2539: Hipster Coffee

I was a little early going into town for work this morning, so I stopped for a coffee. The Starbucks I usually stop at was pretty heaving, so I went over the road to a place that has relatively recently opened but which I hadn't tried before: an apparent chain (I've seen at least two in various parts of Southampton) called Coffee #1. And I think it's the most hipster place I've ever been in.

If I were to say the words "hipster coffee shop" to you, picture what you think I mean for a moment. Chances are you're imagining a place with wooden floors, eclectic art lining the walls and overly familiar, jocular writing on the menu. And, of course, lots of 20-year old mean with beards and overly elaborate moustaches browsing Instagram on their iPads. And blue-haired, slightly overweight women staring morosely at their mobile phones, flipping idly through social media rather than actually talking to the person sitting across the table from them.

Coffee #1 was exactly like this, and then some. The art on the walls seemed to have no coherent theme whatsoever, running the gamut from an enlarged diagram of how to correctly hitch a horse to a post to framed covers of Tintin comics and Tolkien novels. The furniture wasn't much better; I'm pretty sure there wasn't a single matching chair in the entire place. And this wasn't the case that you find in some coffee shops where maybe a chair breaks so they have to bring out an "emergency chair" from the back room to fill a gap; no, this seemed like a distinct effort to make everything mismatched. It was sort of impressive in a faintly insufferable sort of way.

Coffee #1 wasn't a bad place to go for coffee by any means; the coffee itself was nice and at least came in proper mugs rather than artisanal blown glass jars or something, but the whole experience I had while I was there was just one of the place itself trying far too hard. "Look at me!" it seemed to say. "I'm quirky and kooky and wacky!" It felt like whoever had designed the chaotic aesthetic of the whole place was desperately trying to ensnare to coerce the millennial market into coming for a cup of overpriced, overly complicated coffee while taking selfies with their insufferable friends to plaster all over an Instagram feed that no-one in their right mind would give a shit about, regardless of how many cat GIFs and screenshots of the Notes page on their iPhone featuring supposedly profound "showerthoughts" they interspersed their irrepressible narcissism with.

Entertainingly, I got the distinct impression that the staff at Coffee #1 were a little weary of the whole thing, too. The woman serving me wandered off to take a piss (in the toilet, thankfully, at least I assume that's where she went) halfway through taking my order, and the guy who appeared to be in charge looked a little flustered, to say the least. I'm not sure whether this was simply a side-effect of the Christmas rush (which I can attest to as being exhausting) or if working in an environment that practically screams "ME! ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK HOW QUIRKY I AM!" simply fatigues the mind after a while.

Either way, I'm not averse to going back to Coffee #1 again in the future, since the important part of its service — y'know, the coffee — was nice enough and no more obnoxiously priced than its peers. The mismatched, chaotic decor didn't even really bother me that much, despite the words I've expended describing it above — it was simply rather striking, since it was my first visit. It all just seemed like rather a lot of wasted effort — and believe me, to ensure that every single chair in your establishment doesn't match any other chair in your establishment has to take a certain amount of effort — when I can't help but feeling most people would be happy with comfy chairs, muted and relaxing decor, and perhaps some light, calming music playing in the background.

And good coffee, of course.

2534: Christmas Cheer

While I've somewhat lost enthusiasm for Christmas over the last ten years or so — I used to absolutely love it as a child — one thing I am pretty grateful for is the fact that I don't recall ever having a "bad" Christmas.

I mention this simply because one of the most popular stereotypes used when describing the Christmas period is that of "the inevitable family arguments" that apparently occur in many households. While I feel that the descriptions of these are often somewhat overblown and exaggerated for comedic effect in most cases, these stereotypes presumably came about for a reason.

