Empok Nor is tragic because of O’Brien’s background with Cardassians which is highlighted in the TNG episode “The Wounded”. Miles tells a Cardassian “It’s not you I hate Cardassian. I hate what I became because of you.”
That coin is quite the cosmic coincidence. RIP to Eddington. Ollie’s character development over this character was a journey from hating him to loving him over the course of the show 😂. And Empok Nor was so damn good it was all my friend and I could talk about the next day at school. And it’s perfectly timed for Spooky Season.
Great reaction as always, Ollie! It truly is incredible that you happened to have a loonie on your desk as you began this video! As an American, I must confess that I never knew exactly what Eddington was referring to when he mentioned his lucky loonie. Now that I do, though, I'm going to buy one and keep it in memory of a fantastic character, and as a memento of this reaction - AND because it's just a beautiful coin! Incidentally, Ken Marshall starred in my all-time favorite movie from childhood - Krull. He was much younger and I didn't even realize it was him on DS9 when it first aired! It wasn't until YEARS later on my 1st or 2nd rewatch of DS9 that I realized it was him, and I was like... "THAT'S COLWYN?!? 🤯" 😆 If you've never seen it, I think it would be a fantastic addition to the channel! 😀 As usual, your observations and questions about how what you've just seen may impact future episodes is impressive! And I haven't been this excited for next week's reaction since the last season finale/premiere! Can't wait!! 😁
I used to LOVE Krull as a kid. My brother and I wore out the video tape watching it, lol. When I started watching DS9.. I had no idea it was the same guy. I swear, it wasn't until I started watching Star Trek reactions and someone had mentioned it in some comments that I even realized it! 😂
actually I'm wondering if they ever built a Starfleet brig for DS9 or if they just used Voyager's brig whenever needing to show a jail cell that wasn't on the station - like for the holding cells on the Defiant, for instance
Cal Hudson was Sisko's best friend from his Academy days go back and watch your reaction to "The Maquis" Season 2 Episode 20, you reacted to it on December 13th, 2023
The actor who played Cal Hudson, Bernie Casey took the role because he wanted to work with Avery Brooks, not because he was a Star Trek fan, which he wasn't. Bernie Casey was one of my favorite actors.
You should put that coin on a mount! Empok Nor is probably the first episode where you really see what Garak is capable of. He is incredibly dangerous but under very tight self-control.
Empok Nor is another great episode that demonstrates why the Cardassians are deceptively tough opponents in their use of unconventional tactics to offset their weaknesses. As in *_Soldiers of the Empire_* we see that the Cardassians are very clever, always laying traps, never fighting open battles when they don't have the numbers. People assume the enemy will simply accept a disadvantage and fight the battle the Federation wants to fight: High tech open confrontations. But, we see the Cardassians are great at mitigating technological advantages by taking away the use of transporters and tricorders, and making up for their lack of numbers by setting individual traps to pick Chief's team off one-by-one. It is not unlike how Lisket in the previous episode described fighting the Cardassian fleet in space. Sensor shadows, holograms, false sensor readings always leading to a trap.
Andrew Robinson who played Garak first gained notoriety playing the villain in Dirty Harry in the 70's. So yeah, he good at menacing but can be equally charming. I love how this show fleshes out all the characters. By the end of the series, you know them all intimately. Still my choice for one of the greatest shows ever.
I'm just glad he got a chance to really showcase his acting skills with DS9, as opposed to all the villain and whiney douche bag characters he was usually saddled with playing. Same goes for Avery playing Sisko and Rene with Odo, they all got to flex their acting muscles and ditch their typecast with this series, amazing cast!
At the end, Garak has no heartfeelings towards O'Brien because he respects the decision of resorting to extreme measures if needed. He doesn't take Miles as weak.
The thing that drives me nuts about "Empok Nor," that I just can't get past, is when O'Brien assigns one team to "must have," one team to "could use," and one team to "would be nice." That's not how you assign categories like that! You're sending one of your teams to skip past must-haves and only pick up the would-be-nices? That's insane!
