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The Nitpickers's Guide for Deep Space Nine Trekkers covers the first four seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nineand contains twelve side bars including Bajor: Terok Nor and The Boys in Wonderland Tote Board. It was released in December, 1996.
Comments
And now we turn our attention to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine! Given my experience with NextGen I thought it would probably be better to publish the first volume sooner than later; to try to distribute the information a little more evenly between the two volumes.
I also had a new editor for this volume. Eric Wybenga decided that he wanted to do freelance writing himself and left editing to pursue his dream. Kathleen Jayes took over the Guide portfolio and she has been a joy to work with.
This was a fun Guide to do. It's been fascinating to watch the evolution of the show (with the addition of the Defiant in the third season and Worf in the fourth season). Who knows what great adventures the creators will craft for us over the next three years? Should be interesting!
One item of interest with the selected passage below. The last rumination doesn't actually appear in the book. Thought you might like to see a bit of the stuff and gets cut. Personally, I thought it was funny but I can understand how it might offend some people!
By the way, in case you're wondering why this volume came out in December and not November, Dell was a bit worried that we couldn't put the book together for a November release since we weren't certain when the last episode of the fourth season would air. So, they moved the date back a month.
Selected Passage
Star Date: Unknown
After attending the reopening of a library on Bajor, Sisko returns with plans for an ancient Bajoran spaceship that utilizes solar sails. Some scholars believe that these ships took ancient Bajorans to other planets in the Bajoran system and possibly as far as Cardassia. Aside from the pure joy of the challenge, Sisko decides to build the ship to see if he can transverse the Denorias Belt, the only real navigational hazard between Bajor and Cardassia. If so, it would be possible to make the rest of the trip. Jake even agrees to go along on the adventure. Sisko soon discovers why. The Pennington School in New Zealand on Earth has granted the young man a writing fellowship. After discussing it with Sisko, however, Jake decides to wait a year before leaving. He wants to gain more experience to enhance his writing and he wouldn't mind seeing his father involved in a steady relationship before he leaves.
The trip proves astonishing. After some mechanical difficulties, the craft unexpectedly jumps to warp--pushed there by tachyon eddies. It flashes past the Denorias belt and on to Cardassian space. Once it drops to sub-light speed, three Cardassian warships approach and Gul Dukat greets them with congratulations.
Ruminations
In my review of the last episode ("The Die Is Cast"), I noted that the stars in the window of Odo's runabout don't move even though he executes a hard turn to port. In this episode, the creators show their skill at doing it right. Just after the drunken serenade between Bashir and O'Brien, the episode returns to Sisko and Jake struggling to continue their voyage. Sisko says, "Coming about," and the vessel leans to the right as he makes an adjustment. Notice the stars in the window ahead of Sisko's position. They move just as they should if the ship is really tipping! (I know, the stars wouldn't really be moving. The ship would be moving and the stars would only appear to drift because they would remain stationary. Gotta watch you nitpickers, you write letters!) Here's the problem. The easiest way to do this shot would be to tip the camera. Simple and straightforward, right? No muss, no fuss. The only problem is the stars would tip too! To make the stars look right, you have to tip the stars in the opposite direction when you tip the camera. Or . . . you could build hydraulics into the set to actually tip the vessel. Since I don't deal in reality, I don't really care how the creators did it. (There are plenty of fan books out there that deal in this type of information.) All I know is it looks great!
A milestone to note. I believe that this is the first time in any incarnation of Trek that the word "bathroom" appears in a script. (I didn't say it was a great milestone.)
Oh, and one last thing, this episode opens with a Dabo girl named Leeta bidding for Bashir's attentions. Dressed in a skin-tight body suit that's peeled back at the top to show her generous cleavage, she first introduces herself to the good doctor and then makes a pitiful attempt to produce a sickly cough. Bashir immediately turns on the charm and orders a drink to begin her "treatment." I'm confused. It's obviously the poor girl is freezing in that outfit. Why order a drink? Get her a warm, high-neck, long sleeve sweater. That would cure Leeta's "chest cold" almost instantly! (Snicker, snicker.)
Trivia Questions
1. What is Bashir's prescription for Leeta's cough?
2. Bashir attended a party at Bruce Lucier's home with whom?
Plot Oversights
o Sisko must be having a slow month. He builds an entire space ship with primitive tools in less than three weeks! The episode begins with an announcement that the USS Lexington will be docking at the station in three weeks and Sisko leaves in his solar sailer before it arrives. He must have spent all day, every day on it. (It's a space ship for crying out loud!) Hmmm. I wonder what else he might have to do. Well . . . there's day to day operations on the station. There's preparing for a Dominion attack. There's getting Bajor ready to enter the Federation. Did he have too much vacation time accrued and he needed to "use it or lose it?"
o Then again, maybe DS9 isn't as busy as it used to be. Early this season, during "The Defiant," the station sounded positively packed to the gills with cargo. But in this episode, Sisko has the crew clean out a cargo bay so he can play.
o One wonders how the Bajorans managed to get these little solar sailing ships into orbit 800 years ago. Did they launch them with rockets or did they have some sort of orbiting platform?
