TheGodBen Revisits Deep Space Nine

[TheGodBen]

Official Niner reporting in, here are my credentials:


Some of you may know that over the last few years I had review threads for Voyager, Enterprise and Babylon 5, and those threads proved to be quite popular. Now it is time for me to take on my favourite sci-fi series, Deep Space Nine. Why? Because I really want to rewatch the show.

If pushed on the issue, I would say that DS9 is my favourite television series, but that opinion is based on sentimentality. It has been five years since I last watched DS9 and in that time I have not only watched Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5, two of the most acclaimed sci-fi shows around, I've also watched The Sopranos, The Wire and Breaking Bad, three of the most acclaimed shows of all time. I'm curious to see whether sentiment is enough to protect DS9's place as my favourite show or whether being exposed to those shows will reveal more of the cracks in DS9.

Background on me

I've been a Trekkie for as long as I can remember, TNG was my favourite show as a kid and it remains a show that I love to this day. My first memory of DS9 was seeing an ad for the show at my grandmother's house aged 7. The ad showed Kai Opaka and some spiritual stuff, and I remember thinking that it looked boring. At that point I didn't even realise it was a new show, I thought it might be a tele-movie or something like that. I have faint memories of watching some season 1 episodes during their first airing (on this side of the Atlantic) on Sunday nights, but I never set out to watch it, I'd only watch it if someone else had it on.

It may sound trite to say this now, but the episode that made me a big DS9 fan was The Way of The Warrior. And it wasn't just for the action, it was because I loved the grand scale of the story, how the characters interacted, and the use of humour. From that point on it had surpassed TNG as my favourite show and it remains there to this day. I watched the rest of the show
semi-religiously right up to the final episode.

The review format

Some of you may be asking yourself why you should bother to read this thread when there have been so many DS9 rewatch threads already, and that's a good question. What sets mine apart from all the others? The answer is simple: Graphs! I assign a score to each episode between 0 and 5 stars (including half stars) and at the end of each season I produce graphs with averages and trendlines. Isn't that exciting? (I also produce crappy pictures that I make in MS paint, and make weird jokes about Mike Sussmann and Scott Bakula.)

One important thing to note, I don't inflate scores. The other day I was checking out B5's The Lost Tales on IMDb and saw a review saying that the first half was crap and the second half was was average (which I agreed with), so they gave the movie a score of 7/10. That's not me, I don't don't understand how anyone can find such a score logical. That was a 3/10 review and that's exactly the way I scored it. Some have claimed that this makes my scoring system overly harsh, I just think that I'm being honest.

This is a scale I once wrote up to explain my scoring mechanism:

0: Not worthy of my ridicule
½: Awful
*: Bad
*½: Poor
**: Meh
**½: Average
***: Enjoyable
***½: Good
****: Very good
****½: Great
*****: Exceptional

For readers of my previous review threads, I'll point out that my TNG-lite rule is back in play. For new readers, that rule means that I deduct half a star from any episode which could have been easily adapted to work on TNG. That rule was controversial in the past, but I feel that each series after TNG should have strived to be different by focusing on the show's unique setting or one of the show's characters. I'm curious to see what sort of impact this will have on DS9. Also returning will be the feature where I grade the staff writers based on the average score of the episodes they're credited with. It's just a little fun and adds a horse-race element to the graphs that I find exciting. (Yes, I'm a dull person.)

Finally, my great-grandfather was a purple vampire, so I've inherited a love of counting things. One of the things I'll be counting is the number of destroyed runabouts over the course of the series, because there were quite a lot of them. If you can think of anything else then please mention it because I'm stumped for ideas.

If all goes as planned then I'll be watching Emissary tonight and will have a review for it up tomorrow. Thanks for reading all this and I hope you'll stick around.

[sidious618]

I'm definitely looking forward to this.

[Skywalker]

At last, the long wait is over!

I'm actually going through DS9 (mostly for the first time) right now, too, though I'm almost through Season Two. Looking forward to hearing your take on the show!

[aelius]

I am also looking forward to your reviews. DS9 is my favorite Star Trek series and your reviews are always... colorful

[Distorted Humor]

Looking forward to this...

[Canadave]

I think I speak for most of us when I say "it's about damn time."

[Deranged Nasat]

I think the others have said it all, so I'll just say "same".

[TheGodBen]

aelius wrote:

---

I am also looking forward to your reviews. DS9 is my favorite Star Trek series and your reviews are always... colorful

And by that I assume you mean foul-mouthed.

[RyuRoots]

Nothing wrong with a few "colorful metaphors".

[Gary7]

Out of curiosity, something I've wanted to know for some time--what exactly is a "GodBen"? Your avatar looks like something out of a video game... is it related to your chosen nickname? Thanks.

[Sykonee]

Seeing as how Shatnertage brought it up but refused to implement a counter for it, I demand a "'What The Hell!?' Hair" counter!

[JustKate]

Well, this will be fun. For those of you who have never experienced a GodBen thread ("who is this GodBen person, anyway?"), you're in for a treat.

As for things to count...how about threats to the wormhole? There were a whoppin' wad of those, if I am remembering correctly. Or - ooh, this is better! - how about things that Odo can perfectly mimic even though a lifelike Bajoran isn't one of them? That might be kind of fun.

[Biffette]

Will you use the "TNG-lite rule" when you decide to re-watch TNG?

[Admiral Shran]

Hey, I thought we agreed that you'd review Stargate SG-1 first.

Oh well....

I'm also really looking forward to this! Have been for quite a while.

For those of you not familiar with TheGodBen's reviews, prepare yourselves for things like pictures of Avery Brooks in his underware (most likely involving bras and panties ), obscure references to actors who don't appear on the show and wonderful, multi-colored graphs, graphs, graphs!

[flemm]

TheGodBen revisits DS9?!?!? Truly a momentous occasion...

Looking forward to it