What I've Read So Far in 2021

Since I began the month with a What Movies I’ve Seen This Year post, let's end it in similar fashion, only this time for books. Most of these I read without an eye to blogging about them, alas, so not a lot of quotations. 

Excepting some titles that I’ll discuss under separate cover, here’s a chronological account of books read or abandoned thus far in 2021.

(1958)

An account of Thor “Kon Tiki” Heyerdahl’s expedition to Rapa Nui.

I didn’t finish this one. I was led to it from an issue of (I think?) The Jack Kirby Collector, which did a spread on possible book covers that Jack appropriated for comics covers. I liked the look of it and have always found the giant statues of Rapa Nui née Easter Island to be mysterious and intriguing. But I found the narrator kind of hard to take, truth be told. I agree with Paul Bahn that "he relied on the selective use of evidence, which resulted in a misleading conclusion". Much of his evidence has now been refuted by archeologists - Rapa Nui represents the furthest point of Polynesian colonization east-to-west, not a colonization from west to east from South America - and his methods have been criticized. (The first thing he records upon arriving at the island is his suspicion that the island's governor is someone who must be manipulated and tricked, and he congratulates himself on so immediately grasping how to deal with this native.)

There's a great (if all too brief) account in Captain Cook's second voyage of discovery of landing at Rapa Nui. These days of course there's no shortage of material (or pictures) to look at on it. Apparently the island's popularity as a tourist destination is now causing all sorts of problems. The history of the island is fascinating - and like anywhere in the world, punctuated with massacre and tragedy. Unlike just anywhere in the world, though, there's these:

Anyway, skip Aku Aku and just google it, I say.

 

(1998)

A spellbinding chronicle of one of the most unusual communities in the world, these are the stories of the Hamptons' mansions and millionaires. Both a contemporary portrait of the Hamptons and a historical narrative and filled with tales of pirate treasure, a witch-hunt, and the many beguiling eccentricities of the Hamptons today.

I was led to this one from reading Gaines’s book on the Beach Boys. Start to finish great. I had no real interest in the Hamptons prior to reading it, but this book held my interest and consumed my imagination as much as the land-fever seems to grab the rich both new and old once they sail within sight of Montauk Harbor.

Too many great anecdotes and personalities to mention. If you ever wondered why people go so crazy about the Hamptons you might not learn the answer here - there's a FOMO that only makes sense at a certain level of income, I think, beyond just the desire of anyone for a safe harbor/ nice view - but it sure is fascinating to read it all unfold. 

(1997)

The difference between what this book purports to be ("a meticulously researched, comprehensive study of the cover-up by a former Air Force investigator") and what it actually is (a poorly written and badly organized collection of random anecdotes from UFO lore) is akin to the distance between non-alcoholic beer and the real thing. Except alcoholics sometimes drink NA beer and enjoy it, and I can't imagine anyone enjoying this. 

Turns out the book I was wanting to read was this one. I’m not saying squat about straw regarding which ones are closer to the truth, here, or whether such truths are even knowable. Greenewald was one of the guys on a recent Megyn Kelly podcast, and I liked what he had to say re: the knowns and unknowns of the situation. I'm not ready to insert the Aliens-guy-meme yet, myself, but it’s fascinating stuff, right? I mean, it's recorded stuff, it ain't weather balloons, it ain't some weather phenomenon, and it ain't the Chinese or the Russians, so what are we looking at here? 

Is there a Reed Richards out there, or what? Maybe Victor Von Doom. I’m pretty sure it ain’t Elon Musk, or Donald Trump for that matter, but you’d never know it from what people post to Facebook.

(1975)

A recent college grad sets out in search of Eden with his VW bug, his girlfriend, his dog, and his ideals, and instead discovers a genetic disposition to schizophrenia. How do you cope with genuine mental illness in a commune culture that believes mental illness isn't real and schizophrenia just a rational response to an irrational society?

Here's one I never expected to circle back to - I've had it on the shelf for years and years. This year I finally read the whole thing. And it’s great! Much broader and better than I was led to believe – a really wonderful and vulnerable book covering a lot more than the summary above. It’s more about recovery and engagement with belief systems, albeit with some trimmings unique to the author’s experience.

Well worth your time.

“Knowing that you’re crazy doesn’t make the crazy things stop happening.”

 

(2007)

Also well worth your time: this collection of essays from the New Criterion music critic (and more) Jay Nordlinger. I'm a big fan of his monthly podcast Music For Awhile and have sporadically read his "Impromptus" column over the years, but this was my first book-length dive into his mind and opinions. 

