DS9 S03E10 & S03E11-12

In this installment:
(viewed Wednesday, September 3rd)

Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S03E10 - "Fascination"
Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine, S03E11-12 - "Past Tense" (Parts 1 & 2)

---

"Fascination"

• Warning:  This episode features both a Bajoran religious festival and Lwaxana Troi.  Prepare to be annoyed.
• I guess Cmdr. Sisko's concerns about Jake dating a 20-year-old dabo girl kind of sorted themselves out.
• ...and we get a short interruption in our lovely vacation from Keiko and the rug-rat.  This episode gets better and better :-\
• "See you at the festival later?"
  
  "Totally, I can't wait to see you.  Just look for me, I'll be with my boyfriend."
  
  :womp:
• "Oh, you poor dear.  I should never have given you all that candy!"
• "I usually make it a point to drop by Quark's three or four times a day at random, just to let him know I'm thinking about him."
  
  And people say that Odo doesn't have a sense of humor :)
• There are few thing sillier than the Bajoran religion.  The Bajoran language is one of them.
• "You're telling me you're going to be on Bajor for another seven months?"
  
  THAT'S FANTASTIC NEWS!
• "You humans.  You let your women go out in public, hold jobs, wearing clothing...and you wonder why your marriages fall apart."
  
  Clearly Quark doesn't know all humans :P
• Renewal scrolls or not, all of these open flames all over the Promenade can't be safe.
• So, let's get this straight:
  
• Jake is horny for Kira
• Bareil is horny for Jadzia
• Jadzia is horny for Sisko
• Kira and Bashir are horny for each other
• Quark is horny for Keiko
• the O'briens hate each other
  
At least that last one is normal, I suppose.
• Pretty much all of the "comedy" in this episode is sexual harassment.
• Okay, Sisko's reaction when Bareil punches him (basically as though it's only a minor annoyance) is pretty funny.  Or when Dax throws in, too.  That's pretty good.
  
  Pro-tip, bathrobe-and-earring guy:  If you're going to punch someone, make sure it's not a decorated combat veteran twice your size.
  
  Or, for that matter, a decorated combat veteran with seven lifetimes of experience.
• "Zanthi fever?  That only effects older Betazoids."

---

"Past Tense (Part 1 & Part 2)"

• We find out in this episode that Cmdr. Sisko's sister lives in Portland.
• All of the senior staff has to beam down to Earth for an official Starfleet soiree, but neither of our two non-human crew members nor the genius engineer are going along?  Sounds like a perfect opportunity for some hinky time-travel!
• The 111th Rule of Acquisition:  "Treat people in your debt like family--exploit them."
• The 217th Rule of Acquisition:  "You can't free a fish from water."
• How is it that Sisko and Bashir beam down, get scrambled and they wind up on 21st Century Earth...but their comm badges and rank pips don't seem to make the trip with them?  Not that they would do them much good (except maybe as barter; if I recall correctly, the comm badges contain some small amount of gold), but still...
• Oh, Dax still has hers.  I guess the others were stolen by street bums while they were passed out or something?
• ...and that thing I said earlier about the two non-human crew members conveniently staying behind?  I totally forgot that Dax is not, in fact, a human being.  Although with her hair down, she's arguably less conspicuous than either Kira or Odo. 
  
  (Edit:  Or she could just tell people they're tattoos.  Duh.)
• Interface terminal?  Stationary in his office?  THAT'S ADORABLE.
• So apparently "chroniton particles" are a byproduct of cloaking technology.  It was nice of the Romulans to warn them about that.  Then again, O'Brien says that they got stuck in the Defiant's "ablative armor matrix"; maybe Romulan ships have no such "matrix", so it's never been a problem for them.
• Cmdr. Sisko explains to Dr. Bashir that by the 2020s, every major city in the United States had a "Sanctuary District":  A ghetto or slum where the poor were isolated from the rest of the population.  He describes it as one of the "ugly mistakes" of Earth's 21st Century history.
• At least Dax had the good fortune to run into Chris Brynner, who is basically a dashing, handsome version of Bill Gates (which is not to suggest that Mr. Gates is neither dashing nor handsome)...and also seems to be a bit smitten with our lieutenant.
• Computer interfaces in Star Trek--even those intended to be from the 23rd or 24th Centuries--often look quite dated to us, given how much farther computer technology has come between the 1990s and the 2010s (much farther than even most sci-fi authors predicated). 
  
  This is never more apparent than when one of the series does a time-travel episode to Earth's past (our near-future).  The computers in the processing center of the Sanctuary District, for example, are laughably ancient-looking...even though the episode is supposed to take place approximately a decade from now.
• In related news, holy crap, this episode is only set a decade from right now @_@
• I super don't want to bring my politics (or anyone's politics) into this blog.  But the description of the Bell Riots shocks Dr. Bashir and was clearly meant to shock audiences who saw this show in the 1990s. 
  
  As a resident of America in the 2010s, it seems completely possible to me given the state of our poor and the militarization of our police.  Not likely perhaps (at least not on the "hundreds of civilians were killed" scale; maybe smaller), but absolutely possible.
• "Causing people to suffer because you hate them?  That's terrible.  But causing people to suffer because you've forgotten how to care?  That's really hard to understand."
• It's cool.  Chief O'Brien can totally figure out how to do some ad hoc time travel.
• In the course of all of their not-interfering, Sisko and Bashir accidentally get the dude killed who's going to start the social movement that alters the course of human history?
  
  And now the only subspace radio chatter O'Brien is picking is from some Romulans hanging out around Alpha Centauri?
  
  Whoops.
• "When you've accidentally caused the death of an important historic figure, it's very important that you take their place and perform the historic act(s) for which they're known."
  
  I'm pretty sure that's lesson number one in Starfleet Academy's course on temporal ethics.
• "Didn't you say that Bell died when the police stormed the building?"
  
  "But I'm not Bell."
  
  "Right, but we're the only ones who know that."
• The O'Brien & Kira Time-Travel World Tour, Stop 1:  The Roaring Twenties!
• Detective Preston, the police officer who negotiates with B.C., Michael Webb and Sisko-as-Gabriel-Bell, is played by 1980s/1990s television staple Deborah Van Valkenburgh.  I remember her best as playing one of the college-aged daughters in the 1980s sitcom Too Close For Comfort.
• The O'Brien & Kira Time-Travel World Tour, Stop 2:  1960s Counterculture!
• Hey kids, it's Clint Howard!
• Detective Preston's "mobile phone".  ROFL.
• "What the hell.  It's probably raining in Tasmania anyway."
• "How could we have let this happen?"
  
  "The question is:  How can we stop it from happening again?"