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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   5684 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022

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I'm not good at remembering titles, but there was a TNG one where it happens to Riker, he was practicing for some play (it might be actually existing one, but it's title also escapes me) set in some dystopia, where he's a prisoner, who is having his sanity ground down. Then the "wake up in the hospital" thing happens to him, and he has trouble telling which part is real and which is a dream.

Then there were a few DS9 ones, which may have been a sign of things to come for us. Sisko wakes up in Racist America. But it was all just a dream... or was it? Maybe DS9 is the dream? At least two episodes like that, I think one of them was in a hospital.

Frame of Mind is the TNG episode, and Far Beyond The Stars is the DS9 episode you recall. In that one, Sisko is getting a vision from the Prophets, though to what end I can't recall.

Nah, arjin_ferman's right; there are two DS9 ones. FBTS is the first; the second is Shadows and Symbols and indeed is a followup to FBTS in a mental hospital.

Far Beyond The Stars is a message from the Prophets amounting to "cheer up". Shadows and Symbols is the Pah-Wraiths attempting to mind-control Sisko and stop him opening the Orb that's got the Rapist Prophet* in it.

*By which I mean "the Prophet that possessed Sarah and forced her to seduce Joseph Sisko in order to conceive Benjamin Sisko". DS9 seemingly doesn't notice that she's a rapist, since she's pretty much portrayed as a pure good character, but, well, DS9 glosses over a lot of horrifying things the Prophets do.

Frame of Mind is the exact non-voyager one I'd been thinking of, thank you!

IMO Far Beyond The Stars is the pinnacle of all Star Trek.

That's hard for me to understand. To me, it's Star Trek: Picard level of "I'm gonna take the thing you like, and hamfist my politics up it's arse". It wouldn't be hard to argue that's literally Anti-Trek.

Didn't really care about the politics one way or the other. Sharp writing and a culmination of everything that Sisko was puts it far above any other episode to me. I suppose it wouldn't be as interesting to people who aren't as fascinated by Sisko's visionary nature.

Well, I might be missing something big, but my entire point is that it's not a culmination of everything Sisko was, but a sudden pulling out of the story, and making it something it wasn't.

As for the writing, this is where it's a bit hard to ignore the politics, because I can see how someone can see it as good, but only the same way God Is Not Dead was good.

The progressive convictions combined with the overwhelming longing for expression were quintessential Sisko. Sometimes people take the scaffold they were given and turn it into something remarkable, and in this case the politics were just a springboard for Sisko's vision.

When you say "overwhelming longing for expression", do you mean expression of the progressive convictions, or expression generally?

If the former, there's the rub. It's the 24th century, the entire point of Star Trek is that humanity matured, and got it's shit together. Progressive convictions don't really set you apart from anyone else in the Federation. And does having a vision even count as expression?

If the latter, I'm just confused. If he had such a burning desire for expression, shouldn't he be an artist of some sort IRL, not just in his vision? A warrior-poet, at the very least.

Expression generally.

I think you're not right about the history of Star Trek. Roddenberry was very much a progressive (admittedly, I may be using the word incorrectly; it is at least liberal-international). Look at how the cast of the original Trek was based on racial/national diversity. TNG was a society of people who were so enlightened they moved beyond cash.

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