Black Sabbath (1970)

Black Sabbath is the source of all metal rivers and tributaries.
Join me as I take the black Hajj through their discography. This is the way.

(1970)

"Oh no, please God help me..."

Been listening to tons of Sabbath lately. As per usual when that happens the thought occurs - why not blog all this crap up? Make everyone else listen to it too? Or at least read long with me listening to it? (Or give people eighteen or nineteen posts to skip over. Something for everyone!)

Real quick: (1) Black Sabbath invented heavy metal. They share its discovery with Albert Hoffman (the inventor of LSD-25) and whomever was in charge of the sheet metal factory where a young Tony Iommi - later 'the riff master god of heavy metal' - sliced off the tips of his middle and ring fingers in an industrial accent. This forced Tony, then just an aspiring guitarist, to alter his style of playing to what we now know as "the Black Sabbath sound" (or "that sounds like heavy metal.") In the beginning, that meant light strings that were tuned to a lower pitch so he had an easier time bending them and playing a lot of his notes with an open 'E' string accompanying them, to make a bigger, thicker sound. Along with Bill Ward on drums, Geezer Butler as dungeonmaster/bassist, and Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, their sound meshed to loose ("its hour come round at last!") metal on the world. And (2) Sabbath was neither the first nor my favorite metal as a kid, but it was near-first and near-favorite, and my appreciation has only deepened in all the years since. 

Plenty of McAnecdotes and 'memberberries to come, but let's drop the needle on side one and jump into this madness.

Let's start with that cover up there. If there is a heavy metal equivalent to the Tales from the Darkside opening credits, it is that, and several years ahead of things. When Yeats asked what rough beast...? it was that cover he was asking about. Holy hell. Designed and photographed by Keith McMillan and freaking people out for fifty-one years, it might not even be my favorite Black Sabbath album cover, but there's no doubt that it's goddamn perfect. What atmosphere. 

Recorded live in the studio over a single day in October 1969, you can hear all - literally all - of the twists and turns of the heavy metal genre to come in Black Sabbath's thirty-eight-plus minutes. No small feat, and one they'll repeat a few more times in these early-to-mid seventies years. This sort of thing - midwifing several genres - was in the air at the time. Every other album from 1969-1971 seemed in retrospect to announce the musical changes to come in the years and even decades to come.

One final bit of preamble before diving into the songs: You’ll see some quotes here and there in these posts, but I’m not doing a deep dive on the subject. I considered it. Each of the founding members have written a memoir (some more than one), there are documentaries and Mojo-magazine perspectives, etc. All of which would be a pleasure to read and even more of a pleasure to see all grouped together on my shelves next to other rock biographies. That’s not what I’m going for here, though. This is a series of posts from the “I already have all the albums; I’ll see you in Hell!” side of the Dog Star Omnibus dream factory. 

All songs written by the band except the two covers ("Evil Woman" and "Warning.")

“Black Sabbath” 

Bands with their own theme song aren’t so common. And I bet of the ones that have them most of them aren’t great. I’d have to see a list, though; all I can think of is “Iron Maiden.” And that one’s awesome. So’s this one. Holy moley. Opening with a metallized version of the tri-tone from Holst's "Mars, Bringer of War" and some truly tortured vocals from Ozzy detailing an encounter with Satan:

"Butler, obsessed with the occult at the time, painted his apartment matte black and placed several inverted crucifixes and pictures of Satan on the walls. Ozzy Osbourne gave Butler a black occult book, written in Latin and decorated with numerous pictures of Satan. Butler read the book and then placed it on a shelf beside his bed before going to sleep. When he woke up, he claims he saw a large black figure standing at the end of his bed, staring at him. The figure vanished and Butler ran to the shelf where he had placed the book earlier, but the book was gone. Butler related this story to Osbourne, who then wrote the lyrics to the song based on Butler's experience."

Hmm. As far as both establishing a mood of dread for the album and announcing their singular presence on the late 60s musical scene, this does about as good a job as you can do. It’s pretty somnambulant until it gets going halfway through (and you can picture the strobe lights and the paramecium blown up and projected on the day-glo walls and the air thick with weed smoke). Not so much a song as one would traditionally think of one, more of an overture to the band's whole career to come.

Ozzy’s vocals this whole album are a little warbled. Not sure why. Is it the Superman-III-sized cannister of liquid LSD he was drinking from? The warping effect of a Satanic gravitational hellmouth just under the studio? Is he singing the entire album in-between chews on turkey drumsticks and frog legs? Possibly all of these things. Most likely he just was growing into himself as a vocalist. He still nails it, it's just asterisked. 

“The Wizard”

When I first heard this as a kid, I remember thinking “That doesn’t sound like a wizard at all.” My wizards sounded more like "Merlin the Magician" (Rick Wakeman, his King Arthur album). No harmonica. Does Gandalf have a harmonica? He might, actually - anyway, point being, I had a limited idea of what wizards should sound like. 

Evoking musically the sorcerer's vocation or no, this is a classic. Some great, classic-Sabbath structure here. 

