The Ship

Hello fellow TV-lovers!! It's been a while since Jason and I have done a blog post, but worry not, we've been watching plenty of TV ;)

To motivate us to get our blogging butts in gear, our fabulous friend Andrew suggested the three of us recap an episode together, and so we did! Here we go...

“The Ship”

DS9 Season 5 Episode 2

H: Sisko, O’Brien, Dax, and Worf, along with some other officers, are on a planet conducting a survey mission. Episode opens with O’Brien talking to crewman Enrique Muniz - they seem to be friendly and have a nice work comradery. Obviously this is bad news for Muniz, as anytime you have a random character with a speaking part there’s a good chance their days are numbered.

Extras with speaking roles are the new red shirt.

J:  Jadzia and Worf conclude that the planet would be a great place to set up a mining operation, despite its proximity to Dominion Space, when suddenly their runabout (the Defiant is back at the station) picks up a Dominion ship coming in hot. It crashes on the ship, and the runabout reports that it’s still intact. So Sisko and company set off to check it out. Because, you know, they can totally handle it.

H: Everyone goes to check out the ship and it’s hella spooky. All the Jem’Hadar have died because all their bones shattered. Whoa. The ship would obviously be an intelligence gold mine, so Sisko wants to get it back to the Federation. It’s too big for the runabout to tow, so they’ve got to get it in working order, i.e. time for the Chief to kick some ass!

J: The chief is hard at work when the runabout calls them again. While speaking to Sisko, O’Brien mentions how he cannot make heads or tales of the ship, e.g. he cannot tell if the ship has a warp drive. Surprise, surprise, there is another Jem’Hadar warship in route. It blows the runabout away, and then Jem’Hadar beam down and start assaulting the away team, trying to retake their crashed ship. One redshirt wearing a blue shirt gets killed, and Muniz takes a nasty hit to the abdomen. The away team ducks inside the crashed ship and takes cover, and the Jem’Hadar do not follow.

RIP Benzite lady

H: O’Brien fixes Muniz up and reassures him that everything will be okay, even though the Defiant won’t arrive for another two and a half days. Meanwhile, a Vorta contacts them and Sisko heads off the ship to meet with her. The Vorta wants her ship back, but Sisko says by the old Earth tradition of “salvage rights” that the ship belongs to them.

Finders keepers, bitch.

A: The Vorta offers our heroes a ride to DS9 as they do not recognize this tradition. It’s a TRAP!

H: While they are meeting, a lone Jem’Hadar transports onto the ship. Dax and O’Brien end up getting attacked by him, and it’s not looking good, until Muniz stumbles in, shoots the Jem’Hadar, and saves the day.

A: Everyone discusses why O'Brien and Dax are still alive as the Jem’Hadar did not have a rifle just a knife. They realize that something on the ship is too important and they have to find it. They begin by making a blueprint of the ship.

J: The effort of saving everyone’s bacon has Muniz feeling quite out of it, but he keeps the mood light with some unoriginal humor about O’Brian being a lousy nurse with a grating bedside manner. It seems that Jem’Hadar weapons have an anti-coagulant effect, so Muniz is going to keep declining until they find him some medical facilities. So, there’s nothing to do but try their best to get the ship working before Muniz dies, and before the Jem’Hadar finally decide it’s no longer in their interest to keep waiting.

If he doesn’t die soon, his jokes will kill everyone else.

A: The tension in the ship is starting to rise as O’Brien and Worf have a culture clash with respect to treating the wounded. Luckily we have Dax to help by whisking Worf away and explaining the  merits of diplomacy to him.

H: I’m definitely feeling the Jadzia/Worf vibes here. Makes sense cause they get together in the next episode. Jadzia and Worf forever! <3

A: Our weekly Vorta apologizes for the deception and offers another meeting. She recognizes Sisko’s needs to protect his people, and states she is just protecting the Dominion’s… property.

H: It’s obvious that the Vorta doesn’t care about the ship, but just wants whatever is on it. Sisko doesn’t trust her to come on the ship without any shenanigans, and the Vorta doesn’t trust Sisko to bring out the mysterious item unharmed. At an impasse, the negotiations end and the Vorta start to bomb the area, intentionally missing the ship so as to protect the “item”.

