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Voss wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
DS9 has maybe too much Quark I think, but not excessively so.

He was always great on the station. Its when they started dragging him off to 'fix' the Ferengi/Ferenginar that it felt like a stretch.
It wasn't to his benefit, it wasn't even remotely his job or in his wheelhouse, and pretty much no one wanted him to do it, including himself.

As a not-particularly-successful barkeep/semi-criminal/criminal facilitator, he was great. As an unwilling social crusader, it was... odd.
And as the 'Magnificent Ferengi' episode showed, he knew a lot of nasty people that would have him, his brother and his mother quietly murdered, even if they did ultimately adopt some of the more profitable reforms.

They do that a lot I've noticed, any event in the Klingon Empire has Worf involved, any event on Ferenginar has Quark and Nog involved etc.

I think it is good to have events interpreted through the lense of a character that we know, but it does detract from the world builing a bit as these places seem like they are waiting for the main cast to swing by!

True, but at least it’s not the irksome half-human trope, where our protagonist is taught/encouraged to only act on their human interests.

Quark is, arguably, quite the cosmopolitan Ferengi. Thanks to his bar, and the wormhole, he’s exposed to a great many different cultures. So when we see him confronted with sociological changed in his own people, he makes for an interesting lens for us, the viewer. It also provides some conflict as we see Federation ideals hold at least some influence on him.

As covered before, Worf is a really, really good lens for us as the audience to witness Klingon culture. On one hand, he is Klingon, and he absolutely has a warrior’s heart and soul. But on the other, his understanding of Klingon Culture is romanticised. Something he learned from books and second hand tales. One could say he’s an accidental Klingon anime fan (I did use the slang word here, but filters) - someone who venerates a culture, but hasn’t really lived the culture.

And it’s Worf’s ongoing exploration of the highs and lows that make such tales interesting. For me, they got the narrative balance just about right. He’s a Klingon that happens to be a Federation Officer, not a Federation Officer that happens to be Klingon.

I mean, when he takes out Duros and Gowron, that’s pure Klingon. That is his culture - call them out, fight honourably, take their lives in a fair fight.

Indeed, Picard’s response to his slaying of Duros is perfect. He bawls him out, and makes it clear it will affect his career etc, without actually bollocking him for being Klingon.

Good I love TNG and DS9! Such excellent writing! (Yes there is of course dross. Move along home )

 Kroem wrote:

Voss wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
DS9 has maybe too much Quark I think, but not excessively so.

He was always great on the station. Its when they started dragging him off to 'fix' the Ferengi/Ferenginar that it felt like a stretch.
It wasn't to his benefit, it wasn't even remotely his job or in his wheelhouse, and pretty much no one wanted him to do it, including himself.

As a not-particularly-successful barkeep/semi-criminal/criminal facilitator, he was great. As an unwilling social crusader, it was... odd.
And as the 'Magnificent Ferengi' episode showed, he knew a lot of nasty people that would have him, his brother and his mother quietly murdered, even if they did ultimately adopt some of the more profitable reforms.

They do that a lot I've noticed, any event in the Klingon Empire has Worf involved, any event on Ferenginar has Quark and Nog involved etc.

I think it is good to have events interpreted through the lense of a character that we know, but it does detract from the world builing a bit as these places seem like they are waiting for the main cast to swing by!

Lets not forget the one time Quark went to Qo'noS to save a powerful Klingon house from a basic hostile takeover.

 Captain Joystick wrote:


Lets not forget the one time Quark went to Qo'noS to save a powerful Klingon house from a basic hostile takeover.

.... with the awesome power of accounting spreadsheets!

MarkNorfolk wrote:

 Captain Joystick wrote:


Lets not forget the one time Quark went to Qo'noS to save a powerful Klingon house from a basic hostile takeover.

.... with the awesome power of accounting spreadsheets!

Technically the final victory was achieved in (not so) glorious personal combat!

 warboss wrote:

MarkNorfolk wrote:

 Captain Joystick wrote:


Lets not forget the one time Quark went to Qo'noS to save a powerful Klingon house from a basic hostile takeover.

.... with the awesome power of accounting spreadsheets!

Technically the final victory was achieved in (not so) glorious personal combat!

Technically the final victory was achieved by Not combating.

 AduroT wrote:

 warboss wrote:

MarkNorfolk wrote:

 Captain Joystick wrote:


Lets not forget the one time Quark went to Qo'noS to save a powerful Klingon house from a basic hostile takeover.

.... with the awesome power of accounting spreadsheets!

Technically the final victory was achieved in (not so) glorious personal combat!

Technically the final victory was achieved by Not combating.

That would be the "(not so)" part of my post.

Right, but the not so glorious personal combat is how the other guy Lost. The Victory was achieved by refusing to participate in it. If we’re doing technicalities, you gotta go full on.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
True, but at least it’s not the irksome half-human trope, where our protagonist is taught/encouraged to only act on their human interests.