That bugged me as well. You would assign each team to different areas of the station (it's a 1:1 match to DS9 so they already know the layout). Then have each of them search for items based on the three levels of priority.
I think it's because with the time they assumed they had each time can comb through and area and mark their assigned items for transport. Things are much easier when you just have to mark a location and not hand transport.
Frankly I'm also hyped for "In the Cards", which is a great episode too, though some people let the finale and aftermath distract them and make it feel lesser :)
The _Maquis_ are easy to root for, but they were really dumb. There was no timeline in which they win. As Sisko said, all they managed to do was help push Cardassia toward the Dominion. They made enemies with *everyone* and in the end, when the Dominion was steamrolling them no one was willing to help.
@@-M0LEyeah I was about to say you need to know next to nothing because they barely mention them being maquis after the third episode other than seska’s story when it comes up.
@@superhayes256 I would have liked to see a lot more time taken to combine the crews had a bit more story for them But once they integrated they all happily forgot about their cause 😂 I still think VOY is no1
@@-M0LE A defense I've heard is that their cause, liberating people from Cardassian rule, is irrelevant in the Delta Quadrant. I don't think it entirely works though because to some degree, maybe even in the first TNG ep with them, they were also strong about not being Starfleet with many of them either being of species (like Bajorans) who were never in the Federation or Federation citizens with philosophical differences with the Federation's culture. It is a shame Voyager never explored that much.
@@ThomasReeves-s7u we are talking mid 90’s they had so much studio pressure to wrap it up neatly by end of the episode it was a battle to get anything included in an arc fashion I still feel voyager did the closest to what gene envisoned
Emok'Nor and DS9 (Trok'Nor) are indeed sister stations of the Nor class. It wouldn't surprise me if the Cardassians rarely individualize ships and stations Internals all that much. Because of what O'Brien said about both stations being designed similarly
8:51 Cal Hudson was the guy from 2x20 "The Maquis" th-cam.com/video/D6Bd-3c12Nw/w-d-xo.html I don't blame you forgetting him, though. DS9 hardly even feels like the same show now compared to Seasons 1 and 2! 21:11 It is sad that we presumably won't see Eddington again. But he had a good farewell episode. And as things continue to build with the Dominion (and as we've begun to focus a bit more on characters like Rom and Leeta and Martok and Ziyal), it makes sense for the show to close off some of the loose threads from previous seasons.
O'Briens' actor, Colm Meany, has acted in lots of movies. This episode was him showing off his movie star chops. Out of movies he has acted in, I like Con Air, Mystery Alaska, and The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain.
A lot of people would add _Layer Cake_ to that list, with him and Daniel Craig. Personally thought it was just pretty good, but it's always fun seeing him in a big production :) He was also probably a more recognizable name than series lead Anson Mount when _Hell on Wheels_ came out, with Meaney in a featured recurring role. Then 6 years later Mount would go on to become The Captain of a new _Star Trek_ series as Christopher Pike!
I’ve always loved “Empok Nor” and rewatch it around Halloween every year, as it’s quite a dark episode and Garak ends up being a bit of a psycho. Andrew Robinson had quite a reputation for playing bad guy roles before DS9, so had been against being too much of a good guy in the early days of DS9. Thankfully, we get to see just how scary and deadly he can be in this episode. Garak wasn’t infected with the drug in the air, it was the blue stuff he put his hand on. It’s also cool seeing another Nor-Class Cardassian station. I love the simplicity of the behind the scenes people just creating a different station by filming the model leaning at a different angle.😂 Finally, speaking of stations, the Starfleet station that Eddington was on in the previous episode was a reuse of footage from the movie “Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan” (it’s the Regula One station!).
"Our new station model is built with 111 degrees of rotation!" "Why didn't you just turn the old station model sideways?" "...This one is built with 111."
These are both great episodes, but next week's episode, "In The Cards," is one of my all-time favorite episodes of anything. The season finale is also fantastic🎉
I also hate octopus for the exact same reason as you do Ollie: it's so rubbery it makes the texture - in a word - loathsome. And also, octopi reminds me of those face-hugging monsters in the Alien movies.
