Definitely, and it's kind of my point.
What's Special About DS9?
- Thread starter Spot's Meow
- Start date
Definitely, and it's kind of my point.
I can believe that. I've seen him get bruises, after all. What sadist creates a holographic lounge lizard that can get wounds? Perhaps Felix is a Hirogen.
If only that were true, then the EMH would've simply been a recurring character with all the personality of a light bulb.Or Worf breaking holosuite furniture, which seems kinda pointless... It's just a PROJECTION!!! I mean it's like they forgot about that in the episode.
As for Worf, it was the only place he could let loose and release how he was feeling without injuring others or damaging property. Bashir says in the episode that it's startling as Klingons have shorter mourning periods, giving how much more of accepting of death they are, so his actions have those close to him worried.
Quark has as many holosuites as the plot requires, whatever size the plot requires. Vic's looked to use just one.
He wouldn't be on permanently until later in the season, after Nog is recovering from losing his leg at AR-558.
The EMH couldn't be hurt physically, he couldn't even feel pain unless he or someone programmed him specifically for it.
I know he got beat up once and expressed pain for the occasion. As for his sentience, it depends on whether you buy the premise of the series. I mean it's like people who watch zombie movies (I don't) but I would imagine that they don't really believe in zombies, just as I can buy the fact that Vic is sentient in the fictional world of ST without believing that in real life a program could actually become sentient.
What isn't special about DS9?
I'm not saying other Treks are bad, cause any person could argue that TNG and TOS could be better, I would say objectively the same argument cannot be made for VOY and ENT but hey, if it's what floats your boat, why not.
Now, the static position of DS9 made it unique and still to this day, unique in the Star Trek franchise because it allowed for large, arching storylines and character development that was not really possible in the previous shows structure, as a side note I would argue VOY missed a massive opportunity to bridge the gap between TNG and DS9 and could have been a bit of both and it never really hit that mark though I actually thought things like 7's character development was handled ok for the most part.
That isn't to say those things didn't exist in the other series, but not nearly to the same extent and that was also just a general structural choice, things like Picards experience with the Borg carried over into a lot of other episodes as a small example, Datas journey to become more human, but generally it was set that each episode was it's own contained story, that was also the case with quite a number of DS9 Episodes but it was largely always in the back drop of the Dominion/wormhole and other plots that were always happening in the background.
It did divide a lot of trekkies that felt that the less than ideal version of the Federation that was shown at times was against Gene Roddenberrys vision, but I think Dr. Bashir and Captain Sisko sum up this nicely with a couple of quotes.
The Federation was on the edge of annihilation, Weyoun himself talked about exterminating the entire population of Earth, that was the level of the Dominions resolve and we see the Dominion attempt exactly that against the Cardassians at the end of the war... Could you, or would you attempt to argue that any action taken by the Federation could have been unjustified given those circumstances to defeat the Dominion, yes in the Pale Moonlights decision to bring the Romulans into the war by falsifying and murdering, and Section 31's decision to use biological warfare against the founders are arguably very extreme and could be argued to be very much against Genes vision and an affront to what Trek was... But given what they were facing and what the Dominion was morally capable of, it's hard to argue it may not have been justified and any society, no matter how moral high ground it may want to be, most likely cannot survive such an existential threat with all of its moral high ground in tact.
So now that I've rambled on for ages, what makes DS9 special?
The fact it tackles all the stuff I've just talked about.
It's story.
It's characters.
It's unflinching resolve to ask tough questions and to create striking allegories, whether we're talking about Pale Moonlight, Duet or Far Beyond The Stars as just a couple of examples, these episodes were some of the finest TV ever put on the small screen in my humble opinion.
Did other Treks have these elements?
I'm not saying they didn't... But it is my humble opinion, that DS9 did them better, it's my favorite Trek, I think it's the best Trek and if you don't think so, there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm not saying other Treks are bad, cause any person could argue that TNG and TOS could be better, I would say objectively the same argument cannot be made for VOY and ENT but hey, if it's what floats your boat, why not.
Now, the static position of DS9 made it unique and still to this day, unique in the Star Trek franchise because it allowed for large, arching storylines and character development that was not really possible in the previous shows structure, as a side note I would argue VOY missed a massive opportunity to bridge the gap between TNG and DS9 and could have been a bit of both and it never really hit that mark though I actually thought things like 7's character development was handled ok for the most part.
That isn't to say those things didn't exist in the other series, but not nearly to the same extent and that was also just a general structural choice, things like Picards experience with the Borg carried over into a lot of other episodes as a small example, Datas journey to become more human, but generally it was set that each episode was it's own contained story, that was also the case with quite a number of DS9 Episodes but it was largely always in the back drop of the Dominion/wormhole and other plots that were always happening in the background.
It did divide a lot of trekkies that felt that the less than ideal version of the Federation that was shown at times was against Gene Roddenberrys vision, but I think Dr. Bashir and Captain Sisko sum up this nicely with a couple of quotes.