I enjoyed it. The essays from the early years of the twenty-first century and on the campaign trail with George W. Bush are especially fascinating to me as I started those years as a radical liberal, gradually softening or hardening (however you look at it) into a constitutional libertarian. It took the subsequent administrations (and narrativemongering around them) to turn me into the lovable RWNJ I am today. Reading these late 90s and early 00s essays now, when my POV has more or less aligned with Mr. Nordlinger’s on a variety of points, and contrasting in my head to how they’d have been received by contemporaneous-me, was enlightening.

There’s more than politics here. The sections on the Salzburg Music Festival are great - all the music stuff is great. As are other reminders of early aughts culture and personalities you might’ve forgot. I like collecting these volumes of opinion across the decades for precisely that reason: the ideographic timeline.

(2010)

Saw this in one of my neighborhood's little free libraries and took it home. Man, if you'd told me anytime 2000-2008 this would have happened, I'd have called you a liar.

A great read that was a little humbling. Even on areas where I still disagree, I could respect his viewpoint and how he got there - not only that but that he had a viewpoint. I spent virtually all of the years of the GWB Presidency convinced he was a fascist, moron, Cheney-puppet, Rove-bot, etc. In other words I was a member of that performative in-group signal academy of Daily Show/ Colbert Report addicts. Like I say this is not to say I instantly agree with every decision of his Presidency, now; this was me engaging with the man beyond politics pretty much for the first time. 

Embarrassing to think of now, but, like Bush W. says of his own misbegotten (though considerably more gilded) youth:

"Without the experience of my first forty years, quitting drinking would not have been possible either. So much of my character, so many of my convictions, took shape during those first four decades. My journey included challenges, struggles, and failures. It is testimony to the strength of love, the power of faith, and the truth that people can change. On top of that, it was one interesting ride." 

Interesting to contrast as a memoir to King's On Writing or hell, Ace Frehley's No Regrets - three baby boomer alcoholics whose circumstances and talents generated vastly different opportunities but no shortage of rope to hang themselves with, and who each found a humble sobriety through the storm.

(2010)

Edited by Chuck Wechsler and Bob Kuhn, this is a collection of writings to appear in Sporting Life over the twentieth century. If you've ever heard any story about safaris or man-eating lions, whether they include Teddy Roosevelt or Michael Douglas or Ernest Hemingway or Meryl Streep, the original accounts are here. There isn't a skippable piece in this book. It's forty-one pieces of wow-that-was-great African adventure. 

"There is a legend that elephant dispose of their dead in secret burial grounds and that none of these has ever been discovered. In support of this, there is only the fact that the body of an elephant, unless he had been trapped or shot in his tracks, has rarely been found. What happens to the old and diseased?

Not only natives but many settlers have supported for years the legend, if it is legend, that elephants will carry their wounded and sick hundreds of miles, if necessary, to keep them out of the hands of their enemies. And it is said that elephant never forget.

These are perhaps just stories born of imagination. Ivory was once almost as precious as gold, and wherever there is treasure, men mix it with mystery. But there is mystery even about the things you see for yourself."

- Beryl Markham, West with the Night

It's weird, I have no real interest in hunting or even with safari. I appreciate that these things exist, but my armchair reading of the subject(s) is curious to me. I don't know why I find it all so fascinating. Like sailing - another topic I read a lot about - it's not really an interest or hobby or anything I'd do first, second, or third had I the means to do so. And yet I frequently find myself spellbound by accounts of safari or sail - go figure. 

I wish I had the exact quote, but the book's in the basement, alas. It's from the excerpt from one of Peter Hathaway Capstick's (Death in the Long Grass) books. It ends with some kind of animal charge,  and the author's companion - in the middle of speaking to Capstick and nonchalantly spinning the chamber of his pistol saying (paraphrased) "Africa's great," he raised the pistol, "just don't make any mistakes."

 

(1971)

A collection of short stories from the author of Bridge Over the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes. I've been a fan of Boulle's since high school when we had to read The Face of a Hero for English class. Lately I've been collecting his books - like Larry McMurtry, just one here or there, with the intention of going through them all one day in the future.

This one was... well, it was okay. It went over my head, I guess. I enjoyed the short reverie on the misery and nonetheless-nostalgia for duck hunting with the author's father ("The Duck Blind"), but some of the others perplexed me. Was something lost in translation?

Two examples: the first story ("His Last Battle") details the visit of Martin Bohrman to Adolf Hitler in South American exile. The names are teased out if more or less immediately obvious. It's a long set-up for the last line, which is Hitler reminiscing on the Jews. ("I have finally forgiven them."  It seems overwrought. Was the point just Hitler's intransigence? Why write a story about that? I wonder if there was some immediate cultural reference or political parallel for which I lack context. 

