[DS9] Lynch's Spoiler Review: "Tears of the Prophets"

[Tim Lynch]

[Note: alumni.caltech.edu is still down for most forms of mail, and I'm
also about to head out of town for a little over a week. If you've tried
to send me mail, I likely haven't seen it yet, and I certainly haven't
responded. Thanks again for the patience. -- TWL]

WARNING: Down, down will fall the "Tears of the Prophets" --
and just around the corner are spoilers for it, too.

In brief: An odd mix, both deeply powerful and surprisingly empty.

======
Written by: Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler
Directed by: Allan Kroeker
Brief summary: The Federation takes the offensive in the war, but
Deep Space Nine loses one of her own.
======

If I had to sum up "Tears of the Prophets" in a single cliche, that
cliche might be "Jack of all trades and master of none." The episode
did an awful lot of things, some of them very well -- but at the same
time seemed to fall all too short of where it should have been. On the
whole, I'm left somewhat disappointed with all the false leads, and
wondering if the show simply tried to do too much.

In part, that "let's do everything" approach caused huge shifts in tone
during the episode in ways that didn't really feel appropriate. I have
no trouble with sudden shifts from elation to desolation -- in war,
those happen, and they often work dramatically as well. For instance,
the joy when the invasion finally started going well was almost
immediately turned to ashes when Julian's message came in from
DS9. That worked extremely well, though I almost wonder if it
would have worked better had we not known what was going on back
at the station. No, the problematic shifts came earlier in the show,
when we're abruptly going from war planning and Prophet-induced
foreboding to Bashir and Quark moping about their nonexistent love
lives, then back again. I'm sorry, but this both felt forced and broke
the mood of the episode quite a bit. "Call to Arms", last season's
finale, had some similar shifts, but that time all of them held together
under the same backdrop: the war that was looming ever closer. This
time, we were asked to believe that several things (Odo and Kira's
first fight, Dax and Worf's decision to have a baby, Dukat's return to
Cardassia, and the invasion) all just occurred at the same time -- and
that's a reach, particularly when there are so many things that could
have been done and weren't. (What it really felt like, in retrospect,
was material to give Bashir, Quark and Odo something to do. That's
not a sufficient reason.)

Despite all of that, the show managed to build up a nice sense of
suspense for a while. The plans to pierce the Dominion's "weak spot"
in the Chintaka system went pretty smoothly, right down to the
partisan bickering from Klingons and Romulans -- including some
marvelous barbs from Romulan Senator Letant (David Birney).
Dukat's abrupt return, despite the sweeping under the rug of some
important items, certainly got across the sense that the "new" Dukat
was at least as dangerous as the old one, if perhaps not quite so
multifaceted and interesting. (The main item glossed over,
incidentally, was Ziyal's death. I'm certainly glad it was mentioned,
but given how long we've been waiting for Dukat and Damar to meet
and how badly Ziyal's death unhinged Dukat, to have Dukat dismiss it
with "Oh, it was Sisko's fault, not yours" is cheating the viewer a bit,
I think.)

There were some other moments felt a bit off here and there during the
first half of the show, too, one of them being Jake's presence during
the battle. This should have had nothing to do with father-son strife,
really; a civilian reporter simply should not have been on the bridge of
a warship during an invasion. I also thought that Ross's putting
Sisko on the spot with "you've tried to be both [a Starfleet officer and
the Emissary, and now he must choose]" was somewhat old hat;
we've seen this before, and more importantly, the last time it
happened ("Rapture" in season 5) Sisko chose differently. That scene
felt a bit forced, as though it were designed solely to get Sisko out of
the way but guilty about it.

During all of this, though, there were very solid moments as well,
many of them on Cardassia. Dukat's return was one of them: Dukat
may not be as complex a character as he once was, but Marc Alaimo
and Jeffrey Combs still work extremely well together -- Dukat's
discussion of the "clarity" he's achieved of late and Weyoun's
subsequent assessment of Dukat's sanity were absolutely riveting.

Oh, incidentally ... to those who scoffed that the Pah wraiths
mentioned in "The Reckoning" would never be used again: Apology
accepted. :-) Admittedly, I wish Dukat's 'possession' had followed
on far more directly from "The Reckoning" than it did, as it's a little
bit of a stretch to have two wraiths released in four months after
centuries or millennia of captivity, but the concept was still there and
still put to reasonably good use.

That leads to the second half of the show, which can be split up into
two main parts: the battle at Chintaka 3 and the death of Jadzia back at
the station. The former was probably among the best parts of the
show; it moved at a good pace, the Jem'Hadar kamikaze tactics made
sense given their culture and the circumstances, and the orbital
weapon platforms were just neat. :-) I did think the <tech> was a bit
overdone when they were figuring out how to destroy the platforms'
energy source -- is there a reason they couldn't just position
themselves right by the planetoid, then veer at the last second so that
the platforms fire on the wrong thing? (The concept that these
platforms would be built without an energy source of their own also
seems a little hokey.) The overall sense of this battle, though, was
supposed to be one of well-earned triumph, and I thought that came
across very well in pretty much every way.

