Deep Space Nine Fridays: Jake Sisko

Welcome to the first real week that we will be discussing Deep Space Nine and ask that eternal question, “Is it literature?” My answer is yes, but then this is my blog and I can say what I want. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull holds up on multiple viewings. There. See? I’m going to have to back it up, of course. So, I ask again, “is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine literature?”

    Nope, I’m still going to have to answer yes.

    This week we’re going to start out with a character that had the potential to sink the entire franchise from the get-go: Jake Sisko. A young boy that was the Commander’s kid had the ability to sink the show... we should all feel sad for the smart boy with the dead mother, tragically killed in a Borg attack lead by Captain Picard. He had the ability to Wesley Crusher the first couple of seasons.

    Yes, I know that Wil Wheaton is the bomb now, but I think his newfound coolness tends to make people forget just how horrible the character was. Go back and watch an early episode of Next Generation. Watch it. You can’t escape it.

    But I come not to bury Wesley Crusher, but to praise what they ended up doing with Jake Sisko. When they started the show, it was obvious they wanted him to be a way for the viewer to connect with Commander Sisko and see him as a different kind of lead character. We weren’t just seeing a man with baggage... he was a man with baggage and a son. The writers could have easily just slapped him into Starfleet and had him follow in his father’s footsteps. Instead they teamed him up with a Ferengi and decided to make him a writer, letting viewers take a look at the non-Federation people. (SOMEONE has to clean the space-bathrooms. It’s not all green skinned alien sex.)

    I wanted to start out talking about Jake Sisko because one of my favorite DS9 episodes featured him. “Nor Battle The Strong...” was an episode that was featured during the Klingon/Federation War. In it, Jake follows a group of young soldiers headed to do battle with Klingons on a distant planet, along with Doctor Bashir. (We’ll get to him in a few Friday Posts.) In this time he finds a soldier who shoots himself in the foot to get out of battle, he abandons the Doctor at the first sign of trouble, and then he manages to trap himself by firing blindly at a bunch of attackers.

    This was an important episode (and a contender for Star Trek Week) because it shows us not just the other side of the Federation and space-battles, but it shows us another side of war. Too often we get either the side of war that’s all glory and honor, or the other side that’s nothing but blood and guts. Here we get a unique middle ground... a story of war that’s told from a complete outsider’s perspective, one that tries to tell a more personal story. Jake is initially horrified by a guy who would wound himself to avoid battle, until the first time he finds himself faced with the same choice.

    It’s a strong statement. Yeah, it’s told under the guise of phaser battles and Klingons... but it’s still an interesting way to get across something that could easily be dismissed if told “traditionally”. While Star Trek is sometimes about these heavy sci-fi concepts, one could argue that it’s best when it focuses on the human element. DS9 was like this because it had the backdrop of war, so it was allowed to focus on the human element of the show often times.

    Jake allowed the viewer into a new way of seeing the world that Star Trek was trying to create by showing us someone who wasn’t a warrior, captain, or engineer. He was just a regular guy, caught up in life-changing events. He was also a big part of an episode I need to discuss on it’s own, “The Visitor” which we’ll get to while we discuss Deep Space Nine this summer. But his “everyman” status allowed him a unique glimpse into photon torpedos or warp cores. I think people tend to forget that as they critique the show, and his character gets moved to the sidelines. It’s a nice reminder that for every Hamlet, there’s a gravedigger who is going about his job, just sort of watching the events.

Stand Up Against Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Bullying.

                Recently, I saw a preview for the upcoming Summer Movie, Pacific Rim. For those of you who don’t know, Pacific Rim is a dramatic movie how man uses technology to help overcome the deep distrust of nature and of each other. Also, it features giant robots wailing on giant monsters. Did you see the preview, where the one robot picks up a bus, then he starts swinging it at the giant monster, and then it’s all like WHAM! BOOM! SMASH! And then he fires off a rocket fist and smashes his giant arm into the head of the monster, and he all like falls. Yeah. That’s pretty awesome.

                My point is that Pacific Rim looks like an awesome summer movie, and I’m going in to enjoy it because I have an affinity for giant robots, giant monsters, and the movie’s star Idris Elba. (Who also co-starred in the soon to be cinematic classic: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengance.) But that didn’t stop some scientists from publishing their “groundbreaking” article that talked about the physics of giant robots, and how these particular giant robots just wouldn’t work.

