was very shallow on the Station at the time, so they had only very few people to do all the work that was being required of them.
i wonder, dose this count as an a 'o'brian must suffer' episode with him having to deal with puplic speaking and a town of hill billeys
This is where the curse came from. He pissed off the Dal'Rok and things were never the same.
Things really start to take off when they finally get through the discarded TNG scripts, lol.
Nice to look back at the rough beginning of Bashir and O'Brien's friendship though.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the first two seasons of DS9 unfairly gets a bad rap. Okay, so not every episode is a banger, I'll grant that, but it does a lot of setting up of character traits that come to fruition in later seasons. For example, Bashir being an arrogant prick in the early seasons can be considered understandable when you take into account that his genetic modifications more than likely set him far apart from others his age when he was growing up, a feeling I know far too well. When it was learned just how advanced I was, I had a lot of (mostly) unreasonable expectations laid upon me and it had a negative effect for the rest of my life. I'll always say that a genius level intellect is far more curse than it is a gift. Nobody likes a know-it-all, after all, and it's kinda hard not to be a know-it-all when you basically know everything. The eiditic memory that accompanies my condition is also awful because I've seen things in my life that can never be unseen, and often I have difficulty sleeping because the trauma I've been through over the past 40+ years is as bright in my memory as the breakfast I had this morning. I can totally relate to Bashir here and in later episodes.
I'm guessing, haven't seen this one in a few years, Jake wasn't as interested in her so he was able to be more naturally himself whereas Nog "liked her" at least the Ferengi equivelent. But it is an interesting character trait to have Jake just laugh off the prank and not get angry. These 2 really do develop a cool friendship. Saw some special features on the ole dvd's back in the day and one of the people in charge said a lot of this series was about male bonding, no not that kind you sick phooks haha. Don't ever change :) And it makes sense. Bashir/O'Brian, Jake/Nog, Worf/Martok, Sisko/Dax, yes I know lady host but it's a bit of a unique situation. heck one could say Odo/Quark too. Also I'm no Dr. Who fan, seems a bit out there for my taste, but isn't a Dalrock something from that series?
Nothing immediately springs to mind from Who with that name, though I'm certainly not an authority. I'm sure someone here will pipe up if they recognise it and entertain us both.
Personally, Dal'Rok made me think Balrog.
@@Unlimited_Lives Ohh that's a good one. yeah your community is quite good at responding to my randomness which I appreciate.
Real talk, Odo/Quark is how I even REMEMBER this show.
You don't mean Dalek do you?
@@danielyeshe That's it. Thanks
I will say, the DS9 team seemed to realise early that they made Bashir too insufferable, and unlike the Voyager writers, quickly had the character realise this and become less insufferable/more likable over the course of the first season well - and later on had a retcon that went a long way to explaining why he was like this at first. Bashir and O'Brien had alot of onscreen banner and I suspect this is where the idea of them being besties was planted in the writer's minds.
Space Dog!
Why did this minor land dispute require Federation interference? This is way too much of a internal affair, so if anybody from Starfleet had been involved it should of been Sisko, given his whole Emissary schtick
Ah, this was an odd duck episode. Kinda a TNG "alien of the week" scenario mixed with some actually alright character work between Jake and Nog.
This was not a great episode one I would have had a hard time remembering at all if not for Unlimited Lives making it interesting and stopping me from buggering off .
It's a small thing, and I know I'm being pedantic, but I'm bothered by Varis's title. Tetrarch implies that she's one ruler out of four. Could have maybe done something with that, like saying the others had sent her to negotiate as a test.
Good catch, but there's a potential solution. As the other guy was also called a tetrarch, it's possible there's a four-region area originally split from one larger body. Maybe they're still under that larger body and the other two either refused to get involved or voted each way, maybe it dissolved and the names are just tradition.
I agree with what you're saying though about how there was room to look at that plot further and flesh it out. It was more interesting than Cloud Kaiju imo.
This one reeks of "oh shit, we need a new script yesterday". There's next to nothing uniquely DS9 about this episode even though it centers on Bajor. Responding to a medical emergency, a tough diplomatic mission with a headstrong teenage girl... It's all standard Trek fare you could have gotten on TNG as a planet of the week A&B story. O'Brien and Bashir might as well have been Geordi and Worf, a pairing you rarely saw.
Also, don't consider the implications of the Dal'Rok for more than 10 seconds or blood will shoot out your nose. You're telling me this small Bajoran village has the power to conjure up a malevolent psychic entity they can summon at will? Wouldn't that have been handy during the Occupation?
voltmar?
Behind the scenes the roles were reversed with Colm Meany being a bit of dick to Fadil.
Something to do with the Irish mentality towards the British....even though by birth he is Sudanese.
Also Avery Brooks took a dislike to Fadil, so there must be something there.
Awful episode. Actually worse than Move Along home.