Jadzia's death was another matter entirely. (I keep saying Jadzia
instead of Dax deliberately, incidentally; since the Dax symbiont was
saved, "Dax" isn't really dead.) The death itself was more or less
reasonable; it was certainly random as opposed to a noble sacrifice,
but these things do happen, particularly in wartime. (Tasha Yar died
the same way, and I appear to be one of the six people watching TNG
at the time who didn't think it was a cheap way to treat the character.)
What I had trouble with was other aspects surrounding her death.

Firstly, I don't understand how Dukat managed to get to DS9, beam
on board, kill Jadzia and darken the Orbs, then beam away and get
away without anyone detecting him. The Cardassians and the
Dominion have never had cloaking technology, and you'd expect that
the station would be on alert given the situation. In a related fashion,
it seems that no one even knows Dukat was responsible -- at least,
based on Sisko's speech over the coffin later, no one seems to know
exactly what happened. That would be all well and good -- except that
Jadzia was awake and conscious enough to talk to Worf later, which
means she should have been able to tell Sisko what she saw. A
simple "Dukat..." would have worked wonders, and so far as I can
tell we never got one.

More importantly, though, the aftermath of her death felt very, very
lacking. We got far more of a funeral for Tasha back in early TNG
(and a moving one, too) -- hell, we got more of a funeral last week for
a character we never even *saw*. There was certainly no shortage of
material that could've been moved aside to make room for one (Vic's
song, the entire scene in the holodeck, the Odo/Kira fight, etc.) -- so
why not do so?

Even if a funeral wasn't in the cards, though, and I can understand
why it might not be, we didn't get the one most important event
surrounding Jadzia's death that we should have. That event was a
conversation between Jadzia and *Sisko*. Jadzia and Worf certainly
have a lot binding them together, but Dax knew Sisko across two
lifetimes, and from all appearances was Sisko's dearest and closest
friend. We got a sense of what her loss meant to Sisko later when he
talked over the coffin, but a speech is no substitute for a conversation
-- and we got no sense as to what this farewell would mean for
*Dax*. That is missing out on characterization in a very big way, and
almost leaves one with the impression that Dax's role as Worf's wife
was far more important than her role as Sisko's confidant. Both in
terms of her life and the dramatic history of the series, I find that very
wrong.

Jadzia's death had one good thing resulting from it, though; Sisko's
decision to get away from the station for a while and give himself time
to think. It certainly made sense that he'd need to, between Jadzia's
death and the departure of the Prophets -- and given the latter, Bajor
isn't an option. Going back to New Orleans works just fine -- and
dramatically, this is the second year in a row where the station has
been in the hands of another at season's end, which is a nice
parallelism. I don't like a number of things that happened in "Tears of
the Prophets", but I do like the final situation: the war turning in the
Federation's favor, but the Prophets gone and Sisko at home on Earth
collecting his thoughts. Things could go in a lot of different directions
now, and I remain curious as to how they'll be picked up in season 7.
In the final analysis, "Tears of the Prophets" succeeded on that basis.

Shorter thoughts:

-- I liked some of the little details sprinkled throughout the show: the
Christopher Pike medal of valor, the fact that Damar's now worked
his way up to Legate, and so on.

-- The music at the end of the episode, while Sisko's working in New
Orleans, felt strikingly reminiscent of "Far Beyond the Stars"; I'm
hoping that's both intentional and foreshadowing.

-- The final effect of the Federation/Klingon/Romulan offensive is a
little murky to me: exactly how far did they get? Weyoun referred to
"Federation troops on Cardassian soil", but he can't have meant
Cardassia Prime itself.

-- Given that the series has one season left to it, I'd put stock in
Martok's claim that "by this time next year, the three of us will drink
bloodwine in the halls of Cardassia's Central Command."

-- It's also worth pointing out that we could see *a* Dax back next
year, since the symbiont survived. "Ensign Billy Bob Dax, reporting
for duty?" Nah...

-- I'm a bit surprised that Dukat had to explain as much about the
Prophets as he did to Weyoun and Damar; the Cardassians have
certainly been exposed to Bajoran teachings before, and Weyoun
strikes me as someone who'd want to be informed about everything.
(Of course, if Damar wasn't involved in the original Bajoran
occupation, that might change things.)

-- I did rather like the Damar/Weyoun discussion about superstition.
"All this talk of Gods strikes me as nothing more than superstitious
nonsense." "You believe the Founders are gods, don't you?" "That's
different." "In what way?" "The Founders *are* gods."

-- In keeping with the "let's try to do everything" approach that
undercut the show, Garak showed up in order to do basically nothing.
Ehh.

That about covers it. In terms of keeping the audience interested to
see what happens next, "Tears of the Prophets" did its job and did it
reasonably well. I'm just left to wish that it had done a better job
along the way, and I certainly think we deserved better when it came
to Jadzia Dax. Ah, well; on to summer speculation.

Wrapping up:

Writing: Kind of hit-or-miss; deeply powerful moments, moments
that rang completely wrong, and pretty much everything in
between.
Directing: It tended to follow the writing.
Acting: Overall fine, though some people had too little to do.

OVERALL: 7, I think; high marks for ambition and fine for what it
did, but far short of what it could have been.

That's it for a while, folks; I'll be around with a season-end wrap-up
sometime this summer. Until then, be well.

