Deep Space Nine: a thread for (re)watching this awesome series

We've had a couple of DS9 threads before, but they were mostly about specific characters, so I think the the series deserves one of its own. And since it's been recently added to Netflix outside the US too, I think it'd be nice to discuss it with people who are watching it for the first time, or rewatching it like I'm doing at the moment.

And since this thread should be friendly to new viewers, let's try avoid spoilers if possible, and mark any posts with spoiler with an appropriate warning. I think it's okay to mention names like the Dominion or Pah-Wraiths, but please don't discuss any twists and revelations about them without a spoiler warning.

I'm in the middle of rewatching the first season, and since I remembered it being as poor in quality as the first TNG season, I've been a bit surprised that there are actually several episodes that are quite good or even classic (besides "Duet", who's classicness is widely accepted). "Past Prologue", the second episode (third episode in Netflix, since they use the production order rather than the airing order) is already very good and touches several of the themes that will become unique to DS9.

OTOH, you also have eps like "Babel", which are okay but feel more like rewritten TNG scripts... Maybe that's why the first season feels so spotty, because it has more TNG-style, continuity-free episodes than the later seasons, where the big plot arcs start to roll.

The "weird space phenomenon of the week" type of plots work in TNG, but I don't think DS9 finds its own flavour until it de-emphasizes those in favour of galactic politics and intrigue.

I do not accept the classicness of "Duet"!

Like, maybe I'm showing my ignorance of WWII history, but I can't imagine that

*SPOILERS*

an accomplice to genocide would be so wracked by guilt that he'd go to such radical lengths to force a war-crimes reckoning -- seemed like precisely the moral corrective that victims of genocide / retrospective capital-H History would fantasize about.

*END SPOILERS*

If that episode was in a realistic WWII series, I would tend to agree, but this is Star Trek! It's an allegory, a moral fable, and I think it works very well as such.

I mean, one of the main themes of the entire franchise is that our better nature can in the end overcome all the horrible things we've done. I wouldn't want a ST that's cynical in that regard, that's for some other sci-fi series to do.

I love watch Jake grow up over the first few seasons. He's so young at the start! Brooks has discussed it before, but he had a real bond with Cirroc Lofton and it really shows as their relationship develops.

I wouldn't want a ST that's cynical in that regard, that's for some other sci-fi series to do.

That's what DS9 turns into in the 6th and 7th seasons though, no?

Maybe for some stretches, but in the end not really, because...
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(WARNING! SPOILERS FOR DS9'S FINALE WILL FOLLOW!)
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...the whole series ends with the rather optimistic and Star Trekkian idea that the Dominion can be reasoned with, that they can learn to understand solids and eventually change their oppressive ways.

I just rewatched the 1st season episode "Battle Lines", and I hadn't realised before that Jonathan Banks (aka Mike from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) has a major role in it! He plays the leader of the Ennis, one of the two warring factions the protagonists come across. And he conveys a similar cynical and bitter amusement as he does with Mike, I guess that's really his forte. Perfect casting!

Watching the pilot. Sisko explaining the dictionary to dimwitted transcendental beings is hard going.

Yeah, I always found that bit tedious too, and it didn't feel very credible either: if the wormhole aliens don't understand certain concepts because of their non-linear existence, how is explaining them with different words gonna help?

That said, the payoff to that scene ("then why do you exist here?) is still pretty great and moving.

idk because language is multivalent and certain words/phrases might get routed differently through the universal translator

Goddamn it I still have to finish my TNG rewatch don't start this thread now :)

idk because language is multivalent and certain words/phrases might get routed differently through the universal translator

To me that scene felt like the wormhole aliens were communicating to Sisko directly via telepathy, so the universal translator wasn't involved. Presumably the aliens' language is so different from humanoid ones that the UT can't even process it.

oh yeah, I forgot all their interactions take place in mental dream time

Yeah. Also, for some inexplicable reason the aliens only want to talk to Sisko, while they immediately send Dax away from the wormhole. I guess they're afraid of cooties?

Just a couple of episodes in but to my surprise I am enjoying not hating the low budget soap opera feel.

I think DS9 actually had a reasonably large budget for its era, with the virtue of being a Star Trek show. Certainly most the effects still look pretty good, especially when you compare them to a lower-budget show like Babylon 5, whose CGI would nowadays look crappy even in a budget video game.

The big exception I guess is Odo's morphing, which does look silly, but I think those effects were state-of-the-art back then. And you can see budget cuts the show took later on from the fact that in later seasons Odo often doesn't morph even when it would make sense him to do so, or he morphs offscreen.

Ok low stakes rather than low budget - Keiko becoming a schoolteacher is hardly JR getting shot. I know, there's plenty of high stakes galactic political intrigue to come.

Ok, I get what you mean, and I myself like these low stakes stories too. DS9 has a great ensemble cast, and I like how they, unlike TNG, often build the drama on personal interaction and avoid the Weird Space Threat of the Week altogether. Plus the lower stakes make sense considering the stable setting. With the Enterprise, they can sorta justify meeting things that endanger the ship or some random planet every week, because they're constantly on the move, but it'd feel ridiculous if Bajor was constantly under some new, previously unheard of cosmic threat.

The low-stakes stories don't happen till much later in the series IMO, because nearly every episode in the first couple season strike me as having an existential threat shoe-horned into it (see that one where Dax is hazing a Trill would-be initiate and accidentally breaks space-time).

I just rewatched "Progress", which is an excellent example of a first season episode with low stakes. (Okay, if Mullibok stays on the moon he will die, but it's obvious they'll beam him up against his will before letting that happen, so the whole point of the episode is really just the moral dilemma his stubborness causes Kira to face.) But you're right that they do become more prominent in later seasons, when the writers are more comfortable in not following the narrative traditions of earlier ST series.

Trying to do this properly and not skip any but I'm in the middle of the first season slump and things are only going to get worse:

Deep Space Nine is put in jeopardy when the crew's thoughts manifest themselves, and such figures as Rumpelstiltskin appear.

The Federation ambassador from Betazed, Lwaxana Troi, visits the station, and develops an affection for Odo.

Can't I skip them? Pleeease?

It's all part of a rich tapestry, ledge

You cld comfortably skip ahead to the first episode w/ the Jem'Hadar, tbh

you can skip the rest of the first season except for Progress and Duet imo

i wouldn't skip much in season 2, there's some fun throwaway episodes there

Those are both good episodes! You do have to have a taste for camp, though.

The Rumpelstiltskin episode is skippable (it's pretty much a TNG style "weird space phenomenon of the week" story with no larger importance), but I wouldn't skip the Lwaxana episode. It ends up subverting our expectations of the character, and Majel Barrett is wonderful while doing that. Plus it has some important character revelations about Odo. The Lwaxana eps in DS9 (there's a couple of more to follow) in general are better than her TNG episodes, because they treat her less like a joke.

And you definitely shouldn't skip to the first Jem'Hadar episode! In the second season the quality of writing gets better, and the opening three-parter has some very important plot development w/r/t Bajoran politics that will resonate right until the end of the series.

I wouldn't skip the Lwaxana episode

damnit.

Progress was ok, critical character development for Kira, that guy was a dick though.

The Storyteller prob the worst I've seen so far. Fatuous group psychology + ludicrous deus ex machina.

Yeah, The Storyteller's A plot is probably the worst in the entire series, except for "Profit and Lace".

WARNING! SPOILERS ABOUT "PROGRESS"!
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I love how "Progress" subverts the viewer's expectation of what sort of a story it's gonna be, i.e. your typical "the underdog is always right" tale where were supposed to root for this one stubborn guy and forgot about the utilitarian alternative, and instead it turns into a lesson for Kira that sometimes siding with The Man is the right thing to do.
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I love how Quark's life is saved when he bends over to pick up a nickel.

I do not accept the classicness of "Duet"!

I second that emotion!

Can you elaborate?

i like Duet but agree that it is pretty contrived

I like Duet, too. It may be contrived, but it's far and away one of the strongest episodes of the first couple seasons.

I actually had to think about which episode it was, since I always confuse it with Waltz. (Mentally filed under "heavy episodes where two characters square off moralizing against each other.")

Contrived and hammy. I liked the camp survivors standing round all dressed in rags to elicit maximum sympathy.

Kira and Dax notwithstanding this show is being hella sexist right now. Sisko and O'Brien land on a planet and find some earth people marooned there for ten years. One guy says 'I used to be an engineer!', another guy says 'who won the soccer?', a woman steps forward and says 'what are the latest fashions?' smdh. And don't get me started on the Ferengi, a bit of light comic relief from a species who oppress their women in the most contemptible fashion.

That episode with the marooned dude was pretty good though, until the final insulting two minutes.

*dudes

trek gotta trek

i enjoyed the 3-parter opening season 2. that evil religious lady is a good villain!

I think the Lwaxana episodes are good curatives to the usual Trek sexism, IIRC.

on the recommendation of the ILE tastemaking consensus and because I am into day five of being sick as a goddamn dog, I've now set my sights on climbing this mountain of a show. Damn but it is a lot of episodes. I'm about 8 deep into S1 and it strikes me as mostly ok trek, if a little boring. I barely remember watching it during it's orginal run, and couldn't have stuck with it for more than part of S1 and a few into S2 or 3. I find it the kind of show I can watch with my eyes closed. As long as I have the dialogue I can fill in the rest. So far I'm liking Quark mostly because he gets picked on way too much. Kira yells 100% of her dialogue and Dax is to date perhaps the most boring trek character ever created. I'm sure I'll see things change. Anyway, I'm in.

Lwaxana episodes are getting better and better, carrying over from TNG (outside that ghastly drowning kid one). it quite enjoyed seeing her paired with Odo, it's kind of a perfect match, and their little adventure together was very endearing and sweet.

i recall one bad lwaxana episode that was one of the worst of the series but the other couple she's in are fine

11/28/1994. Fascination — A mysterious virus causes the DS9 characters to begin falling in love with each other on sight.

this was the bad one iirc

good god that's going to be a terrible episode on any version of Trek, save the TOS, where it would be hilarious

Kinda surprised if it wasn't used in TOS already, TNG had "The Naked Now" right?

I've just seen 'the captain (commander) falls in love with a ghost', that was pretty bad

I liked that one! (Nice to see Sisko get his mack on imo.) And I liked the love virus one too!

