“Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang”
Written by Ira Steven Behr & Hans Beimler
Directed by Mike Vejar
Season 7, Episode 15
Production episode 40510-566
Original air date: February 24, 1999
Stardate: unknown
Station log: Bashir and O’Brien are at Vic’s Place inviting Fontaine to join them in the Alamo program. (Why he gets invited and poor Lieutenant Ilario doesn’t is an exercise left to the viewer.) Fontaine starts singing “Alamo,” but in mid-song the décor changes and a bunch of female dancers come slinking on the stage. A gentleman named Frank “Frankie Eyes” Chalmers, an old acquaintance of Fontaine’s from their childhood in Philadelphia, has bought the hotel and fired Fontaine. His bodyguard, Tony “Cheech” Cicci is happy to physically throw Fontaine out if he won’t leave on his own. O’Brien’s attempt to delete Frankie and Cheech and to freeze the program both fail.
Bashir consults with Felix, who designed the program, and finds out that Frankie Eyes is a “jack in the box,” something to shake the program up. If they can get rid of Frankie, Vic’s Place will go back to normal. But it has to be period-specific, and it has to be done in such a way that will keep Fontaine safe—so they can’t, for example, just shoot Frankie, because the mob will retaliate (Frankie is a made guy).
Bashir’s discussion of this in Ops with O’Brien, as well as Kira (who owes her relationship with Odo to Fontaine) and Nog (who owes Fontaine for his recovery from PTSD after losing his leg) is interrupted by Sisko, who reminds them to get back to work. To Sisko’s surprise, Yates is also worried about Fontaine, at which point we learn that Sisko has never gone to Vic’s Place, even though Yates loves it.
O’Brien and Bashir go to the holosuite to see that Fontaine’s been beat up. Cheech wanted to remind him to hurry up and vacate his suite. Bashir treats him and tells them that Odo and Kira are checking out the lounge to see what Frankie has done to the place. While Odo hangs out with Cheech and the other thugs and does shapeshifting tricks, Kira plays blackjack. Frankie Eyes comes over, lets her win, and flirts.
They learn that Frankie was fronted the money to buy the place by Carl Zeemo, a big-time gangster from back east. Zeemo is coming to Vegas—where he’s never been—to get his first payment from Frankie in person. So the plan is to make sure Zeemo never gets his cut by robbing the casino.
Kira uses Frankie’s interest in her to check out the count room. Yates flirts with the counting room guard. Odo gets Cheech to hire Dax as a waitress. Fontaine convinces Frankie to let him stay if he brings in some high-rollers.
Sisko is appalled that Yates is so invested in this program, and he finally explains why: the real Las Vegas in 1962 was not a good place to be someone with darker skin. The Vic’s Place on the holosuite is a lie—but Yates argues that the program shows how it could have been, and should have been.
The gang has a plan in place, but they’re short one person. Worf won’t go for it, and Quark views Fontaine as his competition, so he won’t help, either. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Sisko agrees to help out, having been convinced by Yates’s argument.
Kira’s job is the distraction: she’s to keep Frankie occupied and away from the casino. Sisko will be the first high-roller Fontaine brings in, and he’ll throw enough money around the craps table to draw a crowd. At 11:45 every night, one of the count men always calls his mother, while the other count man orders a martini, which Bashir will spike and Dax will bring to him on a tray that is really Odo. Yates and O’Brien distract the guard with a story about O’Brien stealing her chips. When the count man with the gimmicked drink makes a very fast trip to the bathroom, Nog—disguised as a janitor—goes in and opens the safe using his mad Ferengi skillz. Odo will change from a tray to a person carrying a briefcase, into which he and Nog (changing his disguise to that of a security guard) will put all the money, and then casually and calmly exit the casino.
They all practice: Nog works on his safe-cracking, Sisko practices dice-tossing, and Bashir works on his slipping-a-mickey skills.
The next night, they head on in to the holosuite. Everything is set up nicely. The count man goes to call his Mom. Dax is delayed by crashing into someone, and then she brings the gimmicked drink inside—only to find a different count man, who says he isn’t thirsty. Dax asks if she can have the drink instead, which gets the count man to drink the martini just to be a putz. Yates calls the guard over, claiming O’Brien stole her chips. The count man runs away to throw up, and Nog goes in—only to discover that the lock isn’t the same type that Kira told Nog it was, and he’s been practicing on the wrong thing.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, Zeemo shows up a day early. He wants to see the count room. Kira tries to delay him, but Zeemo is single minded. Bashir manages to get the non-puking count man out of the way, and when Zeemo comes onto the casino floor, first Fontaine distracts him by chatting up his date (“Who’s this, your grandfather?”), then Sisko starts tossing money into the air to create chaos.
Nog finally gets the safe open, and he and Odo start loading the briefcase that is actually Odo’s arm. After the guard sends O’Brien off to be strip-searched, Yates has to continue to distract the guard by crying into his arms about how she was going to use the money to buy a present for her mother—at least until Nog and Odo calmly leave the count room. Yates leaves, and Kira then encourages Frankie to show Zeemo the count room. Frankie shows Zeemo an empty safe, to the former’s shock and the latter’s dismay.
Frankie and his entourage leave, the lounge is restored to Vic’s Place, and then Sisko joins Fontaine onstage for a duet of “The Best is Yet to Come.”
The Sisko is of Bajor: Sisko’s misgivings about the Fontaine program serve as a reminder to the viewers that the producers are fully aware that this is a good-parts version of 1962 and that Sisko and Yates wouldn’t be welcome in a real 1962 Vegas casino except maybe as maintenance workers or performers. It’s an observation that particularly works coming from a Sisko who experienced the events of “Far Beyond the Stars,” which would make him more hyperaware of race relations in 20th-century American than, perhaps, the average 24th-century human would be.
Don’t ask my opinion next time: Kira very much gets into the role of Frankie’s moll, wearing an impressive and varied selection of slinky dresses. Then again, she was likely to have to do such things while a member of the resistance, and we’ve seen her play the flirt in the past in “The Homecoming” when she and O’Brien played a comfort woman and her pimp to break into the prison camp.