                I’d like to point out again that this is a movie about giant robots fighting giant monsters who are emerging from another dimension. The second the word “giant” appears anywhere, unless preceded by “Andre The” then I really don’t want to hear your scientific rants. I understand it’s not real. That’s part of the reason I’m going to see a movie. Because to my knowledge, we don’t really have giant robots that fight giant monsters, unless you count the car-sized robots that I’m sure Charlie Sheen and Nicolas Cage have built and use to fight on their secret island off the cost of Alaska.

                Next you’ll be telling me that Amy Pohler doesn’t really work at the City Council in Pawnee, or that Ke$ha is a real thing.

                I’m bringing this up because this is part of a disturbing trend where a cool movie will come out, and then some mean scientists will work as hard as they can in proving that the physics just don’t add up. Or something doesn’t add up, and that really couldn’t happen. A “big” news story (big in nerd-land) came out that professional smart guy Neil DeGrasse Tyson (I did enjoy his video game, “Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Punch-Out!!” when I was growing up) declared that Star Trek was more believable than Star Wars.

                I’m not sure if he used it by the metric that the Star Trek point eared guys aren’t green and they don’t speak conspicuously like Fozzie Bear, or some other strange thing, but I guess we’ll never know the logic of one of the smartest men on the planet. There’s also no word on whether he thinks the doctors on Grey’s Anatomy are any better than the ones on ER, but I like to think that the ones on ER didn’t all sleep with each other. Again, I’m not sure.

                It’s called “suspension of disbelief.” Yes, I know that there’s no rocketship from a dying planet that contains a small child that will go off to fight crime. I know that if a rich guy could build a suit of armor like that he’d most likely use it to play polo in space with his rich friends (rich guys still play polo, right?) I know that Vin Diesel doesn’t actually command an army of street racing jewel thieves. And I know that Jason Statham doesn’t… Jason… no, I’m pretty sure that Jason Statham is real.

                Movies, books, TV Shows exist to help us escape from our giant robot-less, John McClane-less, Lightsaber-less, Green-skinned women-less lives. We use it as a way to say, “hey… let’s go explore the depths of our imagination.” We do it because we’ve never seen a guy fly before, and it would be pretty neat to see it. We’ve been imagining these things back before CGI existed, when it just had to be done on green screen. Or better yet back when we just had to read about it and use our own brains to figure out what it would look like when the son of Zeus decided he’d had enough and was going to lay the smack down on some Greeks. (Has anyone re-done Hercules with the Rock yet? You should get on that, Hollywood.)

                Look, scientists are awesome. They gave us all the things in life that we need to survive, like Penicillin, roads, refrigeration, Netflix, and eventually, Scarlett Johansson. I respect what scientists do. Up until they spend money to tell me that the giant robots fighting giant monsters couldn’t happen. I know that it won’t really happen. I just want to imagine that for two hours that if it did, it would look like what’s up on the screen. Rather than wasting time on disproving science in a movie, we focus on curing disease or figuring out how to make a Butterfinger so it won’t break before you eat it?

Thanks, Teachers!

    Normally I reserve this space for entertainment stuff. Breaking Bad (if I add the word “spoilers” to that I get a ton of hits for the week), Summer Movie Season, and coming next week, information on Deep Space Nine, the Deep Space Nine-iest of the Star Trek series. But today I wanted to talk about something else that I think is even more important.

    By now we’ve all heard about the devastating tornados that cut through Oklahoma earlier this week. Fortunately we’re getting some good stories out of it, and one of the best things has been the stories about the brave teachers that helped save the lives of those students. It’s a reminder that the best teachers aren’t just there to read some facts and hope that some students remember them. It’s a reminder that teachers are supposed to be there for students. Granted, you always hope and pray that it’s not during L. Frank Baum story, but the best teachers are there for students, at any time.

    I’m extremely happy to see that so many teachers are being recognized for acting quickly and getting to those kids to safety. Thank you, all of you.

    Not a long post today... I just wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you to those teachers who were dedicated to getting those kids to safety. Remember as we head towards Memorial Day Weekend, do something to remember the tornado survivors, and remember they need help. Consider donating to the Red Cross or looking up the charity of your choice that can help them out.

I'll Probably Never Really Grow Out of Wanting To Be A Superhero

                I was all set today to do some of my usual advice for graduating college seniors, the first of which being that the real world sucks, and you should probably just stay in college. But then I came across this story from Blastr.com about a school banning “Wrestling, Super Hero Play, and Monster Games”… you know, all those things that made pre-school (and some sections of High School) worth living. And here’s a good lesson for graduating seniors: if you’re passionate about something and you see wrong-doing, then do something to fix it.