DS9 is like TNG in that the show's quality jumps noticeably in the third season.

watching an episode where they find a planet that shifts in and out of another dimension, but their time in the corporeal dimension is shorter every time

as a result, at least one of the inhabitants is.... way horny

he asked dax how far down her spots go and she was like "all the way"

I think the best part of that character is recognizing when you can get away with a tryst because you've honed ephemeral relationships over lifetimes lol

now watching that episode where Dax is working with a trill who was a partner in a previous life

that moment when you'reworking wwith a partner from a past life and they hot as fuk

idk Dax invites Bashir as a neutral third party and why is he not trying hard for a weird trill threesome thing because damn

and TFW you find out the actress that played Lenara also was the Borg Queen in Voyager episodes...

lol of course

I'm closing in on the end of S2 and the show is finally getting more interesting. I've enjoyed how they reference earlier episodes as the characters' understanding of events unfold. The 2-part episode about the Maquis was the best yet. I'm appreciating Gul Dukat and basically the overall shiftiness of the Cardassians.

last episode of S2 is where the 2nd of the show's two overarching plots starts iirc (the first being the bajoran/cardassian political situtation)

Dax hardest to cast because it is hard to find actresses who are beautiful and can act who will do television

http://trekmovie.com/2009/08/26/rick-berman-talks-18-years-of-trek-in-extensive-oral-history/

lol what!?

One of the people transferred in this starfleet coup plot is Snowden, lol

this looks cool. Berman briefly talks about producing this in that interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnOSU6QJrOs

"This program is about some of the alternative ways of attaining civilization - different myths, different truths -- even different realities. And it's also about people who lived outside the western world who have some important lessons to teach us all".
Jamake Highwater

Join Jamake Highwater as he explores differences in how American Indians and people of European heritage experience themselves and their environments. Illustrated through contrasting views of time, art, medicine and dance, Primal Mind identifies important distinctions between a mind rooted in respect for nature, sacred myths and rituals, and a mind that strives toward achievement, order and the desire to rise above nature.

http://mashable.com/2017/02/09/deep-space-nine-documentary-news/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link#yGmFz7DRQiq3

Netflix is producing a documentary on DS9, and then there's also this:

“A big part of it is Netflix,” said former DS9 show runner Ira Steven Behr, who is now producing the new documentary on the series tentatively titled, What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek Deep Space Nine (a nod to the shows’ final episode, "What You Leave Behind"). And, in a special twist DS9 fans will love, Behr reassembled the show's writers to create a story for what, in another universe, might have been the first episode in a never-produced season eight.

Behr and his production team are launching a $145,000 Indiegogo campaign on Thursday to fund the project and, he hopes, help them complete it for a winter 2017 release. Adam Nimoy, who produced a loving documentary tribute to his father, the late Leonard Nimoy ("Spock" from the original series), is on board to direct.

I'm sure they'll get the funding, but I can't imagine this "episode" will be any good... Seems unlikely they'll get many of the original actors, and even if they did, it'd be pretty weird to seem them almost 20 years older. But if they get new actors to play the parts (so that there's no timeskip), that'll feel weird for fans too. Sounds like lose-lose situation to me.

The whole cast has aged remarkably well. And half will have heavy makeup on. Now do I really want Nana Visitor to cook me dinner? Probably need to decide today.

I looked at some recent interviews of them, and you're not wrong! So I guess it could work, provided they manage to get all of the principal cast to join. (Who would want to do see Odo without Quark, or vice versa?) They'd have to use Nicole deBoer and not Terry Farrell though, unless they want to jump through some ridiculous plot loops... But I'm fine with that, I think deBoer did great with the limited time she had, and the main reason people hated her seems to be that she was not Farrell.

Just animate it, problem solved. (I doubt they'll do this) Happy to see this and the doc

http://2kclbr2v3jm326dz4b2vjriu81d.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/CGI-Peter-Cushing-620x349.jpg

i'd watch the shit out of a muppet episode of ds9

Are they suggesting that they're going to actually produce an episode? I read it as the writers just writing a script.

Still doing this but at a much slower rate than before. Just finished season 2, pretty good run at the end. One reminder of bajoran political intrigue (not as dull as it sounds), one reminder that the cardassians really are eeeeeeevil (just in case garak was contributing to a false sense of security), and then an introduction to the badass jem'hadar.

so if i were to watch this, do i need to start at the beginning? heard tell that like tng, it doesn't settle in until season three. i saw a few here and there back in the day; i know who everyone is

and what should i know to skip over, like wesley/lwaxana episodes in tng

not really looking forward to cardassian facial divots and ferengi teeth every damn episode tbh

you have to start from the beginning - it sets up Sisko & DS9 in relation to the Enterprise, etc and gives a lot of context.

it's much more watchable from the beginning than TNG & finds its groove very quickly imo

SKIP NOTHING
WATCH ALL OF IT

:D

when does sisko grow the goatee

i forget but he has it by season 4

you do have to start from the beginning but if you really wanted to you could probably skip all of the season 1 episodes that aren't about the Bajoran/Cardassian political situation. i think season 2 is actually pretty solid.

you can skip the Quark/Ferengi episodes at all points, most of them are pretty lame and none are essential to the story arcs iirc. the one in season 6 that had Iggy Pop in it is the only one i would watch again

boooooo disagree!

disagree disagreee

the people have spoken. ferengi episodes are good now

lol thanks

Ferengi eps are good. Needed to break up the serious eps.

is it okay if i think of him as captain sisqó

(tbh i will always think of avery brooks as hawk from spensaaah)

a while back i compiled four lists of the most-recommended ds9 episodes (from geek.com, medium.com, thr.com, reddit.com/daystrominstitute, trekbbs.com/daystrominstitute) and came up with a weighted stack of best-loved episodes – season 3 onward. have at it:

http://bit.ly/2nObGKu

Don't skip Vic/holosuite eps either. Don't you dare.

there is maybe one inessential one, but the "Nog returns from war" one is among the best episodes

I only recommend skipping one episode.

https://youtu.be/WY4w0RCZTqQ

From my favorite holosuite episode

https://youtu.be/6hPrxYRzuAg

omg who the hell cut these promos

I remember watching them and ignoring the tone and voiceover to try to figure out who the main characters in the episode would be and a hint as to the plot

Still waiting for the third season leap in quality. Dax's featured character episodes reveal her to be a charisma vacuum, and boy am I tired of the running 'gag' of the Ferengi's brutal oppression of their women. Just had to sit through Jake apologising to Nog for being offended when he treated their partners on a double date like shit.

The ol' stranded back in time double bill was ok though, kudos for some creativity in actually setting it in our future.

such a great show, started a couple months ago and am nearing the end of S3 now

i've watched nearly the whole first season now and idk

imo the only *good* episode was the one with kira trying to evacuate the dude from the moon they were going to energy-tap

i guess every show needs a grumpy competent dude who's secretly nice, but in odo and o'brien we have two

quark is okay, but they keep fucking with his character -- sometimes he's arranging a hijacking, the rest of the time he's secretly a good guy who loves our hu-mans. nog and all of the rest of the ferengi suck

never has a creature with the experiences of a dozen lives been as boring as dax. bashir is a puppy. kira moves from shrillness to shrillness, but that one episode was cool and showed promise

sisko is awesome; keep waiting for him to give someone the d'onofrio head tilt when he issues orders

jake is cool too but i am not a child and do not care about his scamming on girls with dumbass nog

oh hey this evil genius discovered a way to transfer his soul into another person's body and then dax figured it out in a few hours and then we never heard of it again. oh hey these gamma quadrant ppl discovered a way to make everyone eternal with nanobots but we're just going to leave the bajoran high priestess here and gtfo

idk man

;_;

you'll change your tune

mmm imagine basing your opinion of TNG off the first season

also at some point TNG ends and DS9 gets all of the writers from TNG and the writing gets 10^6 times better

quark: hey odo want a drink
odo: i'm watching you quark
quark: you need to get laid
odo: i'm watching you quark

well it never gets that good

tbf the cardassian tailor was cool and my understanding is that he becomes a more important (if less gay) character

otoh my next episode to watch apparently involves lwaxana troi hitting on odo

oh hey we are being invaded by aliens whose attack involves manifesting our (most boring) imaginations but it's not really an attack it's just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ with little people and plump japanese baseball players

u are so mean

i want to <3 tho

With the first season, it was obvious they didn't yet know what kind of a series they were doing... They did plant some seeds for longer story arcs with the Bajoran/Cardassian situation, with Sisko's relationship to the wormhole aliens, and with the mystery of Odo's origin, but mostly the episodes were TNG style standalone stories, only with Weird Space Encounter of the Week being replaced with Weird Gamma Quadrant Visitor of the Week. But during the second season they do start to build longer arcs, and the 2nd season finale/3rd season opener introduces elements that will define the rest of the series. From the 3rd to 6th season the quality remains almost constantly good, it's the best stretch of Trek I've ever seen. (Season 7 is not bad either, but unfortunately the P**-Wr**** storyline is silly and feels completely out of place in Trek.)

nog and all of the rest of the ferengi suck

I'm hoping you will change your mind once they start properly developing Nog and Rom too. The scene with Nog in Sisko's office (won't say more not to spoil it, but those of you who've seen it will know what I mean) especially is one of the strongest moments in all of Star Trek, it made me cry.

was that before or after he was a humongous misogynistic dick on the double date and then jake apologised for getting offended?

I mean I am looking forward to federation nog or wherever they're going with that, but c'mon.

starfleet nog I mean.

otoh my next episode to watch apparently involves lwaxana troi hitting on odo

this turned out to be one of my favorite episodes. it's sweet but also pretty weird. feel like Lwaxana episodes start off bottom-barrel in TNG and get better and better from there.

xps yeah i was gonna say, nog somehow ended up being one of my favorite characters

into S5 now and tbh DS9 is better than TNG for me

also i just watched hellraiser and garak's actor is the main character lol

he was the bad guy in the first dirty harry!

yeah saw on imdb, never seen the movie

heh yup, andrew robinson is amazing
so is jeffrey combs!

the vorta annoyed me sooo much at first, but now i've come around to weyoun

which one? :)

Poll?

feel like Lwaxana episodes start off bottom-barrel in TNG and get better and better from there.

