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

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