Frakes talks about DS9

[Bad Thoughts]

He had nice stuff to say about DS9 and I'm glad he's not like Marina who always refers to he show the Deep Sleep Nine. She evidently slept through the Dominion stuff. It would be great to see Frakes appear in front of the screen on Discovery as any character. Just so he can say he has been in every Star Trek show to date.

I'll take Frakes' contributions to DS9 (even that Brigadoon ripoff) over Sirtis' contributions to Voyager every day of the week.

 

[HugeLobes]

I'm glad he's not like Marina who always refers to he show the Deep Sleep Nine.

Man, Marina Sirtis can sure be snarky. At least she has a legacy of expertly playing one of Trek's best characters to back her up .

Frakes impresses me as one Trek actor who really gets the show. I also like how he praises shows for taking risks. Seem to remember another comment of his acknowledging early TNG's failings while pointing out how daring it was.

Also: "Voyager always felt like Next Gen lite to me." PREACH, FRAKES! That perfectly sums up how I feel about VOY, although I think Star Trek Lite would be more appropriate.

 

[Prax]

Voyager did a lot of episodes that TNG never would have, or have been able to. If anything, TNG is Star Trek Vanilla. You know it's true.

 

[apepa]

Voyager did a lot of episodes that TNG never would have, or have been able to. If anything, TNG is Star Trek Vanilla. You know it's true.

If TNG is vanilla Star Trek, Voyager is lower quality vanilla Star Trek with Tide Pods sprinkled in to mask the off flavours

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Vanilla never deserved this!

 

[HugeLobes]

Voyager did a lot of episodes that TNG never would have, or have been able to. If anything, TNG is Star Trek Vanilla. You know it's true.

VOY mostly just recycled previous concepts, including plenty from TNG.

 

[TheSeeker]

https://www.trektoday.com/content/2018/04/frakes-favorite-star-trek-series/

It's a nice article and relevant to the forum, but please try to add a little content to your post when you are creating a thread. Thanks.

 

[Prax]

If TNG is vanilla Star Trek, Voyager is lower quality vanilla Star Trek with Tide Pods sprinkled in to mask the off flavours

Voyager is darker, is heavier on action, has imperfect characters, and more drama, and conversely, also more humor. They spend most of their episodes meeting new civilizations, many of which unfriendly.

TNG is more contemplative, starched, and overtly philosophical. The character's flaws are less pronounced, and much of the time not seen at all. They spend most of their episodes answering distress calls, and dealing with disputes.

VOY mostly just recycled previous concepts, including plenty from TNG.

Yeah, no.
All the series recycled a few concepts from what came before, but no show is more guilty of this than any other. Your statement is not only impossible for you to qualify, but is making an unjust assumption of all the writers who worked on the show, by calling them lazy.

 

[HugeLobes]

Well, I think Trek was just played out at the point, which is something that plenty of writers and producers attest to. VOY invested heavily in the Borg, a TNG concept, and I don't think it ever got quite as dark as DS9. I think at that point they were very much filling in the blanks when it came to characters, but they lacked the strong overarching concept of DS9.

Obviously this is all my own opinion, though.

But, come on:

Voyager is darker, is heavier on action, has imperfect characters, and more drama, and conversely, also more humor.

DS9 already did all that better. VOY always felt like a sitcom to me.

 

[Prax]

Maybe it's due for a rewatch.

 

[HugeLobes]

Maybe it's due for a rewatch.

Ha. No latinum in the verse could make me!

I honestly didn't hate VOY as much as it might seem, I just find it very frustrating.

 

[Garth Rockett]

Frakes impresses me as one Trek actor who really gets the show.

I agree. Over the last few months, I've started to think of Frakes as "Mr. Star Trek." Not only was he one of the stars of the most popular of the spinoffs, he has directed episodes of TNG, DS9, VGR and DSC, directed 2 TNG movies, guest-starred on DS9, VGR and ENT, participated in the campaign for the DS9 doc, is a regular on the convention circuit, is a great ambassador for the show, and based on these comments has pretty much the same opinions on the various shows as me. If anyone deserves the title, it's that guy.

 

[kkt]

Voyager did not seem very dark to me. And it was surprising, really, as I'd expect lots of the crew to be terribly depressed at the unlikelihood of seeing home again while they were young enough to enjoy it. It's the one series that could have gone dark for good reason, and it became an action-adventure show instead.

 

[HugeLobes]

Voyager did not seem very dark to me. And it was surprising, really, as I'd expect lots of the crew to be terribly depressed at the unlikelihood of seeing home again while they were young enough to enjoy it. It's the one series that could have gone dark for good reason, and it became an action-adventure show instead.

Exactly. Again, I think this comes back to recycling concepts without really understanding what made them work. So:

TNG/TOS were very episodic. No real overarching plot, though a few recurring ideas. Characters didn’t really develop (this is not necessarily a bad thing).
DS9 was much more of a serial. Characters developed as time went on, and there was a very strong overarching story.

I think VOY tried to do both those things; in so doing, they struck an awkward middle ground. They put together a scenario which really lent itself to ongoing stories and character development, but then they adopted a very episodic approach.

People sometimes say VOY was dark, but it wasn’t. Some VOY episodes were dark, but that’s not the same thing. There’s such potential in that show, but it was just lost in this mad jumble.