The second examples concern the last three stories, which flirt tantalizingly with their own cosmology of a "Holy Omega Computer," i.e. the holy ghost is actually some kind of celestial super-computer. It's interesting (one of the stories involves Allah, Jesus, and others dismantling every object of holy significance in Jerusalem based on new computations from the holy supercomputer, for example; another with a myriad of universes where Eve refuses to sin and instead kills the serpent) but I was left wondering if I was missing something.

He's obviously interested in layers and layers of irony. Another story ("The Plumber") amused me - the electroshock/ waterboarding interrogation of a political prisoner must wait out the fumbling old-school plumber who can only work when the light is good enough for his eyes and must deal with the ancient wiring and pipes of an old chateau the secret police are using. After he finally fixes it the prisoner is tortured and he goes home happy, where we see him eating dinner with his wife, unaware still of what his repair work allowed to happen, but bemused and exasperated at the bumbling fools who know nothing of real things like pipes and wiring but pretend at running the world. 

(1965)

A man answers a knock inside his closet and is tossed a horn. When he blows it, he enters a fantastic magical world and slowly begins to remember that he was once (see title).

I read this as part of a World of Tiers hardcover I have, which collects the first couple of books in the series. I'll read the others at some point. I enjoyed this one, but it may exhaust some readers's patience. It seems made up on the go, for one, which gives it an agreeable momentum, but also lends a sort of  D&D hack-and-slash quality to things it is. Every chapter is roll for initiative, roll for damage. So much slaughter - you can see why Gary Gygax listed it as one of his original inspirations for Dungeons and Dragons. 

There's a quality to that, it's like improv jazz or what, or improv prog rock, I guess, given the subject matter, but with the same pitfalls. And being a solo act, instead of a group improvisation gives it a different quality as well. 

It's certainly very picturesque and interesting. Isn't it all a bit like the Chronicles of Amber though? Magical nobles remembering who they are and that they all want to kill one another? Lots of similarities, even with the writing (i.e. both Zelazny and Farmer employ that somewhat curt "Several months passed." "He raised his arm, and fifteen of the enemy died" "Thousands of theirs ranks collapsed" kind of momentum) I looked it up and see Zelazny credits Farmer for the inspiration. Interesting. I'm going to be reading (and re-reading in some cases) those Amber books again sometime, so I'll keep you posted.

And finally:

(1998)

Another pick-up from the little free library - nice score! This one can be pricey used.

This is, as you can probably tell, the revised edition to a book I fondly remember from my old buddy Klum's. I'd always flip through it whenever I'd visit in the early days of our friendship, and when we ended up living together in Dayton, OH a few years after that it was one of two coffee table books we had:

We didn't have a coffee table, exactly, but they were on the carpet near the futon. Also some massive film reference guide hardcover that was indispensable (and settled many bets - most of which Klum won, he had a steel trap for who starred in what movie) in the days before imdb. 

And just as IMDB may have made that book obsolete, the internet itself lessened the essential-ness (arguably) of either of the books above. The Dickinson astronomy book was a bit dated (my version was from 1992, so lots happened after that) but the Macauley one is pretty timeless. A beautifully designed book, even if I'm not enough of a visual learner, really, to grasp the mechanical fundamentals and machine wonders illustrated and diagrammed within. 

Still! A book suitable for any home. 

Speaking of Klum  - I picked this one up as well:

(1999)

I say "speaking of Klum" because for the entire time I knew him he had this massive hardcover lying around. 

It's not very visible here, but there it is.
Pay no attention to the neohippy in the papa-san.

In the years since his death I wondered who ended up with a lot of Klum's books. I think they were donated. I ended up with most of his clothes and his DVDs and blu-rays and assorted odds and ends, but every now and again I'll remember some book I used to look at down at his place. Canaris was one of those. I intend to read it, but the damn thing is a thousand pages long. That kind of thing takes a specific occasion in my life these days - a few plane rides or a week's worth of train commutes. 

I'm happy to have it, though, and am looking forward to what I'm sure will be fascinating if intense reading. 

~

If all goes well I'll be back on NYE to let you know about the next six months of books. Until then, keep your bookmarks... dry, I guess. Excelsior. 

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season Seven

In the time since finishing DS9 and taking the notes below, I watched four seasons of Enterprise and a whole bunch of other stuff. Should've struck while the iron was a little hotter - my memory was unable to fill in some of the gaps. I probably should've just watched the whole season again but who has that kind of time? My apologies if your favorite episode gets the short shrift below; all of this is to say, I did my usual half-ass job.

The seventh season was the first one I ever saw. I was dating a girl who loved it (and TNG) but I only had eyes for TOS. This was in Dayton, OH, and those days a re-run of DS9 aired from ten to eleven on some station and a rerun of TNG on another from eleven to midnight. This was our routine while we were dating, and then the new episode of DS9 that Sunday. The new season during this stretch was (you guessed it) the last one. So I saw the whole ending story arc of DS9 before I saw anything other than the pilot (which I watched the night it aired.) 

