Star Trek: Fascination

Episode: "Fascination"

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Season 3, Episode 10

Original Air Date: November 28, 1994

via Memory Alpha

It's Bajoran Gratitude Festival time!  Major Kira is presiding and Lwaxanna Troi is on the station to join in the fun.  Several in attendance get headaches, then fall hopelessly in love: Jake with Kira, Bareil with Dax, Dax with Benjamin, Bashir and Kira with each other.  Meanwhile, in a more meaningful B-plot, Keiko and Molly are back home from Keiko's botany field work on Bajor.  The readjustment to married life is less than smooth for the O'Briens.  

"Fascination" is DS9's take on A Midsummer Night's Dream.  It's goofy.  It was Armin Shimerman's least favorite episode.  He teaches Shakespeare.  He found the episode embarrassing.  For others, it was a fun romp, a moment of levity just ahead of a heavy story.  We get development for Odo: he admits his feeling for Kira to Lwaxanna.  Watching the doctor and major all over each other was reflective of their real world relationship.  While Alexander Siddig and Nana Visitor wouldn't be married until 1997, they were already romantically involved by '94.  The O'Brien story is more relevant: two adults weighing family needs against personal needs.  Evidently, it hit close to home for many involved with the production.

Acting Notes

via Memory Alpha

Hana Hatae played Molly O'Brien, the young daughter of Keiko and Miles.  Hatae was born in Los Angeles, July 15, 1988.  Molly didn't get a whole lot of material in "Fascination" - she rarely did - but she got to throw up all over her father.  I've been there, Chief.  Between TNG and DS9, Hatae had 12 total appearances.

Hatae only had a modest acting career beyond Star Trek.  She had appearances on Family Matters and Kitchen Nightmares.  The latter was a reality show episode featuring her family's sushi restaurant.  At the time, she was working as a hostess and waitress at the restaurant.  Films include My Suicide, 5th Passenger and The Circuit.  

Squid Perks: Nest Coffee & Bakery

Nest Coffee & Bakery is but a short walk from the Amtrak station in Essex Junction, Vermont - a perfect spot while waiting for your train.  Vermont got quite a lot of snow this past Saturday so, despite our being close to the beginning of the route, our child's train back to college was significantly delayed on Sunday.  Coffee and pastries were very much in order.

I got a cappuccino and a chocolate croissant and also tried my wife's strawberry and cream croissant.  All were lovely.  Service is friendly and expedient.  Unfortunately, the space is a bit cramped.  My guess is that most of the service is to go, though there are a few tables to encourage people to stick around, including one relatively cozy area with a couch.  The three of us grabbed one end of a long table, the other end eventually taken by a pair of young women debating the relative merits of Star Wars and Star Trek - right up our alley!

We'll be back.  I don't usually give much thought to the area around the train station as it's right by a preferably avoided intersection.  But if we're already down there, Nest is definitely worth a stop.  As it was later in the morning, they'd already run out of some of their pastry offerings.  Ham and cheese croissant is always one of my favorites and I'd love to try theirs another time.

Star Trek: Defiant

Episode: "Defiant"

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Season 3, Episode 9

Original Air Date: November 21, 1994

via Memory Alpha

Will Riker comes to visit the station!  Or does he?  When the handsome man asks Major Kira for a tour of the Defiant, he attacks and kidnaps her, then steals the ship.  It's not Will at all.  It's Tom Riker.  Will's transporter-generated clone is with the Maquis now.  Neither the Federation nor the Cardassians are the least bit pleased that the terrorists now hold such a powerful weapon.

While the Tom Riker story is a good one, for me, the real fun of the episode is the ensuing chess match that plays out between Commander Sisko and Gul Dukat as they work together to rein in the Defiant.  Though truly, it's a four-player game involving Sisko, Dukat, Tom and the Obsidian Order, represented in the Cardassian War Room by Korinas (Tricia O'Neil).  Sisko's role is based on Henry Fonda's character in the 1964 movie Fail Safe.  Unfortunately, Star Trek has never brought Tom back again, despite promises to the contrary by Kira.

