The Whole Damn Thing: STAR TREK: DS9 #3

I left this lie a little bit, but I feel it fair to take this moment to say hello to the two new followers who added me (twelve, now. Awesome!) and thank Kurt Busiek for stopping by, utterly improbable as that may seem considering this blog flies underneath the underneath the radar.

With that out of the way, here's the next installment of our comprehensive coverage of Deep Space Nine. This week . . .four of a kind, and not the good kind, either.

"THE PASSENGER"

"There's nothing wrong with a good delusion."

One of the things about shows with ensemble casts is that they will typically devote one episode a season to each character in turn, with the goal of exploring the character and giving them a featured role to show that everyone is equally important and interesting and worth liking. For instance, DS9 annually did what they called their "Let's torture O'Brien" episode, wherein we struggled along with our likeable everyman as he was taken for a walk across hell on a spiderweb.

45 seconds into Bashir's first feature episode he manages to overclock his usual pompous assholery well into scientific notation. It is another three and a half minutes before the credits, so really, we're off to a roaring start, aren't we?

Anyways, Na'Toth from that other space station show is making everyone's lives miserable because she continues to insist the prisoner she was guarding is still alive despite being dead. Bashir gets possessed by the dead prisoner which makes him several times more competent than he usually is and a lot easier to get along with. What's a little murder for a gentle personality adjustment.

Meanwhile in the B Plot, Odo flips his shit when he encounters Lt. Premmin, Starfleet's security liason rolls in, acting like a know-it-all asshole the whole time. This will, of course seem like deja vu when it happens again almost exactly two years later when Eddington shows up, and when you consider that Primmin only lasts two damn episodes, it's a bit of a tempest in a teacup. Anyways, this is a rather obvious song and dance--The Cop Who Plays By The Rules Teams With A Cop Who Plays By His Own Rules And Both Of Them Learn Something, and it's worth exactly this paragraph worth of discussion.

This episode is really aggressively mediocre. The whole business with Bashir getting taken over is needlessly complicated (involving that hoary old cliche about not using your full brain capacity) and really, it's not worth getting into. Villain Bashir underplays it (to the point that it's pretty much Bashir, talking slower than usual) when a little scenery chewing would have been welcomed and it turns out the whole thing is in service to a hijack, which is severely underwhelming.

Oh, and the damn thing doesn't even have an ending. Na'Toth just zaps the container with her prisoner's brain ghost and everyone stands around like she just farted a John Phillips Souza march from behind her left earlobe. It may be me, but "mild amusement" would not be the expected reaction at a summary execution. Then again, like me, they could just be happy it's over.

"MOVE ALONG HOME"

"One man's 'priceless' is another man's 'worthless.'"

There are good and bad episodes of every TV show. And the better the TV show, the worse the misfires feel when you see them. Whatever else I can say about Deep Space Nine, I can say when they miss the mark, they do so spectacularly.

If you've never had the pleasure of seeing this episode, you've never had the metaphorical equivalent of a lit blowtorch shoved into your rectum. It is awful beyond my ability to convey.

Here it is in a nutshell, the Wadi, let by a guy who looks like Ron Jeremy if Ron Jeremy had "KICK ME" written across his forehead shows up and it turns out his entire society is all about games, so they spend ages at Quarks until he decides to cheat them and then Not Ron Jeremy takes Sisko, Kira and Dax and plugs them into the game and oh sweet holy shining fuck I hate this god damned episode.

Here's all you need to know: The game bits are annoying and stupid, and consist of scene after endless scene of Our Heroes trying to figure out what they're supposed to do. It's done on the cheap, and thus looks boring as hell. Oh, and at the end of it it's revealed they were never in any danger because "it's just a game," meaning that this episode was actually twice as pointless as it seemed and any emotional investment you may have had (your poor sap) was utterly pointless.

There, now you know the plot. Here's my review: Fuck this episode. MOVING ON.

"THE NAGUS"

"Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity. I certainly never have."

At least once every season, the people who make Deep Space Nine, labouring under the possibly drug-induced delusion that people wanted to see them, made many episodes that involved Quark and the Ferengi. They were obviously hatefully wrong about that, as Ferengi episodes tend to be full of appallingly broad comedy which is twice as objectionable when you consider they're basically Space Jews and the whole drive of their culture is to make easy and obvious points about runaway capitalism and oh dear lord wasn't "Move Along Home" bad enough?

The Nagus, the ruler of the Ferengi (played by Wallace Shawn, even more annoying here than My Dinner With Andre) comes to the station and enacts a hopelessly elaborate plot to teach his son a lesson by making Quark the new Nagus and faking his own death. Obviously, he isn't actually the new Nagus and the old one isn't really dead this episode's in the DVD player right now and I should be paying more attention but all I want to do is beat my head against the desk until sweet blissful darkness envelops me.

In the name of preventing a self-inflicted concussion, we shall leave it at that. If you like ten Shylocks around a table all trying win the prize for "who's got the most irritating high-pitched voice" then you will like this episode and probably the other twenty times they did this over the course of the seven years. God knows I don't.

"VORTEX"

"Don't thank me. I already regret it."

Ironically enough, while this episode isn't great (it's kind of bullshit, actually) the stuff surrounding it is not that bad. For one thing, although we didn't know it at the time, we do get a lot of pretty accurate information about Odo's people--they call themselves changelings, they're rather judgmental, and they don't like outsiders.

The rest is complete claptrap, of course--the people we finally see wouldn't let the person in question hang around with them and they certainly don't go around making lockets for them and . . .

Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. A guy named Croden (who very desperately wants to be and probably should have been played by Brad Dourif) interrupts a meeting between Quark and a pair of Miradorn (another attempt at introducing an alien race, and my God are we running to the law of diminishing returns very hard now) killing one of the Miradorn before Odo can bust them. This makes the surviving Miradorn go ever so slightly nuts and everyone makes frowny faces as we try to work out what to do with Croden.

Odo, tempted by the knowledge Croden has about his people, eventually spirits Croden back to the Gamma Quadrant, wherein we learn that Croden was declared and enemy of the state among his people. The state killed his wife and nearly killed his daughter, but he squirreled her away so he could collect her later.

You see where this is going, don't you? Croden's child is an adorable little moppet who melt's Odo's heart, because heaven knows he can't be a bluff craggy asshole all the time and so Odo will honour Croden's last request and see that she's taken care of and it's all serviceable enough, but it's so very very rote and boring and it's another one of those episodes that even when you see it for the first time you feel like you've seen it a dozen times.

It's . . .well, for an Odo episode, there will be several dozen better ones than this and none of them involve such blatant manipulation. Well, not many. A couple. I don't know.

Well, that's it for this time. Join us next week when things get a little zombified in "Battle Lines." We get our first O'Brien feature in "The Storyteller," a decent Kira episode in "Progress." And finally, in "If Wishes Were Horses," the dancing dwarf from Twin Peaks and Mr. Wu from Deadwood show up in an episode I promise is far less interesting than the two guest stars might indicate. Please pass the ketchup, I think it's going to rain!

The Sensational Character Find Of 2011!

"his character is one of three new X-Men introduced in the game, who are "part of official canon."



Oh dear. Even with the rather slipshod apparoach to character design we've been suffering under since the turn of the century, this is the best we can do now?

Witless Dictionary #25--The Hank Pym Doctorate

Continuing my slightly condescending and apparently never ending series of entries wherein we try to find definitions for things that don't have a term, but should!

