DS9-Better of the trek shows?

[Welverin]

Emm- I haven't seen the pilot in a lot of years. Guess I should NetFlix them or something. Thanks, this is most helpful.

It should be on Spike very soon, if it hasn't already. So you can start from the beginning there (I mention when it's on, on the first page).

 

[Wayside]

Well, the whole 'perceives the whole of time' thingy was first posited by St. Augustine in City of God, so it seems pretty clear that the DS9 writers were trying to conflate at least some quality of the Christian God with their wormhole aliens. I guess that doesn't answer 'why?'. Go read St. Augustine...

The idea of atemporal divinity is certainly not an invention of Augustine's. One (much older) expression can be found in Vedic literature, for example (you may have noticed that the writers of DS9 even made "Vedic" a spiritual office for Bajorans, so the connection is fairly straightforward). There are others.

 

[Ranger REG]

I'd watch The Cage (or the two-part rehash, the Menagerie) a thousand times before I sat through Star Trek the motion picture, again. You can compare the two all you want, but I don't feel that they're at all alike. Hell, the best parts of ST: TMP were Kirk vs. the Bureucracy. The Cage at least had an interesting mystery (and they used a phaser cannon!) What does TMP have to compare to that?

Boring dialogue with the somewhat humanized intelligence of a 1970's space probe?

Yep. With all of the knowledge V'Ger have attained in the universe and suddenly developing its own awareness, it always questioned, "What's next?"

 

[Mallus]

The idea of atemporal divinity is certainly not an invention of Augustine's. One (much older) expression can be found in Vedic literature, for example (you may have noticed that the writers of DS9 even made "Vedic" a spiritual office for Bajorans, so the connection is fairly straightforward). There are others.

Thanks. I think by 'first posited' I actually meant 'the first time I heard this was in...". I sometimes forget those aren't the same thing...

And somehow I managed to miss the whole Veda/Vedic thing. Color me embarassed, that was obvious.

 

[Harmon]

It should be on Spike very soon, if it hasn't already. So you can start from the beginning there (I mention when it's on, on the first page).

Ya, I know. Problem though- I can't always watch TV when its on, and can't always get around to watching a tape (if I taped every episode, and watched them as fast as I could, I would run out of tapes before I got through one).

Between school, homework, work, house work, etc. I just haven't the time.

 

[Harmon]

Question- The Founders, sent out one hundred of their people to explore the Alpha Quadrant, why was it that they didn't do more to investigate it themselves, or did I miss something there?

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Question- The Founders, sent out one hundred of their people to explore the Alpha Quadrant, why was it that they didn't do more to investigate it themselves, or did I miss something there?

My guess would be fear. You learn very late in the series that nearly everything the Founders have done, up to and including creating the Dominion, has been out of fear of outsiders. They fear both what they do not know, and what they cannot control.

Sending out adult Changlings into the Alpha Quadrant runs the risk of exposing the location of the Changling Homeworld, and the secrets of the Changling people, to the sentients of the Alpha Quadrant. On the other hand, by doing what they did, they risk very little. After all, the 100 Changlings sent into the Alpha Quadrant were infants. They knew nothing of their people, nor where their planet was.

So the Changlings send out the 100 children, with only a genetically implanted urge to seek out home, into the unknown. If the children are captured and interrogated, no biggie. They don't have any secrets to reveal. If, on the other hand, some of them manage to learn about the Alpha Quadrant and then return home, big win for the Changlings.

Or so I always supposed.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So the Prophets manipulated Sisko's life so that he would chose to join Star Fleet, have his wife killed by the Borg, and be given the command of the station at Baijor or was he pre destined by their influence to be the Emissary (which means he had no choice in his life, just what the Prophets allowed him to have between birth and the moment when he became the Emissary)?

I recall something about the Prophets being aliens that did not preceive time in a linaer fashion (they saw all moments in time at the same exact moment or something like that). I suppose that would be because they lived within a Worm Hole, where Space/Time is warped beyond even our theortical understanding (even Hakings says he doesn't completely understand Worm Hole theory). How is it that beings that lived in such a fashion would even care about the people of Baijor or its people? More over how would the people of Baijor even know of the Prophets? And why would they worship them?

I guess it is actually impossible to say what the Prophets did if we want to describe it from their perspective.
In our "linear" view on the time we know that he was created by the Prophets, but "later" we have no clear evidence that they are manipulating his actions without him seeing it.
We know that Sisko was ignoring the wishes of the Prophets a few times.
So I think he had a free will from our linear perspective. It was his decision to go to Starfleet, and his decision to marry Jennifer... Maybe a bit of it is result of his "parents", just as some of our traits are result of our parents (maybe his inherent love for Bajor drove him to go for the stars, looking for what he subconciously missed on Earth. But the exact details on how he got there are still upto him...)

Though from the prophets perspective, it probably looked different. They didn´t see his development, they just saw him and his life as a whole, beginning, middle and end at once.
To say the truth, it´s probably impossible for us (including the writers of the show) to really understand or describe this view on time.

 

[Harmon]

Question to Trekkies-

I have none of the DVDs of the series. Do the disks have any back ground on the shows? Helpful hints and such? Basically are the DVDs worth getting?

 

[John Crichton]

Question to Trekkies-

I have none of the DVDs of the series. Do the disks have any back ground on the shows? Helpful hints and such? Basically are the DVDs worth getting?

Yes, but at ebay/amazon prices - not what Paramount is charging.

ign.com has some good DVD reviews on each of the sets released so far...