This is great! It has everything! It's genuinely pretty far out and inventive, like the planet in the wormhole inhabited by entities who inhabit time in a non-linear fashion (this is how time works, this is what pleasure is, this is the concept of death, this is... baseball), and Sisko's great interactions with Picard, Kira, Quark etc. The political intrigue starts off straight away, and is entwined with a section with a soliloquy on the nature of the importance of the unknown to humanity. It has the Cardassians being amusing dickheads, it has tension and action...
I love it. For a two hour new series starter at the time, it must have been pretty incredible
This is great! It has everything! It's genuinely pretty far out and inventive, like the planet in the wormhole inhabited by entities who inhabit time in a non-linear fashion (this is how time works, this is what pleasure is, this is the concept of death, this is... baseball), and Sisko's great interactions with Picard, Kira, Quark etc. The political intrigue starts off straight away, and is entwined with a section with a soliloquy on the nature of the importance of the unknown to humanity. It has the Cardassians being amusing dickheads, it has tension and action...
I love it. For a two hour new series starter at the time, it must have been pretty incredible
I think a lot of people were thrown by how different it was from TNG.
But yeah, the DS9 premier is imo easily the best Star Trek premier. It's legitimately a solid episode of the series.
Sadly imo the wormhole aliens are never really done that well again. The writers didn't really know what to do with or how to write beings that experience time non-linearly.
This is great! It has everything! It's genuinely pretty far out and inventive, like the planet in the wormhole inhabited by entities who inhabit time in a non-linear fashion (this is how time works, this is what pleasure is, this is the concept of death, this is... baseball), and Sisko's great interactions with Picard, Kira, Quark etc. The political intrigue starts off straight away, and is entwined with a section with a soliloquy on the nature of the importance of the unknown to humanity. It has the Cardassians being amusing dickheads, it has tension and action...
I love it. For a two hour new series starter at the time, it must have been pretty incredible
Emissary is the second-best Star Trek pilot for my money (my favorite is "The Cage", my third favorite is "Encounter at Farpoint," which I think is actually really good).
The only things wrong with it are, firstly, hoo boy the lady playing Sisko's wife. Hoofa doofa she's not good.
And also there's an incredibly awkward edit where Gul Dukat and his flotilla arrive to menace the station literally between scenes. I thought Netflix had skipped ahead five minutes because it literally feels like an entire scene of them arriving and people reacting, etc, was cut. And idk, maybe it was! It happens around the 45-mionute mark IIRC so I wonder if it was a casualty of that thing that happens where a two-hour pilot gets two different edits so it can be aired in syndication either as the full two hours or as two regular-length episodes.
I'm in the middle of a DS9 rewatch and really I think the first...six or seven episodes of S1 are all very good. You can tell they deliberately did a thing where each story after the pilot puts the spotlight on one specific member of the main cast to flesh out their character - first Kira with her old war buddy, then Odo accused of a crime, then Bashir curing the aphasia virus, etc etc.
Not all of them are successful - O'Brien helping out the space fugitive is possibly the most boring (not the WORST, not the stupidest, but the boringest) hour of Star Trek ever filmed, and "Dax," while a good story, somehow focuses on...Sisko. And Odo. And Bashir and Quark. Basically on everyone BUT Dax, who spends the entire episode sitting in the corner smiling enigmatically - but it was a great way to kick off the first season of a new show.
+6
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
Susie Plaxon was unfairly hot. I wish they'd done more with Dr. Selar. It's not like having already played an alien character was ever an impediment to playing other alien characters.
Alien characters? Psh. Susan Gibney played both Leah Brahms and Erika Benteen with nothing but a change of change in outfit and haircut. (She was also seriously considered as the lead for Voyager, but they thought she was too young. They also considered her for Seven of Nine and the Borg Queen.)
H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited June 2020
Not an actress, but in the vein of people playing multiple different roles on Trek, British actor David Warner played two different secondary characters (Human Ambassador St. John Talbot, Klingon Chancellor Gorkon) in two back to back Star Trek films (V and VI). Then the following year he played a Cardassian Interrogator named Gul Madred in the two parter "Chain of Command" on Star Trek TNG just for kicks.