                Why the hell would we want to ban children from expressing creativity, passion, and sense of adventure. Let them be superheroes before they're too old to know better.

                Let’s get the academic stuff out of the way first. Let’s not forget that all of the earliest stories are about Superheroes. That’s the first place the mind has gone. The earliest recorded stories are of fantastic men and women doing fantastic things usually against fantastic odds and fantastic creatures. One could even call it “fantastic.” Perhaps four fantastic individuals can form a team one day.

                Moving on.

One of the first heroes, Hercules, was a dude who was half god and had to perform miraculous feats while battling a goddess. (And his evil mother. That also leads to mother-tropes in fantasy and early fiction, but that’s another post. Let’s focus out outrage on this Superhero thing for now.) One of the earliest and boringest things they make you read in school is Beowulf, a dude who fights an evil monster and dragon, a feat that no other hero could perform. It’s almost like it’s “superheroic.” And that’s one of the earliest recorded stories, ever. But I’ve discussed the early origins of Superheroes to death, and why you should love them and bring a Superman comic into class for your next book report.

I get, logically why some school administrators want to ban “Super Hero Play.” (Note how I spell it. I spell it the right way.) I get that ultimately, they want to stop 5 year olds from rough housing, which is sort of like asking the rain not to be wet, or Ben Affleck to stop Ben Afflecking. Kids are going to be kids, and they’re going to rough house. So, why are we stopping them from throwing on a towel, saying, “I’m Superman” and rushing to save the day?

Superheroes are an ingrained part of our culture. Of all cultures. Why can’t we use them to teach kids what Superhero play is all about? (I can’t keep spelling it their way, guys. Sorry.) Why can’t we use superheroes to teach responsible lessons? Superman protects the innocent because he can. He’s stronger than everyone else. Batman, despite the fact that can knock a man down with the wave of two fingers, resorts to violence as a last method. He dresses as a giant bat to scare people into submission. Spider-man is a kid trying to find his way. Green Lantern is an intergalactic space cop with a magic ring that can make anything he wants. (See. Now you know why the movie failed.) The list goes on and on.

Or why not use these lessons to start to get to stories about heroes from the past. Superman is a gateway to the Greek Myths and ancient gods that expected it’s heroes to be larger than life. Batman is a ripoff of countless heroes that came before him, not the least of which being the Scarlet Pimpernel. What about the superheroic team-up of Athos, Porthos, Aremis, and D’Artangan?

I remember when I was little, I created my own superhero. He was invincible. I remember making my mother carry around a cape and a mask that she made for me so I could become him at any time. And while I knew about Superman, Batman, and Spiderman, this was a superhero of my own creation. And that made it all the more special to me. I still remember that hero until this day. (If you’re nice to me, one day I’ll share his name.) And while I like to think I grew out of it, the Green Lantern Ring (or some variation) I wear every day is my little reminder that superheroes are always going to be a part of me. And sometimes, no matter how old I get, it’s just fun to pretend you are one.

I’d hate to think that there’s some kid out there who gets to be denied pretending he’s a superhero because someone is afraid he’ll get hurt. There’s plenty of time to get hurt out there, and putting on a fake cape really is the least of your concerns.

Just remember to teach them that no matter what they’re wearing, they can’t really fly.

The Answer is A). Standardized Tests Suck

            

                                      Shakespeare cat hates Dixon Ticonderoga Pencils

                The name of the cat in Macbeth is Greymalkin.

                I do have a point with that first statement, and we’re going to get back to it in a little bit, but last week while I was talking Star Trek and phasers and pew-pew! Warp speed, Mr. Sulu! I know that some kids were sitting down to take the Standards of Learning Tests. (Known as SOL’s.)

                I want to make this perfectly clear: I hate standardized tests. I don’t feel they contribute much to society except the amazing ability to take one day of a kid’s life and say, “take this test” and hope for the best that the kid remembered enough facts to fill in an oval with a number 2 pencil correctly. I’ve never seen a number 1 or number 3 pencil, so I’m not sure why we stuck with number 2. God help you if you use a mechanical pencil, pen, or crayon. You will use a Dixon Ticonderoga Number 2 Pencil, and you will love it.

                Of course, in memorizing these facts long enough to make sure that kids can fill in an “A” properly, there’s very little focus on whether or not anyone is understanding the answer properly. That brings me back to my first statement up top. The name of the cat in Macbeth is Greymalkin.  So, um… where does he show up and why is he important?