OTM. Like a lot of fans, I dreaded the DS9 Lwaxana episodes, but they're good! They start off as light comedy and show a little bit of heart too.

the one where she causes the crew to all get horny for each other is one of the more embarrassing ds9 eps. the one(s?) about her and odo are fine tho

that one was fucking hilarious what are you saying

choose yr adventure!

something (does it come through the wormhole? almost certainly)

a) makes everyone unable to speak coherently
b) makes it possible to transfer one's soul to another body by touch
c) makes imaginations manifest in physical form
d) makes the station computer turn into a puppy
e) possesses (just) the command staff and makes them replay an ages-old mutiny

every lwaxana episode involves her transformation from being an absurd nightmare to being a decent person. you'd think an empath might have figured out that people hate the absurd persona by now? at least on ds9 there's no one to call 'little one'

e) was good -- any opportunity for sisko to act weird is cool with me -- but also a huge missed opportunity imo. the other characters should have gotten much weirder than they did -- dax being scatterbrained/o'brien being grumpier/kira being shriller was useless. at least data didn't have to portray the entire mayan pantheon by himself, i guess

you're goddamn right i'm gonna show up here and slag the dumb episodes until i give up, except maybe i won't give up because i secretly like it

:D

that's how it starts. with season one i was like iunno bout this then the next season won me over completely

i even love kira who i haaaated in s1

I've totally forgotten all but one of those episodes, I must have put a memory block in place to save my sanity.

s02

three-parter with the return of the resistance 'hero' from cardassian prison camp/frank langella bajoran rebellion was okay. langella and the arch-conservative vedek lady were great. resistance hero dude was kind of lame, as was his death. considering they spent three episodes on it, a lot of stuff seemed awfully perfunctory -- we never even saw langella's downfall, which didn't really seem certain

misfit trill steals jadzia's dax: this was fine -- the misfit trill actor was v. good -- but the fact that quark let the bad guys onto the station and was never punished in any way was bullshit

cardassian orphan boy raised by bajorans: does garak the cardassian tailor need a runabout to go to bajor? by all means, give it to him -- no need to ask why. the whole idea of cardassians leaving orphans behind when evacuating bajor is silly, but the most fucked up thing is that at the end sisko made the kid leave his home and go to cardassia when he didn't want to. maybe as the child of divorced parents i'm overly sensitive but fuck you benjamin

Yeah that was bad - same ending as TOS Charlie X!

the misfit trill actor was v. good

He played Lex Luthor's dad in Smallville.

Started season 4, although there were some good ones in 3 it feels like the leap in quality has finally happened, even though the one I just watched (05) was transparent emotional manipulation in service of contrived character development.

Here's something fun

Y’ALL!
CHANCELLOR MARTOK IS RUNNING FOR CONGRESS!!#StarTrek #ds9
cc @DrunkSpaceNine @StarTrek pic.twitter.com/XWV8cNRQ4f

— fancyfembot (@fancyfembot) June 11, 2017

Martok and Twain are definitely better than Gowron and by the commutative property better than a Trumpite (Trumpet?).

wish i could vote for him

VEDEK BAREIL FOR PRESIDETN!!!!!

Do we see any nuclear Cardassian families? I can only remember Gul Madred bringing his son into work, but I think all the other prominent Cardassian families are estranged or separated.

You'd think you'd at least ask someone to sit down before telling them that they'd unwittingly travelled 200 years into the future & all their friends and family were dead.

nana v turned 60 yesterday

at the half way mark & despite the minor snark am finally fully committed to this, it's definitely near enough tng quality now. so much going on - gul ducat vs cardassia, cardassia vs klingons, klingons vs worf, bajor vs itself. dominion have been laying low but it doesn't matter. even the quark episodes are keeping my attention. couple of highlights: 'our man bashir' which opens like a standard holodeck triviality but turns out to be for much higher stakes and has avery brooks going full shatner; and tony todd aka candyman as worf's brother & possibly the best klingon portrayal of all time.

It was that Kurn episode that cemented me as a regular DS9 viewer.

What'd you think of "The Visitor"?

oh shit that was tony todd too. it was... good? bold & original & successful at what it set out to do, it didn't move me to tears like apparently everyone else though, i guess i'm a cold hearted guy who would have abandoned my dad in limbo. also wtf at using the same actor for nog.

fwiw i'm not that crazy about celebrated & similarly sentimental tng ep the inner light.

Rather than putting pressure on the staff of Terok Nor I am donating the station to Bajor and renaming it Deep Space Nine. Thank you all!

— Dukat (@realRealDukat) August 16, 2017

Can't believe they're making light of the tragedy of the Cardassian occupation.

into season five, they've decided to put the high stakes galactic games of thrones aside in favour of half a dozen whimsical character episodes and it suuuuuucks.

If you're talking about "In the Cards" or the one where Quark gets it on with a Klingon lady, then I don't know you anymore.

I'm only up to 7, i was mostly referring to worf being grumpy with dax on the pleasure planet, and the tribble one - yeah v clever, yawn. oh and jake's war zone correspondent crisis of confidence.

the v entertaining 'greatest generation' podcast has just finished its epic run through the entirety of next gen and has started on ds9 btw, might be a good jumping-on point for new listeners

Trials and Tribble-lations was great. I mean, c'mon:

https://i0.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/trialstribbleations14.jpg?resize=472%2C363&type=vertical

I read somewhere that they did that episode thinking CG would make it feasible based on Forrest Gump and the "Buddy Holly" music video. The latter used no composite shots, no computer trickery.

In the 50 year mission ronald d moore says his "tribbles" pitch had two scenes: the tribble chute and the line-up after the fight. imo the only other joke they added was "look at how dated this all is".

Trying this podcast. No way I’m going to be able to deal with these guys. It will be a miracle if I can make it through the first ep.

noooooo

the greatest generation has some other fans on ilx, help me out here guys

I guess there are some ok bits in there, but the jokes, I can’t. DS9 should be treated with reverence! Also they keep mispronouncing Nana Visitor’s name.

tbf i feel like objecting to the greatest generation on star trek purist grounds is acceptable

It is making me want to do a rewatch though. Probably would be my 4th or 5th time through?

wait how is nana visitor's name pronounced

Nah-nah

Give GG a chance. One problem with jumping in now is that much of the podcast features running gags that draw on 178 episodes of TNG, Trek ephemera, and a constellation of memes. You might first listen to some of the TNG episodes to get a feel for their schtick, which comes from a place of genuine affection for the show. When they're not making poop jokes, they can be very insightful, and they're not afraid to run against accepted wisdom on the series.

Also, "In the Cards" is one of the most joyous episodes of DS9. Easily makes my top 10.

The greatest gen guys are bigger Star Trek fans than they pretend to be. The 'a bit embarassed' part is a comedic role they play.

I'm a bit embarrassed by their grown-up beavis & butthead act but it is a good show, if only for the picard/wesley (the boy!) running gag.

picking this up again in s02 after a series of a/v issues

an oblivious odo turns into a monster every 16 hours: okay. i like the dude who plays his 'dad' (and that misguided romulan defector in tng)

bashir and o'brien are ambushed after helping to destroy biological weapons: i am not all that interested in how grumpy chief and puppy julian become friends

o'brien is a replicant: this was really good!

colony of settlers without technology: actress playing the bitchy colony leader did a great job; plot doesn't hold together, especially when they take her away to face justice (?) at the end and everyone's like, we don't mind being tricked and watching our friends die needlessly, we just love the community

old dude lives in fake settlement with hologram friends: rehash of tng episode (and maybe tos episode as well? can't remember)

trill hopeful interviews with dax: dax being rowdy was kind of fun, trill hopeful actor was bad, b-story with expanding proto-universe was hand-waved away in absurd fashion

cardassian dissident is quark's ex-lover: garak is always fun; everything else was terrible

main complaint is same as before (eg when quark let the terrorists who stole the dax symbiont onto the station) -- no consequences. in just this last one odo disobeys a direct order and frees the dissidents (presumably wrecking the chance for a prisoner transfer and creating a major diplomatic incident with cardassia), garak is very obviously revealed as a spy, quark gets away with dealing in cloaking devices, garak flat-out kills a cardassian gul and . . . nothing changes. everything goes back to normal at the end. c'mon

the o'brien replicant episode is really well executed yeah

Many good O’Brien eps in DS9.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/what-we-left-behind-star-trek-deep-space-nine-doc#/

Nooooo I missed out on the awesome tees and they're not selling them on the site store! 😣

https://ds9documentary.com/#content

Didn't know about that. Adam Nimoy's doc about his father wasn't bad, so I would definitely watch this

Aw, no Avery Brooks involvement? :( sad. Maybe they'll get him and RDM later.

That's not surprising, but still disappointing. I always think of him as a reluctant participant in the Trek culture industry.

BTW those $200 cookies could've been mine too. 😭

Still regret I didn't go for the dinner with nah nah.

the o'brien replicant episode is really well executed yeah

Ah dangit missed a chance for a lol ahem If there's one thing O'Brien knows it's executions.

I just rewatched the second episode again, and can see where people might complain about Avery Brooks's acting -- his laugh when he's having dinner with Dax is soooooo weird.

just watched 'crossover' to the mirror universe with sensual intendant kira

it was cool but also weird? like oh even minor bajoran plenipotentiaries know about alternate universes and have heard of james t. kirk and how he wrecked the terran empire

it was all worth it for salacious sisko tho

STEVEN BERKOFF

vic fontaine fuck off

the episode where he helps Nog with ptsd is good, though

Can’t get behind the Vic hate. Probably one of the best holographic characters in ST history.

low bar

yeah i loathed vic fontaine except for the episode with nog, which is one of the best episodes of the series

ooof just imagining joe piscopo trying to cheer up nog by replicating himself into a million jerry lewises.

Hey this is pretty good

I watched the S2 3 part opener and it felt to me like the BSG season that opened in the prison camp--a serious impressive arc that gets kinda haplessly left behind for more episodic stuff as the season proceeds.

Bashir is fuckin annoying

Dax is a better idea than she is character

Odo's a fuckin fascist

I'm super into the colonizer/colonized storylines that I feel like deal with morally tangled stuff well but man could I do without seeing more than a few minutes of quark ever again.

Wasn't that impressed by the introduction of the rebel colonists that everybody says is great

Been sick all weekend so I just tore through all of season 2

This series would have been even better if Roddenberry's original vision of the Ferengi as big-dicked sex villains had lived on.

