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Character Spotlight: Nog

By Ames

After some great blogposts on Quark and Rom, we’ve got one Ferengi left to shine the spotlight on, and that’s another of our fan favorites: Nog! Similarly to his father, Nog’s character arc over the seasons of Deep Space Nine is captivating to watch, as he grows from a little punk ne’er-do-well into a fully realized, complex person full of nuance and opportunities to learn. Which is pretty much DS9 in a nutshell.

So get prepared for some character whiplash, as we’ve got both childish pranks and severe post-traumatic stress disorder to explore in our blogpost below as we applaud the impressive versatility and range of the late Aron Eisenberg. Check out what your A Star to Steer Her By hosts have assembled as some of the young Ferengi’s best and worst moments, and check out our discussion on this week’s podcast episode (jump to 1:15:10 for Nog!). And there’ll be no running on the promenade!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Vulcans stole my homework As usual, we’re starting off with the good moments, and early on in “The Nagus” we see Nog get pulled from Keiko’s school out of Rom’s sheer racism. But what’s most commendable in the young Ferengi is that he sticks with it, secretly learning to read in the cargo bay with Jake and entirely subverting Sisko’s expectations and systematic racism against the Ferengi!

Maybe this isn’t a problem. Maybe it’s an opportunity. While we gripe about how the Ferengi can be cartoonishly one-dimensional at times, there are times when their obsession with profit makes for good character and plot moments. When Nog encourages Varis Sul, Tetrarch of the Paqu, to view her land-rights situation in “The Storyteller” as a business negotiation, she finds a compromise everyone enjoys!

Say that five times fast Speaking of Nog’s business acumen, he’s clearly still learning some of the basics in “Progress” but we still enjoy watching as he and Jake create their own Milo Minderbinder–like syndicate to sell yamok sauce and self-sealing stem bolts for what will turn out to be great running gags for years to come… not to mention tongue-twisters that frequently plague us on the podcast.

Because I don’t want to end up like my father From what we know about Nog by the midpoint of season three (including some of the bad moments you’ll see below), it seems entirely random for him to want to join Starfleet as he says in “Heart of Stone.” But when he exposes to Sisko that he has dreams outside of making profit, of being something greater than his father, you really root for the guy and know he’s really going to do it!

Best friends in subspace When old man Jake Sisko is ready to embark on some outlandish quest to find his father, lost in subspace for decades, in “The Visitor,” there is absolutely no surprise that Nog is right there at his side in the Defiant, ready to do whatever it takes for his old friend. Sure, it’s an alternate future version of Nog, but the connection he has with Jake is as real as ever.

On Wednesday we wear red Of course, Starfleet Academy is a challenge for Nog, who has set his sights on getting into the elite and extremely cliquey Red Squad to make a name for himself. But when it turns out that Red Squad is just a bunch of cadets being used by Admiral Leyton for his coup in “Paradise Lost,” Nog helps Sisko to find the truth of the matter, even if it is reluctantly at first.

Not quite a Vulcan Hello The B-plot in “Blaze of Glory” may not entirely gel with the A-plot of watching Eddington’s sacrifice, but it’s still some cute stuff for Nog. When he stands up to Martok after a whole episode of getting walked all over by the Klingons, you’ve got to respect the guy. As Martok says, “Courage comes in all sizes,” and it’s great to watch Nog tackle his problems head on.

Have a good day! There’s just something about “In the Cards” that makes you feel good. Nog, being the best friend a kid could ask for, agrees to help Jake win his dad a baseball card, going so far as to loan all his money to Jake (I can hear every Ferengi screaming at that). And then the rest of the episode is them going around the station, making everyone have a genuinely nice day. It’s so cute!

Boogie woogie woogie Okay, Nog might only have one line in all of “You Are Cordially Invited,” but I just find him dancing with Jadzia at her bachelorette party just so endearing that I had to include it. Aron Eisenberg came up with the little Ferengi frog dance himself, and when Terry Farrell joins in, I find myself smiling every time. Thank you, Aron, for creating this adorable moment.

Have faith in the Great Material Continuum So the whole Rube Goldberg device that is the chain events of schemes in “Treachery, Faith, and the Great River” may be kind of a repeat of the deals from “Progress” but it’s still very clever. After he joined Starfleet, you could almost forget that Nog is a Ferengi under the ensign uniform, but he pulls off deal after deal after deal to get the chief the stabilizer he needs.

We have a casino to build While it is painful to watch Nog struggle with PTSD in “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” the way he knuckles down to assist Vic with his finances and to work on expanding the lounge into a casino is simply fascinating. It’s helping him cope, so that by the end of a brilliantly acted episode, he doesn’t even realize that he’s put himself on the road to recovery that is right for him.

He’s not just a hologram, he’s my friend Speaking of Vic’s casino, Nog is quick to pay back his holographic crooner friend for helping him recover by participating in the big heist in “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang.” Nog’s part is to crack the safe in the countroom, and when he learns that it has an auto-relock tumbler that no one was expecting, he keeps his cool, gets to work, and helps the whole crew save the day!

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Worst moments

You never get a second chance to make a first impression The very first glimpse we get of Nog in “Emissary” is him stealing shit (almost certainly at Quark’s bidding) and getting locked in the brig by Odo. He has all of two lines in the episode – “Hurry up!” and “Now!” –  but he is immediately cemented as a bad seed under the thumb of his uncle. The show literally starts Nog off with such a bad reputation there’s nowhere to go but up!

What this place needs is a school Nog’s delinquent behavior doesn’t stop there. When he and Jake strike up a friendship in “A Man Alone,” it’s by sharing the experience of pranking a couple of civilians on the promenade with some Garanian bolites, which cause them to itch terribly and turn colors in a scene that legitimately looks like torture. It’s no wonder Keiko steps in by starting up her little school.

Buckets of fun! We see another of Nog’s juvenile pranks in “The Storyteller” when he fills Odo’s bucket with oatmeal and dumps it on Jake who, utterly mortified, believes for a second that they’ve somehow killed Odo. It’s a little funny in hindsight, but at the moment it just seems cruel. Jake’s reaction of terror certainly helps that along, cementing Nog’s station status as a nuisance.

No running on the promenade! There’s one more Nog prank to make the list! When he sprays some foul-smelling fluid on Tumak in “Sanctuary,” it causes a big fight to break out with the various Skrrean kids. Nog just can’t help himself. As if these refugee kids haven’t been through enough, they have this short, big-eared, froglike nuisance wreaking havoc for them. What a brat.

No one’s asking you to think, my dear As we’ve discussed in Quark’s and Rom’s respective spotlight posts before, Ferengi culture is garbage, especially how they treat females. We see some of that come through in Nog in “Life Support” when he goes on a double date with Jake and acts like a complete asshole to Riska. He’s demeaning to her, he requests she cuts his food for him, and somehow Jake’s the one apologizing!

I’ve been looking for it for two years Even when Nog has matured and joined Starfleet Academy, we get little reminders of the miscreant that he was from the start. At his coming-of-age yardsale, Kira discovers that Nog has had her lost springball racket all along and was attempting to sell it in “Little Green Men.” Sure, that was two-years-ago Nog, but he could have returned it in all that time!

Could you massage it some more? Across so many of these posts, every time oo-mox comes up it automatically makes the worst moments lists. So when Nog tricks Faith Garland into giving him oo-mox in “Little Green Men,” and not for the first time evidently, I find it abhorrent. Here’s hoping I don’t have to bring up such rapey behavior again for a while (at least until that one Ferengi episode of Enterprise).

Healthy body, healthy mind After a season or so at Starfleet Academy, Nog suddenly becomes a tightass. The conflict with Jake, now his roommate, in “The Ascent” is manufactured and trite – the kind of odd-couple antics of eponymous sitcoms. Nog is now a neatfreak. He constantly works out. He corrects Jake’s stories without permission. It’s like his character has been rewritten to fit a punchline, and an old one at that.

I won’t turn my back on you again This one’s just a little silly peeve. After the events of “Empok Nor” when Garak’s little murder spree on the titular station, Nog vows to never turn his back on Garak when they’re out searching for supplies in “Rocks and Shoals.” But then after they get hostage-handoff’ed, he immediately turns his back on Garak as they cross the levy. Dude! What did you just say?

Red Squad, Red Squad, Red Squad! Nog got tempted by the allure of the corrupt Red Squad in “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost,” but it’s in “Valiant” that he gets thoroughly taken in. Acting Captain Watters offers Nog everything he’s ever wanted: respect, rank, and some semblance of power, in exchange for his unquestioning obedience when the utterly impossible plan goes swiftly sideways. Gee, who’da thunk?

And you find that impressive? The Dominion War sure brings out the worst in a lot of people. Sisko commits some war crimes. O’Brien is typically racist about the Jem’Hadar. And Nog starts to fancy himself a soldier, bent on killing the enemy. In “The Siege of AR-558,” he blatantly admires the Ketracel-white tubes that Reese has collected as war trophies, and Quark is all of us, displaying utter disgust at this.

You don’t come into my club and start hitting customers While we totally get that recovery from the loss of his leg is a struggle, that’s no excuse for how Nog treats his friends in “It’s Only a Paper Moon.” Living in a holodeck starts off as a way to not only avoid the people he thinks are staring at him, but to avoid helping himself get better through therapy and rehabilitation. And when Jake visits, Nog is rude to Jake’s date, and then outright attacks Jake in the middle of Vic’s set. Pally!

— You’ve got a deal! That’s the end of the Ferengi spotlights (for now?), but we’ve got more great DS9 recurring characters to examine for the next couple weeks, so make sure you’re following along here. We’re also still plodding through the Xindi arc over on our watchthrough of Enterprise, so join us on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts, and hail us over on Facebook and Twitter. Now say it with me: self-stealing stem– dammit!

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Character Spotlight: Rom

By Ames

Among your A Star to Steer Her By hosts, Rom might be the most polarizing character from all of Star Trek. Some of us (and you all know when I’m talking about Chris) worship the ground this grand nagus walks on. And some of us (oh hello, I’m Ames) would rather throw him out an air lock. His rather offensive depiction as someone who seems to have low intelligence ends up contradicted by his otherworldly engineering skills. His actually very funny scenes get offset by how his whole character becomes a goofy punchline. His Ferengi values are deplorable and yet his character journey and love of his family are commendable. And that voice…

All that to say: this blogpost is going to be our biggest roller coaster ride yet.

So get ready to dig into a bowl of tube grubs and keep your tooth sharpener handy as we dig into the moments we adore about Quark’s lesser brother and the moments we detest about him. Read on below and listen to this week’s podcast episode (jump to 1:01:34) for all the Ferengi gossip. And don’t forget to call your moogie.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

You saved your brother’s life Let’s start off with the good stuff. In “Necessary Evil” when Trazko is pillow smothering Quark, Rom screams and screams for help, foiling the assassination plot and saving his brother’s life. And you know what, it’s actually a pretty funny button when Rom screams again when he realizes that, with Quark still alive, he won’t be inheriting the bar any time soon.

I would be proud to have a son in Starfleet Even I, a bonafide Rom hater, can admit that his relationship with his son is one of the best things about his character. We see him stand up to Quark (a rarity!) and support Nog’s desire to join Starfleet in “Heart of Stone” and we’ve got to give the guy credit for wanting Nog to pursue his dreams of becoming better than his father, low bar as that may seem.

The Ferengi not-so-Benevolent Association When the Nagus’s personality has gotten rewritten in “Prophet Motive,” he somehow ends up making Rom the senior administrator of his new Ferengi Benevolent Association. And you’ve got to give Rom credit for seeing a chance to scheme that even Quark didn’t notice, as he embezzles money from the foundation before Zek turns back to normal. He’s got the lobes!

Moogie’s got the lobes for business In addition to the lovely father-son relationship with Nog, Rom’s relationship with his moogie is also extremely sweet. He eventually supports her profit-making scheme in “Family Business” even though it’s illegal for females to make money, tricks Quark into coming to terms with Ishka, and by the end of the episode is in on the plan to hide some of her profits from Brunt, FCA!

My son’s happiness is more important to me than anything, even latinum It’s worth mentioning how supportive Rom is of Nog again because in “Facets” he foils Quark’s nefarious plan to sabotage his Starfleet Academy exam, even threatening to burn the bar to the ground because he places his son’s personal journey so highly. He also goes to Garak to have Nog’s cadet uniform made personally, which is just about the cutest moment in the show.

Our union, united, will never be divided Rom proves to be a champion of the laborer in “Bar Association” when he starts up a union for Quark’s bar to fight for better pay and working conditions. Again, it’s another practice that’s illegal under Ferengi law, but that doesn’t stop Rom (even when it gets Quark attacked), who rallies his band of waiters and Dabo girls together with confidence we’ve never seen before.

Number one dads! We don’t get a lot of scenes between Sisko and Rom, the two best dads of the station (sorry Miles, but neither of these proud papas left their child to die in the woods). When Jake and Nog are quarreling over their odd-couple habits in “The Ascent”, the two fathers concoct a scheme to get them to talk out their problems and be friends again by pretending there are no other quarters available.

Do I have a reason to stay? Maybe it’s because Lewis Zimmerman comes across as such a cretin, but it feels like a victory when Rom asks Leeta out at the end of “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” and she decides to stay at the station instead of leaving to become Dr. Z’s sex object. Even though everyone already knew she’d say yes, it takes him the whole episode to muster the courage, but let’s take the win.

Self-replication. That’s the only answer. Rom’s contradictory character traits are nothing if not fascinating. Sure, he couldn’t find a cup of water if you dropped him in a lake, but he still comes up with the ingenious idea to have the cloaked minefield also be self-replicating to take on the Dominion in “Call to Arms.” Moments of sheer brilliance like this make Rom a character of simultaneous simplicity and complexity.

I walk through minefields Rom’s profound bravery is on display during season six when he works with the resistance to undermine the Dominion occupation. And it all caps off with “Sacrifice of Angels.” Rom may not have had time to prevent Damar from taking down the minefield, but he still sabotages their weapons array, giving the prophets the time they needed to save the day.

We’re not commandos, we’re negotiators What could have simply been a farcical play on The Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven gets a fresh take when Rom has a rare epiphany in “The Magnificent Ferengi”. The Ferengi don’t have the chops for fighting (except for Leck, whom we love), and Rom points out that they should treat the release of Moogie as a business deal, something more in their wheelhouse.

A kinder, gentler Nagus Rom’s entirely hyperbolized character arc concludes with him becoming Grand Nagus in “The Dogs of War.” Sure, it’s definitely entirely out of nepotism because his mother had put him there, and she’s also definitely going to be the one ostensibly in charge because she can pull his strings, but what a journey! And he’s so magnanimous about it that he even gives the bar back to Quark!

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Worst moments

Not next to that human boy. I don’t want you to have anything to do with him. Onto the bad stuff! In “A Man Alone,” Rom doesn’t even have the caricatured voice yet, but does start the series with all the typical toxic Ferengi values. It takes a battle for him to agree to let Nog attend Keiko’s classroom, and even when he does, his anti-hooman racism shows when he won’t let Nog sit with Jake, just as Sisko didn’t want his son hanging out with that Ferengi trash either.

Now go to your room. And no studying. A few episodes later, Rom pulls Nog from Keiko’s school in “The Nagus” after getting criticized by Zek for allowing his son to learn from a hooman female. It’s one of Rom’s biggest faults (and Quark’s too): his preoccupation with displaying as a typical, profitable Ferengi even among people for whom their value system is hot garbage. Rom at least eventually overcomes it.

Rom’s. Nice name for a bar, don’t you think? Another case to make that point: Rom becomes the lackey of Zek’s son Krax and helps in the attempt to kill off Quark in “The Nagus.” It’s not until later that we see more brotherly love, one-sided though it may seem. But this early in the show, Rom is much more of a typical Ferengi, obsessed with amassing power, fame, and fortune above all else.

Ferengi, Romans, Countrymen: Lend me your ears We here at the podcast really rooted for Pel in “Rules of Acquisition,” a female who really has the lobes to break free of the government’s oppression of her gender. So when Rom outs her to Quark as a female (after a scene way too comically goofy of him literally looking through Pel’s socks to find incriminating evidence), we can’t help but start siding against him, the dirty rat.

You know, come to think of it, my ear’s bothering me too Like I did with the Quark post, I will call out all the uncomfortable uses of oo-mox whenever the show sinks to such a level. We see Rom trying to trick Faith Garland into giving him oo-mox in “Little Green Men” – while his son is actively getting it! – and I just find it so gross. For how much oo-mox is played up to be a sexual act in this show, this is sexual assault, plain and simple.

Too. Much. Oo-mox. And to make things grosser, we get even more oo-mox references a couple episodes later in “Bar Association” when we learn that Rom has given himself an ear infection from too much oo-mox. And it’s self-inflicted. So basically what we’ve learned from this scene is that Rom masturbates so much that he gives himself an infection, a detail I wish I never had to learn.

Even. More. Oo-mox. I’ve got one more oo-mox mention to get out of my system because I’m just so angry every time it comes up. Literally right after Rom has admitted to rubbing his ears raw to Leeta in “Bar Association” and she shows some sympathy for him, his response is to request oo-mox from her! They’re not even dating at this point! It’s disgusting. I hate it. Minus a hundred points.

The better to hear you with Speaking of Leeta, it’s exactly a season after this that Rom finally asks her out in “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” (as we mentioned above!). But! This is a) after we learn that his first wife Prinadora swindled him on their wedding extension contract like a chump, and b) after we watch him literally tuning his ear to eavesdrop on Leeta and Zimmerman’s conversation. And somehow he still never gets the hint she’s into him. Like a chump!

If you liked it then you shoulda put a Bajoran earring on it I’m just gonna lump what a shitty partner Rom is to Leeta into one screed. In “Ferengi Love Songs,” he tries to make her sign a Waiver of Property and Profit just because Jadzia and Miles were teasing him about not being very Ferengi like. This after he started wearing a Bajoran-style earring, which strikes me as on the questionable side of cultural appropriation.

Later in “Call to Arms,” we see Rom trying to suggest Leeta’s wedding dress literally be a couple handkerchiefs and a loincloth (gross) and then once they’re married, he decides she’s leaving the station before the Dominion rolls in, without her getting a single say in her own life (more gross!). Why are all the men in this show so shit at relationships!?!?

You said the reward was twenty Shockingly, Rom’s incompetence hasn’t come up as much as I expected, but his ability to ruin things through miscommunication and shenanigans is on special display in “The Magnificent Ferengi.” He blurts out that Quark is cheating the other Ferengi out of reward money, riles up the rest of the team, and thus gets Keevan killed because he can’t keep big mouth shut.

Foul ball! I’m not alone in hating on the campy mess that is “Take Me out to the Holosuite” but Rom is so disruptively, dangerously bad at playing baseball that it warrants being on this list. How he makes it as far as he does in the tryouts only speaks to how terrible Sisko is at coaching. The guy breaks Quark’s damn head. That’s how bad he is. It goes past being funny to just being idiotic.

That’s why the lady is a scamp We have space for one more bad “Rom is a nincompoop” joke that doesn’t land. In “The Siege of AR-558,” we’re tortured with Rom’s deliberately atrocious cover of “The Lady Is A Tramp” just because Ira Behr really needed to shoehorn Vic Fontaine into as many of the final episodes as possible, and it shows because it’s just another lowbrow, asinine, bottom-feeding gag. Check that off the list.

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Well, that may have gone off the rails but whenever I have to sit through oo-mox jokes, I get testy. And sadly I already know there’s going to be more of that next week with our final Ferengi spotlight on Nog! So make sure you’re following along to catch that, join us as we continue our watchthrough of Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, engage in negotiations with us on Facebook and Twitter, and stop making oo-mox jokes!

