Oh season three on... How I love how many Garak episodes there are...

FRUSTRATION! Episode 6 Season 3 there is a Federation Officer playing Dabo! Or maybe this isn't so frustrating... perhaps it just a property of the sedentary space that is Deep Space Nine

Bla bla bla

Two notes from DS9 Season 2 Episode 16 and 17

16: Sisko makes Jake get a job, but clearly money is not involved.

17: I hadn't really noticed it before, but Jadzia Dax does a lot of gambling even though she's federation. The stakes, of course, are latinum, so it does seem a bit counter intuitive. Was there gambling aboard the Enterprise in ten-forward? I don't think so....

DS9 S2 E7

I wonder what sort of book would be written if Jane Austen decided to write something called "Love and Profit"... it probably wouldn't end up to far from this plot.

This episode is chock full of Ferengi, and you guessed it, capitalism. As to what type of capitalism, I'm not sure. I watched the entire episode thinking I would have something more to write on the subject, but have found that nothing really matches my conceptions of anything. It's all about profit, and what else I can't really get.

Pirate Heterotopias

It seems to me that I need to be a bit more organized than throwing up random Star Trek things and thoughts and calling it work.

Today, I will endeavour to be just a little more academic (albeit only a little).

Joe, my dreadlocked hero, has sent me a paper that has beyond helpful entitled Pirate Heterotopias.

Obviously, it focuses on heterotopias in the context of pirates, although it strangely doesn't elucidate heterotopias (which is a term I have yet to find properly explained to me, and I'm always wondering if it is a subversive space, but opinion on that seems to be divided), it does talk of smooth spaces, nomadology, and Temporary Autonomous Zones, which I think will be helpful in analyzing how the Enterprise moves and interacts.

So the author's I will be looking at now are LeFebvre, Soja, Bey, Delauze, Foucault and... I think Bhabha might actually be helpful as well, since he talks of liminal spaces.

I found this Bey quote, and although I need to find it and read it in it's context, it seems somewhat helpful in crafting my thesis:

"…we must realize (make real) the moments and spaces in which freedom is not only

possible but actual. We must know in what ways we are genuinely oppressed, and

also in what ways we are self- repressed or ensnared in a fantasy in which ideas

oppress us"

What ideas in Star Trek TNG, which appears almost as a nomadology, are actually oppressive? Honestly, the more I think about the difference between stationary space and moving space I come to opposite conclusion. Where there is movement, there is a hardening of ideas.

For example, when I read Seven Years in Tibet, his comments when on the move tend to be far more racial and European then they are when he is finally allowed to live in Llhasa. I find the same sort of thing going on in TNG and DS9 which I will elucidate further in the next post.

Random

I do so enjoy it when Star Trek does this. I love when even the writers can't even go on saying "this is a paradise we've created" and have to admit what it is.

And, I've been reading DeLauze and Guattari, and trying to understand nomadology... I think I quite get it yet, but I yet I feel inexplicably moved which is a quite dangerous thing. I love the book, and yet it really confuses me. Tonight, I shall sit down and try to work my way through it lyrical prose and try to discern some sense from it.

Of course, this quote by Delauze is probably the real reason I love it:

Gilles Deleuze talking about his earlier works: "What got me by during that period was conceiving of the history of philosophy as a kind of ass-fuck, or, what amounts to the same thing, an immaculate conception. I imagined myself approaching an author from behind and giving him a child that would indeed be his but would nonetheless be monstrous."

Inconsistencies are driving me mad

Weird.... DS9

One episode, O'brien get food from a Bajoran and doesn't pay for it (episode when Kai Winn first comes). In Season 2, episode 6, Bashir gets food from a Klingon and pays for it with latinum. Bajor isn't yet apart of the Federation, but wants to be, and the Klingons are allied to the Federation but not technically apart of it. Does this account for the discrepancy?

There really are just too many inconsistencies in this show. Why? I suppose it must depend on who is writing the episode, and what things matter to that person...

TNG Episode 13

Only one worthwhile note: Brent Spiner is awesome. Like totally.

Actually, this is not it. In passing, more than anything else, it is noted that there are Federation colonies in this episode (as well as in the episode Justice) so it leads me to wonder for what purpose does the Federation colonize? I know the reasoning for it in the real world, but why does the Federation do it?

(also... is it uninhabited planets only?)