This is why I hate tribalism

What is it about Rebecca Watson (@Skepchick) that inspires me to blog? I think she has a nose for issues too complex for me to sum up in just a few tweets...also, because it seems particularly important to be cautious and avoid misunderstandings, given that she's attracted an unusually strident and persistent hate movement.

Anyway, here is a recent Twitter exchange, that for some reason was brought to my attention by my perennial favorite blog, Pharyngula (@pzmyers).

dcturner: @rebeccawatson Grab an iron bar and leave him "Para-para.....Paralysed"
Retweeted by Rebecca Watson

tkmlac: @rebeccawatson You complain about threats of violence to women on the Internet but think its funny to joke about paralyzingly someone?

rebeccawatson: @tkmlac You might have a point there, however the "victim" doesn't see it so I don't think it's equivalent.

tkmlac: @rebeccawatson True, but the situations are similar enough so that it might be worth asking where to draw the line.

Wait, no. That only happened in the mirror universe, where people who have had no previous disagreement are polite, restrained, and sane.

This is how it went.

tkmlac: @rebeccawatson You complain about threats of violence to women on the Internet but think its funny to joke about paralyzingly someone?

rebeccawatson: @tkmlac If you seriously think that's anywhere near the same, you haven't been paying attention.

tkmlac: @rebeccawatson Please explain it to me, then. I put paralyzing someone in the same category as rape. Bad, low humor that could offend ppl.

tkmlac: @rebeccawatson I don't think the rape jokes are taken any more srsly by those making them than this twerp joking about paralyzing someone.

rebeccawatson: @tkmlac You need me to explain the dif btwn that retweet & women getting real, direct threats of physical violence? B/c, no. Figure it out.

tkmlac: @rebeccawatson For the record, I'm not defending those ppl. I think it's pathetic.

tkmlac: @rebeccawatson thanks for clearing that up.

tkmlac: @rebeccawatson So you think the rape stuff on reddit are real threats, not kids trying to get laughs from their friends by being shocking.

rebeccawatson: @tkmlac You are very sad if you think an avalanche of rape offers directed at a 15-yr old = 1 RT of a pun that the "victim" never sees.

tkmlac: @rebeccawatson That kind of humor should be treated equally. That's all. Let's all respect each other, whether we are women or Coldplay fans

rebeccawatson: One resolution already broken: Do not argue with twits on Twitter, lest you become one with the twit.

"tkmlac" was offended by Watson's tone and the way the discussion went, so she (judging by the name "Katie" on Twitter) posted the following on Reddit.

So, r/atheism, even with the juvenile and lowbrow sexist humor, you were right all along. (self.atheism)

submitted 8 hours ago by tkmlac

I didn't like seeing the rape jokes that Rebecca Watson pointed out on Skeptchick, but I didn't consider them actual threats like she did. I was glad she at least addressed the issue. Those jokes are stupid and offensive, but who am I to go on a crusade over it? Watson chose that as her "thing" and ran with it and more power to her for standing up for a young girl, even if the title of the blog was rude and misleading (you know the one, "r/atheism makes me hate atheists). I still followed her on Twitter, her and I both don't like getting hit on by drunk men, okay. Then she was complaining about her neighbor playing Coldplay loudly and retweeted someone telling her to go next door with a blunt instrument and "para-para-paralyze them."

Now, that's kind of clever, it's a play on words that incorporates a Coldplay song, but I wondered, this joke being maybe more clever than the rape jokes, still had an element of violence to it. If someone is going to go on a crusade over people insulting each other on the Internet, why would this be funny to her? So I called Watson on it, in a very nice way, explained my position, and instead of actually having a discussion about it, she shot off, flew off the handle, insulted me and called me a twit in a passive aggressive tweet.

R/atheism, I apologize from the bottom of my heart for doubting you. Rebecca Watson is a temperamental, hypocritical jerk. I un follows her so I don't have to see anymore of her mastubating her own ego anymore just to get attention. And damnit, she almost had a good points after elevatorgate, but now I'm thinking that what happened HAD to be over exaggerated by her. I wouldn't trust her to do otherwise at this point.

Tl;dr Rebecca Watson is a bitch.

...and that's when I found out about this flamewar, because while I love PZ, it does indeed seem that no flamewar that mentions him or Pharyngula is beneath notice. But I digress.

Arguably this rant is a much better example of "flying off the handle" than Watson's own dismissal. But this is what tribalism does. For months, the skeptical/atheist communities on the Internet have been doing their level best to divide the world into, to borrow PZ's terminology, "Watsonites" and "anti-Watsonites." So Watson was asked about the consistency of a bit of her humor with her stand against Internet bullying. She probably figured this was Hater #31813114 and was dismissive. tkmlac, being minorly offended/snubbed by Watson, then flew to Reddit, which is apparently now a bastion of "anti-Watsonites," and pledging allegiance to them, crying to all and sundry that obviously everything Watson had ever written or said was in question.

Watson deigned to reply to the post, making it clear to them just how much she was deigning:

To the OP: I'm sorry I called you (and myself) a "twit." It's difficult to get constant demands from people asking me to explain what are (to me) very basic concepts, particularly on Twitter, where I'm limited to 140 characters. For instance, the difference between the retweet of a one-off song-based pun that is not directed at a named individual, and a torrent of sex and rape jokes directed at a 15-year old girl.

If my neighbor was disabled and there were hundreds of people sending him direct "jokes" about paralyzing him? Yeah, that would be a problem, I agree.

So anyway, constantly explaining things like this to people who feel they deserve my time? It gets tiring. And when they persist, I will occasionally get dismissive. I'm sorry for that. It'll probably happen again because I do a lot of stuff online and I'm not perfect.

I'm not sorry for now thinking that you're an asshole for starting this thread, but whatever.

So go ahead, r/atheism! Post about what a bitch I am. I'm sure plenty of people have stories of me saying the wrong thing to them. Take all the stories and mash them together and sculpt a giant bitch statue that you can throw tomatoes at. Start a bunch more threads about the bitch statue, and then look at all the threads and point to them as evidence that the bitch statue is blowing things out of proportion again. "It was just a Tweet! Shut up already, bitch statue!"

It'll be fun.