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Character Spotlight: Quark

By Ames

Do you have the lobes for business? This week, we’re putting our knowledge of the Rules of Acquisition to the test with one of our favorite Ferengi characters: Quark! He really does it all: he tends bar, he runs a profitable casino, he romances ladies who you’d think would be way out of his league, he snarks with a certain gooey chief of security, and he schemes! Boy, does he ever scheme.

The Ferengi overall are a bit of a mixed bag, what with their ultra-capitalist, extremely misogynist society, but Quark proves throughout Deep Space Nine to be a complex and well-written person, full of contradictions and character growth. So read the full contract below and listen to this week’s podcast episode (jump to 55:53) as A Star to Steer Her By takes a seat next to Morn to try to catch the ear of the bartender. Come to Quarks, Quark’s is fun, Come right now, Don’t walk: Run!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Make him an offer he can’t refuse Ferengi-centered episodes are typically goofball comedies and worth a laugh or five, and “The Nagus” gets us off to a quite funny start. Quark’s performance as Zek’s successor is full of funny little touches, and the allusion to The Godfather with Quark stroking a gilvo as if it were a lapcat is a good joke indeed. Quark would make a fine nagus, I say. And a decent godfather.

Who wears the clothes in this relationship? Quark may start out as a typical Ferengi, but we see glimpses of his development to becoming a better person due to hanging around all these hoomans. In “Rules of Acquisition,” he’s prepared to pay Pel ten bars of latinum to set her up in a new life, and then outthinks the Nagus when she reveals herself as a female. It’s a small step, but a big one for a Ferengi!

Being with you was the happiest time of my life Somehow, Quark is at his best when paired with reciprocating love interests. In “Profit and Loss,” (not to be confused with “Profit and Lace”), he earnestly attempts to get Natima Lang to safety when the Cardassian government is after her for being a dissident. Sure, it starts off one-sided and creepy, but Natima and Quark’s love turns out to be mutual and really sweet!

Behold the power of math! Yet again, we’re highlighting an episode in which Quark is romantically paired with a kickass female and he comes out looking swish! Not only does Quark battle D’Ghor in “The House of Quark,” but he also exposes the fraudulent bookkeeping D’Ghor had done for Grilka’s house. Quark allows Grilka, one of our favorite Klingons, to realize her agency and be her best.

If they want their money back, give it to them? People give Sisko all the credit, being the Emissary and all that, but in “Prophet Motive” we get to see Quark go into the wormhole to talk to the prophets himself! To save Zek from whatever personality rewriting the denizens of the celestial temple had done to him, Quark takes it upon himself to ensure that Rule of Acquisition #10 remains true: Greed is eternal!

The bigger the risk, the bigger the win Quark’s lobes might only be rivaled by his spine, as he demonstrates an absurd amount of bravery when he disarms the bomb that had Kool-Aid Manned into the ship in “Starship Down.” The thrill of gambling with their lives is perfectly captured in the scene and you feel both the relief and exhilaration when Quark and Hanok don’t explode into little bits.

For a minute there I thought you were talking to me as a friend As we said in the Odo post, the relationship between the constable and the barman is one of the best explored in the series. We can read between the lines how much they respect each other but just can’t say it. So when Quark (in his jammies!) goes to Odo when he’s hurting over Kira in “Crossfire” and pretends it’s just for his business ventures, we all know what it really means.

I claim the Right of Proclamation One good episode with Grilka deserves another! When the ever-glorious Grilka comes to Quark seeking financial advice in “Looking for par’Mach in All the Wrong Places,” Quark goes above and beyond to win her favor. He even practices how to fight with a bat’leth and learns some of the basics of Klingon culture, all while remaining true to his Ferengi identity! Qapla’!

Let me pour you another By the time we get deep into the Dominion War, Quark is keen to play both sides, but he does his part for the little resistance band too. In “Behind the Lines,” he slyly gets Damar shitfaced enough to spill all the information he has about taking down the cloaked minefield. Like another good bartender I could name, Quark’s main role is to tend the bar and to listen.

Nobody moves except you Soon afterwards when everything in the resistance is going headlong downhill in “Sacrifice of Angels,” Quark practically single-handedly (okay, with Ziyal’s help) saves the day! He tricks a guard using a hasperat soufflé and then straight up shoots two Jem’Hadar goons and rescues everyone from the brig. If it’s not the first time Quark has deliberately killed, he sure plays it that way.

Ferengi can be just as tough as Klingons Quark’s choice to assemble an all-Ferengi elite squadron to rescue Moogie in “The Magnificent Ferengi” may seem hare-brained (it’s a goofy Ferengi episode, after all), but it also speaks to his pride in what Ferengi can accomplish. There’s also a pure familial love for Moogie that is worth all the latinum in the Nagus’s reward (minus the finder’s fee, of course).

My, what big ears you have Finally, Quark would want to flaunt how he turned out to be right in “The Siege of AR-558” when the standoff with Jem’Hadar soldiers results in massive casualties, including costing Nog his leg. But Quark staunchly protects his nephew and uses his superior Ferengi hearing to detect incoming Jem’Hadar soldiers and blow them away before they can finish Nog off.

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Worst moments

A contract is a contract is a contract We could really, really, really have done without this detail. Sarda, one of the Dabo girls, reveals in “Captive Pursuit” that Quark has sexual favors written into their contracts. It’s one thing for the Ferengi to be misogynists and kinda sleazy, but it’s a whole other level for him to engage in sexual manipulation, harassment, and assault. And for the writers to play it as a joke!!!

You Ferengi, you think you’re so clever but you’re stupid We gave Bashir a pat on the back the other week when he saved Jadzia’s life in “Invasive Procedures” when Verad and his hired goons kidnapped the Dax symbiont. But remember that it was all Quark’s fault that these worm snatchers got onto the station in the first place! In his greed to make another illicit deal, Quark let them through the docking ring. All for a little latinum.

I’ve been waiting for you Can we all agree that it’s a bad idea for the holodeck to be able to create holo-images of real people because it will always get gross? Geordi did it in “Booby Trap,” Barclay did it in “Hollow Pursuits,” Odo did it in “His Way,” and in “Meridian,” Quark violates Kira’s privacy to create a sex object for that creep Toran and make a little profit, which is a running theme with him.

No nephew of mine is going to disgrace our family name by joining Starfleet The way Quark scorns Nog for wanting to follow his dreams and join Starfleet is also a pretty bad look for the boy’s uncle. First he tries to forbid Nog from applying to Starfleet in “Heart of Stone” and then he rigs up the holodeck to ensure he’ll fail his exams in “Facets.” Quark just comes across as an overstepping asshole when it comes to his nephew in these cases.

Quark’s Treasure, ready to depart Shocking no one, Quark is looking to make another deal in kemocite which he couches in generosity while bringing Nog to Starfleet Academy in “Little Green Men.” And of course this gets them stranded in the past in Area 51 for a while, breaking the Temporal Prime Directive and perpetuating the trope that Quark will put profit over his family members at any cost.

Great Exchequer, take me now! I like to call “Body Parts” “Missed Opportunities: the episode!” When Quark learns he owes his desiccated remains to Brunt, Quark just… gives up on life and plans to get himself killed by Garak. And this is supposed to be a comedy! This is so not in Quark’s character and I lament that we didn’t get an episode of Quark faking his own death, which would be infinitely funnier and better!

Why, Quark? Why did you kill my baby? While most of Quark’s schemes are just typical goofy Ferengi shenanigans you’re meant to roll your eyes at and accept with a snicker, Quark actually sidles up to committing atrocities when he gets into the arms racket in “Business as Usual.” When even Jadzia, who’s the most forgiving of his Ferengi ways, won’t talk to him anymore, you know he’s gone and done wrong.

Oo-mox for Fun and Profit After years of development into a slightly better person, and just when you start thinking “maybe that episode in which Quark put sexual favors in his Dabo girls’ contracts was a fluke,” “Profit and Lace” comes along. The teaser shows Quark asking Aluura to consider giving him oo-mox or he’ll consider firing her. And by the end when he should have learned better, he’s right back at it. VOMIT.

You’re the worst thing that ever happened to the entire Ferengi Alliance Speaking of “Profit and Lace,” there’s more to hate in this deplorable episode. Quark gets into a screaming fight with his mother, blaming her radical feminism as the cause of all their problems with Brunt dethroning Zek as nagus. It’s an ugly fight in an ugly episode, and Quark cruelly goads his own moogie until she has a heart attack, jeopardizing their plan to reinstate Zek. And nearly killing her!

The REST of “Profit and Lace” I’m not done shitting on “Profit and Lace.” It should be obvious why we rated it hands-down the worst episode of Deep Space Nine, and Quark’s depiction of Lumba is at the heart of it. It’s like Quark has never seen a woman before and concocts the most demeaning caricature. The hormones are inexplicable. The walk is atrocious. The whole thing flies in the face of any message of equality the show might otherwise champion, all for the sake of a Ferengi joke.

I loved Jadzia as much as anyone in this room After pining for Jadzia in season six almost as much as Julian, Quark weasels his way onto the mission to get her soul into Sto-vo-kor. Throughout “Shadows and Symbols,” it feels like all he wants is to one-up the grief of the actual widower in the room, Worf.  Quark makes Jadzia’s death all about him and whines that Worf isn’t gracious enough that he’s there being underfoot.

Someone has to speak up and I’ve decided that someone is me As if all the ogling of Jadzia wasn’t enough, poor Ezri gets targeted by Quark once she arrives on the station. Quark butts in and advises her not to get involved with Worf in “Once More Unto the Breach,” and it’s none of his damn business! The scene plays it off like it’s romantic and funny and cute, but it’s all self serving because he fancies her. Ugh, why did only men largely write this show?

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All bets are final and there will be no reimbursements. That’s it for our Quark chat, but we’ve got more Ferengi characters to spotlight on the way (save me). So make sure you’re following along here, keeping up with our watchthrough of Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, place your drink order over on Facebook and Twitter, and you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Odo

by Ames

The security chief of Deep Space Nine is a lot of things: a bird, a tripwire, a glass, a bag… The list goes on and on (though our favorite is usually when he’s a cute little rat), and all of them add up to a whole that is greater than the sum of his parts. In a world full of solids, Odo fills in that Outsider Character™ whose quest to shape his identity makes for a truly engaging character journey, though many stops along the way do dabble in fascism. But we love him anyway.

So kick back in your bucket and get ready to melt as your hosts at A Star to Steer Her By explore the many, many faces of Odo, even ones for which he can’t quite get the ears right. We’ve got our favorite moments and a whole bunch of times he messed up royally below and discussed this week on the podcast (jump to 1:05:53). Harumph!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

No one has ever seen me like this before We’ve brought up this one before in our fan-favorite Lwaxana Troi post, but it’s always worth dipping into again. Forever the tightass of the station, Odo lets himself be vulnerable with our hot Betazoid mama in “The Forsaken,” and it’s such a thing of beauty for these two polar opposite characters to show each other the hidden sides of themselves.

Do holograms dream of holographic sheep? We really liked the little hologram girl Taya in “Shadowplay” when we did our Children in Star Trek post, and apparently so does Odo! Who’d have thought that the station’s chief wallflower would have such a soft spot for kids? And then he sticks up for Taya and all of the holograms because, real or not, they still qualify as people to him.

You flatter me, sir, you flatter me! Last week, we marveled at how often Miles O’Brien gets to suffer across the series, and in “Tribunal,” Odo really does his darndest to keep the chief alive. By acting as nestor in the sham Cardassian trial, Odo at the very least slows down the inevitable enough for Sisko to reveal the corruption inherent in their awful, awful legal system. O’Brien’s lawyer sure wasn’t any help!

From one laboratory specimen to another Like he did with Taya in “Shadowplay,” Odo identifies with the Jem’Hadar child in “The Abandoned.” When he realizes that Starfleet is probably going to subject him to the same kinds of tests Odo underwent as a baby blob, he takes the kid under his wing to try to treat him more like a person. It doesn’t do much good, but at least Odo got to return him to his people.

You won’t be turning against them. They will have turned against you. We joke a lot on the podcast about how much of a fascist Odo can be. And he sure can, as you’ll see in the Worst Moments list, but he does a great job not succumbing to the draw of oppressing human rights in  “Paradise Lost.” One of our favorite Evil Admirals, James Leyton, masterminds a military coup and Odo is there to work with Sisko to stop him in his tracks!

One raktajino, extra hot, two measures of kava Before Kira starts boringly pining after that dullard Shakaar in “Crossfire,” we get treated to some sweet scenes of Odo and her going about their morning briefings. And it’s downright adorable! Every morning, Odo replicates up a mug of raktajino just how Kira likes it and prepares for his chat with the major in a way that gets things off on the right foot. Cute!

Before I met her, my world was a much smaller place We have one more great Odo-Lwaxana moment to extol. It is just the tenderest, most selfless act for Odo to marry Lwaxana to get her and her baby out from under the rule of her Tavnian husband Jeyal in “The Muse.” When Odo declares all that Lwaxana has done for him and how she changed his life, we are amazed at how honest the speech is. Here’s to the happy couple!

Hardly the words of a Klingon Odo also proves to understand Klingon culture better than other Changelings (and probably some Klingons, for that matter!) in “Apocalypse Rising.” When Martok isn’t acting at all honorably about dispatching Gowron, Odo figures out that it’s Martok who’s the Changeling and exposes him to a crowd of the most honorable Klingons on Q’onos. And Gowron. Qapla’!

Well that’s fine with me, because I hate you too How could we complete a Best Moments list without mentioning his complex relationship with Quark? Their natural opposition and trademark snark make them excellent foils for each other, and though they claim the opposite in “The Ascent,” you can tell that under their sarcastic words, they really do love each other as they keep each other alive on the freezing mountain.

Now Mister Pyramid, here comes Mister Cube Watching Odo caring for the baby goo in “The Begotten” is downright adorable, but at the same time deeply sad. Odo reveals that he doesn’t want to see the baby poked and prodded like when Mora Pol was assigned to him, and he truly empathizes with the infant Changeling in a way that is so parental and personal. It makes the ending all the more heart wrenching.

You have my gratitude… and my blessing Speaking of heart-wrenching endings. Despite how much it troubles Odo that the Vorta all view him as some kind of god, Odo opts to try to help Weyoun 6 in “Treachery, Faith, and the Great River” as much as he can. And when Odo bestows the dying Weyoun with his blessing, it comes across as a kindness between people, regardless of whether he believes it or not.

Talk about a Great Link! Though Odo’s relationship with Kira Nerys started out squicky, as you’ll see in a moment, you can’t help rooting for them. And when Odo chooses being with this solid over someone of his own kind in “Chimera,” it feels like a big win. Odo may not be able to link with Nerys, but the equivalent he whips up in the closing scene is visually stunning and emotionally cathartic.

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Worst moments

Elementary, my dear: I obviously did it! First and foremost, Odo’s first duty is to justice and he just can’t help himself from solving a good mystery. So in “A Man Alone,” he keeps accidentally proving that he committed the murder of Ibudan all along, even though he didn’t. After all, Occam’s razor teaches us that the most obvious answer is probably that Changelings are behind it.

Taking his bucket and going home If I had a nickel for every time Odo quit his chief of security job in a huff… well I’d have two nickels but it’s still weird it happened twice. First in “Move Along Home” when Odo has a little tantrum when Primmin comes onboard and then AGAIN when Eddington comes onboard in “The Search.” Odo, I have no idea how old you actually are, but grow the hell up!

Untie my hands before you start to blame me Let’s just clump all our “Odo is a fascist” moments into this example. In “The Maquis,” Odo makes it clear that he wishes he were given unbridled power in order to keep the station safe, but of course that comes at the expense of civil rights. When he states that Terok Nor was safer under Cardassian occupation, you see just how little he initially cares for the people he’s protecting.

So happy together… except for Jadzia When Odo merges with Curzon during Jadzia’s zhian’tara in “Facets,” what we get is just an asshole who doesn’t want to reabsorb back into the symbiont, leaving Dax feeling incomplete. And while a lot of that is Curzon’s fault, Odo is a part of Curzodo, and he claims that this is how they both want it to be. He entirely fails to consider Jadzia’s personhood. What a selfish jerk.

Solids and liquids just don’t blend It’s never a good look for a guy to get personally offended when a girl doesn’t like him, but Odo shows us a master class in incel behavior in “Crossfire” when Kira’s relationship with Shakaar gets serious. Dude, she’s just not into you. There’s no reason to go ballistic in your quarters and break all our hearts by destroying the plant that Kira had gotten you as a quarters-warming gift.

You don’t even belong here. I do. Try as he might, Odo cannot undo the mistake he made that gets revealed in “Things Past” because this isn’t actually a time travel episode. The Shyamalan twist of this episode is that it was all Odo’s fault that three Bajorans had gotten executed seven years prior because the constable was too lazy to do his damn job and see that they were innocent all along.

This is what increased security looks like? 90% of the time, Odo’s infatuation with security goes above and beyond what should be reasonable. And yet, when a serial killer is murdering off Kira’s friends in “The Darkness and the Light,” he doesn’t notice when a) Furel and Lupaza sneak onto the station, b) they get blown to smithereens, and c) Kira absconds with his list of suspects. You’re losing your touch, Odo!

What’s a nice woman like you doing with a dataport? We gave Geordi stink for getting romantically involved with the woman he was investigating in “Aquiel.” We gave Julian stink for all the patients he grossly seduces. And you’d better believe we’re going to give Odo stink for banging the woman in witness protection he was supposed to be protecting in “A Simple Investigation.” Dude! Gross! That is so not okay!

Tell Kira I want her to know it was me! An alternate timeline Odo gets away with blinking out an entire society of people – the descendants of his friends, no less! – to stop Kira from getting killed. What’s even more screwed up is that our Kira would have preferred dying so this planet of living, breathing people could continue existing in “Children of Time,” but Gaian Odo could only think of how it affects him.

Solids just wouldn’t understand Odo gets tempted by the Female Changeling at the top of season six of the show, and it’s agonizing to watch him totally get suckered in by her dangling the Great Link over him all the time. In “Behind the Lines,” he’s so busy linking with her while his friends in the resistance need him that it foils their plans and gets Rom captured.

Turn her no into a yes! I rag on “His Way” a lot, and for good reason! It rewards toxic masculinity by giving Odo what he always wanted after Vic has tricked him and Kira into a date. It’s not all on Vic though! Odo valiantly refuses to get involved with Lola Crystal, but he is more than okay with wooing one that was supposed to be like the real thing! That’s not romantic, guys. That’s creepy.

Anyone can always steal a shuttlecraft! We already gave O’Brien stink for releasing feral Molly into the wild last week, and we’ll probably do it again when we get to our Keiko spotlight, but when it comes to “Time’s Orphan,” Odo’s hands are dirty too! When one of his security goons catches the O’Briens stealing a shuttle, Odo just lets them go. Where’s your sense of justice this week, constable?

— And that’s all the security footage we have this week from the station. Keep following us here as we shine the spotlight on Odo’s better half next week – the magnificent Ferengi himself: Quark! You can also keep following along with our watchthrough of Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you listen to podcasts, harumph with us over on Facebook and Twitter, and watch out for rats! They might be Changelings!

