Discuss DS9's Final Season

[McAvoy]

How about doing whatever the hell they want with the Ferengi, but not polluting a critical episode in the Cardassian arc with that crap so that we can just properly skip the episode?

Nah. You are allowed to have B plots that are not related to the main one. Especially towards the end where you are tying up character arcs. Good or bad.

[Durandal_1707]

How about doing whatever the hell they want with the Ferengi, but not polluting a critical episode in the Cardassian arc with that crap so that we can just properly skip the episode?

Nah. You are allowed to have B plots that are not related to the main one. Especially towards the end where you are tying up character arcs. Good or bad.

B plots that are not related to the main one? Fine!

B plots that are Ferengi BS? Not so fine!

Was there ever another episode that had as much tonal whiplash as that one? One moment, total destruction and genocide, the next, "hilarious" Ferengi antics.

[Thebestoftherest]

What episode are we talking about.

[MightyDavidson]

I will always maintain my belief that in any realistic universe the FCA would have done a Julius Caesar to Rom within short order. They are cutthroat, they are ambitious, they are absolutely not above murder, and they will have a large pool of candidates to choose from once Rom starts his radical reforms. The Ferengi are Taliban-level misogynists and we all know what happened there.

Quark even said as much in an earlier episode, the ones where the Prophets rewired Zek's brain to make him nice. He was convinced that the Ferengi were going to throw him off the tower of commerce.

Hell when Quark was briefly Nagus there were multiple attempts, including one by Rom himself!

On the other hand, didn't that episode end with the Grand Nagus explicitly calling out the guy who made those attempts on Quark's life, because he tried to kill him rather then control him from behind the scenes? Like he declared the guy was unfit to be Nagus specifically because he resorted to assassination rather then more Ferengi-like methods of profiting from the situation?

[Durandal_1707]

What episode are we talking about.

Dogs 'o War (a.k.a. the one where Rom becomes Nagus)

[Scififan]

I think Quark has his moments. His Picard riffing is dang amusing and Shimmerman knocks it out the park. He's also amazing in Siege of AR-558 so there's that too.

Biggest problem is that the writers admitted that they ran out of time, meaning some characters like Jake are total afterthoughts, and it also didn't help that they did not use that time at all efficiently. Sure there's whole episodes they could have outright deleted like the baseball nonsense or Ezri and her mother, in favour of polishing up the final arc, but I'm talking having a long drawn out music montage in the finale while cutting out Garak's final scene which gave some much needed resolution to Cardassia.

And yet so much of it is so dang good. That's what makes it so rough, and that it is that very quality that makes the flaws become all the more blatant.

I actually thought the Ezri family episode works because finding out that she came from a very dysfunctional family explains why she doesn't like going home and why she became a psychiatrist.

[McAvoy]

I think Quark has his moments. His Picard riffing is dang amusing and Shimmerman knocks it out the park. He's also amazing in Siege of AR-558 so there's that too.

Biggest problem is that the writers admitted that they ran out of time, meaning some characters like Jake are total afterthoughts, and it also didn't help that they did not use that time at all efficiently. Sure there's whole episodes they could have outright deleted like the baseball nonsense or Ezri and her mother, in favour of polishing up the final arc, but I'm talking having a long drawn out music montage in the finale while cutting out Garak's final scene which gave some much needed resolution to Cardassia.

And yet so much of it is so dang good. That's what makes it so rough, and that it is that very quality that makes the flaws become all the more blatant.

I actually thought the Ezri family episode works because finding out that she came from a very dysfunctional family explains why she doesn't like going home and why she became a psychiatrist.

This goes back to Jadzia. If they never killed off Jadzia and the actress was able to stay we probably wouldn't have this episode at all. Maybe some episode where Bashir goes after O'Brien and he gets involved in somehow but they already have episodes like that in Season 7 involving Section 31 anyway.

[Durandal_1707]

This goes back to Jadzia. If they never killed off Jadzia and the actress was able to stay we probably wouldn't have this episode at all. Maybe some episode where Bashir goes after O'Brien and he gets involved in somehow but they already have episodes like that in Season 7 involving Section 31 anyway.

That thing with O'Brien looking for the gangster's family was, in my mind, a great example of "We Ran Out of Ideas." We need to fill some time with something! What do we got? Nothing? Oh hell, just pick a random episode from last season and do a sequel to it, even if it's a rather weak riff on the plot of "Donnie Brasco" that didn't make sense and in no way needed a sequel. Eh, good enough.

The frustrating thing is that there's plenty of things that needed doing in that season that they just neglected in favor of all that wheel-spinning.

[clearspira]

Speaking of Ezri, one of her problems is that she totally fails the Bechdel Test.

Most of her story revolves around Worf, Sisko and Bashir. The family ep is pretty much her only actual episode - and that is put into motion by O'brien!

And ps, that Bashir relationship. That seemed forced - and creepy - knowing how Bashir used to treat Jadzia. Ezri even says that at one point "please don't, Jadzia knew how to handle it."

Chakotay/Seven or Bashir/Ezri for Trek's worst relationship award runner up. The winner is naturally Neelix/Kes - he groomed a child and then kept her in control using jealous rages and pity based coercion.

[Durandal_1707]

Hey, Ezri had that one where there was a murder mystery on the station and she inexplicably took over Odo's job for some reason. And where the "solution" to the mystery was super racist (all the victims had the extremely unusual feature of having pictures of smiling people on their desks! being happy is an emotion! Vulcans hate emotion! Therefore the killer must be a Vulcan!)

Yeah, they ran out of ideas