DS9: Honor Among Thieves

[bronnt]

Can Voyager actually tell a tragic story, anyway?

There was that time where the entire ship of Voyager clones died one by one until they dissolved into unidentifiable goo, and the real Voyager passed them by without ever knowing what happened.

Shaggy Dog story. Honestly, it's a crappy episode because it lets the writers play around with having real consequences for the characters, but once again they just delete everything about this episode with a reset button at the end (not even the message survives to inform Voyager that something tragic happened as a result of their actions). It's shameless because it shows that perhaps someone on the writing staff would LIKE to develop these characters and show the tragedy of their endless journey, but there's a stubborn refusal to change the status quo even a little.

[bronnt]

So talking about the girl that bilby gets for O'Brien it seems like in Gene's ideal future ideas such as not cheating on your wife would have gone away as humanity evolved.

I'm not sure i follow that line of reasoning. Not unless you're being cynical and describing the aspect of Gene that wanted TNG to be a soft-core porno.

[PerrySimm]

Sure, "Course: Oblivion" was tragic. It also made the canonicity of everything between "Demon" and then questionable. The reset button doesn't get any bigger than that!

"Drone" may be a more apt example of tragedy, though to me the overall tone of the episode was technobabble and heroics, the tale of a bright candle burning shorter. It's a throw characters in the blender story like "Tuvix", but we get a more satisfying death, even after our lead's loyalty is tested with the real Borg.

If pressed to put up an episode of Voyager that even comes close to the tone of "Honor Among Thieves," I'd probably stake my wager on "Darkling."

[Durandal_1707]

I'm not really seeing "Honor Among Thieves" as this paragon of moral grayness. To me, it's a victim of the same sort of black-and-white moral simplicity that plagued so much of the last two seasons (see also: Dukat, Winn, the Prophets arc, arguably even aspects of the Section 31 arc). The Orion Syndicate is bad. The Dominion is also bad. Therefore, the Orion Syndicate and Dominion must want to work together with each other, because they're both bad. The Federation will be all Lawful Stupid and waste resources fighting the Orion Syndicate right in the middle of a war/major existential threat, because the Federation is good, and therefore must oppose anything that is bad. It's Saturday-morning-cartoon-level morality.

Sure, there's the character of Bilby having sympathetic sides to him despite being a killer, but that's just part of Al Pacino's character in Donnie Brasco that came along for the ride when they ripped that movie off.

[CareerKnight]

The Federation will be all Lawful Stupid and waste resources fighting the Orion Syndicate right in the middle of a war/major existential threat, because the Federation is good, and therefore must oppose anything that is bad. It's Saturday-morning-cartoon-level morality.

Yes absolutely... if you ignore what the episode said about assassinating a Klingon Diplomat to undermine the Klingon leadership and war effort. Seriously though there is a whole host of reasons why its a good idea for the Federation to put a stop to this both in universe and drawing on historical examples of insurgences and irregular forces/spies.

[Durandal_1707]

The Federation will be all Lawful Stupid and waste resources fighting the Orion Syndicate right in the middle of a war/major existential threat, because the Federation is good, and therefore must oppose anything that is bad. It's Saturday-morning-cartoon-level morality.

Yes absolutely... if you ignore what the episode said about assassinating a Klingon Diplomat to undermine the Klingon leadership and war effort.

I don't ignore that, I'm including their Dominion collusion in the list of things that make no damn sense other than "Orion Syndicate Bad! AQ War Effort Good!"

[J!!]

i think it's fully the dominion's style to use a criminal gang as a proxy to sew discord among their enemies. what doesn't make sense is for them to use a vorta as the contact. if the syndicate were to be compromised (which it was), exposing that link would compromise future efforts. e.g. having it known that they were trying to assassinate frame gowron for an assassination only strengthens his position.

the dominion should've been using founders and using the syndicate as unwitting dupes.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Now THAT would make a lot more sense.

The more I think about it, the more the founders as actual shapechanging agents seem like a vastly underused asset in the war.

[goodperson25]

Now THAT would make a lot more sense.

The more I think about it, the more the founders as actual shapechanging agents seem like a vastly underused asset in the war.

Not sure about the exact timeline of when they could have become aware of it but a disease that is accelerated by shapeshifting is a pretty good reason to not use it. (There's also that the founders skills are limited by being attached to the founders) I think Chuck kinda alluded to something similar in one of the later DS9 finale reviews in regards to the cure.

[SlackerinDeNile]

Now THAT would make a lot more sense.

The more I think about it, the more the founders as actual shapechanging agents seem like a vastly underused asset in the war.

We don't actually know how many founders were still in the Alpha Quadrant after the wormhole was made off-limits, it's not like they could bring in any more. :\