The Benny Russell ending of DS9

Ira Behr has mentioned his original intent for having DS9 end with Benny Russell walking out of the Paramount lot. It would have been interesting, but the fans would have hated it. Star Trek is a dream though, so maybe some might have liked it...

https://trekmovie.com/2018/08/21/ir...deep-space-nine-to-end-more-ds9-at-stlv-2018/

 

Isn't that the reason why people hated These are the Voyages with a strong passion?

I'm glad Berman shot this idea down. Interesting he followed through with the idea about 6 years later.

 

Aw man! Just like that soap opera where the dude wakes up nekkid in the shower and realizes it's a dream. What was his name, Patrick Ewing? Bobby Duffy? I never watched "Dallas", only heard the story... come to think of it, basketball helps me achieve 40 Z's without the need of medication too...

Or Roseanne when she revealed she wrote it all in her writing room in the basement.

In seriousness, I dunno. It would have been a bigger shock to audiences than Sisko's ascension to the Prophets...

The positives involving the "it's all a dream" are the following:
* TNG-Trek remains the goody-goody pure, unfettered society that DS9 questioned (while generally being conscious of TNG's themes during the creation of a clever but underlying layer nobody anticipated in TNG's worldbuilding)
* it's clever, seeding the idea in a mid-era run and saying nothing about it until the very, very end
* Bashir uncharacteristically being a puppy around Data now has a plausible explanation (early chapter by a new writer in town)
* it adds gravitas to even more characters, and - yep - the first one I will mention is Quark from "Move Along Home". Which is great in its own right in terms of Quark's development but even more so as an added layer and complexity, as written by Benny Russell. Also as an early entry to show Benny's underlying raw talent for character development
* even makes "Profit and Lace" easier to stomach - trust anyone who's seen it, that's not easy to accomplish

But the negatives:
* too meta and self-aware. Becomes a unintentional parody of itself
* deconstructs so much put into the Trek universe as a result
* makes it all tons of hours worth of worldbuilding now just a bit of throwaway
* only long-time fans that remember would appreciate the twist. Casuals will go "Huh?" and/or say "That was stupid"

Yeah, I've got ambivalence for it. In ways it's clever but in ways it's too self-destructive for the show and DS9 took what was best from TOS and TNG then added a serialized format. It made some impressive innovations.

But DS9 worked to create its own core audience to tell its own sagas. It didn't run around like a drunken Saint Bernard dog humping the leg of any casual stranger flipping the channel, now did it. DS9 was more substantial and required more from the audience. Which isn't to sound derogatory toward TNG, the two are very different shows with different goals. Both are entertaining, both are valid, both have a place. Both have some depth. But neither show could really do the other's format with any amount of success. Even if some TNG and TOS episodes were retooled, there's still enough DS9 conflict involved to make the bulk of those episodes original. Give me "Starship Down" over "Disaster" any day of the year, for example.

 

A St Elsewhere fan?

 

I think later on the show-runners pulled a similar "it's all a dream" finale for Enterprise's "These Are the Voyages."

And IMHO Enterprise never recovers from it (Fans began to wonder how much of Archer and his crew's adventure really happened and how much of it only existed in Riker's imagination??)

 

Imagination? It was a holodeck program, and not a accurate one if you consider the novel canon.

 

While the "Archer program" Riker watched was supposedly historical, given how many Trek characters have also used the holodeck to create programs to fulfill their own fantasy (e.g., Barclay, LaForge, Picard's Dixon Hill adventures), we'll never really know, won't we

 

I thought he was just reliving a historical event. I don’t think he altered it to suit his needs.

 

That ending would have sent J. Michael Straczynski into a tizzy.

 

I'm glad they didn't do that. Escapism has always been a big part of the appeal of Star Trek, and calling attention to the fact that it's written by a normal human in the real world would harm that.

 

From Far Beyond the Stars:

ROSSOFF Hold on. Making it a dream guts the story.
PABST: Shut up, Herb.
EATON: I think it makes it more poignant.
Rossoff: What about the other Sisko stories? You can't make them all dreams.

 

OTOH, "You are the dreamer and the dream." There is supposed to be reciprocity between imagining a better future and realizing that future.

 

Coincidentally, there is another discussion about TATV going on in the ENT forum right now.

I think it would have been interesting to see the Benny Russel scene, but with bright washed-out light and that incessant "heartbeat" audio effect, to make it apparent that it's part of whatever Sisko is experiencing in his existence with the prophets.

Kor

 

This would have been memorable. Russell was the best thing the show ever came up with.

 

If ds9 was a story, then was all of star trek part of his story?

 

I read that story sometime over this past weekend. One rare example of me siding with Rick Berman on the creative direction of DS9. Ira Behr's proposed ending would have been absolutely terrible and would have killed the re-watchability of the series.

 

It was pretentious bollocks and would have sucked.

The fan reaction would have been amazing, though.

 

Not exactly. The episode features Riker reliving events a decade on from the rest of the ENT series in a holodeck program about the last mission of the NX-01; it doesn't present the entire show as such, just attempts to legitimise it in the context of the wider canon by showing how Archer and crew are remembered by our TNG favourites in the 24th Century.

 

Skip the St. Elsewhere ending and go with the Newhart ending:
Hawk (Avery Brooks) wakes up in bed next to Spenser (Robert Urich), and explains this crazy dream that he had about living on a space station.
Make it weirder by then immediately having Dan Tanna (Robert Urich) wake up next to Bea Travis (Phyllis Davis) and explain that he was in bed with a bald guy telling him about living on a space station.

 

Please do this with DISCO. It was all a dream.