My Christmases growing up were fairly formulaic and predictable, but that brought them a certain sense of comfort about them. I'd wake up to find a selection of small gifts that had been snuck into a "Santa's sack" at the foot of my bed, then go downstairs for a bacon sandwich and, once I was a little older, a Bucks Fizz. After breakfast, we'd go up to the lounge and open presents — my mother usually being the one who was most enthusiastic about this part of the day, and my father urging a certain degree of restraint — before relaxing with our new acquisitions for a little while.

After that, lunch preparations would get underway, with my mother taking the lead on things — we were a household of traditional gender roles, and also my mother is an excellent cook — and the rest of us alternating between staying well out of the way and occasionally fetching and carrying things as requested.

Lunchtime would come, and sprouts would always be on everyone's plate, regardless of protestations, though those of us who really objected to them (such as me) would typically only have one of them, drowned in gravy to make it as inoffensive as possible. This would be followed by Christmas pudding, which would always be set aflame, and which I'd never quite work out if I actually liked or not — after 35 years of contemplation, I don't think I do — and perhaps a cheeseboard to finish.

At some point during the day, the whole family would troop down to a local family friends' place for wine and conversation for an hour or two; this was never a formal affair, but was always pleasant, particularly if the circumstances of the rest of the year had meant that we hadn't had the time to catch up as frequently as we all might have liked to do. Then we'd return home, flop into our respective chairs and go back to enjoying our presents, mountains of snack foods and a generally relaxed, calm atmosphere.

I don't remember a single Christmas that was blighted with arguments or troublesome political discussions, and I'm grateful for that. Perhaps these things did happen and I just don't remember them, but they couldn't have been especially traumatic for me if I can't recall them at all.

These days, a Christmas exactly as I describe above is something that only happens once every couple of years now, since being married, we have the "one family, other family, quiet Christmas by ourselves" cycle going on. This year, we're with my in-laws, who have routines of their own very similar to those that my family have enjoyed over the years, albeit with their own little twists.

And after a turbulent year — not to mention the chaos of working retail over the holiday period — I'm looking forward to a day where everyone, everywhere can just take some time to relax and enjoy themselves for once. At least, I hope that's what everyone, everywhere is at least going to make an effort to try and do.

Merry Christmas.

2531: Planning to Unplug

After some discussion with my friend Chris recently — partly inspired by my recent post on mobile phone apathy — I've made the not particularly difficult decision to try and "unplug" as much as possible from the general noise of the Internet in 2017.

And I'm talking about more than just stepping away from Twitter and Facebook like I have done a few times in the past, as positive as those experiences turned out to be for me. I'm talking about a pretty thorough purge, and a return to a simpler, quieter life with fewer external stressors.

You see, the allure of the Internet and its ability to connect people from all over the world has kind of worn off somewhat for me. The last few years have demonstrated that there are a significant number of people out there who are more interested in conflict, oneupmanship and narcissism than actual meaningful interaction. The fall from grace of the games press — and many game journalists' pretty much unveiled hatred of their audiences — is just one of many examples of this, but the overall negativity that infuses what feels like the vast majority of online communications these days is just proving to be more trouble than it's worth.

I don't need that. It's not adding anything to my life — nothing good, anyway — so, I figure, why continue to put up with it? There's no need to.

As such, starting on New Year's Day, I'm going to begin a process of unplugging as much as I possibly can. Twitter and Facebook are both going completely, since the annoyance both of those bring to my life far outweighs the benefits of both of them. More significantly, I'm planning on ditching the smartphone age in favour of an older, simpler phone that doesn't bug me every five minutes with updates and notifications. At this point, I'm strongly considering picking up a second-hand N-Gage I've seen on Amazon, since that has the added benefit of being an underappreciated and increasingly rare gaming platform as well as a phone I very much enjoyed using when I originally had one.

I'm also going to draw my time with this blog to a close. I'm satisfied with what I've achieved here since I started, but the time has come to move on. I'm not going to give up regular writing, mind you; I'm still going to post weekly articles over on MoeGamer, since those have a clear focus, and I'm also intending to start a weekly TinyLetter as a more private, more personal substitute for my daily updates here. I'll post details on how to sign up for that towards the end of the year, so those of you who want to continue to follow what I'm up to can do so.