Tim Lynch (Harvard-Westlake School, Science Dept.)
tly...@alumni.caltech.edu <*>
"Pah wraiths, Prophets -- all this talk of gods strikes me as nothing
more than superstitious nonsense." "You believe the Founders are
gods, don't you?" "That's different." "In what way?" "The
Founders *are* gods."
-- Weyoun and Damar
--
Copyright 1998, Timothy W. Lynch. All rights reserved, but feel free to ask...
This article is explicitly prohibited from being used in any off-net
compilation without due attribution and *express written consent of the
author*. Walnut Creek and other CD-ROM distributors, take note.

--
Moderated by Scott Forbes.
Article submissions: trek-r...@ravenna.com
Moderator contact: trek-revie...@ravenna.com

[Jim Miller]

In article <forbes-2006...@msf-5.pr.mcs.net>, tly...@alumni.caltech.edu wrote:
>
>[spoilers!!!!]

>Firstly, I don't understand how Dukat managed to get to DS9, beam
>on board, kill Jadzia and darken the Orbs, then beam away and get
>away without anyone detecting him. The Cardassians and the
>Dominion have never had cloaking technology, and you'd expect that
>the station would be on alert given the situation.

Ah, but Dukat has a Klingon BoP, which he nabbed a couple of seasons ago.
IIRC, it had a cloak. Been nice to have actually see/hear a reference to
it.

Jammer Jim Roberts-Miller

--
Texas A&M University '89 '91 | "If faith is blind, through darkness/
jam...@a.crl.com | It will guide us"
"That which cometh *out* of the man, *that* defileth the man." Mark 7:20

[James Walker]

On Sat, 20 Jun 1998, Tim Lynch wrote:

> WARNING: Down, down will fall the "Tears of the Prophets" --
> and just around the corner are spoilers for it, too.

> the station would be on alert given the situation.

> In a related fashion, it seems that no one even knows Dukat was
> responsible -- at least, based on Sisko's speech over the coffin later,
> no one seems to know exactly what happened. That would be all well and
> good -- except that Jadzia was awake and conscious enough to talk to
> Worf later, which means she should have been able to tell Sisko what she
> saw. A simple "Dukat..." would have worked wonders, and so far as I can
> tell we never got one.

But the Dax symbiont knows. As soon as it is put into its next host, it
should start blabbing. Unless there's a way they can communicate with it
while it's in that milky stuff on Trill, waiting for a host.

James

[Peter C. Romero]

Tim Lynch wrote in message ...

Wasn't there a lot of civilian reporting during Vietnam? (One of the reasons
for the protests was the coverage)

Actually it's very logical, not hokey. Weyoun seemed surprised Damar was
able to get them online, Damar cut corners, putting up platforms that all
got their energy from one source. Self-powered platforms would have taken
longer to construct. Imagine if he had taken notes from Rom and made them
self-replicating as well!

> The overall sense of this battle, though, was
>supposed to be one of well-earned triumph, and I thought that came
>across very well in pretty much every way.
>
>Jadzia's death was another matter entirely. (I keep saying Jadzia
>instead of Dax deliberately, incidentally; since the Dax symbiont was
>saved, "Dax" isn't really dead.) The death itself was more or less
>reasonable; it was certainly random as opposed to a noble sacrifice,
>but these things do happen, particularly in wartime. (Tasha Yar died
>the same way, and I appear to be one of the six people watching TNG
>at the time who didn't think it was a cheap way to treat the character.)
>What I had trouble with was other aspects surrounding her death.

It seems to me they probably were ready to rewrite and reshoot at the last
second in case Farrell was bluffing. And it probably was "punishing" for her
to be dismissed relatively easily. And they probably know Dukat did it, it
was a few hours before Defiant returned and that's plenty of time to tell
Bashir or whoever what happened. The effects are left to the season
premiere.

He is super ambitios. Far be it from him to promote himself, huh?

>
>-- The music at the end of the episode, while Sisko's working in New
>Orleans, felt strikingly reminiscent of "Far Beyond the Stars"; I'm
>hoping that's both intentional and foreshadowing.
>
>-- The final effect of the Federation/Klingon/Romulan offensive is a
>little murky to me: exactly how far did they get? Weyoun referred to
>"Federation troops on Cardassian soil", but he can't have meant
>Cardassia Prime itself.

Think of it as a nation. When we invaded Germany it didn't mean we took
Berlin. Nor was the invasion of Betazed "Earth"......it was Federation soil
though.

>
>-- Given that the series has one season left to it, I'd put stock in
>Martok's claim that "by this time next year, the three of us will drink
>bloodwine in the halls of Cardassia's Central Command."
>
>-- It's also worth pointing out that we could see *a* Dax back next
>year, since the symbiont survived. "Ensign Billy Bob Dax, reporting
>for duty?" Nah...
>
>-- I'm a bit surprised that Dukat had to explain as much about the
>Prophets as he did to Weyoun and Damar; the Cardassians have
>certainly been exposed to Bajoran teachings before, and Weyoun
>strikes me as someone who'd want to be informed about everything.
>(Of course, if Damar wasn't involved in the original Bajoran
>occupation, that might change things.)

They probably didn't give a crap. Dukat was the one into Bajoran babes and
probably listened when they pillow talked him about their culture.

>
>-- I did rather like the Damar/Weyoun discussion about superstition.
>"All this talk of Gods strikes me as nothing more than superstitious
>nonsense." "You believe the Founders are gods, don't you?" "That's
>different." "In what way?" "The Founders *are* gods."