I used to watch The Wizard on CBS on Thursdays at 8 pm in the 1986-1987 season. Anyone else? You'd have had to be skipping Cosby and Family Ties, which at the time was a tough thing to do. The show tanked and is largely forgotten today - probably rightfully so, who knows, I haven't seen it since it aired. But would the show have survived had they licensed this song? Absolutely it would have. One of the great what-if no-brainers of history. 

Sad what happened to David Rappaport. I just discovered looking at his wiki that the showrunners of The Wizard later created Baywatch (!) and even had a Wizard-esque tribute in the show's fifth season. I apologize for this diversion, I just want someone to cut scenes from the show to this song and put it out there.

“Behind the Wall of Sleep”

This song showcases the talents and interplay of the band pretty well, as does the next one. Every song – this one included – is such an indelible one-of-a-kind slog classic. No one did head-nodding heavy metal riffing like Tony, Geezer, and Bill.

This one might drag here and there like the stoned beast that it is, but the return of the riff with the waltz time is one of my favorite things ever. There’s a sloppy fade-out/ fade-in to the next song, which is the kind of thing that happens when you record an album live in the studio in one day. Or maybe they just liked the sound of it. 

The vocal/verse pattern here reminds me a bit of "War Pigs." Not so much the lyrics.

“N.I.B.”

Here's a stone cold classic to finish side one. ("My name is Lucifer / please take my hand/ OH YEAH!") Surely side one of Black Sabbath is listed among the great side ones of history. 

I always thought the song meant “Nativity in Black” because that was one of the things the all-metal-is-satanic folks promoted in the 80s. But apparently not, according to the Wikipedia. "Nibs" was some kind of reference to the goutee Bill was styling at the time. Now I see it and think Men In Black and my brain keeps trying to make something out of it. I don't have a Deities and Demigods handy, so I can't check but I bet there's an appropriate D&D reference to make here. 

Ozzy's "Your love for me has got to be real" bit is so warped-sounding. There's a reason Ozzy's main item for sale from 1970 through Y2k was "Is this guy actually crazy or what?" Maybe it is still. I think it changed to "How is this guy still alive?" somewhere back there.

Stoner/ sludge metal owes it all to Black Sabbath, as does every other kind of metal. I'll be saying this a lot; I apologize in advance. Pick a band any band and follow their river back to its source, and its source back to its source, and sooner or later, you end up in “N.I.B.” It is the dark sea to which all Klingon warriors yearn to return and sail and see the skulls and madness in the breaking surf over the deck. 

Show me any spot in Sabbath’s first five or six albums where that isn’t the case, though. 

Some great damn metal right here, friends.

“Evil Woman”

Cover of the old Crow tune, also covered by Ike and Tina. Irresistible riffin’, chorus. Has a bit of a limited range of movement, but no big whup. Recorded at the behest of the label who wanted a radio-friendly tune. Glad they did.

“Sleeping Village”

A better than average slice of atmosphere. I always get this one mixed up in my head with the next one:

“Warning”

It becomes increasingly difficult to hear the 60s in Sabbath's sound, but it's all over these last two tracks. You can easily see the band in the same varied scene as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, etc. on a track like this, but forging their own labored path through the wilderness. 

Ozzy’s vocals sound great if a bit nasally/ adenoidal on this one. (He manages to sing "care" and "man" in such a way as to make them rhyme pretty credibly, so hat's off just for that.) The sound of the asylum in his head, maybe. Sabbath has a lot of songs about going crazy. Not that this one is, it just sounds like Ozzy is projecting from a disturbed place. This becomes a thing: Again, with the crazy? Again, with the Satan? Anyway, great soloes.  

~

The album feels more like a claiming of space: a prelude to what was to come later the same year. It’s rambling and kind of drafty, like a manor estate gone to ruin, with a creepy lady standing in front of it.

Black Sabbath (1970)

Produced by Roger Bain 

Engineered by Tom Allom and Barry Sheffield

Tour of Duty (1987 to 1990)

Tour of Duty aired on CBS from 1987 to 1990. It was created by L. Travis Clark and Steven Duncan and produced (mainly) by Zev Braun – the latter a longtime vet of the industry and the former two vets of Vietnam themselves. African-American vets at that, which makes Tour of Duty one of a handful of twentieth century shows with African-American showrunners. And among those shows, it stands out as one not primarily about the African-American experience. It certainly doesn’t shy away from exploring any aspect of the black experience in Vietnam. I just mean it's not the main focus of the show; it aimed - and succeeded - to capture the experience for the American enlisted man, of any color. 

Race and class were of course in the forefront of the draft and the war, as some of the intertitles that start off each episode (example: "African Americans represented more than 16% of all draftees and 23% of all combat troops, despite being only 11% of the civilian population in 1967." Nothing inflammatory, just fact, but it sets a certain window for the tale to unfold. They use such framing well - and never too obnoxiously - throughout the show) so any honest examination of Vietnam will incorporate such themes, of course. 