For the record, their kiss at the end is completely gratuitous.

Acting Notes

via Scandal Wiki

Shannon Cochran plays Kalita, one of Tom's Maquis collaborators.  "Defiant" is her second of four Trek appearances, her second and last as Kalita.  She was born in Savannah, Georgia, August 7, 1958.  Beyond Star Trek, she has made guest appearances on NYPD Blue, Full House and The Office among others.  Films include The Babe, The Ring and Star Trek: Nemesis.

During filming of "Defiant," Cochran met her future husband, Michael Canavan.  Canavan played Tamal, Kalita's Maquis shipmate.  The couple were married in 2003.

Squid Mixes: Scofflaw Cocktail

A Scofflaw Cocktail combines rye (or bourbon), dry vermouth, lemon juice, grenadine and orange bitters. I got my recipe from The Joy of Mixology by Gary Regan.  The original was created by Jock, a bartender at Harry's New York Bar in Paris in 1924.  I like whiskey drinks and my wife likes lemon drinks so such cocktails as the Scofflaw are good to have in the repertoire.  The lemon dominates the flavor but there's still some of that whiskey warmth.  I think a little more sugar would be good.  The recipe suggests 1 or 2 dashes of grenadine.  I went with 1.  If I were to do it again, I'd try it with 2.

Regan's book is good for many reasons.  He writes wonderful blurbs for his drinks.  The most interesting takeaway for the Scofflaw is the history of the word itself.  Scofflaw was the winner of a 1923 contest to come up with the best word to describe "a lawless drinker of illegally made or illegally obtained liquor."  The prize was $200.

Squid Flicks: Star Trek VII: Generations

Title: Star Trek Generations

Director: David Carson

Original Release: November 18, 1994

My Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Kirk or Picard?  For the die-hards, it's the starting point question, the answer placing you in one camp or the other.  Which Enterprise captain is your guy?

What if you didn't have to choose?

For one and only one story in the canon, we get both of them.  

via Memory Alpha

Star Trek Generations begins in Kirk's era.  Kirk, Scotty and Chekov are the guests of honor for the christening of the Enterprise-B.  After the ship is launched out of dry dock, ceremony is usurped by duty when a distress call comes through.  Our man Jim takes over command when the "real" captain loses his nerve.  But then Kirk runs off to deflector control to make adjustments where he gets killed.  Or so it would appear...

Fast forward 78 years.  Picard & Company respond to their own emergency.  The Amargosa Observatory is under attack and the Enterprise-D runs to the rescue.  There, our friends encounter Soran, an El-Aurian scientist who seems harmless enough at first.  But he's in cahoots with the Duras sisters and that's not even the worst of it.  He's trying to direct the path of a mysterious, space-rending energy ribbon so he can get back to the utopian plane the ribbon contains, the very same ribbon that caused all the trouble in Kirk's story.

Generations was the first Star Trek movie I saw in the theater.  I went with my brother-in-law in Minnesota during Thanksgiving break my senior year of college.  I have to admit that before my recent re-watch, I remembered virtually nothing of the story outlined above.  I remembered Kirk's "death."  That's really it.  Nor did I remember Data's adventures with his recently installed emotion chip.  All I remembered clearly is the next bit.

Picard enters the Nexus, the world of the ribbon.  There, he meets Kirk, who apparently didn't die at all.  He just got trapped in the Nexus.  Picard tries to convince the older captain to come back with him to defeat Soran but it's no easy sell.  In the Nexus, all your dreams come true.  Picard experiences having a family: wife, children, the whole deal.  Kirk gets to hang out chopping wood and burning breakfast at his home on earth with the woman he didn't but maybe should have married.  And then suddenly he's at his uncle's horse ranch in Idaho.  The world seemingly becomes whatever you want it to, like a beautiful dream.  But none of it's real.

That bit I remember and it comes in much later in the story than I realized.  I'd forgotten the most important bit, too...

SPOILER!!!