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Miles O’Brien

By Ames

Though he was introduced in The Next Generation (in the pilot episode, no less!), Miles Edward O’Brien doesn’t really get to stretch his legs until he gets promoted to chief engineer in Deep Space Nine. Not much room in the transporter room, I’m afraid. As Star Trek’s most epitomic everyman, the chief isn’t some magic-powered alien or augmented human or even a pinnacle of futuristic ethics. Hell, it’s his flaws that make him more relatable than most other characters in the franchise, and he remains one of the most popular crewmembers all around!

Is it Colm Meaney’s approachable yet nuanced performance? Is it the strength of the writing of DS9? Or do we just love watching a grown man suffer in the way only O’Brien can? Find out below as your hosts of A Star to Steer Her By shine this week’s spotlight on the chief, and listen to this week’s banter over on the podcast (beam over to 55:13). Jaysus!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

They say you will be doing this manually, sir. No automation.  O’Brien shows up in the first TNG episode, “Encounter at Farpoint,” though he doesn’t get a name yet. And even though Picard orders Riker to reattach the saucer section as a test of his skills, frankly O’Brien does almost all of the work. Riker really only tells O’Brien to reattach the two sections and he just goes and does it while Riker gets all the credit. No respect, I tell ya!

The minstrel boy to the war has gone For most of TNG, O’Brien is stuck in the transporter room, but he gets to use those abilities to beam over to the Phoenix in “The Wounded”! Even through shields! Now that’s impressive on its own, but there’s more. Despite his predilection towards hating the spoonheads, he talks Captain Maxwell out of destroying a Cardassian supply vessel and surely inciting another war.

I’ve been doing this for twenty-two years and I haven’t lost anybody yet One more great use of transporter chief O’Brien comes when Barclay is exhibiting transporterphobia in “Realm of Fear.” Though most of the crew view Barclay’s eccentricities as irrational, O’Brien remains understanding and patient throughout, and works with Reg to figure out what’s really going on in the pattern buffer and save the crewmen trapped in there.

Now you are Tosk as well, O’Brien Our overall favorite Miles moment from the show is probably how he stands up for Tosk in “Captive Pursuit” and helps him escape from his hunters. In one of our best examples showcasing when it’s a good idea to disobey the Prime Directive, O’Brien makes a statement by taking off his combadge to go do what’s right, saving the life of a subjugated person.

I’ve met some Cardassians I didn’t like, and I’ve met some I did O’Brien starts off “Cardassians” being racist about letting Rugal play with Molly or share their table, but it’s commendable how he warms up to the boy. They find common ground. Granted, it’s in how much they hate Cardassia, but it’s something. But it’s truly a great moment when he bonds with Rugal: someone who’s had no choice in life and whose future is being decided for him.

I want to die on my feet Here’s a quick badass moment from O’Brien. When he’s already dying from the bioweapon in “Armageddon Game” and the T'Lani and the Kelleruns are about the execute him to get rid of all people with knowledge of the harvesters, Miles requests that they allow him the dignity of dying on his feet instead of slumped in his own filth. There’s something powerful about that.

He’s their commander. They trusted him. He can’t leave them. This one’s controversial since “Hippocratic Oath” is so multifaceted in a lot of ways. Last time, we commended Julian for his humanitarian (Jem’Hadaritarian?) attempts to save our Dominion enemies from their ketracel-white addiction. Well, O’Brien is there to save Bashir from himself when the doctor’s attempts fail and a bunch of rabid alien soldiers are ready to tear the humans apart.

That boy’s life is in our hands and I won’t let anybody give up on him O’Brien’s friendship with Quique Muniz culminates in some beautiful scenes in “The Ship.” Muniz is dying a whole lot and O’Brien never gives up on him, even battling (verbally and physically) with Worf over how to handle his approaching death. And when the inevitable does occur, it’s all the more heartbreaking when Worf joins in the ritual ak’voh.

This is how an engineer plays kotra You don’t see a lot of scenes between Garak and O’Brien throughout the show. Now some of that is probably that they don’t like sharing Julian’s attention, but the rest is that there’s no trust between the Cardassian spy and the hero of Setlik Three. We get to see them stand off in “Empok Nor” and O’Brien impresses by outsmarting the homicidal Garak using his engineering skills!

Good cat, Chester! Even when infiltrating the Orion Syndicate (for reasons), O’Brien tries to do the right thing. He tries to tip Bilby off in “Honor Among Thieves” when he has entrapped him, though that does neither of them any good. But even more importantly, Miles agrees to take in Chester, who is a pretty cat and a good cat, and your SSHB hosts here have to give him credit for that.

The cause of death was the Orion Syndicate In fact, O’Brien was so dedicated to his sorta father figure that when Bilby’s widow has vanished in “Prodigal Daughter,” he goes looking for her. Without asking or informing anyone, which probably wasn’t the brightest move, but this is Miles we’re talking about. And without him, we’d never have solved her murder case at the hands of Ezri’s messed up family’s business.

You gotta friend in me Just as we did in the Julian spotlight, we’ve got to close out on O’Brien’s sweet friendship with the good doctor. Bashir, who never looks before he leaps, frequently finds himself needing the constant support and level head of someone like Miles when he does asinine things like leap into Sloan’s head in “Extreme Measures,” even when it’s a bad idea, as we've discussed before.

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Worst moments

Don’t phaser the messenger I’ll avoid citing marriage to Keiko as a Worst Moment because that’s mean, but the way they got married in “Data’s Day” was painful to watch. The audience’s first impression of their relationship is one in which both parties refuse to communicate over something as important as their marriage, and make Data (of all people!) act as their middleman. What a terrible start!

Sweetheart, I’m not a fish Don’t worry, there’s more to drag about how Miles and Keiko’s relationship was depicted in TNG. In the very next episode, “The Wounded,” we see just how they clearly didn’t know each other before deciding to get hitched. Neither likes how each other eats. Guys, you can hate each other’s food because, ya know what, food replicators exist! Order your own potato casserole!

I hate what I became because of you We give Miles a lot of grief on the podcast for his systematic racism. Which is fair – he certainly is quick to hate on other races on occasion. We see this explored interestingly in “The Wounded,” for which we already gave him credit for transcending his racism above, but not before he snaps at Daro and blames the Cardassians for Maxwell’s actions before knowing if he was even right or not.

Grapevine says Chief O’Brien and the missus are having problems But let’s move on to when Miles makes it to the main credits in DS9. As expected, we’re starting off with more Keiko drama. We learn in “A Man Alone” that Keiko was none too pleased about being uprooted (cuz she’s a botanist, get it?) from the Enterprise, and they argue about it publicly at Quark’s. In front of everyone. Do they never communicate before major life changes?

I suppose you’d be happier if I was miserable? I’m sorry that there’s more Keiko drama to include. I didn’t do this on purpose. In “Fascination,” Keiko is finally doing actual botany work and feeling useful doing a long term study on Bajor, and yet she and Miles end up fighting (again, in the middle of Quark’s!) about extending her assignment. And to make matters worse, Miles insinuates she’s having an affair! Dude! Stop.

They call me Smiley Smiley O’Brien is almost indistinguishable from our universe’s Miles (they’re both inherently good guys who suffer enormously), so I’d say it’s safe to include kidnapping Sisko in “Through the Looking Glass” and coercing him into pretending to be mirror Sisko on the naughty list. What a bold move! The Terran Resistance is lucky to have him even if we the audience are getting sick of mirror land.

They’re killers. That’s all they know how to do. Jake may have included saving Dr. Bashir in “Hippocratic Oath” on his Best Moments list, but we’ve also got to reprimand O’Brien for sabotaging Julian’s attempt to cure the Jem’Hadars’ addiction. It’s not just in order to save his friend’s life. Miles states up and down that Goran’Agar is not to be trusted because he’s a Jem’Hadar and starts spewing all the old propaganda again, like a racist.

Just leave a Yelp review, dude While it’s always sadistically fun to watch O’Brien suffer (Colm Meaney does it so well!), it’s also rough to see just how poorly he recovers in an episode like “Hard Time.” Miles is suffering hard from PTSD and guilt and he takes it by attacking Quark. Even worse, he nearly beats Molly when she’s annoying him, which is shocking coming from Miles. Please, seek professional help.

All the time you were holding out on me Later in “Hard Time,” we learn what was on Miles’s conscience the whole time. While in his memory jail, he gets paranoid enough of his cellmate Ee’Char that he murders him in cold blood over a couple orts of food that Ee’Char wasn’t even hoarding for himself. Even though none of it was real, the knowledge that Miles could be pushed to kill an innocent man is a huge blow for him.

It gets worse. There’s a view. We ragged on this plotline in the Kira spotlight as well, but there’s enough discomfort to go around. Those weird, unnecessary feelings Miles develops for a pregnant Kira in “Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places” are just a bad plot device. It feels forced to make two people get romantically awkward just because they’re in proximity with each other. Just lazy.

There’s no hiding from the Syndicate Does it make a ton of sense to force O’Brien to infiltrate the Orion Syndicate in “Honor Among Thieves”? Especially in the middle of the Dominion War? Maybe not, but he does a decent job winning the trust of Liam Bilby using his engineering skills and general good nature. In fact, he does such a good job that he certainly gets Bilby killed in Starfleet’s scheme, like a little rat.

Molly and the Hendersons It is just deplorable how “Time’s Orphan” treats the developmentally stunted Molly O’Brien, and the most shame belongs to Miles and Keiko. What parent would give up on their trauma-ridden child after just a few days and release her into the dangerous wild to live like an animal? I am appalled that not once did anyone float another option to aid in Molly’s rehabilitation, but even more appalled that getting rid of her was the proposed solution.

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And that’s the way the Alamo crumbles. Keep your eyes here for more character spotlights! DS9 certainly has a lot more to cover, so make sure you’re subscribed to our Tumblr, follow along with us on the podcast over on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts, sing us an Irish ballad on Facebook and Twitter, and replicate up a nice potato casserole!

[sshbpodcast]

Well, Season 2 of Enterprise deescalated quickly

by Ames

After an extremely underwhelming season one of Enterprise, your hosts here at A Star to Steer Her By were over the moon to see season two start out with some material that got us actually excited. New ideas? Character moments? Actual stakes? Was this season going to make up for the recycled ideas, boring premises, and missed opportunities of the first?

And then the season went immediately downhill with some of the worst Trek we’ve seen since The Animated Series. Archer might be our pissiest captain to date. T’Pol is so constantly sexualized that it makes our stomachs turn. Every time Mayweather tries to get a line, he’s conveniently injured so we don’t need to have him appear in scenes. Are we being too hard on Enterprise? There is some good stuff, as you’ll see below and in our discussion on this week’s podcast episode (jump to 1:03:49) as we wrap the season with our usual top and bottom episodes, but we’re feeling frustrated. I guess we don’t have faith of the heart.

[images © CBS/Paramount]

Top Three Episodes

We’re starting with Tops this time because we have stronger emotions over this season’s Bottoms list, so we’ll get to those in a minute. There were still some highlights (or at least higher-lights), and you’ll notice that the best of them are clustered around the beginning of the season:

“Judgment”: Caitlin Like in season one when we got episodes with Jeffrey Combs, Ethan Philips, and Fionnula Flanagan, a Trek-experienced guest star can redeem an otherwise standard plot. Sure, “Judgment” treads a lot of the same ground we’ve trod before, but J.G. Hertzler as Advocate Kolos is something new for Klingon culture and he chews the scenery so well!

“Regeneration”: Jake We love us a good Borg episode, and this one pulls it off. You could argue that Borg don’t belong in a prequel series, and you’d probably be right, but the tension created throughout this episode, the creepy environment we find ourselves in, the clever way the writers got around the canon issue, and the sense that there were actual stakes for a change are all commendable. Resistance is futile.

“Singularity”: Chris Like a “The Naked Time” or a “The Naked Now,” this one really thrives on how committed all of the actors are to their respective bits. Most of the plot feels like filler – an anomaly of the week affects the crew in weird ways; we’ve seen this a million times – but there’s just something about watching Trip fixate over a chair and Hoshi obsess over her soup recipe that’s just so charming we can’t help but enjoy it.

“Minefield”: Ames Of all our main crewmembers, Lieutenant Reed remains the most vague, and this episode makes us fully okay with that! We get a glimpse into his stiff-upper-lip brand of British Gumption™ paired with the stress his family put on him to succeed, and he just works! So this sweet little character piece about Reed preparing to sacrifice himself for the ship is just the right amount of character insight we need into our pineapple-loving security chief.

“Cease Fire”: Caitlin Andorians are just fun. A large portion of the appeal of the blue baddies rests on the shoulders of Jeffrey Combs as Shran, who is so capable of playing just about anything. But this episode deepens the culture of our antennaed friends by adding some infighting to the mix with the addition of Lieutenant Tarah, played so hypnotically by the ever-great Suzie Plakson! Always a good day when you get to see her!

“Carbon Creek”: Ames, Chris, Jake The episodes that we see agreement for among your SSHB hosts are also those early episodes I was referring to when we still had hope for the season. This bedtime story of Vulcan lore succeeds in showing us a different side of our pointy-eared allies, basically pulling a Coneheads. Nothing wrong with that. And we get such fascinating new characters out of them that I actually amended my Favorite Vulcans list!

“Dead Stop”: Ames, Caitlin, Chris, Jake The one we all put on our Tops list this season is also one of the more original stories from Enterprise. The idea of an enigmatic race of aliens who created an automated repair station is interesting enough on its own, but the creepiness builds throughout; the clean, white design sets an appropriately offputting tone; and everyone is left on edge. And we already know Roxann Dawson rocks at voicing homicidal computers.

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Bottom Three Episodes

And now for the nerd rage portion of our wrap up. We had such hopes when we started this season, but then the rest alternated from “this has been done before and better” to “well, that was unsatisfying” to “cringe cringe cringe cringe cringe!” Here are this season’s biggest offenders, in every definition of the word:

“The Expanse”: Chris We can see the season finale is trying to set something up with the Xindi attack on Earth, but what we get are a lot of expository scenes, an entirely disjointed sideplot with the unfathomably present Klingons, and a not-at-all-subtle 9/11 allegory that is going to taint a lot of our future watching. Why are the Xindi stupid enough to test their probe on Earth and then do nothing for months? Find out next season on Enterprise!

“Bounty”: Caitlin While the A-plot of this episode is fine, it warrants inclusion because the B-plot is so enraging. We’ve already had enough of pon farr after train wrecks like Voyager’s “Blood Fever” and the uncomfortable Saavik scene from The Search for Spock. So we’re all the more done with it when Enterprise forces T’Pol to writhe around erotically in her underpants and sexually assault Phlox and Reed. YUCK.

“Cogenitor”: Chris If you were looking for more reasons to be angry at Archer, we’ve got an episode for you. It could have been successful if we could be sure what its messaging was. We fume at the Vissians for how they treat the cogenitors and assume that’s the point... Until Archer just starts screaming at Trip for standing up for a marginalized person, and refuses to grant Charles asylum after they begged for it. So. Whose side are we supposed to be on? Because it can’t be Archer’s, right? Right?

“Vanishing Point”: Caitlin, Jake What a let down. What could have been an interesting new concept about early uses of the transporter, in an era when they were even more terrifying than usual, gets entirely negated by the conclusion that “it was all just a dream.” These cop-out ending pull the rug out from under you and make everything you watched feel like a trick. As if we needed more to hate about dream episodes.

“Stigma”: Ames, Jake Just when you thought last season’s rape-happy episode “Fusion” was behind us, it rears its ugly head again in this HIV/AIDS allegory that comes decades too late. Yet again, T’Pol gets stripped of her agency so that various Men In The Room can decide what’s best for her. And to make matters worse, the incongruous B-plot seems to suggest that Trip is close-minded for not wanting Phlox’s wife to sexually assault him all day!

“A Night in Sickbay”: Ames, Chris I disliked Archer and Phlox enough after season one – and things were looking up for season two – when this episode comes crashing down. Archer is just a Big Baby all episode long because he refuses to apologize for Porthos pissing on the Kreetassans’ sacred tree, Phlox is nothing but obnoxious and disgusting the whole time, and we get even more objectifying T’Pol in Archer’s dreams for no reason!

“Precious Cargo”: Ames, Caitlin, Jake But the worst of the worst this season just has to be this rehash of TNG’s “The Perfect Mate,” which we hated enough to begin with! Another Kriosian woman is being transported in cryostasis, allowing for an episode of Kaitamma and Trip running around in their underwear until they predictably make love by a stream. Add to that Padma Lakshmi’s awful, awful acting and you’ve made it to the bottom of the season. Woo.

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It’s been a long road, but we’re already halfway through Enterprise. Season three promises to at least shake things up a little, for better or for worse, so we have that to look forward to as we’ll have SO MUCH to discuss over on the weekly watch-through on SoundCloud (or wherever you podcast). You can also tell us your favorite and least favorite season 2 episodes over on Facebook and Twitter. I, for one, welcome our new Xindi overlords!

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Julian Bashir

By Ames

We’re practicing some real frontier medicine this week on A Star to Steer Her By as we shine our spotlight on Dr. Julian Bashir. He starts off the show as kind of a wide-eyed tactless prig – but he’s cute, so we can forgive him a little – and grows into a sort of tempered, moralistic prig you can’t help but want to play games on the holodeck with. When he’s not creeping on women, anyway, which he does. A lot.

So grab your racquetball racquet, work on your best totally-not-really-Bond voice, and get ready to walk the thin line between medical ethics and medical malpractice with us! Scroll on below for our best and worst moments from our dear doctor, listen to our discussion on this week’s podcast episode (jump to 1:00:03), and learn the difference between a preganglionic fiber for a postganglionic nerve.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

I’m not going to let you die Having the symbiont removed is fatal to a Trill host, but Julian keeps Jadzia alive after Verad steals the Dax symbiont in “Invasive Procedures.” It’s a good moment for the good doctor, especially considering he mostly creeped on Jadzia up to this point, to see him stand up to a Klingon in order to care for her and to work with Quark on a scheme to get the symbiont back!

My best friend, Elim What this constantly humping puppy really needed early in the show was someone to temper his boundless enthusiasm, and that person was the enigmatic and utterly captivating Garak. So when Garak is in danger of dying due to his brain implant in “The Wire,” Bashir is the loyal friend who goes so far as to track down Enabran Tain to find a way to save his book club buddy.

He may look like Bareil, he may even talk like Bareil, but he won’t be Bareil The most important character trait of Dr. Bashir – and any Starfleet doctor, for that matter – is his unwavering moralistic attitude. We get a good taste of this in “Life Support” when he refuses to turn Bareil into a Frankenstein’s monster no matter how much Kira wanted him to. Bashir attests that there would be no more humanity (Bajoranity?) left and he stands by that.

First, do no harm… More of those morals are on display in “Hippocratic Oath” when First Goran’Agar asks Bashir to help cure the Jem’Hadar of their addiction to ketracel white. Julian sees not only how it could benefit the Federation to separate the Jem’Hadar from the Dominion, but also how it could benefit this whole race of real people who are suffering, and that is commendable.

And it would be less awkward if you had a chaperone Of course, Julian is more than just a genius doctor. He’s also part of a well-oiled team, and his relationships are at the core of any character. In “Rejoined,” Julian agrees without question to chaperone Jadzia and Lenara’s date because both Trills are afraid of the feelings that might come out if left alone together, and Julian is happy to act as wingman for his friend.

A year ago, I would’ve thought you were just trying to be a hero Starting Bashir off as such a naive, self-absorbed character gave him room to develop and it’s quite amazing to watch how his character grows over the seasons. By the time we get to season 7’s “Starship Down,” he’s able to reflect on how far he’s come when his first impulse is to keeping Jadzia warm when they’re stuck in a closet and not to feel her up instead.