J: The siege starts to wear on them all. O’Brien manages to get one of the ship’s weapons working, but they can’t aim it. Jadzia finds some data crystals that may have information on the ‘item’ that the Vorta wants, but they seem to be blank. Worf finds a Vorta’s computer terminal, but he rips it off the wall and Jadzia makes fun of him. Everyone is at their wits end, and when Worf suggests euthanizing Muniz, O’Brien loses it and tries to sock him in the fu manchu.

A: Worf, in non-typical fashion, does not get knocked on his ass. He easily takes care of O’Brien’s haymaker and puts him into a headlock.

J: Sisko does what Sisko does best and gets everyone to shut up, and rallies them around their duty.

H: By the next morning, the Chief has fixed up the ship enough to try for a take off. Everyone braces

A: Luckily all of our heros are now well versed in Jem’Hadar technology, symbology, writing, and lines as all of them are able to operate the ship with proficiency.

H: They also manage to do this with all the consoles upside-down.

A: It’s a broken ship, so their efforts are for naught.

H: In the excitement of trying to get the ship off the ground, Muniz dies :(

Everyone is looking down in sadness when they notice something dripping from the ceiling...turns out it’s a Founder! That’s what the Vorta wanted so badly, and why they wouldn’t directly attack the ship. The Founder is sick and dies almost immediately, turning into a big ol’ pile of ash.

A: I know the Founders are really good at avoiding scans, Odo as a guinea pig in one episode highlights this, but this one is seriously injured and yet it hides perfectly from scans.   

There are mornings where this is how I feel too.

J: Immediately after the changeling dies, the Vorta beams aboard, alone and unarmed. She explains that all she wanted was to save the founder, and now that it is dead, her Jem’Hadar have committed ritual suicide. It’s a tragic end to a grueling conflict. Sisko and the Vorta together commiserate the fact that they couldn’t bring themselves to trust each other earlier, in which case many lives could have been spared. However, the Federation and the Dominion are at war, and war means killing the enemy and sacrificing your own. Later on, in the mess hall, Sisko admits that if he had to, he would have made all the same choices all over again. Yet the weight of the lives lost weighs heavy over him throughout the episode.

H: I get that this episode is about the challenge of trusting your adversaries, and how this can make diplomacy difficult, especially in wartime. A valid point, but overall this episode wasn’t a favorite. There were a lot of random aspects that had no real relevance to the story (how/why all the Jem’Hadar on the ship died in the first place, the scanning device, Worf finding the computer console, etc) and I felt that diluted the story too much.

A: This episode has its ups and downs. The major downside is that I liked it a lot more the last time I watched it. But now not so much, and it turns out Jason and Hannah don’t like it that much either. And it was my suggestion to watch for our first joint watch & blog. Sorry, Hannah and Jason. So, I still like it for some reasons and dislike it for other reasons.

I still like it for two reasons; it shows the cost of war which is a darker side of Star Trek and it foreshadows my favorite episode of all of Star Trek. The first is the slow death of Muniz as a result of holding on to the Jem’Hadar ship. This entwines with the foreshadowing. Sisko must make the choices that every commander must make during a time of war and live with them. In this episode, he sacrifices his five officers to gain control of the Jem’Hadar ship and says he would do it again. This foreshadows his actions and more significant sacrifice in the episode In the Pale Moonlight.

Now why do I not enjoy this episode as much now? The darker side of Star Trek is shown better in other episodes, and this episode has too many plot holes to ignore when you think about it for two seconds. That’s what I get for putting on my thinking cap to bring you this review. Well, the darker side of Star Trek and the reality of war is better viewed in episodes like Nor the Battle to the Strong and In the Pale Moonlight.

The plot holes alone are just too large to place it on the same tier as the aforementioned episodes. The elite Starfleet officers cannot cope with a 10 hour bombardment, which they know is a pure psychological ploy knowing they will never be hit. They even say this when the bombardment starts. This is just one of many examples that show that Starfleet is perhaps the worse military organization there is. The second major plot hole is how the Vorta and Jem’Hadar attempt to rescue the changeling. They never transport it off the ship, they only send one Jem’Hadar in secretly to get it; why not two, when our Jem’Hadar did transport on board he beamed to a random hallway, and not the bridge where our changeling is. Ok, I admit there are some decent explanations for those examples, but the worse offending plot hole is simply ridiculous though a completely minor issue that has no effect on the plot. Why did the Vorta not transport the changeling’s ashes to her ship? Oh, wait I know why. It’s so that we can have Sisko ask why the Dominion and Federation cannot trust each other. Excuse me, but didn’t the Dominion just kill how many of your people Sisko, and isn’t the Federation basically in a non-declared war with the Dominion? So, being enemies is the problem basically, thanks for letting me know. There are more plot holes, and the three I mentioned just bother me the most.