Quark is, arguably, quite the cosmopolitan Ferengi. Thanks to his bar, and the wormhole, he’s exposed to a great many different cultures. So when we see him confronted with sociological changed in his own people, he makes for an interesting lens for us, the viewer. It also provides some conflict as we see Federation ideals hold at least some influence on him.

As covered before, Worf is a really, really good lens for us as the audience to witness Klingon culture. On one hand, he is Klingon, and he absolutely has a warrior’s heart and soul. But on the other, his understanding of Klingon Culture is romanticised. Something he learned from books and second hand tales. One could say he’s an accidental Klingon anime fan (I did use the slang word here, but filters) - someone who venerates a culture, but hasn’t really lived the culture.

And it’s Worf’s ongoing exploration of the highs and lows that make such tales interesting. For me, they got the narrative balance just about right. He’s a Klingon that happens to be a Federation Officer, not a Federation Officer that happens to be Klingon.

I mean, when he takes out Duros and Gowron, that’s pure Klingon. That is his culture - call them out, fight honourably, take their lives in a fair fight.

Indeed, Picard’s response to his slaying of Duros is perfect. He bawls him out, and makes it clear it will affect his career etc, without actually bollocking him for being Klingon.

Good I love TNG and DS9! Such excellent writing! (Yes there is of course dross. Move along home )

I see both of those examples as part of the really problematic writing of ST, certainly not excellent. The 'your culture is wrong, you MUST accept our idealized 20th century moral values' card gets played a lot, especially with Worf and later with Quark- who should be too cosmopolitan to fall into this hole.
Picard is absolutely 'bollocking' Worf for trying to be Klingon. If he actually accepted Klingon culture as worthwhile, he'd let the slaying of Duros pass without comment- accepting it as moral and legal in terms of what was going on.

The root beer discussion between Garak and Quark is the most honest the writers ever are about this, but the characters are stuck with the conclusion that it is pretty much inevitable.

You can see that type of writing in the Star Trek "Homage" The Orville.
It regularly insults other cultures and builds up cultures as strawmen for the show to tear it down. You would see this in earlier TNG, with alot of aliens just existing for them to enforce federation values one.
Which is why DS9 with how they handled the Bajorans so well i think, They where never considered backwards or wrong for their beliefs.

I think Ron Moore had a lot to do with that, for good and ill.

SF debris did a good analysis on the thematic idea of 'honor' that got revisited again and again in the Worf/Klingon episodes - the idea that Klingons cherish honor as the esteem they are held up to by others, while Worf's sense of honor is about his own esteem in the manner in which he conducts himself.

Also their honor is something that, for Klingons, is more of the idea of being the best and not being challenged on things.

It's clear that the romantic idea of honour is different to how it plays out in reality with a lot of variation on personal interpretation of the honour system.


Also its important to realise that the Klingons have been slowly changing. Their Empire peaked out and is not growing; their war-engine is honestly mostly stalled and they became the guard dog of the Federation. A role that they openly deny if asked but its clearly part of their role.

One of the big things in DS9 was that the Klingons didn't like that role and started pushing back; they saw another race building an empire and it awakened some of the Klingon fire for war and a desire to relive the glory days of their Empire. It didn't last, but ultimately they are a race going through very slow social change as a result of Federation influence.

One neat thing Worf actually shows is that his interpretation of classic honour actually works well with the Federations overall attitudes and morals "mostly". It's not a perfect fit, but the broad ideals do fit together.




What would be really neat would be to see how the Klingons are and wil react to the Picard storyline whereby the Federation has armed up itself and actually built a warfleet (keeping in mind the fleet we saw at the end of Picard appeared to be bigger than the one used to repel the Borg Cube and also potentially larger than several of the DS9 fleets = though how much of that we can put down to advances in cost and CGI technology and how much is actual advance of the Federation in numbers is hard to say).

Yeah, the fleets at the end of Picard were silly. - Including the Romulans.

Hopefully they'll scale that back, because it *REALLY* did look like someone got overly happy with copy/paste.

The fleet at the close of Picard is troublesome for a lot of reasons.

If I had to hand wave it I would say the Federation has (finally) started mass producing a single class of war/defense ships, minimal crews, no frills.

In contrast with the older model of bespoke ships that could do everything from patrol the Neutral Zone to catalogue plant life on a new world to fly to the far side of the galaxy and come back.

Personally I always felt the fleets seemed too small before, so I’m mostly ok with it.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:The fleet at the close of Picard is troublesome for a lot of reasons.

If I had to hand wave it I would say the Federation has (finally) started mass producing a single class of war/defense ships, minimal crews, no frills.