 

[apepa]

Voyager did not seem very dark to me. And it was surprising, really, as I'd expect lots of the crew to be terribly depressed at the unlikelihood of seeing home again while they were young enough to enjoy it. It's the one series that could have gone dark for good reason, and it became an action-adventure show instead.

I've always thought of it as having a few episodes that go a bit dark, but when I try I can't actually think of any suitable examples. They didn't treat the material with enough weight for it to matter anyway.

 

[HugeLobes]

In TNG, the Enterprise’s flagship status made its decisions vitally important to the Federation at large. In DS9, war led to countless deaths, and that’s part of what lent the show it’s tone and it’s characters such responsibility.

But if you strand your ship and characters so far from everything they love, they become your only source of narrative weight.

VOY never had the guts to seriously mess with ship or characters, so there was little gravity. If you want your show to feel dark, it’s sensible to ensure actions have serious consequences.

 

[Prax]

Voyager had many, many stories that you simply wouldn't see on TNG, that were every bit as dark, and even darker then the darkiest darkness on DS9.

Would TNG have had episodes like Faces, Resistence, Meld, Deadlock, Tuvix, the Thaw, The Chute, Revulsion, Year of Hell, Hunters, Extreme Measures, or Equinox? What was recycled from TNG? Are you saying that because they're both "Ship shows" that there are stories that could be told on both?

If DS9 was so dark, and so serialized, why then, during the darkliest most serialist season of the show(6) was there 3 Ferengi comedy episodes, an "I hate my new mother-in-law" episode, a "Honey, I shrunk the space shuttle" episode, a mirror universe love story, a holodeck/romance episode an "O'Brien is Donnie Brasco" episode, a "Molly O'Brien time travelled" episode, and another time travel episode about some lady's voice, and an episode about Bashir's genetically modified misfits. A few of these in some ways tie into the war. Many others don't

But that's the great benefit of sci-fi, particularly Star Trek. You have a fantastical setting with interesting characters. You get to explore all these different genres through that setting. Some episodes are comedies, others are thrillers, or horror, or mystery, or drama, or adventure, or love story, et al. Writers have the opportunity to make homages to their favorite classic films, and give a star trek take on them.

 

[HugeLobes]

Would TNG have had episodes like Faces, Resistence, Meld, Deadlock, Tuvix, the Thaw, The Chute, Revulsion, Year of Hell, Hunters, Extreme Measures, or Equinox? What was recycled from TNG? Are you saying that because they're both "Ship shows" that there are stories that could be told on both?

If DS9 was so dark, and so serialized, why then, during the darkliest most serialist season of the show(6) was there 3 Ferengi comedy episodes, an "I hate my new mother-in-law" episode, a "Honey, I shrunk the space shuttle" episode, a mirror universe love story, a holodeck/romance episode an "O'Brien is Donnie Brasco" episode, a "Molly O'Brien time travelled" episode, and another time travel episode about some lady's voice, and an episode about Bashir's genetically modified misfits. A few of these in some ways tie into the war. Many others don't

You're kind of making my point for me... You've gone through and picked out darker VOY episodes, but those episodes are standalones that don't carry much weight. Take The Chute. That's a pretty dark episode. And how does it end? Kim and Paris are better friends than ever and go get their dinner. Even when VOY gets dark, it almost always returns to a lighter tone by the end of the episode or isolates the drama within that one episode. There's no difference in the friendship of Kim or Paris after that massive incident.

For DS9, you've picked out a run of episodes that aren't dark from "the darkliest most serialist season of the show". Well, I think that's the difference. Not every episode is connected to the war, but there's generally a darker tone over the series. More importantly, it matters when bad things happen on DS9.

 

[apepa]

Would TNG have had episodes like Faces, Resistence, Meld, Deadlock, Tuvix, the Thaw, The Chute, Revulsion, Year of Hell, Hunters, Extreme Measures, or Equinox? What was recycled from TNG? Are you saying that because they're both "Ship shows" that there are stories that could be told on both?

If DS9 was so dark, and so serialized, why then, during the darkliest most serialist season of the show(6) was there 3 Ferengi comedy episodes, an "I hate my new mother-in-law" episode, a "Honey, I shrunk the space shuttle" episode, a mirror universe love story, a holodeck/romance episode an "O'Brien is Donnie Brasco" episode, a "Molly O'Brien time travelled" episode, and another time travel episode about some lady's voice, and an episode about Bashir's genetically modified misfits. A few of these in some ways tie into the war. Many others don't

U mad bro?




As mentioned above, the issue was that when Voyager tried to be dark and shocking, the material wasn't treated with enough weight for it to be taken seriously. Even Year of Hell, which was awesome, loses all its impact at the end when it's revealed that it literally never happened.

 

[apepa]

For DS9, you've picked out a run of episodes that aren't dark from "the darkliest most serialist season of the show". Well, I think that's the difference. Not every episode is connected to the war, but there's generally a darker tone over the series. More importantly, it matters when bad things happen on DS9.

In The Pale Moonlight. The events of the episode have enormous consequences, and at the end of the episode Sisko comes to terms with the fact that he did a very bad thing, but he's OK with it. And save for him decking Garak at the end, not a single violent act was shown on screen. That's the difference right there.