Of course, dismissiveness aside, both times Watson was absolutely correct. Venting is not the same thing as a targeted threat, even if both involve threats about violence. She even acknowledges that she was initially too dismissive and insulting. And of course she is absolutely right that tkmlac's ridiculous overreaction was the action of, well, an asshole.

However I can't help but think that this whole thing would have gone really differently in a pre-"Elevatorgate," pre-"Redditgate" universe. If Watson hadn't (rightly or wrongly) assumed that tkmlac was insincere or opportunistic in her inquiry, i.e. that she was not on "her side," the exchange could have been much more interesting, even productive. And if tkmlac had put this whole thing into context instead of assuming that, since Watson was briefly less than a paragon of politeness, the "other side" was where she wanted to be, than I wouldn't have had to read about this horseshit in the first place.

Why I keep picking at the "Elevatorgate" scab...and why everyone else is, too.

So.

If you read my blog (all none of you) it's been awhile. Feel free to ignore the Deep Space 9 reviews below, written and ignored well over a year ago. Work happened, life happened, and lately, Twitter happened. I'm reviving this soapbox and linking it to my Facebook and Twitter accounts--which people actually read--just so I can pump out a long post. If I feel like people are commenting and reading, I'll figure out a way to revive this blog on a more permanent basis.

So.

Here's what I want to say.

The unfortunately-named "Elevatorgate" scandal is well into its third week now. For those of you who aren't familiar with the atheist, skeptical, or feminist communities, you may have no idea what I'm talking about. Here is a succinct summary. I'll include a link below so you don't have to take my word for it...at least point a skeptic ought to be carefully considering everyone's biases and emphases.

Rebecca Watson, aka Skepchick, was at a skeptical gathering and said a few words about sexism in the skeptical movement. Later that evening, she was taking the elevator back to her hotel room when a mystery man forever immortalized as "Elevator Guy" asked her back to his room for coffee. She turned him down, and a short time later made a video about her conference experience. She described the incident rather gently rebuked EG, saying that the situation made her "uncomfortable," and critically, said that she didn't care to be "sexualized" in that matter.

Now pay attention, because many summaries, notably the ones in the mass media, skip this part. The video inspired some responses from others in the skeptical community, some 100% positive, some critiquing. One Stef McGraw, an apparent admirer of Watson, took somewhat flip exception to Watson's description of the event as "sexualizing." Shortly thereafter, Watson took time out of a talk she was giving to roughly criticize McGraw, who was present in the audience, as nothing less than a defender of sexism.

This is McGraw's reaction, which has links to her and Watson's original posts. This is apparently her last word on the matter, and I don't blame her one bit. http://www.unifreethought.com/2011/06/fursdays-wif-stef-33.html

It's at this point that popular blog Pharyngula weighed in, which brought the matter to my attention. PZ Myers, whom I admire very much, came down heavy on Watson's side. As soon as I read up on it, I wasn't so sure. However at this point the Internet had caught fire.

Now comes the part mass media is drooling over: Richard Dawkins elected to weigh in with three rather ill-advised comments on Pharyngula. These comments were in every sense of the word wrong, empirically, morally, and tactically (presuming that he had a motive other than to troll). You can track them down yourself, but the short version is that they trivialized the right of women to feel threatened by an unsolicited comment in an elevator at all, the likelihood of women to be sexually assaulted in one, and overall reeked of contempt. It couldn't have been a better job of tossing on gasoline if he'd been trying.

In short, I'm of the persuasion that Watson and Dawkins have both behaved badly. So where does that leave me? Isn't "Elevatorgate" Watson vs. Dawkins?

No.

Mind you, at least one of those two has made some attempt to frame it as such. And it's in the interest of the mass media to depict it that way. "Plucky American blogger dethrones famous British scientist" is a terrific headline. And lo, how the tweeters and bloggers who unreservedly support Watson have descended. Dawkins is an old, white, pompous, misogynist man...in short, the old guard that must be swept away. Dawkins' charitable contributions and feminist advocacy are inconvenient facts easily ignored--much less that Dawkins is in fact a sexual abuse survivor and Watson, to the best of my knowledge, is not.

But no, this is not about Watson vs. Dawkins. The true problem that Watson by her actions unwittingly unearthed is nothing less than that the "skeptical movement" itself might be a misnomer.

The concept of skepticism, by and large, has not entered the debate. Elevator Guy, a figure who can be evaluated by one line of dialogue relayed by one tired woman, is fearlessly and shamelessly depicted by debaters however it suits them. An unreservedly pro-Watson faction formed almost immediately and attacked anybody who did not join their collective with the most strident language, reminiscent of the tactics of their chosen exemplar. Anybody who dared agree with McGraw's initial critique--male, female, straight, or gay--was immediately dismissed as a sexist. Criticizing Dawkins and standing up for Watson's original video are not enough. Agreeing with Stef McGraw that Watson was not "sexualized" (or at least she hasn't made her case) is more than enough to get you excluded from the pro-Watson brigade, which will then claim that it alone represents "women," "feminists," and/or "people who get it."

And as for the "other side" (which is about as monolithic as the Balkans)? Well, there have to my mind been some excellent responses. See here, and all the recent posts here. Unfortunately, it's also brought troglodytes and the worst kind of "pro-man activists" out of the woodwork. IMO this seems to go beyond the normal "if you post it they will troll" that's the cost of doing business
on the internet. These screeds are also relentlessly non-skeptical, they are sometimes hateful, and like Dawkins (but more so) they only weaken the position that misogyny is not rampant in the skeptical movement.

The emphasis on arguing loud and emotional, as opposed to well, has bogged down the skeptical movement in a flailing funk. Make no mistake, the simple anti-Dawkins story plays well now, but if this goes on long enough someone will write a real story and the skeptical movement, a small yet plucky beast at the best of times, will become a laughing stock. It's already been seriously suggested that this is a "schism." Allow me to get briefly profane: this isn't a fucking cult, assholes. It should freeze your blood that a group that has something like 99% agreement on major religious, political, and scientific issues is cheerfully devouring itself over Skepchick's anecdote. Groups that possess political power DO NOT get paralyzed by issues this small.

One of the contributing factors to our chronic case of talking past each other is an inability to agree to even the simplest of terms. So I'll construct a brief glossary:

Feminism: the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way, or the set of activities intended to achieve this state (Cambridge). I can say that Richard Dawkins is not a feminist, but I would be wrong.

