Today's Thought Experiment: it's only a matter of time 'till someone decides to have a fiddle with the projector. What do you think the first attempted alteration will be?
Easy, invent the internet in order to leave bad reviews on everyone's cooking and only removing them if the person posting the bad reviews can get food for free.
Jake won't ever be getting a seat at the shit parents table because Avery Brooks *mandated* that he was going to be playing a good black father, and stuck to that. He'd had his fill of portrayals of the other kind.
I knew I had seen Taya’s actress before. I’ll save everyone searching through IMDB, Noley Thornton also played Clara Sutter in the TNG episode Imaginary Friend (S5.E22)
Another conundrum about sentient holograms... since they are essentially data, stored in a ship's computer, does that make setting the ship's self-destruct sequence murder? I think Sisko's understanding of Jake is really rooted in his own experience: his father (who we'll meet later) raised him to be a chef, but he joined Starfleet. Now it's his turn to watch as his son charts his own course. And because he's such a great dad, it's never an issue for him.
This will loop back around to the eternal trek mystery of why the EMH couldn't be backed up and stored offline. Especially since he had two independent systems that supported him - the ship and the mobile emitter. Oh well
@aelolul Or why he WAS backed up in "Living Witness". Remember that Voyager was written by people who didn't even know that an ensign is supposed to make lieutenant. Competence and consistency from them may have been asking too much.
I liked this episode because of the character moments, a daughter reuniting with a mother, a man coming to terms with his attachments and accepting them as they are, and a son being honest with his father. These are great moments in media, well-trodden but still connects emotionally with the audience. The part with Quark felt the most time filler, even though it was the main B plot.
Trek is well know for weak B plots so that's not surprising you feel that way. Looking forward to the Heart of Stone review as an example of a stronger B than the A
@@AC20sAkimbo Yeah the "C plot" (I guess I'll call it C plot) with Jake and his dad was better than with Kira. It was a better character moment and had implications for the rest of the series with Jake not going to be part of Starfleet. Idk if giving more time and removing the Kira subplot in favor of Jake would have been the better decision, but definitely of the 3 plots Kira's was the weakest.
One thing that stuck out to me was Binface acting like a transporter was tech he never saw before and then saying he checked for a transporter signal when investigating. Always kinda sticks with me on this one.
You'd think Dax would have learned from Sisko and O'Brian's ordeal in the previous episode when it comes to beaming down to a planet with wibblies. I'm glad they at least semi foreshadow the dominion but beyond a few words spoken I wish we'd seen some evidence of their presense. Maybe a crashed ship or a desolated society something ominous. I do like the interactions Odo has with the kid. Gives him an excuse to open up a bit.
7:07 I like the reactor. Industrial looking enough that you can tell it's a functional piece of machinery, but aesthetically pleasing enough that nobody minds it being in the centre of their village, a monument to their technology. Durable enough to be outdoors, yet accessible enough for Dax to repair it. Tall enough (nearly) to suggest that it transmits power wirelessly to nearby houses, yet squat enough for Dax to crawl all over it.
I like that Sisko doesn’t mind that Jake doesn’t want to join Starfleet. Although I’d still have him work with O’Brien for now, as knowing technical stuff about the thing you live on is never a bad idea, and it’d have come in handy in the season finale…
@@toomanymarys7355 Toddlers do not understand the concept. They do not have the cognitive capacity to do so. We have scientifically demonstrated this. We know this. Oh hey you know what children DO deserve though? Human rights. Especially freedom FROM FAMILIAL ABUSE.
I love Odo episodes. Being on the spectrum, feeling like the alien in the room is *extremely relatable*. I adore Sisko and Jake's relationship. It's so lovely to see a healthy, functional family on tv and even better to see a happy family of colour.
10:29 What is the significance of this action? Well, ever since Odo claimed to be a shapeshifter, Taya was pestering him to prove it, but he identifies as a shapeshifter and doesn't have to prove anything to her. (No one asks her to prove she's a little girl) He doesn't want to be a novelty, a form of entertainment. He wants to be accepted as a person. When she's no longer asking for a performance, and she appreciates him instead for the results of his investigative skills, then he doesn't mind doing a thing that will amuse her.
In children, this was often diagnosed as "oppositional defiance disorder." Children with this disorder suffer developmental delays in many learning areas because they interpret instructions to "practise" or "demonstrate" a particular task through a lens of "Why would I do x task now as practise? I know how to do it, if I need to. I have no need now. If x task arises, I'm confident I can perform it, and I find your insinuation that I need practise rude and insulting." I'm massively over simplifying, of course, and I don't buy that it's a "medical disorder" personally. Some people are more willful than others. Different people react in different ways to all kinds of stimulus, not just demands to perform. We really need to get over this idea that there is a "normal" in human brainology. We are really complicated animals with incredible brains, and we barely understand how any of it works.
Hey Unlimited, Odo says he doesn't do faces very well yet the mouse faces he did "Past Prologue" & "The Circle" were exquisite, also "plain, simple" Garak has been lecturing Bashir on surveillance techniques!
Yup. And the other three captain's are in the running for the worst. One had a son and his mom ordered him to stay away... another had a kid he never knew about... and the third abandoned her offspring on a bog planet in the Delta Quadrant.
Sounds perfectly fine Space Dog! I liked this episode when I saw it. You could tell the writers were trying to build a bigger story. People at the time linked DS9 to B5 for obvious reasons. I liked Sisko's reaction to Jake. In a stereotypical show, there would have been some pushback and drama to Jake's decision. Instead Sisko acted like a rational adult who loves his son.
