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It’s time to live blog the one narrative in American culture that tells the simple tale of a black man stripped from his homeland, separated from his family by a British guy who raped and killed his wife and is then forced to work on the far side of the known world to rebuild a bigoted and religious society. Did I mention that the British guy is part of a collective society hell-bent on enslaving an entire civilization, taking away their culture and putting them to work harvesting resources?
Nope. It’s not Roots. It’s Deep Space Nine! Although, I’m sure Kunta Kinte is over on the Enterprise working for the same white devil that fucked up Sisko’s life. Speaking of getting on with this shit:
(Oh wait, I thought of one more, he was taken there by ship…)
0:01-3:25
Deep Space Nine, episode one opens with a little back story and then Picard spouting off “Resistance is futile.”
Remember when that phrase had enough novelty that you didn’t want to stomp Brannon Braga’s balls and throw him down a mineshaft? Yeah, me either. Aging sucks. This show aired before I was in high school and now I’m nearly dead. Let’s move on.
First of all, this first episode is long. It’s really long. Not as long as the withering stare that Sisko manages every few scenes. The bad news is his entire life is being rocked by the Borg. The good news? He’s now single ladies! No, his wife’s still breathing. Give it a minute. Yep. Dead. I hope there’s not any lingering tension between Sisko and Picard later.
3:40-3:45
Uh ohhhhh. Someone is classically trained and knows who August Wilson is! Damnit Avery, you’re on camera, not stage. Pull your shit together man!
4:55-6:00
A kid who lost his mother in a fire fight still doesn’t have enough perspective or understanding of the trials in life to stop bitching about a new assignment. Possible that future kids are mentally retarded? I mean, he sees a space station and asks if it’s a space station. This kid is going to wind up eating self-sealing stem bolts in a corner with his illiterate friend. I’m just guessing.
6:00-8:05
The opening credits just spoiled a lot of shit for you. Still, it’s the best song of the entire series. I wonder if we can convince Jim to record a cover of the Enterprise theme as a gag when we start covering Enterprise on the blog. I’ll do the vocals. He’ll probably remind me that I’m supposed to sing “Hold me Closer Tony Danza.” You know what, let’s keep things going. Did I mention this episode is long?
8:05-8:30
Miles is here and so is exposition through an idealized construct. That’s right, like every Star Trek in history, when you want some exposition but you’re too lazy to work it into the action, just have the captain talk aloud to himself for a while. Ooh, shit, I mean COMMANDER. Still, if you need to dump a lot of information fast, I suggest you get yourself a captain’s log. Now that I have Kinect for my 360 I’ll sometimes pretend that I’m a captain. Here’s how it usually goes:
Me: XBox—ESPN.
Xbox: [DOES NOTHING]
Me: Look you piece of shit, I said “Xbox—ESPN”
Xbox: [Opens Netflix]
Me: No god damnit! E-S-P-N!
The future has arrived.
8:40-8:45
Here’s how that really went:
Sisko: Why hasn’t anyone here cleaned this up
O’Brien: Because these fuckers were waiting on the blacks and the Irish to come in and do the dirty work.
P.S. There will be lots of social commentary because that’s how science fiction is often used traditionally. It’s a means of making our current societal issues “the other” and removing them far enough from our current perspective that we’re able to view them in a new and enlightened context.
I will then peel back the thin film of social construction for you, the reader (by you the reader I mean Jim—the only fucking reader. I’m not even reading this as I type it. I’m watching the episode. Are you calling me a liar? For god’s sake look at the time stamps!)
Geeze. There’s still like 120 minutes. We’d better find some sort of temporal situation before my ass starts hurting. From the sitting too much, not from feeling fucked by the fact that this show isn’t on Netflix yet so I have to watch a shit copy I downloaded illegally. We can redact that last part.
Right around the 9:00 mark:
First appearance of Quark—even though Shimmerman played another character on Trek in the past, this is a totally different character that doesn’t totally look just the same. Because that would be racist. Seriously. When dealing with alien life forms “race” isn’t even a misapplied signifier the way it is when dealing with skin color in the 20th and 21st century (the past for the sake of our reader). Somehow, though, despite all that progress, he’s still just a bad stand in for what some asshole thinks the Jews are like.
