DS9: All a dream?

[banquo's_bumble_puppy]

http://www.trektoday.com/news/160606_01.shtml

interesting twist....would have made a better ending....

[Jason Thompson]

Ugh. 'It was all a dream' endings are awful. It would have been especially out of place in a series that was a spin-off of an existing franchise. Ending DS9 that way would effectively have written off the rest of Star Trek too, given the amount of overlap.

[Peteman]

Yeah. It is such a copout no matter the setting, unless we're dealing specifically with a dream-based or have substantial hints that this is the case.

[banquo's_bumble_puppy]

look at it this way....

Star Trek: Nemesis - bad dream
Star Trek: Voyager - very bad dream

Berman and Bragga.....aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeee

[zenbudda]

interestingly enough, there is a 4400 (that's what you call one of the 4400 people who were abducted, "a 4400") that has the ability to create alternate worlds. the show hasnt' really expanded on the concept yet. other than a woman has the ability to live a lifetime in a matter of minutes with someone else.

[ToSeek]

The link isn't loading for me, but I can't say I like the idea. But then DS9 is my favorite Trek after the original.

[parallaxicality]

It was all a dream. So was all of Star Trek. It was all Tommy Westphall's dream.

Starships in Star Trek were manufactured by the Yoyodyne corporation, which appeared in "The John Larroquette Show". The main character of that show was one of Frasier Crane's callers. Frasier was a spinoff of Cheers, which was visited by St Elsewhere's Tommy Westphall. And of course, we all know that St Elsewhere turned out to all be a dream in Tommy Westphall's head. Therefore everything connected to that show was also.

There's an interesting guide to the Tommy Wesphall universe here:

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache...k&ct=clnk&cd=1

[Gillianren]

You know, that's one of the two endings we were absolutely forbidden to use by one of my English teachers in high school. That and "and then everyone died." Both were considered to mean, in essence, "I don't know how to end this story."

[SeanF]

It was all a dream. So was all of Star Trek. It was all Tommy Westphall's dream.

Starships in Star Trek were manufactured by the Yoyodyne corporation, which appeared in "The John Larroquette Show". The main character of that show was one of Frasier Crane's callers. Frasier was a spinoff of Cheers, which was visited by St Elsewhere's Tommy Westphall. And of course, we all know that St Elsewhere turned out to all be a dream in Tommy Westphall's head. Therefore everything connected to that show was also.

There's an interesting guide to the Tommy Wesphall universe here:

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache...k&ct=clnk&cd=1

That doesn't make any sense. A certain entity existing in a dream doesn't mean that entity doesn't exist in reality.




Okay, I'm taking it too seriously, aren't I?

[ElWampa]

You know, that's one of the two endings we were absolutely forbidden to use by one of my English teachers in high school. That and "and then everyone died." Both were considered to mean, in essence, "I don't know how to end this story."

I hate to say it, but that's how I felt about the end of the Dark Tower series.

[Van Rijn]

You know, that's one of the two endings we were absolutely forbidden to use by one of my English teachers in high school. That and "and then everyone died." Both were considered to mean, in essence, "I don't know how to end this story."

In general, Deus Ex Machina type endings are bad. A few are:

A time travel reset.

A superbeing/God appears and fixes things.

An ally suddenly appears at an unlikely point.

A character suddenly finds superpowers.

A previously unmentioned technological fix is developed.

An artifact of great power is discovered.

It was all a dream.

Er . . . how many of those have been in Star Trek?

[Van Rijn]

I hate to say it, but that's how I felt about the end of the Dark Tower series.

I'm not familiar with that series. However, Wiki has a list of examples with the deus ex machina plot device:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...china_examples

And it says:

"Stephen King's Dark Tower series contains a particularly explicit Deus Ex Machina - The Author himself (Who is introduced as a character in the plot) writes a note which is absorbed into the protaganist's world and appears in time to help rescue Susannah and Roland from a seemingly hopeless situation in the final book. The note itself contains the words "Here comes the Deus Ex Machina"."

[Tobin Dax]

look at it this way....

Star Trek: Nemesis - bad dream
Star Trek: Voyager - very bad dream

Berman and Bragga.....aieeeeeeeeee[snip]eeeeeeee

That has nothing to do with DS9, though, especially the ending.

I can see why Behr toyed with the idea of having DS9 end as Benny Russel's dream, but it would have been a very bad move. It works better having that as a vision by the Prophets.

[GDwarf]

In general, Deus Ex Machina type endings are bad. A few are:
A superbeing/God appears and fixes things.

Which is, of course, where the term got it's name. Apparently some (most?) early Greek plays had incredibly tangled plots with no real solution, so at the end a God would be lowered onto the stage and would fix the problems.

[Gillianren]

Which is, of course, where the term got it's name. Apparently some (most?) early Greek plays had incredibly tangled plots with no real solution, so at the end a God would be lowered onto the stage and would fix the problems.

