Deep Space Nine thoughts & questions

[Bry_Sinclair]

DS9 really did develop the characters unlike any other series. A prime example of this is Jadzia. If you were to just take a look at her in any S1 episode and compare it to any S6 episode people might question wtf? She goes from being very Spock-esque to more of a "party girl", but if you watch all the episodes in between you see that at the beginning she is not long Joined, has a lot going on in her head as she tries to find the balance, but then embraces all her previous hosts have to offer and starts living her own life.

On the DVDs the producers said about how she was originally conceived as an old soul in a young body, but found that over time she was the one person always up for an adventure.

All the others developed along the way as well and without too much studio scrutiny and influence (as they were focused on TNG films and then VOY), they could think outside the box and do things differently. I think that DS9 being ignored made it a better series--just imagine how badly it could have gone if it'd gotten the VOY treatment! ::shudders::

[Angel4576]

Bry_Sinclair wrote:

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just imagine how badly it could have gone if it'd gotten the VOY treatment! ::shudders::

Jeri Taylor would probably have insisted that the Dominion War be wrapped up inside two episodes, and at the end of it, something happened to reset everything to being the same as they were beforehand......

[Bry_Sinclair]

Angel4576 wrote:

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Jeri Taylor would probably have insisted that the Dominion War be wrapped up inside two episodes, and at the end of it, something happened to reset everything to being the same as they were beforehand......

Exactly. Just imagine the horror!

[JirinPanthosa]

AllStarEntprise wrote:

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DS9 had a shaky start. The preachy, whiny, and unsympathetic Bajorans grated my nerves

Dax was a know it all Spock type who borderlined Mary Sue with all her talents and knowledge

Odo hadn't been developed yet

The constant trolling by the Cardassians got annoying really fast. Not like they didn't have a government to run or anything.

DS9 didn't feel like a space station. It felt like a space mall with Sisko as the GM.

You see, that's how I felt when the show was on, but right now I find DS9 the easiest to go back to out of any Trek. Bajorans unsympathetic? Yes, by TV standards they are unsympathetic. That's what makes them more interesting than the cast of Friends, the scirpt makes no attempt to manipulate you into liking them. It doesn't cue when when to laugh and when to go 'Awww', it just presents them as they are, with the politics and the failings we have in real life. DS9 challenged the illusions of television, and at the time those were the illusions people wanted.

It's kind of ironic, when Galactica first came out it was praised for doing the exact same things DS9 was hated for. And DS9 is the one new fans have the easiest time connecting with too.

[dub]

I think what made DS9 fail for me during the time it originally aired was as others have mentioned, I initially thought the premise sounded boring. But more than that...having watched the entire series now, I really believe another reason the show failed was because the main characters, guest characters, relationships, alien species and ongoing threads became so complex, it was hard to jump in and catch an episode here and there and just enjoy it on its own. TNG was more episodic. This is oversimplifying it and certainly there are exceptions, but in TNG the characters simply weren't as multi-dimensional, so the shows were more about the individual stories than they were about complex character development, recurring guest characters or ongoing threads. I'm not knocking it, because I certainly enjoyed TNG. But by its nature it's much easier to catch random episodes of TNG here and there and know what's going on, skip around and still have the same basic set of defined characters. DS9 on the other hand was always adding characters and threads here and there and bringing them all back, so if you tuned in at random (as I did), you were just completely lost and uninterested. While I found the idea of a space station with shuttlecraft boring, I still tuned in from time to time hoping to love it. It never happened during its original run. But now that I've watched the entire series on Netflix, it's my favorite. Isn't that funny!

[dub]

By the way, "failed" is the wrong word. I should say "the reason why it didn't work for me at the time." That certainly doesn't make it a failure!

[MacLeod]

As others have said DSN (and similiar shows such as B5) started to air just a few years too early. There was a shift going on to that sort of format for certain types of shows.

The likes of B5/DSN rewarded the viewer for tuning in each week.

[timtonruben359]

JirinPanthosa wrote:

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DS9 made observations about humanity that contradict Roddenberrian wisdom and that weren't taken seriously until 2001. It was an 00s show that aired in the 90s.

I thought I was the only that felt this way! I think DS9 was ahead of its time in many ways. I mean may of the topics the show dealt with like war, terrorism and religion became major issues after 9/11.

DS9 didn't get the respect is was owed when it was on the air.

[MacLeod]

War, Terrorism and Religon where major topics long before 9/11. Off the top of my head

IRA in the United Kingdom
ETA In Spain
World Trade Centre bombing in 1993
Terrosit bombings in places like Israel, India, Colombo

The list goes on and on.

[AllStarEntprise]

^
Pretty much. You could view the Bajoran Occupation as a larger scale and prolonged version of the Holocaust. With the Bajorans being the Jews and Cardassians as the Nazis. While both the Bajorans and the Jewish people commited acts of "terrorism" and other violence against their oppressors. It could be justified given the circumstances. While their were innocent casualties among Cardassians who had nothing to do with the military or occupation, terrorism is a tool of the desperate in extremes.