It was designed to convey the garden variety experience of an infantry platoon on a tour of duty in Vietnam. (A tour of duty was one year. Countdown to DEROS (Date Estimated Return from OverSeas) began the minute the ramp lowered on the C130 troop transport.) And while it does do that, it ended up being a little more like Combat or one of those shows, where the steady and recurring cast got into episodic adventures with a steady stream of guest stars against a theater of war backdrop. Put another way, if you wrote down everything you’ve ever heard about in conjunction with Vietnam, you’ll see it on Tour of Duty, all happening to one group of friends. That said, there’s an awful lot of real (if sanitized for television) detail throughout the show, and Vietnam-readers will pick up threads from many different places, most notably from S.O.G .by John L. Plaster in season three. (Great book, if a little confusing.) 

It’s got good performances, characters you care about, and inventive use of set and production design to convey its Indochina landscape. It was way better than most of its audience noticed at the time, I'll wager. And by virtue of being on TV (and rated PG in other words) it was an effective counterpoint to the edgier Vietnam fare that flooded multiplexes from the late 70s to the late 80s. In short, Tour of Duty, while never shying away from controversy, wasn't afraid to show a little of the heroism along with the ambiguity, or to start and end with the basic (gasp) idea that just maybe the salient point to make in all things was not that Americans were imperialist stooges committing genocide. 

(Although if that's your bag, fret not - plenty of characters still make it. This isn't some state department recruitment video or anything.) 

CBS was likely more interested in moving mass amounts of tie-in soundtracks (which it did) than contributing meaningfully to the positive representations of Vietnam veterans. Everyone was riding the wave of popularity ushered in by Oliver Stone’s Platoon. That's how show biz works, although in Vietnam's case, it was a long time coming. People wanted to forget it for awhile and deal with it only at an arthouse-cinema remove. When it came back, it came back big - and like any fad, left a lot of scorched-earth product behind. A lot of the movies and Vietnam media of this period blends together in memory. (I completely forgot this show existed, for one example, and that one even stars T of D's Tony Becker!) 

Tour of Duty is my favorite of the TV attempts. (For my money, The 'Nam - at least that first one-year-character arc - was the best for comics and Platoon the best for cinema. I hear Danger, Close is pretty good, though; anyone see it? We're a long way from the 80s. But hell, we're even longer from Saigon.) It was a show with solid fundamentals, both with regards to TV production and to Vietnam. It never loses sight of its mission statement in either regard.

I’m especially glad to see so many veterans praise the accuracy and detail of the show. It’s good to have that stuff verified. My father was in the Seabees and did two tours (the first in Chu Lai, the second six miles down the road at Rosemary Point, Camp Miller) so it’s always been part of the background of my life. My Dad had a pretty good go of it, as such things go, nothing like flashbacks or outbursts at Asian-American waiters or things you might see on Highway to Heaven or what not. He opposed the cartoonization of it in 80s media (Rambo, Chuck Norris, the just-mentioned, etc.), but he equally opposed the Hanoi-Jane-ification of it. Beyond that influence, though, I grew up inundated with Vietnam-media the way I was inundated with any other trend or trope of the 80s, then I didn't think about it again until reading In Pharaoh's Army by Tobias Wolff in 2002. And have been reading steadily about it ever since.

I mentioned the soundtracks. If you can see the show with the original music (and “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones over the credits) all the better. The DVD set I have is missing all of those and over-uses the instrumental music which originally played over the end credits (composed by Joseph Conlan, a really nice piece of music) as well as some sound-alike versions of “Purple Haze” and others, or “On the Road Again”. Over and over.  I've seen the episodes all plenty of times as originally mixed, and they're definitely better. It was later released with the original soundtrack restored, and I need to get those one day. This sort of thing always makes me wonder: will the same thing happen to newer shows that used so much licensed music like Mad Men, The Sopranos, or Breaking Bad? Or does this sort of thing only apply to the licensing deals and lateral revenue streams of yesteryear, i.e. the $250k Mad Men paid to use "Tomorrow Never Knows" for a few seconds of screentime applies in perpetuity, while the Tour of Duty folks probably had to keep renegotiating with Allen Klein for "Paint It Black." Who knows. Anyway, I’ll try to note here and there where a change does significant damage. 

I'll devote the next three posts to each of the show's three seasons but wanted to introduce the show's main cast. In order of how they appear in the credits:

Terence Knox as the Sarge aka Zeke Anderson (SSG/SFC) 

On his third tour of duty when the series begins, Sgt. Anderson is the lifer who pretends he isn't, dedicated to keeping those in his charge alive and able to maneuver around the endless rotations in the chain of command above him. Sometimes. Resigned to dysfunction. He’s the soldier whose marriage breaks under the strain and whose daughter doesn’t know him but on whom everyone around him absolutely depends. Ditto for the show. Knox proved himself capable of anchoring an ensemble cast, and it’s too bad he never found a good fit on another show.   