I like how the DS9 pilot casts Picard as a quasi-antagonist in order to be like, this ain't your daddy's star trek
I kinda don't! They just have him stand there awkwardly. He doesn't say anything or try to explain or commiserate. Which makes sense from a TV standpoint, it's not his story, it's Sisko's. But then why have him there? He's not the actual antagonist and none of that ever comes up again.
It just feels pointlessly edgy. Which is, I guess, strong 1993 energy.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I like how the DS9 pilot casts Picard as a quasi-antagonist in order to be like, this ain't your daddy's star trek
I kinda don't! They just have him stand there awkwardly. He doesn't say anything or try to explain or commiserate. Which makes sense from a TV standpoint, it's not his story, it's Sisko's. But then why have him there? He's not the actual antagonist and none of that ever comes up again.
It just feels pointlessly edgy. Which is, I guess, strong 1993 energy.
I agree with with the Greatest Gen guys had to say about Picard's time as Locutus, that there wasn't enough followed-up about that, that there had to be people who loathed Picard that we never got to see on TNG, about what Locutus meant to the greater population. And it was refreshing to have at least a tiny bit of follow-through on that, brief as it was, from Sisko.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
I like how the DS9 pilot casts Picard as a quasi-antagonist in order to be like, this ain't your daddy's star trek
I kinda don't! They just have him stand there awkwardly. He doesn't say anything or try to explain or commiserate. Which makes sense from a TV standpoint, it's not his story, it's Sisko's. But then why have him there? He's not the actual antagonist and none of that ever comes up again.
It just feels pointlessly edgy. Which is, I guess, strong 1993 energy.
I agree with with the Greatest Gen guys had to say about Picard's time as Locutus, that there wasn't enough followed-up about that, that there had to be people who loathed Picard that we never got to see on TNG, and it was refreshing to have at least a tiny bit of follow-through on that, brief as it was, from Sisko.
I would add that part of it is to show how Sisko’s grief at the start of Emissary impacts him to the point that he is a bit stuck in a cycle of negative emotions / obsession. having him lash out at someone we the viewers know is not the villain Siskin believes him to be—someone we love and respect at this point—at least tries to get that feeling home, even if it doesn’t fully succeed.
This is great! It has everything! It's genuinely pretty far out and inventive, like the planet in the wormhole inhabited by entities who inhabit time in a non-linear fashion (this is how time works, this is what pleasure is, this is the concept of death, this is... baseball), and Sisko's great interactions with Picard, Kira, Quark etc. The political intrigue starts off straight away, and is entwined with a section with a soliloquy on the nature of the importance of the unknown to humanity. It has the Cardassians being amusing dickheads, it has tension and action...
I love it. For a two hour new series starter at the time, it must have been pretty incredible
Emissary is the second-best Star Trek pilot for my money (my favorite is "The Cage", my third favorite is "Encounter at Farpoint," which I think is actually really good).
The only things wrong with it are, firstly, hoo boy the lady playing Sisko's wife. Hoofa doofa she's not good.
And also there's an incredibly awkward edit where Gul Dukat and his flotilla arrive to menace the station literally between scenes. I thought Netflix had skipped ahead five minutes because it literally feels like an entire scene of them arriving and people reacting, etc, was cut. And idk, maybe it was! It happens around the 45-mionute mark IIRC so I wonder if it was a casualty of that thing that happens where a two-hour pilot gets two different edits so it can be aired in syndication either as the full two hours or as two regular-length episodes.
I'm in the middle of a DS9 rewatch and really I think the first...six or seven episodes of S1 are all very good. You can tell they deliberately did a thing where each story after the pilot puts the spotlight on one specific member of the main cast to flesh out their character - first Kira with her old war buddy, then Odo accused of a crime, then Bashir curing the aphasia virus, etc etc.
