The Human Adventure Continues: Talking About Star Trek

[Lakupo]

Man these Borg kids are just like...gonna be here for the rest of the show, huh? I'm at the end of season 6 and they're still around!

The younger ones get unceremoniously dropped off on a planet at the beginning of season 7. Not sure what they were thinking immediately following up Unimatrix Zero with another Seven episode, but the only three characters the writers really cared about by that point were Seven, the Doctor, and Janeway, so it's not surprising. (I'm in the later half of S6 in my rewatch now, and I'm reminded of the shift in the writing)

Speaking of Borg kids, while Icheb is totally a drip and never really that compelling, watching the episode where they find Icheb's parents totally reinvigorated my ire for (Picard Season 1 spoilers) when he gets fridged so violently. Picard S1 was such a good main cast wasted on such lousy plots.

 

[Aleryn]

Ugh, the Picard show. I thought I was just done with any new Star Trek after that. But I had another week or two left on my CBS subscription and ravenously consumed Discovery after the first episode. Its up and down for me since that first season but am so happy I didn't give up. Just finished Lower Decks and quite enjoyed it too. Mostly just happy I didn't get closed off to 'nuTrek' as some call it.

No offense to people who liked the Picard show. I really enjoyed some parts of it like Seven, Riker and Troi's family, and other stuff. But I just don't like Star Trek presented as grimdark, especially a Federation that is callous, corrupt, and just too much of an allegory of certain modern nation state governments. And... and... Picard died! I was moved! I was impressed that they... they killed him! And nope, he's an android now. I saw it a mile away, BUT THEY STILL DID IT. *rants in circles for too long*

My takes are probably really old compared to people who watched this stuff when it was new. But I feel better for whining about it here now.

Think I'll go watch through the Dominion War of DS9 again, after having hooked some friends on the Michael Eddington/Angry Sisko mini arc.

 

[Alixsar]

The younger ones get unceremoniously dropped off on a planet at the beginning of season 7. Not sure what they were thinking immediately following up Unimatrix Zero with another Seven episode, but the only three characters the writers really cared about by that point were Seven, the Doctor, and Janeway, so it's not surprising. (I'm in the later half of S6 in my rewatch now, and I'm reminded of the shift in the writing)

Speaking of Borg kids, while Icheb is totally a drip and never really that compelling, watching the episode where they find Icheb's parents totally reinvigorated my ire for (Picard Season 1 spoilers) when he gets fridged so violently. Picard S1 was such a good main cast wasted on such lousy plots.

Oh okay I literally haven't finished that episode yet, so guess I'm almost there. I don't feel like they're...bad, necessarily, just that it reeks of "hey these people are here to give Seven something to do". That said they were part of the central conceit of the "ghost story" episode, and I actually liked that one a lot. I mean it's not classic or anything, but it was a solid B and that's about as good as Voyager gets. I...guess I'll watch Enterprise after this? Not really excited about it, but I mean...pandemic...so may as well, right?

My only other options are to explore Disco/Picard/Lower Decks further, and as discussed many times before that clearly is not the kind of Trek that I like so that's not even an option

 

[Aleryn]

I'd wager Enterprise is worth giving a shot. Its definitely 'old' Trek as you describe it when compared to Discovery and whatnot. Plus the final season deserves its high reputation.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

No offense to people who liked the Picard show. I really enjoyed some parts of it like Seven, Riker and Troi's family, and other stuff. But I just don't like Star Trek presented as grimdark, especially a Federation that is callous, corrupt, and just too much of an allegory of certain modern nation state governments. And... and... Picard died! I was moved! I was impressed that they... they killed him! And nope, he's an android now. I saw it a mile away, BUT THEY STILL DID IT. *rants in circles for too long*

LOL not remotely offended, and they don't seem like uncommon or fundamentally unreasonable takes, but I will offer a different perspective on a few things as a contrast:

Spoiler

I wouldn't categorize Picard as "grimdark". It certainly has grim tones to it at times, and has needlessly gratuitous scenes in it, so I get the complaint and understand it not being people's cups of tea. (I still resent a few very specific scenes myself.) But being grim is thematically not the objective of the narrative, but rather the context of the themes which still very much remain hopeful and positive. That's really a common complaint against nuTrek I see in general, and it doesn't feel like a fully considered critique when the context is overlooked. To me, grimdark things are just sad/depressing for the sake of being sad/depressing alone. But when it's ultimately in service to a larger narrative arc, especially one that is fundamentally hopeful and positive, that's an important distinction I think. The violence and brutality in Picard serve to inform why we would see certain characters in the show have made the choices in their lives that led up to that point, but PIC usually shows that in the service of advocating for being better/living up to lofty ideals, and characters are rewarded for doing so. In that sense, it's no different from some of the darker storylines in DS9, VOY, and ENT that generally get fan approval, IMO. To say nothing of films like WoK.

