S07.E15: Badda-Bing Badda-Bang

[John Potts]

Quote

The crew concocts a plan to help Vic Fontaine regain control of his Las Vegas holosuite lounge from a mobster who's bought the hotel.

I guess how much you like (or dislike) this episode will depend on your tolerance for both Vic Fontaine and "Holodeck gone awry" episodes (the latter of which DS9 has used somewhat sparingly - the last I can recall is Our Man Bashir, though I could well be wrong). I guess that shows the difference between a holodeck run by private enterprise and one run by the pseudo-socialist Federation... but that's probably a little heavy for what is, after all, a disposable piece of fluff. Also a little heavy was Sisko's "the real 60s Vegas was kinda racist!" which is undoubtedly true (it's been commented that Sammy Davis Jr wouldn't have been permitted to attend his own performances), but it rather skipped over how it was also incredibly sexist (Kira has to seduce - at least the PG13 version of seduce - the mark, while Ezri is flouncing around in an outfit that would get her arrested in half a dozen states) which I guess we're meant to be fine with? I guess it just felt a little out of place in an episode which is the very definition of disposable.

But once we get into Sisko's Seven, it does get swinging along. Of course, nothing goes right but naturally our heroes manage to wing it (Hi Gowron as the new money counter!) with O'Brien being the only one to suffer - then again, it IS a Holodeck program, so of course it does work out.

Nobody's ever going to claim this as a must watch, but as our last chance for a little levity before we get into the pretty grim final arc, it's worth a watch.

ETA: One minor point I really liked: when they talk about carrying the money out of the safe, Nog comments that $1m is heavy. As somebody who has worked counting cash, I can say how heavy £1m is (56kg or about 120lbs in 20s, 105kg or about 230lbs in 10s) and that's not a trivial amount of weight. I don't mind Odo being able to carry it, but too often stories act as if millions in cash weigh nothing, which it really doesn't.

Edited August 4, 2017 by John Potts

[jah1986]

This is actually one of my favorite season 7 episodes.  But I didn't hate Vic so that helps.  And you're right it was a last chance at levity.  I really liked how everyone that ever got any kind of help from Vic were right there to help him out. And James Darren and Avery Brooks singing at the end was very nice.

[blueray]

I'm in the group that likes this episode. It's a nice break from the Dominion war, but at the same time continues to build on what happened in earlier episodes. I like the tie back to why Nog, Odo and Kira wanted to help Vic. I love that it included most of the senior staff. I for some reason love the scene on opps where they are discussing what they should do and Sisko is like "get back to work".

[legaleagle53]

I put this one right up there with "Our Man Bashir" as one of the most fun episodes of the entire series. It was indeed a nice palate cleanser from all the Sturm und Drang that characterized the rest of Season 7 (well, this one and "Take Me Out to the Holosuite").

And yes, I loved that it was a direct shout-out to "Ocean's Eleven."

Edited August 5, 2017 by legaleagle53

[SVNBob]

19 hours ago, John Potts said:

"Holodeck gone awry" episodes

Technically, this wasn't a holodeck/suite going awry.  The safeties were still on, and the program was functioning exactly as it should have, according to the person that made it.  The whole bit with the mob taking over Vic's was a called a "jack-in-the-box" in the episode.  But we'd more commonly call it an Easter egg.  And it was meant to be relatively easy to find. 

Julian's friend that programmed Vic (side note: Reg?) set the "box" to go off after x amount of time had passed for the program: say half a million hours.  At first, Vic had been running like a normal program; a few minutes for a short set, up to a few hours so he could host a night on the town in Vegas.  At that pace, the box may never have gone off before the end of the war, if at all.  In total from when we first met him, Vic may have clocked around a thousand hours of run time... up until "Paper Moon."  As of then, Vic was running 26 hours a day (Bajoran clock) every day.  That's how the box got triggered a lot sooner than anticipated.

