Aye - so much so, that it was my policy for many years to not bother watching the first season of any TV show. I had to bend this for Firefly because... well, they were cancelled before they got a second season. But for the most part, I just don't bother until the show finds its feet.
Firefly, Sliders, Dollhouse, Star Trek TOS, Doctor Who (1963) are general exceptions to that rule for me as well. When they find most or all of their feet early on, it's great... until they drop the shoe and that foot fungus smells real bad...
I notice, however, rewatching season one of TNG for
WAMTNG that so much of the lore of that show is set up in the first season that skipping those episodes would have been unwise. I don't find that so much for DS9, though, where the core lore of the show doesn't really develop until quite a bit later. (How much of season one DS9 is called-back that
isn't part of
Emissary...)?
In TNG, they were trying all sorts of things. It's largely season 4 onward when they're going back to the old season to build on ideas for whatever reasons (even if they had nothing else to think of, it happens.) Little did anyone realize how "The Naked Now", done as a Ronnberryism, would be given some impressive and dignified handling for "The Measure of a Man". Usually the makers would pretend the episode never happened, which is too often the case. Kudos for such bravery... and it paid off (to the point TNG would do another three, or at least what felt like three
hundred stories revolving around the same theme of sentient computers (a concept conveniently forgotten in too many subsequent stories too, or else Picard and half of Starfleet would be thrown in the brig for threatening murder by shutting Data down by flicking his off switch...)
Thanks! I'm really looking forward to it, since DS9 is one of my favourite shows of all time. The only thing that even comes close for me is
Boston Legal and classic
Doctor Who. Not that I don't love classic Trek, or TNG, mind, it's just that DS9 eclipses those and so tend not to get mentioned in lists of favourite shows. Having typed that, I now realise how absurd this policy is!
It's all good!
DS9 really hits a home run, in taking the best aspects of TOS and TNG and doing something refreshingly novel with it. I know some fans* were saying in season 4 "Ha! It's not Star Trek without a ship!", but they still really did much without the Defiant. But what they did with the Defiant helped bring in newer viewer and keep them glued to the set as well...
* including me, though I had been watching sporadically before season 4... I was also really young. As they say, "time and tide melts the snowman" and DS9 warmed to my heart for sure. Wait, that doesn't make sense and I'm borrowing a line from Doctor Who too...
