Post by Harkovast on Dec 22, 2014 21:46:08 GMT
It was never as popular as Next Generation, but certainly not as lame as Voyager or as boring as Enterprise, Deep Space Nine was a sort of middle of the road for the franchise....not its best, but not its worst either.
To be honest, the show had some great moments (and lots of good ideas that it stole from Babylon 5...but I digress.) It made the morality a lot greyer and the showed a start fleet captain sometimes having to do bad things to get the job done.
But there was one aspect of the show, I always hated.
Fucking Bajorans.
I hated these damn bastards.
These guys lived a planet right next to the space station and so all their Bajoran bullshit featured a whole hell of a lot and everytime it did, I varied between offended, bored and disinterested.
Let me list some of the shit these nobbly nosed mother fuckers pulled to piss me off!
1- Looking Stupid
The "alieness" of the Bajorans was that they had nobbly noses, a fairly under whelming star trek make up job but sure, why not?
The problem with these guys was their fashions.
Just look at these wankers-
This chick is a top Bajoran religious leader, who appears to have stuck an empty biscuit tin on her head and glued a set of napkins to the back.
Austrailia called...they want their Opera house back!
Check out that guy in the background. Snarl all you want, buddy, there is no way anyone is going to take you seriously with your ears sticking out of the sides of your hood like that.
Everything about their style and their gear just looks plain cheap and goofy, so visually I am already clued in to not take them seriously.
2- Their Stupid Religion
The Bajorans are a "very spiritual people" as the show often tells us, but what exactly is their religion?
Well they follow the Prophets!
Who are the prophets you ask?
A bunch of timeless aliens that live in a worm hole near Bajor.
Yes, these guys are worshipping something you can actually fly a ship and meet that (while strange and powerful) would be an alien of the week for Kirk or Picard.
Why not worship Q? At least he doesn't give cryptic answers and he seemed way more powerful than these stupid wormhole aliens.
The worst thing is that this wierd devotion to seeming indifferent but suitably advanced aliens was never treated as a bad thing.
The idea that, perhaps, worshipping beings that seems more powerful than you but have a rational scientific explanation is just fucking stupid was never brought up.
Everyone is completely okay with the idea of people worshipping what is basically just a more power race of aliens.
To make matters worse, they end up thinking the Captain of Deep Space 9 is the Emissary of their prophets, basically their space Jesus, because he got to talk to them first.
I mean seriously...how dumb are these fuckers?
3- Their vague Relgion
Now we have established who the prophets are we have to ask "what does following them involve?"
And I can honestly say having watched the entire run of the show...I have no idea.
Sure we see some goofy rituals (many of which are REALLY goofy! These guys have a dumb ritual for everything short of wiping your butt. Most of these only feature in one episode giving the distinct impression the Bajorans just make them up as they go along.) What we never find out is what their actual doctrine is!
I dont care if they get their instructions from worm hole aliens, time travelling monkeys or cyber buddha! What really matters is what the religion teaches.
Do the prophets want them to be generous or careful with money? Fighting for justice or turning the other cheek? Kind to the poor or telling them to get a job?
We NEVER find out!
As the Eslum Sea Worshiping religion in harkovast proves, what you worship is far less important than what you think the object of worship wants.
The Bajorans seem happy to worship aliens that never give any clear instructions that we ever hear.
How can I care about or invest in a religion that goes completely unexplained?
Perhaps it teaches love? Perhaps it teaches intolerance and hate?
Who knows?
This show is too spineless to actually give us a meaningful belief system.
4- Their evil Religion
Bajorans are fanatics to their stupid, vague religion.
And fanaticism is dangerous stuff!
The Bajorans were occupied by the Cardasian Union, who are a militant race of bad asses who look cool and have an interesting culture.
Now right off the bat, while clearly the baddies, the Cardassians are far more likable than the Bojans and their bland stupidity.
Unfortunately the show always wrote the Cardassians as stand ins for the nazis and the bajorans as stand ins for the jews.
We were always meant to feel bad for the bajorans and boo those evil cardassians.
Not every cardassian was evil, but as a race their society was always in the wrong on any issue and the Bajorans were always in the right...
Or so the shows makers wished us to think.
Problem was the show had a very "pre 9/11" mind set.
Okay, I am just going to come out and say it...but...
pre 9/11 americans did not really get terrorism.
You need only watch Rambo 3 or any movie relating to the IRA to see what I am talking about!
This nieve attitude is REALLY on show here.
The Bajorans were freedom fighters, setting off bombs and blowing up cardassians and this was entirely justified and entirely rightious.
