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ravenAs life is less than awesome, I am - well, I'm not, I haven't got that far yet. But "Looking For par'Mach In All The Wrong Places" is the best title for anything ever. I defy anyone to disagree.
But I am watching a lot of Deep Space Nine - I seem to be halfway through season four, which considering I only started watching the show a month ago is perhaps a little concerning - and I'm really consistently impressed with it. Okay, basically, I love it to pieces and I think everyone else should too. More than the reboot, this is not your father's Star Trek: if the original series, and TNG and Voyager, are about big things, big liberal ideals, then DS9 is about how other things are important, about how people act and behave when they're at war, how small things matter. Because of the setting on a space station - one place in space - they get to do that thing I wish the other series would do, and show us how people are in the future, and how they live, with their friends and families, and how they fail. I mean, I love Sisko and Jake and how Sisko keeps on thinking he's failing as a father, and I love Nog being terrified that he's going to turn into his father, and how Quark thinks sabotaging Nog will save him from himself, and how Dax thinks it's funny to rearrange Odo's furniture without telling him and just how much O'Brien and Bashir love each other. And I love that a lot of the B-plots aren't about science fiction at all - they're about games of darts, or Jake setting his father up with women, or Odo proposing to Lwaxana Troi, or everyone getting drunk and setting fire to the Defiant. (That last thing has not happened, but I live in hope.)
Oh, and I love how Dax and Kira make sure nearly every episode passes the Bechdel test by having conversations about hand lotion, Cardassians and nubile masseuses from Trill. Speaking of which, I love how we never actually see the Knights of the Round Table programme - we only ever see Dax and Kira in costume for it, which isn't quite the same thing. But yes, female characters, who are strong, and awesome, and draw power from a friendship with each other. Oh, Star Trek, yes, I love you. (I have also watched "Rejoined", now, the supposedly only queer episode of Star Trek, and while it's flawed in a lot of ways, I have this to say about it: it's a lovely piece. It's careful, and romantic and funny, and very very sad, and all the way through Dax remains Dax, and Sisko saying "I will back you all the way" made me tear up slightly, partly because everything does recently and partly because it is that awesome, that simple gesture, that way how things ought to be.)
And more than the trivial things, when it goes for big themes, it does it properly - this is the only series where there's trouble in paradise and the Federation don't save everyone, and I do like that, very much. At one point, Quark compares the Federation to root beer. "It's vile. It's so bubbly and cloying and happy. But you know what's really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you start to like it."
...I think that's awesome. And then you watch something like "The Visitor", which is just a wonderful piece of television, but in a completely different way, doing something completely different. The theme is grief - Jake's, after Sisko's death, and it's beautifully written and acted and shot, with Jake wandering the station in a grim, gloomy haze, avoiding Kira and Dax, and it is subtle, and muted, and just heartbreaking. The careful way the mood is evoked, it made me wail. And has an added bonus of a grown-up, confident Nog, which also made me want to wail slightly. Possibly hormonal, that one.
Anyway. My life is very thrilling. I return you to Friday afternoon. Tonight I'm going to drink.
But I am watching a lot of Deep Space Nine - I seem to be halfway through season four, which considering I only started watching the show a month ago is perhaps a little concerning - and I'm really consistently impressed with it. Okay, basically, I love it to pieces and I think everyone else should too. More than the reboot, this is not your father's Star Trek: if the original series, and TNG and Voyager, are about big things, big liberal ideals, then DS9 is about how other things are important, about how people act and behave when they're at war, how small things matter. Because of the setting on a space station - one place in space - they get to do that thing I wish the other series would do, and show us how people are in the future, and how they live, with their friends and families, and how they fail. I mean, I love Sisko and Jake and how Sisko keeps on thinking he's failing as a father, and I love Nog being terrified that he's going to turn into his father, and how Quark thinks sabotaging Nog will save him from himself, and how Dax thinks it's funny to rearrange Odo's furniture without telling him and just how much O'Brien and Bashir love each other. And I love that a lot of the B-plots aren't about science fiction at all - they're about games of darts, or Jake setting his father up with women, or Odo proposing to Lwaxana Troi, or everyone getting drunk and setting fire to the Defiant. (That last thing has not happened, but I live in hope.)
Oh, and I love how Dax and Kira make sure nearly every episode passes the Bechdel test by having conversations about hand lotion, Cardassians and nubile masseuses from Trill. Speaking of which, I love how we never actually see the Knights of the Round Table programme - we only ever see Dax and Kira in costume for it, which isn't quite the same thing. But yes, female characters, who are strong, and awesome, and draw power from a friendship with each other. Oh, Star Trek, yes, I love you. (I have also watched "Rejoined", now, the supposedly only queer episode of Star Trek, and while it's flawed in a lot of ways, I have this to say about it: it's a lovely piece. It's careful, and romantic and funny, and very very sad, and all the way through Dax remains Dax, and Sisko saying "I will back you all the way" made me tear up slightly, partly because everything does recently and partly because it is that awesome, that simple gesture, that way how things ought to be.)
And more than the trivial things, when it goes for big themes, it does it properly - this is the only series where there's trouble in paradise and the Federation don't save everyone, and I do like that, very much. At one point, Quark compares the Federation to root beer. "It's vile. It's so bubbly and cloying and happy. But you know what's really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you start to like it."
...I think that's awesome. And then you watch something like "The Visitor", which is just a wonderful piece of television, but in a completely different way, doing something completely different. The theme is grief - Jake's, after Sisko's death, and it's beautifully written and acted and shot, with Jake wandering the station in a grim, gloomy haze, avoiding Kira and Dax, and it is subtle, and muted, and just heartbreaking. The careful way the mood is evoked, it made me wail. And has an added bonus of a grown-up, confident Nog, which also made me want to wail slightly. Possibly hormonal, that one.
Anyway. My life is very thrilling. I return you to Friday afternoon. Tonight I'm going to drink.
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no subject
on 2009-09-18 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-09-18 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-09-19 03:05 am (UTC)Dude. The best is yet to come. And now you know why I'm so fucking insistent that DS9 is the best Trek.
no subject
on 2009-09-19 09:55 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-09-20 07:07 am (UTC)And I love the fact that even before, it wasn't perfect-- that pre-Cardassians, there was a caste structure which was absolute and unchangeable (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/D%27jarra). You get to see worlds in a detail you don't get elsewhere because DS9 is so close to Bajor and so involved, still, with Cardassia.
And I love the characters, especially Dax and Kira. Fun fact, One of Dax's previous hosts (the gymnast!) had a brief fling with Leonard McCoy back when he was at university.