Hank Pym Doctorate--Term given to scientists or doctors who start as specialists in one field (as scientists tend to be) and soon graduate to becoming experts in everything. Give a general practitioner enough time and he'll go from putting a cast on someone's foot to designing a robotic exoskeleton for Steven J. Cannell.

Named for the original originator, who rose from a humble biochemist huffing shrinking gas for kicks to building robots, which he added genocidal urges for as that extra touch of workmanship that set his robots apart, I guess.

I Read This--AVENGERS ASSEMBLE: Vol. 1

Boy, thank God for that Avengers movie, eh? Without it I wouldn't have a hope in hell of completing this series because Marvel would have blithely let two fifths of the run fall out of print and I would have spent inordinate amounts of time staring at price lists online offering copies for $100+ used muttering "you must be out of your god damned minds."

Anyways, my angst aside, once again the most ass-backward-yet-somehow-right-for-this-place retrospective look at Kurt Busiek's run on Avengers continues and goes back to the beginning (say it with me--"wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, dodgy availability") to the start. Picture it: Marvel, 1998. We've just gotten the Heroes Reborn business over with and we're trying to get back to the basics with our core characters (generally because Image-ising them didn't work very well and Grant Morrison's JLA was doing big sexy numbers) and someone said: "Get me Kurt Busiek. His near-encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel history will serve us well, especially since Roy Thomas is still burnt out and babbling in the basement."

To further sweeten the deal, they also retained George Perez, who hadn't done a regular run on anything for something like ten years at that point. I like to think--and no, I cannot prove this--that his recruitment went something like this:

MARVEL: Look, we need someone to draw huge crowd scenes and since Liefeld flaked out on us, we're going to try someone who can actually do it right this time. Are you in?

PEREZ: I dunno, man . . .I'm not really feeling it.

MARVEL: You can draw the Scarlet Witch in various kinds of bondage for the first two issues. How about that?

PEREZ: [Puts on sunglasses] I'm hip. Let's ride.

And so, Avengers #1 is born (for the third time), and with all credit to Busiek, the book starts off with an excellent three-parter that manages to hit some familiar continuity buttons and provide something new in the process (it looks like we're going to do yet another Loki brings the Avengers together story, but it's actually Morgan LeFay using Asgardian knickknacks to rewrite reality) and we drag damn near every extant Avenger into it, and by issue #2 give them all sweet medieval redesigns (how the variant hungry action-figure folks never jumped on this, I'll never know) and we even manage to bring Wonder Man back from the dead. It's a genuinely enjoyable romp that really gets the book off to a rousing start, even if this means the book doesn't really settle down and start moving forward until issue #4.

Issue #4 gets the team down to a more manageable size (10 from the original 39) and as is customary at the Prattle, it's time once again for ROLL CALL!

CAPTAIN AMERICA--This is the Mark Waid-era hyper-competent Cap who rides herd on everyone, however reluctantly at times. Over the course of the rest of the issues in this collection, will fret overmuch about how goddamn fractious the team is, but that doesn't really come to a head until much later in the run.

THOR--The designated team muscle, Thor is there to be the hotheaded emeritus member of the team, constantly on a short fuse and the one person who you can be certain that if you step to him, he will bring the pain on your ass. Fades a bit into the background for a bit as the new status quo in the Thor book is established, and rotates in and out periodically from then on.

IRON MAN--Man that armour design he had around 1998 was hella awesome. Anyways, Iron Man shares a subplot from his own book with this one--namely, as a recovering alcoholic, he's deeply worried about Warbird's Sudden Onset Alcoholism Subplot, and well he should, because it is one of the most clumsily handled plot threads in Busiek's entire run and is just . . .embarrassing, really.

SCARLET WITCH--Oh dear. You know, for all I love the Busiek run on this book, this was the exact point where I realised if I never had to read another story featuring the Scarlet Witch, my life would improve dramatically, because the concluding arc in this here collection involves another dry, dull, utterly uninteresting explanation of how her hex powers work (the only correct explanation is of course: "Who gives a flying turtle fuck?") which is in itself nestled in the subplot involving her choosing between Vision and Wonder Man (who remains kinda dead-ish) which, let us not forget, means choosing between a robot and a dead guy/crackle of Kirby-dots. None of this makes her interesting, and I wish she'd said "No More Wanda." I really do.

VISION--Hey, what better way to ensure that one side of a love triangle is doomed to lose out (not that they won't drag it out for THIRTY MORE ISSUES ANYWAY) than to have Vision basically be a non-entity/expository device after issue #3? Because that's totally what they did. Vision gets torn in half in issue #3 and doesn't get back together successfully until much later. The rest of the time he spends moping about as a hologram, occasionally peeking in on Wanda having sex with the dead Kirby-dot guy. This is sick, people. Really sick.

WONDER MAN--Back on the old Avengers mailing list (man, remember those?) one of my biggest criticisms of the early parts of the Avengers run was the following plot progression happened far, far too much: Avengers got their asses kicked, Wanda summoned Wonder Man, Wonder Man kicked ass while Wanda fretted and fussed over why he would appear when he was needed (even though it had pretty much been settled as early as issue #3) and the whole thing was just a hair away from all the Avengers pointing at the sky and calling for the Megazord (or, as I called him, Wonder Robo). I was shouted down, as I remember, but I thought it was pretty fucking funny at the time.

WARBIRD--"Ms. Marvel" may not have been the most imaginative name ever thought of, but sweet shit, it was leagues better than "Warbird." Was the other Ms. Marvel even still around at this point that not confusing the two characters was an issue? Anyways, I imagine that Busiek's goal was to do right by her this time, as Carol Danvers has been the most shit-upon character in the entire history of Marvel Comics. That's not hyperbole--the only one who comes even close is Polaris (and for much the same reasons, now that I think of it) I mean, the 200th issue of the Avengers is basically sending her off to be drugged and raped by her own time-traveling son and the Avengers are waving and going "Okay, have fun!"

That aside, in the name of "fixing" the character, Busiek makes Warbird a bit of a bitch on wheels who hides her de-powering from the team, develops an awfully drama-generating drinking problem, yells at everyone, and eventually gets tossed off the team for being such a hot mess. None of which would be bad, necessarily, except we're never given a moment where she's not being an utter jackass to empathise with her and see the pain that leads her to self-medicate--we're only told after the fact and then, in the shrillest way possible.

Never mind so much of this nonsense could have been avoided with someone having a simple conversation. In short, Warbird is a fictional example of what the late Richard Jeni one said: "This is what happens when you keep fixing something until it's broke."

HAWKEYE--For all that you may say I'm completely negative about even things, I purport to like--here's two awesome Hawkeye moments from this book--Hawkeye takes out the Whizzer, who won't shut up about his super-speed allowing him to run rings around him, and Hawkeye coolly sniping the Corruptor.

Hawkeye is not really on the team for that long a time--he's basically being set up as being discontent with his place on the Avengers (small wonder, he was leader of the West Coast branch for years and years) and setting him up as leader of the Thunderbolts (which happens in the next book) and as a foil for Captain America, which works OK except god damn Hawkeye is shrill as fuck when he's picking arguments with everyone and it kinda ignores the growth he'd made since his earliest days, but as I said, he's not around for long.

FIRESTAR--Firestar and Justice are the two reserves moved up from the New Warriors with the idea that giving them a spot on the Avengers would give them sufficient rub to make them major Marvel characters (see Cage, Luke) The deeper game Busiek was playing, I think, was that even though Justice had always wanted to be an Avenger (New Warriors #1 had him trying and failing to impress Captain America) Firestar would actually be the better Avenger when all was said and done (it would help, of course, that Firestar didn't lose 500 IQ points when she joined, unlike Justice) which is a clever switch and had things gone different, I probably would have liked that wrinkle.

