the reckoning (next week)

[sayla0079]

question on this it might sound a bit stupid but chuck said he was reviewing the reckoning next week, My question is since he has reviewed both series is this the ds9 ep or the Gargoyles ep by the same name?

[Deledrius]

The general rule seems to be that Star Trek titles are without the show name, everything else gets the show name attached, so I assume it isn't Gargoyles.

[SabreMau]

It's mentioned at the end of a DS9 review, so it'll be in next Saturday's Star Trek spot.

[sayla0079]

oh okay thanks I got mixed up

[Durandal_1707]

Uggggggggggggggg

One of my least favorite episodes in the series.

[Deledrius]

Uggggggggggggggg

One of my least favorite episodes in the series.

What puts this one so low for you?

[Durandal_1707]

1. It ruined the Prophets arc. This is where it all gets massively simplified down to the boring simplistic medieval morality play that we were stuck with for the rest of the series. Up to this point, the Prophets had been an interesting story element that I enjoyed.

2. In "Sacrifice of Angels," the Prophets mentioned that there would be some kind of price Sisko would have to pay for the favor he called in. There were a lot of really interesting ways this could have been followed up on. This... was not one of them. What a letdown.

3. Sisko is massively out of character. Are we really supposed to believe that he'd willingly sacrifice his son's life for some vaguely defined religious mumbo jumbo when they've already worked out a perfectly good Starfleet technological solution for dealing with this situation?

4. Does anyone actually like the paghwraiths? They were okay as a monster of the week in the one where Keiko got possessed, but there's just no way they were ever going to work as a myth arc. (And no, I'm not spelling it "pah." I don't care what's in the scripts. The paghwraiths are dumb enough as a concept without making their spelling stupid too. Moore and Wolfe both said it should be "pagh," and that's good enough for me.)

5. How do the paghwraiths even make sense? A group of Prophets rebelled, and then got kicked out of the wormhole? You need a linear existence to do things like that. The Prophets are supposed to be non-linear! Paradise Lost is cool and all, but trying to shoehorn it into a context where it contradicts everything you've written up to that point just results in something that makes no sense!

6. After the Keiksorcism, our heroes have a perfectly fine weapon to deal with the paghwraiths, which should essentially make them a non-threat anywhere in the vicinity of DS9 or any other Starfleet installation equipped with a wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey-stuff generator, without having to risk the lives of any teenage kids. And you can't say the writers forgot about that, because they had Kai Winn actually use it! And then that's treated as a bad thing! If you want to construct a scenario on purpose where the viewer is meant to root for Kai Winn against the heroes, then okay, but if you do it by accident, something is wrong.

7. Why did Sisko break the tablet in the first place? That thing was a priceless historical artifact! Bajor's archaeological division should be riding his ass right about now. Seriously, who does that? Plus, not breaking the thing would keep the paghwraith from getting free, and then there's no problem! Sure, being trapped in a piece of rock on a museum display for all time isn't a great way to spend eternity, but that's what you get for sealing your dumb ass in a tablet as part of a convoluted plan to set the universe on fire . Serves him right! Hell, it'd probably make for a good PSA for the kids watching at home, in case one of them gets the bright idea to bind their soul to some ancient artifact of doom. Could prevent some youngster from making a terrible decision. You never know!

Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Sir Will]

Yeah the Prophet stuff really started sucking at the end.

[Deledrius]

5. How do the paghwraiths even make sense? A group of Prophets rebelled, and then got kicked out of the wormhole? You need a linear existence to do things like that. The Prophets are supposed to be non-linear! Paradise Lost is cool and all, but trying to shoehorn it into a context where it contradicts everything you've written up to that point just results in something that makes no sense!

This is the part which could have saved it from the tired good-vs-evil problem, if they'd thought outside the linear box a bit. If the pagh-wraiths and the prophets were actually the same thing existing simultaneously at different points of their own personal history, it might have added some depth to the prophets, and kept them from being humanly comprehensible. But, this was never revealed to be the case and was never utilized.

I basically agree with all of your points. It's unfortunate they chose to take things in this direction.

[clearspira]

1. It ruined the Prophets arc. This is where it all gets massively simplified down to the boring simplistic medieval morality play that we were stuck with for the rest of the series. Up to this point, the Prophets had been an interesting story element that I enjoyed.

2. In "Sacrifice of Angels," the Prophets mentioned that there would be some kind of price Sisko would have to pay for the favor he called in. There were a lot of really interesting ways this could have been followed up on. This... was not one of them. What a letdown.

3. Sisko is massively out of character. Are we really supposed to believe that he'd willingly sacrifice his son's life for some vaguely defined religious mumbo jumbo when they've already worked out a perfectly good Starfleet technological solution for dealing with this situation?

4. Does anyone actually like the paghwraiths? They were okay as a monster of the week in the one where Keiko got possessed, but there's just no way they were ever going to work as a myth arc. (And no, I'm not spelling it "pah." I don't care what's in the scripts. The paghwraiths are dumb enough as a concept without making their spelling stupid too. Moore and Wolfe both said it should be "pagh," and that's good enough for me.)

5. How do the paghwraiths even make sense? A group of Prophets rebelled, and then got kicked out of the wormhole? You need a linear existence to do things like that. The Prophets are supposed to be non-linear! Paradise Lost is cool and all, but trying to shoehorn it into a context where it contradicts everything you've written up to that point just results in something that makes no sense!

6. After the Keiksorcism, our heroes have a perfectly fine weapon to deal with the paghwraiths, which should essentially make them a non-threat anywhere in the vicinity of DS9 or any other Starfleet installation equipped with a wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey-stuff generator, without having to risk the lives of any teenage kids. And you can't say the writers forgot about that, because they had Kai Winn actually use it! And then that's treated as a bad thing! If you want to construct a scenario on purpose where the viewer is meant to root for Kai Winn against the heroes, then okay, but if you do it by accident, something is wrong.

7. Why did Sisko break the tablet in the first place? That thing was a priceless historical artifact! Bajor's archaeological division should be riding his ass right about now. Seriously, who does that? Plus, not breaking the thing would keep the paghwraith from getting free, and then there's no problem! Sure, being trapped in a piece of rock on a museum display for all time isn't a great way to spend eternity, but that's what you get for sealing your dumb ass in a tablet as part of a convoluted plan to set the universe on fire . Serves him right! Hell, it'd probably make for a good PSA for the kids watching at home, in case one of them gets the bright idea to bind their soul to some ancient artifact of doom. Could prevent some youngster from making a terrible decision. You never know!

Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Agree completely. Its a pity that Confused Mathew all but retired after the end of Blip destroyed his channel because he had some fantastic points on the pagh wraiths. Such as just how quickly the Bajorans abandoned the Prophets and turned to what is essentially satanism when the orbs went dark even though the orbs are actually brand new to most Bajorans because the Cardassians removed them from Bajor.