Alternate History in Star Trek part 14

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this article by @Thande here

 

[Charles EP M.]

I actually do remember the S2 opening, and specifically that Kai Wynn was absolutely tied to the coup and got away with it. One of those things hanging over the character in a rewatch, if she could get away with it, she'd have you killed.

 

[Thande]

I hope I managed to get across just how much people (mainstream people, not randos on the proto-internet) were shocked by the core concept of DS9 at the time, which seems little discussed now. I always think back to that when you see stuff about, say, Discovery (or The Last Jedi for Star Wars etc.) which is really a storm in a teacup in terms of numbers by comparison, it's just that the internet amplifies loud voices.

I actually do remember the S2 opening, and specifically that Kai Wynn was absolutely tied to the coup and got away with it. One of those things hanging over the character in a rewatch, if she could get away with it, she'd have you killed.

I don't know if it's genuinely that unmemorable or if it just came across that way to me, because (due to the massive delays in Trek being shown over here in the 90s) by the time I saw the episode, I already knew the stuff in it wouldn't really matter for the long term.

It was a weird experience having events in DS9 (especially) spoiled in the Star Trek Fact Files up to two years before you actually saw them on screen - for example, Cardassia joining the Dominion and the Prophets destroying the Dominion fleet were both ruined as plot twists for me.

 

[Charles EP M.]

The Circle on DVD-Watch felt like the show pulling a pin on the Bajoran plots, so the post-conflict state has a coup, so it could dial them back later as it had finally figured out where it wanted to take the wormhole plots.

 

[Iopgod]

What is the long Nick Clegg story?

 

[Thande]

What is the long Nick Clegg story?

I think I can talk about it now as it was nearly ten years ago - I was at an event in Sheffield he was attending, and he was spat on by a college student. It came out later that this was not because he was Nick Clegg and tuition fees or whatever, but because he was a man in a suit and the perpetrator had no idea who he was.

 

[Ncw8]

I hope I managed to get across just how much people (mainstream people, not randos on the proto-internet) were shocked by the core concept of DS9 at the time, which seems little discussed now. I always think back to that when you see stuff about, say, Discovery (or The Last Jedi for Star Wars etc.) which is really a storm in a teacup in terms of numbers by comparison, it's just that the internet amplifies loud voices.

I do remember something of the controversy when DS9 was first broadcast. It included parodies of the traditional Star Trek pre-amble. Something along the lines of “Space: the final frontier. These are the orbits of the starbase Deep Space 9. Its five-year mission: to ignore strange new worlds. To be sought out by new life and new civilizations. To boldly stay in one place where everyone has gone before!”

The first season didn’t do itself any favours on those lines by having a number of episodes where TNG characters would drop in on their way somewhere else - Picard, the Duras sisters, Q and Vash. It did perhaps lean a bit too much on TNG in its first few episodes - arguably more than TNG leant on TOS to begin with. Compare McCoy’s cameo in Encounter at Farpoint with the larger role played by Picard in Emissary.

 

[Warthog]

The Circle on DVD-Watch felt like the show pulling a pin on the Bajoran plots, so the post-conflict state has a coup, so it could dial them back later as it had finally figured out where it wanted to take the wormhole plots.

It did give good background and set up for Winn as a key antagonist for later seasons, although I'm not sure if that was planned way back then