Stephen Caffrey as Myron Goldman (2nd Lt/ 1st Lt)

Everything I just said for Zeke applies for the LT as well. The class issues in Tour of Duty are sometimes not very subtle, but they do a good job of sketching out some of the condescension in the upper ranks between commissioned officers and OCS officers, as well as the futility of it all. Lt. Goldman is trying to outdo his Dad (because of course he is) but like Zeke he becomes committed to something else. MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) was a corporation; the Lt. Goldmans of the war were like those division heads who managed to keep their employees from getting fired despite the determined (at times maniacal) mismanagement of the board. Caffrey gradually segued into stage work in the years after Tour of Duty, but he had some memorable turns on 90s TV (Seinfeld, and as John Ford in the last episode of Young Indiana Jones.)

Tony Becker as Danny Percell (PFC/Cpl/SP4)

The grunt, Caucasian. From the backwoods of Montana, uncomplicated, has your back in the field, in the bar, at the base. Except for the few episodes where he briefly gets hooked on smack. (Like I said, they compartmentalize the war onto one group of folks – just roll with it.) Becker had more credits as a kid actor than many actors accrue in a lifetime and continues popping up here, there, and everywhere. 

Ramon Franco as Alberto Ruiz (Pvt/PFC/Sp4)

The grunt, Latino. From the Bronx, has a lot to prove in the first season, then burned by his trial by fire, then steadies into a seasoned hand over the three seasons. Ramon Franco most recently played the theater manager in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a credit which amuses me as I wonder if he came to Tarantino’s attention from his bold use of the n-word in the pilot episode of Tour of Duty, ("What's the matter, n-words? Ain't you never seen a s**c before?" I should mention that too: 80s TV standards were a little different than nowadays; ye of delicate ears and sensibilities and born-to-cancel be forewarned). Regardless, this is an actor who has been on everything from Miami Vice to the X-Files to Law and Order: SVU.

Miguel A. Nunez, Jr. as Marcus Taylor (Pvt/PFC/Sgt.)

The grunt, African-American, walking the line between his own destiny and the one others try to foist upon him. Part of me wonders how much of this guy is based on L. Travis Clark’s own experience in the war, and I wish there were more interviews with him and Steve Duncan about things. As a Navy vet, Duncan's experience was a bit different than an infantryman in a rifle company, but I assume their own experience informed aspects of all the characters, not just Taylor’s. Taylor's arc has a lot of personal touches missing from the other’s, though - just a hunch. Taylor gets most of my favorite moments from the series, and his arc is – outside Zeke’s – the backbone of the show. The actor has been employed steadily since the show ended, and he still seems to be going strong.

Stan Foster as Marvin Johnson (SP4/Sgt)

The grunt, innocent. Also African-American, but I think he fulfills the innocent-greenie role, even if others serve that purpose as he gets more experience as the series goes on. Also the first of the regular cast we see back in the world (in season three) and somewhat adrift. Stan doesn’t have too many credits at IMDB before or after Tour of Duty. Too bad; he's an indelible part of the show.

Anyone who is only in the cast for one season will be covered in the post for that season. Dan Gauthier joined the cast in season two and was in it throughout season three so I'll make an exception for him:

Johnny McKay (1st Lt)

The obligatory hotshot helicopter pilot. Gauthier had a long post-TOD career in soaps both daytime and nighttime as well as many other credits, including Friends and Ensign Levelle from “Lower Decks” (Star Trek: TNG). Gauthier brings an intensity to the role that transcends his Top-Gun-y demeanor. His love triangle with the LT and Kim Delaney is a fun part of season two, and the showrunners chose his character’s arc to punctuate the series in the last episode. Which makes sense: the helicopter remains perhaps the most visible symbol of the war for many Americans, so the image of McKay, whooping “Wooly Bully” over his headset and buzzing the tower, happily not fitting back into the world, is a resonant one. We’ll cover all that in season three, though. 

As for the two showrunners, after Tour of Duty they both worked on A Man Called Hawk, but information is kind of scant on them. Looks like L. Travis Clark died, but I can’t find much one way or the other on Steve Duncan. I watched the documentary that came with my DVDs and looked up a few things but really didn’t find much. * Both deserve a lot of credit for what they accomplished with the show – a blanket statement for everyone who worked on it. 

* If you google and find things and say “You should have tried harder, a-wipe!” I’m happy to be educated in the comments, up to and including the a-wipe. The truth is, Dog Star Omnibus, Inc. could no longer keep its internet-fact-finding team on the payroll, so a google or two is all I can manage. I regret this as much as anyone. I can't even get the official fan site www.hum60.com to open. Can you? 

L. Travis Clark

Next Time: A look through my favorite episodes, season by season, nice and breezy. Mainly I’m going to dump the screencaps I took and bullet-point the notepad blather I’ve been keeping for the past six months or so. Mark your calendars!

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season Six

Let's do this.

26.

The Mirror Universe counterpart of Kira's dead love takes her hostage on Deep Space Nine as he is running from the evil Alliance of his universe.

I can no longer tell which of my Star Trek thoughts are things I say all the time in a variety of places and which aren't. I suspect my thoughts on how the mirror universe should only be used sparingly are things I've shared to a number of places, online and off. So I'll give my spiel once and for all below and hopefully just hyperlink to it going forward; no point wandering through life sharing the same spiel to anyone who'll listen about the same topics as triggered by Star Trek!