I'll be keeping more personal means of communication open. My email address and Google Hangouts accounts will still be active, as will my gaming accounts on Steam, Xbox Live and PSN. But the shouting into the void that is public social media will, hopefully, become a thing of the past. It's no longer enjoyable, useful or fun, so I have no need for it.

I'm not going to put my personal email, Google Hangouts and gaming account addresses in this post for obvious reasons, but if you are interested in staying in touch via any of these means, please feel free to drop me a line via my Contact page explaining who you are and how you know me. If we've chatted before in the past, great, no problem; if we've never spoken before, however, please do include a bit about yourself in your message.

That's the plan, then. And I anticipate that it will lead to a happier, more peaceful and less stressful 2017 for me. At least I hope it does, anyway!

2529: Mobile Phone Apathy

I've always thought of myself as something of a gadget-head, but over the last few years I've become increasingly underwhelmed and bored with those most ubiquitous of devices, the mobile phone.

I remember getting my first mobile phone towards the end of my schooldays. It was a big fat Motorola thing with an extendable aerial, and I remember the most exciting thing about it was discovering that I could hold down a button to write lower-case letters in text messages, whereas I'd previously been writing in all-caps like a grandmother learning to use email for the first time. (We were all writing in all-caps like a grandmother learning to use email for the first time at the time.)

Every year or two after that, there was the excitement of The Upgrade. I upgraded from my Motorola to a Nokia 3210, which was exciting because it had Snake on it, and everyone loved Snake, despite it being something that I'd played some 15 years earlier on my old Atari 8-bit computers. Then I upgraded to a Nokia 3330, which had Snake II on it (which was essentially Snake with mildly better graphics). These two phones were pretty similar to one another, though this was also the age that phones were getting smaller rather than bigger, so the 3330 was pleasingly compact after the relatively bulky 3210.

After that, I went for a Sony Ericsson phone that had a colour screen and a camera. Well, I say it had a camera; actually, the camera was a separate unit you had to snap on to the bottom of it which took photos at approximately the size of a postage stamp that weren't any use to anyone. The colour screen was nice, though.

After that, I got a phone whose make and model I can't remember, but which I think was actually one of my favourite phones of all time. It had a pretty big screen — in colour again, a reasonable quality camera and, best of all, the ability to record sounds that could subsequently be used for ringtones, message tones, alarm tones and all manner of other things. It was a lot of fun, and an early phone to support Java, too, which meant you could download games for it. And there were some decent games available, too — most notably the excellent puzzle game Lumines, which had previously been something exclusive to PSP owners.

If I remember correctly, my next phone after that was the ill-fated Nokia N-Gage, which I picked up out of interest in its gaming capabilities. I actually ended up liking it as a phone more than a gaming device, since its vertically-oriented screen made a lot of games impractical and tricky to play, but the dedicated directional pad, the way you held it and the big, bright, clear screen made it a very comfortable personal organiser device. Sure, you looked dumb talking on it — it was notorious for its "side-talking" posture, whereby you looked like you were holding a taco up to your ear while talking on it — but I rarely talked on the phone anyway, so this simply wasn't a big issue for me. It's actually one of my most fondly remembered phones.

I forget if I had any other phones between the N-Gage and the iPhone that I was given for free while I worked at Apple — I was working retail during the launch of the device — but none spring to mind. The iPhone, meanwhile, was actually a little underwhelming when it first launched; while its bright display and capacitive touchscreen certainly looked lovely, iOS 1.X was severely limited in what you could actually do with it. About the most interesting thing you could do with a first-gen iPhone was browse the "full" Internet rather than only WAP-enabled mobile-specific pages. (Interestingly, with responsive sites, we've now actually gone back to having mobile-specific pages, albeit with a lot more functionality than old-school WAP sites.)