In contrast with the older model of bespoke ships that could do everything from patrol the Neutral Zone to catalogue plant life on a new world to fly to the far side of the galaxy and come back.

I don't think its hand waving, I think its a sensible move by the Federation. Consider that the Federation essentially grew in a peaceful bubble. Most of the major empires they met were past their period of expansion and either in a golden age of stability or heading toward (or fully in) a decline. Even Klingons weren't in heavy expansion. So they wound up with Neutral Zones everywhere and boundaries and because the Federation wasn't an aggressive expansionist group they didn't spark major reprisals. The few battles and wars they did have mostly got solved on their own with a few ships and diplomacy.

It wasn't until the Dominion War that the Federation (indeed the whole Quadrant) actually got a full on war that lasted beyond a few token fights. It also showed up how weak most of them were, even warrior races like the Klingons were not prepared for an all out actual war on multiple fronts. The Federation meanwhile found that when war arose many of their allies were not always ready to help - again even the guarddog Klingons were iffy and were on a knife edge between helping or breaking away and going it alone.
Couple that to ever increasing Borg and such and you've got a Federation that woke up to the fact that exploratory ships might not be all they need. They started with the Defiant, one ship. They enter a war and they built, by the end, 3 actual warships and they were all very small class sizes. Powerful, but small. In the end the Federation won, but don't forget a big part of that was the Wormhole Aliens and the self replicating mines. Basically they only won by being able to cut off Dominion forces and hold one key chokepoint. Without that the Dominion would have out bred and out produced the other factions very quickly.


Suffice to say the Federation likely work up and realised that even if they are peaceful, they need an actual fleet and actual warriors. So commissioning a fleet of identical or near identical ships purely for the purpose of keeping the peace is very sensible. The only oddity in the scene is that Riker was able to commandeer so many ships so fast. Then again he likely did just what we saw Picard do right at the start, only Riker is still in Starfleet and still had contacts and allies in the political system.

My only real dislike is that the Romulan ships looked, weak. They didn't have that impressive awe inspiring presence of the old Birds of War. Now they looked menacing, powerful (and could have had room for way more guns and fleets of fighters).

AduroT wrote:Personally I always felt the fleets seemed too small before, so I’m mostly ok with it.

I can agree with that; part of what we saw of the past was technological limitations of the time. Races would allude to fleets and such right up until late DS9 we'd mostly only see a couple of ships here and there.

In terms of the Federation arming up? There’s also the continued threat of the Borg and the Dominion mounting comebacks.

I can see that being approved of by Klingons, as it’s one thing to love a fight, it’s quite another to have an ally turn you into their shield, whilst refusing to join in.

It's problematic because in the past the Federation struggled to put out 10 or 20 ships at a time (of multiple classes). And even then had to draft random officers to fill them. Now they can field 100+ all the same, on a half hours' notice.

Granted it's 20-30 years later and after 2-3 big wars, but still a bit continuity breaking. A few lines somewhere would have taken care of any issues but that might have spoiled Riker's big damn hero moment.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
It's problematic because in the past the Federation struggled to put out 10 or 20 ships at a time (of multiple classes). And even then had to draft random officers to fill them. Now they can field 100+ all the same, on a half hours' notice.

Granted it's 20-30 years later and after 2-3 big wars, but still a bit continuity breaking. A few lines somewhere would have taken care of any issues but that might have spoiled Riker's big damn hero moment.

Considering the size of the Federation that fleet is likely still small.

Compare it to say the modern day UK armed forces. They don't use drafts and are much smaller in number than in the past; but what they have is a focus on quailty over quantity. Plus there aren't any major wars between big nations at present. So there's no need to draft or draw up or even promoted the armed forces in a big way. There's no huge war to gear up or prepare for nor reason to hold such massive investment. Federation was at that stage, then the Dominion War kicked off and the Borg threat grew. That's 2 big risks that have not gone away, so the Federation has entered into a Cold War type situation and is arming up. Attitudes have shifted, needs have shifted and chances are this means they've made massive investments into building more ships; training more crew and promoting Star Fleet as a major life goal for many. With 10-20 years that's a long time, enough to build up such a system when you've got multiple planets at your disposal.


Granted the risk for the Federation and the reason they never did it before was because they didn't want to end up in a major Cold War with multiple factions; however after the Dominion War the home field is quite different. Romulans, Cardassians and such all were weakened, but also had stronger alliance bonds with the Federation come the end. So the Federations home territory has become more stable for them (more or less) and they aren't entering into a cold war with their neighbours; but with forces far outside of their home regions. There's nothing to say the Dominion hasn't armed up as well in secret and the Borg certainly have not to mention other threats that might be out there in the black of space. Space basically has gone from being an explorers wonder to a dangerous place; the exploratory ships are now ships of war.

 Overread wrote:
It's clear that the romantic idea of honour is different to how it plays out in reality with a lot of variation on personal interpretation of the honour system.