To a lesser extent you have the IRA. With their conflict with the UK being over civil rights and fair treatment. Similar to what african-americans and other minorites went through in the US. Difference is the IRA used violence and bombs to attack British military and other target, while a majority of violence was directed toward the marching protest of the blacks in the US from the establishment government. I say majority because the muslim brotherhood was also apart of the civil rights era and they were more militant.

I digress. A show like DS9 with terrorism and religion as the central conflict for a pitch to any network now would probably not be picked up. During the 90's terrorism was a far away thing. It was real in other countries but little more than science fiction to us in the States. The Islamist/muslim terrorists share a similar vein with the Bajorans. In the sense that they feel their religion is the one true faith and could care less about the infidels (non-believers). It's made worse by the fact that in DS9 their Bajoran gods are real. Frakking real! I couldn't stand all the preachy religious BS every single Bajoran spouted. It was so annoying. Religion is about faith, if your gods are proven to be real, then where is the investment? That you hope they'll send you blessings or do special favors for you? Like destroying a 2,800 Dominion Fleet coming through the Wormhole kind of favor? With Muslims they take their holy texts very seriously. Look at the attacks in Afghanistan at the US base when a FL preacher said he would hold a Koran burning day. I was raised Christian but no longer practice, and Im an American. If some guy across the world said he would burn a bunch of bibles or American flags (which does happen frequently) I wouldn't care. You don't see people of other faiths in any country leading riots and killing innocent people over the depiction of their faith in a Youtube video or what some crazy southern said he would do to books I assumed he bought just to burn them.

These are major turn offs to networks who have to make money of their shows. They make money by the people who buy ad time for commercials. Even a legitimate show about a muslim family was cancelled. TLC's All American Muslim. Research the controversy on that show. To be fair to the Bajorans they unlike the Islamist/Muslim terrorists in the middle east constantly use bombs that drastically effect the civilian population. You can't go two days without hearing about some new bomb killing innocent people in Pakistan, or Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Yemen. The list goes on.

Networks see the words religion and terrorism and they'd pass.

[JirinPanthosa]

It's true terrorism wasn't a new phenomenon in 2001, but Americans saw it as 'A thing that happened elsewhere' before then.

The Nazis aren't the only nation who've ever tried to completely dominate another. Japan did it to China around the same time, France did it to Algeria, powerful nations did it to the rest of the world for all of the 19th century, the Romans did it to every culture around them.

Recommended film watching:
The Battle of Algiers
The Human Condition Part I
Army of Shadows

[MacLeod]

^But there had been several terrorist attacks in the USA prior to the September 11th attack:

Oklahoma City in 1995
First World Trade Centre Bombing in 1993
Olympic Park bombing in 1996

They might have been less frequent in the USA than in other parts of the world, but they did occur and logic would say they could occur again. The only shocking think about the September 11th attacks was not that they occured but the severity.

[Dale Sams]

I didn't want to give "..Nor the Battle to the Strong" it's own thread for one tiny snark, so I'll add it to this general thread...

LoL that Jake was able to drive off the Klingons by firing a phaser rifle like you should instead of exchanging fire like a six shooter in an old western.

[CorporalClegg]

Dale Sams wrote:

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LoL that Jake was able to drive off the Klingons

You had me at hello.

[flemm]

AllStarEntprise wrote:

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People saw it, and weren't impressed with what they saw.

I think that's probably a fair assessment.

Emissary is a good episode in many ways, but a flawed pilot imo because so much time is spent with Sisko in this otherworldy state with the Prophets, which, while interesting in a "high concept" sort of way, is pretty slow and dull.

Past the pilot, DS9 was, as I recall, often using stories pitched to TNG, but that TNG didn't use, so basically cast-off ideas for a significant number of episodes.

The idea of a space station on the frontier is good, but it took a while for the writers to really find a direction. In the meantime, season one feels too much like a more static, less glitzy, less exciting version of TNG.

The show has a good cast, and I think the non-Starfleet characters were a strong point from early on (Kira, Odo, Quark), along with O'Brien among the Starfleet cast. He's always been well-liked. But none of the Starfleet characters really stood out compared to characters like Picard and Data.

There are reasons to like the show from early on, and to prefer it to TNG, but these aspects of the show have more of a "niche" sort of appeal: more flawed characters, a less idyllic setting, some political and religious ideas being addressed, etc.

It was a different time as well. Early TNG, for example, is pretty awful. Early DS9 actually compares favorably to it (though that perhaps isn't saying much). But, back then, it was the first opportunity people had had to watch new Trek episodes on television since TOS. By the time DS9 aired, people were used to a much more polished product, and many of the TNG characters had already become revered by fans (in a way that they weren't necessarily, when TNG first aired).