The slug in your belly: Dax gets to be a waitress. Amusingly, while she is very smooth with a drinks tray in the fantasy sequence when they go over the plan, in the actual execution she’s got the tray in a death grip, obviously scared to death of spilling it. It’s also unclear how she manages to get a work schedule that fits with the scheme and also enables her to actually do her duties as a Starfleet officer, since a waitress would not get to choose her own hours.
There is no honor in being pummeled: Worf has no loyalty to Fontaine, and refuses to think of him as a person the way the others do. Although he does call him an entertaining singer, which is a step up from his initial impression, to wit that he preferred Klingon opera.
Preservation of mass and energy is for wimps: Odo endears himself to Cheech (thus enabling Dax to get a job) by doing a trick with extending his arm. One can only weep at the lost opportunity to finally see the Cardassian neck trick…
What happens on the holosuite stays on the holosuite: The only other way to get rid of Frankie Eyes—besides actually getting rid of him on the terms of the program—is to manually reset the program, but that would reset Fontaine as well, so he’d be like he was in “His Way” without remembering anything that happened since. Fontaine is less than thrilled about this.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: Holy crap, does Nana Visitor look amazing in this episode…
Keep your ears open: “Vodka martini—stirred, not shaken.”
Bashir riffing on James Bond’s usual drinks order.
Welcome aboard: We’ve got recurring regulars James Darren as Fontaine, Aron Eisenberg at Nog, and Penny Johnson as Yates. The various holographic gangsters are played by veteran character actors Marc Lawrence (last seen on TNG’s “The Vengeance Factor”), Mike Starr, and Robert Miano, all of whom have played their share of gangsters and bad guys elsewhere.
Oh, and there’s the replacement accountant played by “Bobby Reilly,” perhaps better known as Robert O’Reilly, the guy who plays Gowron. That makes two weeks in a row when a recurring Klingon plays a different role and uses a variation on his real name…
Trivial matters: This episode was the last one filmed before the closing arc, but it was switched with “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges” because Paramount was really impressed with the production and wanted to air it during February sweeps. It was intended as a calm-before-the-storm story before the heaviness of the closing arc kicked in.
The episode was inspired by dozens of caper films over the years, but most obviously the 1960 Rat Pack vehicle Ocean’s 11. Art director Randy McIlvain used that film as well as Viva Las Vegas for inspiration in designing the episode.
Frankie’s comment to Kira about how there isn’t a statue to Bugsy Siegel in Vegas is a riff on a similar line in The Godfather Part II with regard to Moe Greene, the analogue of Siegel in that film.
While Avery Brooks has sung bits and pieces here and there—the “Allamaraine” song in “Move Along Home,” and brief bits with “Cassie” in “Far Beyond the Stars” and Odo in “His Way”—this is his first time doing a full-blown song. “The Best is Yet to Come” is transposed down an octave from where James Darren would normally sing it to accommodate Brooks’s bass.
Cheech’s complaint about the cheesesteak was a nice touch, as any Philadelphian will tell you that no one outside of the City of Brotherly Love can make a cheesesteak worth a damn.
Walk with the Prophets: “We don’t have time for ‘uh-oh’.” I had absolutely no interest in this episode when it first aired, viewing it as a waste of an hour, especially with only about a dozen hours of the show left and a war still going on. At the time, I hadn’t yet seen Ocean’s 11 (the Steven Soderbergh remake was still two years in the future, and I didn’t see the original until after the 2001 version—by the way, the 1960 original is a really really terrible movie…), and wasn’t as big a fan of caper stories as I am now. Plus, I honestly felt that Sisko should’ve stuck to his guns—there’s nothing particularly wonderful about 1962 Vegas if you’re not a middle-class-or-higher white person. It’s not just the racism that Sisko decries, but the classism, as well, not to mention the criminality (guys like Zeemo and Frankie were the norm at the time).
Now, though—well, I still think this is a waste of an hour, especially since we’ve already had the use-the-holosuite-to-distract-us-from-the-horrors-of-war story in “Take Me Out to the Holosuite.” In fact, you could argue that we’ve had it twice, if you throw “It’s Only a Paper Moon” in there.
But it’s a fun waste of an hour, dagnabbit. Just turning your brain off and disengaging, it’s fun, especially since it doesn’t try to contrive any real danger (I’m looking at you, “Our Man Bashir” and “The Big Goodbye” and “A Fistful of Datas” and on and on and on). Worf’s right in that Fontaine isn’t a person, and this jack-in-the-box is something that Felix programmed into it, so the consequences if they fail are pretty much nonexistent. But it lets everyone play dress-up, and damn if they don’t look good. Dax in a cocktail waitress dress, Yates and Kira in a series of smoking outfits, Sisko in a tux, O’Brien and Bashir in cunning hats, and Odo in a suit. Seriously, what’s not to like?
The casting helps, too. Besides Darren’s usual relaxed charm as Fontaine (which is the only reason why the character even works), the gangsters are all spot-on, as Mike Starr, Robert Miano, and the venerable Marc Lawrence just nail it.
Plus, honestly, the whole episode’s worth it just to see Brooks and Darren duet on “The Best is Yet to Come.”
Besides, this is the last fun episode we’re going to have. From here on in, this shit gets real…
Warp factor rating: 5
Keith R.A. DeCandido is at Arisia 2015, his first convention of the year, this weekend, alongside Author Guest of Honor N.K. Jemisin, Artist GoH Lee Moyer, Fan GoH Colette H. Fozard, and tons more. His full schedule can be found here.
Agreed — it’s insubstantial and self-indulgent and way too meta to be entirely plausible in-universe, but fun nonetheless. I do like heist/sting stories (well, as a rule; I hated Topkapi), so this was entertaining.