Some. They'd literally lower some guy in a chariot onto the stage.

Yeah, Dark Tower's about the only Stephen King other than the books he wrote while out of his gourd on cocaine that I can't really get into.

[Krel]

The best it-was-all-a-dream ending was in Bob Newhart's show "Newhart". He awakens in bed with in Susan Pleshette, and tells her about his dream of being an inn owner in Vermont.

David.

[HenrikOlsen]

For those who don't know and can't be bothered to imdb for it, Susan Pleshette played Bob Newhart's wife in "the Bob Newhart Show", so this ending essentially makes the later show a dream happening in the earlier one.

[Tobin Dax]

The best it-was-all-a-dream ending was in Bob Newhart's show "Newhart". He awakens in bed with in Susan Pleshette, and tells her about his dream of being an inn owner in Vermont.

David.

I think I have to agree with you on that one.

[banquo's_bumble_puppy]

the thing that really bugs me is that DS9 never got a movie....it deserved one

[Jim]

The best it-was-all-a-dream ending was in Bob Newhart's show "Newhart". He awakens in bed with in Suzanne Pleshette, and tells her about his dream of being an inn owner in Vermont.

David.

Ah, but the tag line!

Dick to Emily: "You should wear more sweaters."

And that wasn't all...
http://www.poobala.com/bobandnewhart.html

[Kesh]

In general, Deus Ex Machina type endings are bad. A few are:

A time travel reset.

I've only seen this one properly done twice in my entire life. One is an episode of Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital. And this one is only acceptable to me because it's more of a spiritual "second chance" than actual time travel.

Much to my chagrin, the other is an episode of Star Trek: Voyager titled "Year of Hell." This one actually stood up to me and the reason for the 'reset' actually made sense in the context of the story.

I'm excluding the Doctor Who series, as the entire premise of the show is time travel.

A superbeing/God appears and fixes things.

An ally suddenly appears at an unlikely point.

A character suddenly finds superpowers.

A previously unmentioned technological fix is developed.

An artifact of great power is discovered.

It was all a dream.

Er . . . how many of those have been in Star Trek?

All of them. :P

[ToSeek]

Well, there's always one of the Moriarty Next Gen episodes where Picard says at the end, "Who knows - we could ourselves be living in a box on someone's table." Very few people seemed to catch the irony of this.

[parallaxicality]

I just did.

My favourite "It was all a dream" Trek ep was "Frame of Mind". It wasn't really a "reset"; if anything the world Riker woke up in was worse than the one he was dreaming about.

[HenrikOlsen]

My favourite "all a dream" TV episode was the Buffy ep. where she kept flipping between the Buffyverse and a nuthouse where she was starting to recover from a severe delusional episode.
In the end she had to choose which of the realities where "real" and she picked the nuthouse as being the delusion because it had all the easy choices.
Last scene was of a catatonic Buffy in a padded cell with a doctor telling her parents "We've lost her".

[Ara Pacis]

Makes you wonder if that was the way that Guinan's people saw the universe

[Jason Thompson]

an episode of Star Trek: Voyager titled "Year of Hell." This one actually stood up to me and the reason for the 'reset' actually made sense in the context of the story.

Yes indeed. It's a shame it was so obviously telegraphed in part 1 (this being Star Trek, did anyone believe they were going to leave the ship in such a state and one of the main cast blind for the rest of the show?).

I'm excluding the Doctor Who series, as the entire premise of the show is time travel.

And yet the time reset plot resolution features hardly at all, in over 40 years of the show. In fact, in the original outlines for the series development it was specifically proscribed, since if the Doctor can just pop back in time to fix things there is no drama.

[Gemini]

All Good Things was also pretty good.

[Matherly]

Batman: the Animated Series had a pretty good "its just a dream' episode called 'Perchance to Dream' (the Hamlet reference alone bumped it up a notch).

The basic idea is the Bruce Wayne wakes up to find his parents still alive. It seems like his life is perfect (running Wayne Enterprises, engaged to Selina Kyle, someone else is Batman), but he just can accept that all of his memories of Batman were just a nightmare. He fights his way out of the dream to find Jervis Tetch (aka The Mad Hatter) had put him under the control of a device that makes the victim play out her/his fondest dream. It worked because the 'its just a dream' component was foreshadowed enough not to be a cop-out at the end of the episode.

To be honest, the 'techno-dream' plot device (also seen on Star Trek et al) is really the only time the 'it just a dream' cliche works.

[HenrikOlsen]

Actually, I'd say that unless it leads to character development (throught selfrealization) or plot development (by realizing something about an opponent), then such an episode is just filler by a lazy writer.

[Ara Pacis]

I think all of DS9 was just a dream, and TNG and TOS too

Voyager, on the other hand, was a nightmare.