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?)

Star Trek TNG Episode 12 The Big Goodbye

The obligatory Holodeck episode. Yet again, leaves important issues such as the negotiations with the Jaradan almost completely out of the picture. Just what were they trying to negotiate? And why was it so important that the Federation was willing to wait 50 years before it could negotiate with them a second time (the first time being fumbled by an accidental word mispronunciation that offended them). Indeed, the matter was desperate enough that Commander Riker was willing to put their lives at risk just so he could get the Captain back to continue the negotiations.

Why do you tease me so?

TNG always has hints of foreign diplomacy, but it never actually uses these matters as plot points unlike DS9. Could it be because the nature of the space it uses?

TNG Episode 10 and 11

Still waiting on my Lefebvre books...

10 - Hide and Q

So badly written, I don't even want to talk about it. Useless for the purposes of this paper.

11 - Haven

Interesting questions about Betazoid/Federation relations. A member of the Federation, it strangely does not have an Federation military presence, made clear by the representative's gladness that the Enterprise just happened to be there when their borders had been 'hostilely' crossed. There membership seems to lie solely in that of a defense treaty. If that is so, what does the Federation gain? What profit is there in having Betazed a part of the Federation, if it is only obligated to protect it?

TNG Episode 9 - The Battle

Despite the presence of Ferengi, nothing interesting to report aside from the typically trite lesson at the end "revenge isn't profitable." The Ferengi obviously say this with a different meaning than Picard does, but they at least agree on something.

After further thought, I've decided that revenge likely is not profitable in most cases. If our system is indeed capatilist, and driven by profit as many people suggest, then why do such acts happen at all? Clearly, explaining away centuries of culture and society by an economic system is bad idea.

Also, I'd like to know how how the USS Stargazer, if it was damaged so badly that they had to abandon ship, how is it the not only the life support system, but the engines seem to be working just fine (fine enough to perform the Picard Maneuver which involves warp speed). How I wish I could have been a staff writer this series and point these errors out.

Star Trek TNG Notes

Episode 7 : Lonely Among Us

Picard: But do you understand the basis of all this nonsense between them?

Riker: No, sir. I've never understood that sort of hostility even when I studied Earth history.

Picard: Really? Well, yes, this life forms feel such passionate hatred over matters of custom, god concepts, and even strangely enough, economic systems.

(Picard and Riker, about the Selay and Anticans)

This episode, rather than focus on the more interesting discord between the Selay and the Antican, is focuses on an alien entity that takes over people's bodies in an attempt to get back to the anomaly the Enterprise had accidentally drawn it from. Not much help.

Episode 8 - Justice

Can anyone say Panopticon?

Although this episode seemed to be more focused on Picard's decision of if he will break the Prime Directive in order to protect Crusher, his final choice a despair to most Star Trek fans. Another season with Wesley?! Crap!

In any case, it was somehow hard to see if there was any critique in the episode. After, all the Panopticon of the "god" on the planet creates this lavish paradise of half naked people who like to do it at the drop of a hat, or, as Lt. Yar says, "any hat."

http://www.tvsquad.com/2006/12/05/star-trek-the-next-generation-justice/