Did you get all that? The above is part of the Trek-adjacent info in my head that seems to come burbling out of my blog-hole as activated by certain Trekwords. 

26.

Quark and Rom cross into the alternate universe to rescue Grand Nagus Zek. 

Mirror episode. See last time. I could praise or pick at any number of aspects, but let’s move it along.

25.

Changelings. 

“One of the hundred.” Between him and Odo, that's ninety-eight spinoff chances too many.

Laas turns to fog. What? Can changelings to ice and gas? Did we know this? I guess it makes no more or less sense as anything else about these guys.

This Klingon death howl is pretty weak. I bet there's a hierarchy of death howls. When killed by wankers, the Klingons probably hold it back some. A full-on Klingon/ Changeling war would be a chorus of mumbles every time a Bird of Prey was destroyed. The ironic part of this whole show was we're supposed to meditate on the consequences of bigotry re: solids distrust and "persecution" of liquids. Notwithstanding the absurdity of the idea (how the f**k would solids mass-persecute liquids-from-outer-space FFS when they can just change into gas or make swords out of their arms among a million other things?) I am definitely leaving this show with the idea that the Changelings should be nuked from existence and destroyed wherever you find them. Simply for their sustained offensive against verisimilitude. 

24.

Ezri summons Joran, a homicidal Dax incarnation from her past, for help in understanding the mind of a serial killer loose on the station. 

Sheesh. I know I had notes for this, too. What happened? I have the score sheet, though, and here is where it lands.

I don't know if there needs to be so many "understand the mind of a serial killer" stories. It's a one-note genre. But so are zombies, I guess, and try to get them to stop making zombie stories.

23.

Sisko and crew relieve Starfleet troops under siege by Jem'Hadar at a key communications outpost, AR-558, the largest Dominion communications array in the sector. 

I like what they were trying to do here, but it didn’t really land with me. Apparently Ira yelled out something about killing Wil Robinson on set when Bill Mumy's character died. When I heard that I had a flash: I bet Ira likes Lost in Space more than Star Trek. That explains a hell of a lot. 

Poor Nog. The sound he makes when he's wounded is something. Otherworldy. Kudos to Aron Eisenberg for conveying some of the alien trauma of it all: the Starfleet façade falls away and he makes a sound purely from that alien part of himself. I suppose it's possible someone overdubbed it, in which case kudos to the sound design people. 

But - I'll make this one my Judas Goat of the Dominion War/ Starfleet medical technology - the whole thing is quite labored, isn't it? No harm done, but the type of warfare/ medicine they practice here is just silly. The writers are reading twentieth and nineteenth century war books and swapping them into Trek. I will never understand this crap on DS9.

22.

Everyone who knew Jadzia Dax reacts strongly to Ezri Dax's presence, particularly Worf. Meanwhile Garak suffers from bad attacks of claustrophobia.

I don't know why I ranked this one so low. I have no memory of it whatsoever. 

21. 

The crew attempt to help Vic Fontaine when Vic's hotel is bought by mobsters.

This one is like the Bond holosuite episode but without the malfunction subplot. 

Frankie Eyes’ bodyguard-goon has been around a lot. Oh that’s Michael Scott’s fake-mob guy. Grotti.

Stretches the concept a bit too thin, but that's no big thing. Worse is that there’s nothing of real consequence here. Couldn’t Odo have shapeshifted the resolution to this in like four seconds? It seems like they take a real world solution (sort of) to Vic's (imaginary but real) problem rather than just fix it because, you know, Vic's world is programmed. They pay lip service to why they "can't" but it never really makes sense. 

I know, I know, who cares.

Oh look! Blogger decided to make the above pictures impossible to put side by side! A treat for y'all in the last DS9 post. Hope it happens several more times below.

20. 

Bashir falls for a genetically enhanced patient, Sarina Douglas, that he brought out of a catatonic state using an experimental medical procedure. 

Oh great, a sequel to ‘Statistical Probabilities.’ (And the pictures are side by side again.) 

I like this one a little more than "Statistical Probabilities", mainly for the nice part in the middle with the singing, but that's not saying much. 

That one "That is a stew-pid question" guy is unfortunately costumed.

19. 

A new Dax appears on the scene. Sisko's quest leads him to the truth about his existence. The discovery that the Romulan hospital is heavily armed leads Colonel Kira to set up a blockade of Derna. Bashir, O'Brien, and, surprisingly, Quark join Worf and Martok on a dangerous mission to destroy the Dominion shipyard. 