"The thing about Star Trek is as soon as you see them introduce new characters outside the main cast, you know they're gonna die. Only O'Brien, Nog and Garak are left." Only one of whom is in the main cast :D But yeah redshirting is a serious trope, which can be campy fun sometimes but probably disappointing removal of tension in an episode like this. The budget they run on just doesn't justify paying 4 extra gold shirt crew members to appear throughout the season to set up episodes like this :/
I wish there was a DS9 collectors coin that had the alpha quadrant on one side with the space station and worm hole and alpha quadrant aliens, and the flip side be the gamma quadrant with the dominion and gamma quadrant aliens
These episodes were after I'd give up on watching DS9 regularly and became a "eh, if it happens to be on" viewer. So now I know what happened to Eddington after his surrender to Sisko. Shrug.
If you want to know where the term "loonies" came from - it is that master of Science Fiction (which he later transformed into more social parody ) Robert Anson Heinlein. The earliest settlers of the moon in his novels were disparagingly called "loonies" because why would anyone want to leave Mother Earth for a home in on a rock on the skies? They took back their pride in the designation (much like the Black pride movement of the 60/70's) by calling their currency the Loonie.
That's super cool and I will have to read where that came from but I am pretty sure it is called a Loonie due to the fact that there is a loon on one side of it :)
Killing Garak? You’re joking, good sir. DS9 would definitely never kill any of the main/supporting cast this late to the series. Well - aside from the … mirror episodes, of course - but those are expendables :-p
they did purpose a episode for season 5 that you find out the Ferengi where originally as tall and as strong as klingons and a ferengi scientist found the dormant genes an activated them in his brother
Although always small in their first episode the Ferengi were in, in TNG, they were described as "deceptively strong" and fairly aggressive. They radically rewrote them later, mostly for the good, but I do wish DS9 had given a nod that there still are Ferengi who are basically pirates attacking ships for money as in TNG.
These both fell flat for me… Blaze of Glory seemed perfunctory. I wasn’t surprised for a moment at the twist and I really didn’t like this redemption story for Eddington. And it was such a cliche that one of them would die that Ollie guessed it, Eddington’s own wife didn’t doubt Sisko. Lazy writing and phoned in acting. Ollie felt more emotional then the wife! Empok Nor: not as sure why this didn’t work… maybe it just felt perfunctory too. Not an easy task considering it incorporated Miles, Nog and Garak. But it also included such blatant redshirts they should have just literally put on red shirts.
I agree with you more on Blaze than Empok Nor. With the latter, I think it just comes down to budget and time. You don't have enough of either to really introduce redshirts as much more than obvious redshirts, and the set while spooky in the dark is just not as atmospheric as Alien/s. It's basically a one-off Star Trek episode adaptation of a space horror film, and that's...fine. Actually the fact that it IS a genre shift for the show probably makes one give the premise more scrutiny than it can really stand up to. Still, it's pretty fun and as an engineer I love the "I'm an engineer" line. Garak & O'Brien's exchange in the infirmary is also good. And I just appreciate the style of it even if it's not as convincing as a feature film :)
@@jerodast True, Empok Nor made a valiant effort to not make them glaring redshirts. To work, it really needed to be a two parter. There was a lot crammed into the time allotted.
Across Star Trek, they never really did sell the Maquis. I never bought that any of them were really aggrieved by the Cardassians or that any of them were righteous resistance fighters. They were always just lightweight boring characters. That includes their dumb costumes.
It is surprising that in the future of Trek with such advanced civilizations, so many clothes and so many places were pretty primitive, often at the level of the 19th century.
Probably the reason why Voyager drop the whole Maquis/Federation division story arc in its run. Keep in mind the Voyager episode *Worst Case Scenario* aired after DS9's *Blaze of Glory*
![LAVROV's interview with Tucker CARLSON 😁 [Parody]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mbMemqc-QEk/mqdefault.jpg)
Empok Nor is tragic because of O’Brien’s background with Cardassians which is highlighted in the TNG episode “The Wounded”. Miles tells a Cardassian “It’s not you I hate Cardassian. I hate what I became because of you.”
