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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
ao3feed-ds9

Fill Your Mountains

ao3feed-ds9

by

Elim Garak is redefining what it means to have a bad day.

Words: 403, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English



from AO3 works tagged ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ http://ift.tt/29g2dmU
mswyrr-deactivated20181203

The yardstick that matters most, and it’s a terrible one, is how many people are getting killed. For all that The Wrath of Khan tried to invert it, Spock was basically right: more often than not, the needs of the many really do outweigh the needs of the few. War is, as Sisko and Garak both eloquently point out, a messy and bloody business. Sisko can’t save everyone—no one can. But he can do triage, put a tourniquet on the gaping wound, and at least keep the death toll lower, while also giving them a better chance to actually come out of it on the winning side.

He’s done a horrible thing. He knows he’s done a horrible thing, and it’s so horrible that the only person he can talk to about it is himself—and a computer that will gladly erase all trace of what he said. What’s admirable about this episode is not that Sisko did what he did, as it wasn’t admirable in the least, for all that it was probably necessary—it’s that he is suffering for it. Yes, he says he can live with it at the end, but he also repeats those words several times with different inflections. He isn’t saying he can live with it because he actually can live with it, he’s saying it because he’s trying (and failing) to convince himself.

tor review of “in the pale moonlight”
mswyrr-deactivated20181203
“In The Pale Moonlight” shifts the status quo for the series’ biggest ongoing storyline, but Sisko’s musings, self-recrimination, and self-doubt are the heart of the story. The episode turns the entire Dominion War into an opportunity to consider what lengths a man might be willing to go to try and do the right thing—and how the “right thing” can cease to lose its meaning past a certain point. In that respect, the hour plays like a miniature film noir, full of big gambles and shady creeps; you can even, if you squint, see some of the antihero signifiers that would become so important to modern television drama. Sisko takes shortcuts, offers bribes, works with criminals, and keeps the truth from his friends, and he does it all with, as he himself notes, the best of intentions. He does it for a cause greater than himself, but the sins still stain. The escalation is elegant, all small steps from here to here to here, and then suddenly you look back to where you came from and you can’t see home anymore.
zack handlen, av club review
mswyrr-deactivated20181203
In terms of the character doubling, some choices are obvious: Dukat and Weyoun as asshole cops isn’t a huge surprise, and even though Cassie doesn’t have the same ambitions Kasidy does (for understandable reasons), her relationship with Benny is as strong as Kassidy’s is with Sisko. Other connections are subtler, like, say, O’Brien turned into the Isaac Asimov stand-in Albert Macklin, who loves machines much like an engineer would. Jimmy isn’t exactly like Jake (Lofton’s performance is endearingly forced, and he is, I think, the only actor to ever say the n-word on a Trek show), but his relationship with Benny is of the sort where you can imagine the writer trying to come up with something better for both of them, a situation in which the older man can impart some much needed knowledge to the younger. Seeing Odo as Pabst might be the coldest cut of all, as Pabst’s placating approach to his work is similar to Odo’s behavior during the Cardassian occupation: a shape-shifter who only chooses the form that will please his masters.

Yet Odo, our Odo, rose above this, and if you accept, for a moment, that Benny really did write everything we’ve been watching over the last six seasons, there’s something beautiful in how he tried to find ways to turn ordinary people into heroes. The writing staff at the magazine became a brave crew with complicated histories and passions; more, they became a family, one in which Sisko is first among equals. Cassie got a ship and adventure. Willie Hawkins, the lady loving baseball player became a warrior (a somewhat humorless and stiff-necked warrior, but when a guy keeps hitting on your girl like that, you gotta take revenge where you can find it). The asshole cops get justice as villains who will, in the end, be defeated. And Benny? Benny gets a space station and a loving father and a loving son. He gets the respect of his peers and the voice of the gods.
av club review of “far beyond the stars”