And while Sisko’s criticism of the racism of the period was quite right, I had a slight issue with him actually using the word “black” to refer to his ethnic group, a label that was never previously used in Star Trek (at least not by any Federation-era character) and that I’d figured had fallen out of use by then. Nobody in the 23rd or 24th century would think of humans as “black” or “white” (which are ridiculous exaggerations of a more subtle gradation in hue), just as human. But your suggestion that his experience in “Far Beyond the Stars” shaped his perceptions might help explain his use of an outdated label (although I’m not sure whether “black” was as commonly used in the ’50s as “Negro” or “colored”).
Honestly, I didn’t feel that “The Best is Yet to Come” was a good fit for Brooks’s singing voice. His voice seems like it’d be better suited to opera or musicals. More a Paul Robeson sort of voice (a role my father once saw him play on stage — I still have the program). His sound and Darren’s sound just didn’t seem to work well together for me.
Bleah. All I can say is: would Robert O’Reilly please pass the ipecac-laced martini? If I wanted to watch a casino caper, I’d watch the actual Ocean’s 11. I know Behr likes this kind of thing, but this is some really heavy-handed wanking.
For me, it was saved only by Avery Brooks singing and Nana Visitor in her dresses. (Yes, I usually prefer Nicole de Boer, but her waitress getup didn’t do it for me, and Nana was smokin’.) Maybe I just don’t like Vic stories in general, but this episode is one of my least favorites of the seventh season.
Oh, and my guess on Ezri suddenly fumbling with the tray is that it wasn’t Odo the first time, and somehow that changed how she carried it.
I always enjoy this episode but I love capers. Everyone got to wear cool clothes and Brooks and Darren singing together was great. It’s just fun and much better than Our Man Bashir.
If the solution has to be period-specific, wasn’t it cheating for the plan to rely on Odo’s shapeshifting and Nog’s super-hearing? Shouldn’t the program have therefore rejected their solution?
@@.-@, if I have to make an in-world excuse, I would say that since the program is designed to ignore race and species, and accept 24th century aliens as if they were 20th century humans, then maybe it also ignores any species-specific differences in their biology or capabilities. That is, it would have rejected a plot that required a graviton pulse to cheat at dice, but isn’t programmed to interfere with the physical differences of non-humans.
I don’t like the holo suite episodes, not in Next Gen, not in Voyager, not here.
Strong Dreams beat me to it… I guess the computer decided that you get to use the talents you have, but you couldn’t augment yourself in any way.
But otherwise the episode was fun… there was never any “forced danger” where I thought the characters (outside of Vic) were in danger, so it’s like playing a videogame or LARPing.. it’s harmless fun. I thought Sisko’s objections were a little forced though. I could get that he was aware of his ancestors issues, but to show that level of anger towards what happened 20 generations ago seems a little much (anger might not be the right word there). You can tell in his acting, not only in DS9, that Avery Brooks personally feels passionate about racial relations, and it serves him well as “Benny Russell” but it just sort of takes away from the episode here.
@@.-@ Well someone with an enhanced sense of hearing isn’t that unbelievable. And don’t forget that shapeshifters were around in 1947 so twenty odd years later is still quite believable.
@7, I liked Sisko’s anger and reality check. Would you invite your Jewish friends to play “Spanish Inquisition.” Sure, on the one hand, 400 years ago. But on the other hand, torture and forced confessions?
There is also a problem of handwaving over why Bashir was unable to halt the program. It makes no sense for this “jack-in-the-box” program to be able to do this, since the program itself was designed to be played in rented holosuites, and you can’t just tell the owner “sorry, this holoprogram won’t let us shut it down.” The designer of the game had no way of knowing that they would end up running it continuously.
However, I enjoyed the show even though when I realised what the premise was, I didn’t think I would. And little touches like the difference between perfect fantasy Ezri with the tray and real life “not an actual waitress” clumsy Ezri with the tray were part of what brought it to life and allowed you to buy into what was quite a ridiculous premise.
Also, when it comes to “the characters dress up and play completely different people” episodes, compared to the mirror universe ones, this one wins out by a mile.
As we get to the end of the show, my biggest regret is that we have not yet convinced Keith to work on Voyager next. I will miss these posts and I am somewhat ashamed to say these are pretty much the reason I read TOR.com.
On the bright side, Mark Watches is getting to “TNG” in a few weeks, though I prefer Keith’s deep understanding of the show rather than Mark’s “OMG! Not Prepared!” stream of consciousness writing. With Keith, I learn things… but I need my fix so it may have to do.
Keith… please? :)
@9 Being Jewish I get the reference but I wouldn’t say that I am PO’d at the Spanish over it…
Besides, as Cassidy pointed out, the game I’d be playing was 1492 Spain which took place in a world without the Inquisition. Vic’s program doesn’t recognize racial (or species) differences, so you really are just slipping into the role. Nobody is pointing out Dax’s spots or Kira’s nose ridges- its a very “colorblind” system. So while I wouldn’t volunteer to play 1492 with the Spanish Inquisition, if I got to be in on some court intrigue or sail with Columbus, why not?
Nitpick: “”The Best is Yet to Come” is transposed down an octave from where James Darren would normally sing it to accommodate Brooks’s bass.”
“Down an octave” isn’t transposed at all. It’s just like if a woman sang a song at the same time as a man — generally speaking, they’d sing the same tune but an octave apart. Transposing is when you actually change the key.
I can’t recall what the song sounds like in the episode off the top of my head, but there would be no need for Darren to sing an octave lower in order to match Brooks — they would each sing in their own octave. That’s common and standard and normal.
Okay I just went and listened to it on youtube. They’re both singing in a reasonable high baritone range. It certainly sounds like Darren could go higher and Brooks could go lower, but neither is in an awkward part of their voice. And *no way* would Darren normally sing that an octave higher, that would be getting into silly falsetto range.
I could buy that this was transposed down maybe a fourth or so from Darren’s usual, but definitely not an octave. Because, again, moving down an octave isn’t transposing — an octave is the same note, just a lower range.
@12: Except that Columbus was just as bad as the Inquisition, murdering and enslaving numerous Native Americans (and paving the way for the plagues and colonizations that wiped out better than 95% of their population).