Garak's fighting stance is called "Awkward Paws". 🐾 😂
That coin is quite the cosmic coincidence. RIP to Eddington. Ollie’s character development over this character was a journey from hating him to loving him over the course of the show 😂. And Empok Nor was so damn good it was all my friend and I could talk about the next day at school. And it’s perfectly timed for Spooky Season.
Coin-cidence
Great reaction as always, Ollie! It truly is incredible that you happened to have a loonie on your desk as you began this video! As an American, I must confess that I never knew exactly what Eddington was referring to when he mentioned his lucky loonie. Now that I do, though, I'm going to buy one and keep it in memory of a fantastic character, and as a memento of this reaction - AND because it's just a beautiful coin! Incidentally, Ken Marshall starred in my all-time favorite movie from childhood - Krull. He was much younger and I didn't even realize it was him on DS9 when it first aired! It wasn't until YEARS later on my 1st or 2nd rewatch of DS9 that I realized it was him, and I was like... "THAT'S COLWYN?!? 🤯" 😆 If you've never seen it, I think it would be a fantastic addition to the channel! 😀
As usual, your observations and questions about how what you've just seen may impact future episodes is impressive! And I haven't been this excited for next week's reaction since the last season finale/premiere! Can't wait!! 😁
We also have a 2 dollar coin, we call them twonies
I used to LOVE Krull as a kid. My brother and I wore out the video tape watching it, lol. When I started watching DS9.. I had no idea it was the same guy. I swear, it wasn't until I started watching Star Trek reactions and someone had mentioned it in some comments that I even realized it! 😂
Also American, but I was something of a coin collector when this aired so I think it was kind of neat to me.
Colm Meaney is a terrific actor and Empok Nor is such a nice showcase of his abilities.
I believe the prison scene with Eddington was the first time DS9 used a Voyager set.
Thanks for pointing that out
actually I'm wondering if they ever built a Starfleet brig for DS9 or if they just used Voyager's brig whenever needing to show a jail cell that wasn't on the station - like for the holding cells on the Defiant, for instance
Cal Hudson was Sisko's best friend from his Academy days go back and watch your reaction to "The Maquis" Season 2 Episode 20, you reacted to it on December 13th, 2023
The actor who played Cal Hudson, Bernie Casey took the role because he wanted to work with Avery Brooks, not because he was a Star Trek fan, which he wasn't. Bernie Casey was one of my favorite actors.
You should put that coin on a mount!
Empok Nor is probably the first episode where you really see what Garak is capable of. He is incredibly dangerous but under very tight self-control.
As far as two episides in a week go, these two are wayyyyy up there!
Empok Nor is another great episode that demonstrates why the Cardassians are deceptively tough opponents in their use of unconventional tactics to offset their weaknesses. As in *_Soldiers of the Empire_* we see that the Cardassians are very clever, always laying traps, never fighting open battles when they don't have the numbers. People assume the enemy will simply accept a disadvantage and fight the battle the Federation wants to fight: High tech open confrontations. But, we see the Cardassians are great at mitigating technological advantages by taking away the use of transporters and tricorders, and making up for their lack of numbers by setting individual traps to pick Chief's team off one-by-one. It is not unlike how Lisket in the previous episode described fighting the Cardassian fleet in space. Sensor shadows, holograms, false sensor readings always leading to a trap.
"They can cloak tracked ships."
They can even track cloaked ships :)
But can they ship tracked cloaks?
They ship cloaks and tracks.
Andrew Robinson who played Garak first gained notoriety playing the villain in Dirty Harry in the 70's. So yeah, he good at menacing but can be equally charming. I love how this show fleshes out all the characters. By the end of the series, you know them all intimately. Still my choice for one of the greatest shows ever.
I'm just glad he got a chance to really showcase his acting skills with DS9, as opposed to all the villain and whiney douche bag characters he was usually saddled with playing. Same goes for Avery playing Sisko and Rene with Odo, they all got to flex their acting muscles and ditch their typecast with this series, amazing cast!
At the end, Garak has no heartfeelings towards O'Brien because he respects the decision of resorting to extreme measures if needed. He doesn't take Miles as weak.