Kirk dies.  For real this time.  Picard succeeds in bringing Kirk back with him and, indeed, they defeat Soran together.  But victory comes at a cost.  Soran kills Kirk.

It's been nearly 30 years.  I've forgotten many of the details from my life 30 years ago.  But in my experience, emotional impressions tend to last and I think it says something that the event which was clearly meant to leave such an impression didn't.  

Some critics complained - and not for the last time - that the film feels too much like a long television episode.  That, in itself, doesn't bother me so much.  Obviously, I like Star Trek episodes.  And I think the Kirk-Picard partnership, gimmicky though it feels in the end, does bring that certain something special that a movie should have.  The real problem for me is that apart from the gimmick, the plot itself was not especially memorable.  

As is true of many great stories, TNG's series ending felt like a new beginning for the characters (see here).  Picard's relationship with his crew had clearly changed.  Perhaps the first movie could have worked better if it did more to build on that new beginning.  I understand wanting to make a film bigger than the show had been in terms of scope.  But don't lose sight of why we've grown to care about these characters.

So where does Generations stack up against the previous films?

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
2. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
3. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
4. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
5. Star Trek VII: Generations
6. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
7. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

For the first six movies, my rankings mirrored the Rotten Tomatoes ratings exactly.  Here, I break.  RT has The Motion Picture slightly above Generations.  In truth, both movies feel disappointing - acceptable but so much less than they could have been.  Fortunately, in both cases, the subsequent film was a considerable improvement.

Squid Eats: Central Provisions

Exotic Fruit Salad

Central Provisions is a small plates restaurant in Portland, Maine.  We went on the first night of our recent trip to the small, coastal city.  We ordered Bread + Butter (fancier than it sounds - more on that in a bit), Exotic Fruit Salad, Bone Marrow Toast, Duck L'Orange and a half-dozen oysters.  Everything was very good.  I wish to stress that before I launch into my micro-gripes.  Service was excellent, too - both friendly and knowledgeable.  Central Provisions has an impressive allergy-coded menu, something I've never seen before.  Typical allergens are listed for each dish.  Any ingredient in red ink is essential to the dish and cannot be omitted.  Anything in green can.  It's a clever system, one I hope catches on with other restaurants.

Duck L'Orange

Central Provisions (CP) was our most expensive meal in Portland.  It was not our best.  During this trip, I thought a lot about how restaurants add value (cost) to their dishes.  Which choices genuinely enhance quality?  Which merely increase price?  

Case in point, the Bread + Butter.  It's not just any old butter.  CP serves sourdough on a spread of bright yellow uni saboyon and green, speckled nori butter.  Eye-catching?  Certainly.  Tasty?  Sure.  But actually better than a high quality whipped, fresh cow's milk butter?  No.

Bone Marrow Toast

Or the Bone Marrow Toast.  We've gotten bone marrow on dishes at other restaurant and they can be quite lovely, the high fat content providing dazzling mouth feel as well as rich flavor.  CP's dish was essentially cheesy bread that could have been just as satisfying without the bone marrow.

High quality ingredients are important, to be sure.  But I would prefer a restaurant let relatively simple elements speak for themselves rather than invest in the exotic.  So again, it was a nice meal - just not our best.  For the price, I would have wanted it to be the best.

Family Book Swap: Sea of Tranquility

Title: Sea of Tranquility

Author: Emily St. John Mandel

via Target

Edwin is an English aristocrat exiled by his family to Canada in 1912.  Mirella is a receptionist in 2020 New York.  Olive is a novelist on a book tour in 2203.  Their lives are connected by a shared, extraordinary experience and by their encounters with a time traveler, Gaspery Roberts.  Perhaps coincidentally, they are also connected by the fact they each had these experiences immediately prior to a global pandemic.

To tell more about the story would be to give too much away.  I already fear I've said too much.  And it would be a shame if my post did anything to discourage anyone from reading Sea of Tranquility.  It was my most rewarding read in quite a long time.

