The best and most political episodes of DS9 are more valuable than anything the golden age of television dished out, bc post 9/11, U.S. television would never be that complex or daring again. It just takes a bunch of episodes to get there.
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DS9 could have been even better with a different Sisko. You can almost hear his acting coach in the background whispering "e nun ci ate..."
But once you get past the theatre acting of Sisko, DS9 is probably the best written of the first 4 Treks.
Tbh Startrek TNG had the same issue in the start, but Sir Patrick Stewart learned relatively quickly to adapt. «My» show will always be TNG, as it was what aired here when I was growing up. Startrek TNG and Babylon 5 available on our two, three tv channels when I was a teenager. :)
I can't really recall PS over enunciating the way Avery Brooks did, although he did have a natural projection.
I wasn't that keen on DS9 to start with, but I think it was well written, and helped by the addition of Worf and O'Brien, whose characters were allowed to really develop.
It was in the very beginning. First pilot and episodes. He quickly adapted and and later did a brilliant job. I agree about worf and O’Brien but the guest appearance of other characters sure was helpful too.
The Voyager writers bent & darkened ST & my world in 1 episode,
- from a post WWII vision of lower violence & rising peace from bedrock principles (Prime Directive - PD),
- to a world where Janeway justifies suspending the PD, claiming existential threat.
- I saw it coming: post 9/11 Bush did too
“Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” is my favorite Star Trek show, my 2nd-favorite sci-fi show after “Babylon 5,” and maybe my 3rd-favorite show overall, assuming I’d still consider “The West Wing” #2 even though I haven’t rewatched it in a while…
…Odo is one of my all-time favorite characters, and I feel DS9 covers the topics of family, religion, politics, war, and terrorism, better than all other Star Trek shows. TNG is a close 3rd-favorite SF show after B5 and DS9. Obviously, I miss 1990s style storytelling.
So what you're saying is that shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Squid Game, The Americans, The West Wing, and etc. aren't complex and daring television dramas that pushed the envelope of what could be done on TV?
I'm not sure I'm even going out on a limb here, but 9/11 kinda prevented Star Trek from being culturally viable for like quite a while. And I think that explains the short ending of Enterprise to an extent, and the long time before it was able to be like alive again
The Dominion war episodes (especially the first six episodes of season six) and Far Beyond the Stars are just transcendent. I don’t care what anyone says. That shit is untouchable.
And no, I’m not watching it right now. I left off in the early episodes of season six and can’t return to that beautiful mess at this time of night, so I’m watching TNG. Otherwise, I’ll wind up watching the episode Sacrifice of Angels and breaking.
I'm rewatching DS9 right now actually. TNG is my fave but DS9 has some great stuff in it. The Grand Nagus is silly, but appropriate for ST to portray a capitalist society as silly
I break every time I watch The Visitor. Easily my favorite episode of television ever. It got to me when I was young, but now that I am a father…. Hooo boy. 😭
Nog's war duology in "The Siege of AR-558" and "It's Only a Paper Moon" are sop fantastic because of how seriously they take trauma, PTSD, how war ravages people, and putting a familiar, specific face to it.
Thank you. I watched quite a few seasons and it never quite got there but season 6 I will look at. Probably didn’t get that far. By contrast I liked Voyager and watched most of it.
man Far Beyond the Stars is so. GOOD. Several episodes of DS9 made me cry but that one is in a league of its own
Also I saw it right when people lost their minds about people of color in Rings of Power, which only amplified my feelings about the resistance some have to even imagining another world
Far Beyond the Stars is the best episode in all of Star Trek, like out of any series.
The writers in season 6 put all their effort into that episode & In the Pale Moonlight, since the rest of the season was a bizarre fever dream (clip from the latest video essay where this came up)
Duet was the best episode of the first two or three seasons because of how hard it went into the politics of occupation forces and terroism/freedom fighters (and the superb acting). It's hauntingly beautiful and disturbing at the same time. Honestly, the fact a lead on the show was a terrorist is
something that TV has been absolutely afraid to do that same way.