Not all of them are successful - O'Brien helping out the space fugitive is possibly the most boring (not the WORST, not the stupidest, but the boringest) hour of Star Trek ever filmed, and "Dax," while a good story, somehow focuses on...Sisko. And Odo. And Bashir and Quark. Basically on everyone BUT Dax, who spends the entire episode sitting in the corner smiling enigmatically - but it was a great way to kick off the first season of a new show.
Yeah, I am watching them today. They are good! It's interesting as well how elements of later stories are seeded really early on. I think the first episode is the best, though. It's probably one of the better DS9 episodes overall, one of the better Star Trek episodes over all tbh.
Jennifer Sisko is not good but also, well
She's dead so no worries. Probably she is not served too well by "every scene you have will be with Avery Brooks chewing the scenery magnificently" either, like she looks so bland in comparison but honestly we are fortunate that the rest of the cast in general is pretty charismatic and energetic so they hold up.
What I love about the episode where they introduce Garak, too, is that basically he's set up from the get go as someone who basically knows exactly what is going on
He's like hey Bashir maybe you should take a look at those Klingons huh? Hmmmm? *big wide eyed smile*
Susie Plaxon was unfairly hot. I wish they'd done more with Dr. Selar. It's not like having already played an alien character was ever an impediment to playing other alien characters.
It was to the point of distraction. For a minor character, she stole a lot of the attention. I'm glad the actress got to come back, but I still missed Selar.
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I like how the DS9 pilot casts Picard as a quasi-antagonist in order to be like, this ain't your daddy's star trek
I kinda don't! They just have him stand there awkwardly. He doesn't say anything or try to explain or commiserate. Which makes sense from a TV standpoint, it's not his story, it's Sisko's. But then why have him there? He's not the actual antagonist and none of that ever comes up again.
It just feels pointlessly edgy. Which is, I guess, strong 1993 energy.
I agree with with the Greatest Gen guys had to say about Picard's time as Locutus, that there wasn't enough followed-up about that, that there had to be people who loathed Picard that we never got to see on TNG, about what Locutus meant to the greater population. And it was refreshing to have at least a tiny bit of follow-through on that, brief as it was, from Sisko.
Yeah, I thought it worked really well. It demonstrates how Sisko is still stuck on his dead wife, which is the point his whole arc throughout the episode. And Picard having nothing to say in return feels entirely right. There is nothing Picard could say to Sisko that would matter.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
DS9 was great but whenever someone starts going on about the prophets and shit my eyes begin to glaze over.
Like the Bajorans have this weird religion that really influences their politics and such, and everyone else is thinking "these guys are weird" but you can't just ignore it because they actually do consider it pretty intensely, or at least many of them do. Like Sisko at the beginning is essentially like "ugh this is all frustrating horseshit" and over time he learns to navigate it and even understand it a bit but largely it's something which influences Kira and such which everyone else doesn't... really understand? I think it's a cool way of throwing the Federation up against a society motivated by some pretty strong religious beliefs.
I like how the DS9 pilot casts Picard as a quasi-antagonist in order to be like, this ain't your daddy's star trek
I kinda don't! They just have him stand there awkwardly. He doesn't say anything or try to explain or commiserate. Which makes sense from a TV standpoint, it's not his story, it's Sisko's. But then why have him there? He's not the actual antagonist and none of that ever comes up again.
It just feels pointlessly edgy. Which is, I guess, strong 1993 energy.
I agree with with the Greatest Gen guys had to say about Picard's time as Locutus, that there wasn't enough followed-up about that, that there had to be people who loathed Picard that we never got to see on TNG, about what Locutus meant to the greater population. And it was refreshing to have at least a tiny bit of follow-through on that, brief as it was, from Sisko.
Yeah, I thought it worked really well. It demonstrates how Sisko is still stuck on his dead wife, which is the point his whole arc throughout the episode. And Picard having nothing to say in return feels entirely right. There is nothing Picard could say to Sisko that would matter.