Nor The Battle To The Strong

Hello all! Welcome to our first episode recap. To start, we picked The Deep Space Nine episode "....Nor The Battle To The Strong." We picked this because we felt this episode is pretty accessible, even if you are not super familiar with the characters. It's also a good DS9 episode that makes you think, but also is a bit darker than your typical Star Trek story. Let's get started!

H: Episode opens with Julian and Jake on a runabout on the way back from a scientific conference. Jake is interviewing Julian about the findings he presented at the conference. This assignment is Jake's first big break as a journalist, but he is obviously not enthused about the dry science topic. Also Julian is being his typical pompous, asshole self.


"Good! That's the key! Those protein anomalies!"
J: Julian is being his usual pompous ass for sure, but it's clear that he's also a very bright doctor at the top of him game. As he continues on about how the establishment just won't accept that quantum mechanics plays an important role in some peptide whatever whatever, a distress signal comes in. Agelon Prime, a key system in the ongoing war, is under attack from Klingons and requires medical assistance. Jake is thrilled- this is just the break he needs. But the doctor, despite his carefree attitude while discussing biology, is quite wary of subjecting a young untrained fellow such as Jake to the dangers of a warzone. In the end, humanitarianism and glory win out, and they set a course for Agelon Prime.


Jake needs some action

H: Sidnote: I'm way impressed that Jason knows the name of the random planet.
H: Yay the DS9 theme! My favorite <3



H: Look at that cute little Enterprise.
J: That's not an Enterprise. It has no neck!"
H: But it's from a front angle. You can't tell."
J: The saucer section should be way above the engineering section. I think it's a nebula class.
H: Okay fine.

(Let the record show that the ship is indeed a Nebula class and Jason knows way, way more about Star Trek then me and I should know better by now!)

H: Back on DS9, Quark is trying to make a decaf coffee for Kira, who is pregnant. I totally love this storyline with Kira carrying O'Brien and Keiko's baby. I'm happy they wrote Nana Visitor's pregnancy into the story line instead of having her awkwardly hold objects in front of her belly for half of the season. Plus some good episodes came out of it!
Anyway, DS9 gets news that Julian and Jake are helping out with the emergency situation on ~Agelon Prime~. Sisko is hella freaked out about Jake being on the front lines of a warzone.

J: Zoom to Agelon Prime. Jake finds himself in a makeshift triage center in some kind of cave receiving wounded from an ongoing battle with the Klingons. It's a mess.


Yikes.

Confronted with the reality of the emergency apparent around him, Jake just wants to be useful. He falls in line as some kind of orderly, helping to carry strechers from place to place and basically doing whatever he's told.
H: A man is brought in with a "disruptor blast" to the foot, which he explains he got when stepping over a Klingon he assumed was dead. Julian takes one look at his foot at knows that his injury is not caused by a Klingon disruptor, but by a phaser blast. In other words, this guy shot himself in the foot to get off the front lines. Julian moves on to patients with more pressing injuries, barely hiding his disgust of this coward. Jake is left alone with the man, who proceeds to admit shooting himself in the foot after explaining how unimaginably horrible it was to be in the middle of the fighting. Jake is not convinced by the man's explanation, and is ready to write him off as a coward as well.


"You weren't there! You don't know what it's like!"
**foreshadowing**
J: Jake continues on in his defacto-role lugging around the dead and dying. We meet an inappropriately cheery young nurse/orderly who befriends Jake. Finally the day is over. The battle has ended for the time being and the doctors have handled most of the wounded for the time being. Julian Bashir and some of the others make some wise cracks, and Jake looks lost, coming down from the rush of constantly doing whatever job was put in front of him. He's not as comfortable seeing death so close.

