My obsessively detailed reread of Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles is over, but we want to keep on talking about the books. I’m going to post the occasional continuation post when the last one gets too long or if there’s something to say. Spoilers for all of The Wise Man’s Fear and The Name of the Wind—these discussions assume you’ve read all of both books, and frankly they won’t make the slightest bit of sense if you haven’t. But we welcome new people who have read the books and want to geek out about them. This post is full of spoilers, please don’t venture beyond the cut unless you want them.
Abbreviations: NW = The Name of the Wind. WMF = The Wise Man’s Fear. D3 = Day Three, the forthcoming final volume. K = Kvothe or Kote when I can’t figure out what to call him and I’m feeling Kafkaesque. MT: Myr Tariniel. D = Denna, 4C = Four Corners, CTH—that thing I can’t spell! IID3Y = Is it Day Three Yet?
Useful links: The Sleeping Under the Wagon post. The reread index. The map. The timeline. Imaginary Linguistics.
Sorry there has been such a huge delay in posts. I’ve been writitng. I’m not promising to update these threads regularly unless there’s anything to say, like for instance news about D3 or anything like that. But I will try to do one occasionally so we’re not loading a thread with a five hundred comments every time we have a new thought about Master Ash or what Shapers are.
Anyway, I’m excited to say that Patrick Rothfuss is guest of honor at Vericon this year, March 21st-23rd, at Harvard, further information at the link. I’ve heard rumours that he’s going to be donating some very cool stuff to the auction. And I’m going to be at Vericon myself.
Vericon is a cool little con—I was there last year—run by young people. When people complain there are not enough young people in fandom they’re not looking in the right place. Vericon is one of those right places. It’s run by university students and recent graduates, and it’s a ton of enthusiastic fun. Naturally, as a con, it has its own traditions, and one of those traditions is making a gift for the Guest of Honor.
This year, Ada Palmer is making a mask for Pat. (Making wonderful masks is one of her many talents.) She asked me for suggestions as to what that mask should be. My first thought was that it should be the Encanis mask from Tarbean, with hints that Encanis is in fact Haliax. That would be great because it’s an actual mask from the book, and I can’t think of any other specific masks in the books—but I may have missed some? But reading through the description of the Encanis mask it’s just a black devil mask, which would be easy to make but perhaps not sufficiently special.
So I decided to ask you all for suggestions. I’m sure you have ideas! We know Pat doesn’t read this, so it’ll still be a surprise. What would make a really awesome mask for him?
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published three poetry collections, nine novels, most recently the Hugo and Nebula winning Among Others, and a collection of her blog posts, What Makes This Book So Great. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
So, did you really enjoy Q getting decked by Sisko, or what?
hahahahahahahahahaah
At first I really hated the idea of Q. As a sci-fi fan, I hate the way sci-fi and fantasy are often lumped together in the same category and I saw an omnipotent alien as a way to sneak an element of fantasy into a sci-fi series. And that did happen: in the TNG episode “Qpid” — the last time we saw Vash — Q took the Enterprise crew on a romp through Sherwood Forest.
Nevertheless, in time I became a big fan of John de Lancie. His fun, charming and one-of-a-kind performances earned him complete ownership of the role. I couldn’t imagine another actor playing Q. This episode is not de Lancie’s best; it aired about the same time as the TNG episode “Tapestry” and I always thought that “Tapestry” was the stronger performance. Still, I enjoyed this one, too.
Vash is an interesting character because she represents one of the first efforts to steer away from Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future where humans are no longer motivated by profit and material gain. That vision was most evident in the first season of TNG and it often had a whiff of smug triumphalism about it. The franchise was already backing away from that vision in TNG Season 3 when we first met Vash. In “Q-Less” — the last time we see Vash in TV Star Trek — the transition is complete. Vash may very well be a misfit in 24th century human society, but misfits make interesting characters and one of the refreshing things about DS9 is the way characters are given more individuality and are not merely stereotypes of their respective cultures.
I liked the sexual tension between Vash and Bashir. It looked like Julian was about to get lucky but then Q intervenes and sends him to bed — alone! The oo-mox scene with Vash and Quark was hilarious.
Q is seriously my ALL TIME FAVORITE SNG charachter ever!! I don’t think I’ve disliked a single episode he’s been in. He’s especially amazing in Voyager!! Him and Janeway crack me up lol
@2: I tend to agree: DeLancie’s performance was the only thing that made the ludicrous concept of Q palatable.