Really, it’s hard to find any historical period where some people weren’t being cruel or unjust to other categories of people. Women were treated terribly in Ancient Greece, but I’m sure there are women who enjoy playing video games set in Ancient Greece (I don’t know of any, but there must be some).
@14: Thanks, you reminded me of what it was specifically that bugged me about Brooks’s singing here — it sounded like he was singing at a higher pitch than his comfortable range. Or something like that.
I do enjoy the episode when I shut off my brain, as Keith mentioned. However, one thing that confuses me once my brain restarts is if this is an idealized version of ’62 Vegas, why is it run by the mob? That doesn’t sound like Vegas “as it should have been” (to paraphrase Yates as best I can from memory).
I guess it can be argued that it is the jack-in-the-box that introduces the mob to shakes things up. It’s fortunate that it didn’t introduce other ugly aspects of mid-20th century reality.
@16
The mob does get romanticized a bit sometimes, in particular the era of Sinatra and Dean Martin. Glamour by association.
And speaking of Frank and Dino, yes, the original Ocean’s 11 is a slog to get through despite its incredible cast. One of the few times the remake was better.
Having not watched the show in a few years, but keeping up with these recaps, I still think of Jadzia and not Ezri everytime you say Dax. Now, of course, I can only imagine Jadzia in this episode, which would have been AMAZING, then I remember she’s dead, and I get all sad. Damnit!
@9 Sure. I’d even let them operate the most dreaded instrument of torture open to the Spanish Inquisition, the Comfy Chair!
This is the episode that shows that holodeck episodes are so completely and utterly played out in Star Trek, so utterly done to death, that they had to resort to a “Holodeck follows its programming and does not go mad and try to kill anyone” story. A feature of the episode is the holodeck successfully manages to operate an entertaining role-playing campaign properly. This was the point that Trek should have walked away from using the holodeck in any serious way entirely. It would certainly have saved us from the village of offensive Irish Stereotypes on Voyager.
About Fontaine not being a person – wasn’t it established in previous episodes that he was self-aware? Whether he has true free will or not I don’t know, but if he has some form of intelligence and experiences emotions, then in combination with self-awareness I think he’s got a claim to actual personhood. Of course, that just brings up the concerns of his existence being a form of slavery.
Well Julian and Miles think he is self-aware, but that isn’t a guarantee of actual self-awareness. That all he wants to do is hang out in his casino-cum-lounge bar, sing songs, and help the fleshies seems to point to him just being a complex programme who is ultimately bound by his coding. Even in this episode all he does is punt the actual people back onto the rails whenever they get too far from the Vegas scenario. My money on his self-awareness is that Julian and Miles are just buying the salesperson’s hype.
Ultimately, we all are bound by our own coding (he said sagely…)
@11: Since Keith is at Arisia, I’ll try to remember how he described his interest in doing a Voyager rewatch. I believe it was along the lines of “no, and also no.” But he has said he’ll still be writing for the site, just not Voyager.
Well said — a fun waste of an hour. I thought Sisko’s objections to the program were well in-character (at least after Far Beyond …), but I also thought he was being a stick in the mud and was glad Kasidy told him so, and presented a reasonable explanation of why. (In general, although I know racism is still a problem and sometimes needs to be pointed out, I’m a bigger fan of when we can fight it using color-blindness, a la Kasidy or Morgan Freeman.)
It does seem a shame that Cirroc Lofton’s absence from most of the 7th Season is continued here. This seems like it would have been a really easy plot to give him a major role in for a change.
@10: Yeah, upon reading KRAD’s synopsis of the episode, my first thought was, “why exactly does Felix have any repeat customers, with purposeful major annoying flaws in his products like this?! Unlike maybe some of our protagonists, I can’t imagine most clients would take this as a fun little challenge without being upset at the hassle.”
@2: Odd, I actually found Ezri’s waitress costume alluring. Although Nana Visitor still wins the episode of course.
@21: Recent studies of animal intelligence make me more and more convinced that self-awareness isn’t a binary thing, but a continuum. There’s no sudden emergence of complete self-awareness out of nothingness once a certain threshold is reached — rather, self-awareness on our level is the developed form of cognitive processes that are found at various levels throughout nature. A lot of mammals probably have a level of awareness comparable to that of a human toddler, say.
Increasingly, I’ve been suspecting that it’s just ego that leads us to assume our consciousness is some exceptional alchemy or great mystery — maybe it’s actually a very simple thing, a natural property of any brain that has any kind of feedback process giving it a perception of itself. And the only difference between something like a human and something like a dog or a bird is a matter of degree. If that were the case, then the same would be true of AI. Rather than an abrupt, cliff-like transition between “just following programming” and “capable of conscious thought,” there’d be more of a gradual transition between the two. After all, we have programming too — our instincts and innate drives and cognitive biases. So by the same token, even an AI that’s mostly driven by programming might still have some awareness of itself.
So Vic may not be on quite the same level of cognition as Data or the EMH, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something there that deserves protection.
Oh, Nana Visitor wins this episode entirely. This is why I adore her – I can see her as these characters in the HoloSuite just as much as the hot-headed Freedom Fighter of Season 1. I adore Kira, and I love how she was played.
As for the song – I don’t think that the song came off as well as it could. Avery Brooks and James Darren just sing such different styles, and it felt off-kilter and forced to me to have that as a duet. They are both good singers without the others, so it’s just a thing where the voices don’t match. It’s too bad, but the episode doesn’t suffer for it. It was fun before that run to the end of the series.’
My husband is probably so disappointed in me, as he keeps bringing up all the episodes he remembered hating the first time he watched them, and this was one of them – but I didn’t really hate it. Even though I typically hate holosuite episodes. But I think what actually saves it is that it’s not ‘OMG THE SAFETIES ARE OFF’ but pretty much what it says on the tin – a Holosuite program/game with higher stakes than one would initially think. I have a feeling that the computer is pretty much ‘letting’ them win, too.
And the costumes were so fantastic.