That was a great line.

[Micheal Keane]

In article <6mhe35$ves$2...@camel18.mindspring.com>,

Jim Miller <jamm...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <forbes-2006...@msf-5.pr.mcs.net>, tly...@alumni.caltech.edu wrote:
>>
>>[spoilers!!!!]
>
>
>
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>>Firstly, I don't understand how Dukat managed to get to DS9, beam
>>on board, kill Jadzia and darken the Orbs, then beam away and get
>>away without anyone detecting him. The Cardassians and the
>>Dominion have never had cloaking technology, and you'd expect that
>>the station would be on alert given the situation.
>

> Ah, but Dukat has a Klingon BoP, which he nabbed a couple of seasons ago.
>IIRC, it had a cloak. Been nice to have actually see/hear a reference to
>it.

And the Dominion *does* have cloaking technology... they just never use
it. =-) Anyone remember "The Jem'Hadar"? One of the troops beams onto the
station, gives a padd to Kira, gloats a little, and then beams off.
--
Micheal (Chris) Keane, Political Science, University of Washington
Associate Professor of Psychogravitational Analysis, University of Ediacara
Join the Church of Last Thursday and worship Queen Maeve!
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~aexia/thursday.htm

[Thomas j. Evans]

<SPOILERS>

<snipped stuff to which I have nothing to add>

>That leads to the second half of the show, which can be split up into
>two main parts: the battle at Chintaka 3 and the death of Jadzia back at
>the station. The former was probably among the best parts of the
>show; it moved at a good pace, the Jem'Hadar kamikaze tactics made
>sense given their culture and the circumstances, and the orbital
>weapon platforms were just neat. :-) I did think the <tech> was a bit
>overdone when they were figuring out how to destroy the platforms'
>energy source -- is there a reason they couldn't just position
>themselves right by the planetoid, then veer at the last second so that
>the platforms fire on the wrong thing?

I thought about that, but considering how they are randomly placed,
chances are they would be carefully programmed to stop firing as soon
as they're aiming at each other or at the planetoid. Otherwise, they
would be blowing themselves apart in crossfire.

>(The concept that these platforms would be built without an energy source
>of their own also seems a little hokey.)

Well, yeah. But consider that they probably wanted to build them
quickly, so it's faster to build one power source instead of 30, 40,
however many platforms they had. Also recall that Damar said that
each one carried 1000 plasma torpedos. That's gotta take up a lot of
room, and they probably wanted to keep them as small as possible to
make them harder to hit.

>Jadzia's death was another matter entirely.

>. . .

>What I had trouble with was other aspects surrounding her death.
>
>Firstly, I don't understand how Dukat managed to get to DS9, beam
>on board, kill Jadzia and darken the Orbs, then beam away and get
>away without anyone detecting him. The Cardassians and the
>Dominion have never had cloaking technology, and you'd expect that
>the station would be on alert given the situation. In a related fashion,
>it seems that no one even knows Dukat was responsible -- at least,
>based on Sisko's speech over the coffin later, no one seems to know
>exactly what happened. That would be all well and good -- except that
>Jadzia was awake and conscious enough to talk to Worf later, which
>means she should have been able to tell Sisko what she saw. A
>simple "Dukat..." would have worked wonders, and so far as I can
>tell we never got one.

Good point, I hadn't thought of that. But we can probably assume that
they know. Even though they apparantly did not detect Dukat when he
first beamed aboard, the station's logs still likely show who was in
the room with her before she died.

>More importantly, though, the aftermath of her death felt very, very
>lacking. We got far more of a funeral for Tasha back in early TNG
>(and a moving one, too) -- hell, we got more of a funeral last week for
>a character we never even *saw*.

Indeed. I agree. It felt almost as lacking as Kes' departure from
Voyager.

>Even if a funeral wasn't in the cards, though, and I can understand
>why it might not be, we didn't get the one most important event
>surrounding Jadzia's death that we should have. That event was a
>conversation between Jadzia and *Sisko*. Jadzia and Worf certainly
>have a lot binding them together, but Dax knew Sisko across two
>lifetimes, and from all appearances was Sisko's dearest and closest
>friend. We got a sense of what her loss meant to Sisko later when he
>talked over the coffin, but a speech is no substitute for a conversation
>-- and we got no sense as to what this farewell would mean for
>*Dax*. That is missing out on characterization in a very big way, and
>almost leaves one with the impression that Dax's role as Worf's wife
>was far more important than her role as Sisko's confidant. Both in
>terms of her life and the dramatic history of the series, I find that very
>wrong.

I think they may be leaving this open until next season. If I was a
betting man, I'd bet we'll see Dax again next season, in a new host.
Voyager had no problem with completely forgetting Kes ever existed
once Jennifer Lien was written out of the show, but I think DS9 cares
more about its continuity. Also, they made it a point to have Bashir
say that he was able to save the Dax symbiont.

>-- The final effect of the Federation/Klingon/Romulan offensive is a
>little murky to me: exactly how far did they get? Weyoun referred to
>"Federation troops on Cardassian soil", but he can't have meant
>Cardassia Prime itself.

The planet we see in the Chintaka system is probably Cardassian, and
that's where Martok was sending ground troops. It may be a weapons
factory or ship yard or something.