The iPhone was a bit of a watershed moment for mobile phones, though, because it's at that point that devices stopped being quite so different and unique from one another. Each and every iPhone is much like the last — perhaps a little faster, a little bigger, a little clearer, a little more lacking connection ports we've previously taken for granted — and each and every Android phone is much like the last too, except, of course, for the ones that function as inadvertent incendiary devices.

I've had my HTC One M8 phone for over two years now. I picked it up as an upgrade from my crusty old iPhone 4 because I was bored with iOS and wanted to see what Android was like, and discovered that yes, I liked Android, though it's just as boring as iOS is. Now, even as I'm eligible for an upgrade to the newest, latest and greatest, I have absolutely no desire to investigate my options whatsoever. The M8 works fine for what I use it for, and I find most new phones virtually indistinguishable from what the M8 offers. Again, they might be a little bit faster or offer a higher resolution screen — although at the size of a mobile phone, there comes a point where resolution becomes completely irrelevant, since individual pixels are too small to distinguish — but they don't do anything new or exciting in the same way that my pre-smartphone upgrades offered.

Each and every upgrade before the iPhone I had was genuinely thrilling, and something I wanted to show off to people. Each phone was unique from the last, and each brand offered its own particular twist on things. Now, the actual devices themselves are uninteresting and virtually indistinguishable from one another; simply a delivery medium for their operating system of choice. And operating systems aren't interesting.

I think a big part of my growing cynicism and apathy for this particular side of technology also comes from the fact that the mobile marketplace in general just feels a bit sleazy. Ever since the world was given in-app purchases — something which I knew would be a terrible idea as soon as it was announced — we've been subjected to revolting, exploitative free-to-play garbage, ad-infested messes and all manner of other bullshit. Rather than being the cool, exciting gadgets they once were, mobile phones feel increasingly like just another way for advertisers to invade your life and snake oil salesmen to part you with your case — although what part of life isn't this way these days?

All this is a rather long-winded way of saying that I'm in no hurry to upgrade my HTC One M8, and in fact, I've considered on more than one occasion actually "downgrading" to a feature phone rather than a smartphone. Maybe I should see how much N-Gages are going for on eBay…

2526: Quiet Weekend

I've been working all week, and I now have two full days — a proper weekend — to look forward to. And I am indeed very much looking forward to it.

In particular, I'm looking forward to spending some more quality time with Final Fantasy XV and Pokémon Moon, both of which I've had the chance to play sporadically throughout the week, but not for particularly protracted periods of time due to the necessity of getting up the next day in time for work.

I've always appreciated free time with no commitments, but nothing really makes you appreciate it quite like a week of hard work, whatever form that hard work takes — whether it's getting out of the house and doing something in exchange for money, or simply doing something useful at home.

Although the work I'm doing is just temporary — it's the same seasonal position in retail I held last year — I'm enjoying it, and I'm noticing a few positive things about myself in the process. In particular, I'm finding it a lot easier to quite simply talk to people and feel like "part of the group". Whether this is a result of working with the same people I worked with last year and consequently not having to build new relationships from scratch, or if it's something to do with the new medication I started on about a month back, I'm not sure — it's probably a combination of those two things — but I am, on the whole, feeling uncharacteristically satisfied with certain aspects of myself at present.

There are plenty of things I'm unsatisfied with too, of course — most notably having put a bunch of weight back on since losing a bunch with Slimming World last year, though since changing medication I have subsequently discovered part of the blame for that can be laid at the feet of the pills I was on earlier in the year — but for now I'm trying to enjoy life as much as I can. I don't doubt that in January when my temporary position comes to an end that things will get a little difficult and tight once again, but I have a few plans in place for things to do and some potential opportunities to pursue.

