Quodo in Every Episode discussion: "Paradise"

[chacusha]

This week we're discussing... episode 2x15 "Paradise"!

Episode synopsis: Sisko and O'Brien crash-land on a planet where no electricity or electronic technology works, discovering that the human colony living there is run as a cult under their leader, Alixus, who wants Sisko and O'Brien to give up on the possibility of rescue and integrate into the community.

What The Boys are up to in this episode: Quark and Odo don't appear in this one. This was a problem because for the first time, I couldn't include a screencap for them!

One screencap from this episode:


Transcript: http://chakoteya.net/DS9/435.htm

Quodo fics tagged with this episode: None (https://archiveofourown.org/works?work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=Episode%3A+s02e15+Paradise+%28Star+Trek%3A+Deep+Space+Nine%29&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&commit=Sort+and+Filter&tag_id=Star+Trek%3A+Deep+Space+Nine)

Tell us:
- What did you think about this episode?
- Have you written a fic set during/after this episode?
- Do you know of any other fics set in or that build off this episode that weren't linked above?
- What do you see as the Quodo potential for this episode?

Anonymous comments are on, so feel free to chime in even if you don't have a Dreamwidth account! If you prefer, we are also available on Discord:
https://discord.gg/VaCnMYvKu6 (18+ proship Quodo Discord - there is a dedicated channel for this event)
https://discord.gg/Htz4crCdCt (general Quodo Discord)
Event info & rules
Fic masterlist

Comments

[chacusha]

Random thoughts:

- Loving all of these KiraDax interactions in season 2. They dry up a bit as the series goes on, but there are a lot in this season.

- I'm kind of wondering what happened with this episode as about half the cast is missing? Jake, Odo, Quark, and Bashir.

- Okay, overall thoughts: I find this episode very forgettable! Despite the memorable depiction of a cult leader, the lack of any influence on future episodes makes it easy to just mentally remove this from the timeline, and I think half the cast being missing makes it a bit more dull than the typical DS9 episode. The ending also kind of sucks. I get what they were going for here -- like, given these are colonists, they already have left all their other homes and connections behind to live somewhere else and so, now that the technology-suppressing field is lifted, there isn't really any reason for them to *leave* the planet because the only reason why they may have wanted to be rescued in the first place is to be free from the duonetic field that was making their life so hard. Now that they don't need to move elsewhere to lift the field, they might as well continue with their colony on this planet rather than be moved somewhere else in the Federation, but just need to figure out how they want to integrate technology into their colony again. But it just comes off as really demoralizing as all the colonists seem so beaten down and brainwashed that they don't show any anger and immediately all fall behind the next leader who basically starts to speak for all of them again. Not a single one of them just so momentarily mad that they're like, "fuck this planet and everyone here. I'm out," even if they could later calm down and decide to stay? I don't know. It just feels like either the ending is too rushed or trying too hard for a downer/bleak/nuanced ending that it ends up coming off as torture porn and ultimately (ironically) undermining the very nuance that they were trying to go for by making the colonists' refusal to leave the planet seem sad and just a continuation of their culty mindset when it could have seemed instead like a mature and well-considered decision.

- That said, I think the character work for Sisko and O'Brien is interesting here. O'Brien bonding with the other engineer and Sisko just refusing to bend or break where others would have fallen in line were interesting characterization notes.

- Also, minor thing, but I've always been confused what exactly Sisko and O'Brien are doing at the beginning of this episode. Finding possible planets for colonization in random parts of Federation space near Bajor or something...?


Thoughts on Quodo potential:

Well, with an episode like this, I think the main things you could do here are either (a) write a C plot for this episode focused on the missing characters (Quark, Odo, Bashir, and Jake) and maybe interacting with the A & B plots, or (b) imagine how Quark and Odo would react to being put into a plot like this. That's pretty vague, but I think there's a lot of possibility here!

[conuly]

The premise of this episode doesn't make any sense. If our cult leader was able to find a ton of sympathizers to help her sabotage her own ship, she could've found even more sympathizers to openly establish a low-tech colony. The Federation doesn't seem to actually stop people from leaving the Federation to start outlands colonies.

I mean, I get that she really just loved being a controlling cult leader, but still.

[chacusha]

Yeah... I didn't notice it, but now you point it out, it really doesn't make sense!! DX I guess you could explain it by Alixus power-tripping/preferring to convert others forcibly(???) rather than just make a colony of like-minded technology skeptics happy to keep the device on all the time, but the more likely explanation here seems to be the writers put in one too many plot twists and now the episode just doesn't make sense anymore... The original premise of colonists crash-landing on a forcibly low-tech planet they can't escape from would have worked fine...