                Greymalkin has one mention: when the witches are casting one of their spells, or doing whatever it is they witches in that play do. Did they set Macbeth on a path with newly stoked ambitions where he believed him invincible enough to plot the death of a king, and later his closest friend? (Oh, spoilers for Macbeth. ) Or did they accurately predict the future, one that would not be altered had they not encountered the future king wandering around the forest? Or was it all a dream, and the lost ending featured Macbeth waking up and finding Patrick Duffy in the shower. (Oh, spoilers for Dallas, too, I guess. Shakespeare and JR. You’re getting it all today folks!) And where does Greymalkin fit into all of this?

                The official answer, of course, is that he’s a familiar, which puts the witches in league with the devil. Also, if you read carefully and do that research thingy, you may find that possibly many of the witch scenes weren’t written by William Shakespeare. In fact, there’s an entire scene that clearly wasn’t written by him, and added later. (I’m going to let you find that one on your own. RESEARCH!) But again, where does all of this fall into the grand spectrum of my point, that has been lost amidst the jokes about Macbeth and the not easy target of mentioning that Patrick Duffy once placed Aquaman?

                Quick, which play featured a cat named Greymalkin?

A.      Macbeth

B.      A Doll’s House

C.      The Importance of Being Ernest

D.      The Book of Mormon

You hopefully picked A and filled it out on your answer sheet, filling in the oval completely. Yay! You have done the bare minimum to pass the test! You can’t tell me the significance of the floating dagger in Macbeth, the rise of feminism in A Doll’s House, the Importance of Being Ernest’s satire of the rich, or why the Book of Mormon is an important musical. (It’s like brand new, but the soundtrack is awesome. You should see it. And take me.) But you can name a cat that showed up in one line of a play. That’s cursed. And the cat doesn’t really do anything. He doesn’t slay the title character. (I really have to stop saying it’s name.) He doesn’t even really represent anything, other than the tidbit of knowledge of what real witches talked like back then. It’s like someone studied Nicolas Cage for a few years then wrote True Blood because they assumed that all vampires talk and acted like that. (I just imagine his house is very much like that show.) That’s my point. Knowing one random fact proves nothing. Being able to bubble in a letter proves nothing. There’s no mention of the understanding behind the fact. This is true of any subject. Boiling things down to one stressful day doesn’t help. It only seeks to apply a black and white answer to an increasingly gray world. (A Greymalkin world? No? Anyone? Is this thing on?)

Of course, if you’re unsure of what to pick, I’d go with “C”.

Where's Your Deep Space Nine Post?

   All this week I have been writing about the various episodes of Star Trek series and their relationship to stories. There were quite a few covered, I recommend you go back and read them. But there was a glaring series left out: Deep Space Nine.

    Some of you have asked me why this series was left out. It’s simple. It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite for a lot of reasons. I sat down to pick and episode to write about, and I couldn’t. Which one should I write about? “Far Beyond the Stars?” “Nor Battle To the Strong”? “Wrongs Darker than Death or Night”? The list kept growing. While it was easy to pick out an episode of Next Generation or Enterprise and play with that, I kept getting stuck. I couldn’t pick just one and leave it there. I needed to write more. The original draft for Wednesday’s Post (The original Deep Space Nine post) was four pages long. FOUR PAGES. I get to a page and a half on a good day of writing Bad Shakespeare.

    Last year when I started this blog, I asked the question as to whether we want to count movies and TV shows as literature. I answered that with an in depth look into the world of Breaking Bad, and those tended to be the most popular posts. (That and the Life of Pi review during the Oscar Movie Marathon. What’s up with that, people?) I think partly because people enjoy Breaking Bad, and I think partly because people were looking for spoilers. I hope they stuck around for some of the other posts.

    So, I’m going to do that again with Deep Space Nine. Which I’ll start referring to as DS9, because Deep Space Nine will increase my word count, it’s a lot to type. I want to look at a series that was doing serialized drama and large casts back when it wasn’t cool. It was a series that took risks, told stories that other series, much less Star Trek series, wouldn’t tell. Let me put it this way, one of the main characters is a terrorist. I have a feeling that might not play so well today.

    For those of you who are unfamiliar, Deep Space Nine is about a space station that orbits Bajor, a planet first introduced in The Next Generation. It follows the crew as they help Bajor become part of the Federation, and as they do battle against a dangerous enemy from the Gamma Quadrant. (The earliest literature featured monsters and gods eating their kids. This isn’t so weird, people.) I plan on exploring characters, themes, and various episodes for the duration of the summer.

