Odo: "Hmmm. Sisko's father eh? You look a lot like infamous Starfleet conspirator Admiral Cartwright." Daddy Sisko: "And you look a lot like infamous assassin Colonel West." Odo: "Touché."

That Sisko/Odo bit about regretting tfinding Odo's people really hit hard for me. You could FEEL the anguish and the sincereity from both. They respect each other enough to be honest, even when that honesty is so devestatingly deep.

My favorite thing about the Layton-Odo scene is that it's the first time you see Odo and him interact without Sisko there, so you buy Layton just hates him until the twist is revealed.

I think what makes this episode so much stronger is that there were already instances of this kind of thing happening prior to 9/11. IRA terrorists often planted bombs into public bins so you could not find a public bin in any London train station until the Year 2000 or so. I remember being really annoyed with that as a kid.

Refreshing to hear this POV in the polarized climate. You make a good point about being able to empathize with others veiws without having to release your own

I would say that there's a calculus that is ignored here. In Star Trek, they are dealing with literal threats to the world. Adjusting your definition of freedom vs security in the face of that kind of threat is a lot easier pill to swallow. As opposed to doing so to prevent tragic, yet non-world threatening, terrorist attacks.

The Star Trek captains and their relationships with their fathers: 1. Picard has a horrible alcoholic for a father who insults his dreams of going into Starfleet from a young age. 2. Sisko’s dad is unreasonably stubborn and insults his son in front of his coworkers 3. Archer’s dad dies of a neuro-degenerative disease when his son is a teenager, leading to his lifelong daddy issues

I massively, highly recommend the relatively recent Autobiography of Ben Sisko book if you really wanna get into the weeds of early pre-DS9 Ben. Does an excellent job in digging deeper into the stories established in Homefront/Paradise Lost such as his upbringing, the Sisko family, and Leyton.

You know, Daddy Sisko might have quite the point. How many times did the blood test actually catch a chngeling? And we have one test, that later turned out to be fake.

It'll never cease to be amusing to me how the actor who played the admiral here, has a very similar, if somewhat mirrored role in Babylon 5. Here his good intentions lead him to taking bad actions against a good government, while in Babylon 5 his good intentions lead him to take "good" actions against an evil government, to massively oversimplify both settings. ^^

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself... And Watery aliens who can shape shift. Sonsovbitches." - Abraham Lincoln

"The enemy might figure out ways around our tests." "Yeah hey, let's not do anything at all then! Let's sit back with our thumbs up our asses. Splendid plan!"

This is definitely one of the strongest DS9 episodes. A true example of what Star Trek could do.

I always love the Leg Heart recurring joke. Something about it always makes me chuckle.

weird how when Worf tells the computer to start playback it's at 'time index 911'

"Well, how does the blood test work?" "We stick a hot needle into the blood, and if there's a reaction, we'll know who's a changling."

IIRC, this episode and ithe subsequent one made me uncomfortable in all the right ways. Tough questions are tough because there's no right answer. Or because they involve long division.

If this was released in the aftermath of 9/11, this would hit close to home.

And nowadays. EVERYTHING has to run parallel to current politics. Except when it doesn't, but that's ironically rarer.

Authoritarianism becomes an issue only because the modern Man thinks that to be 'free' means to be free to pursue one's own whims, no matter how degenerate, harmful, or dangerous to oneself or to the cohesion of the social unit. In the classical understanding of the concept of freedom, it isn't any issue at all to compel good behavior.

Brock Peters is still Darth Vader for me, thanks to the Radio Drama I listened to incessantly as a kid.

The only scenes I really hated were those of Sisko's dad. He just comes off as an annoying idiotic old crank. One moment he's, "I'll die before I let you test my blood!", and the next he's, "Yeah sure, take my blood, idgaf". Real "old man yells at cloud" vibes. Ok gramps. I think it's time for the home...

Replace mandatory blood screening for starfleet and families with mediatory vaccines for military and you got a nice allegory for current year.

Where everybody else sees 9/11, I see COVID-19 regulations that naysayers fought. I shouldn't have to wear a mask, stand apart, stay home, and/or have my life inconvenienced.