The mirror universe can work once or twice on the idea that there is no throughline-continuity in the mirror universe, that's it's just like a random dimension-scrabble at any one time, from a transporter accident or Q-snap or whatever, like tuning to the one spot on the dial at any one given moment that will never exist again where this weirdly-improbable-impossible "mirror" universe for the main cast exists. That's it. Once, twice, three is pushing it, and I'm talking across all the shows. And one of those is already (always) TOS' "Mirror, Mirror," so really, you can do it only twice.

The moment you start having it be one continuity you can go back and forth to - and as soon as you tie it into the mirror timelines of the other shows - the whole thing collapses, and I don't care how many gymnastics you perform to tie them together. There is no way the Mirror Universe of TOS "Mirror, Mirror" becomes the timeline seen in any other show; zero, done, nada. It is not a failure of imagination to assert this; it is a failure of imagination to assert it is not. This pretty much goes for reboots as well as for alternate dimensions starring the cast in mustaches or where Hitler won the war, etc. Ask DC. 

I give the DS9 folk kudos for trying some new things with the concept; none of the mirror episodes hit me as dumb the way news (I haven't watched them) of the Discovery episodes does. But the concept simply cannot support the close examination repeated use makes inevitable, so whatever merits this story has - and everyone does a nice job - it's handicapped by that from the first.

I often hear people scoff in a "if you can swallow the transporter or the replicator or warp speed, you can swallow the mirror universe" manner. The difference for me is that I can see technology advancing to a point where people invent transporters or replicators or warp speed, so it's written into the concept of the show to be okay with the iffiness of those things. Whereas technological advancement will - I'm going out on a limb but I feel it will support my weight - likely not lead to the discovery of some ongoing mirror universe where all our friends and family are still nearby, in a Frankenstein'd, artificial construct that maintains the same structure over multiple franchises despite the characters arising from completely different circumstances.

25.

The Defiant picks up a distress call from Captain Lisa Cusak, whose escape pod has crashed on a remote planet following the destruction of her ship, the Olympia.

Early in this episode, Odo starts giving Quark crap about the barstools or some nonsense. It's meant to demonstrate Odo's state of mind, but it's ridiculous Quark would take him seriously or comply with this. This is by no means a hill to die on, just something that mildly irritated me. Then again, Odo and Quark are starting to be better and closer frenemies at this point, so wrapped up in Odo's compliance is likely recognition that Odo's petty tyrannies are masking inner turmoil.

Speaking of Quark's, just a question on money: do they cover the adjustment Federation members must make to a market (not to mention bribes and fines) economy in seasons one, two, or three? For that matter, how do Federation peoples handle commerce with cultures with whom they share Promenade space but do not pay wages/ have a system of exchange? Do they replicate money? That could be a problem.  

The twist is cool but not really integrated well. You could see it coming a mile away, I thought, not that that ruins it. This lady was a commanding officer, though? Some suspiciously poor radio discipline on these distress calls. Her demeanor in general kind of doesn't feel real to me. Maybe it's just not a good performance. I hesitate to put it on that, though. 

24.

When Dukat tells Kira that her mother did not die when Nerys was three but was actually Dukat's lover, Kira goes into the past using the Bajoran Orb of Time to find the truth.

This one is silly. One day Dukat drunk dials Kira to tell her he banged her Mom? And then she time travels to see if it happened? What? This Orb of Bajor might've been used for something else in some other episode for some nobler purpose. (To put it mildly.) 

But they really wanted to tell a story about comfort women, I guess, and it's reverse engineered from that.  

23.

While on General Martok's ship Worf is reunited with his estranged son, Alexander.

It's a shame Brian Bonsall couldn't round out his arc as Worf's son. I don't know what it was about this one that irked me. In retrospect I kind of liked it fine. It was a bit ham-fisted in some regards. This is the one with Gabrielle Union as a Klingon. In my head canon Michael Dorn whisked her away in his Cessna 340 after taping finished and they had a whirlwind romance, in character.

The Ziyal/ Kira/ Dukat triangle was less interesting to me. 

22.

Bashir attempts to reintegrate genetically engineered misfits into society, but they are asked by Starfleet to become a think tank when they provide insightful analysis of upcoming Dominion peace talks.

Very annoyed with all these folks. Good performances - I guess? It's tough to tell. I think so. - but more interesting than enjoyable for me.

I kept waiting for Bashir to bring up the places from "Whom Gods Destroy" or "Dagger of the Mind." Did I miss it? Or did they shut those places down? 

21.

An attack on the Starfleet ship carrying Gul Dukat to a hearing for war crimes, as well as Captain Sisko who is to testify at the hearing, leaves the two of them stranded on a deserted planet together.

Kira is like Number Six from BSG here is. Ron Moore! So much BSG back there in this and VOY. Then again, without checking, the tormenting-ghost-figure is probably as old as Aeschylus.

Were they doing an Enemy Mine thing in this episode? It amuses me to compare so many things to  things like Enemy Mine that are likely not the touchstones for anyone else but to proceed from a place assuming they are. "What do you mean this isn't an homage to Megaforce?" etc. is a confusion-of-perspective that always makes me laugh.

20.