Back at home on DS9, Sisko is worried, and pondering with Odo about the fragility of the mortal coil.
H: Odo is complaining about the hardships of no longer being a changling. I feel bad for him and all (a fundamental change to your molecular structure must be pretty hard to process), but whenever this comes up with all I can think about is how Odo has to eat food now, and what it must of been like for him to experience the horror of his first poop. I am very mature...
J: Anyway....Sisko receives word that Agelon Prime is in danger of falling, and sets off on the Defiant to rescue his wordy and wayward son.
H: Back on the planet, everyone is having dinner after the exhausting day. Julian makes some really horrifying surgeon humor that literally makes Jake run out of the mess hall to puke. Julian follows him, and after Jake has calmed a bit, they chat about the guy who shot himself in the foot. Jake is still shocked that, despite all of the Starfleet training, the man still couldn't handle the pressure of battle.


"Some people say you don't really know what you're made of until you've been in battle."
**Mega foreshadowing.**
H: In the next scene, Julian is talking with one of the other doctors. Turns out her husband is on one of the ships that has been sent to the front line. Julian tries to assure her that her husband is a great officer on a good ship and he will be fine. This scene is a bit of a segway as you never find out what happened to her husband, but is yet another reminder that this whole war thing really sucks and that Starfleet officers, usually so confident and tidy, are starting to unravel.

J: When Jake gets his appetite back, he returns to trying to eat something. The inappropriately cheery nurse shows up and starts chatting about how they are all probably going to die horribly. Jake can't help but think that his article on Bashir wasn't worth this, and he's probably going to die pointlessly without contributing anything of value.

The Klingons attack! Jake and Julian leave the cave to try and retrieve a small generator from their ship to keep the outpost going just a little longer.
H: Julian and Jake are walking over to the runabout when-oh shit!-the Klingons! Shells are raining down around them and they dive for cover. Julian heroically proclaims that "whatever happens one of us has to get that generator!" Two seconds later Julian is hit by a shell and Jake gets separated from him.


Typical Bashir.
Jake frantically tries to decide to help Julian or continue onto the runabout solo, but with the horror of explosions all around he totally freaks out and runs off. Jake ends up getting lost and wandering into the carnage of a recent battle when he literally trips over a dead Klingon. He panics and starting running, eventually colliding with a fatally injured Starfleet officer.
J: This dying guy is a tough guy. Classic hero. He repeatedly insists that he's "not gonna die with his face in the dirt," ordering Jake to keep his eyeballs pointed in a generally upward direction. Jake offers to try and carry him out, desperate to do the right thing after his display of cowardice, but the tough fellow just laughs and points out that any attempt to move him would result in his guts falling out. To amplify Jake's guilt that much more, it turns out this guy found himself in his present situation saving his platoon, sacrificing himself and giving them the time to get to the hopper. Jake can't cope with the guilt and insists that he must have run for a reason, perhaps to save this hero's life. The tough guy doesn't respond kindly to the news that Jake is, effectively, a deserter.


You don't eat nails and whiskey for breakfast?
I thought that the actor and the episode as whole really did a good job of hinting that Jake's cowardice is coming from a place of unfamiliarity and a sense of uselessness more than a straightforward aversion to sacrifice. This isn't stated in the show and doesn't lessen the shame, but its an interesting undercurrent. Jake isn't a medic. He isn't an engineer. He can't fight. I get the feeling he runs more because he just doesn't know what he's doing and feels like he would be giving his life away without contributing anything. Given his lack of training, should he have pushed on into the shells? He had no clue what he was doing- he'd almost surely be killed, accomplishing nothing. Would that have been better?
H: I liked this guy for a different reason. To me, the point being made here is in real life people don't run fleeing only to become heroes in the next scene. Real life is messy. Some people make horrible decisions and some people make incredibly courageous ones, but neither one guarantees your survival. This man's last words are literally "sorry kid, life doesn't work like that", and then he spits up blood and dies. I also like this scene because (like this whole episode) it's contradictory to the whole utopian Star Trek universe. Even in this amazing future time, there are still cowards and good men still die horrible deaths.

H: In the next scene, Jake manages to make it back to the hospital. You can practically see the shame and guilt radiating off of him. He's relieved to hear that Bashir made it back alive, with the generator in tow despite his serious injuries. Jake reluctantly goes to the ICU to visit Bashir, who looks literally nauseous with anxiety and worry over Jake. The look on his face when he sees Jake safe and sound is great, and further emphasizes how selfless Julian really is. Jake lies to Julian about what happened during the shelling, telling him that he got knocked out. Later in his room Jake is writing about his day, concluding that he is a coward.

