this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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Patrick Stewart: 'The studio have always claimed that the ship is the star of the show, especially when they're renegotiating contracts.'
Worf likely has the highest number of episode appearances. Now you’ve got me wondering about literal time on screen of some of these characters. Spock might give him a run for his money if you count all the different actors.
Come to think of it, with the right subtitle files one could probably make some neat infographics about the number of words said per character in each show.
RIP Morne
You can never get a word in edgewise when he's around.
He just won’t shut up
There are sites that catalogue both scripts and transcripts. Should be easier to just download those than try to rip subtitles off of the DVD releases.
Like when he assumed he was Captain.
He was decorated.
Good tea. glances around Nice house.
This scene will be with me when dementia has taken everything else.
I would say no.
I think, to qualify as "The Main Character" one would need fully half the available screen time. Everyone else has the other half to divide among themselves.
I think, to qualify as “The Main Character” one would need fully half the available screen time.
by this logic Sisko isn't the main char for DS9, and he's so main char he might as well be Mary Sue. He's literally space Jesus, but gets like 1 min screentime per ep.
Unless he's nuking planets, then he gets the majority of screentime comitting crimes of war.
Agreed Sisko isn't the main character. He might be the most important, but that's different, and very debatable.
There doesn't always need to be a Main Character. That's what an ensemble cast is.
Erase log message.
I'm so glad I haven't seen that ep, and hope I never do.
I did just see Michelle Yeo as Georgie Papadopoulos DIS 3:2 and yeech. Great actress, awful character for trek.
Loved the idea about "I want to just jump around multiverses" being a nod to everything everywhere all at once though.
Why? It's widely considered the best episode of ds9.
I wrote a long ass post about why I hate a different episode that touches similar themes : https://lemmy.world/post/30261184?scrollToComments=true
Basically, if you're going to be comitting black ops crimes against humanity or breaking treaties with black ops, fuck you, that's not star trek. Doing something so horrible that you have to erase it from history is going to be a no from me for the "optimistic utopian sci fi".
If you're doing crimes against humanity on the reg, you might as well hand Bajor back to the cardassians.
I mean, like what you like. I think you can still have utopian fiction that explores when characters fall short of their utopian ideals, or the boundaries of a utopia, or the shortcomings of a particular form of utopianism. It helps us understand that it's not magic, it doesn't just happen, it's what could be, if real people all worked very hard against the systems and people preventing it.
And I'm not a space lawyer but I think technically Sisko doesn't do any war crimes in that episode, he's just accessory to 2 normie murders.
And I’m not a space lawyer but I think technically Sisko doesn’t do any war crimes in that episode
"In half an hour that entire planet will kill you. I am banking on evacuation procedures being 100% reliable"
And what if something went wrong during the evacuation? How many billions of civillians would have died? He attacked a sentient population with weapons of mass destruction.
Ohhhh, ok, we are talking about entirely different episodes. I thought you were misquoting "Erase that entire personal log" from In The Pale Moonlight. Yeah, the one where he gasses a planet is not the best.
Yeah, and it's my fault. but again, it's Sisko doing "un trek" stuff because of their immoral nature.
spoiler
At the end of his log entry, Sisko wrestles with having condoned forgery, selling prohibited materials, bribery, and murder for the good of the Alpha Quadrant. After thinking about it, Sisko declares that he can live with it, and that—if he had to—he would do it all again. He then deletes the log.
This shit is no good. None of this is "utopian science fiction". They are meant to be better than us in Star Trek, and good is meant to prevail without comprimising its principles when things get difficult. It's not meant to be "yeah, con people into going to war through lies." We are meant to aspire to be like Picard. This kind of stuff is the writers giving up and saying "nah, humanity will never change".
If that's the case, why even bother uniting earth or any other planets? Nothing fucking changes. Might as well just have it be star wars with replicators and teleporters.
It can still be utopian and aspirational without every character being those things. The same way you could have a show where you explore the concept of Justice by having a profoundly unjust main character. Or a show about Sin with a righteous main character. Sometimes you explore a theme by demonstration, sometimes by contrast.
Sure, but Sisko, the Pegasus and section 31 show the corruption of those ideals permeate the entirety of Starfleet and the federation, and it's not "just a few admirals"
Sisko is definitely a darker character, morally dubious. But that’s what I love about him as a captain.
It’s more realistic. More honest. Picard equivocates and bitches and moans and then does it anyway as if that makes it perfectly alright.
Sisko does what he sees needs to be done, and recognizes it wasn’t “good” or maybe even acceptable.
Sisko does what he sees needs to be done, and recognizes it wasn’t “good” or maybe even acceptable.
Yes, because nothing screams "We've evolved beyond petty things" like "the captain is doing things that are unacceptable"
Screentime of all the characters doesn't add up to 100% because there is not always 1 character on the screen.
That's true. I did forget about that.
But still, for anyone to be called a Main Character, they should be part of at least half the screen time.
Okay gramps. Time to go drink your prune juice.
no, lmao, and half his episodes didn't deserve to be episodes. YAWN skipping another Klingon episode....