DS9 really didn't shy away from the fact that every terrorist is a freedom fighter and the line between hero and villain is often purely based on perspective.
Oh yeah, she realised that even though she hadn't given up the fight she'd become the kind of person the younger Kira would have called a collaborator and killed for helping the Cardassians.
A good point. I'm sure the British thought the same thing about Washington during our war of independence. From the colonial perspective he was a patriot from the perspective of the British he was a traitor.
That's kind of what war is though right? Depending on what side you're on you're the hero and the opposition is the villain. In the case of Bajor we can say the Cardassians committed horrible crimes and the Bajorans were justified fighting back, but if they'd have lost they'd have been evil from
the Cardassian point of view. And if the Cardassians had won they'd have been the heroes fighting back against the evil insurgency that targeted innocent Cardassians living on Bajor.
I just started my re-watch a few weeks ago. Yesterday's episode was #17 season one. The one with Odo and Lwaxana Troi stuck in the elevator. It's one of my favourite scenes.
I got very confused around 1998 when I immigrated to the USA and DS9 episodes were coming at me from two different channels, not necessarily in chronological order.
Sometimes everybody was producing comic books in 1940s Harlem. Other times, we were in the desert with Ben Sisko being prophetic.
I agree with this, DS9 took some risks that no Trek show did before and they really didn't do afterwards. Plus the character development, the excellent dialog and the actors did a top notch job of bringing life to the series.
DS9 was so bold. I was just talking to a friend about, how even early with Kira, she’s almost always uncompromising about her resistance life, and while it does allow her moments of introspection, she’s almost never painted as “bad” or regretful for it. Night & day compared the Ro lens in TNG.
Kira's arc is one of emotional healing, not of becoming less radical or bold. It was beautiful to see her go from being essentially feral (to survive) to having the *space* to become her full self. She got softer, but not weaker. I love her forever and ever.
DS9 has always been my favorite Trek show and I hate that it never got the attention it deserved.
When it premiered it got overshadowed by ST:TNG ending, then it barely got to hit its stride before Voyager premiered and stole its press again.
I think DS9 is perfect for streaming, but it wasn't as good as Voyager or TNG for just randomly tuning in, which is how most people experienced TV in the '90s. It's the best Trek, but it didn't suit the medium.
Agreed, DS9 had an ongoing narrative where the other Trek shows had self-contained episodes.
It’s the main reason I loved DS9, because characters had to deal with the ramifications of their choices rather than just taking off to another world in the next episode.
I had the pleasure of rewatching DS9 as of late and went I got to the Dominion War Episodes I had to check when they aired (1998) and was blown away - almost as if the writers had traveled to 2001
Yes, the more I thought about it, it could almost be any time really - we delude ourselves that we live in peaceful times without oppression and an ever-present authoritarian menace but that is more an illusion of privilege and not a fact that should have been clearly realized after 2016 but wasn't
Those smug bastards, with their “Past Tense” wrapup monologue asking, “how did we ever let it get this bad?” and then we’re in our time period of the episode and the clear answer is half-measures compounded into nothingness.
On the contrary, Battlestar Galactica. Trenchantly and challengingly dealt with the "war on terror" when no other telly was doing it. (Honourable mention for Steve Bochco's Over There.)
DS9 had a larger universe to explore.
I know some people hate the Klingon or Ferengi centric episodes but imagine how many spinoffs or specials could have been had exploring other cultures and their point of view about the federation.
Of course, those cultures were stereotypes from our own history
The strange thing is that DS9 and Babylon 5 share a very large number of characteristics and story elements while being produced at the same time, and each show sometimes being the first to do a thing, followed very closely by the other. Used to hold B5 as superior, but these days I've switched.
It's not a coincidence. The B5 writer pitched it (with his 5 year plan) to the studio as a star trek show. They turned it down, commissioned something similar and the execs appear to have drip fed bits of the show Bible to DS9 writers/producers.