J: Next scene, Jake has to attend to the foot-fellow. The level on which Jake is now able to relate to this man's shame ironically leaves him feeling even more isolated and horrible. He walks to the mess hall. Inappropriately cheery nurse and some of his friends are at a table chatting about their preferred method of execution: decapitation, disembowlment, disintigration, lots of 'd' words. Inappropriately cheery nurse asks Jake how he'd like to die, and Jake freaks out, feeling far to vulnerable and stressed to joke around. He then delivers the ultimate rant line of the episode, lamenting the hopelessness of their predicament and the uselessness of courage in its face.


"MAYBE YOU SAVED A HOPPER FULL OF PEOPLE! MAYBE YOU SHOT YOURSELF IN THE FOOT!
NO ONE'S GOING TO REMEMBER!"
Sisko out.

H: I liked the scene with Jake and the foot guy. Jake definitely is relating to this guy now, presumable because they are both cowards (this is what Jake seems to conclude), but I think he also relates to him because he's not Starfleet, he's not trained to rigidly see things like this as right or wrong, so he is able to emphasize with how terrified this guy was, especially considering his recent ordeal.

Either way, shit is definitely about to hit the fan. The medical base is now under attack and the staff needs to evacuate all the patients down a tunnel to safety. During the evacuation, Jake and a few of the medical staff get ambushed by Klingons! The Klingons are true to form and within seconds Jake is the only one left alive in the room. He grabs a phaser from the body of a nearby officer and starts shooting in all directions in a blind panic, eventually causing a cave in. The falling rocks crush the Klingons, but also knock out Jake.


I use the same "oh shit!" fighting style in every first-person shooter.
Jake wakes up to find Bashir and his dad sitting over him. Yay! Captain Sisko and the Defiant made it to the base and saved the day. Sisko and Bashir both congratulate Jake on being clever and brave enough to cause the cave in, even though that's not how he intended it at all.
J: Back on the station, Jake shares what he's written about his experience with his father. Jake insighfully concludes that "The line between heroism and cowardice is a lot thinner than most people think... I was just as scared at the hospital as at the generator, so scared I'd do anything to survive. Once it meant running away and once it meant picking up a phaser."



Deep. It made me wonder if real journalists in warzones experience a similar feeling of displacement, inadequacy, and cowardice. They're certainly not being cowards, but I wonder if, standing next to the deliberate sacrifices of trained soldiers, they might come to feel that way.
H: Also, this episode reminded me that even though Jake has grown up quite a bit during the series, he is still only 18. He hasn't had really any official training of any kind, and certainly not military training. I can only imagine how 18 year old me would have reacted in his situation, and I'm pretty sure I would have ran for my life as well. What I find admirable is that he 'fessed up. At any age it's not easy to admit when you have done something wrong, especially when the stakes are so high and a wrong decision can literally end someone's life, but Jake still puts it all out there. I think that show some serious maturity and also alludes to what an excellent writer Jake is going to become.

So that's it! Our first episode recap. Any other thoughts on this episode? Any suggestions on what we should watch next?

Best of Star Trek extravaganza!

H: A while ago Jason and I read some random internet post ranking the best 100 episodes of Star Trek - a list we both immediately were personally offended by. One of our main issues was the uneven distribution of series. The author was obviously a TOS fan, and as such the top 10 episodes were very TOS heavy, which (in my opinion) seriously snubbed some amazing episodes from other series. So we decided to make our own list with all the best episodes from each series, and then compare these best of episodes head-to-head for a more representative snapshot of the best Star Trek episodes. Although in making this list we quickly realized that it's really hard to directly compare Star Trek series to each other. The series all have distinct strengths and weaknesses, and our interpretation of these pros vs. cons seriously affects how much we enjoy that series. For example, DS9 is my favorite series because I really like the character-driven story lines and long story arcs that last many episodes, or even season.

J: Call me old fashioned, but I always liked the self-contained episodes with a beginning middle and end. I'm the same way with long series like star wars, the sword of truth, etc. The first one is always my favorite, because its always designed to be a complete story on its own. I like it because each story can be new- you can hop topics, you can watch them in whatever order you want, etc. Anyway, we decided that comparing such different series would be apples and oranges, so elected to compromise by picking our favorite episodes from each series. We're going to do a blog post for at least our top three from each of the five star trek series.