Meh. Worf and Martok are usually always fun. This one kind of bounced off me.

18. 

Ezri searches for a missing Worf. Sisko makes plans to marry Kasidy Yates.

Usually I rank two-parters as one episode. Here’s a rare example where I split them as boldly as Kirk splits his infinitives and rate them separately.

The Ezri/Worf stuff isn’t so interesting to me, but it’s a nice enough arc for Worf, all told. But this chemistry isn’t quite there. Of all the TNG characters, Dorn gets the best arc; one wishes it had continued in some kind of Star Trek Worf show. But hey, it's awesome to see Picard "correcting" our perceptions of the TNG-verse. Maybe he'll show up on that and apologize for something.

Some cool space stuff. The gross-Founder stuff is just gross.  

17. 

An alliance is born between the Dominion and the Breen which will prove devastating for the Federation. Ezri and Worf are sentenced to death on Cardassia. 

When Kira says she doesn’t believe in the Prophets, what is it exactly that she doesn’t believe in? What does she think Sisko et al. see and experiences? Hallucinations? This touches the religion/ science problem of the show. Bajor is not some ungrounded theocracy; their gods live in the freaking wormhole in the sky and talk to their emissaries, FFS. Kira's attitude is a little like, what, believing electricity is the work of the devil? Despite living in a world powered by it? I mean the whole idea is that some are cynical about the Prophets, i.e. what good are these things/ how sincere is their love for Bajorans if the Occupation was allowed. Anyone can understand that. But disbelieving, as Kira goes out of her way to say? I mean what does she think is going on?  

Poor Louise Fletcher. (Kai Winn, I mean.) Opposite for Nicole de Boer, here, re: Ezri. It’s part of her character, to distinguish her from Jadzia, but Ezri can’t quite sell the eternal maturity of the Dax symbiote the way Terry Farrell did, so when the script calls for her to, it’s a bit distracting. Had she more time to grow into the role, perhaps, or if we saw her more gradually coming to terms with it, who knows. 

Directed by Odo. I have a note here "Those quotes at the end." But what does it mean? I looked at the transcript; which did I mean? A mystery.

16. 

Sisko orders Kira, Garak and Odo to Cardassia to assist Cardassians in resistance tactics as Damar's rebellion gains ground; meanwhile, Bashir makes a shocking discovery about the disease that is ravaging the Founders. 

I give them a lot of credit for this epic-finish run of episodes. It hadn’t been done in Trek before, and I remember it as an exciting month, watching it all in 1999. 

Bashir/ O’Brien, Sec. 31, Kira et al. advising Cardassian resistance. I think the biggest problem with war in Trek, like I've said a few times here, is how they try to tell WW2 (or even earlier conflict) stories with Trek tech. It doesn't make sense to "parachute" these folks behind enemy lines to help organize resistance cells, etc.  Technically there's nothing inherently unbelievable about it, but something tugs at my sleeve about the concept.

Is there a BSG analog with the Founder disease? I think there is, right, with the Cylons in the later seasons? Not to mention the “dampening weapons” of the Breen are like the Cylons weapon - but that's hardly unique to either series. I haven't watched the last season in awhile; so many of the things explored in Voyager and DS9 received clearer and cooler attention in BSG but BSG would never have been what it was without their proving grounds. 

15. 

Ezri goes to New Sydney to find O'Brien and uncovers some disturbing family secrets. Miles goes in search of the widow of Liam Bilby, Morica Bilby, whom he befriended in an undercover operation. 

This one's got a few things going against it: (1) Oh great, a follow-up to “Honor Among Thieves...” (2) O’Brien’s gone rogue! (3) The "Okay, let's give Ezri Dax her episode" deal. None of these things are awful in and of themselves - or awful to begin with, really; it's just three ideas that fail to excite me. 

I think Ezri does the best she can, but she's up against a tide she can't crest. There's just no way to fit a new person in the cast in season seven of any non-Law and Order/ Doctor Who show. Or Cheers. Okay maybe it can happen, but it didn't happen here.

14. 

Captured by the Breen, Ezri and Worf undergo mental torture.
Sisko agonizes over his broken engagement. 

That summary amuses me. With regard to the former, I love the Weyoun neck snap. A lot of the other stuff is overwrought, though. 

The Breen are lame. They're just a Star Wars action figure. The repeat-the-alien thing (i.e. alien says "krazzzle-mkk-grrn-zzt" and then another character says "Put them in the brig? Why, that's an excellent idea" etc.) they do rather than subtitles is amazingly obtuse, but for some reason it took awhile for that idea to catch on for TV shows. I guess we can't blame DS9 for that, just standards and practices of TV production of the era. Nevertheless I am adding this to the list of avoidably stupid things for which I hold Ira Behr personally accountable.