Also, if I recall correctly, B5 was only supposed to be 4 seasons long and JMS was convinced to do one more season due to the show's popularity, which explains some major arcs being resolved in S4 and some new things being added in S5.
Not exactly. It was always planned at 5, then they were told part way through 4 that they were getting cancelled. So he crammed a chunk of 5 into 4. Which made it so epic and drove viewing figures high enough to get the 5th.
That would make a lot of sense, but it's still interesting to me that it can't reasonably be claimed that one ripped off the other yet the shows turned out so similar. And each show did some things better than the other. I'm still not a huge fan of the way DS9 resolved the pah wraiths arc.
Oh they are definitely their own things. There are things DS9 can do that B5 can't. E.g. In the pale moonlight hits so hard because you've got 11(?) series of older Trek establishing the values of the federation in primary colours.
B5's strength is the 5 year arc and meticulous plotting allowed for some deeper character development. The best time travel episodes ever done with the same event split over several series. And the whole Londo / G'kar tragedy.
Yeah Kira especially would have been hard post 9/11. It is also kinda funny how much the show makes clear that the bajoran religion is just canonically true
Omg all my DS9-loving soulmates! I’ve finally found you! Pardon me while I rewatch “The Visitor” with the incomparable Tony Todd and cry myself to sleep.
100% this! If I tried to elaborate, I'd just go on and on and on. DS9 has everything: religion, political intrigue, redemption, more intrigue, romance, huge themes that speak directly to our 21st-Century experience.
You're right, but BSG got some serious work done in the aftermath. I still think about how a big budget sci-fi show managed to do a full throated defence of the strategic value of suicide bombers in 2006.
When I think about our uphill battle against fascism ahead, much as I love our Federation heroes, I think back to the mirror universe episodes and those beaten down rebels doing what they had to and trying to make something better
Crossover and Shattered Mirror are especially great
The first season is rudderless, they're often using oldTNG scripts and it shows.
Seasons 2 and 3 are more interesting but they don't find their voice until the Klingon/Dominion War arc at the start of season 4 that serves as a second pilot and rebirth of the show.
The first couple of seasons can be a slog and there can be a sense that the writers were throwing things at the wall to see what stuck, but when it's good it's the best Trek.
I’m on my first watch through, but the episode where after a terrorist attack on earth they put soldiers on every corner? I think about that all the time. It’s an incredible show.
As an ENT would say, it take a long time to say anything important. The story arc of Babylon 5 also needed a long time to get to a resolution, and it why most fans appreciate that aspect of the show. There were no magic 48-minute episode fixes.
And over the course of that bunch of episodes, we learn about and care about the characters, so that when the stories turn political, it's not a contrived showpiece but an illustration of how politics springs from the realities of living.
I binge watched the whole thing over about 12 days or so whilst recovering from surgery. Incredible story arc, like most things across the ST family, wholly relevant, prophetic almost!
The important thing to do with DS9 is just accept that the show is starting off a bit "in medias res" and not worry too much if characters refer to events you didn't witness. The show does its own thing quickly enough.
actually funny realizing at this point most people come to it somewhere in the middle, almost certainly not having seen TOS at all. but yah you can start with DS9
I’ve seen maybe
4 TOS episodes and idk 25 TNG tops and I literally cohost a DS9 podcast. My cohost is a completist unlike me. So don’t question us! I have seen all of Voyager at least. Are you loving Lower Decks?
man, I must be old. I'm not sure about any of those abbreviations. lesse, deep space 9?. no idea what that is.
I'm watching rockford files, is that related?
I really love the TOS movies so I attempted to go back to the original series and it's just... I couldn't do it. When back to a TNG rewatch (which was aborted to switch to DS9. Getting close to the end of Season 1)
I mean, I'd caveat that as yes, but don't follow up into the other series expecting more of the same, cos I feel like to some degree it's a response and reaction to it's predecessors?
Ds9 is the first ST to have deep themes which permeate the whole series: faith and loss. That made it extraordinary and incredible, a definite high water of the franchise. I'd still say maybe do a machete watch of Next Generation to get the background info.