H: Here's our list as of now. As TNG and DS9 are our favorite series, we have a lot of contenders to watch. If you have any suggestions of episodes we should add (from any series) it would be most appreciated!

Origianl Series (TOS)
Balance of Terror
City on the Edge of Forever
The Trouble with Tribbles
Devil in the Dark
Amok Time
Space Seed

The Next Generation (TNG)
The Best of Both Worlds
Darmok
Inner Light
Measure of a Man
Tapestry
Attached
Deja Q
In Theory
A Fistful of Datas
Naked Now
Genesis
Q Who
The Offspring

Deep Space Nine (DS9)
The Visitor
In the Pale Moonlight
Far Beyond the Stars
Nor the Battle to the Strong ✓ Blog post here.
The Wire
In the Cards
Trials and Tribbulations
Hard Time

Voyager (VOY)
The Equinox
Year of Hell Parts 1&2
The Void
One
Deadlock
Living Witness

Enterprise (ENT)
Twilight
In A Mirror, Darkly Parts 1&2
Dear Doctor
Carbon Creek
Similitude

Star Trek TNG Sins of the Father

First post from me, Jason!  Two nights ago Hannah and I watched the Next Gen episode Sins of the Father, in which Worf's father, Mogh, is charged with conspiring with the Romulans and betraying the Klingon Empire.  Honor demands that Worf and his brother Kurn challenge the ruling, and through their efforts we discover that the Empire knew Mogh was innocent all along.  They laid the blame on Mogh because the true traitor was the father of one of the council members.  In the end, Worf accepts a kind of 'dishonorable discharge' to preserve the integrity of the Empire's ruling council. 

This episode did a great job of revealing the tension between the demands of honor and the demands of more practical concerns.  Klingons purport to value honor above all else, and they hold that one is responsible for the actions of his/her family, and the family is responsible for the actions of the individual.  Their warrior code sort of parallels the notion of the 'noble savage,' and their culture was originally based on the Samuri of Japan.  This all sounds very impressive, but the episode reveals some problems with this system of justice. 

Worf is the fully honest Klingon - he seems to take his honor as seriously as he says he does.  Duras is the council member who's father betrayed the Klingons to the Romulans.  It turns out later in the series that Duras is just as treacherous as his father, but in this episode all we know is that he's a bit of a sleaze bag.  K'mpec is the ruler of the Klingon Empire, and he's the ultimate pragmatist.  He's a fat guy who drinks too much, and while he's got a bit of pride himself, he only really cares about mantaining a stable Empire and mostly views honor as a populist obsession that has to be carefully navigated by savy politicians. 

What I found most interesting was the end of the episode when Worf discovered the conspiracy.  The entire episode - and really the entire series - Worf is portrayed as a brick wall of honor.  He would rather die than lie, and when he first discovered the coverup he was naturally furious.  However, when it was explained that revealing the truth could cast the Empire into civil war, Worf went along with K'mpecs coverup.  The whole conundrum is summarized by an exchange between Picard and K'mpec:

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: You admit the truth? And yet expect him to accept punishment? What does this say of an Empire who holds honor so dear?
K'mpec: The Empire will not be destroyed for one family's honor!

In the end, I thought it was interesting because typically you expect honor based cultures to view honor as an end in itself, but in this situation you see, when push comes to shove, both Worf and K'mpec embrace, if reluctantly, a more pragmatic solution. 

BtVS: Living Conditions

Hurricane Sandy is in full effect here at Casa de Hannah/Jason. Which means exorbitant amounts of TV and Starcraft.

Amongst the many, many things I've watched today are a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Jason and I have slowly been re-watching the entire series and we just started season 4 today. The second episode in season 4, "Living Conditions," is one of my favorite Buffy episodes. Not only does it contain multiple classic Buffy moments, but the sentiment behind it is perfect. Who hasn't complained (often incessantly and to the annoyance of those around you) about a horrible roommate? I love how this episode takes that situation to the extreme, literally making Buffy's roommate a soul-sucking demon. Pretty much this should be required viewing for all college freshman. No matter how bad they are, at least they aren't trying to send you to hell, right?