>-- It's also worth pointing out that we could see *a* Dax back next
>year, since the symbiont survived. "Ensign Billy Bob Dax, reporting
>for duty?" Nah...

Like I said, I'd bet on it. It probably won't be a Starfleet officer,
though. But if the new host is a male, it will certainly make any
Worf/Dax scenes even more unwatchable than they were during the early
days of their relationship.

>-- I'm a bit surprised that Dukat had to explain as much about the
>Prophets as he did to Weyoun and Damar;

This was probably more of the writer's way of explaining it to the
audience - those who don't watch the show religiously (no pun
intended).

>-- In keeping with the "let's try to do everything" approach that
>undercut the show, Garak showed up in order to do basically nothing.
>Ehh.

Heh, yeah, really. What was that all about. Are we to assume that
Garak is now some kind of permanant Defiant crew member?

[John Ford]

Peter C. Romero wrote:

[snip]<

<>
> >There were some other moments felt a bit off here and there during the
> >first half of the show, too, one of them being Jake's presence during
> >the battle. This should have had nothing to do with father-son strife,
> >really; a civilian reporter simply should not have been on the bridge of
> >a warship during an invasion.
>
> Wasn't there a lot of civilian reporting during Vietnam? (One of the reasons
> for the protests was the coverage)
>

> There was a lot in WWII also. For instance, Walter Cronkite flew on
bomber missions over Berlin, several reporters jumped with the
paratroopers on D-Day, Richard Tregakis landed with the Marines on
Guadalcanal and film director John Ford was 1)on the bridge of the Hornet
when it launched Doolittle Raid, 2) on the island of Midway during the
battle (and had his film crews about the U.S. Carriers) and was 3) in a
PT Boat off Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings. Photographer Robert
Capa was one of the first men on Omaha beach -- check his famous photo of
one of the first GIs on the beach fighting through the surf and the beach
obstacles -- it's taken from the beach!
No, I didn't see anything wrong with a reporter being on the Defiant
...

[Jim Miller]

In article <358c7e57...@news.skyweb.net>, tho...@skyweb.net (Thomas j. Evans) wrote:
>Timothy Lynch wrote:
><SPOILERS>

>
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>>-- In keeping with the "let's try to do everything" approach that
>>undercut the show, Garak showed up in order to do basically nothing.
>>Ehh.
>
>Heh, yeah, really. What was that all about. Are we to assume that
>Garak is now some kind of permanant Defiant crew member?

Though a throwaway line would have been nice, I can think of few better
people to have on-hand for an invasion of Cardassian space than Garak. But
he should have gotten to do something more in his line of work.

[David E. Sluss]

Jim Miller <jamm...@mindspring.com> wrote:
JM>Ah, but Dukat has a Klingon BoP, which he nabbed a couple of
JM>seasons ago. IIRC, it had a cloak. Been nice to have actually
JM>see/hear a reference to it.

Let me take a minute to nip this Klingon BoP Theory in the bud.
1. Clearly the transportor used by Dukat was Dominion. The sound and
visual effects are unmistakable.
2. That Dukat would have his BoP unlikely at best. When last we saw
it, Dukat flew it back to Cardassia in triumph with a Dominion fleet
in tow in "By Inferno's Light." I doubt he kept it. He probably took
pleasure in destroying it.

ae...@u.washington.edu (Micheal Keane) wrote:
MK>And the Dominion *does* have cloaking technology... they just never
MK>use it. =-) Anyone remember "The Jem'Hadar"? One of the troops
MK>beams onto the station, gives a padd to Kira, gloats a little, and
MK>then beams off.

I think that that guy came from a _visible_ Jem'Hadar ship that had
come through the wormhole though. The real deal is the escape of Eris
by transporter to an unseen ship (and note that that may mean that the
Dominion has long-range transporters rather than cloaking tech). The
problem with Dukat's trip to DS9 is that even if his ship is
undetectable, and even if the transporter beam is undetectable, Dukat
himself is not, and he was in the shrine for a non-trivial period of
time, he screamed loudly, he started a pah wraith light show, he took
time to apologize to Jadzia for killing her, etc. Odo is incompetent
enough to be a Starfleet security man :)
--
// David E. Sluss (The Cynic) \\ // "I'm impatient with \\
//_________ sluss%dhp.com _________\\//__ stupidity. My people have __\\
\\ Manager of The Cynics Corner: //\\ learned to live without it." //
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[Shawn Hill]

Tim Lynch (tly...@alumni.caltech.edu) wrote:

: Oh, incidentally ... to those who scoffed that the Pah wraiths

: mentioned in "The Reckoning" would never be used again: Apology
: accepted. :-) Admittedly, I wish Dukat's 'possession' had followed

Grrrrrr....... they're still little more than a plot device, as we have no clue
as to their motivation or what exactly that one did to close the worm-hole. As
soon as Dukat said "Bajoran artifact" I said "and now watch him pull a rabbit out
this hat." Predictable, and too easy.

: weapon platforms were just neat. :-) I did think the <tech> was a bit

: overdone when they were figuring out how to destroy the platforms'
: energy source -- is there a reason they couldn't just position
: themselves right by the planetoid, then veer at the last second so that
: the platforms fire on the wrong thing? (The concept that these
: platforms would be built without an energy source of their own also
: seems a little hokey.) The overall sense of this battle, though, was
: supposed to be one of well-earned triumph, and I thought that came
: across very well in pretty much every way.