    This post is going to be short because this is an introduction, but stay tuned for Deep Space Nine Fridays on Bad Shakespeare.

"These Are The Voyages..." and How Stories Impact Us

               

              Here we go. Day four of Bad Shakespeare’s ode to Star Trek, which is slightly better than Data’s Ode to Spot. While both have great literary merit, I think it’s best if we explore the non-feline version of odes.

                We’ve explored stories that that don’t end as neatly as we expect with “City on the Edge of Forever.” Picard learned how to play the flute (and how stories need to be passed down) in “Inner Light.” And Voyager’s Doctor was a “Living Witness” to how stories can get twisted around. But, what can we do with those stories?

Star Trek: Enterprise – “These Are The Voyages…”

Archer, Picard, Kirk: "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange, new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before."

                The last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise was met with a lot of negative reviews. A lot of people weren’t happy that Riker and Troi from The Next Generation “stealing the spotlight” so to speak, of a crew that they’d grown to love over the years. Some even argued that Enterprise had found it’s voice, and this took it away. Me, personally, I enjoyed it. I thought it was kind of the perfect ending for a prequel series that didn’t really need to be prequeled.

                Star Trek was a brave new vision of the future. We really didn’t need to see Dr. Sam Beckett and his backwards adventures of pre-Kirk, moving slower and finding all the alien races we’ve already grown to love. Or tolerate, in some cases. But towards the end of the series, it really made it work. I hated seeing it go when it was just getting good.

                But that’s part of the point of the last episode: it’s the prequel to everything we’ve seen before. Meaning, in the history of the show, Riker when to Starfleet Academy and learned all about the adventures of Captain Archer, Trip Tucker, T’Pol… all those people who came before him. (presumably. Maybe he just failed history?) He learned their stories. So when he’s given a difficult choice, given within the framework of the Next Generation Episode, “Pegasus” it would make sense that he’d go back to those stories to draw strength and find inspiration.

                “These Are the Voyages…” (I really shouldn’t be writing this so short after my Voyager post, I really want to keep typing “These Are the Voyagers” which would have been a cool name for an episode. Why didn’t they get on that?) features Riker having to make a bold choice: rat out the Admiral that had him do something highly illegal, or be honest. He goes back to the stories of Archer and the founding of the Federation and watches it in Holograph form. At one point, he watches the sacrifice that Trip Tucker would ultimately make, and was able to ask him about it. It’s actually a fitting sendoff for the show.

                But it also concerns itself with the idea of stories, and how we can draw inspiration from them. As we know, Riker would eventually ask that he be put under arrest, along with the Admiral, for his actions. Now, the original episode didn’t feature anything Star Trek: Enterprise. At this point people were more concerned with creating Voyager, so it does require suspension of disbelief that he would have time to go and do all of this during the original “Pegasus.” However, once you believe that we have starships that visit alien planets with green skinned women, well… you have to start accepting other things. Riker had to focus on his belief in stories (or history… I’m going with stories. I’ll be honest with you, when I started this I’d hoped to focus on literature, but ended up focusing on stories. Literature is tomorrow.) to find what he wanted to do.

                “City on the Edge of Forever”, “Inner Light,” “Living Witness”, and “These are the Voyages…” all showcase an aspect of stories that are important. Whether it’s the idea of a twist ending, or how we pass on  stories, or how those stories can get changed, or finally, how stories change us, they all focus deeply on what it means to have a story, or be a storyteller. Star Trek is a series that understands that. It uses the idea of stories to its advantage. Deep Space Nine even has an episode called “The Storyteller” and focuses on the importance of that role. It’s not just green skinned alien girls and phasers. It’s real people, affected not only by the stories they’re creating, but also by the stories that have come before them. Not bad for a series that started out being cancelled after two seasons, revived, then cancelled again.

                Tomorrow: We discuss Deep Space Nine… the Star Trek series ahead of its time, and one of the more literary things to grace our television. You’ll note, I’m not going to be discussing one episode. I’ve been looking forward to discussing Deep Space Nine for a while now, and considered following Breaking Bad Shakespeare Fridays with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Fridays. I still might.

                Some point in the future: this isn’t a movie blog, but what the hell, a review of both Star Trek Into Darkness and The Great Gatsby are on their way for you. The last one isn’t Star Trek related.