Regarding Sisko and his aversion to the Vegas thing – I can completely understand why he wouldn’t want to pretend things were all hunky dory. But on the other hand, I used to spend a lot of times at Ren Faires and…those aren’t exactly ‘period’ either.
It’s definitely a loss that we didn’t get Jake in the episode, especially since Yates specifically mentions that he enjoys going there.
Regarding Worf’s opinion of Fontaine, I wonder if he felt Data was also not really a person, or how much of a difference there was between them in his mind (and I’m not denying that there was a difference…but I like CLB’s ‘continuum’ explanation).
I have a memory of not really liking this because I didn’t give two craps about Fontaine, and I still really dislike “His Way.” So to have the entire crew suddenly getting so involved in saving this character I didn’t really care about was just too much for me.
Now, after kind of knowing it was coming, and also having been softened by all the Vic episodes inbetween, it wasn’t as bad.
Still, even though I can try and lose myself in it and just enjoy it, thinking about how the entire senior staff is very invested in going there at a specific time pulls me out of it a little bit. What if there was some surprise attack by the Dominion at that moment that no one saw coming? I guess Vic would be a casualty of war (I know, that’s also contrived, but just as an example).
@15: You don’t know of any Ancient Greece games, or you don’t know of any women who play them?
I’ve never been a big fan of Vic’s in the first place, and when I saw how this episode was coming together in the first few minutes – holosuite-bound, safely resettable at the end, basically another excuse for a very specific indulgence – I simply tuned out. It was the first, and only, episode of DS9 I actually skipped on my first watch.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate fun caper stories – it’s just that it seems a bit… lazy to me to be relying on such familiar contexts to put them in when you have a whole invented world out there to explore. One episode a season, maybe, but with this I just felt it was a bit too much. Might give it another chance on a rewatch (… if it’s ever going to happen).
@15 – “Women were treated terribly in Ancient Greece”. Actually, not really relevant to the discussion, but this is a bit of a generalism. Ancient Greece was a series of city states each with their own laws and customs. Women were treated terribly in Athens, and because Athenian society is better documented than most of the other city states, people tend to assume that what happened there happened everywhere. In Athens, women had the same status as slaves. In some other city states they held equal status to men, could own land and businesses and take part in government. In the warrior society of Sparta, the bearing of healthy children was considered equal in prestige to great deeds in battle.
(Also, incidentally, the ancient Greeks believed that insanity in women was caused by their not having regular orgasms. So even in Athens, while the women were treated poorly in other aspects of their lives, there was a whole industry based around making sex toys for women for when their husbands were away!)
Personally, I loved this story. Sure, it kinda didn’t fit in with the heavy stuff going on before and after, but even in wartime, people need a break where they can totally cut loose and forget what’s going on around them for a while. This story gave the crew (and the viewer) that opportunity. I think this is a perfect sequel to “A Piece of the Action” and I could totally see Sisko teaching Frankie Eyes how to play Fizzbin. Besides that, Nana Visitor, Penny Johnson and Nicole deBoer all look AMAZING in those period dresses!!!
I still need to get around to re-watching this, but I, erm, re-watched the series sooo many times when I was younger (back before DVDs, I managed to tape the whole series on VHS and would quite literally watch through the entire series, then start over again; I think I watched it 5 or 6 times?) that quite a lot stuck with me even though it’s been awhile. I adored this one if only for Avery Brooks’ singing and Nana Visitor’s costuming. It’s by no means serious, but it was *fun*, and I’d take the fun over some of the trying-to-be-serious-and-completely-failing eps…
27 et al) About Vic and sentience – I must admit, despite reading a lot of Trek and wider sci-fi (including the Dick book that made it so famous) – Vic would pass a Turing test, right? As would Data? So what makes them different from one another, or different from all the main cast?
As a Philadelphian, I’m compelled to back up Cheech’s comment about the cheesesteak. However, there are some Philly expatriates in other cities who can make a decent cheesesteak. I had a surprisingly good one on Maui years ago.
@28: Darn, I thought I’d addressed the ambiguity in that clause, but I must’ve missed it. I meant I don’t know of any such games, since I’m not into gaming.
@30: Thanks for the info on Ancient Greece — good to know.
@33: The Turing test isn’t really a good way to measure machine intelligence, because there are many computer programs that can convincingly fake normal human conversation. All it really proves is that human beings can be fooled into thinking they’re talking to a person. Heck, there’s a whole online industry of chatbots meant to trick people into thinking they’re real.
Turing was trying to define a testable property of machine intelligence, and chose the ability to imitate natural human conversation and social behavior (he called it “the imitation game,” hence the name of the recent biographical movie with Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing), but he didn’t propose that it would “prove” an AI was sentient. He just wanted to give AI researchers something measurable they could use as a stepping stone toward a greater understanding of intelligence. The game/test was never meant to be some ultimate gold standard. Heck, it’s possible for actual humans to fail some versions of the test.
A little while ago, during the Ezri-and-the-sniper episode, we were told there were nine hundred Starfleet officers on DS9, which would imply a total population for the station at least in the thousands. Why are they so dependent on these three?
I don’t think Sisko’s objection necessariy should stick to his gums, nor does Dax’s work schedule, er, not work. Vic’s program is a game. It is not 1962, and does not necesarily have to entirely conform with the realities of 1962. Presumably the program recognizes that player characters have lives out side of the program and glosses over any inconsistancies.
Yes, it is a fun episode that staggers the sense of disbelief that the military staff of a station near the front lines of an existential war have the time or energy to devote to playing this involved a game while in the midst of their normal duties. However, Nicole DeBoer in a cocktail waitress dress.
Pretty much the way I felt. Unnecessary filler, but undeniably fun and entertaining. And I’ve definitely warmed up to caper films since it first aired, which helped the episode age reasonably well.
And for once we get a holodeck story without having some contrived plot device designed to place the main cast in danger. Had someone like Dax been held hostage, all it would take was for her to say “computer, end program”.
A nice and fun hour, overall.
Very shakespearean. Always reminds me of the Macbeth Gatekeeper scene – some levity between/before the drama. Considering how the remainder of the series goes, it’s the perfect levity.
