Sfdebris.net

Great episode, as usual.
My main take from the review is:
OMG, he's finally going to do it!!!!
I've wondered when he was going to tackle the DS9 finale because I remember him talking about how given the multi-episode arc nature of that, it was the one Star Trek finale he wasn't able to review.
We're talking six episodes at least. This is going to be a great summer.

I'm not getting any sound on this video, is anyone else having that problem?

[edit: Nevermind. I reloaded the page a few times and now it is playing normally. I guess the internet fairy was just mad at me or something. I must not have sacrificed enough motherboards for her glory]

As big a fan as I am of Chucks reviews, I must point out that near the start he said Sisko and crew were in the "Delta Quadrant", should be Gamma Quadrant. I know, probably flashbacks to Voyager...

I enjoyed this episode a lot when I first saw it. I wish they'd have expanded the roles of Hoya and T'Lor though. As two alien Starfleet officers that we don't really see enough of, it'd have been nice if we'd seen them before as we did with Muniz instead of being one-shot red and blue shirts respectively.

One thing that I didn't get though was that Sisko went on about if he'd trusted the Vorta his 5 crewmen could have been saved. Well no, since Hoya, Bertram and Rooney were killed on the runabout in a surprise attack and T'Lor was killed in the first surprise ground assault. All this was before Sisko and the Vorta had even spoken. The only one who could have been saved was Muniz... then again, why did no one pick up T'Lor'd medkit when they were outside the ship for him? Surely it wouldn't have took too much time to quickly grab it from wherever his body fell...

For a moment I thought this review was going to bring on a return of the Memory Alpha shaming joke from a previous review, considering that when describing Kilana Memory Alpha notes that she is the only Vorta to wear make-up, jewlery, and a different hairstyle ... but makes no mention whatsoever of the low-cut dress.

On a serious note I quite like this episode. It's very suspenseful. Though I agree with the criticism that the whole "No one had to die" is kind of moot since that happened before Kilana approached him - maybe Ben meant if she'd approached him first instead of firing on the runabout? I don't know.

I, like Chuck, kind of wish we had seen Kilana again. Or really, that any of the Vorta had been reoccurring besides Weyoun and Keevan. I think I'm very much in the minority here, but I think the Vorta were really fascinating and would have liked to see more of them.

Fun fact: The DS9 novel "Inferno" establishes that Weyoun and Kilana were lovers in a previous life - which serves no purpose other than proving that no male character in fiction is safe from the "A Man is Not a Virgin" trope and no female character in Trek is safe from the "All Female Characters must be paired off" Trek cliche.

FakeGeekGirl wrote:For a moment I thought this review was going to bring on a return of the Memory Alpha shaming joke from a previous review, considering that when describing Kilana Memory Alpha notes that she is the only Vorta to wear make-up, jewlery, and a different hairstyle ... but makes no mention whatsoever of the low-cut dress.

On a serious note I quite like this episode. It's very suspenseful. Though I agree with the criticism that the whole "No one had to die" is kind of moot since that happened before Kilana approached him - maybe Ben meant if she'd approached him first instead of firing on the runabout? I don't know.

I, like Chuck, kind of wish we had seen Kilana again. Or really, that any of the Vorta had been reoccurring besides Weyoun and Keevan. I think I'm very much in the minority here, but I think the Vorta were really fascinating and would have liked to see more of them.

Fun fact: The DS9 novel "Inferno" establishes that Weyoun and Kilana were lovers in a previous life - which serves no purpose other than proving that no male character in fiction is safe from the "A Man is Not a Virgin" trope and no female character in Trek is safe from the "All Female Characters must be paired off" Trek cliche.

Consider it a testament to how well written her character is, despite having very limited screen-time. I have seen this episode for the first time back when every bit of exposed skin was quite... let's call it attention-forcing to my younger self and to this day, I never noticed her cleavage until Chuck pointed it out. Quite odd how these things work.

FakeGeekGirl wrote:
On a serious note I quite like this episode. It's very suspenseful. Though I agree with the criticism that the whole "No one had to die" is kind of moot since that happened before Kilana approached him - maybe Ben meant if she'd approached him first instead of firing on the runabout? I don't know.

.

Kilana was full of it. I like Aesop that we should trust more and shoot less, it is a good Aesop and one we definitely need more of in our own modern politics, but it simply doesn't work with Dominion arc stories. For a start Kilana doesn't have the authority to say whether or not the crew die or she keeps her word, not with a Changeling present. As soon as the Goop-God was back in safe Vorta hands they'd have killed the Starfleet crew out of hand, such is the way of the Gloop-Gods.