More to the point, the platforms looked cool and the battle was mighty
impressive, damage and all. I esp. liked one of the basic themes that came
through: Sisko, who had been forced to choose his role as captain over his
emissary's knowledge of the prophets (and it was great how he payed lip service
to calling them 'wormhole aliens'), ends up choosing the prophets after all at
their "death." And Kira has to step in and take over to ensure the success of
their mission.

: Jadzia's death was another matter entirely. (I keep saying Jadzia

: instead of Dax deliberately, incidentally; since the Dax symbiont was
: saved, "Dax" isn't really dead.) The death itself was more or less
: reasonable; it was certainly random as opposed to a noble sacrifice,
: but these things do happen, particularly in wartime. (Tasha Yar died

But Jadzia should have gone out a warrior, fighting for her life. Not only
would it have shown more respect to the character, it would have been more
entertaining than just blowing her away with magic might.

: the same way, and I appear to be one of the six people watching TNG

: at the time who didn't think it was a cheap way to treat the character.)
: What I had trouble with was other aspects surrounding her death.

: the station would be on alert given the situation. In a related fashion,

: it seems that no one even knows Dukat was responsible -- at least,
: based on Sisko's speech over the coffin later, no one seems to know
: exactly what happened. That would be all well and good -- except that
: Jadzia was awake and conscious enough to talk to Worf later, which
: means she should have been able to tell Sisko what she saw. A
: simple "Dukat..." would have worked wonders, and so far as I can
: tell we never got one.

I think they all knew very clearly, or else they would have been wondering why
she was 'ill' in the first place. I'm sure she mumbled "Dukat attacked me" to
Julian, if no one else. It wasn't mentioned because it wasn't important in the
scenes we saw. Only her dying was.

: More importantly, though, the aftermath of her death felt very, very

: lacking. We got far more of a funeral for Tasha back in early TNG
: (and a moving one, too) -- hell, we got more of a funeral last week for
: a character we never even *saw*. There was certainly no shortage of
: material that could've been moved aside to make room for one (Vic's
: song, the entire scene in the holodeck, the Odo/Kira fight, etc.) -- so
: why not do so?

I thought Avery gave a great speech, and I thought it worked well in the empty
room with the stark, about to be ejected, coffin.

: Even if a funeral wasn't in the cards, though, and I can understand

: why it might not be, we didn't get the one most important event
: surrounding Jadzia's death that we should have. That event was a
: conversation between Jadzia and *Sisko*. Jadzia and Worf certainly
: have a lot binding them together, but Dax knew Sisko across two
: lifetimes, and from all appearances was Sisko's dearest and closest
: friend. We got a sense of what her loss meant to Sisko later when he
: talked over the coffin, but a speech is no substitute for a conversation
: -- and we got no sense as to what this farewell would mean for
: *Dax*. That is missing out on characterization in a very big way, and
: almost leaves one with the impression that Dax's role as Worf's wife
: was far more important than her role as Sisko's confidant. Both in
: terms of her life and the dramatic history of the series, I find that very
: wrong.

But it's not wrong; a marriage supercedes other, previous relationships, esp. a
strong one like hers and Worf's. And we still don't know how "Dax" feels about
it, as it's on the way to Trill.

: parallelism. I don't like a number of things that happened in "Tears of

: the Prophets", but I do like the final situation: the war turning in the
: Federation's favor, but the Prophets gone and Sisko at home on Earth
: collecting his thoughts. Things could go in a lot of different directions
: now, and I remain curious as to how they'll be picked up in season 7.
: In the final analysis, "Tears of the Prophets" succeeded on that basis.

Aside from the plot points you outline, however, was the sheer sense of
excitement that the Feds were finally taking an agressive stance. It was nice to
see the Romulans drawn in (and remember, they're only really there through
trickery). David Birney was truly excellent, as was the actor who plays Martok.

: -- The music at the end of the episode, while Sisko's working in New

: Orleans, felt strikingly reminiscent of "Far Beyond the Stars"; I'm
: hoping that's both intentional and foreshadowing.

of what? Next season being set in the 1950s?

: -- The final effect of the Federation/Klingon/Romulan offensive is a

: little murky to me: exactly how far did they get? Weyoun referred to
: "Federation troops on Cardassian soil", but he can't have meant
: Cardassia Prime itself.

I had a hard time figuring out how many planets and moons there were in Chintaka.

: That about covers it. In terms of keeping the audience interested to

: see what happens next, "Tears of the Prophets" did its job and did it
: reasonably well. I'm just left to wish that it had done a better job
: along the way, and I certainly think we deserved better when it came
: to Jadzia Dax. Ah, well; on to summer speculation.

: Wrapping up:

: Writing: Kind of hit-or-miss; deeply powerful moments, moments
: that rang completely wrong, and pretty much everything in
: between.
: Directing: It tended to follow the writing.
: Acting: Overall fine, though some people had too little to do.

: OVERALL: 7, I think; high marks for ambition and fine for what it
: did, but far short of what it could have been.

I do agree that Quark and Bashir's frustrated desires were irrelevant to the
episode, and I hated the jazz loser scene. But I'd give this ep at least a 9, if
not higher. It really built on all the threads we've been following for so long,
and was as dark (for the most part) as it needed to be. I expect to be really
depressed all next season, and I'm looking forward to it.