Sexism: (actions based on) the belief that the members of one sex are less intelligent, able, skilful, etc. than the members of the other sex, especially that women are less able than men (Cambridge). Disagreeing with a woman does not reflect that I am a sexist, but if I disagreed with nearly all women I'd start to wonder.

Male privilege: a sociological term that refers quite generally to the special rights or status granted to men in a society on the basis of their sex or gender, but usually denied to women and/or transsexuals (Wikipedia). Ha ha! I have the right to ask you out, but you don't have a right to ask me out, thanks to my male privilege! Actually, I kind of wish you would ask me out. Oh god, I'm so alone.

Women: A woman is a female human (Wikipedia). They are possessed of a considerable diversity of opinions, but are often treated as a single monolithic class by online debaters of both genders (pers. obs.) I speak for all women when I say you're a bitch!

Sexualization: to make sexual in character or quality (thefreedictionary.com, and just try and find a more reputable source for this definition). I'm trying to ask a girl out without sexualizing her but it's somewhat difficult. Perhaps I'll ask her for coffee?

Now given these definitions, I'd like to point out some fallacies I have observed:

1. This is not a case of "feminists" vs. "everyone else." There are feminists on both sides of the issue. This is true even if you believe that men cannot be feminists. A variant of this is pretending that this is "women" vs. "men." This is facially untrue, but be prepared to see the term "gender traitor" flung about if you point this out.
2. The proper response to a technical dispute in feminist theory (is an unwelcome come-on an example of sexualization, which is a bloody poorly defined term) is not an accusation of sexism. It would be impossible for feminist theory to do anything but stagnate if this was a standard response in the field. This is analogous to charging a fellow evolutionary biologist with creationism due to a disagreement over how many millions of years ago a divergence took place.
3. Strawmen, and by the bushel. A nice example is Greta Christina's post that everyone is crowing over. She presents a beautifully reasoned argument against a caricature that does not exist--an alleged group of men who are stridently defending mankind's "right" to inappropriately proposition women. Seriously, I've been searching the elevatorgate hashtag on Twitter every day for two weeks now and there's simply nobody saying this. I think she picked a troll at random to focus on.
Of course, Dawkins himself presented a strawman of Skepchick as blithely unconcerned with global misogyny. And Jen McCreight is apparently getting it from idiots over her posing for some calendar while simultaneously taking Watson's side that EG was sexist and creepy. Disagree with Jen all you want, but her calendar-posing has fuck-all to do with anything. (Guess that's more of a Red Herring than a strawman.)
4. There is much bewailing and gnashing of teeth over men and women who "just don't get it." The implication is that all boys and girls who got "Feminism 101" would agree with Watson et al. If you think this is true, keep in mind that a condescending teacher educates his or her pupils but poorly.

So there you have it. We are so eager to exclude and define that we have rejected all that is laudable about skepticism in favor of fallacy, categorizing, rejection. No matter who you think is "right," if anyone, this is a problem. If you prize the skeptical movement, you must become aware that it is throwing away its two most important strengths: unity of purpose, and its own professed rationality.

I'm going to close with a list of what I think the interconnected but distinct questions that "Elevatorgate" has raised actually are, and give my position on each.

1. Did EG behave appropriately?

No. His choice of setting and his actions made a fellow human being very uncomfortable.

2. Is EG a sexist or a misogynist?

Impossible to say.

3. Is sexism endemic in the skeptical movement?

Possibly. It is endemic in society at large, and many women have shared anecdotes about unwelcome male attention. I don't believe there is any stronger evidence than that however.

4. Does EG demonstrate this?

Fuck no. In my opinion fixating on EG and Dawkins is a crucial tactical error by the group of thinkers who seek to expose and abolish sexism in the skeptical movement. They are trivializing themselves by focusing on individuals who are natural allies (EG is a cipher but Dawkins has a strong history of feminist advocacy), and they are therefore not making their case.

When the conclusion does not follow from the premises, peer pressure alone will not unite the skeptical movement.

5. Was Watson wrong to post her video?

Absolutely not. Some do think she was: I categorically disagree. Many pro-Watson bloggers think this is the primary axis of the argument--I'm not sure what argument they think they're having. I (and McGraw) dispute a single point that she raised in the video. It was once possible to discuss this point of contention like adults.

6. Was Watson wrong to attack McGraw?

Yes. I believe that she set the unacceptable tone of the "debate," immediately.

7. Did Dawkins produce some grade-A shitty blog comments on Pharyngula?

Yes, see above.

8. Do you think that a boycott is an appropriate response?

No, it's a petty overreaction. Witness Ophelia Benson, Jen McCreight, and PZ Myers jump ship from this...actually, Watson's latest post seems to back away from this as well. I think she's actually a lot more moderate on the whole shitstorm than many of her supporters who have taken to the barricades on Twitter, Facebook, and various blogs.

9. What about the letters from victimized women to Dawkins?

I have no problem with the concept; I think it's good all around for him to recognize the wrongness of his comments. I can't speak in more detail because I refuse to go through the letters and nitpick them. I presume that they are all sincere and, thus, laudable.

10. Do I think that discussion of "Elevatorgate" should stop?

No, I do not, because for whatever reason this has hit a chord with hundreds of people and inspired real passion within the movement. All of the negative consequences of "Elevatorgate" flow from a lack of reason and empathy. Prominent individuals on both "sides" have laid into their "enemies" in the movement as eagerly as they've ever laid into actual misogynists, scam artists, and religionists. The culture of violent rhetoric and exclusion that many of us find so appealing has poisoned our movement, and the likes of Jeremy Stangroom are justified in their gloating.

Keep talking. Stop yelling. I'm not bitching about tone for its own sake; I'm imploring us to stop being a bunch of idiots who can't distinguish each other from genuine threats to our way of life.

Here is the list of things that are distracting me:

The end of the semester just happened, I just had my 23rd birthday, got a Nintendo DS for my birthday, started a new project, and my beautiful girlfriend Courtney is going to be here tomorrow.

I've actually watched a lot more episodes than I've reviewed, but I plan to get to them! Next up, the delightful "Trials and Tribble-ations!"

DS9 Reviews: "The Assignment"

Ok, so I've been toiling away with a couple of my very favorite phylogenetics programs for hours now, and when I put in a command, it takes them a good few minutes to process. It's been very start-and-stop, a frustrating way to work. If I were better at multi-tasking I'd be reading papers, but I will try this instead. So this review itself may come out a little disjointed, but no one will grade me for it (let alone read it).