Also, I’m madly in love with Nana Visitor. That is all.
krad, bmacdonald (@34): Regarding cheesesteaks, Pat’s or Geno’s? (Me, I’m at McNally’s, noshing on a Schmitter.)
@40: Neither! Jim’s on South Street is my steak of choice these days, but nothing beats Sophie’s, the food truck that used to hang out on 34th and Walnut, outside Penn’s Moore School of Engineering, during the early 90s. (Always pick a long-vanished location as the source of your favorite steak; that way nobody can gainsay you.)
@41: Which is why I am free to say Gianna’s had the best one ever… *wistful sigh*
35. Thanks Chris, as always a good answer.
PS: Looking forward to Uncertain Logic!
I’m sure I’ll miss someone, but some thoughts:
1) Pat’s is better than Geno’s. John’s Roast Pork is the best, though. I had a good sandwich in MD, but here in TX I had the worst sandwich I’ve ever had. Too many onions for the meat and there was almost none of either. It was read with the memory of meat.
2) if he’s uncomfortable with 1962 Vegas, why would Sisko go to baseball games, especially pre-integration, where he wouldn’t have even been welcome as a performer? I get he wanted to make a statement, but it wasn’t well thought out by the writers.
3) i get that Worf had other obligations, but I still like that they presented him as not caring one way or another – it’s nice to know that the staff aren’t all on the same wavelength.
4) going back to the “way it should have been,” it’s a good reminder that in any period there are examples of good and beauty. I hadn’t thought about the inquisition, but I wouldn’t have thought twice about inviting a Jewish friend to watch (at the risk of Godwinning the comments) Jesse Owens dominate the 1936 Olympics.
@44
Who says Sisko has to be consistant! He is suppossed to be a human being, after all, and they are not terribly consistant.
@37 i feel the same way in regards to Sisko refusing to go to Vics because rasism, 400+ years in the future, its suposedly a non issue, yet we have an outstanding officer of the federation, playing the 20th century race card, the excuse doesnt fly in any direction other then remiding people that siskos black, and blacks had it rough 400+ years ago
@33 I’m not sure Vic would pass a Turing test. He is programmed with period specific slang. I would think most denizens of the 24th century would sense that Vic isn’t quite right.
@47: Again, though, it’s possible for living people to fail the Turing test. There are lots of cultures with their own distinct slang. It’d be pretty petty-minded to conclude that someone wasn’t sentient just because they used expressions you were unfamiliar with.
Again, the Turing test is actually a terrible way of trying to measure intelligence. It’s been fetishized in popular culture far beyond its actual significance. It was just an attempt to move toward a measurable definition of intelligence. It should be seen as the beginning of that process, not its end-all and be-all. Intelligence is far too complex a phenomenon to be judged by a single parameter.
@48
“it’s possible for living people to fail the Turing test”
Obligatory Dilbert
wiredog@49
Actually, Data would be very valuable. He’s smart, knows about a lot of advanced technology, etc…
Although possibly that isn’t what pointy-haired boss is referring to.
:-)
@@@@@ CLB #48 – I agree the Turing test is only a start. I just thought it interesting that Vic might not pass it. But your points are well taken that someone’s unique slang wouldn’t mean he isn’t sentient. I guess I was picturing a test where Vic was trying to pass himself off as a human Federation citizen. Still, there are no doubt thousands of different cultures among even just the human citizens, many with different colloquialisms, so… I guess I find myself corrected. Vic would probably pass the Turing test.
@51: Indeed, the Star Trek: Corps of Engineers e-novella series featured a Starfleet security guard who was from Iotia (“A Piece of the Action”) and who spoke its 1930s gangster slang even while serving aboard a 24th-century starship.
I have no doubt Vic could pass the Turing test if he wanted to. By virtue of being self-aware, he knows he needs to alter his responses to satisfy the test. But I’ve never seen any indication that he cares much about that sort of thing – he knows he’s a hologram, he knows his world is on the holosuite, and he’s okay with that.
Of course, this could also be a limitation of his programming. Data always aspired to more; the EMH also sought to better himself. Vic is happy with his world. Our culture places high value on self-improvement, so not seeking it could be seen as a way he could fail the Turing test.
I don’t know, there are plenty of humans who are content with their lot (and that’s fine, in some cases) so if the only point of the Turing Test is just to be able to convince somebody that they are human…I think he could still pass (unless of course he flat out tells you he’s a hologram).
Like I’ve said, the Turing Test has been fetishized out of all proportion. It doesn’t matter worth a damn whether Vic could pass the Turing Test, because the Turing Test is not all that meaningful. Turing didn’t even call it a test, he called it a game. It’s not supposed to prove or measure anything. It’s really just a thought experiment, a conceptual tool for AI researchers.
Aren’t all of our rewatch discussions thought experiments, too? We’re all just riffing, here. It’s a conceptual tool we use to keep a show that’s been off the air for over 15 years alive in our hearts and minds. I personally look forward to these discussions very much – and others have said they do, as well – but there’s as much point to them as there is to putting Vic through the Turing test. If you’re going to argue that it doesn’t matter, then what are we doing here?
@56: I’m just saying that if we want to discuss Vic’s intelligence, then focusing on the Turing Test as THE way to determine that is a blind alley. It doesn’t really do the job, and it’s kind of an antiquated notion now that any well-programmed chatbot can fool surfers into thinking it’s an actual person. So we’d be better off looking for other ways of evaluating the issue.
Hmmm… I think we should see if CLB passes the Turing Test. Me thinks he protests a bit too much. :)
@57: The Turing is the most well-known, which is perhaps why it’s an easy topic of discussion – most people are familiar with it. Other measurements, like Lovelace and Winograd, are much more obscure. I think Vic might pass Winograd, but I’m not sure – and I’m not familiar enough with Lovelace to even hazard a guess. But I can look at what I know about the Turing, and have a hearty discussion on Vic passing it or not. (My vote is still for yes, given how much more sophisticated he is than Eugene Goostman.)
