Areas where you'd respectfully disagree with Chuck

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I also find Lawxana really entertaining, maybe partly because she's such a contrast to the stiff-necked Rodenberry Ideal crew we usually watch. I'd hate to have her as a houseguest, or even risk being cornered by her at a party, but seeing her piss off other characters is truly enjoyable.

[rickgriffin]

There were only two times I found Lwaxana REALLY insufferable, and that's TNG Manhunt (Which Chuck hasn't reviewed) and DS9 The Forsaken (which Chuck ALSO hasn't reviewed), so that's gonna be interesting when he gets around to them. DS9 Fascination is close but literally everyone is insufferable in that episode so it's not fair to pin it on Lwaxana.

Other than that, yeah, I don't mind if a character is irritating to others so long as they're not overtly so to the audience (and part of that is being irritating to people who deserve it). That's a tight balancing act to follow.

[Darth Wedgius]

I have a confession. I may have to fake my own death and start over after this. No, I'm not a Nazi pedophile who eats kittens. It's worse than that. I... I don't hate Dr. Pulaski.

Yes, she's like fingernails on a chalkboard. But I sat through a season of TNG where Picard and Riker had enough smug that you could be forgiven for thinking they'd been bitten by a radioactive wine critic. At that point I'd take even a McCoy clone who was a little bigoted toward Data, as long as they'd disagree with someone else once in a while, especially Picard. And she irritated Picard more than she irritated me, so that was an overall win.

I enjoyed Lwaxana not as much for her own actions (though I liked her a lot in "Half a Life"), but for the effect she had on others. It gave Troi a chance to do something other than relay the obvious, and it gave Stewart a chance to do a little comedy.

[MyUserName]

I'd also disagree with chuck on B5's first season, Maybe its the value of hindsight, but I really love all the little nods to the themes and future plot threads that occur throughout the season.

Future episodes paying off the groundwork laid by the earlier episodes doesn't really make the earlier episodes better though.

Yeah, the first season is fine as generic sci-fi, but its no where near as good as the later seasons in terms of acting, pacing, editing, etc. A large chunk of that is because JMS did all the writing after a point, and because of the build up to be sure... but the first season was weaker.

Especially the pilot. That is unwatchable.

The TNT edit of the pilot is alright in my opinion, I've seen both versions and I agree the 1993 original is bad.

Personally, of the first two seasons, I'm far more partial to Season 1. Yes, many episodes are very rough and searching for a direction, but Sinclair was a great Commanding Officer and I always liked him. Chuck raves about Sisko being a Badass, but I think Jeffery Sinclair could KO him in three rounds.

Season 2 on the otherhand, well not only was Sheridan much less confrontational and unwilling to call BS with Sinclair's "come at me bro" attitude, But watch the first half of the season and watch Bruce struggle to get his character down and make his acting and performance feel natural. I think the episode where he confronts Mordon was the gamechanger since it let Bruce really delve deep into what made the character tick, but everything prior to that... ewwwwww. The worst acting on the show by far.

[MyUserName]

I have a confession. I may have to fake my own death and start over after this. No, I'm not a Nazi pedophile who eats kittens. It's worse than that. I... I don't hate Dr. Pulaski.

Yes, she's like fingernails on a chalkboard. But I sat through a season of TNG where Picard and Riker had enough smug that you could be forgiven for thinking they'd been bitten by a radioactive wine critic. At that point I'd take even a McCoy clone who was a little bigoted toward Data, as long as they'd disagree with someone else once in a while, especially Picard. And she irritated Picard more than she irritated me, so that was an overall win.

I enjoyed Lwaxana not as much for her own actions (though I liked her a lot in "Half a Life"), but for the effect she had on others. It gave Troi a chance to do something other than relay the obvious, and it gave Stewart a chance to do a little comedy.

I always liked Laxwanna myself, but never more Than I did in the novel Q in Law, by Peter David, where her and Q date, Q mostly to learn about this thing called love, and partially to get on Jean Luc's nerves, which he does in spades. And that ending was just... perfect.

[SlackerinDeNile]

I'd also disagree with chuck on B5's first season, Maybe its the value of hindsight, but I really love all the little nods to the themes and future plot threads that occur throughout the season.

Future episodes paying off the groundwork laid by the earlier episodes doesn't really make the earlier episodes better though.

Yeah, the first season is fine as generic sci-fi, but its no where near as good as the later seasons in terms of acting, pacing, editing, etc. A large chunk of that is because JMS did all the writing after a point, and because of the build up to be sure... but the first season was weaker.

Especially the pilot. That is unwatchable.

The TNT edit of the pilot is alright in my opinion, I've seen both versions and I agree the 1993 original is bad.

Personally, of the first two seasons, I'm far more partial to Season 1. Yes, many episodes are very rough and searching for a direction, but Sinclair was a great Commanding Officer and I always liked him. Chuck raves about Sisko being a Badass, but I think Jeffery Sinclair could KO him in three rounds.

Season 2 on the otherhand, well not only was Sheridan much less confrontational and unwilling to call BS with Sinclair's "come at me bro" attitude, But watch the first half of the season and watch Bruce struggle to get his character down and make his acting and performance feel natural. I think the episode where he confronts Mordon was the gamechanger since it let Bruce really delve deep into what made the character tick, but everything prior to that... ewwwwww. The worst acting on the show by far.

