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

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.

Suprised I never commented much in this thread given I did a first-watch of DS9 a few years back over a few months.

I wouldn't call it my fave Trek, and my (contentious) opinion is that, at its heights, babylon5 did the longform story better, but DS9 had some really good moments. The whole Dukat/Kai Winn thing, especially how it ended. Nog's war fallout. Any time Weyoun was on screen. Iggy Pop! That early episode with the Cardassian who pretended to be a war criminal guy because of his unbearable guilt.

i did end up liking it, quite a lot! there's some stuff i dislike about the first couple seasons (bashir was almost unbearable, quark *really* should have been put away for letting that dude on board to steal jadzia's symbiont, and thank god they finally let avery brooks shave his head) but they were still better than those of TNG/VOY/ENT

that said, i never liked odo -- he was a fascist! -- and i thought the writers used keiko's character very poorly. and all of kira's boyfriends were stiffs. but! damar's season seven arc was great, they eventually figured out how to use worf (except for that horrible episode on risa) and i even truly liked ezri. won't even complain about vic fontaine! and of course garak is incredible

i guess i kinda pick on the weak spots because i think it's pretty great but could have been even better

You're probably right about Keiko, she's less fleshed out than when she was on TNG, which I find a little ironic since DS9 redeems Lwaxana.

I just got the DVD box set and started another rewatch. "Emissary" isn't great of course but aside from some slack pacing in the last few acts, has a decent story for a Trek pilot, and has Brooks yowling.

i give props to 'emissary' simply for letting sisko *seethe* at picard for wolf 359 and letting picard be completely taken aback by it

I introduced some friends who'd only seen 60's Trek to the larger universe via a double bill of DS9 (Bar Association) and TNG (Darmok). Worked quite well if I do say so myself. Only problem with Bar Association is almost no Sisko!

needed some comfort food and I’m rewatching DS9

after seeing the documentary, knowing that Gul Dukat was being played by an actor who delusionally thought his character was at heart a good guy who made bad choices makes it really hit different. I always thought the character was grandiose and pretty nuts, but knowing where the performance came from is very o_O

yeah he's ridiculous and oblivious and just endlessly ott. never got the appeal; season seven damar was far more interesting

iirc at some point the showrunners wanted to make kira and dukat a thing, and nana visitor was all *absolutely fucking not*, that's like putting anne frank in a relationship with a nazi. so they did it with her character's mom, which was a brutal (and strong) episode

That early episode with the Cardassian who pretended to be a war criminal guy because of his unbearable guilt.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Thursday, August 7, 2025 6:58 PM (two months ago)

this was harris yulin! who just died in june. fantastic episode

Insane stretch of episodes in the season I jumped back into. You get Ferengi badly trading hostages for Quark’s mom, starring Iggy Pop, and several later you get the Benny science fiction writer one. and in-between, the one where Morn fakes his death

I find it hard to watch Dukat now knowing Marc Alaimo was a creepy mf to the female cast. Or to Nana at least anyways. Maybe he got too into his role, lol who knows.

he creepy

the iggy pop one is the best ferengi episode iirc

yeah he's ridiculous and oblivious and just endlessly ott. never got the appeal

He's a villain whose chief and very transparent villainous goal is just to be loved, respected, admired, forgiven, validated, sympathized with — to persuade everyone in the world that he is a wonderful guy, so that the world will assure him he's not a piece of shit by constantly reflecting to him how great he is. I don't know if they leaned into that because Alaimo liked playing him that way or what, but I think it's fantastic to watch! (And, if you want to get into it, kinda anticipates a lot of 21st-century discourse about "nice" people and "misunderstood" narcissists and unfillable bottomless holes of ego.) You get the rare and interesting sight of a bad guy whose whole deal is to court you and try to dramatize/justify himself as a hero — manipulation he evidently does well enough that a whole pocket of weirdo fans managed to fall for it and get upset that later seasons treated him as monstrous. When his self-justification is totally deluded that's dramatically nice, and when his self-justification is just smarmy bullshit it's sometimes quite hilarious (like the thing I mentioned above about the cult baby). The primary thing that appears to make his self-image cohere peacefully is the idea of a Bajoran woman wanting to sleep with him — it's a really interesting character!

nabisco otm

there's an episode in the stretch I was watching where and Dukat and Sisko are stuck on a planet awaiting rescue, their shuttle having crashed on the way to Dukat's trial. Of course, Dukat has disabled the emergency transponder and is attempting to hide that fact, but he's beset by hallucinations of Kira, Damar, and Odo that start out as mocking but eventually become aggrandizing. His baggage is such that he's imagining Kira telling him he's an asshole and a terrible being, but by the end of the episode they're telling him he should be worse! And he rolls with it, I think the poorly-dropped "Kira, I was with your mother" call comes soon. And he's belligerent about how the power dynamic was great iirc