It never quite comes off, because Firestar spends way too much time whining . . .about . . .everything. She's an Avenger only because she tags along with Justice (nothing says "strong female character" like "whiny codependency!") She hates her new costume because her boobs threaten to pop loose at any moment, and she frets over the fact that her powers could kill her (a plot thread that kept getting picked up and dropped because no one consistently dealt with it, and she bitched about Justice pushing her to be more Avenger-y.

Which is fine, but when that's all she does, it becomes so grating that you wish she'd raise up and leave already. As with Warbird, we need more of a larger picture of who she is and what she's about before we start laying on the drama with a trowel.

JUSTICE--In my time reading comics, I have discovered a few constants that exist, and are not unlike Newton's Laws of Motion and the theory of relativity in that they are seemingly immutable. The one law germane to this discussion is as follows: No One Gives A Fuck About What Fabian Nicieza Did. Now allow me to prove it in four steps:

When Cannonball was promoted to the X-Men and moved up after years of being a sober, experienced leader who didn't speak in ridiculous pidgin Southern in the pages of X-Force, he was immediately treated as though he'd just come from New Mutants and acted so ridiculously naive that one expected him to pop out of the bathroom and yell "HOLY SHIT--INDOOR PLUMBING! WHAT AN AGE OF WONDERS WE LIVE IN!" I mean, you could still have done the "rookie plays in the big leagues" thing, but a little subtlety would have helped. Not surprisingly, this was a completely uninteresting way to use the character and Cannonball has now been knocked down to the New Mutants because if comic fans fear anything, it's change.

Cable went from a subtle manipulator playing a long game that would ultimately reshape the world into a utopia (with examination of the consequences of that) to being in some bizarre mash-up of Lone Wolf and Cub and a Roadrunner cartoon.

The Thunderbolts went from being the last bastion of old-school Marvel superhero stories to Warren Ellis Writes The Same 10 Bastards He Writes In Every Story And Oh Look, Speedball's A Cutter Now.

And, most relevant to our subject today, Justice went from being the New Warriors' ace in the whole--wise beyond his years, cool under pressure, well aware of the consequences of his actions (he'd done time in jail for accidentally killing someone) into a callow, reckless starstuck idiot who does for the book what Wesley Crusher did on the Starship Enterprise.

Okay, well, after all that and only four issues covered, let's get back into it. Issue #5 and 6 feature a fight with the Squadron Supreme, who, even Busiek seems to think, have been victims of mind control to an astounding degree. Oh, I think they have the wrong character being a magician, but whatever. Naturally, they're all being mind-controlled here as well because in these heady pre-JLA/Avengers days there was no way we were ever gonna see the Justice League and the Avengers actually fight, right?

The mind-controller du jour happens to be the Corruptor, a Z-list villain from Nova back in the 70's who himself is working for Imus Champion, and even the editorial copy can't believe the continuity backwaters Busiek pulled him out of. This will all be tied up in an annual later in the book. For a quickie two-parter it does very well for what it intends to be--a couple of big fights that set up a conclusion later on and keep the internal subplots humming along.

But before we get to the conclusion, it's time for "Live Kree Or Die," or as it could be more accurately known, Warbird Fucks Up Everything Like Three Times And Nearly Gets Everyone Killed. Seriously, this could have been a done-in-one save for how utterly and repeatedly she messes up and how we watch her fail every single time in nigh-excruciating detail.

Here's all you need to know--after Operation: Galactic Storm, a few Kree survived and are attempting to put together a device that will turn everyone on Earth that it doesn't kill into Kree. As with all Kree plots, it is incredibly convoluted and dumb, and the Kree soldiers trying to make it happen really aren't clever enough to pull a greasy string out of a cat's ass, never mind accomplish a military operation like this.

But they didn't count on Warbird (who, I remind you, is supposed to be undergoing major character rehab) who, after telling off Iron Man for assuming she's a drunk (she is) gets her load on and nearly attacks Iron Man in the same place where (wouldn't you know it) the Kree have been working on their plan. A big fight ensues, and Warbird flies off to prove herself, which obviously is bound to go well, huh?

The story continues in Captain America, wherein Warbird gets herself captured by the Kree and thrown into a death camp (questionable taste, that) calls in Captain America, who actually gets a great scene in this issue when he beats down the head Kree and gets in the following good line, which is worth quoting:

"No. YOU fight for a crumbling empire of a cowardly sadists. You slaughtered innocent men and women who did you no harm. Well . . .I fight for them."

It's a great moment, even if it threatens to become eye-rollingly pretentious because it's a fistfight in Space Auschwitz. But it works, because it's everything you need to know about the Kree and Cap in three sentences.

Anyways, Warbird gets herself captured again (the character rehab's really going well, isn't it?) and we move over to Quicksilver (I cannot believe that Quicksilver once had his ongoing series. Just can't believe it.) wherein Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye try stop the Kree from stealing Terrigen Mists from the Inhumans, only to fail because Warbird gets herself stinking drunk on Space Booze and starts firing wild. On behalf of every alcoholic and every human being everywhere, I would like to apologize for the depiction of Warbird being drunk in this issue. Even Otis from the Andy Griffith show handled the disease of alcoholism with more taste and conscience than is done here.

We cut back to Avengers for the finale in time for Warbird to get cashiered out of the Avengers for being a colossal fuckup and an alcoholic (delivered with the gentle feather-light touch of a claw hammer to the temple, of course) and then it's off to the moon to beat the shit out of the Kree and reveal that . . .yet again . . .this has all been a convoluted plot by the Supreme Intelligence to cover up ropey plotting . . .I mean, part of his master plan for the Kree (which doesn't get covered until Maximum Security a few years later) which, is, as always, utter horseshit. Meanwhile, we're supposed to be sad because Warbird's hit rock bottom, but really, it's an empty moment because we've never been given a moment where the reader can sympathize with her.

That being over and done with, it's time for the Avengers/Squardon Supreme annual mentioned earlier. Imus Champion makes his move (something about blowing up the world) and, in what could be best termed a dramatic inversion of every Avengers/Squadron story up to now, they team-up and split into groups to fight him. And nary a single person is mind-controlled. All pretty standard stuff, but it has some great art by Carlos Pacheco (at this point well into his ascendancy as a top artist) and the whole thing moves efficiently enough, and hey, we get a happy ending for the Squadron (who get to go back to their own Earth, and if I remember right, are never seen again as the new version gains more prominence) and the Swordsman and Magdalene also leave, which is just as well because they only reason they were Avengers in the first place is because they kept hanging around the mansion.

So, there's your Annual, and it's back to the main book for a two-parter wherein Busiek tries to get even more obscure than Imus god damned Champion by pitting the Avengers against Moses Magnum, and I, for one, could not be more delighted. We are also introduced to Silverclaw, who will soon be our newest reserve Avenger and is Jarvis' Save The Children child (because naturally in the Marvel Universe, even something as straightforward as sponsoring a starving child in the Third World means they'll probably have superpowers or something) and Triathlon shows up for the first time.

I've done all my bitching about Triathlon's connection to the 3-D man elsewhere (if you're reading these in chronological order, this means I am retroactively referring to something which for you has not happened yet and as such I am capable of time travel, and this is absolutely blowing your mind) I will, however, say a few other things: I like Triathlon. He's neat, even if by the time he finally joins he spends too much time bitching about being the token black dude.