I think that scene is one of the most important tone setters to make it clear this wasn't going to be a retread of the TNG. There's no catharsis and nothing gets resolved. Sisko holds an unfair grudge against Picard and Star Fleet, wears it on his sleeve, and Picard doesn't give a shit about any of that and he's not taking the bait, he just wants an officer in place that can and will do the job. Both parties leave none the happier than they were when they went in, but they've got their duties to perform and that's just how it is. It's also great because the scene starts out with Picard giving the politician's greeting, and you're expecting the classic TNG affable meet and greet, but it's jarringly abrupt how quickly the tone changes.
Sisko is upset and never will be okay with Picard. And Picard absolutely knows this, he can tell straight away. It's awkward and unpleasant and both men have to live with the consequences of the past, which can't just be let go or rationalised away, which is 1) super DS9 and 2) like the only time Picard actually eats a consequence to W359?
+4
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I like how the DS9 pilot casts Picard as a quasi-antagonist in order to be like, this ain't your daddy's star trek
I kinda don't! They just have him stand there awkwardly. He doesn't say anything or try to explain or commiserate. Which makes sense from a TV standpoint, it's not his story, it's Sisko's. But then why have him there? He's not the actual antagonist and none of that ever comes up again.
It just feels pointlessly edgy. Which is, I guess, strong 1993 energy.
I agree with with the Greatest Gen guys had to say about Picard's time as Locutus, that there wasn't enough followed-up about that, that there had to be people who loathed Picard that we never got to see on TNG, about what Locutus meant to the greater population. And it was refreshing to have at least a tiny bit of follow-through on that, brief as it was, from Sisko.
Yeah, I thought it worked really well. It demonstrates how Sisko is still stuck on his dead wife, which is the point his whole arc throughout the episode. And Picard having nothing to say in return feels entirely right. There is nothing Picard could say to Sisko that would matter.
I think that scene is one of the most important tone setters to make it clear this wasn't going to be a retread of the TNG. There's no catharsis and nothing gets resolved. Sisko holds an unfair grudge against Picard and Star Fleet, wears it on his sleeve, and Picard doesn't give a shit about any of that and he's not taking the bait, he just wants an officer in place that can and will do the job. Both parties leave none the happier than they were when they went in, but they've got their duties to perform and that's just how it is. It's also great because the scene starts out with Picard giving the politician's greeting, and you're expecting the classic TNG affable meet and greet, but it's jarringly abrupt how quickly the tone changes.
I wouldn't say that Picard doesn't care, I think the reminder of what he did as Locutus is deeply painful, he eats that pain and continues on as a professional because whatever personal pain he feels it won't get in the way of his job.
I think the scene does a lot of work other than just being "edgy."
One thing it does is help you understand that for all the great and good work Picard has done through his career, Picard is ultimately living in an ivory tower, and DS9 is down in the trenches. The reason TNG never has moments like this is entirely because of that ivory tower, that bubble away from the harsher realities of living on the outskirts of the Federation Utopia. TNG is, "we are good and honorable people, but if the rules don't permit us to help then our hands our tied." and DS9 is, "we don't have the seemingly infinite resources of those Enterprise folks, we have to make do; that means sometimes skirting around the rules a little just to get things done."
Hell, that one scene in DS9 even sets up Picard, the TV show. It shows us that when Picard is out among the edge cases of Federation society, when he steps out from the ivory tower, he gets put in the ball-kicking machine.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Sisko is upset and never will be okay with Picard. And Picard absolutely knows this, he can tell straight away. It's awkward and unpleasant and both men have to live with the consequences of the past, which can't just be let go or rationalised away, which is 1) super DS9 and 2) like the only time Picard actually eats a consequence to W359?
Satie calls him out on it, and it's kind of clear to my hearing that it's not part of her Romulan witch hunt but something that some of the admirals actually believe.
There's a big difference between Satie and Sisko. Sisko didn't share Satie's suspicion, but didn't particularly care either. He was there and he wasn't going after Picard, all Picard could really do was take it and then go sip Earl Grey about it.