And it was still possible for them to shut the program down and reset.   Meaning they would have been able to reset the clock on the box to zero.  The problem was Vic would also be reset.  All his experience with everyone would be gone, from his persepective.  That's why they had to go through with the heist.  It wasn't to get rid of the mob; it was to get rid of the mob while keeping the Vic that they knew and knew them intact.

[readster]

Yeah, it was a very fun episode and I the entire point of the box was that the program was reaching an end and would reset. It was a nice build from previous seasons and since the rest of the final season would be leading to end of the war. It was a nice break. 

[iMonrey]

Well personally, this episode (and ones like it) actually make me angry. Seriously. It's the reason I'm much more critical of DS9 than any other Trek show, and why I've never done a full re-watch until now. I just think more than any other show, DS9 wastes opportunities. It's often credited with being much darker and much smarter than other Trek shows and then you get ridiculously silly crap like this, right in the middle of the final season. 

It's not just about Vic Fontaine or the holosuite in general, although I certainly have issues with both. It's that DS9 has such a serious premise and every season starts out with so much promise, but then the whole thing gets shelved until the last couple of episodes of the season. They go to the trouble of setting up this whole war with the Dominion and DS9 is the hot spot of that war, but then we have all these dumb throwaway episodes where everyone's playing baseball or some stupid shit like that. It's infuriating. The war must not be very urgent or important if the characters have this much time on their hands to waste.

Bottom line, the writers just didn't have the talent to see a serious story all the way through a 24-episode season. Or didn't have enough confidence the audience would keep tuning in if they stayed on track.

[readster]

18 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Well personally, this episode (and ones like it) actually make me angry. Seriously. It's the reason I'm much more critical of DS9 than any other Trek show, and why I've never done a full re-watch until now. I just think more than any other show, DS9 wastes opportunities. It's often credited with being much darker and much smarter than other Trek shows and then you get ridiculously silly crap like this, right in the middle of the final season. 

It's not just about Vic Fontaine or the holosuite in general, although I certainly have issues with both. It's that DS9 has such a serious premise and every season starts out with so much promise, but then the whole thing gets shelved until the last couple of episodes of the season. They go to the trouble of setting up this whole war with the Dominion and DS9 is the hot spot of that war, but then we have all these dumb throwaway episodes where everyone's playing baseball or some stupid shit like that. It's infuriating. The war must not be very urgent or important if the characters have this much time on their hands to waste.

Bottom line, the writers just didn't have the talent to see a serious story all the way through a 24-episode season. Or didn't have enough confidence the audience would keep tuning in if they stayed on track.

The real reason, was they were trying to do "away from the war" stories to not have every episode series and I do remember Rick Berman saying in an episode it was basically like when soldiers when to the local bar to unwind after battle like in Nam or WWII. Yet, in cases like this, it didn't work. 

[iMonrey]

The problem for me is that DS9 seems to aspire to be more than just a regular weekly adventure series like the other Trek shows. It has such great promise, particularly at the start and end of each season. But then it just lapses back into the same tedious formula the other shows follow. I guess I just want the show to be more than what it is. I had issues with TNG and Voyager too, but I never wanted them to be something more than what they were, like I do with DS9. That's why it's a bigger disappointment to me.

[rmontro]

On 8/4/2017 at 5:56 AM, John Potts said:

Also a little heavy was Sisko's "the real 60s Vegas was kinda racist!" which is undoubtedly true (it's been commented that Sammy Davis Jr wouldn't have been permitted to attend his own performances), but it rather skipped over how it was also incredibly sexist (Kira has to seduce - at least the PG13 version of seduce - the mark, while Ezri is flouncing around in an outfit that would get her arrested in half a dozen states) which I guess we're meant to be fine with?

I thought the episode was good, but not great.  I like Vic, but for some reason the gangster storyline just didn't grab me.

As you note, Sisko shows real rage over the state of racism in 1962.  That is utterly believable, and justifiable.  But I also get the impression that someone was thinking "We have a black captain, so let's make some comments on racism".  Whereas in Star Trek in the past, society has supposed to have evolved to the point where all this was behind us.  I kind of think that it sends a bigger message to have a black captain and NOT make any sort of special deal out of it, than to have him angry over civil rights injustices of the past.  Lt. Uhura was a landmark character because she simply did her job and was an equal.  That in itself sent all the message that was needed.