Sisko creates a risky plan to disable a critical Dominion sensor array, while on Terok Nor, Kira, Jake, Rom and Odo seek to undermine the Cardassian/Dominion Alliance.

More of Odo exploring his sexuality. Great. ("Do you want me to stop?")

The intergalactic warlord aspect is still confusing about the Dominion. There is no credible reason why the Changelings would want to create a Buck Rogers-style star empire. Nor why they would go about it the way they did. For the thousandth time: the Changelings/ Dominion / Maquis make only retrograde sense. 

Too many "Cadet!"s with Nog. They really fell in love with that this season. Not sure why only Sisko feels the need to be his drill instructor, or why this aspect of military training survives into the otherwise enlightened military future of Trek. Plus why is "Chief" O'Brien doing this? Is he an officer or isn't he? Then again, the traditions of the space navy are erratic to say the least.

The broad set-ups on this show are good: war/ resistance/ prophecy. (Come to think of it, that's BSG too isn't it?)

19.

Worf's plans for a traditional Klingon wedding hinge on Martok's demanding wife, Sirella, accepting Dax into their family.

Fine, but it's mostly made-up Klingon stuff, so tough to gauge. They don't mock Worf mercilessly enough for his every-Klingon-boy-dreams-of-a-Klingon-wedding sentiments. Holy moley. What's even funnier is it kind of fits Worf as a character, which is why I wish it had been a sort of mocking-thing between Jadzia and him. 

18.

Sisko is called to Bajor when an ancient tablet addressing
the Emissary is discovered at B'hala.

The season's big Bajor/ Emissary episode I guess.

I was just thinking 'cool premise but no real buld-up' when Sisko smashed the tablet. Nice. Things get more interesting from there. 

17.

Starfleet Intelligence recruits Chief O'Brien to infiltrate the Orion Syndicate to find a Starfleet informant.

"Oh FFS" is what I wrote in my notes. Funny - not sure exactly why. This is a pretty good episode, I guess. Real flair in performance, execution, and script. Feels a little like a mini-movie. What is it that turned me off? I suppose I could watch it again to find out. (Rubs eyes and shakes head in cartoon-noise fashion) Sorry, sometimes I say things...

Why is no one in Orion ever super tall? I don't understand Orion in Trek really. I also don't really understand the lack of green Orion people in this episode. It's unfortunate when space shows go for a terrestrial gangster angle in space. It seems silly. Anyway, the Orion seem like an untapped area of Trek. I'm sure Picard and Discovery will fill in all the gaps with space trans racism. Thank the makers.

16.

As Sisko considers leaving Starfleet due to the destruction of Captain Swofford's ship, the Cortez, he has a vision of himself as a science fiction writer in the 1950s.

At the risk of being accused of tone deafness or worse, I'm afraid I wasn't blown away by this episode. What this episode need is a Don Cheadle from The Family Man/ Q angle. (We just watched Family Man, pardon the reference. But I've taken to saying "What this needs is Don Cheadle" around the house re: scramble-the-timelines.) It doesn't have one. So we have essentially a "very special dream episode" instead of, say, an "Inner Light" episode. One thing I've learned: DS9 doesn't do "The Inner Light."

Anyway, it's not terrible, but watching it in 2020 just makes me think of how pandering Ira and some of the other DS9 brass can be. (Particularly in that Netflix documentary about the show.) Armond White's recent review of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom has a line in it that made me think not just of this episode but a certain "type" of episode / person: a "conception of black artistic struggle as overacting." I'm not the guy to ask about any of this, I guess.

I like the prophets angle, and I really like Michael Dorn as a ballplayer in love with Kassidy. That's another problem with this one; Dorn is just way too likable. Watching this episode you can see a whole career Dorn might have had in another show had he not done Trek. He chose pretty well either way, but it's a good performance.

15.

Sisko asks Garak to help him get the Romulans to join the war against the Dominion. However, Sisko finds that he might not be able to keep his ethics intact to do it.

A bit overwrought. Cool enough I guess. I probably would've loved it in the 90s. I don't care for the direct to camera address. And Avery Brooks is doing all his weird mannerisms and then some all episode long.

Just a war logistics question: with replicators doing what do, shouldn't there be a planet of replicators be working overtime now, for months and months, to pump out the equivalent of the Romulan fleet? If Voyager can 3-d print shuttlecraft as needed, can't some Starfleet Factory produce starships as needed? (Unless - as in the Abramsverse - Starfleet is still putting these things together on the ground, solely so characters can drive up to it and gaze upon their future destiny.) 

Ditto for the Jem'Hadar breeding facilities, etc. This is partly why "war" doesn't work too well in the Trekverse for people who like to meditate on Trek concepts. Take the antimatter chamber, for example; anyone ever beam a micron or two of antimatter over to someone's bridge? Thing would blow up, right? How far away do you have to be to beam this stuff? Meh. 

Anyway, these aren't the takeaways from this episode; we're supposed to be blown away only by the introduction of moral ambiguity into the Trek-verse. (Surely what was lacking from TOS was moral ambiguity! Thanks, Ira!) 

14.