It's perhaps a tiny bit early to review the whole year, though most people will probably agree 2016 has largely been a big pile of shit. That said, this last couple of months have proven to be a little better than the rest of the year, at least, so all I can really hope for at the moment is that the worst is over and that this is the start of the long climb back out of the abyss into something resembling a normal, satisfying, happy life.

It remains to be seen what 2017 has to hold, but I'm not worrying about that too much for the moment. Right now, I have a full weekend to look forward to. And I intend to enjoy it as much as possible by doing as little as possible.

2520: The Grand Tour

I've been watching Amazon's new "totally not Top Gear, oh wait it is really and we're not even trying to hide it" show The Grand Tour recently. So far I've watched the first three episodes and it's been a lot of fun.

The show follows Top Gear's format pretty closely, usually featuring a single longer film split into two or more chunks over the course of the episode, punctuated by shorter regular features that are usually played more for laughs than anything. The longer film tends to offer a blend between Clarkson, May and Hammond's usual silly activities and some thoughts on their cars of the week, deflecting the common criticisms of Top Gear's latter years in which people accused it of not really being a car show any more.

The longer features have been enjoyably varied so far. One week featured a hilarious sequence of Clarkson, May and Hammond attempting to complete a military exercise — in this case, the "car of the week" was used to assist them in their getaway from an eventually successful rescue mission — while another featured an attempt to recreate the "Grand Tour" of years gone by, whereby wealthy young gentlemen would travel around continental Europe in an attempt to learn more about culture and the arts. (The latter was enjoyably undermined by Hammond turning up in a noisy Dodge and repeatedly doing donuts at every opportunity while Clarkson and May drove an Aston Martin and a Rolls-Royce in an attempt to be more "refined" respectively.)

The shorter features are a little hit and miss. "Conversation Street" — essentially a part of the show where the three talk in a rather unstructured manner similar to the "news" section of Top Gear — tends to work well, as the group has great chemistry as always, and plenty to talk about. "Celebrity Braincrash", meanwhile, ostensibly a segment where they invite a celebrity on to participate in a difficult quiz, but where the celebrities in question inevitably die in some comedically ridiculous manner on their way to the tent that plays host to the show, is a gag that kind of ran its course in the first show and would have probably been better served being replaced by something new in subsequent episodes.

Likewise, the show's replacement for the Top Gear test track is a cool course with some entertaining gimmicks, but "The American", the show's Stig-equivalent, isn't a patch on the understated, mute hilarity of Top Gear's anonymous driver. Like Celebrity Braincrash, "The American" is a bit of a one-note joke, though thankfully in this case not one that is repeated in every episode.

Despite its flaws, however, I've been enjoying The Grand Tour, and it's proven to be an enjoyable successor to Top Gear. I watched a few episodes of the new Top Gear with Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc and didn't hate it, though it wasn't the same at all; the chemistry and sense of genuine friendship that Clarkson, May and Hammond had built up over the years simply wasn't there with the new cast. Fortunately, with the existence of The Grand Tour, this is no longer an issue, since those who enjoyed Top Gear's old way of doing things can now simply get more of the same.

Some might call that unimaginative. I would call it eminently sensible on Amazon's part, and great for the people who just wanted more of the show they enjoyed without radical changes.

2512: Police, Stop!

One of my many not-particularly-guilty pleasures is terrible police documentaries. Not the kind that deal with actual hard-hitting crime like murders and whatnot, but the shows that are typically on late-night TV and focus on the more mundane parts of the police force such as traffic and rail cops.

I'm not sure why I enjoy these shows so much, but I have done for quite some time. I think part of it is the fact that I've always taken a certain degree of pride in being law-abiding and resent those who get away with breaking the law — consequently, I rather enjoy seeing people who have done something wrong get into trouble.

I get the impression from these shows that it's not particularly fashionable to be in favour of the police or of "authority" figures in general, and as such the shows themselves tend to be skewed rather more in favour of the police than the criminals. Good PR and all that. All that said, even without the inherent bias in the shows I'm pretty sure I'd find it tough to sympathise with a drug dealer or twat driving an old banger without any insurance.