A Blight-free baby It’s clear just how much Julian has matured as a character in “The Quickening.” Not only does he work tirelessly to try to cure the Teplan of the Blight and succeed in at least creating a vaccine to protect the next generation, but we see him facing failure for the first time (that he’d admit) when he can’t save Ekoria, something we don’t see a lot from TV characters of this era.

Surgery Under Fire Here’s an episode which starts with Bashir being his boastful, blathering self, then shifts abruptly to throwing him into the high-stress role of combat medic, all while Jake Sisko reports on the subject. The strength of “...Nor the Battle to the Strong” is portraying the different sides of Bashir, and the one that tries his hardest to protect Jake during a siege shines through the shelling.

What was one is now two While this episode is one of our least favorites – especially for Worf and Jadzia! – Julian actually comes across as progressive and supportive in “Let He Who Is Without Sin.” He and Leeta are vacationing on Risa, ostensibly to participate in the Rite of Separation, which looks to be a very adult, empathetic, and consensual way to break up with no bad feelings. My, how he’s grown!

It’s either a self-sealing stem bolt or a reverse ratcheting router, I’m just not sure We always love it when the doctors on this show put their foot down and prove what a badass they are. McCoy did it with Khan. Crusher did it with worm-neck Quinn. Pulaski did it every day of her BAMF life. And Julian gets to do it when he stands up to the Jem’Hadar who’ve imprisoned him in “By Inferno's Light.” Because Starfleet CMOs are tough as nails, baby!

Playing spies and being spies are very different things Like the mirror universe, the concept of Section 31 was great once and then got twisted and overused until we were rather sick of it. But when it was introduced in “Inquisition,” Section 31 was the bomb! And Julian was all the more brilliant for figuring out Luther Sloan’s layers of ruse. Even though being a spy should be a dream come true, he somehow resists the urge to join up.

It’s just that I like you a bit more. See? There, I’ve admitted it. No Bashir list would be complete without his adorable friendship with Miles O’Brien, encapsulated in all its glory in their bromance scenes in “Extreme Measures.” When Julian admits to Miles how much he loves him when they think they’re on the brink of dying, it’s just the sweetest thing. But then they go do something stupid, which you’ll see shortly…

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Worst moments

Plug that thing into your own warp core If you hadn’t seen any of Deep Space Nine before Bashir’s guest appearance on TNG in the episode “Birthright,” he’d seem like kind of a nut. This weirdo comes on board the Enterprise with some mystery tech that he promptly starts hooking up to the ship, pointing at everyone’s favorite android, and causing general chaos. Who is this dingbat and what is he doing on my show?

His clone gained consciousness and began a new life DS9’s characters seem more like the “let’s see what happens” types than those on other shows, and Bashir is just as culpable as anyone else (except maybe Sisko, who’s always a wild card). In “A Man Alone” he finds some goo lying around and decides (without asking anyone) to grow it into a fully sapient clone with absolutely no repercussions. This never comes up again. Julian is basically Dr. Frankenstein.

Not necessary, but not forbidden either It is uncomfortable how much Julian follows Jadzia around like a pervert, constantly making little comments (“I can think of better ways of keeping you up,” he says, like a creep) even though she’s expressed she has no interest in him. And even though it allows him to witness her kidnapping in “Dax,” I find it reprehensible for him to stalk her on her way home after she told him not to.

DS9 is not ADA-compliant The first time Bashir initiates a squicky relationship with a patient is in “Melora,” and it won’t be the last. Melora Pazlar is a fiercely independent Enaran, whose physiology is better suited to low-gravity worlds, and Julian tries to “fix” her to be more suitable to Earth gravity. But even grosser, he starts dating his patient, which would get his license taken away in today’s practices.

It’s a five-thousand-year-old battle warm-up For the first couple of seasons, Bashir is so insufferable that all the other characters complain whenever they are forced to spend time with him. And one of his most annoying displays of self aggrandizement comes in “Rivals.” Watching him showing off his exercises before destroying O’Brien in racquetball is just obnoxious as hell. It is hard to like this guy when he’s like that.

Life begins at thirty Clearly turning thirty makes you over the hill, even though in this advanced future, people are living in their hundreds. This is mostly a running gag on the podcast, but it is born out of Julian’s actual feelings in “Distant Voices” and he is such a little twerp about turning thirty that he comes off as even more obnoxious than he did when wrecking O’Brien in racquetball!

He’ll know he’s a Klingon You know how we gave Julian credit for seeing the line where to stop messing with Bareil’s brain in “Life Support”? Well he takes a dump on that line in “Sons of Mogh.” We gave Worf his share of the blame for eschewing familial responsibility for his brother, and Jadzia for coming up with the nonconsensual plan to wipe Kurn’s memory, and now we have to blame Bashir for carrying it out despite the poor ethics involved.

The no-win scenario Based on the projections of the mutants (sorry: augmented people) in “Statistical Probabilities,” Bashir straight up recommends to Starfleet that they surrender in the Dominion War to end the casualties. Come on, man! Don’t you know that “nobody can guarantee what’s going to happen tomorrow, not even an admiral from the future”? And who in their right mind would listen to Jack?

Turn that no into a yes Vic Fontaine is an incredibly polarizing character, but in “His Way,” he is problematic as hell. He psychically reads people’s circumstances, he interrupts people at work, he lies to both Kira and Odo, he won’t stop singing. And we have Julian to thank for forcing his character down our throats in this deeply uncomfortable episode that fails at being romantic and comes across as simply toxic. Hey, just like Bashir sometimes!

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti NO If Julian’s relationship with Melora made us uncomfortable because of the inherent power dynamic, get ready to be downright disgusted by what he does to Serena Douglass in “Chrysalis.” The augmented girl also becomes his conquest, both as a woman he can “fix” and as one he can woo. Her ability to consent in either case is questionable at best and utterly illegal at most.

Adding brain insult to brain injury All the close male friendship scenes in the world couldn’t negate the upsetting character assassination in “Extreme Measures.” How Bashir is capable of inflicting the kind of suffering he does on Sloan negates pretty much any accolades we gave him earlier for his sense of morals. This is simply despicable behavior that Bashir should never have even considered.

Ezri, why are you avoiding me? After we gave Ezri shit for falling for Julian last week, I went and reacquainted myself with all their scenes together in season 7, and Julian is SO gross to Ezri. He starts hitting on her in “Afterimage” when she is clearly suffering from trauma and she flatly turns him down. And then the final couple episodes of the series each have a cringey crush scene until they finally hook up in “The Dogs of War” and it just feels lazy! Bashir is rewarded for years of creeping and finally gets a girl. Not the girl, because she is NOT Jadzia. Just a girl. Vomit.

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Put it back in your pants, Julian, we’re done with this spotlight. This is what you get with such well-rounded characters like DS9 creates: people who have lots of strengths and flaws, and we’ll have even more to discuss in the coming weeks. But first, we’ve got to wrap our coverage of season 2 of Enterprise on SoundCloud, so keep your eyes here for our thoughts on that, keep paging us over on Facebook and Twitter, and tally up those racquetball points!

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Dax (all of ‘em!)

By Ames

We give Deep Space Nine a lot of credit for fleshing out Trill culture after the confusion that was TNG’s “The Host.” Trill characters become so much more interesting when the joining gets retconned to be more of a personality melding than an overwrite, and we’ve got Dax to thank for that. All the Daxes! Sure, we’ve also been frustrated that every Dax-centered episode seems to rewrite how being a Trill works, but we’ll get into that in a second.

Your hosts at A Star to Steer Her By decided to clump all the Daxes together for this spotlight, so we’ve got your gorgeous Jadzia, your cute-as-a-button Ezri, and even some mentions for Curzon and other bonus Daxes to round out our Best and Worst Moments lists! Check them out below, listen to our discussion in this week’s podcast episode (jump over to 1:09:24), and find out if the spots do go all the way down.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

A different kind of worm pouch, er, hole! Deep down, Jadzia is just a science nerd who wants to science, so it’s only fitting that she’s the one who does all the heavy lifting when it comes to discovering the wormhole in “Emissary” (not to be confused with “The Emissary” from TNG). Her study of the orbs leads her down the rabbit… er, worm hole until she and Ben go investigate and accidentally start this whole series!

We were just… wrestling One thing the show makes clear about Jadzia early on: she fucks. This girl is unapologetic about how she seeks consensual sex, and good for her. In “Playing God,” she has clearly just struck the mat with her wrestling coach in a scene meant to raise eyebrows, but she’s so forthright about it that viewers go right past feeling titillated and straight to accepting that she knows what she wants.

You are the only one who can give yourself another chance The rest of “Playing God” is spent appraising her Trill initiate, Arjin. And while she’s more polite and forgiving than Curzon would ever be, she’s also upfront with the little dweeb. She tells him that if he’s only looking to become a joined Trill for other people’s sake and not his own, then he’s bound to fail both himself and a symbiont. He should do what he wants to do.

A Klingon blood oath can never be broken It’s in “Blood Oath” halfway through season two that Jadzia truly emerges as a powerhouse character. Not only does she fight like a true warrior, but she stands up for herself when her old Klingon friends are wary of honoring the blood oath they made with Curzon. It’s the first time Jadzia does something for her after a couple seasons of us questioning her character’s agency, and she slays!

I don’t want to lose you, not again The next really epic, character-defining moment for Jadzia comes in “Rejoined” when again she is fighting for something she desires, even if it will mean the end of the Dax symbiont’s legacy. But screw it, Jadzia lives for love, and her relationship with her old partner Lenara Khan is so deeply felt that we really root for them, and feel all the more crushed at the end.

The only adult in the room Jadzia’s character is so frequently marked by the experience of several lifetimes that she just has this maturity and wisdom about her sometimes. Especially when everyone around her is acting like children, like in “The Sword of Kahless” when Worf and Kor were being selfish brats about finding the legendary bat’leth and Jadzia has to shut them both up. With a phaser.

Kahless hearts Lukara Jadzia’s sort of a hopeless romantic sometimes, so it’s only fitting that she try to earnestly help her friend Quark woo his lady love, the glorious Grilka in “Looking for Par’mach in All the Wrong Places.” When it’s not enough to teach Quark some Klingon languages and how to fight with a bat’leth, she even brilliantly concocts an optronic relay to allow Worf to fight for him remotely.

If this story had an unhappy ending, I would have never forgiven you Sure, it’s mostly a Jake Sisko episode and Jadzia has pretty much just one actual scene in it, but there’s just something about her talk with Benjamin in “...Nor the Battle to the Strong” that’s so sweet. Sisko is stressing out about Jake being in a warzone, and Jadzia tells him one of her past host’s parenting stories to put him a little more at ease, like a good parent would.

Retreat, acquire, confront, evade As we saw in “Looking for Par’mach in All the Wrong Places,” Jadzia’s friendship with Quark has always been well depicted. In a show in which we’ve complained (multiple times) about racism against Ferengis, Jadzia is the only one to give Quark the time of day, and also the one closest to him to tell him to stop weapons dealing in “Business as Usual” because she cares.

Oh baby, I hear the blues a’calling Sadly for us, we lose Jadzia after season six, but happily, there are a couple good moments for the next Dax, Ezri! The first counseling gig she picks up is a bit of a doozy, as she tries to help Garak work through his claustrophobia and his feelings of identity crisis in “Afterimage.” And like all mental health battles, it’s an ongoing one, but she at least gets things started.

The killer in Dax We don’t get enough of the character to see the consequences of summoning that psycho Joran in “Field of Fire” but we can tell it’s noteworthy. Ezri is the only Dax who gets tested by that murderer who briefly had the Dax symbiont, and watching her stand up to him, refuse to give in to the lure of wanton homicide, and solve a case is impressive indeed. If only the episode weren’t otherwise drek.

The Klingon Empire is dying. And I think it deserves to die. Insert any Dax here and they probably have a better understanding of Klingon culture than Worf, but it’s Ezri who really schools him. In “Tacking into the Wind,” she throws in his ridged face just how crappy Klingon politics are and how Gowron is sending the whole empire down the shitter, giving Worf the peptalk he needs to go murder the hell out of that bulgy-eyed fascist.

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Worst moments

The prosecution rests Early-seasons Jadzia hadn’t yet found her agency, which was the biggest character facet she was lacking. A good representation of this in the episode “Dax,” in which she ostensibly should be the focus character, but spends her entire courtroom hearing refusing to speak for herself and allowing a room full of men to dictate her fate. I rest my case.

Don’t call me Benjamin For some of these Worst Moments, we’ve dipped into other hosts of the Dax symbiont to round things out a bit. And that includes that prick Verad Dax, even if he only has the symbiont for a little while in “Invasive Procedures.” But what an asshole! This guy hires goons to help him kidnap the symbiont, forces Julian to perform surgery, and would have left Jadzia to die.

Talk about an earworm! Here’s another alternate host who does some nasty deeds. We learn in “Equilibrium” that Dax had a secret host, Joran, who happened to do some murdering in order to get/keep the symbiont. It’s still unclear to me what his deal was because later episodes “Facets” and “Field of Fire” retcon his character all over the place until we have no idea how many people this guy even murdered!

And then we can count each other’s spots I’m vomiting in my mouth a little over the cloyingly sweet romance in “Meridian.” While we can commend Jadzia for being sex positive in our Best Moments list above, it’s also incredibly tiring how boy crazy she seems sometimes. It’s like the writing staff can’t help but define Jadzia by the men in her life, and falling so hard for a milquetoast guy like Deral in like a day is proof.

The way to a man’s heart is through his ears Yes, I will include on my Worst Moments list every time women give a Ferengi oomox. Bev did it. Lwaxana did it. T’Pol did it (and I’m sure I’ll mention that when we get to her spotlight). And when Jadzia sensually rubs Quark’s ears in “Facets” to convince him to take on a role in her zhiantara, I find it disgusting because it’s a woman engaging in sexual acts only to titillate the audience. Gross.

You were so young, so lovely We’ve got another guest host to give a piece of our mind to, and that’s Curzon Dax. In “Facets,” he reveals that he washed Jadzia out of the Initiate Program because he was in love with her, and that’s just awful. This guy should have recused himself if he couldn’t remain unbiased in his assessment. Poor Jadzia, always being seen through a sexual lens by men, on and off camera.

What if there was a way for you to kill your brother without killing him? Dax’s heart is in the right place when she tries to find a better place for Kurn when all he wants is to die with honor in “Sons of Mogh.” But the option that she offers to wipe his memory to give him a fresh start is SO MESSED UP. Kurn has no consent in the action that Jadzia and Worf (and Julian, whom we’ll point the finger at next week) impose on him. Dishonor on their houses.

There are some things in life you can’t control, and one of them is me We gave Worf a lot of stick for how badly he treats Jadzia, especially in an episode like the notorious “Let He Who Is Without Sin,” which last we checked had the lowest IMDB rating of all of DS9. And for good reason! It really makes us judge Jadzia quite a bit for staying with Worf when he treats her like his property, which is no good foundation for a relationship.

How do those boots taste? Jadzia struggling through Lady Sirella’s rituals in “You Are Cordially Invited” is demeaning, even in Klingon culture. It shocks me that Jadzia going to grovel to the lady of the House of Martok wins her favor. Instead of rewarding bootlicking, there should have been a more Klingon twist: it should have been a test of how long a prospective house member can put up with shit before they snap and do battle! That’s how you honor a house!

I’m sorry, the baby… Jadzia gets killed off in “Tears of the Prophets,” and it feels like a damn waste! It’s always sad for a beloved character to die, but for Kosst Amojen to take her out like a mere bystander brings up memories of Tasha Yar all over again. And then for her death to get undermined by her and Worf’s plan to procreate just feels like we’re back to Jadzia being defined by her relationships after all that progress.

Anyone can steal a shuttlecraft We’re fairly critical of Ezri Dax on this podcast, and some of that is unwarranted. But when Ezri does stupid shit like stealing a runabout to go save Worf in “Penumbra,” we raise an eyebrow. And when she and Worf bicker like old lovers, we roll our eyes. And when she and Worf have sex instead of dealing with trauma in a healthy and mature manner because it’s all a story trope, we lose some respect for these characters. Dammit.

If Worf hadn’t come along, it would have been you Ezri is barely here for a whole season and already she’s paired up with two of the male crewmembers. In “Afterimage,” Ezri tells Julian that Jadzia was into all the constant flirting, but she isn’t. But by “What You Leave Behind,” they’ve hooked up anyway, and it just feels like smashing the two dollies together to make them kiss. Can she be a character first before she hops into bed with the male character, please?

— Time to put this symbiont back in its pouch and call it day. As alluded to, we’ve got more DS9 characters to spotlight, following with Julian Bashir next week! So stay tuned here for that, follow along on SoundCloud (or wherever you get your podcasts) for more Enterprise watchalongs, hail us on subspace over on Facebook and Twitter, and stop retconning how joined Trills work already!

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Kira Nerys

By Ames

We’re moving on in our character spotlight series from our favorite war criminal captain to one of the most well developed characters from the onset, Colonel Kira Nerys. From the moment we meet her in “Emissary,” we know exactly who Kira is, and the show wisely sends her on a complex journey within that grey area between terrorist and resistance fighter. Get you a Bajoran who can do both.

Ensign Ro may have set the mold for the Bajorans, but Kira grew outside of it and we’re so glad to get her perspective. So pick up your Bajoran phaser and get ready to take aim at some fascists as we celebrate A Star to Steer Her By’s favorite crinkly-nosed, red jumpsuit-clad militia officer in our Best and Worst Moments list below and on this week’s podcast (jump to 56:47). Walk with the Prophets, my child.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

What other show gives you a zombie space pope? There’s more going on for Kira in season one than for other characters because she really rocks it from the start. And Nana Visitor has the chops to give that special nuance to a character like this, especially in emotional scenes like her breakdown when she accidentally gets Kai Opaka killed in “Battle Lines,” and the moment she has with her reanimated corpse is nothing short of stunning.

If I leave here, I’ll die Speaking of great moments from season one, Kira makes the hard decision in “Progress” to save Mullibok’s life by ruining said life. Over the episode, she bonds with the obstinate Jeraddo farmer by helping him build his kiln only to destroy it in the end and set fire to his house to force him to relocate, and it’s clear it tears her up inside. Bajorans really never win.

Enough good people have already died. I won’t help kill another. But perhaps the best thing to come out of the season (and to some, the whole show overall) is her character arc in the stunning “Duet.” Kira spends so much of the show battling her Cardassian demons (figuratively and literally), that seeing her grow to accept that some individuals may be redeemable is captivating, heart-breaking, and truly impressive (and have we mentioned it’s only season one?).

A new meaning to being selfish We would be remiss if we didn’t include at least a mention of the excellent and mesmerizing performance Visitor gives as Intendant Kira in episodes like “Crossover.” Say what you will about the mirror universe (and we have), but Kira is a wonder to behold and the chemistry between her and herself is like lightning in a bottle. Zap!

Cardassians LOVE cosmetic surgery Speaking of mirrors, imagine waking up and the face looking back at you in the mirror is the thing you hate most. Kira’s relationship with Cardassians continues to evolve in the wondrous “Second Skin,” in which she bonds with her fake daddy Tekeny Ghemor, foils a Cardassian plot, and discovers a resistance cell within Central Command – her favorite!

I was playing a married woman This is one of those cute little Kira moments from the show that tickles us, but in “The Way of the Warrior,” it is just too hilarious that her response to being wooed by Lancelot (assumably while playing Guenivere) in the holodeck is to slug him. It’s so in character that we have to applaud it. Kira is always the first to choose violence, after all, though sometimes that can be a downside.