Also, Triathlon is also responsible for my first realisation that my concerns and the concern of most comic fans follow parallel but not necessarily intersecting tracks, as his introduction and power set (he is as strong and as fast as three men) began a weeks-long debate on the aforementioned mailing list over whether he was as strong as three regular guys or as strong as three Captain America, who is at the peak of what a human can achieve without enhancement. Yes, this was an actual thing, and it on for ever.

To lighten the mood, I shot my mouth off (never a good thing now, even less so then when I was even more of an opinionated pain in the ass than I am now) and said words to the effect of "Thank God we lived in a more enlightened time (give or take--after all, 1998 was the year the New Radicals' "You Get What You Give" held a terrified nation hostage) because otherwise Traithlon would be gadding about in a midriff-baring outfit calling himself the Black Athlete."

This landed with a thud, and everyone went back to arguing the "human vs. peak human" thing, the upshot of which was that when Triathlon came back, it was made explicitly clear that he was three times what a peak human could be because that distinction is IMPORTANT, god dammit.

Anyways, Moses Magnum looks like Mr. T and acts utterly bugged out the whole damn time, which is extraordinarily funny to me, because it's Moses Magnum (or, "who gives a shit?") and because this is part of an on-again off-again thing that happens whenever someone haules Moses out of the mothballs--Moses was apparently reconnected to be working for Apocalypse (because he appeared in X-Men once, and well, everything has to fit together even if no one really cared.) and has the power to create earthquakes and no control over it, hence the being bugged out and being dangerous enough to cause the Avengers two issues of headaches.

Oh, and while this is going on, by the way, the aforementioned icky scene of the Scarlet Witch and Wonder Man getting it on while the Vision watches. Yeah. This happened.

Avengers #9 has one of my favourite overwrought, clunky titles of all time: "The Villain Who Fell From Grace With The Earth" (seriously, try to say that out loud. It sounds like two trains colliding) and ties up the Moses Magnum thing with a big fight. Oh, and Traithlon and Hawkeye crawl through air ducts long enough for Triathlon to rattle off his origin. There's a big fight, Magnum holds his own, and falls in a hole, because that's what super-villains tend to do. Oh, and the Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye both leave the Avengers for different reasons.

Avengers #10 and 11 are another two-parter, which handily manage to wrap up the Wonder Man thing (or at least get him out of the Wonder Robo formula) and allow George Perez a chance to go utterly apeshit as he manages to draw in one page every Avenger who's ever been an Avenger and a goodly portion of their villains in two separate panels, and the Stuntmaster and Chili show up. If you said "who?" and "who, now?" well, so did I. Life was hard before Wikipedia.

The Avengers celebrate 35 years of continuity (it's all sorta metatextual, really) and in the B-plot the Scarlet Witch frets to Agatha Harkness (who's alive all of a sudden, I guess?) about her powers and we get alternating pages of thrilling summations of the Avengers' history and boring-as-whale-shit explanations of how the Scarlet Witch's powers work for awhile, and then, mercifully, the Grim Reaper shows up, resurrects a team of dead Avengers (85% of whom have been resurrected by now) who promptly beat the living Avengers asses because this is part one of a two-parter and dead Avengers standing over the defeated bodies of living ones is frankly, one hell of a cliff-hanger.

Part 2 starts with the Scarlet Witch returning to the Mansion and getting captured and--you guessed it--tied up while the Grim Reaper monologues to the captured living Avengers about his utterly convoluted plan about how to Not Be Dead Anymore and . . .I've read this thing three or four times now and it just does not make one goddamned bit of sense, really, having to do with the weakening barriers between the living and the dead and love pulling people across and . . .uhm . . .yeah. Wonder Man's alive and he and the Scarlet Witch happily canoodle, and oh yeah, Wonder Man's antler-headed crazy asshole brother also comes back to life because shut up, that's why.

On the whole, one could do worse in trying to bring back the Avengers (and they did a year before this!) and there were enough new wrinkles in the early issues to get me past the bits that didn't work to well and there were a few subplots that worked well enough to balance the ones that got in my nerves.

So . . .yeah. Join us next time whenever the trade for the second volume gets published for the second and final (but not the end--I'm blowing your mind again), when we will cover the early peak of the Busiek Avengers run--"Ultron Unlimited," get a visit from your friend and mine Pagan, and Iron Man learns a valuable lesson about friendship when he fakes the funk on a nasty dunk. Let's all be there!

The Whole Damn Thing: STAR TREK: DS9 #2

OK, well, being busy at work kept me from revisiting this as soon as I'd have liked to, but I'm back once again and continuing my recap/review/endurance test to review every episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Let's blast on through one more disc, shall we?

"BABEL"

"Rom is an idiot. He couldn't fix a straw if it was bent."

I don't have a lot to say about "Babel" because this is really nothing we haven't seen a dozen or so times before--technobabble problem affects the ship/station, everything looks bad for 40 of our our 45 minutes plus commercials, technobabble solution presents itself with five minutes to go, and everything's fine.

The nut of the plot is this--during the occupation, a Bajoran terrorist created a virus spread through the replicators that makes everyone talk in word salads (I should add, the plot of a sleeper program causing problems in the present is used to much better effect in the third season) and slowly but surely the entire station is full of blithering idiots as Our Heroes race against time to . . .uh, to . . .

Germinate antipode frog piston. Fruitful ham lugnut transformer beer can. Ham cupola broadside the funky sponge, wheedling lettuce beetle burlesque. NASCAR amorphous tousle whiplash scrubbing bubble! Humble protractor sibilance motorcycle chili ridiculous noisemaker! FIRE ANTS! FIIIIIRE ANTS!

"CAPTIVE PURSUIT"

"I am Tosk. The hunted. I live to outwit the Hunters for another day. To survive, until I die with honour. But that will not be my fate. But I will not deny my existence as Tosk."

Now we're getting somewhere. I remember this being the episode that really clicked with me. Partly because the Hunters are really cool, and partly because this is the first time we get a story you couldn't do on any Star Trek show except DS9. Oh, and depending on how nitpicky you wanna be about Canon, this is or is not the first time you see anyone from the Dominion. But we won't swim in that shit here.

A new alien comes through the wormhole--the first from the Gamma Quadrant and we are introduced to Tosk. We know this because he keeps saying "I am Tosk," as though that were supposed to explain everything. His ship's shot up and he seems to be running from something, but he's awfully tight-lipped about it. Oh, and he can turn invisible and seems to be really interested in getting his hands on some weapons.

So it's up to O'Brien not only fix his ship but figure out just what the deal is with Tosk. It doesn't take too much, because soon enough Tosk (and the station) soon get visited by the Hunters, who show up and kick a little ass and break stuff. Tosk, it seems, is the fox in a hunt for sport, and at the prospect of catching him alive, they're utterly pissed off. Not that they don't have company--the Federation are pissed off at the notion that a species would hunt another for sport, and invoke the Prime Directive (that hoariest of "let's create instant plot jeopardy by introducing a rule that no one ever follows but we fret about for a few minutes" cliches) hand over Tosk to the Hunters, who will put him on public display for ridicule.

Because it's a grave dishonor for a Tosk to be taken alive. Tosk, it seems, is an ideal in their society--his ability to elude the Hunters, to survive, is the height of heroism to them. It's hard to be an ideal when they drag you back home on a leash. Tosk is OK with this--after all, his reason for living is to elude captors: it's the whole reason he was created. It's an interesting wrinkle to what might otherwise have become Star Trek vs. Predator.

