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UP2 Presents: Armageddon Game (AKA: Tim Horton's, You Tube Videos and Timbits)
This week the Crew of UP2 review the episode Armageddon Game.
O’Brien and Bashir help to rid two races of their biological weapons, however both governments want to make sure no technical knowledge of the weapons can survive.
What did the crew think of this episode? Was this the start of the O’Brien/Bashir Bromance? Have you ever tried Tim Horton’s Coffee? What is a Timbit? Did you like Keiko in this episode? How did we rate it?
Please join us, and don’t forget to leave your thoughts.
Large unsweetened ice tea with lemon, and 10 birthday cake timbits please.
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LikeDislikeI believe Tim was a Ferengi that passed away. You can buy bits of him all over Canada.
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LikeDislikeToo long. Didn’t watch. Just kidding, but I really didn’t. At least, not in the past week. But I had seen in on my Rewatch of Early Episodes of DS9, back when I wanted see episodes that I didn’t remember, making them sort of new. Most of those were awful, which is why I didn’t bother rewatching or remembering them, but this one was relatively good. Probably the best in the batch.
Sadly I don’t have that much to say about it. It’s good but somewhat middling. I’ve gone on record as a Keiko defender and while her B plot isn’t bad, I wasn’t very invested in it. Can I accuse it of retreading The Most Toys? I’ll ask my lawyers.
In the meantime, the B plot is your standard affair. Main characters that aren’t dead appear to be dead. Someone close is hellbent on proving that they’re alive around the time you might expect her to be in the denial stage of grief. Over the course of several weeks, her crazy theories get shot down, she talks with many grief counsellors and eventually moves back home. Wait, nevermind; this is TV.
It’s not that it’s bad, but it’s just not very interesting, at least not compared to Bashir and O’Brien being stuck together. Being reluctantly pulled away from the vastly more engaging A plot, has all the annoyance of getting pulled away from Spider-man 2 The Game to brush your teeth. Though that’s a bad comparison, because Spider-man 2 has an expansive city to explore and our heroes are stuck in Peter’s studio apartment.
Like it or not, it has that Bottle-episode problem where it’s way too obvious that they’re stuck with one location to shoot. Cool, fun, interesting world-building things are actively going on just on the other side of this cardboard set. I mean I like the set of the science lab, but the claustrophobic visuals clashed with the story.
But at the end of the day, the real story is of Bashir and O’Brien. And that was very good. Bashir still has his oddities that have mostly been tweaked into charming quirks (sans his diary. I mean he could’ve given her his dissertation or something. It was creepy enough with him musing to himself about how she secretly wanted to walk around the station half naked. “Run little mouse, run. I know you love the chase, but one day I will catch you.”)
Where was I? Right Bashir is getting much better and even his longing to be O’Brien’s friend is sympathetic as you can see that his arrogance hides his inability to connect with people on a personal level. And O’Brien is in a situation where he hasn’t really connected with someone on a deeper level since probably “the war.” He has work and he has family. He maintains good relations with coworkers, but that’s it.
In addition to all of the other baggage, connecting with Bashir means accepting that he’s gotten older, that he’s settled down when others are “free.” Bashir’s words hurt because he’s fighting those very thoughts. When he gets into a fight or when he hears other people comment on his marriage, it stings with a speck of truth.
But the beauty is that Miles can cut through all of the crap as see what’s truly important to him. Not with resignation, but with enthusiasm. Regardless of what anyone else thinks, regardless of all that he has lost, he’s gained something so much more. And that’s what saves the episode for me.
I’ll give it a 3.25. Don’t give me that look. That’s 5 paragraphs of complaining to 3 of praise.
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LikeDislikeI didn’t really get excited about this episode I’m afraid. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t all that great either. It happens, important universe shaping things happen between Bashir and O’Brien, but ultimately I could just move past this episode.
It’s actually frustrating in some ways, because the bulk of this episode is just… meh. There’s the massive problem with the main premise of “why don’t they just throw this stuff into the sun” which you all raised. I also still don’t know when the runabout was accessible and when it wasn’t. Couldn’t they just beam down and beam back up again? It was clearly working later on in the same episode.
There’s the lack of viewer mystery because we’re following The Next Phase style of storytelling rather than Necessary Evil. We know they’re not dead, and even with the motive still being a mystery it wasn’t quite engaging enough when you know they’ll be found and the harvester won’t kill O’Brien. So without that mystery you need interest around how they’re going to find out the truth and while The Next Phase had technobabbly galore, this just has Keiko thinking she knew the coffee habits of her husband.
Which she didn’t. That twist was probably the highlight of that entire plot. They discovered the truth by sheer fluke!
Okay, maybe that and Keiko’s snuff video fetish. Sorry guys, as creepy as Bashir’s foot fetish and diary writing may be, Keiko wanting to watch the video where her husband dies is the creepiest aspect of this episode!
Mind you, “Doctor Bashir is creepy and not hiding it whatsoever” should perhaps be another feature of this podcast. I think I was too busy wondering what was in the diaries and whether it was a truth or not to truly see how creepy that move was. He’s clearly playing the long game with Dax. Not entirely sure he plans to wait until her next host at this point, but you never know with this creep.
There’s the completely implausable “lets just stay here and hide rather than keep moving because budget” which goes against anything anyone else has ever said about trying to hide from bad guys who might trace your steps.
But that does mean that all the strength in this episode is in the dialogue between O’Brien and Bashir, which I have to admit is fantastic. It covers a multitude of bases, from the congratulatory back patting over who did a good job, to the differing lifestyles where Bashir is all about the… eh… ladies and O’Brien is all about the wife.
I’m going to disagree with that adventure story though, there’s no way marriage is the greatest adventure when you’ve got a kid! Come on Miles, Molly is surely up there as the greatest!
I actually found myself more drawn to Bashir’s stories than O’Brien’s because of that. Although I’m more Miles than Julian these days, I found myself thinking back to my younger days and remember when I used to write an emo-diary that would make you cringe if you read it today. I also remember thinking back to my own version of “the one that got away” – although I’ve no idea what her feet looked like.
If I’m honest though, as good as the Bashir and O’Brien dialogue was, my favourite aspect of this whole episode was Quark’s eulogy. I want him to read mine! Good customers, always paid their bar bill on time… oh yeah, and then some actual mushy stuff. It’s all in the timing.
It’s around this point in the podcast I found myself laughing at Melissa saying she goes to wakes a lot. Now, I know why that is, but in my head – and probably because I was still thinking about Julian’s party animal lifestyle – I started thinking of Wedding Crashers. There’s a spinoff I’d like to see – Julian crashing weddings to get the ladies!
Okay, three final small points before I give my rating.
One – is hair of the week the DS9 equivalent of forehead of the week?
Two – how come there’s always a communications device of some kind that someone can try and configure or repair? Is that a trope?
Three – are runabouts the DS9 equivalent of the red shirt?
Overall, I’m giving this a middle of the road three out of five. The Bashir and O’Brien aspect is terrific and character building to the point that I couldn’t mark this episode too low, but the rest of the episode was disappointing verging on boring at times.
And now I’m going to go and watch Tim Horton’s Batman. That was him, right?
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