Sisko is upset and never will be okay with Picard. And Picard absolutely knows this, he can tell straight away. It's awkward and unpleasant and both men have to live with the consequences of the past, which can't just be let go or rationalised away, which is 1) super DS9 and 2) like the only time Picard actually eats a consequence to W359?
Satie calls him out on it, and it's kind of clear to my hearing that it's not part of her Romulan witch hunt but something that some of the admirals actually believe.
There's a big difference between Satie and Sisko. Sisko didn't share Satie's suspicion, but didn't particularly care either. He was there and he wasn't going after Picard, all Picard could really do was take it and then go sip Earl Grey about it.
This tracks well with the beginning of First Contact, in which the Admiralty benches the friggin' Federation flagship out of fear that Picard is compromised (which he was, but not in the way the Admiralty suspected).
So I finally forced myself to finish watching Picard.
Like pretty much everyone else who posted here, I loved the beginning, the slow-burn world-building, the new window into the Romulans, the exploration of racism and xenophobia... and then it dropped all of that and took a 90-degree left turn into synths and galaxy-ending threats and I couldn't care less.
I also hated how easy it was for the Romulans to convince everyone that there was a galaxy-ending threat coming. That asshole Romulan ex-boyfriend comes over, throws rocks at the ship, tells them a galaxy-ending threat is coming, and everyone is suddenly ready to walk into the synth city with a bomb at his order? That's just bad writing. As was killing Picard to bring him back 5 minutes later in a new synth body... really everything in the last episode was poorly thought-out and poorly executed.
but yes, my tolerance for "we want to have the big emotional moment of a character dying but still, like, do more seasons" is basically zero at this point
but yes, my tolerance for "we want to have the big emotional moment of a character dying but still, like, do more seasons" is basically zero at this point
You would think they'd have learned their lesson after Nemesis tried and failed to be Wrath of Khan. What was not-Data called again? B4?
but yes, my tolerance for "we want to have the big emotional moment of a character dying but still, like, do more seasons" is basically zero at this point
You would think they'd have learned their lesson after Nemesis tried and failed to be Wrath of Khan. What's was not-Data called again? B4?
Man people are really racist about the Ferengi in DS9, and I guess just in the Trek setting in general, aren't they
Like a bunch of Ferengi turn up on DS9 and Kira is like "lock up the Silverware"
Yeah, it's bad enough that it has spawned decades long discourse about the Ferengi character design and antisemitism. Although in that vein I saw a really good quote from the DS9 commentary about it:
"The Ferengi are us. That's the gag, the Ferengis are humans. They're more human than the humans on Star Trek because they are so screwed-up, and they are so dysfunctional. They're regular people. And that was the fun of that.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
I'm surprised Trek hasn't gotten more flak about it honestly. The Ferengi were thinly veiled anti-semitical caricatures from the start. Sure, they are humans alright. Certain humans.
I've sort of come to the conclusion that the Ferengi were never knowingly written to be racist caricatures, but they were created in that same basic ur-framework; despised, exaggerated features and mannerisms, simultaneously all powerful and comically inept villains, and ultimately a collection of shallow stereotypes. On the wikipedia page on them, there's a quote from Armin Shimerman saying that whatever country he goes to, people ask if the Ferengi tie into their version of the local racism - Chinese in Australia, the Irish in the UK, Jewish people in the US, and so on.
And it basically goes back to TNG fucking up the theme of them so bad and deciding to just write them as comic relief, and that comic relief being based on a very 80's/90's sort of sitcom-like humor. It wasn't until well into DS9's run that they started fleshing them out as actual people and providing context for their actions and that sort of chaotic neutral alignment characters like Quark have, or showing how they're not all the same in Rom's character arc.
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
The Ferengi design has some uncomfortable stereotypes going on but they don't really play into the specific anti-semitic nature of it as time goes on imo. Especially in DS9. In TNG they are mostly just fucking annoying at every turn and I cringe every time they appear.
