Of all the Moogi/Ferengi episodes you do know she only ever did the first one right? Cecily Adams portrayed the Ferengi mother for the rest of her appearances.
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All these comments on DS9, and no one (unless I’ve missed it) mentioned Louise Fletcher’s Kai Winn.
What an actress, what a role. I think I sometimes hear her voice in nightmares to this day.
And it’s another example of how breaking the Roddenberry mold was the right thing to do. Having the oppressed, victimized Bajorans produce a villain of her stature was just so satisfying.
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Farscape is by far my favorite space series…but Lexx? I’d watch any Star Trek before Lexx, hell I’d watch all of Battlestar Galactica before Lexx.
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Never watched Blake’s 7, but I pretty much agree except that Lexx is a couple spots too high.
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Lexx is aided considerably by appropriate psychoactive enhancement. 
(and, more seriously: underneath all of the extreme deliberate cheesiness, there were actually quite a lot of genuine SF plots. At one point they destroyed the universe with a flock of runaway Von Neumann probes…)
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I liked Kai Winn as a character, but I didn’t like the way her story ended.
It’s as if Italy and Vatican City were occupied by, say, Russia, and everyone was oppressed.
And then the Russians are beaten back, and Vatican City is freed.
And then some weird Italian farmer comes along and starts whispering in the Pope’s ear that God is powerless, so the Pope should start worshipping the Devil.
And then the Pope’s advisor figures out that the person whispering in his ear was actually the Russian governor in charge of Italy during the occupation and oppression (surgically altered to look Italian), but the Pope then kills the advisor to keep the secret, and follows the Russian Governor in his plan to release the Devil from Hell.
It’s just… Gah!
I can understand having the religious leader of Bajor as an adversary, and they did a good job of making her motivations for being Sisko’s adversary make sense. But then they threw that all out the window and had her basically go crazy.
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I think you are missing one vital piece of Winn’s story.
Kai Winn dedicated her entire LIFE to the prophets and they never spoke to her once. Nor did she ever have an orb encounter. Then this silly little human comes in and day one gets a meet and greet with the prophets. Jealousy and power mixed together. Then the PahWraiths actually show up and she gets physical proof. Easily understandable why she went the way she did.
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I loved the whole jean Valjean/ Javert episode with the Maquis… I thought they did it well, bringing out those themes and pitting Eddington’s idealism against Sisko’s belief in the system.
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But TNG gets a pass because they had an episode censored by the BBC and Sky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHsoPPynIIc
They can do all the Paddywhackery they like!
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It’s just too bad all his idealism ever got him was a anti-coagulant gut shot followed by a brutal death. He never should have left behind his lucky loonie.
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When Sky did show the episode they cut the part about Irish reunification in 2024
With Brexit, it might still happen! So much for their bans and cuts.
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Oh wow! Why am I not surprised by that?
I’m guessing most/many Americans don’t imagine that a stereotype like that is offensive, but comedic. It does bother Irish Americans, though (myself included). Much like Italian Americans don’t like being portrayed as nothing but gangsters in the media, Irish Americans don’t particular like the whole drunken Irishman stereotype. But then again, the context between the US and the UK and their relationship to Ireland is much, much different.
At least Colm Meany became a central and meaningful character in DS9. He was never really a stereotype in that show.
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Indeed. Do you or @robertmckenna know if there is still talk about reunification between the Republic and the North? Talk of the Brexit has really fallen off here, thanks to the stupid election.
I am sad to say, I lost interest in the show by the time Babylon 5 had its second season. It seemed like the Star Trek milieu chafed with the “Casablanca in Space” premise. Which was about the second season of DS9. So I missed the show just when it hit its stride.
Blake’s 7 is best described as a show which tried to write ambitious plotline checks its budget couldn’t cash. Along with several BBC science fiction properties, it is fairly well handled as audio dramas by Big Finish.
https://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/released/blake-s-7---the-classic-audio-adventures
It still has the most badass series ending of all time.
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There never really was talk but it is currently more popular than it has been recently. But still not massively so.
The British Brexit Cat (let me out ! Whine! Let me out! Stares at door doing nothing when it’s opened) hasn’t decided anything but I see no reason to doubt my original belief that the border will remain more or less as it is now when Britain gets its act together. While Britain is not allowed negotiate free trade zones with individual countries I think that the EU will allow whatever it takes to avoid conflict here. Britain will have to institute border controls with the island of Ireland I think.
I cringe a tiny bit at drunken Irish on TV (and wonder why everybody has to have a country accent, even if they are supposed to be from Dublin!) but my Italian friends find the gangster thing really offensive.
Anyway DS9 gets a pass for having Iggy Pop as a Vorta.
They can do anything they like including rerun the Quiet Man on the holodeck. It was well intentioned, just a bit cringey.
And talking of Chief O’Brien, have you seen this Tumblr? It’s awesome.
[edited links]
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Thanks! I do wonder what it would take to get the country reunified, but we’ll see how the actually brexit plays out. I’m sure most are interested in this all going as smoothly as possible and Irish reunification talk would be seen as a major bump in the process.
I know, right! My husband and I watched this documentary recently about pubs in Ireland (you know, for future travel plans!), and I was really interested in how different all the accents were - they interviewed people from all over the country, in towns and cities of various sizes. You normally only get a sort of singular, Irish accent in most American media representation, but of course, just like any other country, accents will vary by region. Irelands small, but it ain’t that small!
YES! He was just great, wasn’t he? The Vorta are just kind of fascinating in general.
And I love that tumblr. Very funny…
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Oooh! I despised her. She was amazing as a villain that way.
ETA: I have to add that while Gul Dukat was a good villian, his character was charismatic, which can be done, but much harder is the villian the viewer really wants to see fail.
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In a related article in that series is a Trek skit where they put the cast of Frasier (except Frasier) on the deck of Voyager with Janeway in command. So painful to watch.
My wife who has a terrible time remembering actors names seems to always number her name primarily from this role (and probably a smidge of Nurse Ratchet)
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