So...according to the excellent Star Trek Wiki "Memory Alpha," about once a year the writers liked to do an "O'Brien Must Suffer" episode. This is the entry for season 5. The basic story of the episode is that a malign presence has taken over O'Brien's wife, Keiko, and is coercing O'Brien into doing its bidding under the threat of murdering Keiko.

I think Star Trek badly overuses fantasy cliches (overlaid with obnoxious technobabble) like possession. Hell, there was already an episode back in NextGen where O'Brien was possessed but Keiko wasn't! Nonetheless, this episode somehow manages to transcend its premise to become perhaps the most solid episode of this early part of season 5.

So anyway, the episode picks up as Keiko returns from a trip to Bajor and her apologetic husband has killed her precious bonsai trees out of semi-comical ineptitude. Keiko, a botanist, uncharacteristically brushes it off with "They're just plants, Miles." She then very matter-of-factly states that she's actually an incorporeal being, possessing his wife, and that she can kill her in a split second. O'Brien isn't quite sure how to take this, but as he finds out, treating it like a joke was not the best idea. In this setting, that's just a dangerous lack of genre savvy.

So the possessing creature (later revealed as a "Pah-wraith," so henceforth, "the wraith") gets this close to killing Keiko, stands back up, and thus establishes the rules. This scene is very creepy and it works because Colm Meaney and Rosalind Chao had been playing husband and wife for over six years at this point, even if only semi-frequently. Chao really seems to relish getting to order Meaney around in, not in a "comically nagging wife" way, but a life or death kind of way. She, as the wraith, also plays the part of Keiko perfectly when anyone else is around, even throwing the awkwardest birthday party ever for Miles. "It would arouse suspicion if we canceled it, dear." She even insists that they share the bed, though this being Star Trek that's as far as it goes (and it's quite creepy enough!) She tells him to make a large number of seemingly minor modifications to the station, with a strict time limit, and to do so without arousing suspicion.

The wraith is a brutally effective villain because there's seemingly no stopping it. O'Brien runs down a list with the computer of ways he could render her unconscious, but none of them are faster than the split second it would take the wraith to burst a blood vessel in his wife's head. The wraith has relatively little to lose, since it won't be harmed by this...if O'Brien forces the issue, the wraith gets a setback but O'Brien loses his wife. She can also threaten their young daughter Molly. The deadline she has him working under is too harsh for him to get much time to consider alternatives. When he does try to get help from the other crew members on the Promenade, the wraith has Keiko jump off the balcony--she knows everything Keiko knows and can predict his movements. Sure that part's a little contrived, but it certainly keeps the tension boiling.

This episode also does some very neat dovetailing of it's A- and B-plots. When last we saw Rom (Quark's brother and Nog's father), he had lent his considerable engineering talents to the service of the station, quitting his job at Quark's and working as a maintenance technician. We see in this episode that he's not very popular initially, both because he's a Ferengi and because he's a bit of an idiot savant, with absolutely no sense of social graces. Sometimes Rom is painful to watch, but in this episode he's more entertaining, joyfully trying to fit in by eating Earth-style breakfasts as his disgusted brother looks on.

Rom's position as a social pariah on the night shift, his dedicated work ethic, and his incredible engineering skills make him the perfect tool for O'Brien as he frantically tries to complete the modifications. It's a little sad how he takes advantage of Rom, telling him that he's on a secret Starfleet mission and not to say anything to the senior staff even if he is asked (as they are testing his loyalty, see). This even extends to setting him up for the fall when the senior officers notice the modifications and catch Rom in the act. This is an awfully shitty thing for a guy to do, and yet...who among us would not, for the sake of their wife or husband? The characters have been married in the show for so long that there's no "establishing" how much O'Brien cares for her, it just IS.

By now O'Brien has only a few hours to go, and he's almost finished when Odo, having a devil of a time wringing any answers out of the guy, drags O'Brien down to talk with him.

Rom's character development since the early days is evident here. He keeps the chief's secret but reveals that he knows it's not a secret Starfleet operation, and he's also figured out the purpose of the modifications where O'Brien has not--the station is now set to flood the wormhole with "chroniton" particles, killing the aliens who live in it...the Bajoran Prophets.

Just to remind you all (and because I'll be dealing with them at great length in later episodes), the Prophets are the gods of Bajor, discovered to be non-corporeal aliens living in the wormhole by Sisko back in the pilot episode. Now, the reason that they are "Prophets," supposedly, is that they experience time in a "non-linear" fashion.

This is a really cool idea that makes alarmingly little sense. See, the Prophets talk to our characters from time to time (as they must, for them to have any relevance in the show) and yet they respond to them in an unmistakably "linear" fashion (i.e. the characters give them information, convince them of things, negotiate with them, etc. Heck, in "Emissary" they are surprised to meet Sisko). One can imagine that they experience the future and yet are doomed to continue to act it out, a la "Dr. Manhattan" from Watchmen (who doesn't really make sense either). Yet, they themselves rarely do interact with the physical plane and alter the course of events for seemingly arbitrary reasons. How can they experience the future even as they are causing it to change?

The wraith's nefarious plot revealed, it pays lip service to these creatures' "non-linearity" even as it highlights their "linearity." See, "chroniton particles" are Star Trek's magic time travel voodoo (See Star Trek First Contact) and the idea is that they will kill off the Prophets by "forcing them to interact with time" or something. Yet if they were not interacting with time already, it seems very strange how a plot to assassinate them could possibly be executed.

"Non-linear beings" are probably nonsensical. But from a scriptwriting point of view? They are REALLY nonsensical.

It gets better. So the Pah-wraiths turn out to be basically evil, exiled Prophets that were stuck on Bajor (in the "Fire Caves", where Keiko visited. Woops.)...so guess who's vulnerable to "chroniton particles" too?

The ending of this episode could be seen coming, but it is no less satisfying. O'Brien, on the run from the station personnel who have finally figured out his game, convinces the wraith that he's still willing to help by saying "I know what you're up to but I don't care about your damn incorporeal war. I just want my wife back." Which, frankly...wouldn't be too out of character for him. Why does he give a shit? He's never met a Prophet. So they board a runabout, open the wormhole, trigger the station's new Prophet-killing beam, but OOPS, O'Brien targeted the runabout instead. And apparently THAT kills the wraith faster than it can kill Keiko. Hell yeah!