Did it not

Ugh nog is the most annoying

Get ready for people to quote those words back to you when it's season six and Nog is great :)

The fact that DS9 has an entire Ferengi family drama embedded in it isn't immediately evident (and all of the stuff with Quark's mom and the Ferengi leadership is ridiculous) but Quark/Rom/Nog have as many scenes about family as the Siskos by the end

its really just the ferengi squeal noise that i hate and nog is the most high pitched of all

get ready for one of those squeals to make you cry later on in the series

okay i'm now halfway through the third season and i still don't get it

quark just hacked into the personnel files to create a kira sex holosuite program and lol we're gonna let that slide too

lwaxanna's 'condition' just made everyone try to bite each others' chins (wtf stop 'kissing' like that)

the t. riker show had (vague) promise but turned out lame. so far the only a+ episode is secret android chief o'brien imo

Secret Android Chief O'Brien was awesome

first show aired 25 years ago today

that statement seems completely unreal to me

http://variety.com/2018/tv/features/star-trek-ds9-25th-anniversary-interview-1202648047/

delightful

very happy to read that but wtf with that blue beard

and no avery brooks again :(

Sisko Stu doesn't advertise.

http://www.vulture.com/2018/01/deep-space-nine-revolutionary-depiction-of-black-fatherhood.html

good article

Wow, agreed. The Sisko & Son relationship is palpably affectionate, and the actors' chemistry is obvious. I didn't know that Brooks became a father figure to Cirroc Lofton, but in retrospect it's definitely there.

He’s said as much at cons. They are still close. You could tell on screen, it was genuine.

Yeah. And I love all the little flourishes they inject into their scenes, like Ben passing a dish behind his back to Jake when they were sitting down for dinner.

just watched the ben-and-jake-fly-ancient-bajoran-replica-to-cardassia ep last night -- first appearance of sisko's goatee! -- and yeah totally

i'm definitely settling into things here late in s03 and looking forward to more! still have to zing the stupid stuff (like the space fireworks at the end of the aforementioned episode) tho

Head shaved, goatee on, ready to go.

<3

The reason Paramount made Brooks grow out his hair and shave his goatee is so sad and stupid.

where does that appear

wasn't it because they thought it made him look too similar to his character in Spencer for Hire?

I read it in the Trek oral history, and yeah, they didn't want DS9 viewers to confuse him with Spencer For Hire.

I'm watching DS9 for the first time. I gave up on season 1 a few episodes in and just watched the episodes considered the best. Now I'm into season 3. I'll say that the end of season 2 from "The Maquis" onwards was excellent.

Got a little emotional when Worf was accepted into the House of Martok. Could not give a shit about 8000 people ceasing to exist due to timey-wimey shit. Acceptable reaction y/n?

y

That was a largely stupid episode IMO, save for Sisko squeeing over a babby.

https://deadspin.com/deep-space-nine-innings-a-star-trek-spinoffs-unlikely-1823440533

That's it, I've reached my limit, I finally have to say something. "Warrior" is three syllables, not two, and the first one isn't "war".

war-ee-or
war-your

ok, I'm still guessing, what's the three-syllable version without war as the first? wah-ree-yor?

Ah the minefield of explaining pronunciation on the internet. I guess depending on where you're from and how you say them they might rhyme, for me the first vowel sound in warrior is shorter than war, rhymes with dot not door.

From http://www.ipachart.com/ I think it's more ɒ than a ɔ or o. Clicking around there is hilarious btw...

war-yer is general martok's preferred and oft-repeated version.

klingons learned english from americans is what I feel

Then they have no honorrrrrr.

shooting at the walls of heartache, bang bang

i am the war-yer

I'm near the end of season 4. the one where they wipe worf's brother's memory is shit -- everyone acting like assisted suicide has never been done on trek before.

otm

h8 u 2 >=(

season 4 is where it starts to get really good tbh.

https://trekmovie.com/2018/07/03/editing-completed-for-what-we-left-behind-ds9-documentary-expected-to-be-released-this-year/

2 episodes to go, but after a strong start season 6 has plumbed the depths of the worst television known to humankind.

Fortuitous revive! I just this week started watching DS9 for the first time since it premiered (I think I watched the first season sporadically before I bowed out), largely because I've been verrrrrry slowly working my way through TNG and didn't recall that the two shows had aired concurrently until I hit the TNG season 6 crossover ep. I also didn't realize at the time that this is essentially a western.

(I wonder how much I'm reading into the Bajoran/Cardassian conflict as a reference to Vietnam finally loosing itself from France's grip just in time for US/the Federation to swoop in as a new colonial presence.)

man season 7 was a fucking chore SO MUCH WEYOUN UGH

I'm on season 1, first time watching the show, other than catching eps here and there when it was first broadcast. it's kind of bad a lot of the time!

I'm choosing to see the occasional badness as a parallel to the ramshackle nature of the station itself. As they rebuild and develop this new community, so too will the show develop. In theory. So I've heard.

Leave us not forget how rough TNG was in the beginning...

yeah I'm sticking with it and there have been some good eps

Some good eps in the first couple seasons, but then it really picks up.

i really like the pilot episode, trippy and moving in parts

What is this Mirror Universe with people complaining about too much Weyoun as if such a thing is possible.

xpost 'You choose to exist here. It is not linear.' has been low-key haunting me since I watched the pilot.

Love Weyoun

Definitely prefer the Dominion story arc to the Star Trek as comic soap opera storylines. Especially if they involve Quark, a new holosuite program, the mirror universe, or anyone being shrunken to miniature size by a rare subspace compression phenomenon.

i like the mirror universe, but the ease with which people move back and forth is pretty silly

almost as silly as 'we had to transport keiko's baby into kira'

So like halfway through the first season, I'm feeling very much like I would like to see a spinoff called The Odo Quark-ple, because they're both pretty great and frankly the only characters I really care about atm. With the caveat that I have no idea how the series ends or what their ultimate fate will be, I'd like to go ahead and pitch Paramount on the next best thing (working title is Grumpy Old Aliens but I'm open to suggestions).

OMG, how had I never learned before that Alexander Siddig is Malcolm McDowell's nephew?! It's all right there in his face, so obvious!

whoa!

mind blown

And Nana Visitor is the niece of Cyd Charisse. And I didn't know Siddig and Visitor were once married. Everybody famous is related to some other famous person and they're all married to each other, apparently.

Fuuuuuuck, 'Duet' is so good. Some haters up itt, yo.

I'm finished! Final season spoilers ahead.

I've had my problems with this show and for a while it seemed that despite the increasing gravity of the Dominion war the inhabitants of DS9 were content to carry on dicking around on the holodeck or in the mirror universe, but finally the show rubbed its hands together and got down to business for a pretty compelling season. Nog's holodeck ptsd episode the only Vic Fontaine one not deserving of being destroyed with plasma torpedoes. Some really strong pair-based conflicts towards the end - Worf & Ezri, Dukat & Winn, Kira & Damar. Unfortunately the penultimate episode was a Ferengenoid shitshow and the last one, though a double, felt rushed, Sisko's arc in particular seemed like a complete waste of a 7 season build up. Still, it beats season 6's 3+ Quark episodes, the mirror universe, Vic fucking Fontaine, and "Molly O'Brien disappears in a vortex and reappears as an 18-year-old woman, but she is now feral".

On the whole though I'm going to miss these crazy folks. I might start revisiting TNG...

OMG, how had I never learned before that Alexander Siddig is Malcolm McDowell's nephew?! It's all right there in his face, so obvious!

the last one, though a double, felt rushed, Sisko's arc in particular seemed like a complete waste of a 7 season build up

I think the consensus is that the Sisko conclusion is anticlimactic, though with time and foreknowledge of what ends up happening, the finale feels like a decent conclusion otherwise, especially for the Dominion War.

That said, Ira Behr's original idea for the ending was an enormous missed opportunity: https://trekmovie.com/2018/08/21/ira-steven-behr-reveals-how-he-really-wanted-star-trek-deep-space-nine-to-end-more-ds9-at-stlv-2018/ (spoilers obvs).

I finished the first season, btw, but then I decided to go back and finish up the final season of TNG (which I never completed) before moving on. So I still have a few more episodes of Data hallucinating/dreaming/having a temporary psychotic break (seriously, did these late-period writers just not consult with one another or was this a conscious decision?) until I get back to my Deep Space Cru.

data is a total liability tbh, he should have been fired out of an airlock into the inky vastness after his fourth attempt on the lives of the crew

Seriously, always thought he seemed like a pretty chill dude until the home stretch, I guess starting from the point when Lore reprogrammed him. Now it's like Five Nights at Freddy's on a spaceship.

they did jettison Lore into the inky vastness. it didn't take.

good point

they should have jettisoned both of them into the inky blackness then atomised them with photon torpedoes

thanks for that link Leee. i think i would've been pretty mad if they did that ending though, tbh, lol
seeing little Jakey all grown up still freaks me out

i skipped back to a season 1 episode for some reason, jake suddenly being a little kid again was a shock.

Watched the season 2 ep whispers the other night while high. Great ep

It's starting to pick up a bit.lots of shit in the first couple seasons but season 2 has some bangers for sure

I watched Whispers after reading your post. Good shit! Although I figured out the (pretty obvious) twist annoyingly early.

I wish I still got high, this show seems perfect for that kind of thing.

o shit, odo got laid

gotta be in the top three of worst things to happen on the show.

I watched Whispers after reading your post. Good shit! Although I figured out the (pretty obvious) twist annoyingly early.

I wish I still got high, this show seems perfect for that kind of thing.

― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, February 21, 2019 5:42 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think perhaps my cognition was effected because it only dawned on me later in the episode.

it also occurs to me that this episode probably has very little replay value.

the final stretch of season 2 was very strong. I'm looking forward to the later seasons.

I enjoyed how Evil Sisko (or at least in O'Brien's imagination) was hardly less weird than Regular Sisko

This looks pretty decent! https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/15/star-trek-deep-space-nine-ai-remaster/

Halfway through the second season now (wanted to finally finish goddamn TNG until I realized the goddamn Maquis show up in the second-to-last episode, so here I goddamn am again so I can find out who the goddamn Maquis even are). Past Odo on Terok Nor investigating past Kira is some good ass Trek. O'Brien the replicant is some good ass Trek. I like that they seem to be developing O'Brien-Bashir into another Odo-Quark 'I hate your guts except that anyone with eyes can tell that I adore you beyond words' odd couple. Kai Winn is an effing great villain. And I'm apparently not even to the point where the show gets next-level good? Cool.

Anybody read any of the novels and have suggestions? I'm a little curious. But I've only ever read like two Trek novels ever. I have a feeling I'll be a little bit more curious about the post-series novels once I'm done watching the actual show. I like many of the actors and at least some of the characters (as characters, as opposed to entities who catalyze or are catalyzed by the plot of the week) from the previous shows but this is the first time I'm vibing hard with the whole ensemble. Auberjonois might be my favorite. He may have unfair advantage in my esteem from his days as an Altman utility player but the dude commands every time he's onscreen.