Cardassian spy assassins. You just have to know how to handle them.
Heartfeelings?
The Eddington final standoff is a direct reference to Steve McQueen in “The Sand Pebbles”.
The thing that drives me nuts about "Empok Nor," that I just can't get past, is when O'Brien assigns one team to "must have," one team to "could use," and one team to "would be nice." That's not how you assign categories like that! You're sending one of your teams to skip past must-haves and only pick up the would-be-nices? That's insane!
That bugged me as well. You would assign each team to different areas of the station (it's a 1:1 match to DS9 so they already know the layout). Then have each of them search for items based on the three levels of priority.
I think it's because with the time they assumed they had each time can comb through and area and mark their assigned items for transport. Things are much easier when you just have to mark a location and not hand transport.
So hyped for Call To Arms, not to mention the ridiculously amazing episodes to come over the next 2 seasons.
Frankly I'm also hyped for "In the Cards", which is a great episode too, though some people let the finale and aftermath distract them and make it feel lesser :)
The _Maquis_ are easy to root for, but they were really dumb. There was no timeline in which they win. As Sisko said, all they managed to do was help push Cardassia toward the Dominion. They made enemies with *everyone* and in the end, when the Dominion was steamrolling them no one was willing to help.
Empok Nor is pretty much the perfect Halloween episode. Great timing for this reaction.
Andrew Robbinson played a totally deranged serial killer in Dirty Harry.
He knew what he was doing this episode.
Definitely agree that Eddington would have been a great regular cast member post-defection. Alas.
Remember every detail you learn about the Maquis. When you get to Voyager, you'll be thankful for the background.
And then as much as I’ll defend voyager being it’s my fave trek they didn’t do anything with the maquis
@@-M0LEyeah I was about to say you need to know next to nothing because they barely mention them being maquis after the third episode other than seska’s story when it comes up.
@@superhayes256 I would have liked to see a lot more time taken to combine the crews had a bit more story for them
But once they integrated they all happily forgot about their cause 😂
I still think VOY is no1
@@-M0LE A defense I've heard is that their cause, liberating people from Cardassian rule, is irrelevant in the Delta Quadrant. I don't think it entirely works though because to some degree, maybe even in the first TNG ep with them, they were also strong about not being Starfleet with many of them either being of species (like Bajorans) who were never in the Federation or Federation citizens with philosophical differences with the Federation's culture. It is a shame Voyager never explored that much.
@@ThomasReeves-s7u we are talking mid 90’s they had so much studio pressure to wrap it up neatly by end of the episode it was a battle to get anything included in an arc fashion
I still feel voyager did the closest to what gene envisoned
Emok'Nor and DS9 (Trok'Nor) are indeed sister stations of the Nor class. It wouldn't surprise me if the Cardassians rarely individualize ships and stations Internals all that much. Because of what O'Brien said about both stations being designed similarly
I love how nog acts like Odo when he tells Martik and his soldiers to “alright, time to move along”.
8:51 Cal Hudson was the guy from 2x20 "The Maquis" th-cam.com/video/D6Bd-3c12Nw/w-d-xo.html I don't blame you forgetting him, though. DS9 hardly even feels like the same show now compared to Seasons 1 and 2!
21:11 It is sad that we presumably won't see Eddington again. But he had a good farewell episode. And as things continue to build with the Dominion (and as we've begun to focus a bit more on characters like Rom and Leeta and Martok and Ziyal), it makes sense for the show to close off some of the loose threads from previous seasons.
Miss the light change! Boop! Nice nice nice!
Oh man how could I forget about the light change so quickly! For today's episodes, obviously red for Blaze of Glory, and for Empok Nor...black.
O'Briens' actor, Colm Meany, has acted in lots of movies. This episode was him showing off his movie star chops. Out of movies he has acted in, I like Con Air, Mystery Alaska, and The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain.