And thus, O'Brien outfoxes the wraith, gets his wife back, avoids any consequences by simply explaining to everyone what was going on, and promotes Rom to the day shift. Which means this IS an unusual "Screw over O'Brien" episode...usually he gets insanity downloaded directly into his brain, or maimed, or copied and forced to kill himself, or something else insane like that. This one actually has a pretty happy ending!

One reason why this show is interesting is that it was clearly written to be a stand-alone show, like every other "O'Brien's Life Sucks" and "Random Ghost-Alien Possession" episode. Shows like this that use only standing sets and have cast members randomly being mean to each other are, essentially, cheap filler programs, and DS9 did plenty of 'em in the early seasons that never were referenced again.

And yet...this becomes one of the most important episodes of the show, in retrospect. Years later, the thread of the Prophets' enemies, the Pah-wraiths, is picked up and becomes key to the show. In this episode, the precise motivations and nature of the being that takes over Keiko is somewhat important to the plot, but is ultimately secondary...one could easily imagine that the relative handful of lines dealing with it were simply added at the last minute because some smart guys (according to the wiki, Rene Echevarria and Robert Wolfe) realized the potential future storyline.

This is the kind of planting and payoff that Babylon 5 excelled in, right from the pilot. It took Star Trek a good, long while to catch up to the idea. :P

DS9 Reviews: "Nor the Battle to the Strong"

It's taken me awhile to get around to this review. Partly because I'm busy; partly because I'm lazy; but largely because it's a relatively hard episode to watch, at least in the context of Star Trek. There's not really any sense of fun or adventure, it's just a very dark character study.

The context is important...this episode's content is extremely mild by the standards of any decent war movie. But in the Star Trek universe thus far, the worst thing that had ever happened to any of our characters on the screen was Picard getting Borgified for an episode and a half. You'll see why this episode is a slight adjustment.

So the episode starts as Jake, the captain's son who is just settling into his great ambition: writing. A brief aside on Jake: he's technically a lead character, but he's one of those characters who the writers often just can't figure out what to do with. The easy thing to do would have been to have him go into Starfleet when the character grew old enough, but to the writers' credit they don't do so, giving this role to Jake's former delinquent friend, Nog. They finally hit on a role for Jake to play in the impending chaos by making him into a journalist, which finally gets him into some unique situations.

Here, he's writing a cover story on the station's doctor, Bashir, and so the two of them are on a runabout flying back to DS9 from a medical conference (a frequent plot device with Bashir, but to be fair, scientists do this stuff all the time). However, Jake is, quite obnoxiously, bored to tears by Bashir's earnest "medicobabble." They get a distress call from a Federation system that's under attack by the Klingons. Wait, what?

See, despite the events of "Apocalypse Rising," the Klingons are still mindlessly attacking the Federation. Worse, this takes place right after the lighthearted fuckery of "Looking for par'mach..." What has been done is to follow a lighthearted, jokey Klingon episode with a "grim'n'gritty" episode in which the Klingons are basically bloodthirsty Orcs. Despite the fact that each episode stands up well by itself, their juxtaposition is ridiculous. This episode might have benefited from coming much later in the season and starring the Jem'Hadar, although open war doesn't quite break out until the very end of the season so it would have taken some creative writing.

Anyway, Jake cajoles Bashir into flying in and helping the besieged doctors. As his voiceover tells us, he does this so that he can write a "real story" about battlefield medicine.

Jake, you're an idiot. But that's the whole point.

So they land on the planet and go into the Generic Star Trek Cave Set, to be confronted with a few doctors and nurses scattering around dealing with redshirts (actually some sort of black military uniform in this ep) who haven't quite died yet. The first person Bashir runs across to treat has a burned foot that he claims was caused by a Klingon gun, but the tricorder says different...he shot himself in the foot with his own phaser.

Star Trek's never shown us that side of war before. Of course, the subtext is that the Federation isn't prepared for war, not having fought one in years. But even though they are relatively soft and spoiled right now, this poor schmo can still kiss his career good bye thanks to one moment of weakness.

Anyway, the medics don't let Jake sit around writing on his iPADD. They put his ass to work hauling bodies out of the OR. The roots of later scenes in Battlestar Galactica (which employed many DS9 writers) are here. There is obviously a limit on what they can show, so none of the screaming, thrashing, and brutal calculus of triage that was depicted in BSG. But seeing the captain's son haul bodies around and get covered in blood is pretty jarring. All the while, the medics talk about how bad the Klingons are. Most of this stuff is either silly or inconsistent, though.

"When the Klingons are really on the offensive, they pull out their bat'leths (like swords, but impractical), charge at us, and that's why we see all these horrible wounds."

YOU'RE IN THE 24TH CENTURY AND THEY ARE CHARGING YOU WITH SWORDS? Fuck me, you guys should be cheering when that happens cause it means you can kill them all with your phasers.

"When the Klingons get to the wounded, they kill them to give them an honorable death."

What? The Klingons are many things, but killing the defenseless is usually a sure way for them to lose their "honor." If this custom had ever been referenced before (or after!) it might be put into some kind of context, but this just makes them into mad dogs. They know damn well that the Feds have awesome medical technology because they've been allies for years and years.

Pop quiz: after this episode, in which the Klingons are basically the Imperial Japanese Army, will we have many future episodes in which their culture is presented as intrinsically admirable, or even amusing?

You bet your ass!

So anyway, the Klingon artillery starts making some noise and power goes out, which will cause a lot of the patients to, uh, die. So Bashir and Jake volunteer to bolt for their landed runabout and grab its generator.

This scene is notable for two reasons, one of which is an important event in the plot and in characterization, and the other of which is fail. So Bashir and Jake are running across the surface of the planet and shells are bursting all around them...like, right next to them, or between them when they are only running a few feet apart. The Klingon "mortars" are just horrible little smoke bombs that could probably be purchased legally in all fifty states (and in Florida you'd get a free stick of dynamite). For reference, real life mortars are designed to cut you in half with shrapnel from fifty feet away. Jake is terrified out of his wits by these...mortars, and sees Bashir get knocked down (!) by one and call out for Jake. Jake, however, just runs.