I think the "how much can we sacrifice before life is not worth living" point is a little dramatic. It's possible for security to be excessive long before "life is not worth living." Realistically, most security measures are at best slightly effective. They slightly reduce the risk of something that is probably unlikely to begin with, and we do something of minor consequence to put up with it. The real risk of asking for random screenings and stop-and-ID is that it gives an unsafe amount of power in the hands of the police. It makes it very easy to arbitrarily arrest people, to push trumped-up charges, and to hold people awaiting ID. And it will allow them to catch people for all sorts of innocuous minor crimes while they're at it. It's a police state. Nobody is complaining that life is not worth living if we have to give a milliliter of blood one time. The concern is that the state will exert increasing power in the face of an increasingly dangerous threat. (And also, they're totally going to record the DNA of the white blood cells in every sample they take, don't tell me they won't.)

Red from overly sarcastic productions: " Wharf could you also tell us about your gods like some of their names?" Wharf: " their names have been lost to history but one of them was known to be around lots and lots of people much much love making and many children which made it very hard to kill all the gods." Red:" did he by chance throw lightning?" Wharf: " yes."

Sisko's dad is supposed to be from New Orleans and yet he calls them 'crayfish' instead of 'crawdads'

Are you Steve?

When was this review first recorded (approximately)? I remember watching it before.

Damn chuck I was just having this argument with some idiot who thinks you need to have you r ID on you at all times 12:41

This goes deeper than 9/11. These themes are always relevant. Everywhere in the world. Past, Present, and Future. Not just dealing with terrorist threats. Dealing with anything the state will use to clamp down on citizens.

How do restaurants work in paradise? Do they pay him in pretty smiles?

*Looks at what the courts and alphabet agencies are doing.* I'm not voting for the current ones in power, that's for sure.

As a European, I would interject here: This episode isn't an effective 9/11 analogy. No. It's an analogy how the West ignored Putin's doing for years for fear of desrtoying the "paradise" of post-Cold-War peace with Russia. 9/11 which was a single terrorist act used to justify the follow-up "security measures" already written up by members of the Project for the New American Century think tank (who included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others behind George W. Bush) founded in 1997 with the stated goal of "regime change in the Middle East" for American interests. Odo brought proof the Changelings are already on Earth. Whereas after 9/11 North America was not crawling with bearded Jihadists dastardly pushing over trashbins in rural Americans towns, as Fox News viewers believed. We now know Putin has been at work destabilizing Europe since 2012, but we didn't realize we were already under attack. We tried to appease Putin in 2014 when he annexed Crimea. Russian desinformation and propaganda campaigns had been at work to push the Brexit narrative, all of which we have evidence for now, but when in 2016 the UK referendum vote was for Brexit, we slept through it. Putin had Donald Trump in his pay since Trump visited Moscow for that money-laundering beauty pageant spectacle and to try and get permission to build a Trump Tower there; after Trump returned he started talking about one day becoming President. We know now that every single Russian Twitterbot & Facebook bot who posted pro-Brexit narratives was also used to push pro-Trump talking points on Social Media in 2016 during Trump's candidacy. Timothy Snyder published a whole book about it in 2018 giving a painstakingly researched account of how it was done... but people ignored it. Peaceful Paradise is not under threat from "authoritarianism" if the citizens of Paradise decide to take off their pink glasses and implement security measures (instead of having them imposed from "above" indefinitely to keep a certain group in power by stoking fears), as long as these security measures are put away again once the threat is over. If Paradise _is_ under a very real threat because you have enemies actively working to destroy it, then it's self-defense. The enemies don't give a crap about your "principles of freedom"... they will in fact encourage you to feel victimized for having to "submit" to anything that shatters your illusion of being perfectly safe.

Dang now all of it is now DS9 on a google search

09:36 Undiscovered County informed us that yes, the heart is indeed located in the leg. More specifically, the knees. 🫠😂

I remember watching DS9 when they suggested doing the blood tests and immediatelly thought about the changelings just storing fake blood in their own bodies for the tests. I was amused that that's exactly what ended up happening in the later episodes!