Averting eyes from potential spoilers while scrolling up but I see y'all were recently discussing the very O'Brien replicant ep ('Whispers') I just finished. I'm glad I didn't see the twist coming at all. Great, great ending.

Oh! I've read one. Mid-'90s. It's the only franchise tie-in novel I've ever read. I was at a KOA in Maine, and I got food poisoning, and my family left me behind for the day. The novel was wedged beside the dirtiest latrine in Aroostock County. It didn't have a cover, and I don't remember the title. I think I talked about it with Ian once, though.

In the book, some bad one-off aliens slowly infiltrated the entire station and brutally murdered/enslaved the entire crew. Beheadings and burnings and bioweapons, lovingly detailed. Lots of minor characters died, but Jake (I think) spent the middle third of the novel hiding in vents and watching the aliens maim/decapitate the show's main cast, one-by-one, while doling out breadcrumbs of a plan for galactic destruction. And then somehow Jake did some time time-stuff, rewound the clock to before the infiltration and ... failed to stop it a second time. He died just after rewinding the timeline, but second-timeline version of himself found his first-timeline corpse and somehow deduced what was happening. Then, second-Jake watched some of the crew die (again) before second-Jake was convinced, rewound time again, got injured again, but this time managed to utter a few key phrases to third-timeline Jake, who successfully had the info to stop the invasion. The book ended with second-timeline Jake dying happy, convinced his plan worked, and third-timeline Jake setting out to make it so. (D+)

Jesus. That's dark

i've stalled in the fifth season. there are some great moments all along, but somehow i am not inspired to carry on

tbh i think i mostly just don't care about odo. oh, you're grouchy and have daddy problems whatever terek nor sellout bro

I've been increasingly vibing w this show but now the Dominion is here and, well...yes. There's an air of menace lingering in the background, faint perhaps at the moment, but it feels like shit might be getting real. I enjoy earlier Trek stuff but it often has a soporific air (a combination of Roddenberry's indefatigable utopianism + the ever-present ambient hum of a starship's interior) that kept me from being wholly engaged. DS9...you have my attention.

OL > mookie, tbh

(jks of course)

I'm very slowly watching the series, just watched the two-parter that begins the 3rd season and the quark marries a klingon ep after it, and I'm really enjoying the show. it's definitely a bit slow going for a lot of season 1 (although tbh i love the pilot) and the early part of season 2 but has improved drastically since. the introduction of the dominion is very welcome as there isn't really a compelling overreaching narrative yet - bajoran politics, the cardassians, bajoran-federation relations etc. are not hugely diverting imo.

i guess the cardassian-bajoran stuff is quite good, shouldn't have poo poo'd it too much. poster's remorse.

Dude you are literally one episode ahead of me, rad (high fives)

My TNG rewatch stalled mid-season 4 and I’m tempted to skip straight to DS9. I’ve never “vibed hard with the ensemble” (© Old Lunch) so I’m glad that steps up.

Anybody read any of the novels and have suggestions? I'm a little curious. But I've only ever read like two Trek novels ever.

I’ve read a bunch of the PAD novels but no DS9s. Imzadi is classic, obviously; the rest were varying degrees of cheese but the New Frontier short books were fun are probably the closest to DS9 in style (i.e. a bit “adult” as a teen might conceive of adultness). YPADMMV of course.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've only ever read PAD Trek novels. Reading the first original DS9 book (by PAD, natch) atm. It's fine, pretty much like a filler episode. Although also impressive inasmuch as he hadn't seen the show yet when he wrote it and was drawing only from the show bible and a handful of the initial scripts. He captured the voice of the characters surprisingly well.

Yeah, he’s creepily good at that.

I mean, his writing is very often, in a real sense, dreck, but I really enjoy those books.

(And most of the other writers are of course oh so much worse.)

They got Brooks!!!! (Brief spoilers in vid.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4LPDX6uqSM

I want to go to that!

mmmm very tempting

Dude you are literally one episode ahead of me, rad (high fives)

― A Cheetah Drenched in Applesauce (Old Lunch), Wednesday, April 17, 2019 3:25 PM (one week ago) Bookmark

my gf and i went nuts on the rewatch on sunday and monday and I'm now on episode 3 of the 4th season

"rewatch" should be struck from the record, I've never seen this series before

https://io9.gizmodo.com/star-treks-ira-steven-behr-looks-back-on-the-complex-le-1834401786

I'm up to the point in season 3 when Voyager kicked off and I'm wondering: is there any reason I need to start watching Voyager now? Like am I going to miss anything crossover-y if I wait until I'm done with DS9?

No overlap between Voyager and DS9.

Also, don't subject yourself to Voyager.

I'm hesitant to do so tbh.

I like the Maquis stuff and know it carries over to Voyager, and I did watch a little of it when it originally aired and thought it was fine, but I'm still hesitant.

The Maquis storylines evaporate really quickly on Voyager, and the treatment of SF/Maquis is immensely unsatisfying and ill-thought out.

IMO you're better off sticking to DS9, as it dips back into Maquis stuff a little as late as season 5.

Dang the theatrical release is on a Monday??

the portrayal of dukat is so corny

he is the greatest space Nazi ever

Anyone watching the doc in theaters today?

I was very close to doing it, but I'm going to wait for the wider/streaming release.

This is so amazingly perfect and why I'm team #DS9 for life. pic.twitter.com/zPyRkMeAOT

— Charles Evans (@banditref) May 13, 2019

I like both, but stan harder for DS9.

I can't say why exactly but it feels like a big deal that O'Brien died and was replaced by his future self (even if only from a few hours hence). Like he and others should be freaking out more about that, I feel.

Oh yeah that is crazy

They treated it like it was nbd but it seems like a bd. Oh hi Keiko, your husband got plucked out of the present and is now dead somewhere in the future but don't worry, I am his time-displaced future self here to take his place so let's just forget all of that pesky 'dead husband' stuff and go about our lives like nothing happened, what's for dinner.

remember when he was found guilty of some crime or another on a planet and before anyone could appeal it was "oh, he's already in the punishment chamber nbd he'll be out shortly" and the punishment was some simulation where he experienced years of imprisonment in something like an hour?

A shaken O'Brien returns to Deep Space Nine after his mind has been altered to make him believe that he spent the last two decades in prison. Accused of espionage by the Argrathi, he was given the painful memories of a 20-year incarceration — the alien race's time- and money-saving alternative to constructing jails — and released before his fellow officers could arrive to stop the punishment. Although the process took only a few hours, the effect on O'Brien is clearly devastating, and while he's told what he went through was not real, the memories are too vivid to be dismissed.

jesus, i haven't gotten to that episode yet. they really put o'brien through the ringer (well I guess this is technically o'brien 2, the first o'brien having died to save the station)

whoops! didn't mean to post spoilers, but that's just the first five minutes of the episode so you should be good

xposts Dude's been put through the ringer without a whole lot of follow-up on the impact. Whereas, for example, multiple references were made to Picard's similar (yet much more pleasant) experience in 'The Inner Light' and the subsequent effect it had on him. I clearly still haven't gotten to the end of O'Brien's televisual journey but I have to assume that at some point he just snaps and like beats the shit out of Quark for no reason.

mh, I'm utterly appalled that you spoilerized that 25-year-old tv episode. Give us a chance to catch up, for the love of pete.

solid trek history of having characters undergo monumental life-altering experiences that . . . don't actually seem to change them at all

I've been with my gf for a little over a year now, the other night i was describing the plot of the episode "the inner light" to her when she interjected: "this is the third time you've told me about this"

jim, can you say with certainty that you aren't currently being 'Inner Light'-ed, perhaps for the 3rd/4th time

maybe he's being 'cause and effect'ed

https://www.vulture.com/2019/05/what-we-left-behind-documentary-deep-space-nine.html

a couple of my friends at work saw it and really enjoyed it! think there was just the one showing so i'll have to wait for home release

the blue goatee is really a LOT though

i def want to see it anyway

Farrell, at one point in the documentary, breaks down into tears discussing the disrespect she dealt with at the hands of an unidentified producer.

*cough*rickberman*cough*

Daaaamn @ Klingons leaving the Federation. Did not see that one coming, particularly since I knew Worf would be making his way into the cast at some point. Glad I've somehow managed to avoid spoilers for the past twenty years. But yeah, man, I guess when Sisko shows up with a chrome dome at the start of season 4 you know shit's about to get real.

'The Visitor' = some good-ass Trek. Almost choked me up a bit at the end, almost.

fuck yeah, great ep

Almost? You monster!

I think it was because I was struggling with Tony Todd's old man makeup. I mean, it was top-notch work for the high school theatre kid who presumably won a contest to work on DS9 for a day, but it wasn't quite broadcast quality.

Get the doc on Bluray: http://www.treknews.net/2019/08/02/deep-space-nine-doc-what-we-left-behind-slated-for-digital-release/

I can't say why exactly but it feels like a big deal that O'Brien died and was replaced by his future self (even if only from a few hours hence). Like he and others should be freaking out more about that, I feel.

― Blithering Hayseed (Old Lunch), Thursday, May 16, 2019 8:09 PM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh yeah that is crazy

― findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Thursday, May 16, 2019 8:45 PM (two months ago)

they do this to harry kim on voyager too, only he is the harry from a slightly phase-shifted second voyager who opts to hop back on the one whose harry kim dies during the episode, when he's walking off with janeway at the end he's trying to weird out about it and she's just like yeah shit is crazy that's starfleet for ya huh

sounds like a feeble attempt to make harry kim interesting

they also sent him to an alternate universe where he never embarked on voyager and had to steal an experimental shuttle with a ne'er-do-well tom paris to get back home

and once he fell in love with a holodeck hoochie, but then had tuvok swoop in and become ensnared by her wiles (she was really a lonely alien)

harry kim just can't catch break, interest-wise

just watched the episode where worf's brother comes to ds9 to have worf do Mauk-to'Vor on him. pretty good. worf is a welcome addition to the show.

then watched the one where rom forms a union for the workers at quark's bar, to see rom saying "workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains" was a joy

worf felt really awkward to me for a while -- seemed like he'd regressed to a character that hadn't just spent six seasons among humans. which i guess isn't surprising since it sounds like the producers were all like 'here's worf, fit him in somehow'

i think that might just be the overall model for character-writing for the entire universe: start out with racial-essentialist 'x aliens drive like this' and lean on it hard for six to twelve episodes and then gradually plod into the main characters actually displaying facets and possibly personalities and having relationships with a modicum of history, which counteracts but certainly never displaces the initial MY KLINGON TEMPER IS SO DEEP-SEATED IN ME garbage

oh sorry if i'm ranting but the other day i saw the voyager where two ferengi try to corner the market on a wormhole and end up trapped in the delta quadrant but they are received by the locals as gods so they use a replicator to exploit the populace and disseminate the rules of acquisition which they actually haul out of the temple like they're in the ark of the covenant

I'm watching series 2 and for some reason it's defaulting to German language. I forget and it cracks me up every time for some reason.