I read a lot of books and enjoy most of what I read.  What I long for, though, is a book that makes me want to do nothing but curl up in a corner and lose myself in the narrative, perhaps even to forget that I'm reading.  I want to be invited into a world I hate to leave when the book is over.  That level of immersion has been much more difficult to find as an adult than it was as a child.  It's possible, of course, that I've been reading the wrong books.

Sea of Tranquility is the closest I've come to realizing that ideal in years.  The fact that it's a time travel story is all the more extraordinary.  As frequent visitors to The Squid have likely caught on, I approach such stories with great skepticism and tend to leave them annoyed and frustrated.  Mandel's take on the concept didn't bother me.  She certainly deserves credit for tidiness - time travel has rules in this book and she sticks to them.  And the answer to the central question - which I won't reveal - satisfies me.  I cared a lot more about what happened to the characters, especially Gaspery, than I did about the time travel consistency.  I can assure you, that is not easily said for me.  Mandel also deserves a lot of credit for a relatable rendering of the lockdown experience as well as a vision of the future that is not overly sensationalized.  

A snippet that spoils nothing but does exhibit the emotional intimacy Mandel allows the reader to have with her characters:

She never dwelt on my lapses, and I couldn't entirely parse why this made me feel so awful.  There's a low-level, specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones.

So yes, I would love to read more books like Sea of Tranquility.  Bravo!

Star Trek: Meridian

Episode: "Meridian"

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Season 3, Episode 8

Original Air Date: November 14, 1994

via Memory Alpha

Our heroes discover Meridian, a planet which only appears in our dimension once every 60 years.  While visiting, Dax falls in love with one of the inhabitants, Deral.  To be together over the long term, either Dax or Deral will have to forfeit a life with their own people.  Dax is willing to make that choice.  Meanwhile, Quark schemes to get a holo-image of Major Kira to use for a sleazy holosuite program for Tiron, a wealthy patron.

"Meridian" was Co-Executive Producer Ira Steven Behr's attempt to recreate the musical Brigadoon.  Both critics and creative staff consider the episode to be the weakest of Season 3.  Mind you, that in itself is nothing to be ashamed of, at least so far.  DS9 had been on a solid run to this point, stretching back to the end of Season 2.  The love story isn't believable, which Terry Ferrel herself freely admitted, especially when compared to a masterpiece still to come in Season 4.  Her tender (ultimately unnecessary) goodbye with Commander Sisko, on the other hand, is amazing.  Avery Brooks's emotional availability gives both writers and actors a lot to build on as they seek to develop a sense of family for the series.

Once again, I appreciate that Dax was allowed to be a sexually expressive being in a way no woman on NextGen ever was.  In an otherwise weak romance, her responses to Deral's cheeky questions about her spots are absolutely dynamite:

Deral: I was admiring… your markings. Are they decorative?

Dax: No. Are yours?

De: No. …If you don't mind me asking… how far down do they go?

Da: All the way.

Sure, one could argue that the gender fluidity of the symbiont made it easier for the writers to move away from the Star Trek ideal of the demure female (at least within the context of a romantic relationship).  But they gave Kira a lot more elbow room, too.  Especially in Dax's case, granting her this range will pay off handsomely in tales to come.

Food Notes

Andorian ale makes its first Star Trek appearance when Tiron orders one at the bar.  Like Romulan ale, it is blue.  I found a recipe here.

Acting Notes

via The West Wing Wiki

Brett Cullen (Deral) was born in Houston, August 26, 1956.  He graduated from the University of Houston.  In television, Cullen has had principal roles on The Young Riders and Devious Maids and recurring roles on Falcon Crest, The West Wing and Lost.  Films include Apollo 13, The Dark Knight Rises and Joker. 

Squid Eats: Cabin Fever

On our recent trip to Portland, Maine, we stopped at a cozy little restaurant in Bartlett, New Hampshire called Cabin Fever.  Bartlett is in the heart of ski country.  It has not been the snowiest winter in northern New England but there was a respectable amount in the White Mountains compared to Vermont's Greens.  We also discovered Cabin Fever draws a far number of snowmobilers.