I also wouldn't say that the Federation as depicted is "callous, corrupt, and too much of an allegory for certain modern nation state governments" either. At least, not any more so than old Trek. There's no real obvious corruption in PIC beyond spies that have infiltrated Starfleet. And that's not unique to PIC. And the callousness is more a product of the Federation at this point in time being beleaguered by war and incalculable loss and the resources of Starfleet being spread too thin, than any willful intent. Both of these things were common Star Trek themes in the TNG-Era. The Maquis in particular say hello. But when presented with evidence and given a choice, Starfleet Command made the right decision and immediately dispatched a fleet to intervene and protect, which I don't think would be the case if they truly were callous and corrupt.

As for Picard's death, that's really a matter of perspective, I think. If you consider uploading your memory patterns into a robot to be a continuation of life, then I guess. I think there's a good argument though for that not being the case. IIRC Data himself argued in The Measure of a Man that even if you uploaded his memories into an identical machine, it would still not truly be him. Which is actually what informs his decision to have Picard pull the plug on him, because he views himself as having already died and thus come to the end of his natural lifespan. Picard as a character is not immediately bothered by such philosophical quandaries, but I get the feeling that this'll be an ethical issue that's explored in later seasons as he contemplates maybe he's just a soulless golem that thinks he's Picard.

 

[Phantoon]

I also like the fact that no matter how bad it looks, no matter what the world around him thinks and no matter the cost, Picard is unflinchingly moral. It highlights Picard's strengths by showing his incorruptibility. The show also takes away everything he's relied on in the past, his crew, his ship, Starfleet, and even his mind, and it questions if what he has left is enough. Of course it is, he's Jean-Luc Picard.

Season 2 needs to back off on the gratuitousness of some of it, but I really liked Star Trek: Picard. He's like a member of the family and it's just good to have him back.

 

[zonetrope]

TNG, "Sarek": Roddenberry's influence on early Next Gen was a mixed bag, but I like that he made the series wait nearly three full seasons before devoting an episode to something from TOS. The fan service on early Discovery is so constant and deafening that the series is just now figuring out its identity.

 

[Lakupo]

I'd wager Enterprise is worth giving a shot. Its definitely 'old' Trek as you describe it when compared to Discovery and whatnot. Plus the final season deserves its high reputation.

Enterprise definitely continues the "Bermaga" era of Star Trek from Voyager, but it's kind of tough to get motivated to rewatch it sometimes. The first two seasons are kind of meandering, and half of the episodes I get from the random ep generator I'm just like "That one? Bleh". S3 and S4 are both much stronger and have a clearer direction, but are also very arc heavy (although the Xindi arc has plenty of standalone eps sprinkled in, i.e. Similitude), so it's usually more of an investment. Then again, my current rewatch of Voyager started with "I'll watch some Seven of Nine and Borg episodes to get ready for Picard." and then "I'll watch random episodes as if it were syndicated" and finally "I'll just watch the whole series now." So, what do I know about "investment."

Did I mention this on the old forum? I can't remember anymore. Time is a construct. I watched this video essay about How Voyager Is Good Actually a few months ago, and while the main structure of the video breaks down the show by each character and their arcs, there's definitely a common thread on how it treats those characters during each era of the show (obviously the introduction of Seven is the biggest breakpoint, but there's some other shifts in the middle of those two eras). But I do mainly agree with the general thesis of the video: most of the episodes are good, so the show itself is good. We'll see if I still agree with that by the time I get through S7.