Also all the political intrigue is quite stressful.

Didn't mean to write "for some reason" twice.

just watched the episode where o'brien has memories of 20 years imprisonment implanted in him.

oof.

correct reaction

i suppose when you think about it the original miles o'brien is already dead 0_0

googling o'brien/bashir and there is a lot of slash fiction. sometimes garak is in there too

apparently in the ds9 doc the guy who plays garak is asked about the dynamic between garak and bashir and he just flat out says "garak wants to fuck bashir"

which, I mean, lol

i feel like his performance brings that as subtext.

it most definitely is how he plays the character

yup 100%

While the subtext of the relationship between Odo and Quark is that they are a cranky lesbian couple who own a jam and jelly emporium and who entertain their customers with some completely transparent pantomime that's meant to suggest they don't intensely love one another.

I got my DS9 doc! Won't really have time to watch till the weekend but stoked all the same.

I think I'm gonna wait until I can stream it. Looking forward to it though!

just watched the iggy pop episode! solid entry in the vortas being weirdos canon

*shouting down the hallway*

"We're gonna need another Weyoun!"

I think I'm gonna wait until I can stream it. Looking forward to it though!

Bluray has additional footage though!

The Blu-ray version will include 47 minutes of bonus footage, that wasn’t shown during its original theatrical release in May.

I don't know if I have a BluRay player of any kind. I think my XBox One had one but I sold it. T0rr3nt? ;)

I watched most of the doc yesterday (I have about 30 minutes left), and it made me want to watch the entire series again. So good thus far.

- If you were ever curious if Rom could make it as a lounge singer, you're in luck.
- I was disappointed to see that Rick Berman was included.
- Both Daxes in the same room at the same time!
- The remastered space battle looks amazing.
- Colm is pronounced "Collum"!
- Marc Alaimo is a weird, insecure guy. His voice is all messed up now, too.
- The hypothetical season 8 premiere -- loving it so far.

- "Silent Bob"

marc alaimo was a weak link as an actor, so . . . otm

he was great! hammin it up with the best

Yeah gul dukat owns.

I'm really into ds9 rn. On season 5, the cardassians have joined the dominion, eek!

I have way too much stuff to watch, but if I dip into this show, is s1e1 the best place, or in media res somewhere else?

Things don’t really pick up until S2, but it’s somewhat serialized so I’m not sure you’d want to skip S1. I used this guide when I rewatched it, which skips a bunch of fluffy episodes. It leaves in all the Ferenghi stuff (space Jews!), which can get a bit tiring, but the guy makes a good case for watching them: https://medium.com/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-deep-space-nine-in-82-5-hours-10acde591fd2#.nfj6q7sqb

Yeah you need S1 to set up the world and the characters - first two episodes especially. If I were to watch it all again (hint: I never will) I would skip all the Ferenghi episodes, as well as all holosuite and all mirror universe ones.

I like the concept of Space Jews, as that role seemed to belong (somewhat) to the Vulcans in TOS and even the first Abrams movie.

Even if that means skipping Vorta Iggy Pop?

If you’re not keen on seeing militarized Federation war serial, I’d recommend something close to the opposite — a handful of the novelty episodes that they sprinkled in for leavening. The tribble one for example
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tXar2DiP_w4/UZ0gs7PAhUI/AAAAAAAABJM/qISF7kIu1VU/s1600/tribble.jpg

Looking through the first season episodes, the ones that jump out at me as the most skippable: 'Move Along Home', 'The Storyteller', 'If Wishes Were Horses'. Depending on your feelings re: Q and Lwaxana Troi, you could probably skip their episodes. The Ferengi-centric episodes aren't my favorite but I like the core DS9 Ferengi trio enough that I push through (although the one (or the first one, as I understand there's at least one more) with Quark and Rom's mother was...trying).

the mirror universe ones are Good (even if the ease of getting back and forth is extra silly)

that quote from Behr about Picard's greatest fear in the Medium piece DJI linked is great
and of course Roddenberry killed it and liked the whole Risa pleasure planet junk

I don't think there's a ton of agreement on what the outright bad episodes are - I love the Mirror Universe eps for instance - plus a lot of the politics are drawn super slowly in the first two seasons. Just suck it up and digest it all, buddy!

xp too lazy to find it, can you quote it mh

Can do, sorry for the length

I created this planet called Risa, which was a pleasure planet. The captain was stressed out and needed a vacation. He went on this vacation and there was a holosuite there — or a holodeck — I guess a holosuite, we called it.

It said, “Face Your Greatest Fear!” and it was like a carnival place. And he thought, “Oh, cool, this is going to put me in a good mood. What I need is to fight some Klingons without thinking about the repercussions of it, or go after some Romulans or whatever it is.

And he goes into this holodeck, and it was all about the captain being promoted to admiral, and losing the Enterprise, and Riker being bumped up to captain of the Enterprise. Basically, though we never really hit it on the head, it’s about growing old. Not to grow old, but your time of life changing and suddenly you’re not going to be the guy going off on adventures, you’re going to be sitting at a desk somewhere, SENDING people on adventures. That’s his greatest fear.

Then it became a whole long story that I’m not going to get into now, but it got SLAMMED dead by Gene (Roddenberry); it was my big ‘Gene meeting’, where he slammed me down with all kind of pronouncements about what Star Trek is and is not. It was like, “Picard fears nothing. If it’s time for him to grow old, to become an admiral, he becomes an admiral! He would not think about that, AT ALL. Picard is John Wayne!” Well, John Wayne had all kinds of fears and guilt and angers and bitterness in his best movies… “No. John Wayne is a hero, Picard is a hero, we are not doing this episode.” Even though I guess this had happened a lot on the show in the first couple seasons, it hadn’t hit us.

And that’s when Gene sat there, “…but I love the pleasure planet! Get the captain laid!”

https://medium.com/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-deep-space-nine-in-82-5-hours-10acde591fd2#.nfj6q7sqb

Done a LOL @ that.

hahaha omg

We all know that Picard's unyielding lack of complexity is at the core of his enduring popularity.

I'm surprised Roddenberry didn't insist he have a heroic catchphrase. 'Jean-Luc out, here comes Picard!'

Um. Engage?

Not heroic enough imo. Maybe like 'engage that shit' while he slides on some shades to the accompaniment of chugging guitars.

I think i've mentioned the time i was on the men's room line at the theatre w/ Patrick Stewart, but didn't end up at the next urinal, where i wd've intoned "Make it so, Number One."

tbh I can't imagine that you would like DS9 at all Morbz

Yeah, if you're primarily a fan of TOS, it bears little resemblance. Very good but quite different.

does anyone want to explain to me what is going on with the Tribbles ep img with O'Brien inserted into it upthread

i don't require it to be a clone of the first series

fwiw I couldn't make it past the first episode, and you know how low my standards are

The first episode of a television series is usually its best, so that's a pretty fair assessment.

idk if you really want to have this argument but I was not given the impression that the things that were the most objectionable about it (like, say, the lead's line readings) were remedied later on

Does the Medium piece talk about how Roddenberry also wanted half-naked guys in the background holding hands?

I actually like "Move Along Home"! I think that someone who gets with TOS would appreciate its silly camp.

like, there was just nothing there that grabbed me, nothing that seemed like an interesting idea/no character that might develop into something interesting, and plenty of things I found actively irritating (Sisko, Ferengi etc.)

xps

You'll be missing out on Wallace Shawn and Space Nurse Ratched
https://s.put.re/maPB9nTX.png
https://s.put.re/PmdfguRf.png

Like while on the one hand I can accept that your objections were enough to keep you from pursuing the series further, on the other hand recommending against watching a well-regarded television series on the basis of the one (1) episode you couldn't even make it all the way through is...what's the word? Oh, yes: challops.

As Philip notes, if you haven't even gotten around to seeing Vedek Winn and Garak and the evolution of Nog etc. etc. you might as well be saying 'don't watch this show why because I saw a commercial and it looked unintersting'.

well-regarded television series

eh depends who you ask

not sure what you think Morbz would like about this series tbh

Did you read the post right after you wrote to Morbs where I agreed with you (not realizing you hadn't actually seen the show)

fair enough

anyway i'm a fan of Rene Auberjonois and Colm Meaney in other things

also there is a baseball episode

love me some Alex Siddig, that guy has been a valuable supporting actor in a lot of things over the years. he was the best thing about the worst part of Game of Thrones too (Dorne), which was an utter waste of his skill level and charisma.

I agree with Οὖτις that Avery Brooks can be a bit off-putting with his weird line-reading, but if you can get past that the rest of the series is really great. One of the first golden-age-of-TV-style shows where there is a large over-arching plot, and the first Star Trek show to have any hints of darkness or doubt within the Federation.

eh depends who you ask

I admit that I'm pretty deep into the Trek echo chamber but basically everyone praises DS9, especially for its structural ambitions.

also there is a baseball episode

i think this was the only one i skipped.

probably still prefer the later tng seasons

There's also an episode that revolves around the 1951 Willie Mays rookie card.

The baseball episode is actually really good, in a corny, sentimental way, even for someone likes me who knows almost nothing about it. It helps that it's right in the middle of long war arc, and it's clear that both the viewers and the characters need the temporary distraction it brings to all dark stuff they've been going through.

And yeah, baseball features in other episodes too, because right from the start Captain Sisko is established as a major fan of the sport (which apparently isn't played much on Earth anymore in the 24th century).

Baseball only exists as a Fortnite DLC in the 24th century.

Avery Brooks is just very theatre.

He's a joy and my favourite captain.

It wouldn't be Star Trek if the principals didn't ignore the last several centuries of their history in forming cultural interests that are uniformly familiar to viewers in the 20th/21st Century.