Major, tell me another story Kira spends the second half of “Starship Down” tending to a badly concussed Sisko, and working through character conflict. As I harped on in the Sisko post, Ben is double-fisting roles as both space station commander and Emissary to the Prophets, and that comes with deep significance to Bajorans like Kira, and this is her chance to talk to him about it. Love that for her!

The life you’re choosing isn’t for her There are a ton of great moments between Kira and Ziyal, from saving her life in “Indiscretion” to encouraging her painting in “Sons and Daughters,” but the one we’re highlighting comes from “Return to Grace.” Kira sees that Ziyal is on a dangerous path if she stays with her father, and the bond they’ve established makes her advocate she move to DS9. There’s truly no safe space for the girl, but Kira does all she can.

The baby just had a change of address Thank the Prophets the show didn’t introduce yet another baby when Nana Visitor got IRL pregnant. That’d be way too many babies, so it was rather ingenious to move the O’Brien baby over to Kira in “Body Parts.” And it also highlights just how like family this crew has become. Kira really takes one for the team by agreeing to incubate Kirayoshi for Keiko. Now if only their characters talked more…

I owed it to my father to get it right this time Yet another great character-development episode for Kira comes in “Ties of Blood and Water” when she learns that Tekeny Ghemor – her fake dad and one of our favorite Cardassians! – was up to some shady stuff in his past. And while this alters the relationship between the two of them, Kira again accepts how he’s changed since then to be with him as he dies.

Romulans gotta scheme! Come season seven, the Romulans have gotten added to the mix thanks to some nefarious doings by Sisko and Garak. And Kira is left to deal with their constant scheming. Typical Romulans! Throughout “Image in the Sand” and “Shadows and Symbols,” Kira stares down Senator Cretak in a huge game of galactic chicken, and Cretak blinks first.

Don’t drink the Kool-Aid Our final great Kira moment is also the last time she ever sees Dukat. In “Covenant,” he’s leading his own little pah-wraith cult, and when the going gets tough, the tough gets really Jonestown-y. Kira literally leaps in and stops the whole assembly from ritual suicide, revealing that Dukat had a placebo pill for himself and he’d had them all charmed. Stupid sexy Dukat.

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Worst moments

Maybe the ends justify the means? One of Kira’s strengths is also frequently one of her biggest faults, and that’s how very wide her ethical grey area is. She’s able to justify doing lots of pretty messed up things, like a certain captain I could name, and we see this pretty early on in “Babel” when she intentionally infects Surmak Ren with aphasia disease and holds him hostage to find a cure. That’s pretty brutal.

Bajor is not Kentanna For most of “Sanctuary,” it’s rather nice watching Kira befriending Haneek and the other Skrrean refugees. Until they express interest in immigrating to Bajor, and then Kira’s NIMBY side really comes out. It’s not a good look, Kira, especially for someone whose people were in a very similar plight until very recently. And frankly, Bajor could use the laborers.

It’s like stepping on ants, Odo Because of that wide ethical grey area, we’ve noticed that Kira is almost always the first person to advocate just killing whatever the danger of the week is, no matter the consequences. In “Playing God,” an episode about killing Cardassian voles, she’s quick to jump to the option of killing the tiny proto-universe, even when Dax expresses she’s found sentient life in it. Yikes.

The people have chosen Winn We know from “Battle Lines,” mentioned earlier, that Kira has a super soft spot for Kai Opaka, and also probably feels guilty for trapping her on zombie planet a little. But it’s just a bad idea to let Bareil take the fall for some shady doings in “The Collaborator” because it sets up Winn for the win (wow, I didn’t even try to do that) in the big kai election, lest she sully Opaka’s name.

The distant memory of a touch It would be an understatement to say Kira’s taste in men isn’t great (and that’s not even including the fascist she ends up with!). The first of her various men is Bareil, who’s fine but boring as hell. Certainly not worth forcing Julian to keep him alive against all his medical ethics in “Life Support.” But Kira’s into the vedek, so we’re forced to watch her push his existence to the edge of morality and cringe at what he’s becoming.

Do you like me? Check yes or no. Lucky for us, Bareil is a thing of the past by season four (for now), opening up the opportunity for Kira to make more bad dating decisions. While Odo weeps, she sets her sights on Shakaar in “Crossfire” and viewers at home roll our eyes at how high school the whole ordeal is. Why have these resistance cell leaders downgraded to petty relationship drama? It’s beneath them.

Kira’s edgy artist phase We’ve said it myriad times before, but Bajor is a cultural disaster. When Akorem shows up in “Accession” and declares he’s making Bajor great again by reinstating their rigid caste system, it’s clear that Kira is uncomfortable but still refuses to oppose it. This is a Sisko episode, after all. Even though she can’t sculpt worth a damn, she goes along with the d’jarras like a sheep.

A little lower While Kira is surrogating the O’Brien baby, she and Miles randomly develop feelings for each other only because of their constant proximity in “Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places.” That’s just gross and unnecessary. Nothing again Miles, but men and women are allowed to be friends without wanting to bone. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones.

The phantom of Cardassia This one always bothered me. After several seasons of growth as a character, Kira seemed to have chilled out a little in her constant desire to murder Cardassians. So when “The Darkness and the Light” introduces a blast from the past whom Kira would otherwise have at least some empathy for, it strikes me as a character regression for her to fall back on thoughtlessly killing like she used to.

Same face, different universe Kira regesses again in “Resurrection” when a new Bareil is barking up her tree. Oh mirror universe, what have we done to deserve this? Sure, mirror Bareil is at least less bland than the original recipe, but who the hell is this Kira immediately falling for a boy in less than a day? That’s just not the character (that’s Jadzia, if anyone, whom we’ll discuss next week). Kira’d kick his ass.

That’s not what your mom said last night I may have given Sisko a little bit of guff for allowing this too, but I’ve got to give Kira even more. Whose first reaction when Dukat makes a yo mama joke in “Wrongs Darker than Death or Night” is to GO BACK IN TIME to check  on your mother’s sexual history??? What the hell, Kira??? Now the bigger debate is whether she should or shouldn’t have blown Dukat up. And fight.

Foul ball! Finally, I need to continue venting about “Take Me Out to the Holosuite.” Somehow, Ben held tryouts on a station full of beefy Bajorans, and still put Kira on his baseball team when she can’t even catch a ball. Kira plays springball in her spare time. She’s a resistance fighter. She was raised to have street smarts. How in the firecaves does she not know how to catch a freakin’ ball???

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Praise be to the Prophets, that’s all! Keep your subspace communicator focused here for more character spotlights. We have someone who’s multiple characters in one next week when we discuss Dax! You can also go to warp five with us in our watchthrough of Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, grab some hasperat with us on Facebook and Twitter, and maybe take up sculpting if it’s something you’re actually into.

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Benjamin Sisko

By Ames

We’ve segued so smoothly into Deep Space Nine for our character spotlights here on A Star to Steer Her By that you didn’t even notice it. Thank you, Worf. So this week we’re doing an in-depth look at one of the more complex lead characters of a Trek series, Benjamin Lafayette Sisko. He might be the leader who gets tested the most out of any of our main stars, and he makes probably the most wide-ranging decisions – though typically that decision is “let’s see how this goes.”

From first contacts with the Gamma Quadrant, to yet another standoff with Klingons, to full blown Dominion War, to whatever was going on with the wormhole aliens, Ben’s got a long list of moments for us to consider. So grab yourself a bowl of jambalaya, hop in your solar sail ship, and maybe get a little war crimes as a treat! Scroll on below for our Sisko spotlight and listen to a ton of spare moments on this week’s podcast (jump through the wormhole to 1:04:00). Ow!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

There’s no hurry Our first contact with beings from the Gamma Quadrant is also DS9’s first breaking of the Prime Directive. In “Captive Pursuit,” Miles is trying desperately to save Tosk from his hunters and Sisko is doing his best to technically stay within the rules, and it’s a rare success of doing both. Telling Odo to take his time in apprehending O’Brien shows that Sisko is coming from a place of real morality.

Find something you love, then do it the best you can We could name great moments between Ben and his son all day, but there’s more to our list than that, so let’s sum things up with a perfectly pure moment of excellent parenting from “Shadowplay.” Sisko is immediately accepting of Jake not wanting to follow in his footsteps and join Starfleet, and melts our hearts. Doing something he loves and being true to himself is far more important than legacy.

Cardassians love cosmetic surgery Appropriately, we watched Enterprise’s “Judgment” on the podcast this week and spent most it comparing it to The Undiscovered Country and “Tribunal.” When O’Brien is on trial in Cardassian kangaroo court and his lawyer is doing nothing to defend him, Sisko walks in with an undercover Cardassian spy in tow and wins the whole thing without saying a word. Like a badass.

Humans used to be a lot worse than the Ferengi We brought this up last week in our Worf chat too, but there’s a general racism towards the Ferengi all through Deep Space Nine. Quark calls Sisko out for it in “The Jem’Hadar” when Sisko and he are butting heads, and by the end of the episode, Sisko has seen Quark in a new light and refuses to leave him behind because Sisko got over some his prejudice (at least a little bit).

I’ll see that you get that chance Speaking of that prejudice against our lobed friends, everyone and their moogie is dubious when Nog claims he wants to join Starfleet in “Heart of Stone,” which would be a first for a Ferengi. But when Nog tells Sisko that he’s serious and looking for a life that will earn him real respect, the commander takes him at his word and vouches for him, putting in motion one of the best character arcs in Trek.

Some taboos are made to be broken Throughout the series, the relationships between characters are probably the strongest in Trek, and a true highlight is watching Sisko with his old/new friend Jadzia Dax. It’s such a beautiful scene in the equally beautiful “Rejoined” when Ben tells her that he’d still support her if she decides to break Trill taboo and hook back up with Lenara Khan. He’s that good a friend.

Don’t you see, Admiral? You’re fighting the wrong war. Around season 4, the show really tests Sisko with some ethical conundrums during the Dominion War. This is one he passes with flying colors. In “Paradise Lost,” Sisko is able to see his old mentor and silver medal winner from Jake’s Evil Admirals list, James Leyton, for what he really is: a megalomaniac who uses the Changeling threat as an excuse to incite a coup. Until Ben steps in!

Presenting the newest honoree in the Order of the Bat’leth It takes a certain level of crazy to think you can infiltrate the best warriors the Klingons have to offer, and luck for us, Captain Sisko is just that level of crazy. Avery Brooks seems oddly at home portraying a blood-thirsty Klingon being inducted into the Order of the Bat’leth in “Apocalypse Rising,” and even better, he and Odo (mostly Odo) expose Changeling Martok!

Don’t let Bajor in the Federation! We say it all the time on the podcast and today is no different: Bajor is NOT ready for Federation membership, no matter what Picard says. So when Sisko goes fully nuts after getting zapped by a plinth in “Rapture” and crashes the Federation membership ruling, we are fully supportive of his absolute batshit meddling. And ya know what, it works out for Bajor because of it!

Sisko, you’re baby crazy Any time Sisko is with a baby is truly joyful. This from a podcast of self-professed non-baby people. But this man’s mirth is so pure we’ve got to give it to him. Avery Brooks isn’t even acting in “Children of Time” when he dandles that baby, or in “The Abandoned” when he’s nostalgic about Jake as a baby, or in “Heart of Stone” when he’s delighted that Vilixpran is budding. This man just loves babies.

Let’s pretend that the Major’s not even here… By season 6, Gul Dukat is at his lowest point – he’s lost the station, his daughter is dead, and he’s more nuts than Ben in “Rapture”! And Captain Sisko plays him like a fiddle! “Waltz” is such an amazing showcase of acting talent, with Avery Brooks and Marc Alaimo bouncing off each other like pros. Sisko pushes his Cardassian counterpart over the edge and survives the cave of madness, some-freaking-how!

The Emissary has completed his task Sisko’s final action in this corporeal plane is also the climax of the whole series, culminating the wormhole alien plot that was started at the very beginning. And while we may whine that the Kosst Amojen plotline in “What We Leave Behind” felt rushed at the end, we have to admit that it’s cathartic to have the Emissary make a huge sacrifice to take out the pah-wraiths in the series finale.

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Worst moments

This is how you hold a grudge Interestingly, the first taste we get of the jambalaya-slinging commander is him being bitter and fickle in the series premiere, “Emissary.” The show immediately introduces him being a dick to Picard, stewing with rage over Locutus’s part in the Battle at Wolf 359 (as if Picard had any control of that!). He also clearly doesn’t want to be in command of the station, starting him off with character conflict that the series will build on.

If I hear of you hanging around with him… Continuing our running gag that the only alien species the show seems to think it’s okay to be racist against is the Ferengi we brought up last week with Worf, we see more instances of it from Sisko early in season one in “A Man Alone.” When Ben basically tells Jake to not hang around with Nog anymore, it’s flavored with that anti-Ferengi racism we’re sadly accustomed to.

When in the Mirror Universe, do as the Mirror Universe people do We have a lot of issues with how DS9 trots out the mirror universe all the time, and it’s at its most uncomfortable when Sisko goes over there and sleeps with his friends’ counterparts in “Through the Looking Glass.” Sure, there’s not much you can do when Intendant Kira sets her sights on you, but it’s simply wrong to take advantage of Mirror Jadzia, regardless of how hot she is.

Abusing your power is so romantic Sisko is so blinded by love in “For the Cause” that he ignores all the signs that his girlfriend Kasidy has been aiding the Maquis. And then Ben abuses his power as commander of the station to get her out of an inspection when she bats her eyes at him, which is straight-up unethical. As we’ll see, Sisko tends to make terrible decisions when the Maquis are involved…

Red – the blood of angry men Arguably the most immoral acts that Sisko commits are the war crimes in “For the Uniform.” Even after Starfleet tries to take him off the Maquis assignment, Sisko’s obsession with taking out Eddington has gotten so personal that it clouds ALL his judgment. If we gave Picard grief about removing the residents of Dorvan V, then we’ve got to rake Sisko over the coals for POISONING A PLANET and relocating more people!

Prophets, take the wheel! Half our Worst Moments come from the last two seasons when Sisko is tested more than any other Trek captain due to the Dominion War. And so often, he chooses the messed up response. I am still trying to figure out his Hail Mary play in “Sacrifice of Angels” when he flies headlong into the wormhole against thousands of ships and ends up asking the wormhole aliens to do a literal deus ex machina for him. Leeeeroy! Jennnnkins!

What’s a better response to a “Yo Mama” joke than this? I shat on this one in our time travel post, but Sisko using his status as Emissary to let Kira play with the Orb of Time in “Wrongs Darker than Death or Night” because Dukat banged her mom and then gabbed to her about it is absolutely incompetent of him! Why anyone has access to that thing is incomprehensible because it just begs for time shenanigans!

I can live with it… because Vreenak can’t Arguably one of Deep Space Nine’s best episodes, “In the Pale Moonlight” forces Sisko to make the hardest decision a Starfleet officer has to make – and he jumps at the chance to pick the option involving committing more war crimes. While it is a huge benefit to get the Romulans on your side, Sisko knowingly accomplishes this through lies, counterfeiting, bribery, murder, and most damning of all: enlisting the help of Elim Garak!

Sisko SMASH! Here’s another instance when Ben abuses his power, this time in order to get access to an ancient artifact from Bajor in “The Reckoning.” And what does the Emissary do once he’s borrowed the tablet without asking permission, promising to take good care of it and that he’ll return it first thing in the morning? He destroys it utterly in a fit of rage, releasing some spirits that nearly gets Jake and Kira killed.

Pick a lane, Ben I will always give Sisko guff about this. In “Accession,” he has accepted his role as Emissary to the prophets while he’s already serving as commander of Deep Space Nine, and frankly, Ben, you can’t be both! It’s a HUGE conflict of interest. In “Tears of the Prophets,” Admiral Ross gives him some hell for this when he’s torn between the Prophets and Starfleet, and he’s right! Step down!

You’re outta here! “Take Me Out to the Holosuite" is a polarizing episode that fans either love or hate (even your SSHB hosts are mixed!), but you’ve got to admit: Sisko is a terrible baseball coach! He forces all of this senior staff to play a baseball game in the middle of wartime, cancels his girlfriend’s shipments to make her to play too, kicks Rom off the team, gets obsessively competitive about it, and then gets himself thrown out anyway! How many strikes was that?

They warned you that marrying me would bring you sorrow Finally, we are still cross with Sisko for knocking up Kasidy. In “The Dogs of War,” Kasidy tells him she’s pregnant because he forgot to take his contraception, even though Bashir is constantly reminding him! This is a world in which having children should always be a choice because future contraceptives are basically magic, AND he’s been told that he’s basically cursed, so take your damn meds, jackwit.

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Well, we can live with it. We can live with it. We’ve also got more DS9 character spotlights on the way if you keep watching this blog, more Enterprise watch-throughs on the way if you keep listening to us on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, and more announcements from Ops over on Facebook and Twitter. Computer, erase that entire personal log.

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Worf

By Ames

It’s an honorable week here on A Star to Steer Her By because we’re shining our character spotlight on the show’s first Klingon main character, Worf, Son of Mogh! He’s also the first specifically main cast member to span two different series (sorry, O’Brien), so we’ve got glimpses from both The Next Generation and its films and also Deep Space Nine to cover. Worf might get the most time of any character to truly develop, growing from the guy who gets thrown across the room by the baddie of the week into the complex warrior who, for just a moment, wears the robes of the Chancellor of the Klingon High Council. Go Worf!

So put on your baldric, grab your bat’leth, and top off your mug of bloodwine as we give Worf all the honor he deserves (which every so often, isn’t very much, but other times is a lot!). Read on for the commendable battles below and listen to our death yells over on this week’s podcast (fight your way to 55:39). Today is a good day to die.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Bloodwine is red / Andorians are blue… While we gave Dr. Pulaski lots of props for whipping up an antidote so she could participate in Worf’s version of a tea party, it’s also just lovely that Worf honors her by performing the ceremony in the first place in “Up the Long Ladder.” Deep down under the head ridges and scowl, Worf is just a poetry-reading, tea-sipping teddy bear and we love it.

Klingon paper dolls Star Trek characters jump at any opportunity to play dress up, and we get a good instance of that in “The Emissary” when Worf and K’Ehleyr put on their warrior garb to trick a crew of Klingons in cryostasis into thinking they represent the Klingon Empire. As always, this episode gets some extra points for featuring K’Ehleyr, and it turns out Worf’s pretty good at improvisation too.

We have bonded and our families are stronger While we’re certainly going to give Worf some shit for how badly he parents his biological son, his connection with Jeremy Aster in “The Bonding” is actually quite beautiful for the both of them. Each an orphan, they are able to form a familial-type relationship together, and it’s really touching when Worf invites Jeremy to join him in the R'uustai that will bond them as brothers.

He has claimed the right of vengeance A trend emerged in our Best Worf Moments when they tended to fall into the “killing the fuck out of some jerk who deserves it” category, and the first to really deserve it is Duras in “Reunion.” Duras has been begging to get murdered since we first heard his contemptible name, but when he killed Worf’s mate in cold blood, Worf knew exactly what he had to do with his bat'leth.

You may now give birth Despite the fact that it resulted in adding a baby to the cast (blech), we have to give some credit to Worf for delivering the O’Brien baby in “Disaster” in a way that only he could. We’d need a whole additional blogpost for all the great Worf one-liners throughout the two series, as Michael Dorn’s delivery is always gold, but “Push, Keiko, push” has got to be pretty high up there.