But this episode illustrates how the writers often seemed to use Q as a sort of audience stand-in, voicing the criticisms you’d hear from viewers and basically giving the characters a chance to respond to those criticisms. The fact that he actually used the word “technobabble” in onscreen dialogue makes that clear; until then, that was just a bit of fan/producer vernacular, a teasing nickname for the technical dialogue. Q was almost a metatextual character, coming ever so close to breaking through the fourth wall and acknowledging the audience.
On the pre/post-ganglionic thing, I never felt that later fix was necessary. I never took his line here to mean that he mistook the actual items for one another, but rather that he misread a written question, thinking it said one thing when it actually said another.
Why does the Daystrom Institute, which is named for a computer scientist, have an archaeology department? I think that once the Institute was introduced, there was too much tendency by later writers to use it as a catchall science institution, which is a case of small-universe syndrome.
This in some ways seemed more like a half-baked idea than a fully thought out episode. “Hey, what if Q shows up on DS9?” says one writer. “But he has Vash with him” says another. “Bring her along and let her be disreputable with Quark” says the first. “What’s the problem in the episode?” says the second writer. “Make something up- it’s a Q episode… just technobabble a b plot…”
While I love the interaction between Q and Sisko (it further differentiates that Sisko is not Picard just as Picard was not Kirk) but there really isn’t anything happening here. As you pointed out, Vash has chemistry with just about everyone except Picard, but I think that’s because Picard is a very responsible and mature individual and you can’t quite imagine him involved with someone as irresponsible and immature like Vash. Picard is simply too serious to get involved with Vash, whereas Quark is appropriately irresponsible, Bashir is appropriately immature (and young enough to be motivated by lust) and Sisko isn’t so “by the book” like Picard is.
To follow up on CLB’s point in #4 about the Daystrom institute, I agree with your basic issue. The only thing I could think is that like Harvard University, which was built as a divinity school and remained as such for almost 170 years before it was secularized. Perhaps Daystrom started out as a computer/AI institute but became involved in other areas as it grew. A real world example is the US’ supercomputer network, run by the National Science Foundation. The supercomputer network is run by NSF’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure but it touches on almost every other scientific discipline because of the growing abilities of computer based experimentation and modeling. But unless that’s what happened, Daystrom institute has basically been a catchall for non-Starfleet or Vulcan scientific research.
@@.-@ and @5: As for the Daystrom Institute, consider MIT. It is generally considered an engineering/applied science school; yet it has a stellar linguistics department and even the philosophy department is well regarded. Nevertheless, in a Federation of hundreds of worlds one would expect a number of top-notch research institutes. Perhaps the Daystrom Institute is the MIT of 24th century Earth and it appeals to Vash because Earth is home.
As much as I love John Delancie, I generally hate Q episodes (“Tapestry” is a major exception, perhaps because it’s never entirely clear whether or not it is a Q episode). But here at least he keeps this from becoming merely a Vash episode. Vash is never a good idea. Hetrick’s lack of on-screen chemistry with Patrick Stewart is odd, since they apparently had a fair amount of it off screen, even being engaged at one point. Still, that lack of chemistry poisoned the character for me forever. She’s never written very well either.
I do like that neither Vash nor Q recognize O’Brien at first. We know him, because he regularly had lines to speak and interacted with the main cast. But for guests of the week, he really was just the guy who pushed the buttons for the transporter (which meant that Q really never would have had anything to do with him).
@@.-@: I really like your explanation for Bashir screwing up the question by misreading it. Happened to me in high school where I flipped biography and autobiography in a test because I was going too fast. Unfortunately, the way the line is written it is difficult to interpret it that way. I think I’ll do so anyway, though.
One of my favorites from season 1. Sisko decking Q is also a favorite scene of mine.
Bobby
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I had stopped watching early in the 1st season, so when I decided to pick it back up again, this was the last episode I remembered watching, so I started back up with the next ep. (Unfortunately I had already seen the next 3 eps. Just didn’t remember that I had.)
I always thought Q had a personal connection to Picard, but his appearance here made me wonder if Q pestered other Starfleet ships and outposts, not just those that happened to have a tv show. I haven’t read any of the novels, so I don’t know if that’s been addressed. I suppose it probably has.
I see the bug lunky alien that’s always hanging about is in the picture with Q and Sisko dueling (no idea whatsoever what his name is). Is this his first appearance? Personally I think he should have a section in the recap just letting us know if he appeared and where he was hanging out (you could even mention what he was doing, which would just be hanging out).
I always loved this episode because it really underscored the difference between DS:9 and TOS/TNG, as well as between Sisko and Kirk or Picard. “Picard would never hit me!”
DS:9 was a much darker, more violent – and yes, far more exciting – series. Sisko isn’t the Gorn; I seriously doubt Kirk & Picard together could take him in a fistfight.