Religiously motived fighters trying to drive out a more advanced foriegn power that is after their resources....I swear this show happened before the Iraq war! It really did!
But the thing was, the Bajorans often did bad stuff, but it was treated as good stuff.
One episode had a cardassian who had worked as a servant for a cardassian officer who had been injured by a Bajoran bomb (which also killed the officers family, which presumably meant they blew up his wife and kids.)
He comes back for revenge, killing off member of the bajoran resistance cell that did it.
One of the main characters is a bajoran who it turns out was involved in the bombing and he comes to kill her.
Now obviously hunting down people and assassinating them after the war is evil...but so is setting off bombs that blow up civilians and family members, right?
Well actually the show decides to say that the cardassian here is evil, but the bombing that started it all? Totally justified!
The Bajoran character literally says that every cardassian that was on their planet deserved to die and this is treated as a rightious point of view.
While I am sure a lot of palestinian suicide bombers would agree with this idea, it is not what I expect from characters on star trek!
This could have been played for drama, with the character qustioning herself and the evils she had to do during the war...but no, cardassian war crimes bad, Bajoran war crimes? Heroic.
The Bajorans aren't just evil to other people in the name of their ill defined faith! They treat each other like shit too!
Before the Cardassians invaded they had a caste system where you family name determined what job you were allowed. This was abandoned when the cardassians took over (so the Cardassians really DID improve bajor!)
One day a Bajoran who was lost in time in the worm hole reappears and it is decided that he is the real emissary (later turns out he is not, status quo is god on star trek.) He tells them all to put the caste system back in place....so they do.
Just like that.
These dumb fucks, the mindless sheep that they are all just agree to go back to this backwards, discredited system because some guy shows up that has been held by some suitably advanced aliens , who they declared space jesus and now obey his every command!
A few bajorans give each other nervous looks, but none of them say "wait! This is insane!" or "I'm actually a bajorn atheist and I think this is fucking stupid!"
It is taken so seriously that one priest stabs a man to death because he doesn't leave his job in government despite having a lower caste name!
As much as the Bajorans bitch about Cardassians using them as slave labour...it seems they were happy to force large sections of their own population to serve as an untouchable under class who deserved to die if they stepped out of line!
Worse yet, first chance they got all the Bajorans jumped right back into this crap without hesitation!
Bajorans are boring, stupid and do evil stuff while endlessly being painted as the heroes or the victims.
I hated them then and I still hate them now.
Cardassians should have finished the fuckers off and done the universe (and the show) a favour!
To be honest, the show had some great moments (and lots of good ideas that it stole from Babylon 5...but I digress.) It made the morality a lot greyer and the showed a start fleet captain sometimes having to do bad things to get the job done.
But there was one aspect of the show, I always hated.
Fucking Bajorans.
I hated these damn bastards.
These guys lived a planet right next to the space station and so all their Bajoran bullshit featured a whole hell of a lot and everytime it did, I varied between offended, bored and disinterested.
Let me list some of the shit these nobbly nosed mother fuckers pulled to piss me off!
1- Looking Stupid
The "alieness" of the Bajorans was that they had nobbly noses, a fairly under whelming star trek make up job but sure, why not?
The problem with these guys was their fashions.
Just look at these wankers-
This chick is a top Bajoran religious leader, who appears to have stuck an empty biscuit tin on her head and glued a set of napkins to the back.
Austrailia called...they want their Opera house back!
Check out that guy in the background. Snarl all you want, buddy, there is no way anyone is going to take you seriously with your ears sticking out of the sides of your hood like that.
Everything about their style and their gear just looks plain cheap and goofy, so visually I am already clued in to not take them seriously.
2- Their Stupid Religion
The Bajorans are a "very spiritual people" as the show often tells us, but what exactly is their religion?
Well they follow the Prophets!
Who are the prophets you ask?
A bunch of timeless aliens that live in a worm hole near Bajor.
Yes, these guys are worshipping something you can actually fly a ship and meet that (while strange and powerful) would be an alien of the week for Kirk or Picard.
Why not worship Q? At least he doesn't give cryptic answers and he seemed way more powerful than these stupid wormhole aliens.
The worst thing is that this wierd devotion to seeming indifferent but suitably advanced aliens was never treated as a bad thing.
The idea that, perhaps, worshipping beings that seems more powerful than you but have a rational scientific explanation is just fucking stupid was never brought up.
Everyone is completely okay with the idea of people worshipping what is basically just a more power race of aliens.
To make matters worse, they end up thinking the Captain of Deep Space 9 is the Emissary of their prophets, basically their space Jesus, because he got to talk to them first.
I mean seriously...how dumb are these fuckers?