Speaking of the "Berman" era, the same guy who did that video essay previously did a video about how much of 90s Trek was both shaped by Rick Berman, and also the good stuff happened in spite of Rick Berman. I mean, a lot of that is common knowledge, but especially damning when it's all laid out at once. (More Berman = Worse Show, and that especially applies to the worst parts of Enterprise like the first two seasons) There's also some interesting contrasts in that a lot of elements of new Trek are pretty much totally opposite to what Berman allowed in the Trek series he was overseeing (ongoing storylines, women who aren't objectified, gay people)

LOL not remotely offended, and they don't seem like uncommon or fundamentally unreasonable takes, but I will offer a different perspective on a few things as a contrast:

Spoiler

I wouldn't categorize Picard as "grimdark". It certainly has grim tones to it at times, and has needlessly gratuitous scenes in it, so I get the complaint and understand it not being people's cups of tea. (I still resent a few very specific scenes myself.) But being grim is thematically not the objective of the narrative, but rather the context of the themes which still very much remain hopeful and positive. That's really a common complaint against nuTrek I see in general, and it doesn't feel like a fully considered critique when the context is overlooked. To me, grimdark things are just sad/depressing for the sake of being sad/depressing alone. But when it's ultimately in service to a larger narrative arc, especially one that is fundamentally hopeful and positive, that's an important distinction I think. The violence and brutality in Picard serve to inform why we would see certain characters in the show have made the choices in their lives that led up to that point, but PIC usually shows that in the service of advocating for being better/living up to lofty ideals, and characters are rewarded for doing so. In that sense, it's no different from some of the darker storylines in DS9, VOY, and ENT that generally get fan approval, IMO. To say nothing of films like WoK.

I also wouldn't say that the Federation as depicted is "callous, corrupt, and too much of an allegory for certain modern nation state governments" either. At least, not any more so than old Trek. There's no real obvious corruption in PIC beyond spies that have infiltrated Starfleet. And that's not unique to PIC. And the callousness is more a product of the Federation at this point in time being beleaguered by war and incalculable loss and the resources of Starfleet being spread too thin, than any willful intent. Both of these things were common Star Trek themes in the TNG-Era. The Maquis in particular say hello. But when presented with evidence and given a choice, Starfleet Command made the right decision and immediately dispatched a fleet to intervene and protect, which I don't think would be the case if they truly were callous and corrupt.

As for Picard's death, that's really a matter of perspective, I think. If you consider uploading your memory patterns into a robot to be a continuation of life, then I guess. I think there's a good argument though for that not being the case. IIRC Data himself argued in The Measure of a Man that even if you uploaded his memories into an identical machine, it would still not truly be him. Which is actually what informs his decision to have Picard pull the plug on him, because he views himself as having already died and thus come to the end of his natural lifespan. Picard as a character is not immediately bothered by such philosophical quandaries, but I get the feeling that this'll be an ethical issue that's explored in later seasons as he contemplates maybe he's just a soulless golem that thinks he's Picard.

Spoiler

As for grimdark, I'd say that ST: Picard's ethos is "This world is a hella grimdark Lovecraftian nightmare, let's try not to be grimdark"... but man, is it hella grimdark. If anything, the first half of Disco S1 was almost the opposite, in that it leaned into becoming more grimdark before coming to their senses. They both tried to accomplish this by killing off side characters for the sake of it. At least Disco learned from its mistakes, and even was able to undo one of its biggest ones. Hopefully Picard will also recover from its stumbles.

 

[Büge]

I started rewatching DS9 recently, after I'd finished off TNG. I've watched about ten episodes, and... they're not bad. Some of the characterization is kind of iffy so far. Dax has a very Spocklike aloofness to her and Bashir vacillates between "callow, breathless tenderfoot" and "self-aggrandizing lothario". Kira feels like early-TNG Worf at the moment (though a better comparison might be Tasha Yar). She's very aggressive and quick to draw her phaser. It was really smart of them to bring in a character with an established... character like Miles O'Brien. He seems to be one of the few factors anchoring this show thus far (the other being Sisko). Interestingly, the Odo/Quark dynamic seems to be the only one that started out strong from the beginning. Rene Auberjonois and Armin Shimmerman have a natural chemistry between them.

As for the episodes, as I said, they're decent. All the characters seem to have lots to do. We've had a few locked-room mysteries, which I predict will be a popular theme to revisit. When you have this many interesting characters to play with, why wouldn't you plop a whodunit in their laps? There was also a courtroom episode concerning Dax, titled... uh, "Dax". I thought it was a clever way to explore the philosophy of Trill joinings without a lot of "you see, Timmy" moments.