It was also a little odd that they said that the "jack in the box" acted according to the time - you could use a pistol but not a phaser.  Yet there is still a changeling and a Ferengi running around.  Not an error necessarily, but it feels kind of odd.

I kind of liked the look of shock and disappointment on Kira's face when she was trying to seduce Frankie Eyes' boss, but he rebuffed her.  Guess she wasn't used to her sexual powers of manipulation failing her.  :)

[legaleagle53]

8 hours ago, rmontro said:

As you note, Sisko shows real rage over the state of racism in 1962.  That is utterly believable, and justifiable.  But I also get the impression that someone was thinking "We have a black captain, so let's make some comments on racism".  Whereas in Star Trek in the past, society has supposed to have evolved to the point where all this was behind us.  I kind of think that it sends a bigger message to have a black captain and NOT make any sort of special deal out of it, than to have him angry over civil rights injustices of the past.  Lt. Uhura was a landmark character because she simply did her job and was an equal.  That in itself sent all the message that was needed.

But the original series did address the issue of racism through Uhura.  There was one episode when the crew met a facsimile of Abraham Lincoln, who, when he met Uhura, called her "a charming little Negress" and then promptly apologized for using what he thought she would have interpreted as a racial slur. She in turn graciously and sincerely assured him that no offense had been taken because society had evolved to the point that such words no longer had the power to offend that they once did.  And, of course, the classic episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" met the subject of racism head-on by featuring two members of the same species whose mutual hatred was both the product and the cause of a race war that, as the episode revealed, had wiped out their home planet's entire population by the time they returned to their planet.  When Uhura asked Kirk whether that racist hatred was all that they'd ever had to motivate them, Kirk sadly observed that it was now all they had left.

[rmontro]

23 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

But the original series did address the issue of racism through Uhura.  There was one episode when the crew met a facsimile of Abraham Lincoln, who, when he met Uhura, called her "a charming little Negress" and then promptly apologized for using what he thought she would have interpreted as a racial slur. She in turn graciously and sincerely assured him that no offense had been taken because society had evolved to the point that such words no longer had the power to offend that they once did.

Okay, I had forgotten the incident with Lincoln, but that just proves my point.  There was no anger in that situation, because everyone has moved beyond it.  Like you point out, Uhura states that those words no longer had the power to offend.  That directly contrasts with Sisko, who is seething about the state of civil rights in 1962.  That may be raw and fresh in our minds, but obviously it isn't by the time of TOS, and DS9 took place well after that.

I was going to mention "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", but decided not to, for brevity's sake.  Trek has traditionally dealt with issues like racism through the alien species that they meet.  Although Spock also experienced prejudice on more than one occasion for being Vulcan.  That isn't exactly racism, it's more like "species-ism", but the fact that the attitude is there seems to indicate some inconsistency in the writing.  Apparently humans have all accepted each other, but that doesn't necessarily extend to our allies.

[SVNBob]

4 hours ago, rmontro said:

That directly contrasts with Sisko, who is seething about the state of civil rights in 1962.  That may be raw and fresh in our minds, but obviously it isn't by the time of TOS, and DS9 took place well after that.

Well, it was rather fresh in Sisko's mind, since he'd had both of his "Benny Russell" experiences within a year of the events of this episode.

[rmontro]

4 hours ago, SVNBob said:

Well, it was rather fresh in Sisko's mind, since he'd had both of his "Benny Russell" experiences within a year of the events of this episode.

Fair point.  Although I was kind of talking about the writers' decision to tell this sort of story in this manner, specifically because DS9 has a black captain.  I know DS9 is the "dark" show, but Trek has generally taken an optimistic view of the future.   From what Uhura said, all those wounds had long since been healed (optimistic, indeed).  But very good point.

I did enjoy that first Benny Russell story quite a bit.  The second one where he was in the insane asylum was a bit cheesy.