I like Sinclair a lot too and I prefer him to Sheridan as well, Sheridan always felt to me like an American (Bruce is quite the patriot in real life) actor trying to play some all-American hero, although he really started to stand out in the latter half of season 4 and season 5 in my opinion. I don't think he was the worst actor on the show though, not by a long shot. Like you said Michael O'Hare's acting usually seemed pretty natural, that was one of the things I liked about Sisko as well, Avery Brooks gave a pretty natural performance most of the time.

Another thing is that I feel if Michael had been able to stay on the show, the romance between Sinclair and Delenn would have been a lot better, Sheridan and Delenn had good chemistry together but their romance felt extremely forced. I get the impression Kosh was doing some telepathy behind the scenes to make them more likely to fall in love.

Btw I still think Sisko would win against Sinclair, Sheridan or Ivanova in a fight, war or starship battle.

[TrueMetis]

In the Han Solo Trilogy (which by the way, is really quite excellent) it's shown how it happened. Basically Han had to go dangerously close to a cluster of black holes to save his girlfriend when her ship was caught in one. Because of time and space being distorted, and engaging hypserspace in that field, a sort of warp effect occurred that ended up cutting the distance he had traveled when he got to kessel.

So he uses that story to show how powerful and fast the falcons hyperdrive is.

I didn't realize there was anything about space and time distortion. I thought it was just that in the area of the Kessel run is such that you can lessen the amount of distance you need to travel by flying closer to various blackholes in the area, and to do so you need a more powerful hyperdrive.

Which is a guess an okay explanation, though I still prefer "Han was trying to impress what he saw as easy marks that wouldn't know any better."

[Jonathan101]

In that season 1 episode of DS9 where Kai Winn orchestrates a school bombing, Chuck sees that as an irredeemable act of terrorism that immediately costs Winn and her faction any and all sympathy points, even before she has her rival murdered.

Obviously Winn herself, as we know from later stories (if not right away) was driven at least in part by self-interest rather than fanaticism, but I'm going to play Devils Advocate here:

What if we learnt that, during the Occupation, Kira herself had carried out school bombings?

Or, even if if not Kira personally, members of the Bajoran Resistance that she knew and liked carried out similar attacks.

Consider- the Cardassian Occupation lasted for decades. There would have been Bajorans- maybe even the majority of Bajorans- who spent their entire lives under the Cardassian boot.

In other words, any schools that were on Bajor were run either by the Resistance...or by the Cardassians themselves, glorifying Cardassian culture and ignoring or demonising that of the Bajorans. As Dukat himself ranted later, the Cardassians thought that they were better than the Bajorans in every way that mattered, that the Bajorans were just a bunch of ignorant, superstitious backward nobodies who should have just accepted their lower place on the ladder.

It is not at all unlikely that the Bajoran Resistance bombed Cardassian schools, especially if they were teaching that sort of thing to Bajoran children.

And after decades of having their culture trampled on by an outside foreign power, now they have FINALLY regained their independence they can get back to the task of rebuilding their culture and instilling a sense of pride in their heritage back into their brainwashed children. Even if I'm wrong and their were no Cardassian schools, it is still true that all that Bajor stood for had been spat on for generations.

So when this other outside power comes along and starts contradicting Bajoran teachings AGAIN, with they same story of offering to be their friend and protector, it's understandable that this would trigger some PTSD in a deeply traumatised people.

And if they had already carried out numerous such bombings before (and bare in mind that nobody was actually HURT- it was set to go off so that everyone could see it, as a statement, but nobody would be killed) , it would be very natural for them to do so again. What seems appealing and extreme to the viewer might just be falling back into old habits to many a Bajoran.

At least, I think thats what they were GOING for. I admit that the episode in question could have made that clearer; still, this was back in the 90s when terrorists were romanticised as another persons freedom fighter, rather than simply dangerous, homicidal fanatics as they are today. But I do think that incidents like the bombing would have been seen in a different light had we gotten a closer, more in-depth look at the Cardassian Occupation before this had happened.

[Deledrius]

That's a really good read of the situation that seems like a very DS9 attitude towards the dilemma. I don't think it was really intended at all by that episode, but it easily could have been included and wouldn't feel out of place. Perhaps if the finale had been a two-parter there could have been room for it.

[MyUserName]

In the Han Solo Trilogy (which by the way, is really quite excellent) it's shown how it happened. Basically Han had to go dangerously close to a cluster of black holes to save his girlfriend when her ship was caught in one. Because of time and space being distorted, and engaging hypserspace in that field, a sort of warp effect occurred that ended up cutting the distance he had traveled when he got to kessel.

So he uses that story to show how powerful and fast the falcons hyperdrive is.

I didn't realize there was anything about space and time distortion. I thought it was just that in the area of the Kessel run is such that you can lessen the amount of distance you need to travel by flying closer to various blackholes in the area, and to do so you need a more powerful hyperdrive.

Which is a guess an okay explanation, though I still prefer "Han was trying to impress what he saw as easy marks that wouldn't know any better."

Well, a Parsec is a measure of spatial distance, so how a ship being to travel a certain distance being special doesn't make sense, unless Han was baiting them to ask how it was possible so he could brag how the ship was so fast and powerful that it managed to break free of a black hole to technically shave the distance traveled on that run off the their systems. That's how AC Crispin explained it anyway, and I think it was about as good an explanation as any that could be given.