So, the Hunter ain't happy at having Tosk alive; Tosk isn't happy to be caught; the Federation ain't happy but can't interfere with the rules of the hunt; and O'Brien is least happiest of all, as he and Tosk have become friends in the interim. But he suddenly has an inspiration--why not change the rules? So he breaks Tosk out, gives him his ship, and sends him on his way and the hunt continues, and Sisko, for his part, tacitly lets him do it.

Quite a big deal as usually on Next Generation, we either hew to the Prime Directive, or the plot convulses in some improbable way that saves our characters from having to make a choice that might be less than heroic or complicated or, y'know, interesting. That DS9 allows itself to flex these rules and explicitly declare intent to do so (an example of metatextuality if ever there was one) is what makes it an interesting enough show to follow and breaks it out of the hidebound black and white morality that Star Trek usually goes for, and is the first example of changing the rules which will ultimately come to define DS9.

"Q-LESS"

"Picard and his lackeys would have solved all this technobabble hours ago."

Q and Picard's girlfriend show up on the station, Q gets punched in the face, and we learn a valuable lesson about not putting space mantas up for sale on eBay.

Much as I like the notion of omnipotent beings getting punched in the face by Avery Brooks, this episode ultimately doesn't really work. For one thing, we're dealing with the girlfriend of a character who's not only not on the show, but has no real connection to this show and using it to tie up plot business best handled elsewhere. And the whole shit with the space manta is the same crap we covered elsewhere.

I did like the following lines, tho:

"What was it they called you on Brax? The God of Lies?"

"They meant it affectionately."

That said, Q has some decent interactions with the cast and it's obvious the the actor playing Q's having fun, and you almost wish those bits had happened in a better episode. It's not the worst DS9 episode, but it feels like it could have been a Next Generation episode and they just filed the serial numbers off.

"DAX"

"I intend to be in here until supper, not senility"

Dax nearly gets subjected to extraordinary rendition, and is put on trial for something she did in a past life.

Man, that Bajoran judge in this episode is a great one-shot character. And Bashir gets his ass kicked.

That concludes the nice things I have to say about this episode. Now, here's what I don't like: This is that most god damned annoying of all trail/murder mystery episodes, wherein the whole thing would have been wrapped up in ten minutes if someone had just FUCKING SAID SOMETHING. God damn it, I hate it when one phone call or one sentence would have solved the whole fucking problem, because it's so obvious that's all that was needed. But instead of this, Dax stoically keeps schtum and the other witness in this mess won't say anything either and the whole damn thing feels so padded because there's one revelation that makes everything make sense and did this need to take a fucking hour, really?

Never mind that this brings up once again the extraordinary problem with the Trills--yes it's great you have a slug inside you that has lifetimes of memories you can draw on, but what responsibilities do succeeding hosts have to the lives of previous hosts? And I'd be fine with exploring these questions if the answer wasn't obviously "no," (because you'd never get out of the fucking witness chair for the last life and live the new one) and "none of this is fucking interesting."

Thankfully, when we do ask this question again in Season 4, it's a little more nuanced and more thought has been put into it than just plugging Our Heroes into Stock Courtroom Murder Mystery Plot #29. In the meantime, the creators of the show decided that the best thing to do was to soft-pedal the notion of the Trill part of Dax and just make her the Smart Hot Chick, rather than the robotic exposition delivery system she is in this part of the first season.

Needless to say, this episode is pretty feeble, and while the cast does it's best with what they have, the beats feel so well-worn and familiar that you feel like you've seen the episode a dozen times even if you just saw it once.

But the judge is really fucking funny in it ("Split her down the middle!") Doesn't make all the pain go away, but it certainly leavens it a little.

That's it for this time. Join us for our next thrilling installment. In "The Passenger," Bashir tries to be a villain, fails hilariously. One of DS9's earliest contenders for Worst Episode Of All Time happens when Ron Jeremy visits the station in "Move Along Home," Wallace Shawn tries not to get the goblet with the iocaine power again in "The Nagus," and Odo has to protect the world's worst fugitive in "Vortex." It'll be a stone gas!

Desty Nova

(Hi all. This bit will need a bit of set-up. This is a parody of a old National Lampoon bit called "Deteriorata," which was itself a parody of a poem called "Desdirata." I recently rediscovered it and decided it was as good a way as any of articulating my feelings on an industry that routinely congratulates itself for putting its worst foot forward and eating its own. As to why it's named after the mad scientist from "Battle Angel Alita," well, that's the density of reference you've come to expect from me, innit?)

DESTY NOVA

(You are an antiquated genre.

You have nothing meaningful left to say.

Desty Nova, Desty Nova)

Go placidly into the noise and waste of the Internet and remember what comfort there may be in slagging off whoever doesn’t agree with you and telling him to go fuck themselves. Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless they are your editors, in which case they will ignore themselves for you. Declare your undeserved superiority. Speak glowingly of your reverence for past stories, even if the best you can do is a straight reprise or a horrible cover version, though the original deserved only to be forgotten. Consider that two retcons don’t make a right—but three or more will make a Crisis. Whenever possible, avoid deadlines—they don’t really matter, do they? Be comforted, in the face of all impermanence and disillusionment, you’re only slumming in comics in-between TV and movie gigs anyway.

(You are an antiquated genre.

You have nothing meaningful left to say.

Whether you know it or not,

They left you behind decades ago.)

Remember Stamford. Strive at all times to bend spines, crease covers, and un-slab your comics. Know your awesomeness. If you need sycophants, start your own message board. Exercise caution in your daily affairs, except for those jagoffs on the Internet, because they don’t matter anyway. That guy on Livejournal, for instance. Be assured that a walk through the ocean of innovative ideas and stories in comics today would scarcely get your feet wet. Never follow a book—instead, wait for the trade. Gracefully surrender the things of youth: Captain Marvel, Speedball, logical storytelling, Wolverine—and let not the sands of time get in your shoes while you run away. Hire people who worked on Heroes. For a good time, go to www.newsarama.com, ask for Matt. Take heart that in the deepening gloom that your Twitter feed has 10,000 followers and you haven’t said anything meaningful in months. Reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot, you can always sell this piece of shit comic to a studio and start making some real money.

(You are an antiquated genre.

You have nothing meaningful left to say.

Whether you know it or not,

They left you behind decades ago.)

Therefore, make peace with your inspirations, be they bald Scotsman or ridiculously-bearded curmudgeonly snake worshiper. With all the failed hopes, illusion of change, false promises, bungled resolutions, Fear Itself, falling sales, and downward mobility, this job isn’t going to get any better. STOP TRYING!

(You are an antiquated genre.

You have nothing meaningful left to say.

Whether you know it or not,

They left you behind decades ago.)

The Whole Damn Thing: STAR TREK: DS9 #1

Now that all the set-up is out of the way, let's get down to bidness!

"EMISSARY"

"If all you say is true . . .then why do you exist here?"

Before we begin, a brief history of Star Trek premieres. "Encounter At Farpoint" introduced us to the Next Generation cast and taught us a valuable lesson about not turning space jellyfish into shopping malls in the most excruciatingly pompous way possible. "Caretaker" taught us that leaving two crews stranded in the Delta Quadrant because the words "timed detonation" or "remote detonation" never occurred to you is a good way to engender 7 years of "women driver" jokes. "Broken Bow" taught us that if a Klingon lands on Earth by accident, Sam Beckett will drag him home and be really goddamn bratty about it.

Of the quartet of premieres, "Emissary" works the best, even after you figure out that it's a very small-scale large-scale premiere. Oh sure, we get a cool intro with the Battle of Wolf 359 (all three ships! Man, CGI has spoiled us for this kinda shit now) but generally the show efficiently concerns itself with setting up the premise in the first hour and then getting Sisko in the damn wormhole for the "meat" of the story.