This scene had great potential. Countless people have broken and run under shelling. It brings the character to a place he's never experienced before. But the awful smoke bombs, the locked-off camera, and the "generic Star Trek danger music" leech a lot of the drama away.

We do get to some of the real meat of the episode here though. Jake stumbles into a crater with a mortally wounded human soldier. He provides companionship during the soldier's last moments. "Turn me over. If I'm going out, I want to be looking at the sky!" It comes out that this man sacrificed himself, willingly staying behind to provide covering fire as his unit boarded a ship and flew to safety. Jake is ashamed by this and starts babbling about how if he can bring this man back to the doctors and save him, it will make up for leaving Bashir to die. The soldier dies with the sardonic words, "That's not how it works, kid..."

Jake returns, only to see that Bashir not only survived, but saved everybody's lives, bringing back the generator from the wreckage of the runabout. And this whole time, he's just been worried and guilty that Jake was in danger! Jake, no longer the boy of early seasons but a young man, seethes with self-hatred and loathing. Concealing his shame, he lashes out at the doctors. He meets the guy with the self-inflicted wound again and they bond in mutual understanding..."You're the only one here who treats me like a person," says the "coward." Jake urges him to fight his probable court-martial, but the man will have none of it...he knows what he did and that the service is not for him.

The Klingons close in on the caves and everyone pitches in to frantically evacuate the wounded. A gun battle ensues in the OR and Jake finds himself the last man between the wounded and the Klingons. He snatches up a phaser rifle and fires wildly in the air, causing them to hesitate as well as the ceiling to collapse. Jake is KOed, but the Klingon advance stops long enough for the Defiant to swoop in and rescue everybody. Jake is hailed as a hero.

In his own account, however, he is truthful, which earns the admiration of his father all the same. "Sometimes, the line between heroism and cowardice is a lot thinner than any of us would like to admit."

This episode isn't flawless, but as I described, it is remarkable in many ways. Like "The Ship," it set the tone of the remainder of the series, and prepared us to explore the theme: "If a utopia must go to war to defend itself against evil, can it still remain a utopia?"

Runabout tally: One destroyed off screen by Klingon smoke bombs. Those dastardly Klingons! They can destroy a small Federation ship if it's not moving or shooting back!

DS9 Reviews: "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places"

It's that time again...the dreaded Komedy Episode. DS9, and Star Trek in general, have a very mixed record on these. When they work, they are hysterical. When they don't they are awful. Same goes for romance episodes...and this is both!

Worse still, this episode is sandwiched smack in the middle of four very dark (or at least momentous) episodes. So if you're watching them all in a row (like I was) then you will get some serious mood whiplash (as well as another inconsistency that I will address).

However, it's a very charming episode and I can actually offer mostly unqualified praise for it. "Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places" is a very important development for the characters of Dax and Worf, and a charming enough sequel to the events of "House of Quark" in season 3.

"House of Quark" was a positively brilliant season 3 episode in which Quark took credit for killing a drunken Klingon who fell on his knife. He winds up married to the guy's widow, Grilka, at knifepoint. It seems that Grilka needed to marry the killer of her husband in order to prevent his rival from taking over their house with financial chicanery. Quark, naturally, is better equipped than any of the Klingons about to expose the fraudster, and proves him without honor when the guy tries to kill his helpless self. Grilka then grants Quark a loving divorce.

So in this episode Grilka comes to the station, ostensibly to get Quark's financial advice, but it is clearly a thinly disguised social visit. This sits ill with Grilka's bodyguard. Worf sees Grilka and is instantly smitten. When he sees her embracing Quark and Dax explains that she's his ex-wife, Michael Dorn does a great job showing us the murder wheels turning in his head, just for a moment.

As far as continuity goes, Grilka's casual visit seems very strange. The whole past season they were fighting the Klingons, and in the very next episode they are going to be fighting Klingons. Dax tosses off a line like "Oh, the treaty negotiations must be going well." Sure, and in the next episode it will be going badly. Treaties don't change all that much about how difficult it is to fly past borders, etc. until they are ratified. Of course, it is actually possible that these Klingons took a passenger vessel, but you'd think coming aboard one of the Federation's most important outposts would raise a few eyebrows.

But anyway, Worf decides to try and go after Grilka anyway. It turns out that the Klingon mating ritual is to loudly be a dick to other people in the vicinity. I'm not even joking. So after a few innocents are harmed, Grilka's advisor (not her bodyguard) shoots Worf down on her behalf, reminding him that he's never even been part of Klingon culture to an extent that he has ever courted a Klingon lady before. It's a nice little moment for Worf. And to his credit, he backs off.

However, Quark does a little plot-thickening when he comes to Worf, insecure about his ability to court Grilka. And Worf decides to not be a dick for once and help the guy out, Cyrano-style. Dread Continuity raises its ugly head again because in all future episodes Worf is back to hating Quark with apparent sincerity. But here, he ropes Dax into giving Quark some bat'leth practice and all the Klingon knowledge he has. Meanwhile, Dax is stepping up her flirting with Worf, which she's been doing since she met the guy, even harder, but Worf just keeps staring at Grilka.

"par'Mach," as you no doubt have gathered, is Klingon for "love."

Speaking of thickening and meanwhiles, I've been neglecting the B-story. Several episodes back, O'Brien and his wife conceived their second child, but Keiko was injured in a runabout (seriously, why would anyone get on one of those deathtraps?). As a result of that emergency, the fetus was beamed (!) into the womb of Major Kira. The production reason for this was that Nana Visitor (Kira) was getting quite noticeably pregnant, thanks to Siddig El Fadil (Bashir). However, it was a cool little plotline that added a vulnerable dimension to Kira's hard-bitten ex-Resistance fighter. The various complications of putting a human child in a Bajoran womb are handwaved away, naturally, but whatever. They got awesome medicine in Star Trek, we can dig it.

Anyway, Kira has actually moved in with the O'Briens at this point so they can take care of her and, well, their kid. So O'Brien is massaging Kira, and their conversation is starting to get just a little too casual/friendly/flirty. They both realize they've gone over the line juuuust as Keiko walks in all cheery. "Don't stop on my account!" As if the scene weren't awkward enough, when Kira suggests that she take a vacation on Bajor, Keiko INSISTS that O'Brien go along to watch her.

