#his host club hairstyle lol joke

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DS9 Companion liveblogging (5/14?)

First half of season 3 (3x01-3x10):

Interesting context on the first part of season 3, which was the only time when DS9 was the only new Star Trek show on air (between the end of TNG and beginning of VOY): Quark and Odo were apparently the favorite characters, people wanted more travel outside the station, and were lukewarm toward the Bajoran religious and political plots. Fascinating.

The Defiant was originally going to be called the Valiant but that name was vetoed because it was too similar to Voyager. Both ship names come from TOS episodes.

Some interesting notes on the reveal that the Founders are Odo's race: Behr and Wolfe joked about the Founders being Odo's people throughout season 2, then Michael Piller separately floated the idea to them and they cracked up and decided to propose making that happen. And Auberjonois was worried about the reveal because he'd always joked that the day Odo's backstory is revealed, that's when he's getting written out of the show. But he was reassured that they had more directions to take Odo's character post-reveal.

^ I'm sorry, it will always be funny to me that Bareil had a sizeable fan club. Interesting notes about why Eddington was brought in. (Eddington's character is apparently influenced by a character of the same name in the film In Harm's Way. I am unfamiliar with this film though.)

3x01 "The Search Part I": There's a note here about how Armin Shimerman didn't like the scene where Sisko asks Quark to kiss the nagal staff since there is an air of mocking Ferengi culture to it, but I love that scene. 👀 (For horny reasons lol.) Also apparently the prop sculptor (Dragon Dronet) based the head of the staff on Quark since he was given Quark's picture as a reference and didn't realize the prop was meant to belong to another character entirely.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Jadzia's very short-lived hairstyle in this season opener. Apparently it was controversial so it was changed afterward.

3x03 "The House of Quark": Love this episode because of all the ridiculous drama of Klingon noble houses and inheritance law meeting very polar opposite Ferengi sensibilities. There's some notes here on how Gowron's actor Robert O'Reilly was pleasantly surprised to transition to DS9 after TNG ended. Also, this is sweet:

Looks like Keiko's temporary departure from the show was to free up Colm Meaney for film projects (mentioned earlier) and to allow more focus on the Bashir/O'Brien relationship.

The story behind 3x04 "Equilibrium" is so funny. Basically, a producer got really into a stage magician and bought a pitch for a DS9 episode that just had the magician as a guest actor and his act involving masks, and the writing team had to create a whole plot around it: "Moore recalls that the original storyline had something to do with 'the circus coming to Deep Space 9, and this magician was in it, and we thought, "Well, we're not gonna do that."'" -- lmao. Initially it was about Odo before they realised that masks worked better as a metaphor for Trill hosts.

Apparently, the original plot of 3x05 "Second Skin" involved O'Brien as the secret undercover Cardassian instead of Kira, but the writer couldn't make it work with the Keiko/Miles marriage resulting in a human baby. Also some interesting thoughts on a more ambiguous version of the ending we got, where it is Kira's determination to be Kira and Bajoran that is what makes her so:

(The theme of this episode is that everyone is wearing a fake deceptive appearance (i.e. a second skin): Kira, Ghemor, the Defiant and Sisko, Garak, etc.)

Wow, lots of interesting notes on 3x06 "The Abandoned" -- so many I can't really summarize them all. Briefly: a lot of teenagers growing up/maturing in this ep including Jake, the Jem'Hadar, and Odo himself; Avery Brooks (who directed this ep) felt it was very much an allegory for how to deal with a generation of troubled, addicted, and potentially violent youths and what it says about society if it gives up on them (very much grappling with race and class issues although through sci-fi allegory and not direct analogy); Mardah's time on DS9 spanned from 2x17 "Playing God" to 3x10 "Fascination"; the way people worry about the age difference and Mardah's job but no one in this episode blinks an eye at her and Jake's interracial relationship, a casual depiction of a post-racial world; Jake gets a new outfit; Sisko also gets a dignified three-piece outfit for the dinner with Mardah, to indicate how seriously he's taking meeting Jake's girlfriend and how he doesn't want to embarrass Jake.

Also some interesting notes on Odo getting quarters in this ep (including the scene where Kira gives Odo flowers that he puts in his old bucket, and later flings that bucket/vase in 4x13 "Crossfire" -- Auberjonois added that detail to the "Crossfire" scene) and also makeup restrictions on babies/children, which constrained the young Jem'Hadar looks.