Doesn’t gik’tal mean to the death? Worf sees so much potential in Sito Jaxa in “Lower Decks” and spends most of the episode arguing on her behalf for a promotion. So when we see Worf testing her with the made-up gik’tal martial arts to teach her to stick up for herself, we can’t help but see in her just what Worf sees. Ya know, until Picard totally gets her killed.

Assimilate this! Sure, it’s a soundbite-y line designed to be marketable in the trailer, but when Worf survives getting his EV suit punctured by tying it off with some Borg bits and then blows up the interplexing beacon in First Contact, it just feels right. Maybe it’s that Michael Dorn can get away with cheesy lines like “Assimilate this!” or maybe we just love watching Borg explode.

If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand While the movies are mostly showcases for Picard and Data, First Contact gives some great moments to the other castmembers. Worf’s standoff with Picard is nothing short of chilling. Borg are overrunning the ship and Picard orders Worf and his security team to what is almost certain to be their deaths. Lucky for us, Worf doesn’t actually mutiny, just threatens to a little bit.

And in this corner… While we spent most of The Next Generation watching Worf getting knocked around as shorthand for “the alien threat is strong,” by Deep Space Nine, we don’t really get that anymore and instead he actually gets to kick some ass! In “By Inferno's Light,” Worf is forced to battle Jem’Hadar after Jem’Hadar in the fighting ring, and he refuses to quit even when he has every right to.

Help me fight again, Worf You’ll see in a second that sometimes when Worf tries to help another Klingon die with honor, things can get complicated, but when Kor asks for help going out in the warrior fashion, Worf is totally a good guy about it. He gets the old legend a place on Martok’s ship in “Once More Unto the Breach” even though it’s not Martok’s favorite thing, but in the end, Sto’Vo’kor gains a new warrior.

Seven down, one to go We still have more “killing the fuck out of some jerk who deserves it” mentions to bring up! What list would be complete without the murder of at least one Weyoun on it? In this case, Worf straight up snaps the neck of Weyoun 7 in “Strange Bedfellows” when he has the opportunity and it is a thing of such beauty that it gains Damar’s respect.

What I have done was for the Empire Finally, our last jerk who needed to get killed the fuck out of is that bastard Gowron in “Tacking into the Wind.” Gowron was going around making terrible decisions, rewriting the history books, and trying to get Martok killed in various ways, and Worf finally has enough and kills him in honorable combat. He gets the cloak of the Chancellor for it but selflessly passes it to Martok, like an absolute boss.

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Worst moments

I would rather die than pollute my body with Klingon filth While Geordi is putting racism aside to be able to coexist with his new BFF Bochra in “The Enemy,” Worf takes the opposite path. By refusing to let Crusher give his blood to Patahk, Worf condemns the injured Romulan to death just because of his race. And then the show takes some of the guilt off Worf by having Patahk refuse treatment anyway, leaving Worf’s hands clean, I guess.

This is not unlike a drumhead trial Worf is also quick to fall in line with Admiral Satie’s Red Scare of a trial against crewman Tarses in “The Drumhead.” He gets so infatuated with dispensing justice that he jumps past “innocent until proven guilty” and determines that Tarses is guilty of treason because he’d lied about his alien heritage, when the two things aren’t even related.

Would you further dishonor our family with your disobedience? It’s a running joke in the Star Trek community that Worf is a terrible father and… well, he is. To his defense, he did have Alexander sprung on him when K’Ehleyr died in “Reunion,” and he did try to pawn the little brat off on the Rozhenkos, but that was a terrible move too. So when we watch how clueless he is trying to parent in “New Ground,” we cringe hard at how Worf just doesn’t get it.

Donkey Kong: 1. Worf: 0. A lot of Worf’s decisions about how to deal with his paraplegia in “Ethics” are complicated and problematic, but the way he ended up in such a state is what we’re really here to roast him on. My dude got bitched by a big blue plastic barrel in the cargo bay, and that is downright dishonorable for a Klingon warrior. Battle, sure. Explosion, fine. Spat with Spot, of course. But not blue barrel!

How could your mother mate with a Romulan? Worf’s prejudice against Romulans comes out again in “Birthright” when he learns that Ba’el is half Romulan and he starts spouting racist accusations at her when he’s already seen what kind of a person she is, and even what kind of person her father is. Since his father’s death at Khitomer, it’s a long road for Worf to accept that all Romulans are not that same, and it’s unclear if he ever gets there.

Tell him he is a pretty cat and a good cat All your hosts here at A Star to Steer Her By are ride-or-die cat people, so when Worf refuses to tell Spot he’s a good cat and a pretty cat in “Phantasms” when Data asks him to look after the feline, we take it super personally. Frankly, Data should have looked elsewhere for someone to catsit because what’s supposed to be a humorous moment in the show just makes us angry at Worf. Hiss!

I believe the Ferengi bartender is plotting something By the time Worf joins Deep Space Nine, his racism against Romulans doesn’t come up, but his racism against the Ferengi sure does. Ever since “Hippocratic Oath,” Worf refuses to call Quark by name, instead calling him “The Ferengi bartender.” We joke sometimes on the podcast that the only race it’s okay to be racist against is the Ferengi, but you know what? It’s really not okay.

My life is in your hands Sure, we can argue that Kurn coming to Worf for the Klingon rite of Mauk-to’Vor in “Sons of Mogh” is messed up and puts Worf in a tough position, but Worf manages to pick an even worse outcome for his brother. Instead of killing him and sending Kurn to Sto’Vo’kor with his honor intact, Worf does the least honorable thing and has Bashir wipe Kurn’s memory. Without Kurn’s consent! Eeesh.

Everything you do reflects on me There were a bunch of times during DS9 that we really thought Jadzia could do better than having Worf as her mate, and “Let He Who Is Without Sin” is the chief offender. Worf starts the episode arguing about Jadzia consorting with other men even though she’s with him now, gets jealous of the Dax’s previous relationships, and generally poopoo’s Jadzia’s streak of individuality like a toxic boyfriend.

Have you accepted Kahless as your lord and savior? And that’s not even the worst thing Worf does in the abysmal episode “Let He Who Is Without Sin.” He spends the rest of their vacation on Risa palling around with the New Essentialists who’ve decided that people enjoying things is bad form, which is just Worf being petty. So when he goes out of his way to help them literally rain on everyone’s parade, it’s super damaging to his character.

I do not know you, nor do I wish to know you After Jadzia’s death, Worf utterly fails as grieving in a healthy, productive way and instead opts to take it out on Ezri during “Afterimage.” Just because she’s not Jadzia, Worf treats the poor Trill with disdain, ignoring the fact that she too is living through the trauma of being joined to the symbiont. None of this is her fault! Don’t yell at the innocent cupcake!

If it looks like a Dax and it quacks like a Dax… Worf and Jadzia had chemistry like whoa and we were here for it. Worf and Ezri… just don’t. So when they bump uglies in “Penumbra,” we just find it kinda gross and distasteful. My dude, that is not your wife anymore, and she’s in a very vulnerable state having had the Dax symbiont thrust upon her, so it strikes us as kind of problematic that they go to the bone zone (and I don’t mean Worf’s calisthenics program).

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Qapla’! Now that we’ve got our honor back, take the R'uustai with us and subscribe so that you can see our next batch of character spotlights as we segue smoothly into our crewmates from Deep Space Nine! On the flip side, you can listen along to our dishonorable rewatch of Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, challenge us to a bat’leth fight on Facebook and Twitter, and join us for some good tea in a nice house.

[sshbpodcast]

Tasha Yar vs. Ro Laren: Fight!

By Ames

We’re taking a quick break from our normal character spotlights because I just couldn’t justify doing individual articles about either of these characters, but when I realized I could discuss both of them, I got a little carried away. So welcome, one and all, to the Enterprise-D’s contest between its two resident badass bitches. Your hosts here at A Star to Steer Her By needed to know – who wins? Tasha Yar or Ro Laren?

This calls for another Big Board (seen previously when we ranked the Trek films and Star War films)!

To determine this as fairly as possible, we’ve designed this competition and discussed it at length in this week’s podcast episode (jump to 50:53 for the boxscore) to score our two contestants against each other in eleven categories. Not every battle went as we thought it would, there are surprises in store, glavins to be thrown, and the occasional double-cross to keep things interested. Ready? Fight!

Some major spoilers for Picard are below and discussed on the podcast, if anyone cares. Shrug emoji.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

1. Childhood History

Yar: If there’s one thing (and one thing only) the writers knew about Tasha Yar when writing her character, it’s that she grew up in a failed colony full of rape gangs. Which she brings up all the time. Like, way too much. We see a brief glimpse of it in a flashback in “Where No One Has Gone Before” and yeah, it does not look fun. Basing a character around horrible trauma for no good reason is just the kind of thing the season one writers did, for better or for worse.

Ro: Ensign Ro arrived when the series was much more established with a much more established history that made for the background of the episode “Ensign Ro.” The whole concept of Cardassia-occupied Bajor came along with her introduction, and the story that she tells about watching her father get tortured to death by Cardassians was the complex foundation that this show (and others!) found worthy to explore.

Winner: Ro Laren. The story of the Bajorans ended up being such a major seed for all of DS9, while the established rape gangs of Yar’s childhood only ended up getting entirely contradicted later in “Legacy.” Speaking of which…

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2. Pre-Enterprise Backstory

Yar: Picard tells Tasha’s sister Ishara in “Legacy” about the first time he saw that woman who would later become the chief of security on the Federation’s flagship. He encountered her rushing to rescue a colonist on a Carnelian minefield. Picard was so impressed that he immediately requested that she join his crew, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Ro: We learn that Ro had a very different standing in Starfleet before her reluctant posting to the Enterprise-D in “Ensign Ro.” Apparently, she got eight crewmen on the Wellington killed due to disobeying orders, and was given the choice between going to prison or performing a mission for the definitely corrupt Admiral Kennelly. Hell, Picard’s first impression of her was basically “I don’t want someone like her on my ship.” Lucky for us, he eventually came around!

Winner: Tasha Yar. These two couldn’t be more different in standing within Starfleet when we first meet them. I’ve got to rule that anyone who piques the interest of Captain Picard is worth a point in this category.

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3. Friends

Yar: Tasha seems friendly with pretty much everyone on the ship! Worf plays Parrises Squares with her in “11001001” and he even bets on her for a martial arts competition in “Skin of Evil.” We see her borrowing clothes from Troi in “The Naked Now.” And it’s all the more clear that she leaves an imprint on all her friends’ lives when she leaves final words for so many crewmembers after her death in “Skin of Evil.”

Ro: On the other hand, Laren is so much more reserved and particular about who she chooses to spend time with. It’s so significant that Guinan decides to befriend her in “Ensign Ro,” and we see more of their dynamics together in “Rascals.” There was also something hinted at between her and Riker when he says in “The Next Phase” that he wants to deliver her eulogy, but we never get to see what that was.

Winner: Tasha Yar. Clearly she has a rapport with so many of her shipmates in a way that actually affects them deeply and personally, as we’ll see in a moment with Lt. Commander Data.

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4. Pets

Yar: We see in “Where No One Has Gone Before” that at one point Tasha had a kitty whom she cared for and kept safe from the rape gangs on Turkana IV. Surely, that cat was probably the only good thing going for her through her traumatic childhood.

Ro: None we’re aware of! Your loss, Laren!

Winner: Tasha Yar. This podcast full of cat people has deemed it so! We can’t not spread the love to fellow cat parents, so the winner here was a given.

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5. Romantic Interests

Yar: I can cite that really hot scene with Data in “The Naked Now” as much as I like, but when you think about it, both of them were under the influence at the time so it’s a little bit squicky. And while it’s clear in episodes like “The Measure of a Man” and in the series Picard that it was meaningful to Data, for Yar, it was just Tuesday. However, the truly lovely romance that we see for her comes in the alternate timeline in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” where she gets to make googoo eyes at Richard Castillo, and we are here for it!

Ro: Similar to that caveat above with the drunken Data, we have to put an asterisk on Laren’s romance scene with Will Riker in “Conundrum” because they were both amnesiacs at the time. Again, there’s something not fully consensual about the thing because they don’t have all the information to know what they’re doing, no matter how much chemistry they have together.

Winner: Tasha Yar. If it had just been a Data versus Riker battle for this category, I’d be uncomfortable making a call because of the lack of the ability to consent involved in both. But that budding romance between Yar and Castillo actually holds meaning for her and we ship them hard!

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6. Fighting Prowess

Yar: Here’s where we start to put up our dukes in this competition. As chief of security, Tasha clearly kicks some ass. We see this many many times in “Code of Honor.” She drops Lutan’s bodyguard Hagon like a load of bricks in their first meeting, displays her combat skills in the holodeck for the Ligonians, and finally wins in the combat ring against Yareena without killing her. Points off, however, for getting utterly destroyed by Armus in “Skin of Evil,” but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Ro: While phased in “The Next Phase,” we get to see some killer moves from Ro when the phased Romulan confronts her. She sneaks through a wall and gets the jump on Parem, a chase ensues which leads to a fistfight. And while we may have misremembered Ro being the one who threw the guy through a bulkhead (turns out, it was Geordi), she still holds her own and kicks some phased butt!

Winner: Ro Laren. Okay, so we’ve established that both of these women are badasses, so which of them would win in a fight? Put that way, we’ve got to give it to Laren because she’s Maquis and may be more likely to fight dirty. Catfight! Meow!

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7. Command Skills

Yar: I bring up this category mostly to talk about some missed opportunities on both sides! Ro and Troi were the obvious choices for who should have taken charge while dealing with the matriarchal society in “Angel One,” but Riker walks all over them because it turns out all these bitches needed was a man to tell them what’s what. C’mon! This should have been Yar’s show and instead she relinquishes command.

Ro: Similarly, there’s a power vacuum during the disaster in “Disaster” and Ro is this close to mutinying against Troi who is utterly flailing and refusing to make the hard choices. Ro is there and making the right calls for the situation, displaying that she has the nose for command should the situation arise, but frustratingly, nothing comes of it and she has to apologize to Deanna at the end (even though she was right!).

Winner: Ro Laren. After we later see Troi pass the command test by killing holo-Geordi, it stings that much more that we see how right Ro was when she advocated sacrificing the engineering section, so the point goes to her for being willing to make the tough calls.

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8. Ethical Stands

Yar: Oh boy, the most up on her high horse we see Tasha get is in the infamous scene with Wesley about drug addiction in “Symbiosis.” The whole scene reeks of Nancy Reagan’s war on drugs and the scene feels forced as hell, like an after-school special somehow invaded an episode of Star Trek. And ya know, the messaging was perfectly clear without Yar spelling it out with a heavy-handed “say no to drugs, kids” speech.

Ro: We do give Ro a lot of credit for coming clean to Picard in “Ensign Ro” after that chat with her new bestie Guinan. Ro’s more obvious display of standing up for what she believes is her joining the Maquis, even though it gives Picard a sad in “Preemptive Strike.” BUUUUUUT! Somehow all that gets undone in the Picard episode “Imposters” when she has apparently rejoined Starfleet, shitting all over that big moment of character growth. Oh Laren, you’re making this one tough!

Winner: Stalemate. Sorry, but we’re going to have to give half a point to each since we could not agree on a winner after that episode from Picard really ended up complicating things (as I’m sure Chris refused to cut from our discussion in this week’s podcast episode). We’ll see in a moment how this affects the overall competition in the Verdict section…

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9. Strategy & Tactics

Yar: This category was meant to be a catch-all of miscellaneous things the characters have done, and it really made us realize that the tactical officer rarely makes decisions that are particularly… tactical? Yar and later Worf seem to get punked whenever they try to do anything. In both her confrontations with Q, she gets knocked out – frozen in “Encounter at Farpoint” and sent to the penalty box in “Hide and Q.” Is there really anything else worth mentioning? No, really. I’m asking. Comment below.

Ro: We see Ro in fewer episodes than we see Yar, but she at least gets to attempt to do some things. Her plan to use the unmanned Bajoran transport to trick Kennelly in “Ensign Ro” was pretty ingenious. While it’s a good idea to try to knock out all the aliens possessing crewmembers’ bodies in “Power Play,” she does miss Data entirely and her little scheme is foiled. And finally, she and the other child-shaped folks in “Rascals” outthink some Ferengi, low bar that that is.

Winner: Ro Laren. This was an easy win for Ro because, frankly, Yar just plain doesn’t get to DO much in her season of Trek, and when she does, she gets Worfed (before Worfing was even a thing!).

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10. Death(s)

Yar: A character so nice they killed her twice. There is still much controversy over her death in “Skin of Evil” because it’s so abrupt and pointless, but that was the point. Is that a good or bad thing? Aside from her nice post-mortem message, we’re barely affected by it. Her sacrificing herself in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” would have been an excellent resolution to her character… but that seems sullied by the knowledge that she survived, was kept as a Romulan concubine, and then killed when baby goddamn Sela ratted her out, as established in “Redemption.” Dang, Yar can’t catch a break.

Ro: This one’s tricky because it does mean we have to dip into the Picard series, which we haven’t been doing for other characters in our spotlight series because we haven’t covered it on the podcast yet. Say what you will about the myriad character deaths in Picard (and we can, have, and WILL), but Ro’s death fighting the conspiracy in “Imposters” is a pretty good place to resolve her character. She resolves some character stuff with Picard, uncovers a huge Federation-wide plot, and goes out in a blaze of glory. Is there a better way to go?

Winner: Ro Laren. Especially for a Picard death, Ro’s character resolution actually feels earned and not like the writers picking and choosing who lives and who dies just for shock value (*cough cough* Ah cHugh *cough*).

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11. Personal Style

Yar: Ooh la la. That hair in “Haven.” Get it, girl. We don’t see either of these characters out of uniform very often, so it’s in little personalizing elements that we get to see their own style, and Yar sure knows how to doll herself up for a wedding-planning dinner. I’ll also give a couple nods to that outfit in “That Naked Now,” though I’m pretty sure it’s alluded to that Yar yoinked that from Troi’s closet.

Ro: Ro’s defining stylistic feature is her big Bajoran earring, which she defiantly wears as a statement of heritage, culture, and a big F YOU to Riker, and we like that about her. Her little headband that we see in “The Next Phase” and “Rascals” is a little funny since it’s so matchy matchy with her uniform, so it might be a wash. I’m also gonna say the undercover garb we see her sporting in “Preemptive Strike” doesn’t count because that was for a mission.

Winner: Tasha Yar. Did we include this category just so we could give heart eyes to that great hair pouf from “Haven”? Yes. Yes, we did.

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Verdict

That’s 5.5 points for Tasha Yar and 5.5 points for Ro Laren. We have a tie! We really weren’t expecting this, though I must admit throwing Yar a few bones (and cats) since I really thought Ro would run away with the whole thing. Even when we tried to agree to stop citing plot elements from Picard so that we could pick Ro as the winner of the Ethical Stands category, then we’d have a stalemate in the Deaths category and we’d STILL have a tie. 

So what does that mean for us? Sure, we can continue to claim that Ro Laren is the better written character from a strictly story perspective (and Michelle Forbes of course is a stellar actress), but she also has the advantage of joining the show after the writers’ room chaos of the first couple seasons had sorted itself out. If Tasha Yar had been given that same chance (as we glimpsed in something like “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” we’ve just proven she’s got the potential and backstory to go toe-to-toe with one of our favorite recurring characters from TNG. You go, girls!

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So our big fight set piece ended with both combatants sort of hugging it out, which seems the Star Trek way! We’re back to our usual character spotlights next week with a character that bridges our trajectory from TNG to DS9 (and it’s not O’Brien!). So join us for that, continue listening along to our Enterprise watch-through on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast, do the wave with us over on Facebook and Twitter, and punch like a girl!

