Sobbing over Dax and Sisko. Dax has lived 8 lives, and Benjamin was there for the last three of them in a row. Every time they became best friends. As soon as Ezri gets the symbiote she feels the need to find Benjamin and immediately flies to earth to find him, despite her spacesickness. Ben takes her in immediately and brings her on his road trip because he can. Ben calls her old man like shes still Kurzon. When Jadzia falls in love with her (sorta) ex wife, the only person she can tell is Ben. Ben is the only person who knows her well enough to tell her shes wrong for her. She doesn’t listen to him. And she gets her heart broken. They gossip like schoolgirls about geopolitics. They are the definition of platonic soulmates. I cannot do this.
I listen to a lot of podcasts in which the speakers examine works of film, literature, video games, television, etc. and the opening question is always “what’s your history with this particular work?” And let me tell you, listening to someone dive back into their own history in relation to the subject is a real joy. It’s targeted microbiography, part nostalgia and part background for the discussion ahead.
As I’ve been on an ever-revolving tour of everything Star Trek, I’ve listened to many people explain where they began with this sprawling fifty-plus year series. It’s got me thinking about that as well, and since I love a good catalogue of unnecessary information, I’ve decided to explore that. Now I can check this when I need to remember how many times I’ve watched all this.
The beginning: 2012 DS9 #1, TNG #1, movies #1
So I don’t remember the moment I started watching Star Trek, but I know I started because I was browsing Netflix at the time when they were the streaming platform that had all the TV shows. I knew Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes from their other works (X-Men and Fact or Fiction, respectively) and that they were famous for being on that space show that was on the air when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s. I should’ve started there. But instead I came across the Star Trek show featuring a black captain and a big-eared hypercapitalist, and I thought, sure let’s do it. Then, having completed that, I did go and watch the one with Professor X in the lead role. I remember that one being real rough going in the first seasons and wondered whether it was worth finishing, but this was the essential lesson of all Star Trek: ya gotta stick with it because it gets better.
Having watched both Deep Space Nine (DS9) and The Next Generation (TNG), I thought I owed it to the series to see what the big deal was with Kirk and Spock and all those old-timers. I really only understood The Original Series (TOS) as a punchline in shows like The Simpsons and as the material from which Futurama pulled a lot of stories and themes. But also… I just couldn’t see my way to watching an old show like that in its entirety. And hey when there are a bunch of movies featuring those characters, why not just take the shortcut and watch those instead?
Now we get to how I know that this was all circa 2012. Netflix didn’t have the movies but I was living in gloomy SW Portland near to a honest-to-goodness Blockbuster video store. Since I moved away later that year, I think I got a new Blockbuster card just for that one location and just to rent these specific movies. So the image I can recall as my first Star Trek memory is a dark afternoon, a stack of Star Trek movie DVDs on the coffee table, and feeling stunned when that’s what V’ger turns out to be. I also watched the TNG movies afterward for a full-on weekend marathon. This would’ve been the last thing I did before leaving Portland to return to the bay area.
This time in order: 2014 TNG #2, DS9 #2, VOY #1
So that was a lot of Star Trek, but I can’t says it hit. So circa 2014, now living in a stable place in Oakland, I decided to give it another try. I’d already been doing this with other shows for years, so as long as all the shows were still on Netflix, might as well. I dived back into the show starting with TNG this time, then DS9 again for the full confirmation that this was my favorite of these shows, and moving on to my first time watching Voyager (VOY). While the contrast between TNG and DS9 is there but fuzzy, the contrast from these shows to VOY was huge. I’d watched Battlestar Galactica and Firefly years before and that early 00s CG-heavy style of sci-fi has a distinctive air of trying hard to get away from the kinds of goofy (at the time) practical effects seen in shows like Star Trek. DS9 had some of it, but late VOY really leaned into CG bonanzas.
But still no TOS or The Animated Series (TAS). I just wasn’t ready to take it seriously. Then I got to early 2015 when things were, uh… shaky in my personal life.
