Fanfare posts tagged with obsidianorder Posts tagged with 'obsidianorder' at Fanfare. Mon, 06 Feb 2017 09:18:52 -0800 Mon, 06 Feb 2017 09:18:52 -0800 en-us 60 Star Trek: Voyager: State of Flux Starfleet captains hate this crewmember's one weird old trick for escaping the Delta Quadrant--their true identity will shock you! (Or not.) <a href="">Memory Alpha</a> is having a bad hair day:<br> <br> - According to Seska actress Martha Hackett, the revelation that her character turns out to be a Cardassian operative was decided shortly after the series went into production. The actress recalled, "I think it was three episodes or four episodes in, they thought, 'Well, let's make her a Cardassian spy.'" After laughing at the outlandish idea and then nodding, the actress enthused, "So, um, it was a good surprise." She elaborated, "That episode was a real surprise! I wish I had known earlier that Seska and Chakotay had been lovers, because I would have played some scenes in previous episodes differently. In that story, she became more mature and craftier than I had initially envisioned her; Seska definitely has a lot of colors to her."<br> <br> - Robert Beltran himself felt that this episode succeeded in exposing certain facets of Chakotay's persona. The actor said of "State of Flux", "That episode lets you see Chakotay's vulnerable side. Normally, Chakotay can handle anything, but he made a mistake with Seska. The episode also showed Chakotay's loyalty in that he was willing to stand by her until it was absolutely certain that she was a traitor. I think that's one of the strong things about Chakotay: he's very, very loyal and it takes a lot to shake his belief in people. That's something the writers had captured well." Midway through Voyager's second season, Beltran further said of the relationship between Seska and Chakotay, "Given the way it fizzled out, which has not been made real clear, I think it was probably a mutual breakup. What had become a platonic relationship wasn't enough for Seska, who was obviously holding onto the notion of getting a romantic relationship started again. When she saw the door shut, I think, it made it easier for her to leave the Voyager and go ahead with the Kazon." In fact, the scene in which Seska departs Voyager, moments after criticizing both Chakotay and Janeway, was a moment that Beltran found memorable, saying, "I remember Seska turning into this awful, awfully scary person [....] She turned into this evil, malevolent person who Chakotay had never recognized in the Seska he thought he knew."<br> <br> - In order for Anthony De Longis to look the part of Maje Culluh, he had makeup applied to him by Makeup Supervisor Michael Westmore and also wore a headdress. Of his makeup, De Longis recalled, "We were sort of making do because they really hadn't done it before except en masse for the opening episode. Michael began by giving me this Klingon-looking forehead, and then he designed these pieces to build up my cheeks slightly along with a funny nose appliance that made it look as if I had nostril tusks. Some of the pieces didn't quite fit me, but I could still animate the prosthetics. We managed to find something that worked pretty well." The headdress that De Longis wore for this episode was mostly made out of sponges and dog chew toys. An amused De Longis remarked, "When I saw the hairpiece, I thought, 'Well, Culluh must be the leader because he has the biggest head of hair.'" According to De Longis, seeing how the production staff had designed Culluh's hair and makeup reinforced the realization that the actor would not be romancing Captain Janeway in this episode.<br> <br> - While trying to explain how the Kazon acquired Federation technology, Tuvok ponders the possibility of another Federation ship being brought to the Delta Quadrant. Captain Janeway explains that, to her knowledge, no Federation ships had gone missing in the Badlands prior to Voyager. However, it is later revealed (in the two-parter "Equinox" and "Equinox, Part II") that the USS Equinox had been pulled into the Delta Quadrant just as Tuvok guesses in this episode.<br> <br> - Torres' line claiming she doesn't exaggerate is an allusion to Scotty's habit of exaggeration, which led to his becoming known as a miracle worker. (TNG: "Relics")<br> <br> - While discussing whether Seska could be a Cardassian agent, Tuvok mentions that Starfleet has documented several instances of Cardassians using cosmetic alterations for the purposes of infiltrating an enemy. This is demonstrated in several episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, such as "Tribunal" (wherein the crew of space station Deep Space 9 arrests a Cardassian agent who has disguised himself as a former Starfleet officer as part of a plot to discredit the Federation), "Second Skin" (which involves an incident wherein Kira Nerys has been surgically altered to become a Cardassian in an ultimately unsuccessful Cardassian plot to convince her that she was an Obsidian Order agent) and "'Til Death Do Us Part" (in which Gul Dukat disguises himself as a Bajoran to earn the trust of Kai Winn).<br> <br> "You know, I'm really easy to get along with most of the time, but I don't like bullies and I don't like threats, and I don't like you, Culluh. You can try and stop us from getting to the truth but I promise you that if you do I will respond with all the 'unique technologies' at my command."