The Federation was on the edge of annihilation, Weyoun himself talked about exterminating the entire population of Earth, that was the level of the Dominions resolve and we see the Dominion attempt exactly that against the Cardassians at the end of the war... Could you, or would you attempt to argue that any action taken by the Federation could have been unjustified given those circumstances to defeat the Dominion, yes in the Pale Moonlights decision to bring the Romulans into the war by falsifying and murdering, and Section 31's decision to use biological warfare against the founders are arguably very extreme and could be argued to be very much against Genes vision and an affront to what Trek was... But given what they were facing and what the Dominion was morally capable of, it's hard to argue it may not have been justified and any society, no matter how moral high ground it may want to be, most likely cannot survive such an existential threat with all of its moral high ground in tact.
So now that I've rambled on for ages, what makes DS9 special?
The fact it tackles all the stuff I've just talked about.
It's story.
It's characters.
It's unflinching resolve to ask tough questions and to create striking allegories, whether we're talking about Pale Moonlight, Duet or Far Beyond The Stars as just a couple of examples, these episodes were some of the finest TV ever put on the small screen in my humble opinion.
Did other Treks have these elements?
I'm not saying they didn't... But it is my humble opinion, that DS9 did them better, it's my favorite Trek, I think it's the best Trek and if you don't think so, there's nothing wrong with that.
I think it's a bit on the nose.
The greatness of DS9 is in its theme: Oppression. From Jennifer's death at the hands of the Borg, the Cardassians Occupation that turns Kira soldier, not artist, to the Founders that create order and control because they were feared and mistrusted by solids, to creating solids to do their bidding that have no other purpose, to the Klingon invasion of Cardassia that oppressed the Cardassians into the Dominion. The cold war that burns hot, on Sisko's decision, as the Dominion wins in peace, and the resistance fighters slaughtered by the Dominion as they engage in genocide when Cardassians attempt to join the other side. Genocide. The same thing Section 31 does to the Founders to eliminate a threat.
That's politics. Each character faces it at some point. Bashir and genetic manipulation. Jadzia and Lenara. Jadzia and Joran. Kira throughout the run. Odo and the Great link. Ben and Jennifer. O'Brien and his criminal trials. Worf and honor. Garak and exile. Rom and Quark. Iska and fe-males. Nog and Starfleet.
All of them taste oppression. And the message is in Robert Kennedy's words after MLK is assassinated:
"This much is clear--violence breeds violence. Repression breeds retaliation. And only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness, from our souls."
They never talk of it, directly. And it makes it that much greater. To make the audience aware of it, in dialogue, would make it predictable, unnatural, like sheet music that tells you how to feel. But, there it is. Oppression.
Tosk and the Jem'Hadar learn to love it.
Benny is broken by it.
Changelings and 31 try to be safe from it.
Worf is bitter.
Sisko heals.
Kira is shaped by it.
Odo lusts to end it.
But, they all face it.
That's politics. Each character faces it at some point. Bashir and genetic manipulation. Jadzia and Lenara. Jadzia and Joran. Kira throughout the run. Odo and the Great link. Ben and Jennifer. O'Brien and his criminal trials. Worf and honor. Garak and exile. Rom and Quark. Iska and fe-males. Nog and Starfleet.
All of them taste oppression. And the message is in Robert Kennedy's words after MLK is assassinated:
"This much is clear--violence breeds violence. Repression breeds retaliation. And only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness, from our souls."
They never talk of it, directly. And it makes it that much greater. To make the audience aware of it, in dialogue, would make it predictable, unnatural, like sheet music that tells you how to feel. But, there it is. Oppression.
Tosk and the Jem'Hadar learn to love it.
Benny is broken by it.
Changelings and 31 try to be safe from it.
Worf is bitter.
Sisko heals.
Kira is shaped by it.
Odo lusts to end it.
But, they all face it.
Also proving no matter how high the standing of living and how civilised a society/culture becomes, people will always be people. Not even logical Vulcan Sarek made father of the yearProving that even when we've conquered war, poverty, and prejudice, families still drive people nuts.
I find that silly about Star trek, the assumption that as a human you will automatically follow into your parents footsteps because its Starfleet, smacks of small universe syndrome and pretty unrealistic concept. Starfleet must be the only employers in the Federation.
I never thought it was that common. I mean sure we had Demora Sulu and Will Decker, but we also had David Kirk. Picard's brother hated the thought of leaving earth. Jake said no to starfleet and Nog (whose family hated the idea) said yes. Paris was obviously pushed into it by an overbearing father, he didn't really want to be there.
It's not strange that some families might have a 'legacy' of following in the Starfleet tradition - Wesley Crusher and James Kirk, for instance, had very good reason to look up to and want to be like their fathers - and there are tons of other characters who don't seem to have that sort of legacy at all.
Watching TNG it is assumed Wesley will join the SFA, there are no scripted conversations with his mother or him stating 'I want to join Starfleet', he is a boy genius, why not join the Vulcan version of MIT or whatever passes for the top Federation university in the 24th century?
Kirk, Crusher, Janeway, La Forge, Sulu, Decker, Paris all Starfleet families
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I always got the impression those conversations already happened with Wesley before the show started. He was always super precocious. And six families (or even a dozen) isn't really a lot compared to the number of characters that exist, especially since we also saw that even those families aren't necessarily totally committed (David Kirk had no interest, Tom Paris had to be pushed into it).
What's funny is that in spite of that and of being demoted once for a serious offense,(he attempted an act of terrorism against an alien culture, well-meaning or not that remains an act of terrorism), he still got promoted back to lieutenant before Harry Kim. Say what you want but something about Kim rubbed Janeway the wrong way.
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