If you’re going to reject an avenue of discussion, it’s always nice to provide an alternative. What do you say, could Vic pass the Winograd? Is the trophy too big, or the suitcase? What if the suitcase is Odo? :)
I’ve always thought of this episode as light and airy, like cotton candy, compared to the Dominion War arc. I try not to view it as a “Star Trek” episode but a riff on “Ocean’s Eleven” or “Ocean’s Thirteen”.
As an African American, I was glad the writers showed they were fully aware that Vic’s program was good-parts 1962 Vegas, and acknowledge that Sisko, Kasidy, Jake, and myself wouldn’t have been welcome in the real Vegas in 1962. This allowed me to fully enjoy the episode, especially since I really like Vic. And I liked Kasidy’s argument; it acknowledged the reality of what Sisko said without diminishing it.
If I were a 24th century human (and I love pretending I am) and had experienced what my 20th century ancestors went through for myself, I would have reacted the same way Sisko does here, and also would have been swayed by Kasidy’s point.
That said, what a fun hour. Ezri in that cocktail waitress dress, Kasidy all dolled up, Kira SMOKIN’ hot the whole episode, the whole gang looking awesome, just damn fun.
@58 Christopher is much too sophisticated for the Turing test but I’m not convinced he could pass the Voight-Kampff!
@27 Actually, Lisamarie, I was always impressed by how easily Worf seemed to accept Data as a person. As early as the first season he would empathize with Data since they were both outsiders of sorts in a mostly human crew. In “The Next Phase” when the crew believes LaForge and Ro to be dead Worf freely discusses matters of faith in an afterlife with Data without any of the mild pedantism that the rest of the crew would often employ with the android. In “Birthright Part I” when Data reveals that Dr. Soong has appeared in his dream program then Worf tells him how fortunate he is to have a vision of his father and encourages him to explore its meaning. There’s never a hint of “Klingons have dreams – you had a program malfunction!” Even Data’s best friend Geordi would sometimes be a little skeptical when Data would hope that an unexpected occurence in his behavior or perceptions might mean he was evolving as a person. Worf didn’t just accept Data’s sentience, he seemed to accept Data’s spirituality.
@62: Well, I found a Voight-Kampff test online, and though I thought my answers were very empathetic, it concluded that I’m totally an android. But why would an android need bifocals? I need to talk to James Hong about the quality control on those eyes…
And that’s an interesting insight about Worf. As you say, I guess it’s because he and Data both grew up as outsiders. Or maybe it’s because Worf’s adoptive father was an engineer? Maybe Sergei’s empathy toward machines rubbed off on his son.
LOL LOL. Now I need to try and take this thing and see how I score.
I agree that those are some interesting thoughts. I can’t really make a good comparison, because most TNG and DS9 episodes I’ve only seen once, and it was over a huge period of time, but it seems like DS9 Worf is sometimes portrayed as really rigid and almost a Flanderized version of himself. This could be selective memory though because the things in DS9 I am primarily remembering are most of his interactions/conflicts with Jadzia…
@62: That’s an excellent observation about Worf’s treatment of Data. It’s true, he was always admirably respectful of Data as a person.
Wasn’t there one episode where he was mildly jealous of Data’s physical strength? If so, that’s extra-consistent — most of us aren’t jealous of lumps of metal (like construction equipment) for being stronger than us. But again, Worf treats Data thoroughly like a person.
Contrary to @63, I always thought this was partly because Worf isn’t as technically-minded as Geordi, Crusher, Picard et al. He doesn’t treat Data as a machine because he doesn’t think about machines, doesn’t wonder how the machinery works …
@63: Androids need bifocals to make them appear more human.
@63: The trick is not to be thrown by the word “tortoise” – it’s a dead giveaway every time…
@64: Oh I agree that in both series Worf is generally stubborn, rigid, culturally intolerant and, at times, blatantly racist. That’s why I always thought it was a nice touch of complexity that he didn’t have a trace of the prejudice against artificial life forms exhibited by characters like Commander Maddox in “The Measure of a Man” or Lt. Commander Hobson in “Redemption II”.
Or Pulaski ;)
Oh shit! You’re right – I overlooked the most egregious example of all! Sometimes I forget there was this weird year where Crusher was replaced by a warmed over McCoy wannabe…
I hated this episode, but I agree with DanteHopkins that the Sisko speech was necessary. Star Trek is a TV show of our time period when race clearly matters and the creators needed to acknowledge their sanitized version of Las Vegas. Plus I think it was an implicit copping to the fact that the franchise failed to convincingly portray a post-racial future where people have transcended the racial categories and identities we have with us now. If that ever happens, and race ceases to exist, then we should see a lot more people with skin tones similar to Alexander Siddig and Cirroc Lofton than we do in these shows, and frankly a lot fewer people whom us 20th and 21st century viewers could easily peg as “white”, “black”, and “Asian”.
OK so I’m typically not one to nitpick about convenient plot-contrivances involving 24th century technology, but for some reason the gangster accountant guy being affected by the mickey emetic kind of bothered me. How would the hologram know that he was supposed to throw up? (Or maybe: When the crew met earlier to go over their plan, Vic was present, yes? So they were meeting somewhere in a holosuite? So the program was spying on them somehow? I dunno, for some reason this one kind of bugged me.)
I’ve always found Sisko’s rant to be inappropriate and not in keeping with the show. I’m not even sure the writers thought of the fan justification that he’d experienced the racism of that period (give or take a decade) in “Far Beyond the Stars”. The show has always treated racism as something that humans just don’t understand, much less feel bitter about generations later. Contrast with Kirk and Spock’s nonplussed reactions in “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”. Someone should have pointed out to him that it’s a holosuite, that they didn’t let Klingons and Ferengi into casinos in 1962 Vegas either and that that’s stupid. It felt like the show throwing a sop to Avery Brooks unfortunately.
Love, love, love this episode. Only thing that could make it better would be, independent of the “solution,” to have them bring in Martok to beat the living s*** out of Cheech. Just ‘cuz.