Just did yet another DS9 rewatch, and ended up curating just the Dominion Wars-related episodes (incl sides like Far Beyond...) Incredible how it hits now—its relevance increasingly justified.
I recommend it. TNG was my entry as a kid and I never really watched the rest. A handful of years ago I decided I watch all the Trek shows on a whim and while I still love TNG, it was absolutely DS9 that was the most impactful and touching. The first couple seasons were slow, but it picks up.
I 100% agree! I know the creators butted heads with the network alot to get those episodes through as well. DS9 is my favorite Trek because it was willing to tackle those issues which is what I think Gene Roddenberry would have wanted. Plus Nog is amazing!
all star treks from that era sorta sucked at first and then got great in surprising ways. even voyager and enterprise, though both of those had flaws they never really overcame
Late 80's to mid 90's Trek is the strongest proof that you need to give a show a few seasons to really find its footing, even if ratings and quality are shaky at first.
Yet it’s amazing how much ds9 knew right out of the gate. The scene with Sisko and Jake is in the pilot. Garak meets Bashir in the pilot. It’s amazing. Yeah we also have the games aliens but even season 1 kicks ass
Actually @rasher.bsky.social & I should do an episode of Deep Space Dive about the pilot some time. We generally don’t do episode by episode, we do themes or characters. But a look at how the pilot succeeds as a pilot would be a worthy episode topic.
This would be especially interesting because I don't agree with your perception of the DS9 pilot - I think its tone is very different from the rest of the show, and it's so tethered to TNG.
Garak first shows up in episode 2, but Gul Dukat and Rom are in the pilot!
I first watched the first season of DS9 around early 2020 at a personal low point in my life (not to mention societal low point) and I just sobbed and sobbed through the pilot episode. Not sure if I would’ve had that tearful reaction at any other time period, but I do still find it moving.
I was coming off another round of failed therapy where I was grappling with traumatic events that happened to my parents when they were young and how that reverberated down to me. So when Sisko asks why he’s being forced to relieve trauma, only to discover he’s doing it to himself… that was A Lot.
Sounds like an interesting subject. Of course the pilot is different from the rest of the series in that Cisco is just beginning to get over wolf 359 by the end of the pilot.
NextGen faffed around for at least a season and a half before it really understood its characters, after which it hit its stride.
DS9 DEEPLY understood all of its characters from the start, but floundered around for most of the first season trying to figure out how to tell space station stories.
DS9’s Ronald D Moore cracked out Battlestar Galactica AND For All Mankind, both of which carry on DS9’s legacy of rich political storylines with piles of episodes to get us there…
FAM isn't exactly... carrying on DS9's legacy. RDM BSG sorta? RDM BSG was a fun watch, don't get me wrong, but I don't consider it particularly politically progressive or challenging. And the lesson of FAM is to compromise with corpo class cause strikes are bad and get people killed? yea check again
BSG had a crushing contemporary commentary on the war on terrorism at the time with humans cast in the role of terrorists and Cylons as America, and FAM similarly criticizes the most dangerous elements of today: the pitfalls of nationalism & capitalist self-interest as the engine of “progress”.
Hm, I've been thinking BSG RDM might ought to be worth a rewatch at this point, the religious commentary was always quite interesting to me.
I guess I just saw a lot of FAMs progresive themes to be rather performative, and the anti-capitalism somewhat lacking, although the astroid plot is worth ig
Oh, you’d love a BSG rewatch! When I did, I even re-read some of the Time magazine articles & commentary of the era… it was a controversial, edgy show making some really big moves. I do wonder how FAM will land the thematic plane, since AppleTV is notoriously controlling with editorial on shows…
Call me a pessimist, but I think that FAM was popular because of a very specific set of circumstances, with folks thinking we'd get into space race2 with China and all, and then now we have a fool on the global stage who's our real life Helios, and it don't leave a good taste in my mouth these days.