Shawn
* . * . * . * .

Q: "Am I still your woman?"

A: "You're the captain's woman...until he says you're not."

. * . * . *sh...@fas.harvard.edu

[Timothy J. Lee]

James Walker <s06...@aix1.uottawa.ca> writes:
|But the Dax symbiont knows. As soon as it is put into its next host, it
|should start blabbing. Unless there's a way they can communicate with it
|while it's in that milky stuff on Trill, waiting for a host.

A Vulcan or Betazoid might telepathically communicate with the Dax
symbiont to get the story.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timothy J. Lee timlee@
Unsolicited bulk or commercial email is not welcome. netcom.com
No warranty of any kind is provided with this message.

[christian]

Jim Miller wrote:
>
> >[spoilers!!!!]

>
> >Firstly, I don't understand how Dukat managed to get to DS9, beam
> >on board, kill Jadzia and darken the Orbs, then beam away and get
> >away without anyone detecting him. The Cardassians and the
> >Dominion have never had cloaking technology, and you'd expect that
> >the station would be on alert given the situation.
>

> Ah, but Dukat has a Klingon BoP, which he nabbed a couple of seasons ago.
> IIRC, it had a cloak. Been nice to have actually see/hear a reference to
> it.
>
> Jammer Jim Roberts-Miller

That was before he was given his title back; allied with the Dominion;
took over the station; lost the station, his daughter, and his mind; was
taken prisoner by the Federation; and escaped the Federation. Sorry,
don't think he has access to the Klingon BoP anymore.

I think not detecting him had something to do with the thing possessing
him -- the anti-Prophet (forgot their real name).

BTW, the Jem Hadar have a cloaking device. Remember the PREDATOR like
FX the first time we saw them on Sisko, Quark, Jake, and Nog's little
field trip.

--
christian

[Laurinda Chamberlin]

tly...@alumni.caltech.edu (Tim Lynch) writes:
[...]

>time, we were asked to believe that several things (Odo and Kira's
>first fight, Dax and Worf's decision to have a baby, Dukat's return to
>Cardassia, and the invasion) all just occurred at the same time -- and
>that's a reach, particularly when there are so many things that could
>have been done and weren't. (What it really felt like, in retrospect,
>was material to give Bashir, Quark and Odo something to do. That's
>not a sufficient reason.)

The Odo-Kira scenes could have had a point if they had instead focused
on Odo's fears of Kira's dying in battle now that they had a
romantic relationship. It might have lent a little poignance when Kira
comes back a hero, and it's actually Jadzia who dies.

>[...] (The main item glossed over,

>incidentally, was Ziyal's death. I'm certainly glad it was mentioned,
>but given how long we've been waiting for Dukat and Damar to meet
>and how badly Ziyal's death unhinged Dukat, to have Dukat dismiss it
>with "Oh, it was Sisko's fault, not yours" is cheating the viewer a bit,
>I think.)

Poor Ziyal. She got her ten seconds of grief from Kira and Garak, then
forever after, she's a footnote. Even Dukat seems to be blowing her off
these days. The only thing I can think is that this is part of an effort
to line up who offs whom by the end of next season. The line stretches
around the block to take a crack at Dukat, so unless we're going to have
"Murder on the Orient Express" in space, we have to divert some of the
characters. Since the writers seem to setting up Dukat at some sort of
anti-Emissary, that lays the groundwork for the decisive battle being
between him and Sisko (rather than Kira, as I'd hoped). If Dukat doesn't
revenge his daughter's death by killing Damar, that leaves Damar to Garak.

>There were some other moments felt a bit off here and there during the
>first half of the show, too, one of them being Jake's presence during
>the battle. This should have had nothing to do with father-son strife,
>really; a civilian reporter simply should not have been on the bridge of
>a warship during an invasion.

I don't know about that. Reporters went along on D-Day.

[...]

>During all of this, though, there were very solid moments as well,
>many of them on Cardassia. Dukat's return was one of them: Dukat
>may not be as complex a character as he once was, but Marc Alaimo
>and Jeffrey Combs still work extremely well together -- Dukat's
>discussion of the "clarity" he's achieved of late and Weyoun's
>subsequent assessment of Dukat's sanity were absolutely riveting.

The "you have changed" line was wonderfully rich. However, I'm not
sure about this "new man" Dukat has become. I appreciated the character
arc up through "Waltz", because even when he was still what passes for sane
on Cardassia, his thought processes were so wonderfully twisted, and
that much was retained after he went mad. There were shades of the old
Dukat in his absurd apology to Jadzia for getting her killed and in his
hambone spin control after screwing up the wormhole, but I need some more
exposition on what this wonderful "clarity" is that he's so impressed with.

One thing I'm glad of about Dukat's exploits in this episode was that the
writers avoided the pitfall of getting him off the hook for his deeds
because he was possessed at the time. They showed him clearly as a willing
collaborator with the pah-wraith.

>[...] Admittedly, I wish Dukat's 'possession' had followed

>on far more directly from "The Reckoning" than it did, as it's a little
>bit of a stretch to have two wraiths released in four months after
>centuries or millennia of captivity, but the concept was still there and
>still put to reasonably good use.

Well, if you like, it's also a bit of a stretch that we just happen to
be living in the time of the Emissary.