^^ Apparently that is the big turning-point episode that Dukat stans despise and complain about, since it peels back his self-flattering facade and officially, canonically says that he is a delusional genocidal maniac

(To be fair, I can understand the impulse to pretend the writers goofed up or changed something, because that is less embarrassing than admitting you managed to get suckered by a manipulative space-Nazi reptile-man on a 1990s TV show)

how can he be charismatic AND terrible? well, I have some news for you

the marooned delusion episode, before the coda where he absconds and Sisko is rescued, ends with him being goaded by Sisko into yelling about how he should have killed every single one of the Bajorans. definitely not subtle, hope the fans got it

i had no idea people actually stanned for the space nazi. I mean, he's an awesome amazing character, so fun to watch, perfect compliment to Sisko's exaggerations, but pretty obviously evil?

ugh yeah that is dismaying news to me as well. "how can he be charismatic AND terrible?" I guess one explanation is some trek fans don't engage with literally any other media?

I dunno guys, there's a lot of weirdos out there stanning for almost any obviously evil character you could think of.

hm yes I guess I did know that already

I mean, I kind of stan for Garak and he is also a space nazi. Though by "stan" I mostly mean "enjoy the character of" and not "excuse all his space nazi crimes". I do like to imagine that he genuinely enjoys tailoring as much as spying, though, which is probably the sort of apologetic/sympathetic headcanon that can lead down the slippery slope of delusional stannery.

Garak grudgingly admits that he's a good tailor, with the implication that he hates that he is.

Garak was for sure actively complicit in a lot of horrible shit but as a character he is immensely more sympathetic than Dukat, we get to see him refrain from causing harm even when it could help him recover his standing, learn about his trauma, who knows maybe he really WAS exiled for helping bajorans. And he doesn't have Dukat's creepy sex thing.

Yeah, there's a lot of reasons why my headcanon can't really be true. But it would be fun! And neat!

(Seriously, though, I think this highlights the different mindsets of fans/stans - I'm just over here enjoying an implausible interpretation because I think it would be amusing, not stating something as fact or arguing that the actual people who wrote the show don't know what they're talking about because they didn't write it my way.)

xpost

Garak would justify something terrible by doing his semi-sarcastic voice and the acting was good enough that you could tell it bugged him but he was trying to stick to the rationale that business is business. Dukat's constantly attempting to do some self-justification thing and also how dare you question him because he's actually a good person

Don't neglect the other interesting test on the space-Nazi front, which is Damar. Willing servant of the empire, Dukat, and the Dominion; descends into cynicism and drink more because he's annoyed by Dominion bossiness than because he has any objection to their aims; but then has that redemption-and-atonement moment that works oddly well, considering how late it arrives. Honestly they may have Dukat to thank for that — Damar is really contrasted with him in terms of exhibiting very little ego-struggle or self-justification. He has spent a while in touch enough with his own self-loathing to just be like okay, got it, I am horrible and wrong, might as well go fight and die in the opposite direction

agreed. he’s a career bureaucrat, which is funny in itself

good posts. once again I am wondering if I could talk my partner into watching this

watched 'whispers' (the one where o'brien becomes super paranoid because everyone's acting weird around him because he's actually a replicant and doesn't even know it) last night

pretty great stuff, especially from the historically shit-upon keiko

“The Feringinar that I knew doesn’t exist anymore. No, I take that back. It will exist.. in this bar! This bar will be the last outpost of what made Feringinar great!”

— Quark, channeling the spirit of a NYC Cuomo voter who actually moved to Florida

blondie concurs (sorry britishes, postimages doesn't seem to be working)

https://i.imgur.com/m6AGBtd.jpeg

Haha, I was like "but wait I can see the good joke", then renembered I'm in France. A new entry in the "relieved you're not currently in the UK" gallery.

Garak was for sure actively complicit in a lot of horrible shit but as a character he is immensely more sympathetic than Dukat

which is why *we* are complicit in all his horrible shit because we like him

'in the pale moonlight' really nailed everything about starfleet and its pieties in a way that little else has before or since

Going way back upthread mh said this:
if they ever followed up on the Ferengi, I’d most want to know how Rom did as Grand Nagus

Well you got your wish in Lower Decks haha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y2KOoa0VxU

He likes baseball!

Oh yeah! Always nice to see Rom