Madner Kami wrote:
Consider it a testament to how well written her character is, despite having very limited screen-time. I have seen this episode for the first time back when every bit of exposed skin was quite... let's call it attention-forcing to my younger self and to this day, I never noticed her cleavage until Chuck pointed it out. Quite odd how these things work.

She's also played very well. Complete kudos to Kaitlin Hopkins for how she played her - the review doesn't touch on this scene, but the moment where she asks to take some of the Founder's remains is actually very sad despite everything we know about the Founders and the events that led up to it - that look of devastated reverence on her face as she puts some of the ashes in the bottle demands sympathy.

That's a character that could have been completely unsympathetic, but instead I liked her enough that I got really quite angry at the Myriad Universe novella "Places of Exile" for a portrayal that I thought wasn't giving her enough credit.

FakeGeekGirl wrote:Fun fact: The DS9 novel "Inferno" establishes that Weyoun and Kilana were lovers in a previous life - which serves no purpose other than proving that no male character in fiction is safe from the "A Man is Not a Virgin" trope and no female character in Trek is safe from the "All Female Characters must be paired off" Trek cliche.

setting aside the question of why the vorta would even have a sexual/romantic drive, that actually does raise some interesting storytelling possibilities. like, maybe two vorta lovers work together, then one dies and is replaced, and the other has to deal with being around this person who looks and talks and acts exactly like their lost love, but isn't them. or you could have a pair of vorta who keep dying at the same time, and each new pair of clones has a completely different relationship: sometimes love, sometimes hate, sometimes indifference. or a vorta could fall in love with a non-vorta, but then dies and the new clone tries to pick up the relationship where the previous one left off. or the non-vorta dies and the vorta tries to have a clone made of them.

FakeGeekGirl wrote:Fun fact: The DS9 novel "Inferno" establishes that Weyoun and Kilana were lovers in a previous life

Ohhh, that is so wrong on multiple levels. It basically casts the author as one of those "don't care about lore or characterization" fanfic shippers.

Winston Churchill, somewhere in his history of WWII that he wrote, spoke of this kind of situation where doing the right thing often does cost lives that otherwise could've been spared had other options been known and/or considered. One such situation that comes to mind was the use of the atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Not many people know this, but General Douglas MacArthur was livid over this, saying that if only the White House and General George Marshall and others had asked him about this, that he would've suggested changing the terms of surrender to allow the Japanese to retain their Emperor, which they ended up doing anyway, because one of the stipulations of Unconditional Surrender was originally that the Emperor was to be deposed completely, and because of this the Japanese were not going to surrender if it meant losing him, because he's the Son of Heaven. He said that if the stipulation was changed prior to dropping the atom bombs, that the Japanese might've considered it.

The problem with this is that Mac was not especially popular in Washington, so they weren't going to ask him on advice on anything, regardless of his own personal expertise on the Far East and their cultures. Secondly, even if they had consulted him and did change the stipulation, there was no guarantee that this would work to resolve the war earlier. There was a plan for the Invasion of Japan itself building up for launch called Operation Downfall, comprising of two phases, and nobody had any illusions as to what this was going to cost in terms of lives, both for the Americans and the Japanese, particularly Japanese civilians, who were being trained by the Japanese military government in an operation called Ketsu-Go, which would've had children strapped with bombs to throw themselves under American vehicles and tanks, and women running around with bamboo spears in banzai charges. The thought was that the atom bombs, at the least, would give the Japanese people, and the government, a way to save face in the wake of such overwhelming military firepower and superiority.

Similarly, Churchill talks about a little known event that happened in early 1940, prior to the Americans entering the war, after the Germans had taken Paris To prevent the Germans from taking French warships sitting in a harbour across the English Channel, he ordered that the Royal Navy fire on those ships in harbour to destroy them. There were French sailors and officers on those ships at the time, and the claim was that the French themselves had no intention of allowing the Germans to have those ships either, and that they were getting ready to move them out and, if necessary, scuttle them. Churchill said that there was no way he could guarantee if even the French would be successful at all, given how close the Germans were to that port, and he could not allow them to take hold of those ships to threaten Britain. He made the call, and yes, he was depressed over the issue, and it did cause considerable animosity between the Free French government and Britain, but he said he'd do it again even knowing what he knows now (that it's very possible the French would've also succeeded). To this day, understandably, there are a lot of old French naval veterans who remember what happened on that day, and have never forgiven the British or Churchill for it.

In such desperate situations, often you can't go on "what ifs," and hope for the best. You have to take the actions necessary to accomplish the objectives under the information you have at the moment. This is the nature of military and government leadership, as well as being a policeman and a fireman, and paramedic, that sometimes you do the best that you can, even if you don't have all the options you ought to have. It may cost lives, but that's the nature of the beast.