Wrote this in 2006


I have just sat through an episode of Deep Space nine, one of the ones with Warf in it, which was kind of weird, because we're used to seeing him on the other series, but anyway!

Series 5 episode 7.

A group of them go on holiday to a planet called Risa.

I just sat through someone (who actually turned out to be a kind of bad guy, meant well, but went wrong, but anyway) sit and tell them that because the whole point of this planet was pleasure and enjoying yourself and having a good time that he saw them all as children who couldn't defend themselves! And if he saw them like that then how did their enemies see them?
Risa is one of those planets the federation has set up with all sorts of things to control it's natural environment. They control the weather, to make it always lovely and wonderful, they control the seismic activity to make sure there are never any earthquakes (and BTW therefore never any tsunami waves), and so on. He turns off the weather control and all of a sudden the people start to leave, they're not enjoying themselves any more, they complain about everything.
And I sat there and watched this, kind of open mouthed really, like "OK, now I understand what T's been on about".
WOW!

There was also some stuff in this episode about Warf and his romantic relationship with one of the female characters.
And how she confronts him on the fact that he is so restrained, so locked in, never really knowing how to enjoy stuff, never really being truly himself, who he was made to be.
And he talks about how in the heat of the moment of a football match when he was a kid he killed a boy, not meaning to and realized that . . . .
here it comes . . . . .
"I realized how much more fragile humans are and that if I was going to live among them I would have to hold back for the rest of my life!"
Then there was some stuff about the relationship with her, and he didn't want her as someone he loved to get hurt, because of him being himself.
But in the end he got so angry at what this bad guy was doing that he did let rip, did let the real Warf out.

Doesn't that have something to say to our men, to where a lot of them have found themselves in the past, and for sure some of them still are, but also what you said about the young men in youth as well. That maybe some of the holding back has been out of fear for what would happen to those around them, those they love.

But also something more general than that, something about the angels we've seen as well, something about them holding back, because we would get hurt.
Not sure I understand all of it, but it was incredibly powerful.