That is very good!
Why wasn't Sisko promoted at the start of Season 3?
- Thread starter suarezguy
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That is very good!
It's what made DS9 great and VOY merely good in a nutshell.
I don't entirely agree that Voyager went nowhere.
I do think Voyager squanders its dynamic cast in a way that DS9 does not.
As with the topic in hand, even ancillary characters in DS9 actually go on incredible personal journeys in a way that principal characters on Voyager... don't.
To invoke one of your personal demons... Sisko get's promoted to Captain, wins a war and finally ascends to Godhood, while Kim spent seven years in the same seat, doing the same thing... as an Ensign.
I think VOY was the Berman show with the most potential and sadly, also the Berman show that fell furthest from it.
A better parallel is Nog. He starts out as a juvenile delinquent, waiting tables in Quark's and periodically releasing Garanian bolites on the Promenade. He ends up a seasoned and battle-hardened Starfleet lieutenant. The Nog of "Emissary" and that of "What you Leave Behind" were both Ferengi, but otherwise nearly unrecognizable from each other. Can you imagine Harry going on a character journey like that? Can you imagine who he would have been afterward?
It really says something that the son of a brother of a crook, a character who starts out as not very much at all, somehow managed to undergo a personal hero's journey, whilst Kim got squat. But that's Voyager. The Janeway/Seven/EMH show, at least primarily.
And look at Bashir, too. While the revelation that he was genetically modified was not universally popular with the fans, it at least showed how the writers of DS9 worked: a main character was falling by the wayside, so the writers worked to make him interesting and take him somewhere.
The writers of Voyager, to their credit, recognized that Harry's character was foundering and set a plan into motion to salvage him; they planned to have him be an alien. This was vetoed by interference from above, resulting in one of Trek's most stagnant characters.
Indeed. Quark, as the comic relief, was arguably the most static character there. But even he showed a certain amount of nuance.
My statement obviously lacked nuance. All characters change as writers fine tune characters and fill out their details. But that doesn't necessarily show meaningful development.
Voyager's characters changed, but not in a way that reflected or enriched the show. Steve Shives jokes that Harry switching from clarinet to sax isn't a big deal. In other areas, characters' experiences don't lead to meaningful evolution because they are constantly being reset. Indeed, Seven of Nine still has problems with committed relationships and intimacy during Picard, and any meaningful intimacy occurs offscreen.
Tom Paris probably provides the best example. He starts out as a principled, but self-absorbed young man and ends largely the same. He does stop chasing tail and marries, but his sexual drive is merely replaced with hobbies. The one itime he could have evolved, when he hijacked the Delta Flyer at the water planet, the subsequent episodes were used to reset him.
Nog is a great contrast, but not bcause he matures as he joins Starfleet. Nog's life choices cause constant tensions with his sense of self and his cultural identity, and he must frequently adjust how his image of himself in order to cope. Nog didn't evolve because he joined Starfleet. He evolved because he choices led to new challenges and tensions, and he committed to growing through those challenges. What he learns from Starfleet enriches being a Ferengi and vice-versa.
I think it could very well be that Starfleet was still concerned with Sisko's "commitment" to the role. We also know that Starfleet generally disapproved of some of the way he chose to run things, not the least of which was his continued usage of Odo as station Security Chief over other potential Starfleet personnel.
and so they sent him Eddington... possibly the biggest traitor in Starfleet history.
Actually, the best opportunity was during the arc which culminated in "Investigations", which promptly spoiled all the potential development Tom had done with a whole "never mind, he was just trying to draw out the spy" resolution.
If Harry switches from clarinet to sax, fine.
If this is the ONLY change Harry exhibits, going from a 22-year-old wet behind the years Starfleet newbie to a 29-year-old Starfleet veteran who's endured some harsh stuff (dying several times, hardcore alien prison, being eaten alive, etc)... that's a problem, isn't it?
Oh, this old complaint. It's always the same and it's always either vague or doesn't make any sense in the end. I have always thought DS9 had the most potential and in the end, had failed to meet that potential due to the writing for the last two seasons.
And I wonder why Sisko and Burnham are the only two leads in a live-action series that do not start out as captains and only achieve that rank around the end of the third season of their respective shows.
I can't get an answer about Sisko, though people have theorized that basically, DS9 was a backwater assignment that didn't need a captain to run it. Once it was known to be a place of great strategic importance, Sisko was given the appropriate rank.
Interestingly, unlike our wet navy, all Starfleet ships seem to have captains in charge, even those with crews in the dozens instead of hundreds. Sisko has about 300 Starfleet officers under him; some ship captains have far fewer. A more sensible solution would have been for the smaller ships to have commanders or even lieutenant commanders in charge.
Interestingly, unlike our wet navy, all Starfleet ships seem to have captains in charge, even those with crews in the dozens instead of hundreds. Sisko has about 300 Starfleet officers under him; some ship captains have far fewer. A more sensible solution would have been for the smaller ships to have commanders or even lieutenant commanders in charge.
If it needs spelling out, DS9 was the show in which the static location allowed a deeper look at how people of diverse backgrounds interacted while the CO dealt with his traumas and raised his son alone. Voyager was the show about a ship thrown into survival mode and forced to cooperate with people in opposition to them. Elements of DS9's concept were modified: the war made stories more expansive, but the station remained home. Before the first season ended, the studio--Kerry McCluggage--, along with Berman, shut down the stories of interpersonal conflict and deprivation BY DIRECTIVE. The situation was so absurd that one of Voyager's late series writers, Ronald Moore, developed a series to explore the what Voyager failed to do: Battlestar Galactica.
This is great.
I've often been of the opinion that in the earliest stages of development of DS9 "Commander" was only supposed to be Sisko's title rather than rank, but some sort of miscommunication along the way resulted in it becoming his rank in the final product. Much like how in navies the CO of a ship is addressed as "Captain" regardless of their actual rank, in the real world whoever is in charge of a space station as addressed as "Commander" regardless of whatever rank or title they hold. For example, while in charge of the ISS Chris Hadfield was addressed as "Commander Hadfield" despite the fact his actual rank in the Canadian military is (or was at the time) Colonel.
I would say some cast members needed growth, and thus should have been presented with more acting challenges (which they likely would have appreciated), but even Russ and McNeil have shown great sense of the craft of acting over the years. (Indeed, everyone should check out Russ' appearance on Poker Face.)