A lot of people would add _Layer Cake_ to that list, with him and Daniel Craig. Personally thought it was just pretty good, but it's always fun seeing him in a big production :)
He was also probably a more recognizable name than series lead Anson Mount when _Hell on Wheels_ came out, with Meaney in a featured recurring role. Then 6 years later Mount would go on to become The Captain of a new _Star Trek_ series as Christopher Pike!
Thank you, Oliver! 🖖
I’ve always loved “Empok Nor” and rewatch it around Halloween every year, as it’s quite a dark episode and Garak ends up being a bit of a psycho. Andrew Robinson had quite a reputation for playing bad guy roles before DS9, so had been against being too much of a good guy in the early days of DS9. Thankfully, we get to see just how scary and deadly he can be in this episode. Garak wasn’t infected with the drug in the air, it was the blue stuff he put his hand on. It’s also cool seeing another Nor-Class Cardassian station. I love the simplicity of the behind the scenes people just creating a different station by filming the model leaning at a different angle.😂 Finally, speaking of stations, the Starfleet station that Eddington was on in the previous episode was a reuse of footage from the movie “Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan” (it’s the Regula One station!).
"Our new station model is built with 111 degrees of rotation!"
"Why didn't you just turn the old station model sideways?"
"...This one is built with 111."
Can’t wait for next week 2 of my favorite episodes 🖖
"I just hope they don't die." - - - DOOM music kicks in ♫
These are both great episodes, but next week's episode, "In The Cards," is one of my all-time favorite episodes of anything. The season finale is also fantastic🎉
12:15 I can't remember if it was mentioned before or not but Eddington was Canadian.
I cannot wait to see you do a backflip next week. For me, we are entering the best part of DS nine.
Yep! 💥🛸💥🚀💥
"Nog, you are definitely getting stranger as you get older."
4:48 😂
I think you got those words backwards 😂😂😂
We’ve all done it
Ollie I just realised that very soon you are going to be the first person ever on TH-cam to react to Star trek voyager. Can't wait 👍
Good to see you!
Cameo crew members are the Redshirts of DS9.
I also hate octopus for the exact same reason as you do Ollie: it's so rubbery it makes the texture - in a word - loathsome. And also, octopi reminds me of those face-hugging monsters in the Alien movies.
I can’t wait for you to reach episode 6-19!!!!
"The thing about Star Trek is as soon as you see them introduce new characters outside the main cast, you know they're gonna die. Only O'Brien, Nog and Garak are left." Only one of whom is in the main cast :D
But yeah redshirting is a serious trope, which can be campy fun sometimes but probably disappointing removal of tension in an episode like this. The budget they run on just doesn't justify paying 4 extra gold shirt crew members to appear throughout the season to set up episodes like this :/
Cobra la la la la la la la la la !!!!!
I agree that Eddington would have been a great main character in the episodes to come. That being said, I think you'll enjoy them anyway ~~
That one space station design is used in the Trek universe plenty of times.
I think that was even a reuse of a shot from "Wrath of Khan."
@@hippusmaximus9319 It was originally the station in Star Trek The Motion Picture. The flipped it upside down for TWOK and all future appearances.
E23: B'Elanna Torres is not going to like this.
E24: Perfect horror-like episode before Halloween.
I hope these ones do not die.
I wish there was a DS9 collectors coin that had the alpha quadrant on one side with the space station and worm hole and alpha quadrant aliens, and the flip side be the gamma quadrant with the dominion and gamma quadrant aliens
I can't wait until next week
You don’t remember cal Hudson he was on the episode of season 2 that introduced the maqui
These episodes were after I'd give up on watching DS9 regularly and became a "eh, if it happens to be on" viewer.
So now I know what happened to Eddington after his surrender to Sisko. Shrug.
If you want to know where the term "loonies" came from - it is that master of Science Fiction (which he later transformed into more social parody ) Robert Anson Heinlein. The earliest settlers of the moon in his novels were disparagingly called "loonies" because why would anyone want to leave Mother Earth for a home in on a rock on the skies? They took back their pride in the designation (much like the Black pride movement of the 60/70's) by calling their currency the Loonie.
That's super cool and I will have to read where that came from but I am pretty sure it is called a Loonie due to the fact that there is a loon on one side of it :)
@@RolyPolyOllieReactionshey Oliver I messaged u on instagram bro
Unfortunately, I will miss the premiere. Enjoy yourself!