9:25-9:45
Not only do we get some classic Sisko over acting and eye movement, we get what seems to be a gay proposition from an elderly prostitute. This is exactly what happened to Joel in Canada.
Full disclosure: I once had a Bajoran earring made for me at a Ren Faire. That guy was wearing his on the right. That’s called “flagging.”
10:00-11:00
Oh, good. Jake is still whining like a pussy. I guess in space black men don’t back hand their children anymore. At what cost, progress?!!
Miles: Oh, and by the way Sisko, if you don’t have anything else to do (you know, since your wife is dead and your life is in shambles) could you go andtalktocaptainpicardyouknowtheguywhokilledyourwife?
Sisko: What was that chief?
Miles: Nothin’
Now Jake is bitching about the food replicators. No wonder Sisko holds it together so well. His wife may be dead but he’s still got plenty of pussy in his life. Jake, act like a man…and get out of those silly ass overalls.
12:00-16:00
Kira spends a while being grumpy and having a shitty haircut. We also meet Odo via comm screen. We see him again soon after when he’s screaming at bad guys.
Oh, and Odo is one of those liquid terminators.
Quark gets his first speaking part of the episode. Sisko makes his first real power play. Black people are shifty—but so is Odo. We can’t trust ANY of these fuckers.
16:15-20:00
Picard doesn’t remember killing Sisko’s wife. AWKWAAARRRD!
Sisko also reveals that he might not stay with Starfleet. I sure hope there’s a key plot point that convinces him to stay. It’s taken us too many years to get a black captain [ok fine, commander] and I’m not ready to let that go yet.
Another aside: How is it that in our actual time we have an actual black president, but it took the open minded future decades to get a black leading man? Once we got one we still only got a commander. Sisko is still the only Trek leading man who had to work his way up to captain through the course of the series.
Great moment of dramatic irony (which is when the audience knows something that the character does not you fucking idiots, stop going to google every god damn time I use a literary term) as the likely departing Sisko blackmails the departing Quark into staying.
What. A. Fucking. Hypocrite.
21:33 -24:00
Sisko eye fucks Kira while they both compare the size of their custodian dicks. Yeah, that’s right, we have a strong woman and a strong black man proving that they’re really really great at tidying up and gossiping. Thank goodness the gay, homeless, Bajoran Santa Clause comes to spare us any more.
Also, when Sisko tries to prove his hands are dirty, how the fuck is an alien white woman supposed to know the difference?
25:00-28:00
The Kai mentions irony. I’ve been preparing you assholes for it, but you weren’t ready.
I’m shocked this bitch didn’t feed Sisko a cookie. THERE IS NO SPOON!
Damnit, now I wish Avery Brooks had been Neo.
Wait a second—now that I’ve seen him in that ugly shirt I take it all back.
Also, it’s a little weird that Sisko is narrating this event with Jen as it happens. This isn’t a captain’s log, you’re looking a little crazy.
31:00-33:45
We find out that Sisko has a journey to take. You think it’s some sort of Star Trek?
Meanwhile, people are drinking and gambling again. It’s good to know that in times of tragedy we always get the important businesses up and running first. How long before we have a shuttlecraft bailout in this episode?
34:00-38:00
That awkward fellow is Julian. The attractive, smug one is Dax. Ok, so they’re both smug. Make a note heathens. Only one of them will be dead in six seasons. SPOILER!
We get to see that somehow Julian and Kira both have a decent working knowledge of the lingo of U.S. Westerns and the notion of the noble savage.
Gee, I sure wish there was some sort of plot device that we could use to see exactly how a trill works or what one looks li—OH MY GOD WE’VE BEEN TRANSPORTED TO ANOTHER PLACE!
Trills look far less fuckable than I’d hoped.
39:00-40:20
O’Brien is on the set of the Enterprise. Picard comes in to remind him that the English can get the jump on the Irish any time they like.
There’s less tension and more affection in this particular interaction with Picard. Anyone else think it’s because Picard has yet to kill anyone in O’Brien’s family? You can argue the point if you think I’m off base.
41:00
The Enterprise has left and now the Cardassians are about to wave their dicks around. You know what, come to think of it, I’m not really sure if the Cardassians are packing. Pretty ethnocentric of me I guess. All I really know is those guys found a way to rape a whole lot of Bajoran women.
You know what…we’d better make this a two-parter.