<br> <br> - Kathryn Janeway<br> <br> "You were working for her [Janeway], Seska was working for them [the Cardassians]... was anyone on that ship working for me?"<br> <br> - Chakotay to Tuvok, on finding out that Seska was a Cardassian spy<br> <br> "I did it for you. I did it for this crew. We are alone here, at the mercy of any number of hostile aliens, because of the incomprehensible decision of a Federation captain. A Federation captain who destroyed our only chance to get home. Federation rules. Federation nobility. Federation compassion? Do you understand? If this had been a Cardassian ship, we would be home now. We must begin to forge alliances. To survive, we must have powerful friends. The Kazon-Nistrim were willing to be our protectors in return for some minor technology."<br> <br> - Seska<br> <br> Poster's Log: <br> <br> This episode obviously belongs to Seska, although Chakotay gets some good bits as well. His conversation with Tuvok at the end was especially good; Tuvok is obviously not really going to apologize for doing his duty, but he's also quite cognizant of needing to mend and maintain relationships with the Maquis crew that he "betrayed." I also liked how the episode kept the question of who gave the tech to the Kazon-Nistrim up in the air, floating the possibility of the evidence pointing to Seska as a red herring and possibly Carey being the one. (I think that B'Elanna should have also been a suspect, with her participation in the trajector acquisition of last episode, but anyway.) Seska and Chakotay's conversations, with her falling back on her explanations for her Cardassian genes until she doesn't have any more fallback positions, and her closing rant/mic-drop, were also very good. <br> <br> That having been said, there are a couple of things that I wish they'd done with her character: a) Made her a Cardassian-Bajoran "war orphan" of the type seen in the DS9 episode <a href="">"Cardassians"</a>. Not only would it have made her passing for Bajoran, with her story about getting the bone marrow transplant, a lot more plausible, it would also have given her some sympathy in terms of being yet another Trek biracial character (Spock, Alexander Rozhenko, Deanna Troi, B'Elanna), but one whose parent cultures were deeply antipathetic. She may have even gotten a sliver of sympathy from B'Elanna on those grounds. <br> <br> Coming off of that, b) I wish they'd kept her as a character on the ship. She could have still gone off and done her dragon lady turn with the Kazon-Nistrim, only to turn on them during the events of "Basics", and claim that that was her plan all along, with a number of the crew wondering if it really was or if she was just switching sides again because she decided that the murderhoboes weren't the winning team after all. It's not as if there hasn't already been <a href="">a sympathetic and well-done Obsidian Order character</a> in the franchise already (I'm assuming that Seska was an agent of the OO), and even though she would have a tough, if not impossible, nut to crack with a lot of the crew, especially the Maquis (and very especially B'Elanna), going by Garak's example, she could probably be pretty ingratiating when she needs to be. (Which would worry Janeway and Chakotay, especially as she would make her own point of view more popular in the process.) They could also have had her and Chakotay get back together, which would have thrown more monkey wrenches into relations between Chakotay and the crew, and yet still been more plausible than the Chakotay/Seven late-series romance. Alas, none of this was to come to pass. (I'm not sure if I should mention this, because I don't know if it's been substantiated, but one of the explanations that I've read for Seska and other recurring characters being killed off is that they were mostly Michael Piller's characters, and they got axed when he left the series. Could be true.) Yeah, I probably just need to write another fanfic to get it out of my system.<br> <br> Poster's Log, supplemental: The MA entry mentions that the Doctor doesn't say "Please state the nature of the medical emergency" when he's activated, and that it's explained in a later episode, but I had assumed that it was because the Doctor's program <em>was already running</em>--The Doctor is really a program resident inside a computer, and he "sees" with the sensors built into the sick bay; there's no reason why he needs to have a holographic manifestation, except to give people something to talk to. He should even be able to pick things up, as his hologram is a combination of light projection and force field projection (IIRC the explanation for the holodecks in the TNG tech manual). So he could be this invisible, intangible ghost if he wanted to, unless that sort of behavior is hard-coded into his program.<br> <br> Also, too, it's worth reading <a href="">Anthony De Longis</a>' (Maje Culluh) MA entry as another example of a Trek actor having a lot more serious dramacred than is suggested by what they get to do in the franchise. A "founding member of The Australian Light Horsemen", if you can but dig it!,2017:site.8609 Mon, 06 Feb 2017 09:18:52 -0800 Halloween Jack