13. 

Kor, an aging Klingon hero, asks Worf to find him a battle assignment. Martok plans a "cavalry raid" of five birds of prey, hitting several key targets behind enemy lines to throw them off balance. 

Old Man Klingon. See? The old still have some value. No one should boil them down into nutrient-rich jello. At least not as a national policy.

Again with the Klingon song! Excellent. 

Cool to see Kor again even if we've seen this sort of thing in Trek before. Still that's hardly a disqualifier. Part of me is torn on seeing figures from TOS (Sarek, Kor) return only to be used as examples of pitiable deterioration. But it's also part of life, and that's what drama is for, etc. I mentioned in my TNG reviews for the "Unification" episode that I had a friend who couldn't handle that kind of thing and thought it was the new shows humiliating the old, etc. I think that's a silly attitude. But there is something dramatically repetitive about it or perhaps counter-message (i.e. "the old have value! Let's demonstrate that by showing how they are defined by their diminished capacity!") that I can understand. I think anytime you can boil a story down to someone's "handicap" being an attribute you run the risk of someone's eyes rolling, but ultimately who cares.

12. 

With the Bajoran wormhole collapsed, Sisko struggles for a way to contact the Bajoran Prophets. The Romulans receive permission from the Bajorans to open a military hospital on the moon Derna. General Martok offers Worf an opportunity to gain admission to Sto'Vo'Kor for Jadzia. 

There is no frakking reason why the Klingons would spell it Sto'Vo'Kor. There needs to be a penalty for weird punctuation for aliens in Trek or elsewhere. Sometimes this stuff builds up inside of me. Anyway, Kahless Himself would have ripped those stupid apostrophes right out and cast them into the pit of eternal dishonor.

This is the sort of Sisko-emissary episode I've been lukewarm-to-negative on in the past and yet here, it's not so bad. A good season-opener.

11. 

The war reaches a crucial turning point when the Dominion retakes the Chin'Toka system, the only Allied foothold in enemy space. Meanwhile, Winn learns that Dukat plans to release the Pah-Wraiths, and Damar leads a revolt against the Dominion. 

Let's get back to the Breen. Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they do? Why not the Shelliak or some other race? I think we heard about the Breen in TNG, so there’s at least as much precedent, but big deal: we heard about the Xindi in TNG, too. Doesn't just make something awesome, though, because they were mentioned in TNG. I’m just curious why they introduce this generic space-baddie race into the mix at this late hour. Nothing wrong with having a heretofore unknown alien species; it’s a big ol’ galaxy and all that. But where’s the drama? It’s cool when the Romulans join the fight against the Dominion, because there’s history, there; there’s little feeling to the Breen joining or not joining.

Is this the fourth or fifth time San Fran’s been attacked on account of that's where Starfleet Headquarters is? Move that shit to the moon, FFS. 

Louise Fletcher and Mark Alimo don’t have the best chemistry. The character drama is good, though. The Pah Wraiths/ fire caves angle is a good one. (Reminds me a bit, too, again, of BSG!)

The deterioration of the Founder makes no sense. Why would the splotches be on the fake tunic she wears? Just drape a sash over it. Wear a container to keep shape. Do they not have girdles? I hate the goddamn Founders. 

“Attack Pattern Delta!” followed by “Abandon ship!” It's like they read my notes from last time and went back in time to live down to my grumblings. When will they listen?

10. 

A Vorta defector, Weyoun-6, gives Odo valuable information in exchange for asylum. 

Weyoun-7, the next clone in the series, pursues them. Meanwhile Nog engages in 

a series of barters to get a Graviton Stabilizer for Miles. 

This series of barters thing seems like they’ve done it before. I forget for what, though. Or even if it was DS9. Was it the baseball card one? I think it was something else.

Have I mentioned that I like Damar? Hey, then: I like Damar.

“Founder” does a good job with her character and arc, but the emboobened-Odo factor (and then to bring it back even in ENT, although I think this was all intentional re: the Berman Era cosmology of founders seeding the Alpha Quadrant ) never stops being weird. (I wrote these notes independently of one another; I don't keep harping on the same point, I promise.)

9. 

Nog struggles with PTSD from the traumatic battle of AR-558 where he lost his leg. 

He begins living with Vic Fontaine. 

Nog’s rehabilitation in the holosuite is a nice sort of thing, but one wonders if they actually are doing Vic a favor. Too much self-consciousness for a hologram can't be good, right?

Some nice interplay between James Darren and Aron Eisenberg, as actors, as people, and as Trek-people. All three. A good Trek will hit all three dynamics in important scenes.