He’d do it for the Bloodwine.
What’s interesting about Sisko’s take on 1962 Las Vegas is… most likely, he would be welcome at the casino, and for that we have Frankie, Dino, Joey, and most significantly, Sammy, to thank for that. Frank Sinatra refused to perform at any casino that wouldn’t let Sammy Davis Jr. play at the tables. Given that Vic is a Frankie expy, I find that significant. Now, the classism is another story. He’d probably have to be flashing the cash as he walked in the door to not get a hard time. But Vegas was in a few ways a little bit ahead of the times, and for a very typical reason: dollars and cents.
If I wanted to watch Ocean’s 11, I’d watch Ocean’s 11, not yet another plot-hole ridden “Holosuite episode”.
That being said, yes, it sure is fun watching this but ultimately this episode feels so much out of place in the great picture. I mean, there’s all this talk about an ongoing war, casualty reports are posted almost daily, and yet the entire senior staff of DS9 hasn’t got anything better to do than to help A HOLOGRAM to take back a holographic casino from another hologram? I’m sorry, but this is just stupid.
Edited to add that I agree with 1/ChristopherLBennett’s take on Sisko’s critizism. I also found it very unusual that he wo say “our people”. I always felt humankind finally left racism and exclusion behind them in the Trek future. If Sisko says “our people” he should be referring to “humans”, not to “black people”.
Skin color has never been of much concern in Trek so far (not even in TOS, which had been produced during much different times), so it’s really odd for Sisko to react so strongly.
@75/waka: The whole point of the episode is that they need a break from the constant pressures of the war. It’s always been recognized that soldiers need time for recreation and stress relief so they don’t burn out. So I don’t see why that’s implausible to you.
And just because racism doesn’t exist, that doesn’t mean humans have become culturally uniform and homogenized. Lots of human Trek characters identify with and take pride in their cultural heritage — Scotty, Chekov, Picard, O’Brien, etc. There’s no reason why only white characters should get to do that.
Honestly, the program Sisko should’ve had a problem with was Bashir & O’Brien’s beloved Alamo program. The “heroes” of the Alamo were slaveowners and slave dealers. Texas seceded from the Mexican Empire because Mexico outlawed slavery and the Texans didn’t want to give up their “right” to keep slaves. People like Travis and Bowie were the bad guys, white-supremacist insurrectionists just like the Confederacy. Sisko should’ve been shocked to see members of his crew glorifying the kind of people who treated his ancestors like property.
I think the problem with Sisko’s objection was in the writing and the dialogue. I can understand him being uncomfortable with that period of history but his vehemence followed by the sudden change and enthusiasm felt forced. His specific mention of the Civil Rights act also felt out of place considering this is over 350 years in the future and the U.S. is probably long gone as a political entity. If he’d said something like “real progress in racial equality in North America was yet to be seen” or something along those lines, it would have sounded more consistent with the time period. I’d expect him to remember someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. but not to refer to a specific legislation with the familiarity of someone from today.
Also, he and Kasidy sound more like they’re making speeches at each other than talking. Her mention of “no limits except those we impose on ourselves” sounds pasted in. I’m sure Avery Brooks had plenty of input but it still sounds like a couple of white guys (Behr and Beimler) trying to sound enlightened.
Otherwise, a fun episode if you don’t think about it too much. I liked the little touches like the fast cut to the dancers pantomiming gunshots as Frankie Eyes was about to be walked out and the song “The Best is Yet to Come” and it’s oblique reference to the final 8-episode arc of the series.
What’s missing from the analysis here is the connection to “Far Beyond the Stars” that Sisko is experiencing, which makes the 24th Century no racism argument not valid. Sisko is channeling Benny Russell but in addition we are receiving information from the perspective of … I’m sorry, not a white guy, which is the only perspective we have ever had before on how great this supposedly color-blind Trek future is. It’s bullshit for us to opine on how great imaginary Trek universe is when writers actually try to imbue some human real-world content into it.
I don’t recall Worf expressing jealousy over Data’s strength. But, IRRC, in “Clues” he comments that Data is the only member of the crew who could easily break his wrist (which was a plot point in the episode). Which still demonstrates Worf’s lack of bias or prejudice against Data. He was another member of the crew, not an asset or piece of equipment.
I don’t know enough to say if Vic could be considered an individual rather than just a very sophisticated program, but if he is, that raises some serious questions about Felix’s jack-in-the-box. Especially considering Vic seems capable of experiencing pain and even death that could only be undone by resetting his entire program.
Lockdown Rewatch. If it had not been for “It’s only a paper moon” I would not have been happy with this episode first time around and possibly skipped it in my rewatch, but I feel after Paper Moon the writers and The Fontaine character probably earned this one, it was fun, it looks great Avery Brooks singing is excellent, and although I agree how spectacularly hot Nana Visitor looks in this also a word for how cute Ezri looked in that Waitress outfit, it certainly got my attention.
I haven’t seen anyone else mention this, but Felix seems to be having it both ways. Bashir et al. are required to use the heist narrative to oust the gangsters and win the casino back for Vic—an “in world” solution.
But the gangsters didn’t arrive in the first place via an “in world” mechanism, such as Frankie Eyes arriving in the lounge waving a deed and announcing his takeover. The bad guys just magically appeared on the scene, the scenario already in-progress.
I disagree with DougL, on the holosuite episodes; it’s interesting to see what the various crewmembers like to do, in their spare time; and I can see how the holodeck could be a valuable tool, as well. Personally, I’m a recreational bicycle rider, and would probably do some “riding”, on the holodeck. Imagine the Episode with “Minuet”, but with her, as a beautiful, blue-eyed, Auburn-haired, bicyclist. That’s MY fantasy! A ride through French Wine Country wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Many of the better episodes involved the Holodeck.
Watched it in lovely restored 1080p on a projector. Loved it.
I do think if we can use Odo’s shape shifting, then he should be able to slip into the safe through a crack, or as a fog. Once he got there, it could be another level of tension, not just an easy solution.