Alright, fine: 2015 TOS #1, TAS #1, TNG #3, movies #2
But things settled down when I got to Portland again and was ready for more Trek. While I know I finally devoted some time to getting through TOS and TAS, I mostly recall zipping through them in a semi-distracted state in order to get to the more familiar TNG episodes. TOS is just very much of its time and I couldn’t get past some of the outdated notions and production quality, as forward-looking as the show was for its time.
Something about Sisko: 2016 DS9 #3, VOY #2, ENT #1
Having kicked off a complete rewatch from the start the previous year, I went on to DS9 because of course, and then breezed through VOY with little appreciation for it in order to quickly get to Enterprise (ENT).
ENT was… rough. I had naturally developed the innate instinct to stick with it past the first season, but then I had to extend that to season 2, and season 3, and it wasn’t until season 4 that the show seemed to find a good voice and cadence. Naturally, that’s when they decided to cancel it.
Kelvin calls: 2016-2019 Abrams movies #1
I don’t recall or really care exactly when I watched the Kelvin movies. I’m pretty sure I sort of watched them as they released, and I would have definitely watched the third one in the theater as I was all-in on watching stuff at the theater by this point. So let’s say I’d definitely watched them all by this period.
Strangely, I don’t think I was (re)watching the shows at this time, except for a couple of episodes of Discovery (DSC) that I was jazzed to see on Netflix in the UK during a work trip in 2017. DSC was one of those big gets for CBS’s streaming service so it never released anywhere outside of that in the U.S. But after that, I didn’t bother to watch the rest until a few years later…
2017 to 2019 was strangely bereft of Star Trek, but I came back around in early 2020 as news of Picard (PIC) began to circulate. Since I was signing up to what was then called CBS All-Access to watch that, I decided to go and watch the seasons of DSC that were available then. That was… fine, but it wasn’t quite the same Trek.
So a bunch of us who were watching PIC together hoped that would hit the spot, and while I recall enjoying it, it still wasn’t quite the classic Trek (of the 90s, because what does “classic” even mean for something that’s around for decades?)
And yep, just keeping DS9 on loop by this point. This is when I began to see that there’s something about Garak, someone who I’d really not thought about much in previous watchthroughs. He’s really unlike any other character on this or in any TV show. I glommed onto his attraction to Bashir when before I’d never even glimpsed it. Oh and Nog, gah he’s great too. Rewatch a show enough times and every character starts to really pop.
Later in the year I dragged myself away from another DS9 rewatch in favor of starting over from TOS, which leads us into the current times.
The neverending frontier: 2022 DS9 #7, VOY #3, ENT #2
This year’s DS9 rewatch led me to buy the EU DVD set so I could rip the episodes with all language dubs intact. It was Spanish this time but the disparity between spoken dialogue and subtitles is awful. Subs are best for non-native speakers to get the gist.
I finished the VOY rewatch just a few days ago and this time it really hit, to the point that I’m now listening to podcasts, reading novels, and playing the video games featuring these characters when I’d previously only done that for DS9. It’s still kind of a mess at times but I just appreciate the time with these characters more.
The upcoming ENT rewatch kicks off next month. Will it finally click the way VOY did? And then on to the Kelvin movies again, and DSC and PIC and LD and Prodigy (PRO) and then, then I can finally watch Strange New Worlds (SNW). Please Paramount no new shows until I’m caught up thanks.
When are they going to get to the DS9 factory?: 2023 LD #2, PRO #1, PIC #2, SNW #1, DS9 #8
We did it! I finished a complete rewatch of all of Star Trek that I began in 2021, then hovered on in to Lower Decks again, followed by catch-ups with Prodigy, Picard, and Strange New Worlds. And of course, I could finally get back to just rewatching DS9.
I may squeeze in the new season of Lower Decks that I haven’t watched before the end of the year, but even then it was a solid year of too much Star Trek.
Odo and Quark NEVER looked more married than in this episode!
They’re the total opposites of their DS9’s selves:
Odo is a big submissive to hierarchy twat who doesn’t care about what’s right, almost actual fascist, who let himself getting fucked by bigger fascists cause they have more power than him,
Quark is a revolted, almost up in arms, and progressive as fuck electric battery who can’t stand any kind of injustice, like not letting women be published writers or impeding Black people from writing.