The political boldness even deepened the escapist sci-fi. By the time the Cardassians take the station we’ve had so much on the trauma of occupation that we can believe the writers might actually let the Federation lose the entire war.
It's recognizably the same universe as TNG, but the vibe is different enough that plenty of people who love one don't really click with the other. (DS9 works for me a lot better!)
There might be a reason for that--early on w TNG, the writers were told to minimize conflict betwn the human characters bc they would have grown beyond it in the future(!)
I think they figured out later that that didn't work, but it explains some of the vibe early on.
--from the pilot onwards, major characters have big differences over serious stuff, but they're usu able to work together & are both/all presented as relatable or having reasons for their POV. It's such a rich emotional landscape IMHO.
I'm not saying TNG is bad! It's got some banger episodes and
some good characters (a couple of which recur on DS9!) & plot arcs. But DS9 was allowed to experiment with things TNG wasn't, and works much better for me.
I happened to start watching DS9 at an impressionable time in my life. It was on reruns so I was seeing it for the first time during the W years. I genuinely think DS9 shaped my politics more than any other media besides Terry Pratchett, and I am so grateful.
I feel this way about Babylon 5, let’s fight (just kidding) let’s talk about how long format television allowed for breathing room and character development in a way that the obsession with British style micro-seasons make impossible
I hate the idea of filler ep’s because those were the ep’s that gave characters room to grow and breath outside of the major plot. Not to say that there weren’t ep’s that just existed to fill a time slot, but many ep’s in the 23/4 ep format moved characters forward even if not the story forward
Battlestar Galatica 2.0 did some very edgy post 9/11 stuff especially the occupation of New Caprica arc. No surprise Ronald D Moore who was heavily involved in the writing of DS9 was co executive producer/creator.
That episode, and that scene, were the best that darker Trek had to offer. Trek is usually great for the hopeful, uplifting and empathic messages, but DS9 manages to do real solid work with shades of grey.
Such an incredible episode, but not at first glance. I’ve heard that lots of veterans wrote very nice letters to Aaron Eisenberg and the writers for this episode.
The very last episode of Designated Survivor on Netflix was about as close as I’ve seen to something like “In the Pale Moonlight”. In fact they are very similar structurally. Complexity and nuanced grey areas don’t play well these days it seems. The last season of D.S. Was VERY morally ambiguous.
DS9 is absolutely a political masterpiece and I remember watching it going through middle and HS in the 2010s. Star trek was my life for a while, and DS9 is absolutely some of the best of it.
Also I can appreciate a nice lesbian kiss and a character who is trans (fight me, i will win).
DS9 couldn't be made post-9/11, at least not the Bajor/Cardassia storyline. The use of the word "terrorist" to describe the occupied Bajoran forces would have been scrubbed.
I really enjoyed the original and TNG when I watched them over the last couple years, but I was genuinely emotional when I finished the DS9. I don’t think they’ve ever been able to top that show and even though I enjoy some modern Trek, it’s not nearly as nuanced.
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But once you get past the theatre acting of Sisko, DS9 is probably the best written of the first 4 Treks.
I wasn't that keen on DS9 to start with, but I think it was well written, and helped by the addition of Worf and O'Brien, whose characters were allowed to really develop.
- from a post WWII vision of lower violence & rising peace from bedrock principles (Prime Directive - PD),
- to a world where Janeway justifies suspending the PD, claiming existential threat.
- I saw it coming: post 9/11 Bush did too
Btw, thanks a lot...thanks to your handle I have Puff the Magic Dragon song in my head...yes, I'm old. 😏🖖
Both were ahead of their time at 90's when "history had ended" and way ahead seemed to be smooth sailing
In the end it took about three years since end of B5 when we had Bush in White House and we still deal with fallout.
I know there is a lot to cover around building sustained movements so the fact that there was an episode like this just melted me.