3- Their vague Relgion
Now we have established who the prophets are we have to ask "what does following them involve?"
And I can honestly say having watched the entire run of the show...I have no idea.
Sure we see some goofy rituals (many of which are REALLY goofy! These guys have a dumb ritual for everything short of wiping your butt. Most of these only feature in one episode giving the distinct impression the Bajorans just make them up as they go along.) What we never find out is what their actual doctrine is!
I dont care if they get their instructions from worm hole aliens, time travelling monkeys or cyber buddha! What really matters is what the religion teaches.
Do the prophets want them to be generous or careful with money? Fighting for justice or turning the other cheek? Kind to the poor or telling them to get a job?
We NEVER find out!
As the Eslum Sea Worshiping religion in harkovast proves, what you worship is far less important than what you think the object of worship wants.
The Bajorans seem happy to worship aliens that never give any clear instructions that we ever hear.
How can I care about or invest in a religion that goes completely unexplained?
Perhaps it teaches love? Perhaps it teaches intolerance and hate?
Who knows?
This show is too spineless to actually give us a meaningful belief system.
4- Their evil Religion
Bajorans are fanatics to their stupid, vague religion.
And fanaticism is dangerous stuff!
The Bajorans were occupied by the Cardasian Union, who are a militant race of bad asses who look cool and have an interesting culture.
Now right off the bat, while clearly the baddies, the Cardassians are far more likable than the Bojans and their bland stupidity.
Unfortunately the show always wrote the Cardassians as stand ins for the nazis and the bajorans as stand ins for the jews.
We were always meant to feel bad for the bajorans and boo those evil cardassians.
Not every cardassian was evil, but as a race their society was always in the wrong on any issue and the Bajorans were always in the right...
Or so the shows makers wished us to think.
Problem was the show had a very "pre 9/11" mind set.
Okay, I am just going to come out and say it...but...
pre 9/11 americans did not really get terrorism.
You need only watch Rambo 3 or any movie relating to the IRA to see what I am talking about!
This nieve attitude is REALLY on show here.
The Bajorans were freedom fighters, setting off bombs and blowing up cardassians and this was entirely justified and entirely rightious.
Religiously motived fighters trying to drive out a more advanced foriegn power that is after their resources....I swear this show happened before the Iraq war! It really did!
But the thing was, the Bajorans often did bad stuff, but it was treated as good stuff.
One episode had a cardassian who had worked as a servant for a cardassian officer who had been injured by a Bajoran bomb (which also killed the officers family, which presumably meant they blew up his wife and kids.)
He comes back for revenge, killing off member of the bajoran resistance cell that did it.
One of the main characters is a bajoran who it turns out was involved in the bombing and he comes to kill her.
Now obviously hunting down people and assassinating them after the war is evil...but so is setting off bombs that blow up civilians and family members, right?
Well actually the show decides to say that the cardassian here is evil, but the bombing that started it all? Totally justified!
The Bajoran character literally says that every cardassian that was on their planet deserved to die and this is treated as a rightious point of view.
While I am sure a lot of palestinian suicide bombers would agree with this idea, it is not what I expect from characters on star trek!
This could have been played for drama, with the character qustioning herself and the evils she had to do during the war...but no, cardassian war crimes bad, Bajoran war crimes? Heroic.
The Bajorans aren't just evil to other people in the name of their ill defined faith! They treat each other like shit too!
Before the Cardassians invaded they had a caste system where you family name determined what job you were allowed. This was abandoned when the cardassians took over (so the Cardassians really DID improve bajor!)
One day a Bajoran who was lost in time in the worm hole reappears and it is decided that he is the real emissary (later turns out he is not, status quo is god on star trek.) He tells them all to put the caste system back in place....so they do.
Just like that.
These dumb fucks, the mindless sheep that they are all just agree to go back to this backwards, discredited system because some guy shows up that has been held by some suitably advanced aliens , who they declared space jesus and now obey his every command!
A few bajorans give each other nervous looks, but none of them say "wait! This is insane!" or "I'm actually a bajorn atheist and I think this is fucking stupid!"
It is taken so seriously that one priest stabs a man to death because he doesn't leave his job in government despite having a lower caste name!
As much as the Bajorans bitch about Cardassians using them as slave labour...it seems they were happy to force large sections of their own population to serve as an untouchable under class who deserved to die if they stepped out of line!
Worse yet, first chance they got all the Bajorans jumped right back into this crap without hesitation!
Bajorans are boring, stupid and do evil stuff while endlessly being painted as the heroes or the victims.
I hated them then and I still hate them now.
Cardassians should have finished the fuckers off and done the universe (and the show) a favour!