Bashir shows off a new Holosuite program of a martini lounge with a 1960s Vegas singer named Vic Fontaine who is very perceptive. Vic delivers the conclusive advice to Odo he needs to hear to woo at last Major Kira.

Vic Fontaine was a big part of my first positive feelings on DS9. But I never saw his debut episode until now. Good for James Darren. (Although, for continuity sake, they could've gotten Joe Piscopo. How would we feel about Joe Piscopo had he done this role, I wonder? I don't think he'd have done as good a job, but it's interesting to consider.)

It's unfortunate the Doctor from VOY and Vic Fontaine never met. I bet the Doctor would've been annoyed by him. It'd have been fun to see. 

Anyway, his strokes are broad, and this is basically Hitch for Odo, or The Tao of Steve, or any of those type of things. I guess The Tao of Steve came along later. I further guess there's some Commedia dell'arte or even more ancient precedent. Goes on a bit too long/ too one-note. But hey. Harmless enough. 

13.

Bashir is accused of unknowingly spying for the Dominion.

Directed by Michael Dorn. ("Today is a good day for... 'Action!'") We see the widening of Trek into something else here, something 'darker.' More successfully, for my money, than in "In the Pale Moonlight." Still, Bashir's moral indignation is a little silly. Isn't everybody at war FFS? Some of the hair-splitting gets a little much. Then again, of gods and generals and all that. Of these things and more is good drama made. 

Sloan and his guys are obviously the same guys from Die Hard 2. So that changes how I view the end of Die Hard 2. Obviously the plane's wreckage was beamed in as they beamed to the future or what not. Who the hell is General Esperanza supposed to be in the Trekverse?  Interesting development. I didn't expect to have a new take or reason to love Die Hard 2 in 2021. I thought peak Die Hard 2 had been reached long ago. 

12.

Dax, O'Brien, and Bashir board a Runabout, which is shrunken to four inches long as they investigate a rare subspace compression phenomenon.

I don't have much to say about this one except that it doesn't quite capitalize on its premise as much as it might. Otherwise it's a fun one. There's something a little, I don't know, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olson about the whole thing. 

11.

Three months into the war, DS9 is still under Dominion control. Sisko and his crew are given a mission to destroy a vital Ketracel White facility deep in Dominion space using a captured Jem'Hadar ship. Jake is working for the Federation News Service. Odo is head of Terok Nor's security supported by the Vorta Weyoun.

Nice set-up for season 6. (More BSG! I promise to stop saying this, but FFS someone needs to write the definitive Thematic and Structural Overlap in Berman-Era Trek and the Moore/Eick Battlestar Galactica.) 

Good stuff, what more to say? Hate to leave cruddy reviews, but what say you? 

10.

Sisko and his tired crew crash on a planet where they encounter a band of Jem'Hadar.

From the get-go here, I liked this one.

So many BSG parallels. Good stuff at the end. 

I am the worst reviewer on the planet. 

9.

Jake and Nog come under attack by the Jem'Hadar and are rescued by a rogue Defiant class starship, the Valiant, under the command of Starfleet Red Squadron cadets.

Red squad! red squad! red squad! It's a little too much. This feels like it was written by people who didn't make the varsity squad and honed the resentment into a critical worldview rather than worked through it.

That said, I like this one. I wanted to listen to Cirroc Lifton and Aron Eisenberg's podcast episode on this one, if they did one. But time ran out and I didn't get to check, never mind listen. There's a bit at the end where Nog says "In the end he was a bad captain." Hey Nog! Says you, CADET. Maybe tactical hierarchy is not your purview? It certainly isn't from a military standpoint. The ending feels like a movie about wartime made by Hollywood, which is, more or less, a problem with DS9-at-war in general. Here, though, specifically, the episode should have let people make up their own mind. There are any number of other arguments from people with much more experience regarding the who and how of a good Captain, especially during wartime. 

8. and 7.

Learning of thousands of Dominion reinforcements gathering in the Gamma Quadrant, Sisko initiates a plan to retake Deep Space Nine and secure the wormhole before the minefield is detonated. (And) Sisko commands the Defiant and 600 Federation ships against a Dominion/Cardassian armada to retake Deep Space Nine. Damar has Kira, Jake, and Leeta arrested. 

It's kind of unbelievable to me that they (the Jem-Hadar, Cardassians, whomever) wouldn't keep a Defiant-deterrent ship around.

All the drama(s) in this episode. Good stuff. 

6.

When Jadzia Dax is critically injured on an away mission, Worf must choose between saving his wife and completing their assignment. O'Brien becomes obsessed with beating Quark at Tongo.

The Worf/ Dax/ soundstage-jungle plot is pretty good. And the Tongo duel between Quark and Bashir is fun. I was hoping Bashir was faking being so distracted. I'm not sure how his genetic enhancements wouldn't neutralize such things. But perhaps Quark is just that good.