About the only weak spot in the series so far is the episode "Q-Less". It really felt like the main cast were guest stars in The Q & Vash Show. I have to wonder if the episode was written from an edict on high, from producers who didn't have much faith in the series. It was almost like a backdoor pilot for a TV show starring Vash. Such an idea would never get off the ground. A series about a beautiful woman going on adventures to exotic locales, discovering artifacts and escaping deadly pitfalls, like some kind of a... a "tomb raider"? The very notion is absurd!

 

[zonetrope]

All the characters seem to have lots to do.

That really struck me about DS9 as well, watching the various series over the last year or so. Some characters are better developed and written than others, but there's a clear effort throughout not to sideline any of them (except Jake, who they never really figure out).

 

[FelixSH]

DS9 has my favourite crew, of all the older Trek shows. Kira is one of my favourite Trek characters, period, Odo an Quark are a ton of fun,... I could go on, I really love these people.

I...guess I'll watch Enterprise after this? Not really excited about it, but I mean...pandemic...so may as well, right?

I don't dislike the new Trek shows, but they also don't really work for me as much I'd want them to. It's a shame, but oh well.
Anyway, I watched Enterprise more-or-less for the first time myself a few months ago. I really liked it. It still feels like 90s Trek, while slowly becoming more of an 00s show. Especially the first two seasons are still a show about exploring spsce. The crew isn't the best, but they are fine, and work well from S3 onwards. I'm very forgiving, so there might be more clunkers than I think, but it definitely has it's classics in the first two seasons.
I think I'm rambling a bit here. Just give it a chance, you might enjoy it, if nothing else, than for being 90s Trek. And S4 is legit great, but also needs the buildup from the first three seasons, I think.

 

[Aleryn]

LOL not remotely offended, and they don't seem like uncommon or fundamentally unreasonable takes, but I will offer a different perspective on a few things as a contrast:
[spoiler parts snipped]

Excellent defense of Picard, Wisteria. I still feel very negative about it but your reasoning has convinced me to give it another chance when I have the time.

Enterprise definitely continues the "Bermaga" era of Star Trek from Voyager, but it's kind of tough to get motivated to rewatch it sometimes...

Said better than I could. That Bermaga effect is why I stopped watching the original airing somewhere in season 2 because of boring recycled TNG scripts. Thinking back on it, I did the same thing around Voyager season 2. Streaming made it possible to watch the meh stuff in my own time. Both those shows end better than their meandering middles.

Bashir vacillates between "callow, breathless tenderfoot" and "self-aggrandizing lothario".

Bashir is just insufferable at times in the first season of DS9. Possibly a tad longer? As the odd duck who enjoys the early seasons of shows like this because things aren't fully defined yet, that is the bit of DS9 I still gag over near the beginning.

DS9 has my favourite crew, of all the older Trek shows. Kira is one of my favourite Trek characters, period, Odo an Quark are a ton of fun,... I could go on, I really love these people.

Depth of characters and the interactions across the board, and Kira alone - YUP! Those depths and interchanges are why I loved Babylon 5 as well.

I think what helped me along early in DS9 is how much I appreciated the Cardassians as villains. TNG only broached on them a few times but there was a menace that I felt would be good counter to the Federation. Its similar to how the Romulans were presented as the main rival to the Federation in early TNG.

 

[JBear]

Bashir and Geordi post in the same MRA subreddits.

 

[Aleryn]

Early on Bashir and those weirdly written outliers of Geordi, sure. I remember them both growing out of it eventually?

 

[JBear]

Bashir, maybe. To a point. They find more interesting things to do with him, at any rate, so that stuff gets sidelined.

Geordi, on the other hand? I think he's a mod on that subreddit.

 

[FelixSH]

I completely forgot about Bashirs, uh, problematic beginnings. If my memory is correct, that part of his should get completely dropped.

