DS9 season 2 Disc 7
Sep. 18th, 2016 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI finished watching DS9 season 2 on DVD.
Tribunal
There are quite a few plot-holes here, and a reversion to comedy at quite the wrong moments.
O’Brien is on his way to a holiday with Keiko sans Molly when Cardassians board their ship and arrest him, unwilling to say what for. The crew have to figure out what the crime was and that O’Brien was, of course, set up, but an arrest under Cardassian law is tantamount to a guilty verdict. (Still would the Cardassians really frame a Starfleet officer? Shouldn’t there be some sort of arrangement? And like Odo works out, the crime takes place in Federation space...) It was all too contrived, up and including to the final save, as the mysterious Maquis help Sisko and co figure things out offscreen so that they could somehow get into the court on Cardassia Prime with the proof of the Cardassian plot they needed to get the judge-equivalent to save face and free O’Brian.
O’Brian’s useless lawyer was fun, up until they let him be nothing more than a ham. There was a bit of speechifying.
The unanswered question was how Odo had worked under this ‘justice system’. It’s barely glanced at.
That’s all a bit negative, but this penultimate episode of the season is a nice examination of ethics and ‘justice’ under a repressive regime, just not as good as it could have been.
The Jem’Hadar
This episode was better, pretty good as a cap to the season and in setting things up for the next. I mean, it is ambitious to have the Bajoran-Cardassian history, the Maquis-Cardassian conflict and the growing awareness of the Gamma Quadrant’s Dominion all brewing in the same season, although the seeds of some of that were present in the first season too.
It starts off jollily enough – Sisko’s planned to spend time with Jake, but Nog tags along and then so does Quark, trying to influence Sisko to let him try a new business venture. So, you have the amusing dynamic of a father who doesn’t much like his son’s friend or that friend’s uncle. (Quark has several rants about Sisko’s superiority complex, although he claims it’s his being Human, but Jake doesn’t look down so much at Nog. Except literally.)
All that changes when they meet Erris and the Jem’Hadar and learn a little more about the Dominion as the adults are kidnapped because the Dominion has finally decided to make its feelings about the AQ’s ‘incursion’ into its territory known. And it has fancy tech and, in the Jem’Hadar, suicidal fodder.
A Starfleet starship is fortunately in the neighbourhood as the kids can’t save the day - Jake tries but is out of his depth, while Nog totally panics - so we can also get action set pieces. I presume the Oddessy’s bits were filmed on TNG’s Enterprise. Its destruction might have meant more if we hadn’t just met the Captain and his XO was the only other talking character to humanise the loss of all those lives. It felt a bit perfunctory. The action is a bit tame and small screen compared with, say, the recent films, but the script is tight.
There are lots of good character moments. Kira and Sisko both show their command abilities. Odo insists on joining the rescue attempt for Quark! Quark is the one who flushes Erris out and the Jem’Hadar soldier who wished he was dealing with Klingons was droll.
The extras are featurettes with clips from various eras. In one of them the writers and producers admit the first season was a bit of a shakedown and they found their way more in this season. There’s also a discussion about the difference between DS9 and other Trek shows, in that the characters have to stay where they are and live with the consequences of what they’ve done, and yes, it got flak for what was perceived as a more negative tone. Michael Westmore talked about the make-up designs for the aliens and how all the alien ladies had to be beautiful (snore.)
Overall, I found this was a season of more extremes than the previous one. The Collaborator was my very favourite episode, followed by Crossover, while Armageddon Game was, I thought, the weakest. When it was better than season 1, it was better, and it was more its own thing and less TNG’s spin-off.
Tribunal
There are quite a few plot-holes here, and a reversion to comedy at quite the wrong moments.
O’Brien is on his way to a holiday with Keiko sans Molly when Cardassians board their ship and arrest him, unwilling to say what for. The crew have to figure out what the crime was and that O’Brien was, of course, set up, but an arrest under Cardassian law is tantamount to a guilty verdict. (Still would the Cardassians really frame a Starfleet officer? Shouldn’t there be some sort of arrangement? And like Odo works out, the crime takes place in Federation space...) It was all too contrived, up and including to the final save, as the mysterious Maquis help Sisko and co figure things out offscreen so that they could somehow get into the court on Cardassia Prime with the proof of the Cardassian plot they needed to get the judge-equivalent to save face and free O’Brian.
O’Brian’s useless lawyer was fun, up until they let him be nothing more than a ham. There was a bit of speechifying.
The unanswered question was how Odo had worked under this ‘justice system’. It’s barely glanced at.
That’s all a bit negative, but this penultimate episode of the season is a nice examination of ethics and ‘justice’ under a repressive regime, just not as good as it could have been.
The Jem’Hadar
This episode was better, pretty good as a cap to the season and in setting things up for the next. I mean, it is ambitious to have the Bajoran-Cardassian history, the Maquis-Cardassian conflict and the growing awareness of the Gamma Quadrant’s Dominion all brewing in the same season, although the seeds of some of that were present in the first season too.
It starts off jollily enough – Sisko’s planned to spend time with Jake, but Nog tags along and then so does Quark, trying to influence Sisko to let him try a new business venture. So, you have the amusing dynamic of a father who doesn’t much like his son’s friend or that friend’s uncle. (Quark has several rants about Sisko’s superiority complex, although he claims it’s his being Human, but Jake doesn’t look down so much at Nog. Except literally.)
All that changes when they meet Erris and the Jem’Hadar and learn a little more about the Dominion as the adults are kidnapped because the Dominion has finally decided to make its feelings about the AQ’s ‘incursion’ into its territory known. And it has fancy tech and, in the Jem’Hadar, suicidal fodder.
A Starfleet starship is fortunately in the neighbourhood as the kids can’t save the day - Jake tries but is out of his depth, while Nog totally panics - so we can also get action set pieces. I presume the Oddessy’s bits were filmed on TNG’s Enterprise. Its destruction might have meant more if we hadn’t just met the Captain and his XO was the only other talking character to humanise the loss of all those lives. It felt a bit perfunctory. The action is a bit tame and small screen compared with, say, the recent films, but the script is tight.
There are lots of good character moments. Kira and Sisko both show their command abilities. Odo insists on joining the rescue attempt for Quark! Quark is the one who flushes Erris out and the Jem’Hadar soldier who wished he was dealing with Klingons was droll.
The extras are featurettes with clips from various eras. In one of them the writers and producers admit the first season was a bit of a shakedown and they found their way more in this season. There’s also a discussion about the difference between DS9 and other Trek shows, in that the characters have to stay where they are and live with the consequences of what they’ve done, and yes, it got flak for what was perceived as a more negative tone. Michael Westmore talked about the make-up designs for the aliens and how all the alien ladies had to be beautiful (snore.)
Overall, I found this was a season of more extremes than the previous one. The Collaborator was my very favourite episode, followed by Crossover, while Armageddon Game was, I thought, the weakest. When it was better than season 1, it was better, and it was more its own thing and less TNG’s spin-off.