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that's good Plakson
And man
This is great! It has everything! It's genuinely pretty far out and inventive, like the planet in the wormhole inhabited by entities who inhabit time in a non-linear fashion (this is how time works, this is what pleasure is, this is the concept of death, this is... baseball), and Sisko's great interactions with Picard, Kira, Quark etc. The political intrigue starts off straight away, and is entwined with a section with a soliloquy on the nature of the importance of the unknown to humanity. It has the Cardassians being amusing dickheads, it has tension and action...
I love it. For a two hour new series starter at the time, it must have been pretty incredible
I think a lot of people were thrown by how different it was from TNG.
But yeah, the DS9 premier is imo easily the best Star Trek premier. It's legitimately a solid episode of the series.
Sadly imo the wormhole aliens are never really done that well again. The writers didn't really know what to do with or how to write beings that experience time non-linearly.
Bruce Wayne, 8 years old, standing over the bodies of his parents in Crime Alley. "You exist here."
Emissary is the second-best Star Trek pilot for my money (my favorite is "The Cage", my third favorite is "Encounter at Farpoint," which I think is actually really good).
The only things wrong with it are, firstly, hoo boy the lady playing Sisko's wife. Hoofa doofa she's not good.
And also there's an incredibly awkward edit where Gul Dukat and his flotilla arrive to menace the station literally between scenes. I thought Netflix had skipped ahead five minutes because it literally feels like an entire scene of them arriving and people reacting, etc, was cut. And idk, maybe it was! It happens around the 45-mionute mark IIRC so I wonder if it was a casualty of that thing that happens where a two-hour pilot gets two different edits so it can be aired in syndication either as the full two hours or as two regular-length episodes.
I'm in the middle of a DS9 rewatch and really I think the first...six or seven episodes of S1 are all very good. You can tell they deliberately did a thing where each story after the pilot puts the spotlight on one specific member of the main cast to flesh out their character - first Kira with her old war buddy, then Odo accused of a crime, then Bashir curing the aphasia virus, etc etc.
Not all of them are successful - O'Brien helping out the space fugitive is possibly the most boring (not the WORST, not the stupidest, but the boringest) hour of Star Trek ever filmed, and "Dax," while a good story, somehow focuses on...Sisko. And Odo. And Bashir and Quark. Basically on everyone BUT Dax, who spends the entire episode sitting in the corner smiling enigmatically - but it was a great way to kick off the first season of a new show.
Alien characters? Psh. Susan Gibney played both Leah Brahms and Erika Benteen with nothing but a change of change in outfit and haircut. (She was also seriously considered as the lead for Voyager, but they thought she was too young. They also considered her for Seven of Nine and the Borg Queen.)
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
I kinda don't! They just have him stand there awkwardly. He doesn't say anything or try to explain or commiserate. Which makes sense from a TV standpoint, it's not his story, it's Sisko's. But then why have him there? He's not the actual antagonist and none of that ever comes up again.
It just feels pointlessly edgy. Which is, I guess, strong 1993 energy.
I agree with with the Greatest Gen guys had to say about Picard's time as Locutus, that there wasn't enough followed-up about that, that there had to be people who loathed Picard that we never got to see on TNG, about what Locutus meant to the greater population. And it was refreshing to have at least a tiny bit of follow-through on that, brief as it was, from Sisko.
I would add that part of it is to show how Sisko’s grief at the start of Emissary impacts him to the point that he is a bit stuck in a cycle of negative emotions / obsession. having him lash out at someone we the viewers know is not the villain Siskin believes him to be—someone we love and respect at this point—at least tries to get that feeling home, even if it doesn’t fully succeed.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
This is why you don't make your dangerous mission team a husband and wife.
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Yeah, I am watching them today. They are good! It's interesting as well how elements of later stories are seeded really early on. I think the first episode is the best, though. It's probably one of the better DS9 episodes overall, one of the better Star Trek episodes over all tbh.
Jennifer Sisko is not good but also, well
She's dead so no worries. Probably she is not served too well by "every scene you have will be with Avery Brooks chewing the scenery magnificently" either, like she looks so bland in comparison but honestly we are fortunate that the rest of the cast in general is pretty charismatic and energetic so they hold up.
