(DS9) Penumbra

[rickgriffin]

I always had an issue with Jadzia, personally: She was always rather full of herself. Which isn't an awful character trait, a lot of Klingons have it, but Jadzia never really seemed to sell it in a way that felt authentic. Ezri, on the other hand, always felt significantly more authentic. She just happened to also be completely in over her head. Personally I prefer the latter possibly because I'm a writer and like characters whose flaws are acknowledged. Additionally, seeing Ezri completely in over her head in her episodes did a lot more to show how Dax changes between hosts much more than most any Jadzia episode.

And while Ezri still falls victim to "Star Trek Counselors are mostly useless" I think she has one of THE best lines in one of the upcoming episodes of the finale.

Given that, though, it's still a trade-off between whether you think "Insufferable" or "Completely in over her head" is a worse character trait to suffer.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I think you'd need a really talented actress to pull of the character of Dax, and Terry Farrell wasn't. To be fair, the character was written to be insufferable a lot of the time, and even now I still don't know exactly how to characterize the Trill's symbiotic relationship to its host. I do think Ezri had more charm, but obviously she was insufferable at times as well.

[FakeGeekGirl]

One thing that I really liked about this review is it didn't gloss over Sanders telling Weyoun to have the Vorta doctors killed and replaced. A lot of reviews of this episode gloss over that and fair enough it's a minor scene but it really shows what an epic bitch Sanders is. It's one of the most callous kick the dog moments I've ever seen.

As to why the Vorta worship them when they're provably frail and fallible - because they're programmed to. Both my genetics and more than likely behavioral conditioning.

[bronnt]

One thing that I really liked about this review is it didn't gloss over Sanders telling Weyoun to have the Vorta doctors killed and replaced. A lot of reviews of this episode gloss over that and fair enough it's a minor scene but it really shows what an epic bitch Sanders is. It's one of the most callous kick the dog moments I've ever seen.

It makes her hard to take seriously after that point, though. It's over the top enough that it almost comes off as a parody of villainy, like something directly off the Evil Overlord's Checklist. "Kill them and then clone them and let their clones keep working with the memory that the reward for their loyalty was death."

[Naldiin]

One thing that I really liked about this review is it didn't gloss over Sanders telling Weyoun to have the Vorta doctors killed and replaced. A lot of reviews of this episode gloss over that and fair enough it's a minor scene but it really shows what an epic bitch Sanders is. It's one of the most callous kick the dog moments I've ever seen.

It makes her hard to take seriously after that point, though. It's over the top enough that it almost comes off as a parody of villainy, like something directly off the Evil Overlord's Checklist. "Kill them and then clone them and let their clones keep working with the memory that the reward for their loyalty was death."

The incompetence, honestly, goes further than this though. I've never heard a researcher ever say, "Gee, it's too bad I have all of this qualified and capable labor to work with." Instead, research is almost always constrained by resources, and the main constraint is usually expertise and personnel.

So if you have clones of your doctors on standby - why not send in the new team, while the old team continues to work? Double your team-size, and you can iterate on potential cures and solutions twice as fast. It's not like the added overhead of personnel is going to make or break your war-with-armies-of-millions.

Sanders is both evil and callous, but also really bad at her job. Honestly, give what she's done, I find the 'reconciliation-with-Odo-and-treaty-and-maybe-prison' ending for her profoundly unsatisfying.

[FakeGeekGirl]

One thing that I really liked about this review is it didn't gloss over Sanders telling Weyoun to have the Vorta doctors killed and replaced. A lot of reviews of this episode gloss over that and fair enough it's a minor scene but it really shows what an epic bitch Sanders is. It's one of the most callous kick the dog moments I've ever seen.

It makes her hard to take seriously after that point, though. It's over the top enough that it almost comes off as a parody of villainy, like something directly off the Evil Overlord's Checklist. "Kill them and then clone them and let their clones keep working with the memory that the reward for their loyalty was death."

The incompetence, honestly, goes further than this though. I've never heard a researcher ever say, "Gee, it's too bad I have all of this qualified and capable labor to work with." Instead, research is almost always constrained by resources, and the main constraint is usually expertise and personnel.

So if you have clones of your doctors on standby - why not send in the new team, while the old team continues to work? Double your team-size, and you can iterate on potential cures and solutions twice as fast. It's not like the added overhead of personnel is going to make or break your war-with-armies-of-millions.

Sanders is both evil and callous, but also really bad at her job. Honestly, give what she's done, I find the 'reconciliation-with-Odo-and-treaty-and-maybe-prison' ending for her profoundly unsatisfying.

