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Oh man.
Quark is absolutely backwards: Quark believes he has no dignity and is a heartless profiteer. He turns out he is an empathetic lovable guy with dignity.
The Grilka episodes show this best. The House of Quark is an honorable one.
Qplah! Glory to the house of Quark! The only one to teach Gowron how to use Microsoft Excel
I love Gowron’s ‘is this really happening?’ face throughout the episode.
The “Qplah” immediately made me use the right voice for this. Without it I wouldn’t have gotten the right voice at all!
Quark: I should’ve listened to my cousin Gaila. He said to me, “Quark, I’ve got one word for you…weapons.” No one ever went broke selling weapons. But did I take his advice? No. And why not? Because I’m a people person. I like interacting with my customers. Like you and I are doing right now. Talking to each other, getting to know one another…
Garak: I can see the attraction…for you.
Quark: But when you’re dealing in weapons, buyers aren’t interested in casual conversation. They just want their merchandise, no questions asked. It’s so impersonal.
Garak: Your charms would be wasted.
Quark: Exactly. So now Gaila owns his own moon, and I’m staring into the abyss. And the worst part is, my only hope for salvation is the Federation.
At least his fortunes seemed to have changed by Lower Decks’ time, judging by all the Quark signs everywhere.
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I wonder how much that helped him. Rom is way too nice to Quark, true, but Leeta and Moogy are both protective of Rom and wouldn’t look kindly to him being taken advantage of.
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I haven’t counted, but I have a suspicion that of the main cast, personally Quark kills more Jem’Hader on screen than any other character, except for maybe Worf.
Seriously. Watch with that in mind. I think Quark might be a low key badass.
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I always love the Watch the Irishman Suffer episodes.
I would also personally modify the Quark one, because sometimes they show his (repressed) compassionate side.
And sometimes he takes the dignity of everyone else down along with his own.
Yeah he’s definitely shown to have a soft spot, it’s just that he views it as a moral failing, and not a redeeming characteristic
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It is surprising how much PTSD he has for someone who’s just supposed to fix the ship
That’s why he’s so good at fixing things. He can’t fix himself, so he puts all his effort into fixing everything around him instead.
Basically this but with fixing things.
Both of them have PTSD because of Cardassians. Shaxs and O’Brien should do group therapy.
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And maybe it could give a clue as to why he’s the most important person in Starfleet history!
Well, this comment hit a little too close to home.
Like every good Irishman, he projects.
Garak is a simple tailor. He resolves an impossible situation in the least tailorly way possible yet somehow maintains plausible deniability.
I remember one episode when he is not on drugs, and starts telling truths to everybody. That one explains him.
Well no actually. In that episode he tells Bashir at least three different contradictory stories. Though right before Garrak thinks he’s about to die he tells Bashir that he was really ashamed because he fucked over his best friend and we’re lead to believe this is the actual final truth. Then you later find out the friend’s name he gave Bashir was actually just Garrak’s own first name and that every story Garrak told was a likely a complete fabrication. In the end we know nothing more definitive about him or why he’s at the station.
We know a lot more about him. Just not about his past.
Everything he said was true, especially the lies.
His takedown of Ezri articulates exactly how I felt about the character shift in general
Lol not in drugs that took me a second to comprehend but your a totally right.
the least tailorly way possible
I don’t know, I think he usually finds a way to thread the needle.
Tbh, Garak is just: Kingsman, but make it star trek.
Jake naively and brashly tries to explore some aspect of himself for personal growth…
The one thing that I always remember about Jake Sisko was an episode where he was trying to hide something from his dad, and at the end of the episode, dear old dad catches him trying to teach a young Ferengi how to read.
Everyone in-universe feels about Jake the way that everyone out of universe feels about Wesley.
Kai Winn shows up and ruins the episode
Edit: I love that for a brief moment this had a higher count, but the masses being what they are, was soon surpassed. Louise Fletcher was a master at getting people’s ire.
This woman won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for playing Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. She’s so good at acting you literally dislike her character. She makes you uncomfortable.
My child, don’t stray from the path that the Prophets have laid out for you.
Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.
—Rule of Acquisition 109
- Quark believes that he has made some profit. He loses it.
Rom: “Well brother, I suppose the real profit was the friends we made along the way.”
Quark: “What?! No. I’m docking your pay for that.”
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“Yes, but I’m not going to do anything to you about it.”
