From: YANJUNA@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu
Subject: Re: Saturday Night Review - "Chain of Command Part II"
Organization: Yale University
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 92 14:22:55 EST

In article <1992Dec26.3208.18208@dosgate>
"bernie wong" <bernie.wong@canrem.com> writes:
 
>
> -=> Ph9991 Manfr babbled to All and look what he said! <=-
>
> PM> SPOILERS ahead for "Chain of Command Part II"
>
> PM> SPOILERS!  -Do not cross the Cardassian border
>
>
> PM> Script(Dialog and Scenes alone): Average.  Good points were Gul
> PM> Madred's showing-off of Picard to his daugher, bad points were the
> PM> constant and very pointless use and reuse of the "four, five, SIX"
> PM> lights time after time.  As I said before, none of the techniques we
> PM> saw had any science fiction bend to them whatsoever, thus I consider
> PM> them below average for a science fiction series.
>
>I think you missed the point about the lights thing.  It's called
>reverse psychology.  I once saw a touching CBC documentary about schools
>around Canada which literally stole Indian children in order to teach
>them the "civilized" way of life.  The first thing they did was change
>their names.  No, you're not some foreign name like Dances With Wolves,
>you're now Bob Jones.
>
>They stripped their identity and punished them if they spoke in their
>native tounges.  The first thing (well, close to it) Gul Madred did was
>denounce Picard to Human.
>
 
   The Japanese in their pre-WWII colonialization days did similar things
in Korea (which the Japanese took over and colonized).  In the latter
era of the Japanese rule, they forced all Koreans to take Japanese names,
and all schools were run by the Japanese, and taught in Japanese.  The goal
was to try to wipe out all Korean culture, assimilating Koreans as (second
class) Japanese.
    Since we know that Cardassians use torture, and if we take the Canadian-
Japanese example of breaking cultures, one can just imagine the effect of
the Cardassian rule on Bajoran culture, not just physically (hunger, poverty),
but "spiritually" as well.  People like Ro Laren, who hate Cardassians with
a vengence, STILL THINK LIKE CARDASSIANS because that's the way they have been
taught, and that is the way that they were brought up, and the Cardassian
idea of "success" and "victory" will be the way the younger Bajorans think
what "success" and "victory" should be, even though that may not be the way
the traditional old-Bajorans think of them.
    DS9 people probably recognize a lot of this already, since two of the
repeating characters are supposed to be an old-timer Bajoran religious
leader and a Ro Laren clone.  I am looking forward to seeing this story arc
play itself out.   (one more comment below.)
 
>And then the lights thing -- that was all another brainwashing tactic.
>It's used all the time and is an important element of reverse
>psychology.  "How many lights do you see?  Four?  NO FIVE!  FIVE
>LIGHTS!"  And don't you get the irony?  At the end, Gul Madred gave
>Picard a choice of either freedom of torture.  All he had to do was
>answer that there were five lights.
>
>And in the end, he was so driven and convinced that there INDEED were
>FIVE LIGHTS that he was going to SAY that there were FIVE LIGHTS.  Gul
>Madred got to him so hard that he was going to crack.  And Gul Madred
>knew that it was too late -- if only he could have got to him sooner.
>However, Picard got to GUL MADRED first.
>
 
>It was a beautiful episode and I can't see why you didn't like it.
>
> PM> I think that pretty much covers it.  As an episode of TNG, or any
> PM> science fiction series come to that, this sucked wind, because it had
> PM> no story of its own to tell and no science fiction in what it did do.
>
>TNG does not have to be science fiction.  I think CoC Pt. II stood very
>well as a drama based in the 24th century.
>
> PM> Overall Grade for Part Two (scale of one to ten): 3
>
>I'd really like to see how the individual subjects were graded for you
>to give an overall ratings of 3...
>
>
   The original Saturday Night Review did not like the story because
it seemed to have no definite story, just an excuse to torture Picard
and the 2 parter seemed to be just a setup to DS9.
   The former has been covered enough (why send Picard? thread), but
as to the latter...
   To truly set up a LONG story arc, you do need set up.  We needed several
Klingon episodes and Romulan episodes to set up the "Redemption" arc;
and I suspect "I Borg (Borg Scissorhands)" will be a crucial setup for the
upcoming Borg arc.  These stories will have a hard time existing as stories
on their own.  (Perhaps not impossible, but certainly very very hard.)
Given that the Cardassian arc will be an important one in the future,
I don't see any particular problems spending two episodes to set it up;
it's not like they spent the two episodes giving a documentary on
the Cardassians.  IMO the Picard/Madred story was complete enough on itself
to excuse some dangling background threads which will probably be followed
up on later.
   (Though the part where Madred explains the Cardassian military rule
to Picard is absolutely chilling and intruiging.  I've heard several
conservative [of course] and even middle-of-the-road Koreans say the
same thing about military rule.  Hell, I think I agree with it, and sometimes
even liberal Koreans agree with it. It's one thing to complain about lack of
human rights, to say  "I'd rather be a hungry free man than a fully fed pig
in a controlled state.", and another to be ACTUALLY hungry.  Most of
the really sactimonious statements about free speech, human rights,
and freedom over material needs (hunger) comes from people who have
never been really hungry once in their lives.)
      [Jane Fonda and Ted Kennedy?-- pleeeeeease....]
 
Junsok Yang
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current