A funny thing happens when you cross from Vermont into one of our New England neighbors.  Almost as soon as you cross the border, diners and restaurants advertise their seafood offerings with an enthusiasm you never see in Vermont.  New Hampshire just barely has a shoreline - only 18 miles long, the shortest of any coastal state in the United States.  But it counts and it's certainly more than our none.  So even in the mountains far from the sea, lobster rolls and the like are practically obligatory.  

Partly because of the relative prices and partly because we wanted to wait until we got to Portland to fully enjoy the ocean's bounty, we both got burgers instead.  My wife got the Cog (with mushrooms and Swiss) with onion rings.  I got The Notch (Swiss, bacon and caramelized onions) with fries.  All were good.  Medium doneness is pinker in New Hampshire than it is in Massachusetts - that's a good start.  The fries and onion rings were fine, not exceptional.

It was a comforting meal on a cold winter day.

On the Coffee Table: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Title: Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories

Author: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

via Amazon

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa is generally regarded as "the father of the Japanese short story."  His legacy was further strengthened by filmmaker Akira Kurosawa whose masterpiece Rashōmon combines the story of "In a Bamboo Grove" with elements (including the title) of "Rashōmon."  The film has had enormous impact, including on Star Trek's "A Matter of Perspective."  

The stories are highly varied.  Some are set in feudal Japan.  Others are more modern, some realistic, some with magical realism elements (an important influence on Haruki Murakami for one).  Many of his later autobiographical works are included in a section entitled Akutagawa's Own Story.  

Akutagawa was likely schizophrenic, though he was never officially diagnosed as such.  He certainly suffered troubling hallucinations and finally killed himself.  He was quite frank about his mental illness struggles in his writing.  Many of his earlier works reveal a deep morbid fascination, unsettling in light of his eventual self-inflicted death.  The most memorable story for me, Hell Screen, is also the most disturbing.  Master painter Yoshihide insists on seeing the images he must paint, no matter how horrible, including watching his own daughter burn to death in a carriage.

Akutagawa's work is certainly compelling - high quality literature, though in light of the disturbing content, I was glad to finish.

Star Trek: Civil Defense

Episode: "Civil Defense"

Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Season 3, Episode 7

Original Air Date: November 7, 1994

via Memory Alpha

Garak episode!

Our heroes accidentally trigger a security system program from the Terok Nor days, designed to quell a workers revolt.  In fine Cardassian tradition, it is brutal and uncompromising.  If the gang doesn't figure out how to shut the system off, the entire station will self-destruct.

"Civil Defense" is loads of fun.  As the screws tighten - every time someone solves one problem, the program triggers increasingly terrible measures - the sparkling dialogue only improves.  A smug Gul Dukat arrives eventually then when he reluctantly tries to help, he finds he is stuck in the muck with the rest of them.  His exchanges with Garak are especially fun.  But the real treat of the episode is the repartee between Odo and Quark who are trapped together in the constable's office.  The best example:

Quark: Why go to so much trouble to keep people out of the security office?
Odo: It's not to keep people out, it's to keep me in. I suppose, during the Occupation, the Cardassians considered their security chief a security risk.
Q: And I know why.
O: Oh, do you?
Q: It's because they knew you were an honorable man. The kind of person who would do the right thing regardless of the circumstances. And now your integrity… is going to get us both killed. I hope you're happy.

Seriously, those two deserve their own buddy movie.

Acting Notes

via Memory Alpha

Danny Goldring played Legate Kell, the Cardassian military official who delivers the crushing, insulting blow for Dukat via pre-recorded video message.  Goldring was born in Woodstock, Illinois, May 31, 1946.  He attended Trinity University and served in the Army with the Signal Corps.  In addition to the typical stage work, Goldring was a puppeteer, touring with the Cole Marionettes for two years.

Goldring made many guest appearances on television, including ER, Wings and Boss.  "Civil Defense is his first of several Trek appearances on three different series.  Films include The Babe, The Fugitive and The Dark Knight.

Goldring passed away in 2022.