The one thing that does bug me a bit about the police depicted in these shows is their ridiculous overreliance on business-speak and jargon. It's never a car crash, it's an "RTC". It's never a house, it's a "property". And God knows what they're on about with half of the charges. "Aggravated vehicle taking?" No, mate, you nicked a car.

These documentaries aren't going to win any awards for quality television or hard-hitting journalism, and often end in a rather unsatisfactory manner explaining just how the people the cops in the episode spent tailing managed to not get locked up for the things they clearly did, but I still find them enjoyable nonetheless. They're not something I'd find myself actively watching in favour of something else, but as something on in the background — usually while we're trying to get to sleep — they're hard to beat.

On that note, it's an early start tomorrow so it's time to get to bed and hear Jamie Theakston explain what ANPR is for the 500th time.

2510: Cats

I haven't talked much about our two cats since we got them a while back, so as a break from all the Final Fantasy XV (it's pretty much all I've done today to enjoy a much-needed day off) I may as well talk about them a bit.

Our cats Ruby and Meg very obviously had established personalities when we first got them. Initially we were led to believe by the people at the animal shelter that Meg, the slightly older one (and possibly the mother of Ruby, we're not sure) was shy and hesitant to trust, but she's emphatically proven that to not be the case since she's settled in. Now she's the most vocal of the two of them, making it abundantly clear when it is dinner time, but I also think of her as the more "mature" one of the two, since when she comes for some fuss she sits down and just chills out, perhaps even dozes off. That said, she does have a tendency to dribble if she's particularly happy, which I wish she wouldn't.

Ruby, meanwhile, is a very active cat. She likes to come and bug you for fuss, and if you provide fuss, then she won't sit still. She likes to demonstrate her enthusiasm for fuss by walking back and forth over you with no regard for your personal space or anything you happen to be doing at the time. Heaven forbid you have a controller or phone in your hand at the time, because if you do and Ruby wants fuss, the thing in your hand is getting headbutted until you pay attention to her.

Ruby also has a thing about licking people, which was initially weird but is something we've just learned to sort of tune out. Of course, to a visitor, getting licked by a cat would probably still be weird, but it's just what she does. I can't quite work out why she does it, whether it's an attempt to wash us or just because something on our hands tastes good, but, well, it seems to be a habit that is already in place and, since it's not doing anyone any harm, I'm certainly not going to try and train her out of it.

I'm grateful for the cats' company, because they seem to appreciate us being around. I really enjoyed having the rats to sit and watch and talk to while they were still alive, and I get the same feeling from the cats. The difference is that the cats are a bit more communicative than the rats were (though all our rats were most certainly very much aware of us and knew how to look cute in order to extract treats from us) and a lot more independent. The latter aspect in particular makes it all the more pleasing when they choose to come and spend time with us; they want our company and enjoy our company, and that's a nice feeling, even if they sometimes decide to express that at inconvenient times.

Pets are great. I loved having a cat growing up and I missed having animal companions in the years since leaving home before we finally tried our hand at keeping rats and eventually our long-awaited cats. Ruby and Meg will hopefully be with us for many years to come just yet; they're very much part of the "family" now and it's getting hard to imagine how our previous life was without them.

2508: The Cough of an Eighty Year Old Man

I am ill.

I do not like being ill, because it is annoying and painful, particularly when it is that particular breed of "ill" somewhere between a cold and flu that causes you to feel constantly stuffed up and occasionally cough like an eighty year old smoker. Also I have the shits.

It is not a pleasant day to be ill, either. Andie's phone claimed it was -7C outside earlier and while I tend to take phone weather readings with a pinch of salt, the fact that it is still visibly frosty outside leads me to believe that yes, it certainly is at least a bit cold out there. Meg the cat certainly let me know that it was cold when I let her in just now.