So when Worf mentions Nikolai here, does his creator get credit/ royalties? Who created Nikolai? Ron Moore wrote this one; Naren Shankar did the teleplay for "Homeward" on TNG. Ron and Naren worked closely for years; I wonder if it was just tossed out in the writer's room. ("Mind if I reference Nikolai?" "Lease 'em to you for a dollar.") I keep hoping someone with writer's guild sort of experience/ lawyerly know-how will opine on the subject and let us all know.

5.

Starfleet Command begins an offensive against the Dominion, and Sisko is chosen to lead the invasion of Cardassia, but the Cardassian/Dominion Alliance has secretly reinforced their borders with unmanned orbital weapons platforms.

What is it with admirals in Starfleet? Admiral Ross (Barry Jenner) is so milquetoast. Is it only to contrast the Captain, is that why they do this? 

"We're in the middle of taking over the Alpha Quadrant" says someone on the Dominion side during this. I really need to go back to the earlier seasons. Is there ever a time where the Dominion makes sense? It all goes back to some kind of solid/liquid war? I mean, really? So they became space empire overlords? Did they ever meet the Metrons? Or the Organianians? Or Q? 

Vic Fontaine is like that buddy of yours who only communicates in bad Dad joke memes. Whereas Martok (at least in this episode) is like that buddy of yours that communicates only in"Mister Spock's Dank Meme Stash" memes.

Dukat! Jedzia! Oh no! The drama. This whole angle on Dukat/ X-men transform is pretty wild. The mad Pa-Mach Prophet.

BLOWED UP BIG ROCK IN SPACE! would've been a cool subtitle for this episode. The ending evokes "The Paradise Syndrome". Good set-up for season 7. 

4.

Quark mounts a rescue mission when his mother, Ishka, is captured by the Dominion and Grand Nagus Zek offers a reward for her return.

I'm undoubtedly overranking this one, but screw it. I'm enjoying the Ferengi so much on this re-watch and this is such a pleasant surprise to me. All the actors do such fun work. 

3.

Morn is killed in an ion storm and Sisko informs Quark that Morn left his entire estate to him. But Quark has a little competition.

That extends to this and one of the next two, as well. I just enjoy the Ferengi episodes more than the others, I guess. This one, digging into the mystery of Morn a bit, has that sort of "Captain's Holiday" chase-fun/treasure-hunt quality to it, as well. And President Logan to boot.

I often cite Cheers parallels with Berman-era Trek. Morn is obviously a reference at least in nomenclature to "Norm," but this episode hints at a more Al-Rosen-type presence on the show. I wish there was a subtitle of him saying "SINATRA!" in some episode. Or a Cheers episode where Al vomits up some latinum to pay his bar tab. 

2.

Molly O'Brien disappears in a vortex and reappears as an 18-year-old woman, but she is now feral, bringing great difficulty for her parents.

Yaay, it's the O'Briens... Even the writers must've felt this way, really. Consider the mutations of family dynamic of the typical O'Briens episode: possession, brainwashing, disappearing into a prison fantasy for years and PTSD in close quarters, etc. And yet, is this their finest hour? I think so. The whole thing was unexpectedly moving and tragic. One of the emotionally-truer meta-statements on parenthood Trek has pulled off, I think. The ending - like the ending to "Children of Time" - has a lot of stuff to unpack, not all of it pleasant. Rosalind Chao gives a good performance, as does Hana Hatae, hell even the Chief breaks out of his usual comfort zone here. Great marks all around. 

The Worf/Jedzia/Yoshi stuff was nice, as well. 

1.

Quark helps out when Zek's status as the Ferengi Grand Nagus is put in jeopardy by proposing equal rights for Ferengi females.

"This is not a female!"

"Close enough for me."

Hey-oh! Anything I can possibly say about this Dr.-Bashir-directed episode seems redundant. Or something. Wow! To think this Ferengi journey began with "The Last Outcast." The metaphor gets away from them a little bit. But who cares.

All the Nog stuff is great. Mrs. Quarkfire is more hit or miss but Nilva (Henry Gibson) and Slug-o-cola (the slimiest cola in the galaxy) are great. And great stuff as always from the Nagus bodyguard guys. Well, "guys."

At one point I thought of how much talent and weirdness was on the screen before me. Quite an impressive achievement this episode. I'm not one to congratulate a show for the optics of such things, but I do praise audacity when judiciously applied, and having a main character undergo surgery to bribe a visiting captain of Ferengi industry with sex is a hell of a thing to pull off properly. And they did here. Kudos. I imagine that's whence the conspicuous-hook-up babe at beginning and end, to placate anyone uncomfortable with such implications. 

The score during this whole scene from commercial break to the bitter end is really something. It's like a little movie, or scene from an opera. 

"You may be a lousy son, but you make a wonderful daughter."

And now...

LEFTOVER
SCREENCAPS.

Bye Jadzia. (Or, as the girl who got me into DS9 once put it, "Have fun on Becker, you traitorous hussy.")

Gregory Itzin.

Hana Hatae.

The single most disturbing visual in the Trek universe. 

"It's called 'teamwork.'"

"It's called 'mweamwowk."

...

...

"Hate us because we're beautiful well we don't like you either we're cheerleaders! cheerleaders! ROLL CALL!"
Okay, okay, wrong team I know. 

~

Until next time