“Because you forgive me, brother?”
“No, because I’m pretty sure that light fixture over there is actually Odo.”
“You know, I might be Nagus one day, and then you’ll be sorry you treated me this way!”
“Pfft, yeah, right! Keep dreaming…but do it on your own time!”
I saw that one last night, “The Abandoned”.
One of them.
If you don’t need money, then you certainly don’t need mine.
Alternative episode: Sisko believes that he can solve something in the normal, intended way and not a horrible, fucked up way. He solves it with baseball.
Yup I have to save this post. I agree with folks about Quark, however I’ll add the wrinkle that the things that make Quark grow emotionally only serve too shred his dignity among the Ferengi.
I haven’t yet been able to watch DS9 from beginning to end … I’ve seen episodes here and there but never saw the entirety.
So my question is
What about these Garrick episodes I keep hearing about?
From someone who did the same: there is no way to understand what DS9 is about without watching it end to end, it’s just designed differently than TNG or TOS or Voyager, which were made for people to catch individual episodes and feel like they watched something. DS9 has intricate plot points that expand over an entire season, and then on into the next. I thought I knew what the show was about, but I was so very very, wonderfully wrong! Instead of it being my least favorite, I see now that it’s the deepest of them all, though they all have their individual contributions, especially for the historical time they were released in.
So my advice is to wait until you have a few hours, then watch all of season 1. You’ll be glad you did, and can decide when to find time to continue with season 2.
Learning about Garak will be infinitely more satisfying that way:-). He is one of the most “interesting” characters on the show, but really when you think about it, they all are.
He is one of the most “interesting” characters on the show, but really when you think about it, they all are.
To borrow a quote from B5, “No one here is exactly what he appears.”
Except Garek, obviously. He’s merely a simple tailor.
I dunno, man. I heard he used to be a gardener.
OK FINE I will watch DS9 again, convinced me.
Friggin Risa strikes again.
We are sneaky that way. :-)
Somehow at the same time I also convinced myself to rewatch Babylon Five, go figure:-P.
Me watching DS9, you watching B5…
Everybody you interact with lately (including yourself) has a surge of good taste!
Injecting those shows into our thoughts, is what gives us culture! :-P
Best reply I’ve ever recieved on the question. Thanks for that.
There’s only two of us in the house and only one of us like watching Star Trek which makes it very hard to find time to watch on my own. We like watching TV and movies together but when your significant other doesn’t like what you like, it isn’t easy to watch what you want on your own time.
I think the estimate is that DS9 has 126 hours of content across all episodes … now I just need to set aside about five days alone and without sleep to be able to watch it all.
If anything the anticipation of watching the series is very exciting for me.
Thanks again for the great response!
Or if you only have 82.5 hours available, check out the episode recommendations at https://medium.com/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-deep-space-nine-in-82-5-hours-10acde591fd2 I found it a great way to watch it in a slightly condensed form, focussing on the main themes.
Thank you for your kind words.
Actually there is a chance that your housemate might like DS9, even if they do not like other more canonically “sci-fi” shows - much more than others like TNG and Voyager, it returns to the roots of TOS and then blows way past them in offering “grit” and “grime” and dirty nasty backstabbing surprises, which were more or less absent from the more sanitized, pristine & safe spaces of e.g. TNG. Like, by offering a new set of bad guys to explore each week, those other shows focused more on exploration and “us vs. them”, whereas DS9 by re-using the same cast was able to delve deeper into drama and in particular “us vs. ourselves” matters.
As one example, if you devoted your entire life to fighting terrorism - the raping & pillaging of your people - and then one day woke up to find that you had become the very thing that you used to fight against, would that bother you? Take note that such thoughts are not everyone’s cup of tea, and just b/c DS9 offers more “drama” / deeper character development than other Star Trek shows (which take multiple series to get time to dip into such back-stories), doesn’t mean that they will automatically like it!! But there is a chance that they will, at least?
Also, rather than binge it, personally I think I would recommend watching an episode a day and then NOT watching another until you’ve had time to “digest” that, b/c it does deal with weighty matters and for me at least although I had the opportunity to do it either way, I found that more fun. But ofc you have to do whatever you can find to work for you!:-P
Garak? Why, he’s just a simple tailor
There are no Garak episodes. Why would anyone want to watch an episode about a mere tailor
Garak: “Do you know what the sad part is, Odo? I’m a very good tailor.”