That's all the notes I took. Too bad - I did like it, though, even if you know where all this stuff is going.

8. and 7. 

Sisko leads the Federation/Klingon/Romulan alliance in the offensive on the Cardassian homeworld. Dukat and Winn journey to the fire caves to release the Pah'Wraiths before a final confrontation with the Emissary. A new chapter dawns.

I fully expected this to be #1 when I sat down. I tell this story a lot so I have no idea if I’m just saying the same crap I always say, but watching this with my then-girlfriend and then leaving Dayton was a big departure for me, and watching this episode (it was the Sunday night replay – look this up to get the time right; could this be right? Could my life in Dayton have ended, with me watching this with her the last night? It’s possible.) It was the end of an era of my life, and turning to look back at all that night in Salamanca, NY remains a holy shit moment of my youth. I projected all of my dumb young self on this montage. Still do, albeit with about twenty years more of non-dumb stuff, now, to even it out some. 

I'll leave that there, just know a whole different review of this finale has nothing to do with Trek and everything to do with me. Tough to separate the two sometimes, but try I shall! All I can say is: the episode stops being about DS9 for me at certain points.

As I might've mentioned previously, the problem with this whole thing / war is it’s just not believable. Captains don’t plot the strategy with Admirals; there’s no “turning flank” in space, etc. (Or even in naval/ space-naval combat; that’s an army thing, isn’t it? Trek does that sometimes, like in STVI where Kirk says “Right full rudder.” Uhh, what? Are we adjusting our course in the water, sir? Did you forget you were in a spaceship?) It’s all fine, it’s just a bit cliched. Martok sounds ridiculous through most of it – less carried away with Klingon bloodlust and more author of Hallmark cards. ("They will songs of this day!" is his contribution to every strategy pow-wow.)

From a Trek sense, what exactly are the Pah-wraiths? Are they like those things from TNG “Power Play”? I don’t mind there being a mix of mystical/ alien with Bajor, but I probably would’ve handled all this differently. It's simply more interesting when you try to come up with some non-mystical explanation for it. It's Trek - there should be. 

The Founder does an awful lot of bitching at Weyoun, but what exactly do the Founders DO? Besides hang around and gross everyone out? For the umpteenth time, the entire hierarchy and raison-d'etre of the Dominion simply makes no sense. 

What They Get Wrong: Well not wrong precisely, but they fail to truly unify either the Bajor or Dominion storyline under a banner that interests me personally. They do a good enough job of tying up loose ends.  As with VOY it feels like what they wanted to do was “Daybreak” (BSG) or “All Good Things” (TNG) but just couldn’t quite corral the elements. I respect the effort(s).

Also, Sisko and Admiral Deputy Dawg are mega-lame in the ashes of Cardassia. Good lord. Sounds like a book report. (Also, where are the Vulcans in all this?)

What They Get Right: Everything else: (1) Odo’s return to the Great Link feels emotionally correct, if intellectually stupid, (2) the Vic Fontaine farewell, (3) “Minsk,” (4) Gul Dukat and Kai Winn and the Pah Wraiths, (5) Sisko’s mysterious journey (I hate when gods/ prophets tell you you’re the chosen one or whatever and then it doesn’t pay off. Ditto for visions in dreams. It pays off here, as it paid off at the end of BSG.) In that sense, I guess I'm wrong above - they do corral successfully certain elements of the bigger storyline. 

6. 

Kira masterminds a plot to steal the Breen energy-dampening weapon and Worf instigates a power shift in the Klingon Empire. 

Lots of war-movie cliches in this Dominion War stuff. That's cool, I guess. Garak/ Kira / Rusot. Damar is awesome. “When men as honorable as Martok and Work knowingly allow corruption at the highest levels, there is no hope for the Empire.” Amen.

This Gowron/ Worf thing is great. “There can be only one answer!” Hats off to Robert O’Reily for Gowron. As I always do, I definitely recommend the audiobook version of any of the Nitpickers stuff for his and Dwight Schultz’s (and in a distant third, Tasha Yar’s) reading of it. Those books are an acquired taste, perhaps, and the DS9 one is probably not very good at all, really, but I can’t think of Gowron or Barclay without thinking of the way they read The Star Trek Quiz or the Nitpickers Guide to whatever-season.

Cardassia/ Klingon Empire: “Change or die.” Arcs! An old enemy redeemed! “Flood all compartments with the gas.” Bad-ass.

Have I mentioned how needlessly gross the changeling disease is? FFS, put a jacket on or something, you're the leader of an Empire. 

5. 

Dukat, now a religious leader of a Bajoran Pah-Wraith cult, holds Kira hostage. Mika, one of Dukat's followers, gives birth to a half-Cardassian child. 

I gave this one a high score! No notes.