>[...] I did think the <tech> was a bit

>overdone when they were figuring out how to destroy the platforms'
>energy source

Treknobabble can be annoying, but I think people are going too far in
the other direction in complaining about it. They are fighting a high-tech
war in the 24th century -- what else but technology is going to win the
battle?

> -- is there a reason they couldn't just position
>themselves right by the planetoid, then veer at the last second so that

>the platforms fire on the wrong thing? [...]

It looked like it took more than one platform to destroy the moon. That
would mean that you would need more than one decoy ship to converge over
the power station simultaneously, which would mean...*SMASH*.

>[...]based on Sisko's speech over the coffin later, no one seems to know
>exactly what happened.

I don't recall anything from his speech that implied that.

>That would be all well and good -- except that
>Jadzia was awake and conscious enough to talk to Worf later, which
>means she should have been able to tell Sisko what she saw. A
>simple "Dukat..." would have worked wonders, and so far as I can
>tell we never got one.

Not onscreen, but it was only logical that it did happen given that she was
able to speak at all.

>[...]Even if a funeral wasn't in the cards, though, and I can understand

>why it might not be, we didn't get the one most important event
>surrounding Jadzia's death that we should have. That event was a

>conversation between Jadzia and *Sisko*. [...]

I've speculated on another thread that cramming in Jadzia's death at the
last minute may have turned a conversation between Dax and Sisko into a
monologue over Jadzia's coffin.

>[...]-- I did rather like the Damar/Weyoun discussion about superstition.

>"All this talk of Gods strikes me as nothing more than superstitious
>nonsense." "You believe the Founders are gods, don't you?" "That's
>different." "In what way?" "The Founders *are* gods."

They were great lines, but too bad Damar-Weyoun doesn't have nearly the
snap of those wonderal war-arc Dukat-Weyoun exchanges.

>-- In keeping with the "let's try to do everything" approach that
>undercut the show, Garak showed up in order to do basically nothing.

>Ehh. [...]

E tu? They've brought him along before when entering Cardassian/Dominion
space because he knows quite a bit about Cardassian defenses, and even
if it wasn't spelled out here, I assume the reasoning was along the same
lines. Besides, I still say better that than to perpetuate his unwelcome
absences this season.

--
Laurinda She walked by herself, and
all places were alike to her.

[Jimmy A. Roberts-Miller]

In article <358F0F...@leo.infi.net>, thus spake f...@leo.infi.net:
>Jim Miller wrote:
>>
>> >[spoilers!!!!]

>>
>> Ah, but Dukat has a Klingon BoP, which he nabbed a couple of seasons ago.
>> IIRC, it had a cloak. Been nice to have actually see/hear a reference to
>> it.
>

>That was before he was given his title back; allied with the Dominion;
>took over the station; lost the station, his daughter, and his mind; was
>taken prisoner by the Federation; and escaped the Federation. Sorry,
>don't think he has access to the Klingon BoP anymore.

Well, they let him have access to *something* in order to carry out his
diabolical plan[tm], why not the BoP with a Dominion transporter?

Someone else has suggested the Fed shuttle he stole in "Waltz", but that
thing seems to small to have a transporter. No, I'd go with the BoP or a
Dominion fighter sneaking around.

>BTW, the Jem Hadar have a cloaking device. Remember the PREDATOR like
>FX the first time we saw them on Sisko, Quark, Jake, and Nog's little
>field trip.

That "device" appears to be at least partly biological and internal to
the Jem'Hadar, see "Rocks and Shoals".

Jammer Jim Roberts-Miller

--
Texas A&M University '89, '91
"Is there in truth no beauty?"

[christian]

Jimmy A. Roberts-Miller wrote:
>
> In article <358F0F...@leo.infi.net>, thus spake f...@leo.infi.net:
> >Jim Miller wrote:
> >>
> >> >[spoilers!!!!]
> >>
> >> Ah, but Dukat has a Klingon BoP, which he nabbed a couple of seasons ago.
> >> IIRC, it had a cloak. Been nice to have actually see/hear a reference to
> >> it.
> >
> >That was before he was given his title back; allied with the Dominion;
> >took over the station; lost the station, his daughter, and his mind; was
> >taken prisoner by the Federation; and escaped the Federation. Sorry,
> >don't think he has access to the Klingon BoP anymore.
>
> Well, they let him have access to *something* in order to carry out his
> diabolical plan[tm], why not the BoP with a Dominion transporter?
>
> Someone else has suggested the Fed shuttle he stole in "Waltz", but that
> thing seems to small to have a transporter. No, I'd go with the BoP or a
> Dominion fighter sneaking around.

It could have been a one-man Dominion ship. I don't think they would
give him a Dominion fighter or the BoP simply because they wouldn't give
him a crew to fly them and they figured his plan was a long-shot anyway,
so they wouldn't waste a valuable fighter or crew on him.

> >BTW, the Jem Hadar have a cloaking device. Remember the PREDATOR like
> >FX the first time we saw them on Sisko, Quark, Jake, and Nog's little
> >field trip.
>
> That "device" appears to be at least partly biological and internal to
> the Jem'Hadar, see "Rocks and Shoals".
>
> Jammer Jim Roberts-Miller
>
> --
> Texas A&M University '89, '91
> "Is there in truth no beauty?"

--
christian