Also I saw it right when people lost their minds about people of color in Rings of Power, which only amplified my feelings about the resistance some have to even imagining another world
The writers in season 6 put all their effort into that episode & In the Pale Moonlight, since the rest of the season was a bizarre fever dream (clip from the latest video essay where this came up)
they refer to things that've happened in TNG, like the Borg attack etc. but you need to have watched those things to be able to just go with it
It’s self contained though be prepared Avery Brooks is going to rip you up tear you down and drag you along with where he’s at…..
Curious to hear your thoughts later
DS9 really didn't shy away from the fact that every terrorist is a freedom fighter and the line between hero and villain is often purely based on perspective.
It's always about perspective.
IMO it's for the cognoscenti of ST fans, both political and scifi genre-wise, although that's probably elitist of me. I don't care. IT IS.
Sometimes everybody was producing comic books in 1940s Harlem. Other times, we were in the desert with Ben Sisko being prophetic.
When it premiered it got overshadowed by ST:TNG ending, then it barely got to hit its stride before Voyager premiered and stole its press again.
It’s the main reason I loved DS9, because characters had to deal with the ramifications of their choices rather than just taking off to another world in the next episode.
“Why are the heroes not helping the Cardassian crush those pronoun aliens?”
I know some people hate the Klingon or Ferengi centric episodes but imagine how many spinoffs or specials could have been had exploring other cultures and their point of view about the federation.
Of course, those cultures were stereotypes from our own history
Then I went back and watched them all. :D
But know Pluto has a DS9 channel and you can binge watch all of it (it’ll take a week)
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://pluto.tv/us/live-tv/65c69bbfd77d450008c7ffee&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjaj8CA6aqKAxUUHrkGHRwjImsQFnoECBoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1ZOKNutMITrk5vu0YWz1zb
It has all the episodes, pretty much a season a day. After the finale it starts again with the pilot.
Non stop…
Crossover and Shattered Mirror are especially great
The first season is rudderless, they're often using oldTNG scripts and it shows.
Seasons 2 and 3 are more interesting but they don't find their voice until the Klingon/Dominion War arc at the start of season 4 that serves as a second pilot and rebirth of the show.
But yeah, I wasn’t a real fan of DS9, but I can see what you mean.
Sisko was 1/2 Sun Tzu and 1/2 the Prophet Mohammad
4 TOS episodes and idk 25 TNG tops and I literally cohost a DS9 podcast. My cohost is a completist unlike me. So don’t question us! I have seen all of Voyager at least. Are you loving Lower Decks?
I'm watching rockford files, is that related?
Some bangers in that series and it definitely hit the “how fascism rises” and “what to do about it”
Garak first shows up in episode 2, but Gul Dukat and Rom are in the pilot!
DS9 DEEPLY understood all of its characters from the start, but floundered around for most of the first season trying to figure out how to tell space station stories.
I guess I just saw a lot of FAMs progresive themes to be rather performative, and the anti-capitalism somewhat lacking, although the astroid plot is worth ig
Of course, that, too, was a Ronald D. Moore production.
I think they figured out later that that didn't work, but it explains some of the vibe early on.
DS9 had no such restriction--
I'm not saying TNG is bad! It's got some banger episodes and
https://youtu.be/mt3MVP3FizQ?si=rjsXUbAN94SbFUaG
https://youtu.be/6VhSm6G7cVk?si=a2-lCwgnRzOBCp_v
"It's Only A Paper Moon".
Took a lot of backstory, but what power:
"Are you alright?"
"No. But I will be."
B.) I don't agree that there aren't later shows of complexity from "The Expanse" to "The Morning Show."
Also I can appreciate a nice lesbian kiss and a character who is trans (fight me, i will win).
Recorded entire series OTA orig. broadcasts (TNG/DS9) on VCR tapes for 'future child' to learn how humanity 'should be'. Boxes & boxes. Never watched.
DVDs, cable TV, web streaming. Who knew?
Eventually grew me a whole devoted Trekkie! Cherished memories... Streaming together. 💞
Each episode is so deep there is often things that we miss and catch later
I agree one of the most valuable shows ever