I always loved that … in an age of replicator technology, instant manufacturing and duplication, automated systems and digital recreations … no one ever finds it unusual that there is an individual of the species that was a former military opponent posing as an old school clothing merchant on a space station.
It would be like having a simple humble scientist from 1940s Germany working as a common rocket engineer in the American space program in the 1960s … weird right?
To quote Lower Decks:
Mariner: I think it was the chef in the biolab with the sniper rifle that can shoot through walls.
Freeman: You always pick the chef.
Mariner: Yeah, because we have replicators. Why is there a chef? That’s just shady.
I mean…no? The scenario you described uses identical skill sets, which was also desperately in need by the USA at the time, whereas Germany wanted to kill the scientist plus their entire family and all of their friends bc of their ethnic background so… it rather seems inevitable that the immigrant would want to use their skills to the best and most profitable effect?
That said, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, for he is a humble tailor and that is all… :-P
I was being stupid … I was referring to … Wernher von Braun
Basically a Nazi scientist who helped to build Germany’s rocket program during the last half of the second world war.
After he was captured, the Americans took him into the states, completely ignored his Nazi past and allowed him to build what would become NASA and the American rocket program.
He was an obvious Nazi supporter and member … but the Americans completely white washed his past, ignored his past ties, and based a lot of the early development of the US rocket program on the help of Nazi scientists. It’s pretty twisted when you think about it … if humanity ever gets to the level of development of the Star Trek timeline … it will have been made possible by Nazi scientists.
You know more about the depths of that story than I do… I can only guess that some kind of “strategic thinking” went on there, balancing right vs. wrong morality with the practical need to have superior technology, essentially turning him into a “brain drain” scenario where the USA took advantage of the technology from Germany (rockets go further with higher precision), in order to use it against Russia (both in rockets meant for warfare plus also as demonstrated in a show-off capacity for the space race). And that is even assuming that he was a “real” Nazi supporter, and not just trying to blend in as a Jew (which would be bad enough, to be a “collaborator”, but you get what I am saying: easier to make an exception for, especially if there was some evidence of him protesting in underground ways, as opposed to a full-on die-hard actual Nazi).
Something similar happened recently when Biden met one of the royalty responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and decided to call him out for that murder, but when the response was “what was that? I couldn’t really hear you there…” just dropped the issue entirely rather than pursued it. It was not even a slap on the wrist, and was less even than a phrase stated loudly enough to be heard (a whispered thought then?) regarding the torture, interrogation, murder and actual dismemberment of that journalist… but in return, the Saudis helped lower gas prices. And lest you think this was all about money, that in turn helped blunt the whole “thanks Biden” (sarcasm for high gas prices, as if Trump had literally nothing to do with that) that Republicans were trying to use at the time to get more seats in Congress and set up for the next Presidential race, which in turn ties back to Supreme Court seats and all sorts of things.
I am fond of quoting that literal hero Jon Stewart who once said “liberal media aims to be correct, while conservative media aims to be effective”. Maybe somewhere we need to find a balance, in maintaining our morality while also not taking it to the grave with us - or perhaps the latter is what needs to be done? But if so, it seems better to do that intentionally so worth thinking through and wrestling with the truth to determine what we can “compromise” on, and what we absolutely, simply, can NOT without losing who & what we are.
And believe it or not, yes this is all absolutely, entirely, 100% relevant to the OP: Star Trek is infamous for wrestling with precisely these kinds of plots - even TNG and Voyager that were more often episodic lets-go-forth-adventuring-today styles occasionally had them (remember that time Picard was dying from his bad heart due to his poor judgement in his a youth, and Q offered him an alternate life where he would not be a captain anymore, but he could do science and really enjoy it, thus making him choose b/t a longer life that he would enjoy vs. a shorter one lived to the fullest, basically a It’s a Wonderful Life parody? and ofc “THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!!”); but DS9 really just immersed itself and flat lived in this space.
TLDR: you are going to REALLY enjoy watching DS9, even if you need to do it alone:-). (again, make sure to give yourself adequate time to think them through, not just watch them all back-to-back, or you will miss so much!)
Quark only had that shred of dignity because he planned to sell it to the highest bidder like any good ferengi would.
Also occasionally we remember the Marquis exist and have an episode about them. Sisko comes up with basically the same solution as always, but at least it’s not the Dominion.
😢
