Why was the last episode of DS9 so incredibly awful?

[gazomg]

same here, all this pedantry over re used scenes is hardly an issue to most people except the complete nerd

[Ian Keldon]

JustKate wrote:

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I'm not sure I'd go that far - "All Good Things" is probably my favorite. But DS9's was fantastic as well.

I like TNG, don't get me wrong, but on it's best day it was only as good as a moderately good ep of DS9.

DS9 did far more, and far more interesting things with it's characters than TNG was ever allowed to do (thank the Great Bird for Berman's contempt of DS9 in this case).

The finale of DS9 therefore FELT like a finale. The crew was breaking up, going on to the next chapter in their lives. Things would never be the same again.

AGT felt like just another ep (2-part ep but ep nonetheless). The status quo prevailed, and we were left with the impression that their journey together was not over yet, that we could come back and pick up right from there and nothing would have changed. Which indeed it was the case with 4 feature films yet to come.

Arguably, TNG's true "finale" was Nemesis. Some characters moved on, one (Data) died, new characters were coming in (Madden), and the status quo came to an end.

[gazomg]

totally agree with you ian

[JustKate]

Totally disagree with you, Ian and Gazomg, but that's OK. I love both shows, so perhaps I'm biased, but I honestly thought AGT was the almost perfect ending. But then, so was WYLB. I really don't feel a need to quantify which one (show or finale) was better. They were great, and I'm happy to leave it at that.

P.S. I also never noticed the reused battle scenes. To be honest, very few battle scenes stay in my mind longer than, oh, 27 seconds or so.

[gazomg]

27 seconds ?

thats longer than the memory of a goldfish....or so we are told .
How exactly they work that out I am not sure

[JustKate]

That was just an estimate - 28, 31, 27 seconds...something like that. As to how they test goldfishes' memory, I imagine quizzes using tiny little waterproof mazes and the like.

[Sykonee]

Thing with the re-used battle footage in WYLB is it nicked one of the most iconic shots from Sacrifice Of Angels, so it stood out far more than any typical re-used footage. Though it's funny how they re-used the battle footage from Yesterday's Enterprise in Redemption, and no one really complains about that. Shouldn't there be a bigger budget available for Season Finales?

Still, it sure is odd seeing the same 'Garak fleeing an explosion' shot from Dogs Of War in with all the other exploding shots during WYLB's space battle.

[MacLeod]

Remember that a large portion of the budget for any episode is taken upby things like gust stars and in WYLB we had guest characters :-

Damar
Weyoun
Dukat
Female Founder
Garak
Kai Winn
Admiral Ross
Chancellor Martok
Vic
Cassiday Yates

etc..

TV reuses footage all of the time as a cost saving measure so that money can be spend elsewhere.

[Farrens]

MrBorg wrote:

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I assume you are referring to the "Satan vs. Jesus" thing between sisko and dukat, and I agree.

That whole arc was horrid. Dukat was a favored villain/anti-hero of mine before season 7. I tend to just delete out the whole thing when i think of the end.

Otherwise I felt it wrapped up things nicely, giving us a general feeling where each of the characters we had grown to know over the years was headed.

As far as my favorite ending? All Good Things gets my vote, with DS9 coming second. 3/4 is hard for me neither Voyager nor Ent's ending were particularly good.

[ElimGarak]

To be more specific:

I thought Dukat's character became completely absurd. The entire scene with him and Kai Winn chanting in the fire caves would have fit better in "Ernest Scared Stupid" than in any semi-serious scifi series.

also, and this bothered me the most, the black and white flashbacks for the main characters felt like really bad tv drama kitsch. I half expected to hear Dawson's Creek theme music playing in the background.

[JustKate]

^ We're just going to have to agree to disagree. Dukat is indeed a fabulous character, but the way I saw it at the time (I haven't seen the episode in years, but I recently received season 7 as a present, yay!), Dukat had to do something dramatic, either dramatically good or dramatically evil - he is just not a middle-of-the-road kind of guy. And he chose evil. Which was, for him, a perfectly legitimate choice. Maybe it will strike me differently when I rewatch it.

[Gary7]

OP joins and just two days later posts a highly contentious stab at DS9 as their first order of business?

[JustKate]

Maybe, Gary, it's been eating at him for, like, years?

[Shatnertage]

I'm not crazy about DS9's finale. There were a lot of problems with it (some good things, too), but I think the main issue was that the writers were too concerned with wrapping up the plot(s) and not focused enough on the story. Sisko at the beginning is charged with getting Bajor into the Federation and being there for his son. So in the last episode he seemingly voluntarily leaves Starfleet, Bajor, and his son to live with the Prophets. And poor Jake, abandoned by his father...it just didn't seem right.

AGT, on the other hand, had a pretty thin plot, but did a great job of thematically wrapping up the TNG story.

As far as overall quality, I'd put TNG, DS9, and VOY all on the same level, each excelling in some areas, with ENT slightly behind them.

[Dukhat]

Jono wrote:

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I'd argue against calling it a "cheap move". Just because it's the last episode doesn't mean they have an bottomless money pit to call on.

I'm not saying they had to make lots of new footage; just don't reuse footage from an episode whose battle was still fresh in my mind. I'd rather not see any footage at all than reused footage, but that's just me.

gazomg wrote:

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same here, all this pedantry over re used scenes is hardly an issue to most people except the complete nerd

Thank you for calling me a complete nerd. I love you too.

ElimGarak wrote:

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To be more specific:

I thought Dukat's character became completely absurd. The entire scene with him and Kai Winn chanting in the fire caves would have fit better in "Ernest Scared Stupid" than in any semi-serious scifi series.

also, and this bothered me the most, the black and white flashbacks for the main characters felt like really bad tv drama kitsch. I half expected to hear Dawson's Creek theme music playing in the background.

So you condemned the entire two-hour series finale as a contrived pile of garbage because of those two factors?