He's like hey Bashir maybe you should take a look at those Klingons huh? Hmmmm? *big wide eyed smile*
PSN: Bizazedo
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Yeah, I thought it worked really well. It demonstrates how Sisko is still stuck on his dead wife, which is the point his whole arc throughout the episode. And Picard having nothing to say in return feels entirely right. There is nothing Picard could say to Sisko that would matter.
Like the Bajorans have this weird religion that really influences their politics and such, and everyone else is thinking "these guys are weird" but you can't just ignore it because they actually do consider it pretty intensely, or at least many of them do. Like Sisko at the beginning is essentially like "ugh this is all frustrating horseshit" and over time he learns to navigate it and even understand it a bit but largely it's something which influences Kira and such which everyone else doesn't... really understand? I think it's a cool way of throwing the Federation up against a society motivated by some pretty strong religious beliefs.
I think that scene is one of the most important tone setters to make it clear this wasn't going to be a retread of the TNG. There's no catharsis and nothing gets resolved. Sisko holds an unfair grudge against Picard and Star Fleet, wears it on his sleeve, and Picard doesn't give a shit about any of that and he's not taking the bait, he just wants an officer in place that can and will do the job. Both parties leave none the happier than they were when they went in, but they've got their duties to perform and that's just how it is. It's also great because the scene starts out with Picard giving the politician's greeting, and you're expecting the classic TNG affable meet and greet, but it's jarringly abrupt how quickly the tone changes.
I wouldn't say that Picard doesn't care, I think the reminder of what he did as Locutus is deeply painful, he eats that pain and continues on as a professional because whatever personal pain he feels it won't get in the way of his job.
I think the scene does a lot of work other than just being "edgy."
One thing it does is help you understand that for all the great and good work Picard has done through his career, Picard is ultimately living in an ivory tower, and DS9 is down in the trenches. The reason TNG never has moments like this is entirely because of that ivory tower, that bubble away from the harsher realities of living on the outskirts of the Federation Utopia. TNG is, "we are good and honorable people, but if the rules don't permit us to help then our hands our tied." and DS9 is, "we don't have the seemingly infinite resources of those Enterprise folks, we have to make do; that means sometimes skirting around the rules a little just to get things done."
Hell, that one scene in DS9 even sets up Picard, the TV show. It shows us that when Picard is out among the edge cases of Federation society, when he steps out from the ivory tower, he gets put in the ball-kicking machine.
Satie calls him out on it, and it's kind of clear to my hearing that it's not part of her Romulan witch hunt but something that some of the admirals actually believe.
There's a big difference between Satie and Sisko. Sisko didn't share Satie's suspicion, but didn't particularly care either. He was there and he wasn't going after Picard, all Picard could really do was take it and then go sip Earl Grey about it.
I also hated how easy it was for the Romulans to convince everyone that there was a galaxy-ending threat coming. That asshole Romulan ex-boyfriend comes over, throws rocks at the ship, tells them a galaxy-ending threat is coming, and everyone is suddenly ready to walk into the synth city with a bomb at his order? That's just bad writing. As was killing Picard to bring him back 5 minutes later in a new synth body... really everything in the last episode was poorly thought-out and poorly executed.
But yes,
Like a bunch of Ferengi turn up on DS9 and Kira is like "lock up the Silverware"
Or when they tried to do it again in
(don't get me wrong I love Odo but he is a prickly customer)
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Yeah, it's bad enough that it has spawned decades long discourse about the Ferengi character design and antisemitism. Although in that vein I saw a really good quote from the DS9 commentary about it:
And it basically goes back to TNG fucking up the theme of them so bad and deciding to just write them as comic relief, and that comic relief being based on a very 80's/90's sort of sitcom-like humor. It wasn't until well into DS9's run that they started fleshing them out as actual people and providing context for their actions and that sort of chaotic neutral alignment characters like Quark have, or showing how they're not all the same in Rom's character arc.
Odo is a cop!