Bashir and Jadzia are also the weakest part of the crew, I think. Bashir gets more interesting as time goes on, but Jadzia never quite worked for me. She isn't bad, but compared to the rest of the cast, she felt one-note.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Yeah, I'm on season 6 and Bashir is mostly rehabilitated by then, thanks to more focus on his friendship (and sadly not more) with Garrak being a lot of the focus. Jadzia is a high concept character and in theory I love the idea of a crewmember who more than anyone wants to just take a big bite outta life and is friend to all but she just never works for me either. It doesn't help that the symbiote stuff never manifests into interesting stories like Klingon, Ferengi and even Bajor culture does. And her (spoilers for season four and beyond) her and Worf as a couple feels wrong. They don't work for me and both could have partners that are more interesting.

But despite that, I think DS9 has a strong cast. Kira is by far my favourite and most complex female character (who has a succession of boring-ass boyfriends), Odo adds a detective, which is great on its own, who also is a very sad melancholy character in an intriguing way. And of course, the Ferengi are all across the board great and often add a folk tale element to their stories.

 

[zonetrope]

Even later Bashir has that moment where he's hiding in close quarters with Jadzia and basically says "Man, this sure would be awkward if I were a creep like I used to be, heh heh."

 

[Büge]

Its similar to how the Romulans were presented as the main rival to the Federation in early TNG.

The Romulans were underutilized as a foe, I think. They schemed and threatened, but they'd just kind of slink back to the shadows. It never really felt like they worked directly against the Federation.

Kira is by far my favourite and most complex female character (who has a succession of boring-ass boyfriends)

How does anyone mistake guys like Bareil or Shakaar for charismatic? They're both about as interesting as day-old oatmeal.

 

[Büge]

Speaking of Romulans, I just got to "Unification" I/II on my listen through Mission Log and I learned something interesting. The Klingon captain who ferries Picard and Data to Romulus is played by Stephen Root.

If that name isn't familiar to you, maybe this role of his will jog your memory:

Spoiler

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Oh, I'm a huge Roothead. I liked Office Space but Root is omnipresent in good film and TV (and, inexplicably, the star of Tripping the Rift. Ew.) I was introduced to him on NewsRadio where he played way-too involved billionaire Jimmy James.

He appears in a ton of the Coen Brothers movies and has a great role in Get Out and appears in cartoons a lot (most notably as Bill in King of the Hill) and this guy is just... just my favourite. Seriously, if we ever do a top 50 character actors list, he might be my number one.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

But despite that, I think DS9 has a strong cast. Kira is by far my favourite and most complex female character (who has a succession of boring-ass boyfriends), Odo adds a detective, which is great on its own, who also is a very sad melancholy character in an intriguing way. And of course, the Ferengi are all across the board great and often add a folk tale element to their stories.

DS9's cast strength lies mostly in its willingness to hand over so much screen time to such a large and well developed supporting cast. And that's not something that happens early in the show either, but something you can really only fully appreciate after having experienced the entire breadth of the show. Rom starts off as an idiotic, but also malevolent brother of Quark's who is nearly irredeemably sexist and racist. Same for Nog too basically. But by the third season they begin giving each of them more texture as they explore the issues of them not living up to Ferengi ideals and trying to find new paths in life for them both. Without that supporting cast, they're a main crew on the level of TNG and VOY, IMO. Where half the characters are brilliant/fascinating, and the other half intriguing on paper but hard to write good stories for.

(except Jake, who they never really figure out).

I disagree with this, I think the writers learned a lot from the Wesley experiment. And Jake's whole arc is basically just a regular kid trying to grow up in the shadow of his great father, and trying to find his own path in life. Which I think really works over the entire breadth of the show as he goes from a kid trying to have fun in a shitty situation, to deciding he doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps, to discovering his passions in life (writing) and then finding his own way to contribute to the war effort by maximizing his skills (reporter/spy). And even if you set all of that aside, him and his father are probably my favorite, most well realized, father/son relationship on television that always felt genuine and real. They did real good with Jake. It's one of those story arcs that you probably have more or less appreciation for if it resonates with you or not.

The Romulans were underutilized as a foe, I think. They schemed and threatened, but they'd just kind of slink back to the shadows. It never really felt like they worked directly against the Federation.

They were continuing the Cold War paradigm from TOS. Schemed and threatened, but slink back to the shadows was the whole point of their allegory. Whether that makes for good TV anymore, especially for a millennial audience that largely didn't live through the Cold War themselves is another story.