o Oddly enough, O'Brien the "model ship builder as a child," O'Brien the "fixer of stations," O'Brien the Chief of Operations on DS9 and--evidently--the Chief Engineer of the Defiant can't figure out why Sisko wants to build this ship in the first place. He suggests that Sisko simply use a computer model to prove it's space worthy. Well, if that's the way he feels why doesn't he just move back to Earth with Keiko, make a computer model of DS9 and spend his days pretending to fix the station?
o At one point, Sisko tells Jake to listen. Jake says he doesn't hear anything. "Exactly," Sisko replies, "not even the hum of an engine." No but the sound effects guys felt the need to put in that low droning noise in the background!
o Jake says that Pennington found out about him because he showed one of his stories to Keiko and Keiko showed it to a friend who knew someone at the school. This must have been before Keiko took off for Bajor.
o Mitzi Adams assures me that tachyons could not accelerate mass from sublight to superlight speeds.
o Gul Dukat's congratulations at the end of the episode seems a bit out of character for the Cardassians. In essence he says, "Great! You made it! Now, we look like idiots!" (Must be because of the new peace treaty with Bajor and the recent pummeling by the Dominion.) And personally? I felt the plasmaworks were a bit much on the end but hey, I guess those Cardies really know how to throw a party.
Changed Premises
o Before Sisko departs in his little craft, Gul Dukat calls to warn the commander about the dangers of the trip. Specifically, he says that it's a long way to the Denorias Belt. He must have forgotten that O'Brien moved the station to the mouth of the wormhole in "Emissary." That episode establishes that the wormhole is in the Denorios Belt. Strangely enough, everyone in this episode seems to think it's a long way to the Denorias Belt! (There is only one explanation that I can imagine. "Emissary" establishes that the wormhole is in the "Denorios Belt" while this episode says that it's along way from the station to the "Denorias Belt." See the difference? So . . . it's possible that this isn't a nit. It's possible that the creators are just playing with our minds!)
Equipment Oddities
o Just before telling his father that he'd like to go along with him on the solar sailing adventure, Jake receives a message from the Pennington School. He tells the computer to display it on the screen. Apparently the message is text only because Jake bends over and reads it. Text only? In this futuristic setting that uses audio-video communications almost exclusively? (Of course, this is very convenient because it means that we don't learn immediately that Jake has been accepted to Pennington!)
o I love the little self-leveling navigation device that Sisko installs on his solar sailor when Jake comes to sign on for the mission. It appears to have a weight on the bottom and it's configured to swing freely in all directions. Evidently, it was designed to stay upright and give the vessel's occupants some idea of the pitch and yaw of the craft. But, but, but this is a spaceship and originally it didn't have any artificial gravity, right? So what good does this thing do? Without gravity it would be wandering aimlessly around on its axes. "Ah!" you might say, "maybe the ancient Bajorans didn't use that device. Maybe Sisko installed it because he's added the artificial gravity net." Well, if that's true there's no reason for the thing to swing freely because it's always going to be pulled down to the floor because that's where the gravity net is installed. (In fact, you can see this happen in the scene I described above under "Ruminations." It's a bit difficult because Jake is in the way at first but if you watch the device as the ship tips to the right you'll see that it always stays parallel with the floor--which would indicate that the creators tipped the camera, not the set. Wink, wink.)
o I find it interesting that Sisko was going to take this trip alone but the ship seems to require two people to deploy the sails properly.
o Just before Sisko jettisons the sprit, he and Jake take some pressure off the sails by cranking the cranks. It appears that Jake forgets to unlock the crank before turning it. No wonder he's struggling!
o Many nitpickers had real problems with when this dinky little craft jumped to warp. First, the craft has no structural integrity field and it's made--at least in part--from wood. Can you say, "crinkle, splinter, crunch?" Second, no mention is made of an inertia damping field. This wonderful little device somehow overrides the normal effect of inertia on Starfleet crewmembers when a starship rapidly accelerates to warp. Without it--the Technical Manual descriptively advises--the crew onboard a starship would turn into "chunk salsa." Sisko's little craft seems to be missing an IDF. Can you say, "splat, smear, dip?"
o But--just for the sake of argument--let's say that this little craft did manage to get to Cardassia. How was it suppose to land on the planet? Drop like a rock until it made a large crater on the surface? (In fact, Gul Dukat at the end of the episode mentions the discovery of a crash site. Not doubt these crash sites were the original instigator of the deep primal fear and hatred that the Cardassians hold for the Bajorans. Look at it from the Cardies' point of view. It's 800 years ago. You're having a lovely dinner with the family eating raw taspar eggs. Suddenly, you hear howling from the sky. A blazing eruption fills the night. Your neighbors' huts are blown to oblivion and you're picking body parts out of your garden for weeks! In the resulting months you sift through the wreckage and keep finding the same symbol: an oval with a smaller circle at the bottom. You have no way of knowing from whence the destroyer came . . . but you remember that symbol. That symbol. The oval with a smaller circle at the bottom. You remember.)
Continuity and Production Problems
o Once Avery Brooks grows his own goatee in later episodes, the one he sports in this episode looks obviously fake.
Trivia Answers
1. Fanalian tonic, very hot.
2. Erib, an Andorian.
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