This is a rare case where the rampant prudery (perhaps rather, its weird attempts to seem sexually liberated whilst actually being one of the most unsexual shows on TV) of Star Trek actually works in its favor. One can only imagine how overplayed this would have been on a typical drama, or even something like The Office. The fact that nothing actually happens (and nothing will) makes the situation feel very real and not sensationalist. In most episodes of Star trek, since, y'know, this plot has nothing to do with Trekking, this would seem superfluous, but in this episode it dovetails nicely with the rest of the romantic proceedings.

Back to the A-story. Quark is doing very well in his courting, so well that Grilka's bodyguard, revolted, knocks him down and challenges him to a battle to the death. Oops. Quark asks Worf and Dax if his "throw down the sword" trick from "House of Quark" would work again here, the answer is basically "Not if you want to live."

But, Worf and Dax have a smart plan, you see.

No, it's not informing Sisko or Odo about the death threat that has been made against Quark.

No, it's not telling Quark to back down, neither his pride nor his dick being worth a battle to the death with a 6'5'' lunatic.

It is, however, strapping weird devices to Worf's and Quark's heads, so that as Quark fights this guy in one holosuite, Worf can control his actions from the other.

I hear that will be an iPhone app any day now.

Anyway, Worf-as-Quark starts utterly schooling his guy, and I must say I am impressed with Armin Shimerman's physical acting in this scene as I have never been before. However, Worf is "showing off" too much for Grilka and somehow breaks the little doohickey. As Dax struggles to fix it for 2 minutes, Quark invokes Ferengi custom and distracts the Klingons with a little ad-libbed speech/plea for Grilka's love. Then as soon as he's cheating again, he schools the Klingon. Then Quark actually tries to kill the guy, but Worf makes him just pick up the other dude's bat'leth and jerkily present the weapons to Grilka.

Either Grilka doesn't realize that Quark's cheating, or she doesn't give a rip, because Quark is IN. Well, he was basically already in, but now he's IN. And out. And...I'll shut up. (I watch episodes about interspecies sex so you don't have to! Actually, all of the couples in this ep are interspecies, which is to say at least one of them is wearing between an ounce and a pound of latex on their heads.)

Worf starts moping about Grilka again, so Dax conjures a holo-bat'leth and starts trying to kick HIS ass. Again, we see that violence is Klingon foreplay. As well as the deed itself. After a tasteful fade to black, both happy couples stagger into the infirmary covered in bruises (well, Grilka isn't too bad off). In an amusing touch, Dax is wearing Worf's sash. In another amusing touch, Siddig El Fadil as Dr. Bashir plays "restrained horror" EXTREMELY well.

In the final analysis, Quark risked his life for a one night stand with his ex-wife, but it was fun seeing that character again, especially since she's less of a judgmental thug than most Klingons. Of course, she's also attracted to Quark, which should make anyone wonder. Worf and Dax, on the other hand, they are pretty much together from here on out, and it's great for both characters ("Let He Who Is Without Sin..." notwithstanding). Kira and O'Brien have one last cute/awkward scene as they are preparing to leave wherein they decide that they will NOT spend five days alone in a resort on Bajor because they wouldn't be able to keep their hands off each other. So with a "what might have been..." O'Brien figures out an excuse and begs off. (The guy's so busy I don't understand how he was gonna take time off anyway.) The implications of their non-relationship do show up in Nana Visitor's performance later, as she tends to call him "Miles" instead of "Chief," etc, but this show not being "Battlestar Galactica," they are over and done with.

Runabout Tally: None destroyed, but I bet that one's duotronic phase relays were short-circuited by the awkward sexual tension between Kira and O'Brien. (I ship O'Brien/Bashir myself. Or hell, get them, Keiko, and Garak together in a foursome.)

DS9 Reviews: "The Ship"

I guess I'll start all of these by commenting on the title. Very straightforward. Accurate, yet mysterious. Certainly less actively misleading than the previous one.

So anyway, once again the whole senior staff is flying into danger, aka the Gamma Quadrant, aka "the area of space that is an openly declared shooting gallery." And this time, they don't even take the Defiant, their cloakable ass-kicker ship. They take a runabout. Wonder if that will bite them.

So O'Brien plays amateur geologist with his buddy Muniz while Sisko walks around importantly, nods, and says that the Federation should start mining this planet for all its worth, despite the fact that "establishing a supply line will be difficult." Dude, you're in enemy territory on the other side of a wormhole, which is a tiny little chokepoint. This would be like Winston Churchill drilling for oil in Munich.

Suddenly, the runabout orbiting the planet (which is piloted exclusively by people we've never met before...bad sign) picks up an unidentified, damaged ship flying into the planet. By frankly amazing coincidence, Sisko and the others look up and see its contrail as it hits the atmosphere. At least he has the runabout beam them to the crash site...in Stargate it probably would have happened to crash within walking distance.

Anyway, the crashed ship is a series of unidentifiable gray boxes buried in a ridge. However, we are supposed to instantly identify it as a Jem'Hadar fighter! Shock! Awe! (Thankfully, Sisko breathlessly identifies it for us. But damn, was this a failure of the Art Department.)

The crew cautiously climbs aboard the wreck and finds everyone--the Jem'Hadar soldier-goons and their Vorta captain--dead.
BASHIR: Looks like he's suffered total osteonecrosis.
SISKO: Bwa?
BASHIR: All his bones are shattered.

Now I'm not a doctor, but "osteonecrosis" sounds like all of your bones have died, not *been pulverized.* In fact we soon find out that the crew has died of inertial dampener failure.

For the non-Trekheads in the audience, "inertial dampeners" are the magic boxes that allow the ship to accelerate from any speed to any other arbitrary speed without the crew feeling any G-forces. They started getting mentioned in scripts when a fan pointed out to the Next Generation production team that the crew should be "crushed into chunky salsa" every time the Enterprise executes a typical maneuver.

Usually, they "fail" to just enough of an extent to slam the crew around, dramatically but non-fatally, during action scenes. Really, the slightest hiccup should kill everyone. This is a rare case of a fatal malfunction in Star Trek. They don't show most of the bodies--that one Jem'Hadar is a little too intact, but hey, it's a prime time show.

So the idea of this ship being struck by dampener failure is interesting, but unfortunately it leaves the impression that these ships are REALLY unreliable, since it was apparently JUST a malfunction.