To cut a lot of time off it, Sisko, fresh off having his wife killed by Picard back when he was Borged up the ass, is reassigned to Deep Space Nine, as former Caradassian space station/work camp (I have recently begun to wonder just how well this notion would work in real life--isn't it a bit like turning Dachau into a theme park? Don't answer that, please) The station was trashed by the Cardassians, who took "pulling out of the sector" to mean something not dissimilar to "moving out of your dorm for the summer" and trashed the damn place on the way out. Federation tech and Cardassian tech don't work well together. For an alien several centuries in the future, Kira has the same early 90's bob every girl I tried to mack on back the day had. The Bajorans don't even really seem to want the Federation there and are in constant danger of splitting into warring factions. Sisko walks around looking irritated, as if he's wondering who he pissed off to pull this detail, and who could blame him?

Sisko even gives Picard some attitude (hey, what better way to kick off a premiere than a little good old-fashioned rub from the parent show?) because, hey, the guy killed his wife, meaning we get the patented "I will hiss every line of dialogue through gritted teeth because I am mere seconds from throwing you through the fucking wall" that Avery Brooks does so well. Picard tries to give it right back and it's a rather good scene, full of tension, but perhaps because I'm an innately mischievous sort, because I can think of is how would this scene be if Patrick Stewart was doing it as Director Bullock from American Dad.

But Sisko, even though he explicitly says he doesn't want to be here, is determined to make the best of it. He uses leverage to keep Quark on the station as a way to keep the place from becoming a ghost town. The extras on the DVD set talk about how they initially envisioned DS9 as being structured like a western town and how the saloon, the doctor's office, and the sheriff's are all on the same "street." I can't help but be reminded of Deadwood in that every element of the community has its place and they're all interdependent. Man, maybe I should do Deadwood as a series next, eh?

Anyways, we move ever closer to the meat of the plot when Sisko visits Kai Opaka, the Bajoran pope (more or less) who tells him obliquely about her gods (The Prophets) spells out the thrust of this episode: "One who does not wish to be among us is to be the Emissary." Sisko gets shown an Orb, which has weird powers of time and space (read: plot-convenient flashbacks) and Sisko is returned to the day when he first met his wife and I begin to wonder why in the hell in the future we've managed to cure disease, unite and voyage to the stars and we will apparently dress like fucking clowns. I say all this to avoid talking about the scene which plays with all the naturalism that might come from David Lynch making a Frankie and Annete beach-party movie.

Anyways, Sisko has his marching orders--Find the Celestial Temple, warn the Prophets about the Cardassians, and catch Carmen Sandiego.

Oh, and Dax and Bashir show up. Bashir obligingly acts like a horny, awkward, jackass with all his talk about "frontier medicine" (and mightily pisses off Kira in the process, which leads to her shutting him down in an awesome scene) and we get a bunch of exposition about Dax being an old man, and really, I'm not at all sure I get how this is supposed to work or how it came about in the first place. This culminates with an orb-assisted flashback to when Dax got her slug. I'm not quite sure why all this was needed as THEY JUST FUCKING TOLD US THIS FIVE MINUTES AGO, but this kind of awkward over-exposition happens in every pilot, really.

No sooner do we get done with that than it's time to meet DS9's arch-nemesis, our first member of the recurring cast, and the most well fleshed out Star Trek villain ever (until he wasn't)--Gul Dukat. Dukat was the Cardassian prefect of Bajor for the final years of the Occupation, or, if you like, Space Himmler. Unlike pretty much ever other Cardassian we see in this episode, he underplays their innate dickishness with surface affability and quiet menace.

This lights a bit of a fire under the gang as, following an end-run around the Cardassians, we discover the Celestial Temple--and artificially constructed wormhole, wherein dwell the Prophets, who aren't gods so much as they are highly-evolved aliens with no conception of linear time. Dax gets sent behind to figure into the B plot, and Sisko is kept to answer for being a representative of a malevolent race with all this talk of "linear time" and assorted other crazy shit.,

While this may all seem rather familiar, this is a good bit of scenes because all of Sisko's patented Federation-y "no, no we're all friends, we seek the unknown, because the unknown defines our existence and all that shit" doesn't actually work, because he keeps coming back to the moment where he saw his wife die and was forced to leave her behind. At first he doesn't understand what they're on about until they finally say "Hey, what the hell do you mean "linear time," asshole? You've been stuck at this point in your life for three goddamn years." Confronted with that, Sisko ultimately learns to let go. It's a bit like Star Trek II--Kirk hates the idea of growing old and being removed from the moment in his life he felt the most vital, and it's only with what he experiences in that movie, that he can set the past aside and commit to the possibilities of the future. This is actually the main driver of the story and frankly, it works like gangbusters.

Meanwhile, in the B-plot, the station gets moved from Bajor to the mouth of the wormhole (yeah, eew.) thanks to the timely application of some technobabble and the Cardassians get all rowdy and there's a big fight on the station, which, because this isn't season 4, gets the shit kicked out of it. Ultimately, everything ends up OK, the wormhole re-opens and DS9 now becomes a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and . . .oh hang on, that's the other space station.

For all I nitpick and criticise, "Emissary" is an excellent intro to DS9, primarily because we're very quickly dropped into the situation, we learn what the stakes are, and we see how everything changes. For me, it works a hell of a lot better than Babylon 5's pilot movie did (look, I liked Babylon 5 a lot, but that pilot movie was feeble. The first episode of the regular series does a much better job giving you an idea of what it's all about) because it's about something--in the midst of all this setting up, this is a story about Sisko letting go of the thing that pissed him off and holds him back, and as it's a realistic, human emotion (something Star Trek struggles mightily with) we can identify with, and so we actually, y'know, give a shit. That this is accomplished successfully leavens the stuff that doesn't work so well (the eye-rollingly obvious exposition, the idea that "everyone arguing all the time=dark.") and puts us in a place where, it is hoped, we're interested in what is to come.

"PAST PROLOGUE"

"Go over my head again, and I'll have yours on a platter."

In which we are introduced to our next and much-beloved member of the recurring cast--Garak. Garak is the sole Cardassian left of the station and makes his living as a tailor (mind you, this means for some reason he dresses like Dennis the Menace and a desert lizard) and he plays his initial outing with the subtle, reserved, homosexual subtext of Mr. Humphries from Are You Being Served. Bashir, being a member of the enlightened Federation culture that accepts infinite diversity in in infinite combinations, acts all squicked out that reptile-dude made a pass at him, but plays it off as being freaked out Garak was probably left behind as a spy. Yeah Doc, that's what was bothering you.

Oh, and one of Kira's old terrorist buddies--a Tahna Los-- is there to blow up the wormhole to get the Federation out of Bajor. The Duras sisters show up to give the show a bit of Next Generation Klingon-style rub and also show off their Valkyrie cleavage.

Obviously we're still working out the kinks on the show, as Tahna Los plans does not make one god damned bit of sense. Ok, let me walk you through this: the wormhole is the home of the Prophets, who are the foundation of Bajoran religion. Bajoran religion is stated, implicitly and later explicitly the one thing that allowed the race to survive the Cardassian occupation, and no one in the episode says "Hold on Tahna, this shit is fucking crazy--you can't go around killing God to make a political point."