[sshbpodcast]

It's Threshold Day! That deserves a reblog!

Making a case for “Threshold”: Character Transformations in Star Trek

By Ames

This week, A Star to Steer Her By and guest star Carl covered one of the most infamous Voyager episodes out there: “Threshold”. You all know and dread it: Tom Paris exceeds the warp-10 barrier, starts transforming into a horrible monster, and kidnaps Janeway, and then the two of them turn into giant salamanders and have lizard babies. It’s a tale as old as time travel. “Threshold” is currently the second-to-lowest rated Voyager episode on IMBD (the lowest is “The Fight” for those of you wondering), won Star Trek 101’s Spock’s Brain Award for worst episode of a series, and is perpetually cited on worst-of lists and hated by the general fandom. I won’t deny it: the ending is just that chin-scratchingly absurd and ruins a perfectly serviceable Paris plot.

But you know what: I’m gonna make the case for “Threshold” here by examining the use of character transformations throughout Star Trek, which we see a LOT.  We make some good cases for this loathed episode in our podcast coverage (and bonus character transformation chatter starts at 1:08). Start mutating now, because things are going to get weird!

Keep reading

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Guinan

By Ames

Guinan gives The Next Generation the closest thing the show gets to a wizard: just some kind of supernatural being whose unquestioned wisdom gets the heroes out of scrape after scrape but whose true powers are never entirely explained. Oh, and she wears baller hats.

Sure, she may play into that “bartender, here to listen to your problems and guide you on your path” trope (which frankly Deanna should be doing but rarely does), but Guinan is so much more than that. We’re going to get into the good number of moments this week on A Star to Steer Her By, so get ready for your personal epiphany as you read on below and listen to our chatter on the podcast (pull up a stool at 1:02:25). El-Aurians are always listening.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Whole generations of disposable people Simultaneously one of Picard’s best scenes, the peptalk Guinan gives to Jean-Luc when he’s being thoroughly whooped by Riker’s prosecution in “The Measure of a Man” feels like a turning point in the show. Whoopi Goldberg’s calm presence as a Black woman in a scene about creating androids as slaves imbues their discussion with meaning, weight, and stakes that are both personal and universal.

Every time you feel love it’ll will be different The perpetual sounding board, Guinan helps Wesley parse his feelings at the end of “The Dauphin” in a scene we really give the both of them credit for. Guinan doesn’t speak down to the kid or just tell him everything will be okay while he’s broken hearted after watching Salia leave. She tells it like it is: love is deeply subjective and his feelings are valid.

A warrior’s drink Guinan introducing Worf to prune juice in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is such a perfect microcosmic scene depicting her character in a lot of ways. She just knows people. Worf is a tough nut to crack, but she reads people in such a way that she figures out just what he’d like in a drink, just as she does later in the episode on a much greater scale…

I look at things, I look at people, and they just don’t feel right …when she figures out the parallel dimension problem at the heart of “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” In that slightly fantastical wizard way she has, Guinan can feel that something is wrong with the timeline when the Enterprise-C shows up out of some rift or other and suddenly her once familiar crewmates are denizens of a warship. And even better, she gets Picard to believe her.

You have to let go of Picard Whenever anyone on the crew needs a little guidance, that seems to come from a really great scene with the ship’s bartender, and who could possibly need it more than Riker at the top of “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2”? She gives him the confidence he needs to keep going in the absence of Picard, whom she insists she’s super close to for reasons we don’t know yet.

Job opening in the Empath field Another crisis, another peptalk from Guinan. We all know Troi handles losing her empath powers in “The Loss” pretty terribly, but you know who handled it great? This El-Aurian bartender I know who swoops in and reverse psychologizes Troi with such stealth that even if she had all her senses at the time, Deanna wouldn’t have known what hit her!

You saw exactly what you wanted to see in the holodeck It is downright glorious how Guinan puts Geordi in his place in “Galaxy’s Child” when he’s unironically whining about how Leah Brahms is nothing like the hologram he created of her (vom!). “She's probably done the most horrific thing one person can do to another,” she says, “not live up to your expectations,” and I can’t help but stand up and applaud.

I’ve heard some Klingon belly laughs that would curl your hair Guinan’s advice to crewmembers isn’t limited to the human ones! In “Redemption,” she not only schools Worf in holodeck target practice (and left-landed, to boot!), but she also makes him consider what it means to be Klingon, as his experiences are atypical from most of his people. We have no doubt that her chat with him inspired him to get involved in Kurn’s war.

You ain’t never had a friend like me When Guinan sees other officers like La Forge pointedly avoiding Ro Laren, she makes it a point to befriend her in “Ensign Ro.” That in and of itself is very Guinan-like behavior, but it also comes with some of her copyrighted motivational chats when she is able to convince Ro to come clean to Picard about the secret mission she was tasked with for Admiral Kennelly.

I tell you, that razorbeast was a good friend All throughout “Imaginary Friend,” while the other officers not only infantilize Clara Sutter for having an imaginary friend, but they entirely ignore the signs that something isn’t right. Everyone except Guinan. Guinan talks to Clara as an equal, even if she’s a child, and imparts the story of her own imaginary friend: a Tarkassian razor beast, which somehow seems fitting.

We are also lonely Despite being conflicted about Hugh being on board in “I, Borg,” Guinan goes and meets with him and it’s such a cute little scene. You forget that someone as old and wizened as Guinan still has things to learn, and to find some common ground with a Borg was unexpected for her. And she even convinces Picard to see him too, giving us yet another great scene from this great episode.

Why are you still sitting here? Let’s see, is there a single member of the crew Guinan hasn’t peptalked yet… ah right, Dr. Crusher. Now we have a full BINGO card! Our final tete-a-tete from Guinan comes in “Suspicions” when Bev is doubting her decisions to look into Dr. Reyga’s murder and Guinan cheers her on until the good doctor solves the mystery, kills the baddy, and flies in a sun like a badass! Truly so many of our Best Moments from other character spotlights are initiated by Guinan!

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Worst moments

Give yourself permission to be selfish Guinan’s first significant scene in the series is in “The Child,” and of course she’s doing better counseling than Troi. However, your hosts here at SSHB can’t help but cringe because, while the show got rid of Beverly Crusher for a season, it means we were still stuck with Wesley because Guinan convinced him to stay, especially after a season in which we were so annoyed by his character all the time! Guinan, how could you?

You’re a ‘droid and I'm a ‘noid You saw above all the times Guinan helped all the other characters with a little self introspection to find their way through a problem, and the one character whom I’d say she fails with is Data in “The Outrageous Okona.” It’s probably because encouraging Data to consult Joe Pesci on how to do comedy led to the events of my least favorite TNG episode, and it’s all Guinan’s fault!

Tell me more about my eyes While the scene in which Riker flirts with Guinan when Wesley asks for dating advice in “The Dauphin” is hot as hell and inspired a little bit of shipping, we’ve got to admit that it’s not at all helpful to Wesley. Usually Guinan scenes are much more beneficial to the crewmember who is struggling, and in this one, none of this is what Wes asked for. I’m still totally into it though.

Let me introduce you to the Borg We learn in “Q Who?” that the El-Aurians were almost wiped out by Borg… because apparently Guinan and her people never told Starfleet this before? Think about it: she clues Picard in after Q has flung them into the Delta Quadrant about who the Borg are, and it is news to him! Starfleet spends every other interaction with Borg playing catch up because they don’t have any info on them!

That’s what you get, Charlie! You get fork stabbed! Pardon the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia quote, but I couldn’t help myself. And Guinan seems to me no better than a McPoyle when she stabs the suddenly human Q with a fork in “Déjà Q” and generally mocks him. It just seems petty and violent for a character who is usually so stoic and reserved. So much for the tolerant Alpha Quadrant.

But I know it was an empty death, a death without purpose While Guinan had a lot of instances from our Best Moments list above from “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” we’re still troubled by her nudging Tasha Yar to go sacrifice herself on the Enterprise-C to make up for her waste of a death in “Skin of Evil.” Even if you consider it a better death than a tarpit, then you get freakin’ Sela in “Redemption,” which Guinan somehow blames Picard for when she’s the one who compelled Yar to go!

That was setting number one While some might give credit to Guinan for quelling a riot before it could get out of control when everyone was on edge due to sleep deprivation in “Night Terrors,” I’m not one of them. As I said in “Déjà Q,” violence doesn’t seem the answer for Guinan, and this scene escalated so quickly (partly because the bar scenes in this episode feel like afterthoughts), it makes me wonder how she let things get that bad.

A Yankee in Captain Picard’s Court Oh boy, I’ve got to question some of Guinan’s standards when we see her hanging out with Samuel Clemens in “Time’s Arrow” (and a terribly acted Sam Clemens at that!) after Picard had claimed in “Ensign Ro” that she’s very picky about her friends. Her cohorting with the author led to some of the most obnoxious scenes from The Next Generation that I’ve ever seen.

Our relationship is beyond friendship, beyond family There are several instances of Guinan hinting at her and Picard’s established kinship before we get to the story of the bald man who was kind to her in “Time’s Arrow” and my reaction was… that’s it? We say sometimes that leaving something unexplained is better than giving it a stupid explanation, and oh boy, Picard just sitting with Guinan in a cave once was totally fizzled what had been built up for so long.

Were you this much fun when you were a kid? Some of this is the overall child acting being bad in “Rascals” and Guinan’s child actor had it especially stacked against her since her voice had to get dubbed (resulting in her just sounding super smug all the time), but boy was she insufferable as a child! It was cute for adult Guinan to befriend adult Ro in “Ensign Ro,” but we felt bad that little Laren had to put up with this! Let this girl mope by herself, lady!

Forty to love Though Guinan helps boost Beverly’s confidence in “Suspicions,” she does it by tricking her with this lie about playing tennis that just seemed unnecessary. Guinan always finds ways to converse with people who need it, but this whole tacked-on frame story had some weirdness to it because it forced both Guinan and the episode to be indirect when it really didn’t have to.

Think of me as an echo of the person you know I’ll take every opportunity I get to shit on the Nexus in Generations. It’s just such a confusing device they used to get Picard and Kirk together that really makes no sense if you think about it for more time that it’s actually onscreen, which isn’t a lot. And there’s an echo of Guinan in there, feeding Picard exposition and generally complicating what this place is supposed to be, and I’m just done with it.

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That’s enough from Guinan’s advice column this week! We’ve got a really special DOUBLE spotlight next week, in which Tasha Yar and Ro Laren are going to go head to head for the title of Baddest Bitch on the Enterprise-D. Place your bets now and be sure to come back for that! Also keep coming back for more of our series watch of Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts, order a drink with us over on Facebook and Twitter, and enjoy your prune juice.

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Lwaxana Troi

By Ames

Lwaxana haters, see yourselves out (or stick around and see how wrong you are!), because A Star to Steer Her By loves our black-eyed Betazoid mama. She’s the daughter of the Fifth House, holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed, and also one of our favorite characters from The Next Generation!

Like Katharine Pulaski (whom we also stan with the best of them!), Lwaxana Troi is a character who gets way more hate than she deserves, who grew substantially every time she appeared on the show, and who has way more nuance than even some of the main characters we’ve discussed from the show so far! And that fashion sense? Holy cow. So pack your absurdly huge luggage, don your fluffiest wig, and meet up with us and Mr. Homn as we celebrate (and occasionally criticize) all things Lwaxana below and this week on the podcast (sashay over to 55:22 for the convo). We’re going on a manhunt!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Murderers! Assassins! While her first couple of appearances in TNG were fairly annoying, as you’ll see in our next section, the one thing Lwaxana gets emphatically right in “Manhunt” is figuring out the two Antedians the Enterprise was carrying are actually assassins. And she drops this information in the most nonchalant way possible, cementing her status as a major boss.

Release them and I will stay with you willingly Oh boy is “Ménage à Troi,” a tough episode to gauge. While it certainly has its lows (Lwaxana constantly crashing Deanna’s day, Ferengi shenanigans at their worst, and some sexual assault and implied rape swept under the rug), Mrs. Troi does put her daughter first and insists to Daimon Tog that Deanna and Will be released if she sacrifices herself like any mother would.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? The other great scene that Lwaxana inspires in “Ménage à Troi,” is one we mentioned in our Picard Spotlight post, when she and JL work together to trick the Ferengi into releasing her. Even from across viewscreens, she compels the beautiful diatribe of Shakespearean poetry from Jean-Luc that ends up saving the summer’s day!

What does that little one do, Mister Woof? I don’t know why, but it always tickles me the couple of times on the show that Lwaxana calls our Klingon security head “Mr. Woof” as she does in “Half a Life” and others. Is she doing it just to evoke a reaction from him? Does she actually know his name at all? Regardless of the answer, it’s a cute joke that the writers play.

It is the custom for your loved ones to join you at this Resolution, is it not? Our fuller opinion of the character really started getting formed once the show reached “Half a Life” – one of our TNG faves – and we got a different look at this man-hungry helicopter parent. Suddenly, Lwaxana has nuance. She fights for people other than herself or her immediate family. She becomes vulnerable with Timicin, something we didn’t think possible from her character. And when she decides to go with him to his Resolution, it feels personal, complex, and complete.

A child who is trusted becomes worthy of that trust We gave Deanna some rightful criticism for thinking that writing up a contract between Worf and Alexander would be a good idea in “Cost of Living,” and Lwaxana waltzes in like a fairy godmother and throws that terrible idea in their faces! Immediately, she knows how to better parent Alexander than anyone else on the show ever had, low bar that that is.

You’re telling me you’re not going to be naked at your own wedding? It feels like such a triumph for Lwaxana to so brazenly show up naked to her wedding in “Cost of Living,” fully embracing her Betazoid heritage and throwing her strong will and individuality in Campio’s and his little toady’s faces. Now why she was engaged to that uptight twat in the first place is another story, but good for her anyway!

Whatever it is, we can face it together Here’s an actually good moment she shares with her daughter: That tear-jerking moment in “Dark Page.” It’s another instance in which we see Lwaxana as having more personality traits than we were led to believe she had as she comes to acknowledge the death of her daughter Kestra, and also we see Majel Barrett nailing some acting we’d never seen from her before.

Nobody’s ever seen me like this By the time we reach Deep Space Nine, the writers have figured out what to do with Lwaxana Troi to make her an impactful character. Sure, she’s still a great comic device, especially against rigid characters like Picard and Odo, but it’s in the way that she is humanized (or Betazoidized?) in scenes like the truly remarkable turbolift scene in “The Forsaken” that she really shines.

Then sway with me, Odo. Sway with me. While Lwaxana’s constant pestering of Picard gets tiring really quickly, her relationship with Odo proves something more interesting. In one of those Odd Couple kind of pairings, she’s able to get Odo to come out of his shell, even if it’s just a little bit, so when she gets him to dance with her in “Fascination,” it’s delightful and shows more layers to their respective characters.

Before I met her, my world was a much smaller place Okay, so the weird inspiration vampire side of the plot of “The Muse” may be idiotic, but the Lwaxana-Odo scenes are pure gold. Lwaxana and Odo, again, find each other to be the only people they can be vulnerable with, and Odo agrees to marry a very pregnant Lwaxana to get her out of an existing marriage, delivering the purest, most intimate and beautiful speech we’ve heard from him (until Kira, at least).

Strut your stuff on the catwalk Finally, we just have to give massive points to her remarkable fashion sense. One of our favorites is this blue number from “Fascination,” with the perfect wig to complement it and accessories like whoa. Make sure you check out our full screenshot assemblage that we put together previously to give fair credit to the excellent costuming of this iconic woman.

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Worst moments

Momzillas gone wild Mrs. Troi is not without her faults, however, and most are man-related. How much pressure she puts on her daughter to get married is more than uncomfortable, it can get downright offensive. When the arranged marriage she initiated between Deanna and Wyatt comes due in “Haven,” it’s clear that this momzilla doesn’t always have her daughter’s best interests in mind; just her own.

Use your mind, not your mouth We also found it just plain rude how much Lwaxana insisted on communicating with Deanna telepathically in “Haven” and other episodes. a) Deanna has made it clear she’d rather speak out loud, and b) Picard and other crewmembers can’t hear what’s being said and that’s impolite, especially coming from someone of such standing in the Federation.

Oh, Jean-Luc, what naughty thoughts It becomes a running gag for the first couple appearances of Lwaxana how much she makes sexual advances on Captain Picard, who is just trying to do his job most of the time. But “Manhunt” really takes the cake for just going overboard with presumptuous behavior unbecoming for a woman of her stature. Leave the poor guy alone!

Until death us do part Later in “Manhunt,” it’s even grosser for Mrs. Troi to declare that she and Riker are to be wed. Whatever physiological state she was in is no excuse for how she goes out of her way to mortify her daughter, to put the moves on Deanna’s imzadi without consent, and to make scene after scene all for romantic attention. Why Gene Roddenberry would make his wife act like this is beyond us.

No man has ever been such a mystery to me Lucky for the flesh-and-blood men that Lwaxana spends most of “Manhunt” sexually accosting, apparently she has no idea what a hologram is. I don’t know how, but she’s so horny that when she meets Rex the bartender, she’s so intrigued by her inability to read his mind that she doesn’t even realize it’s because he’s not a real person. We can just imagine how far it went before it dawned on her.

Oo-mox is only the beginning It’s only fitting that someone like Lwaxana Troi should be there for the introduction of oo-mox on the show, and one time was already too much. During “Ménage à Troi,” Lwaxana unknowingly performs what’s essentially a sex act on her captor, which is gross enough as it is, but we learn later in an episode of Deep Space Nine that she also slept with Daimon Tog, and I vomit in my mouth.

Swipe right! We learn in “Cost of Living” that Lwaxana has gotten engaged to Campio, whom she effectively met on a dating app and whom she has absolutely no chemistry with. It strikes us as entirely out of character that she’d accept marriage to someone who wouldn’t allow her to be who she intrinsically is just because he’s rich. Thank the Four Deities she found a way out of it!

My name is Mud While we gave Lwaxana credit for spending more time with Alexander and treating him better than Worf ever does, we have to admit that the jacuzzi scene in “Cost of Living” is off-putting. Sure, it’s the future and we know that in Betazoid culture, nudity is entirely normal, but we’re still not sure it’s something Alexander is accustomed to or had any ability to consent to and that’s weird.

The worst thing that can happen to any parent This is a complicated one because it’s so triggering. I’m not sure it would be fair to blame Lwaxana or anyone for the accident that befell Kestra as we learn in “Dark Page,” but it’s very clear that Lwaxana blames herself. This is truly the lowest her character had ever been, and it explains a few things about how she so tightly latches on to Deanna, but it is a bad, bad time for her.

Bad thoughts, they hurt her What’s more accurate to say about the events from “Dark Page” is that Lwaxana had handled her trauma in an ultimately poor way. By blocking those memories as evidently Betazoids do with triggering events, she never was able to mourn or accept the loss of Kestra, instead avoiding the memories entirely in a way that turned out to be harmful to her and not fair to her late daughter’s memory.

Does no one understand quarantine procedures? I’ll nitpick about it every time some disease breaks out in an episode and no one seems to understand you shouldn’t go around touching everyone around them. So when Lwaxana has Zanthi Fever in “Fascination” and suddenly her horniness becomes contagious, I’m doubly pissed off because it resulted in a really, really stupid premise for an episode.

What I’d mistaken for love was nothing more than a prison After we mentioned just now when Lwaxana leapt at the chance to marry Campio in “Cost of Living,” we see she’s made the same mistake with Jeyal in “The Muse,” except now there’s a baby involved. The most irritating facet of Lwaxana’s personality is how man-hungry she always seems to be. It always clouds her perception, making her make bad decision after bad decision, and worse: making her compromise who she is.