Btw, I suspect these 50’s New York Odo and Quark are an actual gay couple, that no one except their colleagues know, and while Quark wants to yell it on the rooftops, because GAY RIGHTS, Odo refuses at all costs to let the world know. Maybe that’s why he’s so bitter, so submissive and so pessimistic.
While his cute social justice warrior is combative and unyielding. X)
Also that end, wow! Such a meta end!
“What if Benny exists and we are the dream?” says the guy who actually wrote that episode.
While I’m writing things that I’ve been intending to write for a while… one of the things that I think that a lot of people who haven’t been involved in like… banking or corporate shenaniganry miss about why our economy is its current flavor of total fuckery is the concept of “fiduciary duty to shareholders.”
“Why does every corporation pursue endless growth?” Fiduciary duty to shareholders.
“Why do corporations treat workers the way they do?” Fiduciary duty to shareholders.
“Why do corporations make such bass-ackwards decisions about what’s ‘good for’ the company?” Fiduciary duty to shareholders.
The legal purpose of a corporation with shareholders – its only true purpose – is the generation of revenue/returns for shareholders. Period. That’s it. Anything else it does is secondary to that. Sustainability of business, treatment of workers, sustainability and quality of product, those things are functionally and legally second to generating revenue for shareholders. Again, period, end of story. There is no other function of a corporation, and all of its extensive legal privileges exist to allow it to do that.
“But Spider,” you might say, “that sounds like corporations only exist in current business in order to extract as much money and value as possible from the people actually doing the work and transfer it up to the people who aren’t actually doing the work!”
Yes. You are correct. Thank you for coming with me to that realization. You are incredibly smart and also attractive.
You might also say, “but Spider, is this a legal obligation? Could those running a company be held legally responsible for failing their obligations if they prioritize sustainability or quality of product or care of workers above returns for shareholders?”
Yes! They absolutely can! Isn’t that terrifying? Also you look great today, you’re terribly clever for thinking about these things. The board and officers of a corporation can be held legally responsible to varying degrees for failing to maximize shareholder value.
And that, my friends, is why corporations do things that don’t seem to make any fucking sense, and why ‘continuous growth’ is valued above literally anything else: because it fucking has to be.
If you’re thinking that this doesn’t sound like a sustainable economic model, you’re not alone. People who are much smarter than both of us, and probably nearly as attractive, have written a proposal for how to change corporate law in order to create a more sensible and sustainable economy. This is one of several proposals, and while I don’t agree with all of this stuff, I think that reading it will really help people as a springboard to understanding exactly why our economy is as fucked up as it is, and why just saying ‘well then don’t pursue eternal growth’ isn’t going to work – because right now it legally can’t. We’d need to change – and we can change – the laws around corporate governance.
This concept of ‘shareholder primacy’ and the fiduciary duty to shareholders is one I had to learn when I was getting my securities licenses, and every time I see people confusedly asking why corporations try to grow grow grow in a way that only makes sense if you’re a tumor, I sigh and think, ‘yeah, fiduciary duty to shareholders.’
(And this is why Emet and I have refused to seek investors for NK – we might become beholden to make decisions which maximize investor return, and that would get in the way of being able to fully support our people and our values and say the things we started this company to say.)
Anyway, you should read up on these concepts if you’re not familiar. It’s pretty eye-opening.
This is really interesting and important to understand our current economic shortcomings, it is now my excuse for not going out, I have fiduciary duty to the shareholders (I want to sleep in the stuffie pile)
This dawned on me pretty early in life when I worked at a shoe store where we had sales targets that simply required us to sell more in that day/week/month/year than the previous day/week/month/year.
Like… you want revenue growth… year over year… forever? Just constantly selling more than what was previously sold?
Anyway now I always think of Quark emphasizing the importance of short term quarterly gains.
and heres just the lineart because i love nice crisp weighted lines.
rene had such a great way with body language which he leaned on during his performance as odo- i assume because his face was covered by a creepy skin-mask the whole time, limiting his facial expressions. very fun to see how he portrays this really gruff grumpy dude in his posture. he’s always skulking around with his head low and his nose high.
so i’ve finally got a good grasp on how to draw odo with stylistic flair. drawing goo is both meditatively fun and horribly tedious, 7/10.