Mind you, that may have been implicit or subtextual or whatever--frequently people who do things in the name of religion aren't really doing things in the spirit of that religion. It just would have been nice to make that plain, as this is kind of one of the lynchpin of the series mythology. It's only brought up at all in the sense that it's bad for Bajor. For all the times that Kira and Sisko bicker during this episode (which is all they seem to do for a lot of the first season) you'd think this might have come up.

Not to say the episode doesn't have ideas--Kira argues that they can't be freedom fighters and think in terms of just insurgency: Bajor has to build themselves back up from where they are; Tahna fought for complete independence, doesn't want the Federation's help and views anything less than that as selling out. Again, as this is one of the central tenets of the concept, it's worth exploring, which makes you wonder why they left out the other thing.

We also get our first glimpse into the mind of Odo--he's an effective sheriff, no question, but he has some pretty damn fascistic ideas about law enforcement--he wants to throw the Klingon sisters in jail because they're obviously trouble--even though they haven't done anything yet.

Mind you, he turns out to be right--the Duras sisters and Tahna have arranged a little deal for the material for a bomb that will make the wormhole a'splode real good and Garak gets tied up in this as well--the Duras sisters plan to double-cross Tahna and sell him out to the Cardassians. Garak, for his part, feeds this information (as obliquely and as impenetrably as possible) to Bashir.

Anyways, this all leads to a final showdown on the runabout between Tahna and Kira, and Kira makes her choice. The thing I like here is that the episode doesn't flinch from the consequences of what she does--she makes her choice and Tahna's response--to sneer "Traitor," at her, it left to hang in the air un-answered and un-equivocated.

On the whole, the episode, though it's muddled and doesn't address the questions it really should, isn't bad. We get Kira's essential conflict in Kira's character foregrounded and she's forced to confront being a terrorist in the past and possibly being a collaborator with another imperial power and she has to make a choice, she struggles with it, and frankly, that part works. We also get our first taste of the Kira/Odo relationship, which has good chemistry from the start. The ancillary stuff--Garak, the Duras sisters--doesn't work as well, but the episode is still worthwhile and points the way forward for other, better episodes about this in the future.

"A MAN ALONE"

"In an hour, you'll regret what you tried to do here."

Or, Episode 3: Attack of the Clones. Odo gets framed for the murder of an old antagonist--Ibudan, and oh my Christ is it the most convoluted way of framing someone imaginable. Meanwhile, Bashir tries and fails to get into Dax's jumpsuit, which he fails to do because he's still a bit of a callow lunkhead in this season. Meanwhile, in the B-plot, O'Brien's wife acts all bitchy, as she always does when the writers don't really have a role for her and decides to open up a school, because the requirements for teaching and the requirements for botany are exactly the same.

I have a lot of problems with this episode. For one, it's a casualty of a cliche that grips a lot of episodes this season--it's ridiculously easy to stir up the Bajorans on the station, as within about ten minutes they're ready to run Odo off with torches and Frankenstein rakes. Two, the plot of this is utterly goddamned ridiculous, as Ibudan clones himself, murders his clone to frame Odo, and . . .ghuhhh, the whole thing falls apart the more I think about it. Three, the school thing is just . . .tedious, and while it gives O'Brien's wife something to do, it matters very little as she disappears from the series until the end of this season and then of course, the school actually works as the basis for the episode. Who knew? Fourth, the Jake and Nog stuff (he's a whiny Earth brat! He's a groveling Ferengi! Stay tuned for wacky adventures from these l'il rascals!) is more than a little grating and we're some years away from either of them being given something more interesting to do.

That said, the episode does have a few things to recommend it. We get more of Odo's theories on law enforcement which are less Oliver Wendell Holmes and more Jack Bauer, which becomes important later. Two, we get a good scene in the middle of the episode with Quark and Odo which plays up their adversarial/co-dependent relationship when Quark makes Odo feel better about the whole angry mob trashing his office in the most unusual way possible. Three: Bashir, for all his character suffers otherwise, Bashir is actually allowed to be a competent doctor. The thing about early DS9 episodes is that you constantly see all the things the show will eventually do very well that are struggling to come out of episodes that are trying too hard to be "Next Generation-esque" (That is: Technobabble--the cause of and solution to all our problems!) or veering in the other direction and being too weird and obtuse to be properly realised in an effort for the show to display how "edgy" it is.

That's all for this go-round. Join us next time when we Take the next four episodes, and they frankly ain't too bad. "Babel," "Captive Pursuit," "Q-Less," and "Dax." Incoherent blatherskite, our first alien from the other side of the wormhole, omnipotent beings getting slugged in the face, and a trial episode already. Are you excited? I'm excited.

The Whole Damn Thing: STAR TREK: DS9 #0

Well, this has been long-promised, long-threatened, and possibly long-dreaded, but I may as well get started. For awhile now, I've been steadily building up to doing longer and longer reviews in total of various things--we did The Prisoner, we did The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and now comes the longest project yet: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Before I actually get down to the nitty-gritty of thing, let me lay some foundations. One: I am not a great huge Star Trek fan. I watched some Next Generation, I liked the newer movie and I liked some other bits and bobs of the franchise, but I am not liable to ever talk one's ear off about how the Treaty of Algeron left the Federation at a tactical disadvantage or what Klingon sex is like . . .it's a conversation I'm as interested in having as, oh let's say--Batman recruiting a Muslim French Batman being proof that Batman is "Un-American." [NOTE: Batman is NOT REAL GOD. DAMN. IT.] which is to say--not at all.

I'm also not into (and frankly roll my eyes at) the notion that Star Trek is "the blueprint of the future and the way forward for humanity." I find Gene Roddenberry's vision for the future troubling, partly because the human race without conflict strikes me a bit like ice being found on the sun--not likely, and not all that interesting to think about, really. I generally find the human race as portrayed on Star Trek in its purest form as what Bill Hicks used to call "Feel-good ain't humanity great bullshit" and exceedingly pompous and off-putting. Besides which, if a TV show featuring people in pyjamas is the blueprint for humanity's future we are even more fucked than if Scott Pilgrim is really The Story of Our Generation, and no one, not even porno actresses in gangbang videos wants to be that fucked, so you shouldn't either.

And yet, I liked Deep Space Nine. Partly, I think because it chiseled the gravestone for that sort of thing. If Next Generation was a revolution ("Enterprise without Kirk and or Spock? Well, I guess it works anyway") then DS9 is an examination of what that revolution brought: If we are a perfect people in the future, do we struggle with it? How do we resolve our issues with people who may not share human values? And when our notions of enlightened humanity is tested . . .what do we do and where will we allow ourselves to go?

The other part is, of course, my natural inclination to root for the underdog. DS9 is one of the highest regarded yet least-loved shows around. In fact, it hasn't been re-run for a few years, while one can hardly throw a rock without hitting a re-run of one of the other shows (somehow Next Generation is showing on goddamn cable access now?) being re-run in perpetuity.

Part of the reason is practical--DS9 was one of the first shows that committed to serialising itself (not to the extent of their rival, Babylon 5, but close). Actions had consequences that were played out over seasons, years, hell the entire run of the show played plot threads the length and breadth of the whole seven years. Characters started out as enemies, became allies, then went back to being enemies, and the turns only had resonance because we follow these characters over time and invested something in them. In a typical syndication market, they really didn't give a shit about whether one episode flowed into another or not--more than likely they just wanna grab a tape down off the shelf and put it in--as long as the label says "Star Trek," what the hell does it really matter?