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Give it up for Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who could really do it all. Stick around next week for more kickass recurring characters on the Enterprise-D, and for our continued ride through the series Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you podcast. You can also send us love notes over on Facebook and Twitter, but stop marrying every eligible dude you meet!

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Wesley Crusher

By Ames

Grab your favorite hideous sweater! It’s time to talk about Wesley Crusher. He’s one of the most polarizing characters on TNG, with a lot of hate directed his way, but he also has a number of great Trek moments which we on A Star to Steer Her By are going to sort through today!

We can probably blame Gene Roddenberry for making this character so insufferable, especially in the first season when he seemed to have the easy solution for the engineering problem of any given episode. Gene designed him to characterize a person’s infinite potential and then slapdashedly shoehorned him into every place he could, and you’ll notice that right after the big writers room turnover, the child prodigy started feeling more like a character and less like a cheat code. Scroll on for the list below and listen to our chatter on this week’s podcast episode (warp over to timestamp 57:36) for all the dirt. Just unplug your nanite experiment first.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Don’t shut up, Wesley While I’ll give Wesley the deserved scrutiny in a moment for the absurd number of times in season one of TNG that he saved the day, we do have to give him some credit for figuring out that Lore was impersonating Data in “Datalore.” Even while pretty much everyone on the crew was telling him to shut up, Wes had it all figured out and topped it off by beaming Lore into space.

Double dumbass on you! Wesley actually does get to shine during “Coming of Age,” an episode that really uses his youth to its advantage by having him take the Starfleet Academy entrance exam. And he gets pretty far! He even figures out that Rondon is a Zaldan, so Wesley realizes that apologizing for getting run into himself is the wrong reaction for that culture and comes away looking like a badass.

Teamwork makes the dream work Speaking of “Coming of Age,” Wesley is also this close to solving the dynamics relationships test first when he helps Mordock figure it out too. Wesley’s natural affinity for helping his crewmates is more important to him than getting the top score, which TAC Officer Chang takes into consideration in the final results. I’m not sure it helped much, but it’s a good character moment.

You never forget your first “I'm never going to feel this way about anyone else,” Wesley says to Guinan after watching his first crush leave in “The Dauphin.” Strangely, it’s a very mature little conversation considering Wesley was ready to write Salia off as some kind of alien monster earlier in the episode. But he learns to accept her differences, score some relationship experience points, and get his first smooch.

The minute you walk through that door they’re your team Slowly, the show starts putting Wesley in more age-appropriate situations in which he isn’t just saving the day, so it’s fitting for him to be overwhelmed when leading his first committee in “Pen Pals.” His team member Davies effectively takes over because Wes initially lacks confidence, but he soon takes charge and they work together to save Drema IV. Go team!

You told me to improvise During the war games in “Peak Performance,” Wesley thinks outside the box and retrieves one of his many, many experiments from the Enterprise to use on the less advantaged Hathaway. While Riker initially accuses young Crusher of cheating, no one said he couldn’t sneak tools off the other ship, and it’s that kind of ingenuity that could be useful in a fight.

Begin by letting go of your guilt, Wesley His mother Beverly may be on full display in “Remember Me” as we discussed last week, but Wesley also gets some interesting development. Back in “Where No One Has Gone Before” the Traveler saw potential in the child prodigy, and when the two of them use their special powers here to open the door for Dr. Crusher to return from the warp bubble, we witness some of that weird potential get unlocked.

I’ve done it all because I want you to be proud of me We joke a lot on the podcast that Picard is secretly Wesley’s father, and it’s mostly for laughs. But when we get touching scenes between the two of them like the one in “Final Mission,” we think we may be onto something. Stranded on a planet without water, Wesley keeps an injured Picard alive (can’t say the same for Dirgo, but whatever), fueling paternity theories for years to come.

I just lost the game After Wesley leaves the crew after “Final Mission,” his appearances are more methodical, and thus his character feels more and more appropriate each time. In “The Game,” he’s just visiting but his tendency to see how things work helps him and Lefler to discover that the video game everyone’s playing is actually harmful before the whole crew turns on them.

I would like to add something to my testimony We get even more glimpses of how far Wesley has come when he’s attending Starfleet Academy in “The First Duty.” All of Nova Squadron has lied about the circumstances of Josh Albert’s flight accident, and it’s Wesley who comes clean in the end because he can’t bear the guilt and the dishonesty of covering up their nefarious actions. Take that, Locarno!

These people deserve better than to be removed from their homes We found Picard’s actions inexcusable and entirely out of character in “Journey’s End” but you know who was actually on point? Wesley freakin’ Crusher. How on earth the boy was the only Starfleet-adjacent person to actually try to defend the colonists on Dorvan V is beyond us. It strikes us as opposing Federation ideals to force the colonists to move, and Wes knows that.

I had to find my own path Finally, it is a fabulous resolution to the Wesley Crusher character for him to decide on his own to leave Starfleet and go with the Traveler to discover his true potential in “Journey’s End.” For too many kids, it’s the parents who put pressure on them to walk certain paths, and we celebrate Wes for finding his own. Ya know, until he’s randomly back in Starfleet for that cut scene from Nemesis for some reason.

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Worst moments

Wesley Saves the Day! Okay, I’m gonna lump all the obnoxious “Wesley Saves the Day!” instances into one blurb because it’s so damn repetitive. Every single time, Wesley – a child amidst some of Starfleet’s best of the best – figures out some impossible engineering problem before any of the adults in the room can, and we got so tired of it. 

Whether it’s by getting drunk and taking over engineering only to use his reverse tractor beam in “The Naked Now,” or saving the day with the Traveler in “Where No One Has Gone Before,” or spotting Picard’s brain scan from across the room and deducing there are Ferengi shenanigans afoot in “The Battle,” or cracking the lock on the holodeck door while La Forge had already admitted defeat in “The Big Goodbye,” or seeing through Lore’s disguise as we mentioned above while all the adults in the room tell him to shut up in “Datalore,” or probably a ton of others all from the first season, it was clear no one knew how to write him except as some kind of magical prodigy. Alakazam!

Keep off the grass It’s all the more clear that having a child character on the crew is just a cringey idea in “Justice.” Sure, it could have been anyone who broke the stringent rules of the Edo, but just the fact that it’s Wesley gallumphing through a flower bed like an uncoordinated doofus, destroying it utterly, makes us roll our eyes and seriously wish they’d let them execute the brat. 

Frosty the no-no man Let us not forget that it was Wesley who hit the captain with a snowball in “Angel One,” an immature and obnoxious little scene that seems to prove Picard’s point that letting children run roughshod all over the ship is an inconvenience at best and a liability at worst. And it happens to be the latter in this episode, because he ends up getting the whole ship sick with some disease!

Drug Abuse Resistance Education is futile! While we can go on about Wesley’s whole exchange with Tasha about drug addiction in “Symbiosis,” what’s most egregious is how sheltered and clueless Wesley (normally some kind of child genius) has to be to not understand how narcotics work in the first place. It’s such a forced scene that we can just feel the Reagan Era war on drugs sentimentality written all over.

I guess leaving’s gotten easy for you It’s easy to find fault with “The Outrageous Okona” – it is my least favorite TNG episode, after all. Literally everyone in this episode is annoying, and as usual, that includes Wesley who first idolizes the charming rogue, then seems really judgey of his independent and carefree lifestyle, and finally he sasses the guy into making him conclude the soap opera plot of the episode.

How do you tell each other apart? It’s a pretty cheap joke when Wesley meets Mendon in “A Matter of Honor” and mistakes him for Mordock, whom we met in “Coming of Age.” I can’t tell if the writers were trying to make a racist “you people all look alike” kind of gag, but regardless, it makes Wesley look like an idiot for not knowing anything about Benzites and Benzite culture.

Klingons hate surprise parties Everything Wesley does in “The Icarus Factor” is annoying. He blathers like a maniac at the impatient Klingon, but then takes that impatience to assume something greater is going on than just being fed up with an obnoxious tween like anyone else would be. But to make things more exasperating, the little twerp is right, as he always is, and throws Worf an Age of Ascension party. Ugh.

I think that everything that’s been going wrong might be my fault It’s not until season three that, instead of saving the day as he did so many times already, Wesley actually screws up big by releasing the nanites in “Evolution.” While it’s refreshing to see Wes finally admit to some kind of flaw, his escaped nanites end up taking over the ship and start attacking people. And what’s worse is that he tries to lie about it until Guinan catches him!

Broccoli on the side You’ll remember this from La Forge’s spotlight as well, but Geordi reveals in “Hollow Pursuits” that it was Wesley who initiated the cruel nickname “Broccoli” for Lt. Barclay. Wes, you might still be a child, but you’re in a room with adults so stop acting like one! I don’t know what’s worse: being such a dick to one of your coworkers, or all the adults in the room condoning it.

I’m the one trapped in the bubble As if his misadventure in “Evolution” weren’t enough, Wesley botches another science experiment in “Remember Me” and nearly gets his mother killed in a pocket dimension! I know we just gave him some credit for bringing her back (though I mostly give that credit to the Traveler), someone’s got to stop letting Wes hook shit up to the warp core just because he’s the CMO’s kid! Nepotism much?

The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth Here’s another Wesley moment that ended up on both lists because as much as we can see the character growth and lesson learned when he comes clean in “The First Duty,” it also needs to be said that he is fully prepared to follow Nick Locarno like a little sheep. Wesley almost certainly wouldn’t have done the right thing in the end if Picard hadn’t basically threatened him first!

You are out! Auf wiedersehen! Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t poopoo Wesley’s fashion choices. Again. It’s a trainwreck of a fashion show. Sweater after sweater – all oversized, hideously patterned, and monstrously ugly. Ames has the full write up in an early blogpost: Wesley's Sweaters: An Unfashionable Collection, but this coral nightmare from “Where No One Has Gone Before” might take the cake.

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Well, we’re off to go exploring with the Traveler, so that’s gonna wrap things up for this one. We’re back next week with more characters to spotlight and also more Enterprise to watch over on the podcast, which you can find on SoundCloud or wherever you listen. You can also get our help on your Academy entrance exams over on Facebook and Twitter, and watch out for those flowers!

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Beverly Crusher

By Ames

Paging Dr. Crusher to medbay. Dr. Crusher to medbay. We have a character spotlight procedure to perform, so get your medical scrubs on and refresh yourself on the hippocratic oath as A Star to Steer Her By reviews the vital signs of Dr. Beverly Crusher, The Next Generation’s Chief Medical Officer for six out of seven seasons of the show. Plus the movies (I guess?).

She may have taken a full season off, and you know what: it’s painfully obvious why. Her character probably gets less to do than Troi whom we recently discussed, and she more often than not defaults to just being the mother of the resident boy genius, which isn’t saying much. So what can we say about Bev? We definitely scraped together some moments to highlight, so read on below and listen to this week’s episode on the podcast (jump to 1:00:49 for Bev chat). Stat!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Say no to drugs, kids As we’ve said when covering doctors like McCoy and Pulaski, Starfleet CMOs are at their best when they put their patients before the Prime Directive. So when Crusher brilliantly figures out how the Ornarans are exploiting the Brekkians’ addiction to felicium in “Symbiosis,” she uses it to pressure Picard to intervene. His response wasn’t NEARLY enough, but Bev was 100% right.

Set phasers to BAMF I love it when the doctors get to kick some ass in an action scene, and Crusher proves herself capable of absolutely owning enemies on occasion. Especially awesome is the scene in “Conspiracy” after the alien-possessed Admiral Quinn beats up Riker, throws Geordi through a door, and swings Worf around like a ragdoll, Bev just walks in and phasers him like it’s no big deal.

The longer we argue, the longer it’s going to take me to save them In the middle of the terrorist attack in “The High Ground,” Crusher puts her foot down and puts her patients first, defying orders to stay with the injured casualties. And though the Federation’s position is to stay neutral (though they fail at this), Bev diagnoses the terrorists willingly and ably despite not agreeing with their insurgence against their government.

I’m here, Jean-Luc. I’m not going anywhere. Though it’s pretty clear that Patrick Stewart and Mark Lenard steal the show in “Sarek,” we’ve got to give some commendation to Dr. Crusher as well. She’s the one who figures out that Sarek’s Bendii Syndrome is causing disturbances around the ship, even when the Vulcan party tries to conceal it, and her devotion to helping Picard through the mind meld is nothing short of beautiful.

Separating the man from the machine Not only does Crusher get to go on the away team to the Borg Cube to find the captured Picard in “Best of Both Worlds” and proceed to shoot Borg drones like she’s swatting flies. But she also defies all odds and deprograms Locutus after they’ve rescued him and destroyed the Borg Cube. She’s so good, there’s nary a scratch on him for the rest of the series.

If there’s nothing wrong with me, maybe there’s something wrong with the universe Pretty much everything Bev gets to do in “Remember Me” is stellar. It makes you realize that Crusher doesn’t get a lot of episodes that are deep character pieces like the other characters get to (even Troi, though those are mostly problematic). But “Remember Me” gets to show off the doctor’s shrewdness and problem-solving abilities in one of the most original episodes of the show!

Correction: Blown out While her and Geordi’s subplot in “Disaster” is probably the most disconnected of the lot, it’s actually pretty impressive that Crusher is able to survive the decompressed cargo bay and get to the panel to repressurize everything. She knows exactly what to do to prepare for the absolutely lethal conditions inflicted on them, keeps her cool, and gets them both through it alive.

Then Deanna has to die I’m not going to even pretend to understand how everything worked out in the end in “Man of the People,” but it was all thanks to Beverly Crusher. She figures out Alkar’s psychic vampire deal, risking everything by performing an autopsy against orders. But even better than that, she makes the batshit decision to kill Troi and then revive her to break the link, and even crazier: it works!

Someone in this morgue is a murderer! Later the same season we have Crusher yet again performing an autopsy against the wishes of the deceased’s culture, but in “Suspicions,” there are consequences. Bev’s tenacity in sleuthing out Dr. Reyga’s murder, her flying into a damn sun to prove him right, and her killing the hell out of Jo’Brill make an otherwise forgettable episode into a great showcase for her character.

Let’s make flying into the sun a thing And somehow, that’s not even the last time Bev flies into a sun using Dr. Reyga’s metaphasic shield technology! In “Descent,” she avoids a Borg attack by hiding in a sun’s corona, even while her security officer Barnaby (who’s played by the same actor as Jo’Bril; that can’t be just a coincidence!) is over her shoulder doubting her and tactical officer Taitt’s every decision.

You’re not Nana! Nana’s dead! Okay, hear me out. Even though “Sub Rosa” is a notoriously bad episode of TNG and it even swept our worst of the series list (we’ll hear from it again in this blogpost in the Worst Moments section), there’s some stuff to love about Crusher in this episode. Watching her stand up to Ronin in the end when she’s figured it all out is some great work from Gates McFadden!

Please state the nature of the medical emergency Finally, we get to the movies, which seem to mostly forget that Bev is a character sometimes, but we know the truth! Bev is a rockstar who saves her entire medical staff AND Lily Sloane in First Contact by thinking to have the Emergency Medical Hologram create a diversion while she leads everyone through all the various ducts like an absolute boss.

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Worst moments

I haven’t the comfort of a husband Another week, another mention of “The Naked Now,” which has come up in pretty much every character spotlight except Riker’s (maybe he should have gotten a mention for not getting space drunk). And for Beverly, it’s just another case of the female characters all getting horny for the various male characters in that tropey, sexist way the show had, and it’s just bullshit.

Get out of my mind It’s not every day that someone on the Enterprise gets possessed by some entity or other. It’s more like every other day! So when Crusher gets possessed by the entity in “Lonely Among Us” and suddenly finds herself on the bridge with gaps in her memory, you’d think there would be some kind of protocol to submit yourself for examination, but she just goes back to work like an amateur!

Shut up again, Wesley We gave Picard some guff about this in “Datalore” and we’re going to do the same for his mother later that same episode. Sure, we’re ALL thinking it at pretty much all times this first season of TNG, but Starfleet officers should not be saying “Shut up, Wesley” to their crewmembers on the bridge, especially when he’s just imparting important knowledge about Lore!

The future the AI bots want I’ll always question Crusher’s leaping at the opportunity to assume Yuta is the woman from some impossibly old photo in “The Vengeance Factor” because the computer overlaid her face on top of it when they asked it to. Like we’ve never seen the same actor play different roles before. Call me faceblind, but I wouldn’t have even noticed the resemblance.

No wonder we retconned the Trill... Probably the most questionable thing Crusher does is continue her relationship with Odan after his symbiont is put into Riker’s body in “The Host.” Odan gives her an out several times, but Bev decides to keep romancing him, which seems really squicky to us since Riker didn’t have the ability to consent to the happy couple using his body in… that way.

First, do no harm... by doing nothing at all Cultural differences make the episode “Ethics” a very complicated one, since Worf refuses palliative care for his paralysis and would rather die. What’s a doctor to do in such a situation? How about make matters worse by ignoring every request of her patient, treating him like a human instead of a Klingon, and withholding the experimental procedure he’s requested?

This is a recipe of the Captain’s Aunt Adelle In the very first aired episode of The Original Series, “The Man Trap,” we see McCoy taking a sleep aid of some kind to help him sleep. And it works! So when Riker is suffering from sleeplessness in “Schisms” and Crusher just prescribes a hot milk toddy instead of actual drugs, I just have to call bullshit. You’re a doctor, Bev, not a barista.

The lobes for business Ugh, we’re not even on Deep Space Nine yet and I’m already fed up with oomox. I find it gross how often the women of these shows have to effectively demean themselves by giving a Ferengi oomox like Bev does to get information out of Solok in “Chain of Command.” Sometimes, I swear this show was written for sex-starved teenaged boys and no one else.

Put ze candle back! While I gave Beverly some credit for defeating Ronin in the end in “Sub Rosa,” I also need to take her down a few pegs first for getting so infatuated with the guy in the first place! Sure, it’s some level of minor mind control, but she’s treating her crewmembers terribly, gushing at Deanna about her grandma’s erotic diaries, and quitting her job all for some guy who banged Nana. Gross, Bev! Real gross.

AITA, Enterprise edition While we like to see our two medical crewmembers looking out for each other, Crusher’s devotion to Lt. Ogawa somehow leads her to accidentally spreading a rumor that Powell is cheating on her in “Lower Decks.” Ogawa tells her in confidence that she’s upset he canceled a recent date, and in the next scene Crusher is gabbing at the poker table about every time she saw him in the same room as another woman!

Captain, I believe the crew is de-evolving While we could blame Reg Barclay for making the crew “de-evolve” in “Genesis,” it’s also on Dr. Crusher for elevating his T-cells in the first place. The rest of the episode is a mess that Bev can’t be at fault for because Worf knocked her out with his venom breath early on, but the initial outbreak could have been entirely avoided if the good doctor hadn’t gone tampering with his DNA.

Not that we care about such things in this day and age Another quick repeat that we also brought up in the Troi spotlight, but wow, we must harp on how the writers seem to have no idea what else to do with their female characters. Dr. Crusher has about 20 lines in all of Insurrection and two of them are wasted talking about her and Deanna’s boobs just to titillate the men in the audience.

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With this blogpost wrapped up, let’s blow out this candle for good. We’ve got more character spotlights on the way, with another Crusher to discuss next week, so make you’re following along! We’re also still flying along through Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you pick up your podcast frequencies, maintaining our universe bubble over on Facebook and Twitter, and flying into a sun every chance we get!