I like how the synopsis of 3x07 "Civil Defense" only covers the A and B plots of the Ops group and the ore processing group, making no mention of the Quark and Odo C plot. It's okay -- the two of them literally contribute nothing plot-relevant to that episode lmao. Reading the summary, I really love this episode. It's one of my favorites just for the ridiculousness of the security program that has Dukat cringily chastising rebelling Bajoran workers and responding to an increasingly severe hypothetical uprising in a way that manages to come off as both smug and panicked, and his boss publicly shaming him for abandoning his post lol. Like, nothing about this security program makes sense; it's all just done for the lols and for the sake of making things increasingly dire. I suppose maybe it establishes that there is just something buffoonish about the way the Cardassian military (/fascist governments more generally) operate. But mostly it's just a very silly plot.

On polishing the script for 3x07 "Civil Defense": "'He [Michael Piller] hated it, he hated it, he hated it,' states Behr, likening the tortuous experience to one he and the other staff writers on TNG went through to turn 'Yesterday's Enterprise' into a solid script." -- So surprising to hear this, because the final result (of both episodes) is so good! I am considering reading whatever is the TNG equivalent of this book because I have so many questions about what they were thinking / what was going on in some of those episodes and plotlines...

^ O-omg... 😂

^ I always wondered about this... I like the look without the belt better too, although maybe if it were around longer it would have grown on me.

^ I agree. 3x10 "Meridian" sucks. It has some interesting cinematography because Frakes directed it but the romance in it is so painful and unconvincing.

Dang, I didn't realize the alien in this episode was Jeffrey Combs' first Star Trek role ever. (Apparently, Frakes cast him because he remembered him from the Riker audition! -- according to Memory Alpha, not this book.)

^ I always kind of wondered (1) when did the writers first get the idea to make Odo's feelings for Kira romantic, and (2) when in the timeline of their relationship did Odo develop his crush (kind of wondering the same question, just from a Doylist + Watsonian point of view). For (2), I think this is the earliest explicit moment (it has kind of a "I hope this doesn't awaken anything in me" kind of vibe going on with Odo), although I suppose the feelings could have started earlier. But it looks like the answer to (1) is sometime after this point. Interesting!

(Also, I feel kinda bad for Quark in this episode as I think a lot of the humor is a bit mean-spirited/at his expense. But at the same time, Kira and Odo ganging up on Quark is a great dynamic (see also: 2x24 "The Collaborator").)

Some interesting notes on 3x09 "Defiant" on where the story idea came from (they wanted to do something with Tom Riker and have a plot where the Maquis are gaining strength due to his help/leadership); the humanization of Dukat; Tom's characterization (vs. Riker); that this episode sets up that the Obsidian Order are planning something but what exactly was not decided at this point; and the dangling plot thread of what happened to Riker. I agree that it always bugged me that you never find out what happened to Tom (Frakes says he envisions Kira would at some point get sent to Cardassia to get him out of his sentence). He and Kurn are two great TNG characters that DS9 brought back just to do something vaguely depressing with, and I'm honestly tempted to just render those plotlines non-canon. 🤷‍♀️

Some interesting notes on (1) 3x10 "Fascination" being an homage to A Midsummer Night's Dream, and (2) how the set design and costumes were played with in light of that:

Also, OMG:

^ I mean, Quark does have cartoon character energy... Shimerman's evaluation of the episode is a bit cranky but he's not wrong.

More on the earlier note about Odo's crush on Kira from "Meridian": "And it ["Fascination"] openly reveals a plot point that only had been hinted at previously: the fact that Odo loves Kira. Interestingly, this was a case where an actor's performance strongly influenced the producers. 'There was a moment in 'The Collaborator,' Behr recalls, 'where Rene [Auberjonois] does a take with Nana that we hadn't been expecting. And we all looked at it and said, "Odo loves her. That's what he's playing!" Recognizing the rich story possibilities, Behr's team took the ball and ran with it, giving Auberjonois plenty of material to play with in the coming seasons." (I'm guessing he was referring to "Meridian," not "The Collaborator.")

Oops, I have to end this post a bit early because apparently I am hitting Tumblr's limit for images in posts. (Also, I know I focus on Odo and Quark a lot in my notes. I am biased.)

[abnosome1]

Love this 🥰

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