I think that's a big reason why TNG and DS9 shifted toward Cardassians. Having to work with former enemies who may or may not be bargaining/cooperating in good faith was definitely a post-USSR development that feels a little more relatable personally. Of course, they shifted away from that too after a few years when the US/West largely got more comfortable with Yeltsin's Russia in the late 90s/found them boring adversaries.

 

[Aleryn]

Having inherited my fandom of Star Trek from family, I knew from a very young age that the Romulans were a diaspora of the Vulcans. Spock was probably my favorite of the TOS crew and I thought how... weirdly different the Romulans were intrigued me. Especially being told they split thousands of years in the past, when humans were far simpler in technological advancement. Maybe that seed of 'whoooooooooooaaaa' sparked a lot of wonder and headroom of their possibilities the average viewer didn't really consider based on what we actually saw of them.

 

[Fredde]

TNG, "Sarek": Roddenberry's influence on early Next Gen was a mixed bag, but I like that he made the series wait nearly three full seasons before devoting an episode to something from TOS. The fan service on early Discovery is so constant and deafening that the series is just now figuring out its identity.

I mean, there was "The Naked Now" in season 1, which was pretty explicitly a followup to "The Naked Time".

 

[Büge]

I watched more of DS9 season 1 and it continues to be good. But then I asked myself if "good" was good enough. Looking back, I think that it wasn't. Maybe that was a large contributing factor to why few people gave it a chance.

Consider: on the one hand you have TNG. It's established. You know what you're getting. On the other, you have DS9. It's new, there's some neat stuff in there, but they're doing a lot of the same thing as TNG. Space anomalies, strange aliens, mysteries. You know, exploring. True, you have more characters with their own cultures and agendas, and that gets us some good dialogue and character moments, but the framework of a lot of the episodes I've seen so far wouldn't look out of place in later seasons of TNG.

I think people cut early TNG some slack because it was the new Star Trek series on TV. Viewers gobbled up every episode, even the ones that are now looked at as weak, because it was the only game in town. The same can't be said for DS9. The producers were basically competing against themselves. Still, I can appreciate what they were trying to do.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I think having TNG as a direct point of contrast to compare to while both were concurrently airing was a big part of the show not being as warmly received. But I don't think it had to do with it being too similar. Quite the contrary, I believe the differences are what caused people to not embrace the show. That was at least my lived experience back when it was airing, and also what the showrunners believed to have been the case from all the feedback they used to get while making the show.

When DS9 first came on the air, I was hyped beyond belief. I was 8, TNG was my favorite thing ever, and as you said I gobbled up everything. I very much wanted and expected DS9 to be more TNG, because to me, TNG was Star Trek. And when it wasn't more TNG, and tried hard to differentiate itself, I instinctively rejected it for being too different from what I wanted. And what I wanted was more TNG, not these poor imitations. I never made an attempt to evaluate the shows on their own merits, or even considered that "exploring the unknown" could be done in esoteric ways like challenging franchise conventions.

Rejecting differences and fearing change is honestly to me, the main throughput of Trek fandom. Literally every single new entry to the franchise has been met with an initial backlash that was wholly irrational and based on old fans being upset that it was different from their expectations in some way or another. Even TNG, which was definitely not cut any slack. Kirk vs Picard/Trekkie vs Trekker defined the fandom for decades for a reason.

It really wasn't until I was an adult, and once Star Trek as a franchise was 'dead' with no prospects for the future for all intents and purposes that I went back and gave DS9/VOY/ENT a real fair shake and began to appreciate each entry for what they were rather than what I wanted them to be. And I think that all of the renewed interest and appreciation for these shows by fans who never appreciated them while they were running is for similar reasons. Especially now that we have nuTrek now as an active point of comparison. DS9 is going to feel a lot more like TNG when you've got the perspective of Into Darkness or DISCO to compare against.

 

[Aleryn]

I recall DS9 having a notable theme of religion and faith coexisting with secular humanism - or just atheism in a possible future. There were other examples of this at the time like Babylon 5 [hi G'kar and Delenn] - but that particular theme stuck with me early on. Especially Kira's take on it, and Sisko's unique role. Going off recall alone - especially for the time is how I held it apart from TNG.

 

[Sprite]

I wish someone would revisit the idea DS9 had of what happens to a religion when we discover the entities they worship are irrefutably real. It’s an insanely compelling concept that they barely explore, I assume because of when and where DS9 aired.