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

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