FTR, I get shakey's qualms inasmuch as the pilot is overlong and unwieldy and not a great entry point for people who aren't predisposed to jump headlong into a new Trek venture sight unseen. And if you don't stick around to the end, you miss the emotional payoff and best part of the episode. And, yeah, Brooks is sometimes a little much.

iirc the the TNG pilot was much worse

contains nothing as bafflingly inscrutable as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR1gdiuqAQs

TNG pilot has Q in it, which at least makes for an entertaining/watchable villain. Other stuff is stiff/stupid but that central conflict between Picard and Q in the pilot establishes a lot successfully imo.

xp
He's talking to an incorporeal wormhole alien!

Also, the Bajoran mystical stuff is some of the least interesting material in the show imo so frontloading it like that probably wasn't the best idea.

shakes, go watch 'Duet' and tell me this show still stinks.

Ignore Shakey, Morbs, he's muddying the waters.

The only thing you need to know from the first episode is that:

- Sisko's wife was killed by the Borg (which happened in TNG), and he's raising his son on his own.
- He's been sent to command a backwater space station (titular DS9), which makes him wonder if he should remain in Starfleet (his career is going nowhere).
- Bajorans are another kind of Space Jew, and the Cardassians are Space Nazis. In fact, the station used to belong to the Cardassians, but the Federation is taking it over in the hopes of negotiating Bajor's entry into the Federation.
- By the end of the episode, a wormhole suddenly opens up next to the station -- and living inside are noncorporeal aliens that Bajorans worship -- and Sisko is credited with its appearance. From now on, he's viewed as Bajor's Emissary (basically a prophet for renewing contact with Bajor's gods), and he likewise finds renewed purpose as a Starfleet officer.

That's from memory so I may have gotten some details wrong.

Also, be aware that the early seasons look butt-ugly (they haven't been remastered for HD and UHD screens).

The visual aesthetic of this show always struck me, I.e. still polished but it seemed to be an attempt at downplaying the visual interstellar glory prevalent in the previous series (which of course were journeying everywhere) but beyond that making it appear more working class and underfunded. This is just my memory from watching 25 years ago of course.

The station was pointedly a run-down wreck early in the show. It kinda develops like Deadwood, a character unto itself.

god I fuckin hate Q

excellent run about 2/3 of the way through season six: worf/dax in the jungle, kira and her mom, bashir meets section 31

(i know the next one is a favorite too, but i haven't watched it yet so shush)

Ah yes, the classic "Profit and Lace."

ayo my nerds have you all watched this?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6332276/

ira steven behr’s ~hideous~ goatee (and general “look”) notwithstanding, it’s v enjoyable

I plan to as soon as I have a couple furtive hours alone in my house

just finished season 6 :'-(

ayo my nerds have you all watched this?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6332276/

ira steven behr’s ~hideous~ goatee (and general “look”) notwithstanding, it’s v enjoyable

My post has gotten buried already! I guess that's a good thing. Deep Space Nine: a thread for (re)watching this awesome series

i just watched all of voyager so i guess i will watch this now, it's kind of relaxing watching crummy 90s tv, nothing too high-intensity, no worries about what it means

waiting to watch the doc until after i finish the series

vic fontaine and vic fontaine episodes are great. fu if you disagree!

it's kind of relaxing watching crummy 90s tv

as opp'd to crummy pretentious 2010s TV

i like vic fontaine, but he does say 'pallie' too much

i have begun season seven

maybe the nog ptsd episode managed to wring some pathos out of the otherwise risible vic fontaine thing.

pic.twitter.com/xe7vaiwIg0

— Charles Windstar (@Cwindstar) September 6, 2019

damn, i finished ds9 last night. i definitely felt bereft afterwards.

i know we have people watching rn so i won't spoilerize, but there are many elements of the finale that i was not fully on board with.

was pretty amazed that the penultimate episode was honestly not very good and focused quite a bit on the ferenghis. never change ds9

man I'm so itching to discuss all the aspects of the finale and the whole of the season that i wasn't on board with.

this show is a hundred years old, there can be no spoilers, metaphysically speaking

It is with extreme regret and sadness to announce that my love and best friend, Aron Eisenberg, passed away earlier today.
He was an intelligent, humble, funny, emphatic soul. He sought to live his life with... https://t.co/VbI9X5g1ku

— Malíssa Longo (@Malissa_Longo) September 22, 2019

RIP :(

aww. RIP :(

Bummer.

finally finished it

still don't like nog

your heart felt something at the ptsd episode, though. right?

never felt like he was a character dude I could relate to personally due to baggage and different outlooks but the realization, couched in the disconnect that *he* was now the injured one and really figured out what empathy is, meant something

then again, c’mon, you have to lose a leg to realize you’re mortal. ferengi are all libertarian teens

i think i mostly didn’t like him because his actor (rip) seemed to always be yelling? as a character he had a good arc, but weird because even at the end he still looked exactly like the kid he used to be

He still looks exactly the same 75 years later (The Visitor).

According to Ira Behr, Marc Alaimo never wavered from his belief that at heart, Dukat was an okay guy. He'd developed his theory during the shooting of the third season episode "Defiant", a landmark show in terms of rendering Dukat a more ambiguous character from a moral standpoint, and despite all that Dukat had done, Alaimo still felt there was good in him. As Behr says, "In Marc's mind, I believe he felt his relationship with Winn was legitimate in some way, and that, in some wacky fashion, it was Dukat's bid for legitimacy. I mean Marc was actually upset when we had him hit Solbor [in "The Changing Face of Evil"]. Until the very end, he wanted Dukat to be the hero of Deep Space Nine.

lol what a weirdo

method acting

anyway, s07 was good. i think the jadzia-to-ezri thing was handled about as well as it possibly could have been. (the ezri's family episode was weak, but that wasn't the character's fault.) her interactions with worf were great. the method of her getting with bashir was annoying -- oh, she's talking about him in her sleep, and then the two of them spend three episodes staring at/avoiding each other like adolescents -- but i don't mind them getting together.

i liked vic fontaine, but it was maybe a little too much. if those episodes had been spread out over multiple seasons than one-plus seasons it might have been better. i was a little disappointed that it was never explained why he was 'more than just a hologram' -- briefly wondered whether he might be a Prophet who was on probation or something.

garak and weyoun were awesome. kai winn was perfect. damar was solid. would join the house of martok. still don't think much of dukat or his actor -- no depth when it was required nor presence when it wasn't.

the section 31 eps were good (and the guy who played sloan was great) except for the final one where . . . miles and julian traipsed through his dying mind? that was goofy af and easily the weakest part of the entire Final Chapter.

the miles-and-julian relationship really became a parody by the end.

weird to see quark reduced to the role of greek chorus in s07, particularly as people went to vic's instead.

sorry for complaining about kira being shrill early on; she ultimately ruled.

i just never really cared about odo. and tbh it's pretty weird that the federation would keep on a security officer who served under the cardassians -- even before he was revealed as one of the Dire Enemies. he and kira getting together was weird but fine, and much less annoying than the seasons spent with odo yearning.

always here for wallace shawn and rom; the rest of the ferengi episodes were . . . fine. whatever. the only episode i skipped in the whole series was the one where quark evidently dresses up as a woman.

the segue from Female Changeling Ordering the Genocide of All Cardassians and Pyrrhic Final Battle > Linking with Odo > Calmly Surrendering and Submitting to Judgment was . . . awfully handy.

the sisko's final fate was, i think, questionable at best. i'm told that originally he just became a prophet and that was it, but that upon reflection avery brooks thought 'having the black guy abandon his family' was a bad look and insisted on sisko promising to return. imo he should have been offered prophetic immortality and turned it down.

v. glad i watched it, even if it took like three years! definitely cared more about the characters than in other treks, although it took longer to do so than might have been ideal. i think it had higher highs than TNG; it might also have had more duds, but that's probably because i skipped the first two seasons of TNG. ultimately they're tough to compare.

and yes nog's progression from gung-ho kid who signs on with the crazy elite cadets > kid who is less gung-ho > maimed and scared veteran is really good and important.

i just find nog's presence annoying. it'd have been better (and more interesting) with jake

if they ever followed up on the Ferengi, I’d most want to know how Rom did as Grand Nagus

Nothing would ever be better and more interesting with Jake

My issues with the final season were: enough with the mirror universe and holodeck and stupid Ferengi episodes already! When they were still coming in the second half of the season it *really* felt like they had more important things to be getting on with. Except... the whole Dominion/Cardassian alliance and war ended up being just as tiresome - there was absolutely no sense of the grand scale of it, when most of the time it was just Weyoun and Damar alone in a room looking at screens. The expressionless Breen added absolutely nothing. And as for Sisko, what a fucking disaster. Seven seasons of building up expectations and then - "I know what I have to do! Fly to Bajor in a shuttle and hurl myself off a cliff!"

The last section 31 episode was indeed a dire, a miserable failure of an attempt at a classic mindfuck episode. Hated Vic. The Klingon episodes were good, probably the best part of the whole thing.

Sorry to be so negative. I'd never have agreed that it had higher highs than TNG, but I feel like S7 retroactively poisoned my enjoyment of the whole thing!

Ok, Terrence, don’t be nervous, it’s just a walk by. You’re just an extra. You’ve been walking your whole life. This shouldn’t be hard. Just don’t walk like a complete weirdo, distract them, and ruin the scene. Ok. Here we go pic.twitter.com/EMktaqaWb6

— William Mullally 🍯☕️ (@whmullally) October 2, 2019

My issues with the final season were: enough with the mirror universe and holodeck and stupid Ferengi episodes already! When they were still coming in the second half of the season it *really* felt like they had more important things to be getting on with. Except... the whole Dominion/Cardassian alliance and war ended up being just as tiresome - there was absolutely no sense of the grand scale of it, when most of the time it was just Weyoun and Damar alone in a room looking at screens. The expressionless Breen added absolutely nothing. And as for Sisko, what a fucking disaster. Seven seasons of building up expectations and then - "I know what I have to do! Fly to Bajor in a shuttle and hurl myself off a cliff!"

The last section 31 episode was indeed a dire, a miserable failure of an attempt at a classic mindfuck episode. Hated Vic. The Klingon episodes were good, probably the best part of the whole thing.

Sorry to be so negative. I'd never have agreed that it had higher highs than TNG, but I feel like S7 retroactively poisoned my enjoyment of the whole thing!