I have spent the morning in bed accompanied by one or both of our cats at all times. I'm always amazed at quite how well cats understand people; they know exactly when you're not feeling great, whether it's physically, mentally or both, and they know that what you often need in such situations is company and affection. Ruby, who is typically the more irritating of our two cats, rather fond of walking across your face when you're trying to do something, sat with me quietly and peacefully for most of the morning, even curling up and settling down for a bit, which is rather rare to see her do.

I'm up now and craving nothing more than "ill person food". Specifically, I'm feeling a steak slice, nice crisps (Walkers Max!) and some chocolate might help with the doldrums of being ill, accompanied by plenty of Lemsip, of course.

This is a singularly tedious blog post, I'm aware, as there are few things more boring than listening to someone else talk about how ill they are — I've heard enough complaints from my parents about my grandmother having such conversations with them to know this all too well — but, well, it's something to do now that I appear to have exhausted my capacity for lying in bed wheezing all morning. Now I am on the couch beneath a blanket like a homeless person while Andie puts up the Christmas tree and decorations, because now it's December, it is an acceptable time to do so.

Time to dose up on drugs and steak slices, I think, and hopefully I'll feel a bit better tomorrow.

2504: Tears of the Prophets

Reached the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's sixth season this evening and despite inadvertently spoiling myself on the death of a major character some months earlier (though given Deep Space Nine's age, I'm surprised I lasted this long without spoilers!), it remained an impactful episode and an excellent season finale.

I really like how Deep Space Nine developed. While it started as something of a "soap opera in space", which is why some people found it a little dull when compared to the galaxy-spanning adventures of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the gradual buildup of the Dominion storyline into all-out war throughout the sixth season gave the show scope to deftly and subtly readjust its focus over time.

At the end of the sixth season, it's still recognisably distinct from the more "mobile" Star Trek series such as The Next Generation and Voyager, but the action following Sisko and his comrades into battle against the Dominion gets the action off the station often enough to keep things fresh and interesting — and Tears of the Prophets, the sixth season finale, features some spectacular space combat sequences, an area in which Deep Space Nine generally excels.

One thing I've found particularly interesting about the show as a whole is the development of the character Gul Dukat. Initially presented as a character whose motivations and overall alignment wasn't entirely clear, he's had plenty of significant moments over the course of the series, ranging from joyful to tragedy. When he's at his lowest ebb, it's hard not to feel sorry for him, because the show certainly kicks the shit out of him, but Tears of the Prophets makes it abundantly clear why it took such pains to make us sympathise with Dukat as he lost everything he held dear.

Dukat's losses drive him to absolute desperation. He willingly allows himself to be possessed by a Pah-Wraith, the antithesis to the "Prophets", aliens who live in the wormhole that Deep Space Nine protects. The Wraith kills [REDACTED so you don't have to suffer like I did] and apparently cuts off the connection between the Prophets and Bajor before leaving Dukat's body. We're left to see Dukat with a few regrets — most notably the death of [AHEM] — but an overall sense that he's enacted vengeance that he's satisfied with.

This sequence — and the consequences therein — highlight another reason why I enjoy Deep Space Nine: it doesn't attempt to explain everything away with (fake but plausible) science. Oh, sure, there's plenty of traditional Star Trek technobabble throughout the series, but also there's a real sense that some things simply are unknowable and impossible to understand by humanity at its stage of development in the 24th century. The recognition and embracing of this is the basis of religion (or spiritualism at the very least) and Deep Space Nine as a whole handles this sort of thing very nicely. It also makes for some extremely dramatic moments, as metaphysical, "supernatural" things are far less predictable than those which can be explained by science.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the series ends, and am very glad that I've finally got around to watching it all the way through for the first time. I'm even more glad that doing so is a simple matter of watching it on Netflix rather than collecting however many hundred VHS cassettes would have formed the complete run on its original release!