Honor I think is one of those words that is heavily watered down by shifting cultural norms and attitudes.

People today kind of regard it as some vague notion of behaving according to an established code or engaging in fair behavior, and it gets treated as something as an individual ideal rather than a cultural construction. Star Trek is one of the few shows I can think of where honor actually means honor, though the show fudges a lot so it can often look like it's the watered down variation. Klingon honor is completely about being a warrior and adhering to a set of behaviors that the Klingon's culturally subscribe to as honorable (fight to win, don't surrender/retreat, warriors don't play 'politics' etc.). And the Klingons also did it right by breaking a lot of the presumed rules when it was pragmatic, because no society is so honor bound that it encourages rampant stupidity. The Klingons used cloaking devices because their tactical advantage is too good to give up and they play politics because they're unavoidable, but all these things are interpreted through the lens of being a warrior, which isn't an individual idea but a shared cultural idealogue of expected behaviors and social norms.

One neat thing Worf actually shows is that his interpretation of classic honour actually works well with the Federations overall attitudes and morals "mostly". It's not a perfect fit, but the broad ideals do fit together.

To a degree, I think it also slowly shows how Worf's perceptions are shaped by growing up and serving in the Federation. We see few Klingons who have Worf's sense of fair play. Fair play doesn't actually seem that important in their culture, but Worf frequently does things that hinder himself to offer an enemy a fighting chance and it often backfires. He's also frankly, a lot more honest that pretty much any other Klingon we meet. Most are willing to lie and don't seem to regard lying to non-Klingon's as dishonorable. Worf tends to treat inter-personal deception as beneath him and it always struck me as more of a Federation ideal that he'd absorbed into his perception of Klingon culture rather than something native.

True and perhaps that's a good way of showing other Klingons how the Federation can have a positive effect on their own cultural elements.

Finally watch the last episode of STD. I liked because it was refreshing to have an episode where no one got shot or punched. Like seriously I think it may be the only STD episode so far to not have that.
I like Tilly, but yeah, that made no sense. I feel like it actually robs her of a more intereting character arc of actually becoming Captain one day which she stated was her goal in the first episode. Like they could have just promoted her to Lieutenant and that would have been a huge deal for her and we could see what happened after that but they decided to just get this over with and make her 1st officer...

I don't know about that, my impression is that Worf has a very narrow view of what is Klingon. Would his vision of a renewed Klingon Empire really be that great?

Gowron on the other hand has a lot more to lose than Worf, but he shows on multiple occasions that he can look beyond Klingon rules and traditions to make the pragmatic choice if he can see the benefits. (For himself or the Empire!) Gowron also seems to weaponise honour to manipulate Martok, he knows when to seem to have honour and when to discard it.

I liked that in the end his undoing was not because of some inherent Klingon inflexibility or desire for an honourable death, but because one of his plan's unraveled.

I think there really could be some sort of potential in there if there is a kind of 'yes man' route that they alluded to.

I mean, I'd feel bad because it also feels like that sort of plotline would mean shoving Saru under a bus, but it could certainly be interesting if it does end up being something like Tilly not rising to the challenge of being a 'good' first officer, because she was Not Ready Yet.


One thing they did highlight a few times is that she is the *provisional* First Officer, maybe it's a case of her rising to the occasion, doing well, then get busted down by central Starfleet, being replaced by an outsider.

There's plenty of routes the story could go that ends up with it not being 'Tilly is now Boring First Officer like Chakotay now.'

Man, there sure are a lot of interesting new faces on the away team of this episode of DS:9 and wait, they’re all dead.

So like, Tilly made the stupidiest decision ever with the "What if its not a federation ship" right?
That will surely mean she isnt an XO anymore because Osyra saw right through that.

Man, that ship sure has a ton of firepower! Cant blow up a single smugger ship.

I know the bad guy’s ship’s special weak spot! Shoot the entire thing.

Shields are at 10%, we can’t take much more of this, I’m switching piloting to manual! Continue to fly straight line strafing runs back and forth along the length of the enemy ship while still being hit by their guns.

That whole plan was just the dumbest thing.

Well, it’s no Evasive Maneuver Riker Delta ...*slowly turns left*.

 AduroT wrote:
Man, that ship sure has a ton of firepower! Cant blow up a single smugger ship.

I know the bad guy’s ship’s special weak spot! Shoot the entire thing.

Shields are at 10%, we can’t take much more of this, I’m switching piloting to manual! Continue to fly straight line strafing runs back and forth along the length of the enemy ship while still being hit by their guns.

That whole plan was just the dumbest thing.

Did that really happen?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Well, it’s no Evasive Maneuver Riker Delta ...*slowly turns left*.

Drifting lazily to the left is a time honored and very effective yet relatively unknown ace pilot trick in scifi.