♬ Allamaraine, you'll come with me. ♬
♬ Allamaraine, you'll come with me. ♬
DS9 s1e10 "Move Along Home"
Edit: Coincidentally put together last night before NegativeNull's Kiss post. Funny how that works.
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I don't know why people hate this episode so much.
It's a little cheesy, but who cares? So are dozens of episodes people love
Personally, I find the main alien characters highly annoying and the little girl singing the song over and over again even more so. And that's before we get into the "none of this actually mattered because there were no actual consequences" ending.
Edit: Not to mention, the exact same "this was all a game and there were no consequences" ending was done so much better in Shore Leave where Kirk still grew as a person despite the fact that he was never in any real danger.
And that's before we get into the "none of this actually mattered because there were no actual consequences" ending.
To me, that doesn't matter as much because the characters weren't aware of that. Sure if it happened every other episode I'd be annoyed - it's like the "it was all a dream" trope ending, in a way. But I don't have issue with it if used sparingly.
I think it was also useful in terms of showing, early on, that Quark does care about people over profit, and signals to the viewer that he is very much a redeemable character, and will have character growth in the future.
Overall I view it as a silly but kinda enjoyable episode. I certainly understand why people wouldn't like it, but I've never really understood why some hate it.
I don't hate it, but it's an episode I'd be fine to skip if I did a repeat viewing of DS9.
Fair
To me, it felt like the episode mattered because you got character development. It's the first time we get to see exactly how Odo and Quark's relationship works, and we also get to see Quark's..."unorthodox" problem solving style, in contrast to how federation weenies go about things.
I guess, but those feel pretty minor things to me that could easily have been developed in other ways and don't really mean anything within the episode itself. Compare that to Kirk finally besting the academy bully who taunted him for four years and finding closure with a relationship he regretted ending. And even though those things did not echo through the series since they didn't do plot arcs back then, those are much bigger things in terms of just telling a story. On top of that, you see McCoy can be charming and gallant if he wants to and that Sulu is a capable fighter in hand-to-hand combat.
But with the DS9 episode, taken on its own as an episode with the show you saw up to that point, it really is a "zero consequences and zero effects" episode.
Hopefully I've explained why one works so much better than the other well enough.
Edit: I would also say that putting a 'this adventure never put anyone in real danger' episode right near the beginning of the show is just a bad move in terms of selling a show to an audience and episodes like that were why DS9's first couple of seasons were pretty weak. Even Enterprise had more of a sense of danger despite not a single crewmember dying in the first season. Because at least you knew by the end of the episode that they really could have died.
Not every character moment has to be climactic. You gotta mix in some slow-burn stuff there too. And also remember that early episodes like this had to do a lot of heavy lifting to reform the Ferengi from their disastrous TNG appearance.
I'm not sure how this reforms the Ferengi past the point they had already been reformed. It develops Quark's character a little, that's about it.
And I'm not talking about climactic moments, I'm talking about overcoming adversity, which is a major component to Star Trek stories in specific and Western fiction in general. When there are no consequences, you're not overcoming any actual adversity. Back to Shore Leave, it wasn't actually Finnegan Kirk beat up at the end of the fight, it was his own inner demons. It was a moment of adversity when he overcame what had been holding him back for so long. It's not about how he achieved it, it's that it happened.
I don't remember them being reformed at all in TNG, but I admit it's been awhile. I picture them as capering caricatures in TNG. But I'm thinking specifically of that moment where Quark argues with Odo that he can save them a bunch of small dangers by making one big gamble; it shows the Ferengi way of thinking about things as not just allegory, but as an actual culture that succeeds in some ways and fails in others.
Edit: Which I liked since the federation is ostensibly all about interacting with new and different cultures.
Edit edit: Not to say any of that invalidates your own feelings about it. I care about and find meaningful some stuff; you are under no obligation to feel the same way, nor are you wrong for not doing so. I only share because sometimes it's fun to hear other's perspectives, and I appreciate you sharing yours with me.
I've never met anyone who hates this episode. it's one of my favorites
I've seen a lot of hate for it, although entirely online
Some people aren't into cheesy stuff
Yeah but there's a lot of cheesy Trek