I hate the Female Changeling so much. More than I hate Winn. Not only is she profoundly cruel and callous, she is also, as many people have already pointed out, an idiot. I suppose that's a good thing from the good guy's perspective but how many times does Weyoun have the impulse to do the strategically correct thing (kill the survivors of the Defiant, smooth things over with Damar, and not waste a bunch of their ground forces on killing civilians in the middle of a fucking siege) and she decides, "Nah, let's do the stupid thing instead."

[Arkle]

You know, that could be a bit of subtle genius on the part of writers; basically, after centuries of selling themselves as gods, the Founders have started to believe their own press. And there is precedent in ancient Earth cultures for gods being that level of capricious. As the Zeus vs. Thor Epic Rap Battles of History brilliantly put it,

Who would ever worship someone as abusive as Zeus is
You're ruthless to humans
Your crew is like the Clash of the Douches.

[Madner Kami]

You know, that could be a bit of subtle genius on the part of writers; basically, after centuries of selling themselves as gods, the Founders have started to believe their own press. And there is precedent in ancient Earth cultures for gods being that level of capricious. As the Zeus vs. Thor Epic Rap Battles of History brilliantly put it,

Who would ever worship someone as abusive as Zeus is
You're ruthless to humans
Your crew is like the Clash of the Douches.

It might go a little bit deeper than "just" that though. Remember, she's dying at this point in time. Her entire race is dying. They are facing what they have been dreading so much in the past, that they once created the genocidal juggernaut that is the Dominion, to prevent exactly that from happening what is happening to them now, despite and maybe even because of the Dominion. All that might and power and they can do nothing about it. That, plus the fact that she is, if Odo's reaction to the illness is anything to go by, is in constant excruciating pain. This kind of stuff tends to mess with the psyche quite drastically.

Naturally, this is something they brought onto themselves, so it's hard to feel or even justify compasion towards them, but this is something one needs to remember. What she is doing is basically her equivalent of flailing about and crying like a little helpless child, that gets poked with a pointy stick all the time.

[Meushell]

The incompetence, honestly, goes further than this though. I've never heard a researcher ever say, "Gee, it's too bad I have all of this qualified and capable labor to work with." Instead, research is almost always constrained by resources, and the main constraint is usually expertise and personnel.

So if you have clones of your doctors on standby - why not send in the new team, while the old team continues to work? Double your team-size, and you can iterate on potential cures and solutions twice as fast. It's not like the added overhead of personnel is going to make or break your war-with-armies-of-millions.

Sanders is both evil and callous, but also really bad at her job. Honestly, give what she's done, I find the 'reconciliation-with-Odo-and-treaty-and-maybe-prison' ending for her profoundly unsatisfying.

Not that I agree with her actions, but I can see why that isn't done. Vorta loyalty, in part, may come from the "immortality" the Founders grant them. Coming face-to-face with what is suppose to be the extension of your life may break that illusion.

[FakeGeekGirl]

Not that I agree with her actions, but I can see why that isn't done. Vorta loyalty, in part, may come from the "immortality" the Founders grant them. Coming face-to-face with what is suppose to be the extension of your life may break that illusion.

Not to be the person that brings up their fanfic, but I'll bring up my fanfic. I write from the Vorta POV and part of their religion of Founder worship is the idea that if they're continuously found worthy they can be essentially immortal by being cloned over and over. So a situation where one clone is activated while the other is alive would be something very dire like with Weyoun Six and Seven - in the show, Odo acts surprised that Weyoun Seven was activated and he says that he normally wouldn't have been.

Also, in terms of resources, sometimes the problem isn't needing more hands - I imagine Weyoun has just about every biologist and doctor he can trust to keep their mouth shut working on it - it's needing more space, more tools, and most importantly here, more time. Which is the one resource the Dominion can't muster.

Which of course still makes it stupid as well as cruel because it's going to take the clones time to pick off where their predecessors left off, and it probably will damage their morale, though maybe not in the way that's been suggested.

Throughout the final arc she kicks the dog so damn much with Weyoun I was sure they were setting up a "Wormtongue stabbing Sauruman in the back" kind of thing, and when Garak and Kira break into headquarters I half expected them to run into him first and demand to know where Sanders is and him to just be like, "Up one floor to to the right third door on the left." That's not what happens of course - he's so thoroughly loyal to her that even her constantly belittling him and even threatening to have him killed and replaced as soon as the cloning facility is up and running (which leaves him visually shaken) doesn't make a dent in his commitment to the Founders. I think it's the same way with the doctors being executed and replaced - I think if anything, they'd be devastated that they "failed" so thoroughly to "deserve" execution and just grateful they got a "second chance." They'd probably be so desperate after that point they'd start making stupid mistakes out of panic or vacillating on necessary decisions out of excessive self-doubt - Vorta seem pretty cool under pressure but even they have to have limits (Weyoun did briefly lose it when Dukat made the wormhole disappear), and for many human scientists at least pressure + science = no bueno.

Damn it Sanders, you can't do anything right.