― The Pingularity (ledge), Wednesday, September 25, 2019 1:04 AM (one week ago)

i basically share most of your criticisms. i like vic tho.

it also felt a little too melancholy to end with that shot of kira and jake looking at the wormhole, thinking about their loved ones that they may never see again.

at work emailing someone with the first name gul and a second name that sounds like a cardassian surname

https://s.put.re/36doTBVb.jpeg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGaHMdkWwAAAqpt?format=jpg&name=small

My roommate sent me a “meme” and now I have to sit down pic.twitter.com/Wl8vRRhpwr

— Alex Arrelia (@AlexArrelia) January 12, 2020

Ya, iirc Trek pretty regularly paints this era as basically the Dark Ages.

I watched that two-parter not too long ago and it was probably a heavy-handed warning of what could be in the mid-'90s but watching it today I was fairly impressed by their prognostication skills.

*marks calendar for four years from now*

The Bell Riots were a pivotal series of events on Earth that took place in September of 2024. Started in San Francisco's Sanctuary District A, they were named after protest leader Gabriel Bell. One of the most violent civil disturbances in all of American history, the riots and subsequent crackdown resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Sanctuary District residents

By the 2020s, the American government – reacting to serious problems of homelessness and unemployment – created special Sanctuary Districts (essentially walled-off sections of the city grid) in most major cities. Unfortunately – while established with the benevolent intent of providing free housing and food, as well as prospects for future employment – the Sanctuaries quickly degenerated into inhumane internment camps for the poor.

this appalling socialism would never fly in the real america of the 2020s

xp. strangely TNG mention that in 2024 irish unification happens.

and that ds9 ep also prognosticates that the neo-trotskyists will soon be in power in france

which, if la france insoumise were more popular, would be kind of accurate maybe?

I could see the sanctuary district thing happening if it gave a huge kickback to the property owners that topped the amount they'd make from redevelopment

Star Trek had a nuclear apocalypse in the late '90s IIRC

same

i know they shared a lot of writers, but did ds9 pick up a lot of tng staff once it was off the air? would that explain the general uptick in quality with season 4?

He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them pic.twitter.com/PZySdov6Po

— Carta Monir (@CartaMonir) March 14, 2020

lol, thought that scenario felt familiar. Although I don't remember ever hoping that Quark's would get looted in the wake of a failed scheme.

Anyone complaining that ST: Picard is too slow has not watched this show recently.

HOW DARE U

this one's mostly episodic though other than like 4 or 5 episodes per season that advance the Plot? its not 'slow' if its executing a complete story every episode imo

i haven't seen picard so maybe that's the same idk

IDK, because of my love for Trek and my respect for the participants of this thread, and their enthusiasm, I have been trying for a while to get into DS9. I've watched about 2 1/2 seasons over the last couple of years, but have forgotten what took place in most of the episodes so I've been rewatching select eps from S2 & S3 to keep at it. Anyway, I still find most of the characters to be less than compelling. I don't really know what Dax is or does still, Bashir I'm warming to, Quark I like, but everyone with the exception of O'Brien TALKS WAY TOO MUCH. The only person to really own it, and who I'm finally getting into as I'm getting close to the end of S3, is Avery Brooks and his demented, go for broke line readings no matter what the occasion.

By and large, the pace is excruciating, even on the self contained eps. Story arc-wise, I did like the one where the Dominion clowned the Cardassians & Romulans in one fell swoop. That was well written and paced, but it took an entire episode of setup to get there.

Anyway, I have plenty of time to keep at it and see where it goes.

I don't really know what Dax is or does still

There's behind the scenes stuff that kind of explains Dax's fuzziness, namely that the original scope for the character was to be a mentor figure dripping with gravitas, but Terry Farrell, being relatively new to acting, said she felt she couldn't pull it off, which sent Dax into a limbo until they settled on Action Barbie (her term) and party girl.

My beef with STP isn't its narrative slowness so much as its patchy and flimsy world-building, which is an area in which DS9 is unrivaled among the other Trek properties.

Other things that I love are Sisko and Jake's unbridled affection for each other, Garak, Kira yelling at people.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/05/deep-space-nine-the-trek-spinoff-that-saved-the-day-by-staying-put/

The time-traveling San Francisco episodes are overly too prescient and I hope they're not quite our world. They're much closer than I think the writers ever intended!

If Jeff Bezos wants to justify some of his zillions, he should fund the HD-ing of DS9.

just read (parts of) the 'star trek - the second 25 years' and lol

it's essentially just endless bitching by writers, most of whom were fired, complaining that they 'couldn't tell stories' because of roddenberry or berman or braga or the network. i mean it doesn't even *mention* that two ds9 actors had a baby during the show's run.

the exception is behr, who went ham at the end of ds9 (and will not shut up about it)

berman comes across as a dick, but at least a self-aware and superficially diplomatic one. except for 'it's so difficult to find beautiful young women who can actually act.' maurice hurley didn't even bother with that.

also everyone absolutely loves the bakula

I’ve gotten up to the early 3rd season in this, and it’s definitely coming together a bit more. I agree with a lot of mookieproof’s criticisms, there were a number of season 2 episodes that created interesting and difficult problems and then came up with ridiculous resolutions. (Sending a rapidly expanding mini-universe...somewhere else, Garak just killing a Cardassian officer with zero consequences, etc.)

I loved the episode with Garak’s malfunctioning implant. Really liked O’Brien living out The Trial and Kira getting turned into a Cardassian. Mirror dimension was fun, the whole cast seemed to be having a great time, especially Brooks. Still find Dax pretty boring, and Kira’s love interest is such a drag.

that is not the *least* of the shit o'brien 'lives out' (you'll know it when you get there)

and yeah if you like it so far it basically only gets better!

Standing by my offer to take Bezos off the guillotine list if he paid for a 4K DS9 remaster.

you need to ask for more

He still has to go to the reeducation camp.

can't tell if you're stupid or just not funny

let us know if you figure it out

gutted, just gutted

oof, sorry. that was lame and uncalled for by me -- apologies

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EixOp3VUcAEcp9S?format=jpg&name=small

Whomst among us has not...

Watched the documentary on the show which I thought was very good. Check it out if you have the chance

Full yet incidental series spoilers but amusing: https://youtu.be/bQPB5xzxlQQ

is ezri dax a manic pixie dream girl y/n

besides the haircut? nah

yes and no

yes outwardly v pixie dream girl
no bc inwardly = old man

manic pixie dream girl old man

i think the inner old man only really emerged when convenient, as with the *insanely* over-the-top joran manifestation or when prodding worf. which is fine

that said i think she and they did a pretty great job with her character

tbf an aspect of mpdg is always ~unknown knowledge~ but hedged behind a social anxiety that makes them accessible to dorks

as i'm rewatching S07 after like a year and a half it seems i too want to live in the holosuite

the inherent thing isn’t “wow I can introduce this girl to things only I know” but “this girl has the secret keys to fixing my internal problems” so she’s definitely mpdg

so say we all xpost

xp you and Nog just chilling in there

I've decided the only way I'll get through this series is by turning my internet-browsing procrastination into DS9 procrastination for a couple of months. Just watched the pilot. It's pretty charming, tantalising setup for all the political stuff, likably stupid but not-TNG-season 1-stupid, and some of the dialogue is... quite good? I think I will split the diff between these two watchlists.

I've seen the pilot three times, when it first came out, for previous failed rewatch sometime in the past decade, and yesterday. The only things I ever remember are the shot of Sisko in the escape pod at the start, Sisko's swimsuit, and the "OW!".

yeah i just rewatched emissary again the other day and that shot from the pov of the escape pod is stunning

For a bad first season, this is a pretty great first season, so I’m excited about when this actually gets good.

I have a watchlist of which episodes to skip, but after watching ”Progress” (moving!) and an actually enjoyable Lwaxana episode (!), neither of which were on the list, I’m thinking I might as well watch the whole lot.

i really thought the first season was not bad, although it absolutely does get better. a better first season than TNG imo (I just did the TNG rewatch, i prefer it slightly to DS9 overall but it's fairly close for me).

I'll go to bat for DS9's first season, even "Move Along Home!" And DS9's Lwaxana episodes put her TNG episodes to shame, because in the latter, she's basically a "LOL old harridan" but DS9 gives her emotional depth and shading.

I will only recommend one episode to categorically skip, that being "Profit & Lace" i.e. the trans-Quark lol emotional wimmin episode, which is irredeemably awful and objectionable.

Ok I have to watch that now. Move Along Home was very silly but not unenjoyable, so miles better than early TNG nonsense. Basically almost every one of the main ensemble is a fun character actor, so it’s enjoyable watching them even when the stories r dumb.

Oh no what have I done.

haha profit & lace was the only episode i skipped when i watched the series -- hadn't even heard anything about it, just saw the preview and thought 'that sounds terrible'

yeah i wouldn't skip anything in DS9, there's a couple stinkers each season but those watch guides throw away tons of good ones just because they're lower stakes or whatever

Out of morbid curiosity, I checked https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Profit_and_Lace_(episode)#Reception, which has this delightful nugget:

This episode received Star Trek 101's "Spock's Brain" Award for Worst Episode of Deep Space Nine.

my main complaint about the early seasons is that they wouldn't let sisko shave his head

Ok maybe I’ll skip it. Or...

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/d/d9/Quark_as_Lumba.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E3hrW3jVkAAD5K_.jpg

Whats this from? Orville?

‘the making of star trek deep space nine’ by judith and garfield reeves-stevens

I was just confused by all the non-ST refs there lol.

I named a piece of software “emissary” recently and the icon is Sisko, lol

Nice

prune juice: a warrior's drink

just watched the ep where they accidentally set off the station's panic mode left by the cardassians and omg it's so good, you learn more about garak in like 10 seconds than he'd revealed in the entire show up to that point, had to have been such a gag when it came out

https://t.co/4kPK1NYbPA is saddened to learn of the passing of Camille Saviola. Camille made her mark on the Star Trek Universe as the incredible Kai Opaka. She will be greatly missed. pic.twitter.com/TTgDmdYJIp

— Star Trek (@StarTrek) October 29, 2021

Never noticed that Garak is the guy from Hellraiser (and many other things, as noted elsewhere on these boards.)

yeah he’s a great character actor! i love when he pops up in old shows.

my personal fave is his “zodiac but not” killer in Dirty Harry

My brother in law gets up early with the baby and has been going through Deep Space Nine so I also have pic.twitter.com/1HlGcSae27

— Kate Beaton (@beatonna) April 16, 2023