Go with God and Be Safe from Evil. 😎 👍
Hope you enjoyed the video anyways!!
I didn't have a loonie on hand, so I had to raise my twoonie.
For mor crew episodes you need to watch lower decks after u finish ds9
Fake trek
I have the nerf version of that phaser rifle 27:07
"hope these ones don't die" yeah so about that. . .
Scorpio vs O'Brien
Boron gas, huh. Even at high vacuum, boiling point would be pretty high. Curious.
Killing Garak? You’re joking, good sir. DS9 would definitely never kill any of the main/supporting cast this late to the series. Well - aside from the … mirror episodes, of course - but those are expendables :-p
😂
Eddington, the hero of DS9.
they did purpose a episode for season 5 that you find out the Ferengi where originally as tall and as strong as klingons and a ferengi scientist found the dormant genes an activated them in his brother
Sound like the plot of *The Lazarus Experiment* from Doctor Who.
Although always small in their first episode the Ferengi were in, in TNG, they were described as "deceptively strong" and fairly aggressive. They radically rewrote them later, mostly for the good, but I do wish DS9 had given a nod that there still are Ferengi who are basically pirates attacking ships for money as in TNG.
Your next episode is literally the calm before the storm and then the s**t hits the fan especially the final shot of season 5.
Oh, I'd forgotten what happened to Eddington! A fitting end to the character, but damn it. RIP you infuriating old folk hero.
Star Trek has not had a great track record with horror or anything even horror adjacent, Empok Nor is definitely one of the major exceptions.
Eddington had to die, to get him out of the way for what comes next. it all changes soon
These both fell flat for me… Blaze of Glory seemed perfunctory. I wasn’t surprised for a moment at the twist and I really didn’t like this redemption story for Eddington.
And it was such a cliche that one of them would die that Ollie guessed it, Eddington’s own wife didn’t doubt Sisko. Lazy writing and phoned in acting. Ollie felt more emotional then the wife!
Empok Nor: not as sure why this didn’t work… maybe it just felt perfunctory too. Not an easy task considering it incorporated Miles, Nog and Garak. But it also included such blatant redshirts they should have just literally put on red shirts.
I agree with you more on Blaze than Empok Nor. With the latter, I think it just comes down to budget and time. You don't have enough of either to really introduce redshirts as much more than obvious redshirts, and the set while spooky in the dark is just not as atmospheric as Alien/s. It's basically a one-off Star Trek episode adaptation of a space horror film, and that's...fine. Actually the fact that it IS a genre shift for the show probably makes one give the premise more scrutiny than it can really stand up to. Still, it's pretty fun and as an engineer I love the "I'm an engineer" line. Garak & O'Brien's exchange in the infirmary is also good. And I just appreciate the style of it even if it's not as convincing as a feature film :)
@@jerodast True, Empok Nor made a valiant effort to not make them glaring redshirts. To work, it really needed to be a two parter. There was a lot crammed into the time allotted.
Across Star Trek, they never really did sell the Maquis. I never bought that any of them were really aggrieved by the Cardassians or that any of them were righteous resistance fighters. They were always just lightweight boring characters. That includes their dumb costumes.
To be honest most civilian trek clothes were boring and generic looking for a space show.
It is surprising that in the future of Trek with such advanced civilizations, so many clothes and so many places were pretty primitive, often at the level of the 19th century.
Probably the reason why Voyager drop the whole Maquis/Federation division story arc in its run.
Keep in mind the Voyager episode *Worst Case Scenario* aired after DS9's *Blaze of Glory*
Yes, the Maquis was a poorly executed story created just to establish Voyager's excuse for their situation, which was quickly forgotten.
Unfortunately they were tpprorists so they couldn’t do much with them especially after a certain date
Also trek was pg kid friendly so they were stuck
I did not have a loonie on me, so I raised a toonie to Eddington instead 🫡
Kind of neat that the big rebel of Star Trek is a Canadian and he dies fighting the forces of the Dominion.