Did you enjoy DS9 the first time you watched?

Babel is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. On first viewing it seems like another throwaway early-series virus story. Essentially it is, but I think the virus itself was pretty interesting. It was all gibberish when infected, but the actors had some great moments in conveying their characters' emotions.

I loved Quark in this episode. Seeing him in Ops, fancying his chances to save the day, was great fun.

 

When I first watched DS9 I didn't like it. I was 7-8 at the time and it didn't hold my interest the time. It was also on a weird time and I wasn't allowed to say up for it. I didn't get back to DS9 till the 5th season and after that I continued to watch all the way through.

It wasn't till DS9 came out on DVD that I really came to love it. I binge watched all of DS9 by season as they came out and I think this is the best way to watch the show, due to its ongoing plots. Wish I would have waited till netflix it would have been a lot cheaper, the DVD were $100+ when they first came out.

 

My experience was closest to this. While I definitely appreciated what Deep Space was doing at the time, local broadcasts were very hard to come by, so I couldn't really 'follow' it as well as I should've. It wasn't until I was able to watch it all in one go on DVD that I fell in love with it.

 

Weirdly, the very first episode I remember seeing was the rather middling "Civil Defense" and even then, I thought, "Cool!" Garak, Dukat, Sisko and Jake, Odo and Quark, Kira...I was hooked.

There are certainly better episodes and more important episodes in DS9's run. But to this day, I hold a special place in my heart for "Civil Defense."

 

Late to the Party, here, but I liked DS9 from the start. Using the "Transition TNG" strategy certainly helped, and, similar to what has been said before, the Quark presence and the Quark/Odo relationship was what really captured me. I had also been very interested in Sisko, because I only knew Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) from his tenure as Hawk in "Spence for Hire", in which he was just delicious!!!

 

I loved DS9 when it first aired, as I did with Voyager. It was just great to have so much trek on at the time.

 

First run for me, every week, for all seven seasons and enjoyed it all the way through. I hadn't seen any of it since then, but just recently I started a rewatch, now at season 2, episode 24. It's every bit as good as I remember, maybe better.

I've been surprised that so many episodes that I had vivid memories of were in the first two seasons.

 

I remember not even giving it a chance. I remember watching the opening intro, then they go to the bridge and started talking about base operations and I was like, they're not going to fly anywhere? Nope.

Glad I ended up watching it eventually.

 

A tough question. I did not watch other Star Trek before. I just glanced at the screen and recognized that a ST series was on but I did not pay much attention. One night I saw a Cardassian (it was the “Maquis”) and got really intrigued, “Wow, a big, ugly lizard up to some mischief and pissing off the goodies. This sounds funny.” So I checked on the net what the hell this was and then started watching. I have always liked Babylon 5 so when I realized that it takes place on a space station I quickly warmed up to it. The aliens and Quark’s bar simply fascinated me.

Oddly, I quite like ENT, too, though most fans don’t.

 

I didn't care for the show much at first. I felt short changed with what little of the battle of Wolf 359 we actually saw after all the hype, I didn't care for the Bajorans and the whole station design was unappealing.

After watching it again later I got a deeper appreciation of the series. Some episodes I still roll the eyes at, but others have grown on me with time.

 

To be fair, at the time what we saw of Wolf 359 was up there with the best space combat we'd seen in TNG to date.

 

I did think I was mislead with the 359 intro. The pace was far slower as the episode, still less the first few seasons progressed. However, it just so happened I did like the slow pace as well.

Of course we did get our big set piece battles with the later seasons. The first few seasons are almost like a different series compared to the latter ones.

I did think there was a string of turgid, overly sentimental, formulaic episodes roughly in the middle of the run. But generally DS9 is strong stuff with a potent cast.

 

I loved how DS9 was so very different from The Next Generation, to start with, at least, because it was like Rick Berman wasn't stepping on Gene Roddenberry's shoulders. Yes, it's under the STAR TREK brand, but it's also got Rick's stamp all over it, too. I admire Mr. Berman and all that he's done for the franchise. But when he, or someone there, decided to bring in Worf, and get away from the starbase thing, so much, by attaching the Defiant, I felt he'd stumbled. O'Brien and his beautiful wife were more than enough of a tie-in. And what more of a send off could a STAR TREK series want or need than having Sir Patrick Stewart guest star, or make a cameo.

AND the show was focusing largely on a TNG-introduced race, of course, the Bajorans. So ... right out of the box, here, TNG's shoring up this show in ways that were anything but subtle. And it didn't take too long for it to find its legs, before DS9's suckling on TNG's teat, again, as I've said. I was just so disappointed, when the Klingons started to dominate. Then, towards the end, it got so soap-operaish in such a laughable way with Dukat and Wynn and all that ... and losing Terry was such a misstep, too. I don't know what happened, why DS9 started losing confidence in itself. Maybe just the inescapable conclusion that TNG is an incredible source of inspiration, creatively. It's the crème de la crème.

 

I'm rewatching it again, have to say my opinion as when I was 10 when it was airing in the mid 90s hasn't changed in relation to the first season, it's incredibly dull. Season 2 picks up a bit and season 3 is pretty good but there are some terribly dull episodes, particularly the trill centric episodes. I remember watching the latter seasons a few years back and they were fairly good, at least DS9 was an evolution on the trek brand so I can give it kudos for that. I think where it falls short is that it belongs to a different era of TV, it's almost like comparing a nineteenth-century novel (usually extremely dull with the exception of The Monk) to edgy twentieth/twenty first century fiction. It's far more stately and reserved by comparison and there's less drama, or the drama isn't as intense (I'm thinking when compared to BSG or Game of Thrones).

 

The Trill-centric episodes? Is there more than 1-2 of those per season, really?

 

I couldn't get into DS9 when it was on t.v. It didn't appeal to me at the time. It wasn't until I bought the Fan Collective sets watching the DS9 episodes in them that I began to enjoy DS9. After seeing The Way of The Warrior, Little Green Men, and In The Pale Moonlight I wanted to see the whole series so I bought it. IMO, seasons 1 through 3 are a bit slow, some good episodes in them but it took awhile for DS9 to find itself.

 

Not only that, the Bajoran ones, it's like yeah, I don't really care about your prophets/religion etc I almost prefer the Cardassians, at least they were less in your face or something. The trill one where the actors get to exercise their acting chops generated the following reaction: "oh no, no, I can see where this is going, you're going to show off your acting skills, everyone is going to be different yet the same as they ever were for 40 mins, I've seen this before in Trek with the TOS crew being possessed by alien lifeforms and TNG's masks, please, no!" But it wasn't just that, today there was an episode where some old Klingon dude wants to find some magical horn or whatever and Worf and Jadzia tag along, just generic and boring, dressed up as an adventure yarn with some narrative arc significance, meh. These episodes are terrible, the ones that are good are those which focus on interesting characters like Quark, Nog, Sisko, Garak, Gul Ducat, O' Brien and Bashir etc and lose the shiny, oh so perfect trek elements, for example Bashir and O'Brien playing darts was a great addition. I'm not dissing TNG as that was great also, but I just liked the idea of people in Starfleet, playing darts and even getting drunk! It's like DS9 to some extent presented a slightly more human face to Trek in comparison to say Voyager.