The other reason is that Star Trek fans, who really fuel an enormous franchise that covers a ridiculously-sized Expanded Universe covering however many continuity eddies there are (and really, don't enlighten me--I don't care) still do not cotton to the idea that Star Trek can be about something other than "ship goes to planet/fix or fuck shit up/leave/40 goto 10." You could not escape, even as a lay person, the constant refrain of "how can they call it Star Trek, they're not going anywhere?" Which is exactly the kind of over-literal, hidebound, narrow-minded thinking that one expects to find from those who say Trek is a blueprint for a more open-minded future.

My feeling--not that I had a vote in this--was, "I've seen the typical "ship goes to planet/fix or fuck shit up/leave/40 goto 10" thing twice, Now. Is there really any mileage in doing it again?!" (answer: Apparently yes. Twice more, and to the predictable diminishing returns) So I was ready to see something new done with it. Hell, they'd made oodles of money with Next Generation, with the luxury of success why not experiment? Besides, I was looking for something to get on the ground floor of that year.

That's not to say, mind, that this show was in any way, shape, or form perfect. When DS9 is good, it's really good. When it's bad it's nigh-unwatchable (Kevin Murphy says Star Trek's Prime Directive should be "Never do comedy." I wish they'd taken his advice) Even when they were at their best, they still managed to drop the ball spectacularly, something that got carried forward when some of the same people went on to work on the new Battlestar Galactica (curiously enough, the failures were on the same damn things, so . . .yeah. You'd think people would learn, and you would be wrong, I guess)

But on the whole, the level of quality is very high, and it's that quality and my affection for this show has strengthened my resolve to do this entire series, every episode, good, bad, or indifferent in this here blog.

But as a way of introducing you to it, I thought I'd use this introductory post to set the scene: Deep Space Nine takes place on a space station called . . .well, Deep Space Nine, located in orbit of Bajor. Bajor and its people, the Bajorans, have just spent the last 60 years in terrorist actions and outright insurgency against the Cardassians, which--unusually for Star Trek--are accused of from Nazi-level shit, from strip-mining the planet, to ethnic cleansing, to forced rape. . .trust me, every creepy war crime you can think of, the Cardassians did and will be explored over the course of the series.

So, Bajor, having just thrown the Cardassians off their planet, now need help getting their shit together as a nation. This is a fairly realistic touch--in the wake of pushing invading forces out who were so oppressive that they ruined any organized government that factions that unite to push the invaders out will immediately resume their old factional conflicts once that happens, as there's no external force to smooth out the internal difficulties. So Bajor calls in the Federation (finally doing their "blue helmet" U.N. thing that they've always been going on about but we've never really seen) only not all the Bajorans want them there and . . .well, there's a lot of tension.

The stated goal of this is to ultimately get Bajor into the Federation, and ultimately, that was seen as the end point of the series. However . . .it doesn't quite go that way, as the situation continues to evolve, but I can't get into that without spoiling things, and this is supposed to introduce the series to y'all.

And better way to do that than to do a Roll Call of our intrepid main cast (the supporting cast we'll pick up as we go, because there's like 20 recurring cast members and oh shit it'd be the Marvel Handbook all over again) let's meet our people:

CAPTAIN BENJAMIN SISKO--Well, he starts as a Commander, but he's a Captain for all practical intents and purposes. It takes them forever to get a handle on his character--he starts out all pissed off and doesn't want to be there, then recedes into the background for awhile, then becomes apologetic and conflicted about what he wants to do with what his duty restricts him to ("I don't like it any more than you do" is his goddamned mantra at one point) and finally he kinda settles into his role as lead in the show by being . . .well, basically Hawk from Spenser for Hire and not taking any shit from anyone. This has led to some controversy among Star Trek fans, but there's no pleasing them.

Also he gets to do this:



. . .and that's just god damned awesome, and something I emulate every day at breakfast. I am banned from so many International House of Pancakes, lemme tell ya . . .

What, more? Oh, he also becomes a quasi-religious figure as the show goes on, but that's a minefield we'll negotiate that as we go.

KIRA NERYS--Sisko's second is our designated "strong female character" back when "strong female character" equaled "bitch on wheels of hellfire." Ultimately, the people writing this show learn that they need not push that hard because there was plenty of grist for the character--she was a former terrorist/freedom fighter (depending on which side of the equation you fall on) who has now been folded Into The System, which is a great source for conflict--she thinks Bajor's current government and that joining the Federation is swapping one foreign group of despots for another, and that conflict is what drives her character through most of the series.

ODO--For a character who was essentially a walking gimmick at the start (he did that cool t-1000 morphing shit, and since this is 1993, EVERYONE WAS DOING THE SAME GOD DAMNED THING) and little else, he turns into one of the most intriguing characters of the show. He's kind of the Data of the show as he is the outsider looking in at humanity, but not in that tiresome "Is that what is called . . .love?" way and more "You do that? That's . . .really stupid." Over time he develops into something a good deal more interesting as more is revealed about his people and his motivations.

DOCTOR JULIAN BASHIR--I guess the rationale here was that since Dr. McCoy was the exemplar of the old grizzled doctor as elder wise man, the plan was to swing in the other direction and make the station's doctor a callow young man eager to take on the world and. . .well, he's a bit of a twat, really, at first. It's only as time goes on and the writers pair him with O'Brien in what turns out to be DS9's buddy-comic team. It also doesn't hurt that he actually gets some decent material to work with and doesn't come across as quite so much of a jackass then.

JADZIA DAX--The Bright Girl who handles all the science stuff that O'Brien doesn't get to solve, Dax starts out aloof and remote, then she becomes the team smartass. The particular fuel she supplies to our storytelling engine here is that she carries a slug around in her stomach which lives through its hosts and when a host dies, they plug it into a new one. I'm not entirely sure how this ends up being considered cooler than tastee-freeze to do, but then, a lot of things with her character don't make sense when held to closer scrutiny.

MILES O'BRIEN--Apparently if you can run a transporter, you are qualified to build and maintain a space station. O'Brien gets promoted from recurring member of the Enterprise crew to the regular cast of this show--our first, but not last Next Generation transplant. Becomes a jack of all trades, the Murtagh to Dr. Bashir's Riggs, and the recipient of his own annual episode, commonly known among the writers as the "Let's Torture O'Brien" episode. Brings his wife and child with him to the station, and the writers very helpfully portray her quite often as a shrill shrew . . .so, yeah.

JAKE SISKO--Oh dear. The one saving grace about Jake Sisko is that he'll eventually develop into a moderately interesting character, and when he's an annoying snot, he's barely on the show derailing things. Spends the first season being hopelessly whiny, then vanishes, returns a bit taller. Starts dating women embarrassingly older than he. Vanishes, returns taller and older, and becomes slightly more interesting each time after that. Not as annoying as Wesley Crusher, because he's never portrayed as a super-genius wunderkind, and thank God.

QUARK--Man, remember when the Ferengi were gonna be the next big bad guys? Instead, they kinda ended up as Space Jews, which never sat all that well with me, because why the hell are they always running around after gold when you can get it out of the fucking walls? Anyways, Quark runs the local bar and attempts to be the Al Swearengen of DS9, which is doomed to fail because as we soon learn he's not quite that smart and nowhere near ruthless enough. Even though I find the alluded stereotype to be a little rankling, episodes that focus on Quark tend not to be terrible. Episodes that focus on his family will make you want to kill people and then yourself.

So that's our cast as things begin, and begin we shall next time. Join me as we tackle the first few episodes of DS9 (I'm taking this in DVD set sized bites and 1 post will equal one disc, which will hopefully mean we get out of here before 2025 or something.) Head on back here next time when we cover "Emissary," "Past Prologue," and "A Man Alone."