Anyway, digression over. Point is, they've lucked into an incredible find. The Dominion has all kinds of awesome tech they've been kicking the Feds around with, and now they've got a chance to crack it. Now personally, I'd have preferred that some redshirts discover the ship and then call in Sisko, as the contrivance is still pretty nuts. But then they'd have to explain why Sisko didn't just bring the Defiant.

But now is when things go wrong. Another fighter shows up and destroys the runabout in two shots. Then a bunch of screaming Jem'Hadar run towards our heroes as they retreat towards the wreck to take cover. One more redshirt is killed outright, and Muniz takes a glancing hit in the midsection, but they make it, and the attack stops.

Now, remember when I mentioned the crappy phaser effects in the last episode? I don't think it's memory playing tricks on me, they are AWFUL. Sisko doesn't hit a damn thing and the Jem'Hadar blasts look and sound incredibly cheesy. This scene is supposed to be unnerving and brutal and it's utterly ruined.

Anyway, Sisko occupies O'Brien with trying to make the ship flyable, as the Defiant won't be there for days. He's very determined to hold the ship as he's figured out that there has got to be a very compelling reason why the Dominion hasn't just blown them all to hell. A Vorta sends them a transmission asking to meet Sisko outside. She (and she's a cutie pie!) tenders him the extremely reasonable offer of removing all of his people and transporting them unharmed to DS9.

Sisko rather curtly rejects the offer, which is pretty generous considering that these two powers are basically fighting an undeclared war and, as the Vorta points out, he clearly has no claim to the ship. But from his perspective, he has no reason to trust the Vorta to keep her word, and he's figured out that there is something on this seemingly unremarkable ship that the Dominion are desperate enough to NOT kill them for.

Still, I would have liked to see O'Brien question Sisko's zealotry, considering that his friend is actually badly wounded.

Anyway, Ms. Vorta is not trustworthy after all. She's beamed a Jem'Hadar aboard the wreck, who turns invisible (they can do that) and stalks the crew. He attacks O'Brien and Dax with a knife. This seems rather dumb at first...first, cause he brought a knife to a gun fight, and second that he didn't manage to kill one despite being invisible. Of course, Muniz promptly shoots him dead with a phaser.

The soldier's lack of a rifle makes everyone even more suspicious, and sure that there is something awesome aboard the ship that they are afraid of damaging. O'Brien finds some minor alterations and irregularities from the standard Jem'Hadar fighter design, but this turns out to go nowhere. Then Muniz distracts everyone by starting to die in agony. Apparently Jem'Hadar energy weapons "leave an anticoagulant" in the wounds they cause. This line makes it sound like they are shooting rat poison beams, and really needed to be rephrased. However, the fact that a wounded crewman is bleeding out on the floor is so dark for Star Trek that it does make an impact. He raves, hallucinates...it is tough stuff to watch.

Sadly, this leads to an awful plotline for Worf as he assholes it up, telling O'Brien that Muniz is a goner and needs to be told cause of honor or something. The humans, being rather human, are doing the standard sort of "you're gonna make it" bedside manner thing, which goes as far as Sisko ordering him to stay alive. Of course Muniz is not an idiot and can tell he's a goner. So Worf is just an asshole for the sake of ramping up the tension. As if they didn't have enough to deal with.

The Vorta tries to negotiate again, apologizing (!) for beaming in her knife-wielding maniac and extending Sisko another sweetheart offer. He cuts her off again, and she beams up and suddenly these big white things start exploding in the atmosphere as Sisko hustles back.

The crew almost instantly figures out that these explosives would kill them instantly if the enemy fighter was actually trying to hit them, and that "they're just trying to rattle us." They proceed to get rattled. They try and fail to fly the ship off the planet. Oh, and Muniz dies during a shouting match. Go team.

However, the real reason for the Dominion's interest in the ship is shortly revealed. A console suddenly collapses into a pile of goo, which then solidifies into a pile of ash. A Founder just became a dead Founder. Its death cry is heard by the Vorta and her troops through an open vent in the side of the ship (yes kids, this spaceship HAS A SCREEN DOOR). I guess dampener failure kills goo-creatures too, just slower.

Sisko and the Vorta negotiate one more time. This is very close to being a good scene, but it's ruined by one line of dialogue. The Vorta's troops have all killed themselves for failing to save one of their gods. This is a logical and chilling extension of the Founders' genetically engineering both races for their needs. The Vorta is a bit smarter and less zealous, but she's still clearly shattered. She tells Sisko that her offer was genuine, and she didn't tell him about the Founder because they would have tortured it. Sisko says no, they would have let the Founder go because all they wanted was the ship. The Vorta says that they didn't care about the ship with the Founder's life in danger.

So we get the message; these two cultures have completely misjudged each other, leading to unnecessary death on both sides. But Sisko spells it out for the slow kids: "If only we'd been able to TRUST each other!"

Hello Sisko! This is an enemy power that killed your people. Of course you didn't trust her, what with all the lying she did. Gah, makes my skin crawl.

Anyway, they let her take some of the changeling's remains and book it. Personally, I would have stunned her and taken her to a nice cell on Earth. All her troops are dead and the Defiant is somehow going to get there before any Dominion aid. But whatever.

The scene that makes this episode truly great is after all the fireworks, back on DS9. Sisko is trying to write the families of the five crewmembers who died. Dax sits with him and the two of them reminisce about the lost...not just Muniz but the ones flying the runabout and the lineless extra cut down by the Jem'Hadar (who was apparently a great trumpet player). They actually sit down and talk about the five redshirts who bit the dust forty minutes ago. Dax tells Sisko that the successful retrieval of the Jem'Hadar ship was worth the five lives because it's likely to save five thousand, or five million. Then Worf joins O'Brien in a vigil for Muniz.

This episode isn't the best of DS9, but it shows off some of the things that made it really cool and unique. It's mostly just an action episode with some dark twists, but the mutual cultural incomprehension of the Feds and the Dominion soldiers was very interesting, and the general theme of presenting the nastier side of the typically-antiseptic conflicts the Federation gets into is really starting to come out. It is much more fully explored in "Nor the Battle to the Strong," a couple episodes down the line, but this episode really drives home the fact that the Dominion are coming for blood. And of course, the retrieval of the enemy ship is an important plot element in the series as a whole.

Runabout Tally: One destroyed by a Jem'Hadar fighter.