"10 Reasons Deep Space Nine Was Cruelly Misjudged"

[flemm]

BillJ wrote:

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Much of it would've been the same as they would've simply tweaked the Ro backstory. Ro would've been a long time resistance member who finally ran away to Starfleet.

They tweaked much of the Trill backstory from TNG to make the Curzon/Jadzia Dax story possible.

That's not comparable at all, as Jadzia was not a crossover character. Miles is a closer comparison (providing familiarity/established affection in the new setting).

I have never heard anything about tweaking Ro's backstory, but rather: Ro was going to be the first officer, when Forbes turned it down, they created Kira to replace Ro, then cast Visitor as Kira.

DS9's overall story was not planned out in advance past the pilot, but was something the writers pulled together and developed over time. Since Kira inspired a large chunk of what they did, it is logical to assume that it would have been very different.

[Lance]

On some level I agree with many of the sentiments expressed in this thread -- that DS9 was "ahead of its time"; that audiences in the mid-90s probably reacted against it worse than audiences today probably would -- but it can't be denied that, for whatever reason, DS9 was less popular than TNG. I think this is just the luck of the draw though. The trouble with spin-offs is that risk of decreasing returns. Its possible that any follow-up to the massive success of TNG would have been given a (relatively) lukewarm reception.

Personally, I appreciated DS9 at the time -- heck, I appreciated VOYAGER at the time too -- but I can also see why there were some quarters with who DS9 just didn't "take".

[The Mirrorball Man]

Actually I think that in many ways, Deep Space 9 was comparable to Knots Landing. Both of them were spinoff shows which were never as popular as the original but pushed the envelope an little more, and which were, although not groundbreaking, slightly ahead of their time.

[MacLeod]

Lance wrote:

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On some level I agree with many of the sentiments expressed in this thread -- that DS9 was "ahead of its time"; that audiences in the mid-90s probably reacted against it worse than audiences today probably would -- but it can't be denied that, for whatever reason, DS9 was less popular than TNG. I think this is just the luck of the draw though. The trouble with spin-offs is that risk of decreasing returns. Its possible that any follow-up to the massive success of TNG would have been given a (relatively) lukewarm reception.

Personally, I appreciated DS9 at the time -- heck, I appreciated VOYAGER at the time too -- but I can also see why there were some quarters with who DS9 just didn't "take".

Well as you say there is the rule of dimminishing returns. Which would explain VOY and ENT a bit, but there is more to it than that. For some who where new to the franchise might find those shows interesting, but for other longer term followers of the franchise they might have found those shows dull and repatitive of what the previous shows has done before. TNG's biggest advantage when it came out was it was one of the few Sci-Fi genre shows on at that time. It's success demonstrated that Sci-Fi could work on TV and everyone elsershed to get Sci-Fi shows out so by the time DSN came out there was far more competition for the same audiance group. If two networks schedule two Sci-Fi shows opposite each other one of them is going to lose out. Rememer this is the days before DVR's, and we where still on VHS, so we as an audiance might not miss it, but the ratings wouldn't show it.

Today, I can DVR weeks worth of episodes to hit in a marathon session. With today's 24/7 lifestyle, it's not always easy to sit down when something first airs on TV. TV has changed a lot over the decades, and audiance figures have been in general decline for years. Is this because of comptition or quality or a combination of both?

[Nacluv]

I found the article to be quite frivolous and trivial. The author really never goes beyond the obvious, never tangents on something beyond the concrete, limpid discordances.

And WTF?:

Unlike Spock or Data, Odo was quite content to not be human. In the early episodes, he went out of his way to deride human values whenever possible. Sometimes, he had a point.

EDIT: And I've always found this to be the most exaggerated mantra among DS9 fans, not to mention that it's not nearly as veracious as many seem to want to believe. Though I do find the really extreme ones to be amusing. I'm of course referring to those who alleges that the earlier shows literally never delineated and illuminated any character flaws.

They could be stubborn, petty, even spiteful. They made mistakes. Most importantly, they were a complete 180 from the utopian ideals presented in The Next Generation.