You tell me, dear reader: what was it I liked so much about it?

4. 

While attending a diplomatic conference on Romulus, Bashir
becomes an unwilling pawn of Section 31. 

I quite liked this one, even if (tell me if you see a pattern here) I apparently took no notes for it. Adrienne Barbeau joins the ranks of sci-fi hotties (sorry) who have played Romulan senators. 

This idea ("The Federation needs men of conscience; it also needs men like Sloan") is one I've come almost one-eighty one since I originally watched it. Or rather, I can see how people like Sloan are themselves "men of conscience" as well, a view obscured at earlier points on the trail. All of which is to say: it (life, war, conscience) is a hell of a lot closer to complicated than it is to simple, and sometimes Bashir's remarks in these conversations seem a bit simplistic. Shouldn't his genetically enhanced mind engage with some of the complexities? Or perhaps the more complex the mind the less patience one has for what seem like contradictions/ trade-offs to us lesser-brained mortals. 

It's an interesting topic and discussion, I don't mean to suggest it was botched.

3. 

As Odo falls gravely ill to the shape-shifter disease Bashir and O'Brien must get inside the mind of Luther Sloan, who holds Odo's cure. 

That Dollhouse episode where they go into the Attic came to mind a few times watching this. I keep meaning to go back and watch that show. 

I’m not especially enamored with the while Section 31 angle, as I’ve said here and there, but I can see its appeal. Some good stuff from William Sadler here, and a nice coda to the whole concept. Again, this stretch of episodes is quite exciting. The last season of DS9 is like a one of those great, tumultuous years of the X-Men in the 80s. I’ve been using that as my go-to example for everything lately, but it's because, year after year in the 80s, that soap opera was so riveting and intense. A shared experience for a generation of comics readers. To a lesser extent so was the last season of DS9 and I'm happy to have been there.

2. 

Sisko takes command of a new ship; Kira and Garak face a Dominion ambush on Cardassia. Grand Nagus Zek has an announcement to make, as well as the Siskos. 

Hats off to Sisko/ Avery Brooks (director of this episode) and in s7 in general. Even Admiral Deputy Dog is more interesting, somehow. Michael Dorn, on the other hand, lost his acting partner, and seems a bit unmoored in s7. Ezri/ Bashir have a little more chemistry than Ezri/ Worf. 

"The moral argument is dumb." I wrote this but I don’t recall what it refers to. Here's another cryptic note: "Dabo girls just Staying Alive still. Have I mentioned that yet? My brain keeps making the cross-connect. I always picture playing “Staying Alive” in the jukebox at Quark’s anyway so it makes sense."

This undoubtedly refers to both the song "Saturday Night Fever" and the movie Staying Alive, with all those crazy outfits. FWIW I watched this movie a hundred times in 1983-1984. Along with Xanadu. So two weird musicals got in my brain early on along with everything else I blog about.  

Quark ("The Line Must Be Drawn Here!") gets some dynamite stuff in this episode. It's funny - we're meant to see the Ferengi as the ultimate exaggeration of capitalism, but TBH I ended up thinking he/ the Ferengi were right about a lot of things. That Rom becomes Nagus - a kinder, gentler, "more complicated" Nagus - foreshadows doom. But, a fun kind of doom. It definitely was the right note to hit in 1999. 

And finally:

1. 

Sisko must train his staff to play baseball when the Vulcan Captain Solok, an old rival of his, challenges him to a game while his ship is being repaired. 

Rom’s awkwardness is a little overdone, and I’ve some quibbles on how the Vulcans come across. Some broad strokes here and there. That's all I have for cons - what a fun and great episode otherwise.  

Avery Brooks is so much noticeably more alive in this episode than others. The subject matter? Different venue? The Vulcan rivalry? Penny Johnson? 

Bless you, madame. 

I digress. I like that she was some kind of damn freighter captain when the series started. I mean what the hell - sure, okay. But the whole Kassidy and Ben arc works out pretty well. The love of a great woman and all that: all arcs serve the Beam. 

As for Solok, he's apparently had quite the non-canon career.

I feel like I should have more to say, this being my favorite episode of the last season. But there's not much to cover, really. It's fun stuff. Auberjonois gets some of his best moments of the series as the umpire. I wish this side of his character had been as much of a subplot of the show as any of O'Brien's and Bashir's holosuiting. 

~

And that's a wrap! 

I may or may not return with DS9 s1-4, and I may or may not cover the documentary What We Left Behind. I hated it, so I don't want to watch it again, but hate-blogging it might be productive. I think, though, Trekwise, I may just move on to Enteprise for now. 

Let's close this out with a special "The Way You Look"-themed Ending Screencaps. 

Cheers, folks.