I know from experience that the weight of expectations can be heavy even when not verbalized. I could feel that weight even though my dad wasn't even aware that he was projecting them at the time. It was only later that he told me that he had been doing that, just without realizing it.
A good episode if largely stand alone. It does mark the start of Kira's first on screen romance but he is abit dull. Also, Jake makes it clear he's not a starfleeter. The main plot is solid and the mystery did a good job.
When I was rewatching this one, during Bareil's scenes, I found myself paying more attention to his earring than the man himself. There's some interesting beads in there.
@@KassFireborn yeah, Bareil as a character felt pretty wooden all the way through his time on the show. Whether it was acting or writing that made him dull, I can't rightly say.
@@dm121984 I think it was acting, not writing, and I even think I know what the problem is: he was aiming for a certain zen serenity, and it just ends up robbing his performance of a lot of passion. My question is: actor or direction?
Bareil seems generally disliked but I was pretty cool with him. And him being kind of mellow maybe works considering how traumatized etc Kira has been. I've known women with difficult childhoods who intentionally seek out guys who feel safe and respectable, which makes sense to me.
Dax being able to instantly read and use an alien Tricorder with no issues. Dose the universal translator in your ear also effect what your able to read?
Starfleet being able to read and use any control panel they come across, even the Borg's, is one of those things that requires you use the MST3K mantra lest you go crazy.
It's a weak approach, but when I was a teenager, I wondered if common frames of reference that all languages and means of communication and control would lead to a sort of "convergent evolution" of technology and controls. Ad I say, I don't really think it holds water, but obviously, a segue into explaining an operating system and controls would kill the episode's momentum.
@@thegreenmanofnorwich If you believe the acient humanoids - Or changelings given the actress chosen and the makeup - made all the current species via genetic tampering then perhaps that could be the root of it.
I think Ben Sisko's natural presumption that Jake would want to join Starfleet may be because Jake has literally been in Starfleet since he was born, from a certain point of view, that is.
Since the reactor makes the valley one big holodeck, the question about whether the villagers are people comes down to whether the hardware/software combination is sophisticated enough to be sentient either through intent or accident. It did not seem Ruragen (sic) initially thought it was, and I don't think the episode really suggests that they are really people. While this is special case, in most circumstances, holodeck NPCs becoming sentient would be horrific because they are supposed to be playthings. That, I suppose, is why there would be resistance to the notion of hologram sentience. The implications are unpleasant given how they are used in universe.
Damn, that really makes a lot of sense. Data has a positronic brain, as does the main computer of enterprise D and Voyager. But data being non Starfleet tech makes him novel, whereas the holograms (even one as advanced as the Voyager EMS,) are, as you say, initially used as playthings. This channel always stirs up very interesting conversations.
In addition, the implications of being able to create sentient life on a whim and without much effort can be troubling. Children are created and raised through years of hard work. Data was created and programmed by the same process. Holograms were made possible through the hard work of the engineers of the past, but now might not require any work at all.
The vanishing holo-town is another one of those "From the TNG plot pile" storylines. It would have worked just as well with Data and Troi or Geordi. The result is highly enjoyable nonetheless. Odo and Dax rarely got to spend any time together, which is a shame because they have interesting chemistry together.
@Taranis79 but have a hologram bring you real food would be better if was a missed opportunity cuz the bushes should have been real and they could if had a shot of the branch falling .. to emphasize it
So given how Holo people get treated like nothing, I remember Blitzwing from Transformers Animated. Blitzwing was given 3-split personalities, and was seen as a mental condition as a triple-changer experiment. An added form. If the holos ARE just puppets, what of the puppeteer? Is the SHIP a being of freewill? What about that projector, did Odo and J.Dax play to a skitsophinic computer? Wow, so this is why those 2(?) were on the away mission.
This is one of those episodes where you get basically the same thing on other shows too, the StarGate SG1 episode Revisions jumps to mind but I actually enjoyed this one much better. The SG1 version was far more a coutionary tail about overreliance on technology where as this one is far more hopeful. This also has has the added layer of the holograms and odo being a changingly generally makes this far more a rewarding.
the fact that they have an old man playing a child is quite the unique choice in fiction. i've seen the reverse several times, elves or witches in a fantasy setting are often depicted as artificially youthful
Odo isn't really a child if that's what you mean. I think his experience with humans being childlike is defensible, but I feel like things we learn later (I know "spoilers") imply he's not a kid.
@@ThomasReeves-s7u you know what I meant. he's only been in human form for less than that bajoran scientist's adult lifetime. If all you have to say is "well actually" then just don't bother trying to correct people.
Surely Dax and Odo shouldn't just turn up unannounced on a planet without confirmation that they've got warp capability due to the prime directive, or is that just convenient plot? Also, as dull as I find Jake as a character, I'm glad to see that he has no interest in joining Starfleet, its something I find that nearly every child of a Trek character ends up doing. Good to see that they're doing something different here.
My last 4 comments are (at time of writing) all listed as "0 sec ago." And yet it feels as if re-watching the sceans, checking the timestamps, typing comments out and re-reading them before submission, took longer than that. (?) Edit: O.K., now it's updated the submission times.
They did this whole episode again a few years later on ENT. Rene Auberjonois was in that one too. Both episodes are a bit meh but the ENT one is worse. And I like ENT.
Contractually obliged to be in X number of episodes as a main cast member maybe? There's a few episodes where one character has a single scene unrelated to the rest of the show. The Adversary, for example, has Quark in a single scene at the start and then not show up again.
