TNG vs DS9 - The Showdown!

[flemm]

RDM and BSG fans really don't know the difference between flawed and morally bankrupt.

Or possibly this sweeping judgement is entirely unwarranted and baseless? Watching a group of well-written morally corrupt characters can be entertaining. It's possible to find that vision of humanity interesting and compelling without necessarily subscribing to it. Not to mention that these characters are living in extenuating circumstances to say the least, which doesn't really tend to bring out the best in people (contrary to what standard heroic fiction would have us believe).

I've only had a chance to watch a few scattered episodes of BSG, but for the most part I have enjoyed them. I highly doubt that this is because of some sort of "cognitive dissonance" on my part

I also have no difficulty imagining why someone would not like the show, and not find these characters entertaining. I hope some psychologist somewhere is studying this tendency (ever so prevelant on the Internet) to transfer dislike of a tv show into contempt for those who do enjoy it. I would love to understand it better

 

[DevilEyes]

I would've signed everything you wrote, if it weren't for the BSG remark. I suspect you've never actually watched BSG or didn't see more than one or two episodes. BSG characters are indeed darker and edgier and more obviously flawed than those on DS9 (or TOS), but none of them, except maybe one or two, were horrible people without any virtues who never tried to make things better or never strived to better themselves, and BSG certainly did not carry a message that the future sucks, that humanity sucks and that one shouldn't bother changing things. (BSG also did not even take place in the future.)Quite the opposite, most of the characters were doing quite fine considering the horrible situation they were in (for which there is nothing comparable in the entire world of Trek), they were fighting and hoping, and since the pilot, the importance hope in all the darkness (Earth, to the Colonial humans, represented hope) was one of the show's most important themes. The question of the bad and the good within humanity was constantly asked throughout the series (Adama's speech about being "worthy of survival"), several characters in the show can be described as idealistic and many as heroic, even though many of them were either deluded, or used questionable means to achieve their ends; and even certain characters who can be described as weak, cowardly and selfish showed a capacity for compassion, love and even heroism

No, I've seen every episode of BSG. It's an vain exercise in nihilism. RDM basically took the Joss Whedon angst-just-for-the-sake-of-angst method, turned it up to 11, and put a bunch of Enya music in there. Minus Whedon's wit and humor of course. How anyone could find any character on that show redeemable after 4 years shows a huge cognitive dissonance on their part. Adama's a brutal dictator. So's Roslin. Apollo's a degenerate tool. And Starbuck's just a strait up degenerate. RDM and BSG fans really don't know the difference between flawed and morally bankrupt. The characters on the show are all villains. They just happen to be very well written villains. People like Adama and Roslin are the very types of people real life heroes struggle against. All the real heroes died in the Cylon attack. Only the scumbags lived.

Not to derail thread, but I'd like to offer this guy a standing ovation--and a beer. Your take on New Galactica is completely right. This misguided notion that that show was about hope is complete bullshit with a capital B. Hope was the point of the original but not this one. This one was about a bad situation getting worse and never recovering. As you said, angst for angst's sake.

Yeah, it's not like they had reasons to be angsty, I mean what was so bad about their lives? So 95% of their race was annihilated, msot of friends and family dead, they had nowhere to go, and they were in overcrammed starships running away from much stronger Cylon fleet intent on killing them. Big deal. Crybabies. They should have done what every decent, non-villainous human being does when faced with genocide and desperation: go to the casino planet. And they didn't do it. How nihilistic.

 

[RandyS]

"This one was about a bad situation getting worse and never recovering."

You know, that sort of thing does happen...

I know. I never claimed that it doesn't. All I'm saying is that it's not the kind of thing I want to see in a show.

 

[Count Zero]

Of course there are, I never denied that there are extremists I just said that not all people who dislike Voyager are raving loonies. Are you willing to admit that?

When I meet one that isn't a "NuBSG OWENNZZZZ YURRR SOULZZZZ" type, which may be next to never.

Well, I dislike Voyager and I wouldn't say that, mainly because I haven't seen NuBSG as I thought it would probably be too dark for me. So, 'next to never' seems to be now.
(To make things worse: I love ENT, too.)

As for the poll, I can't really decide. Both shows are great. DS9 is closer to what I like in TV shows, especially concerning continuity and visuals. On the other hand, TNG is iconic and has its moments. For sentimental reasons, I'm voting TNG on this one.

 

[CaptJamesScott]

DS9 remains the only series in the franchise that presented a realistic universe. It was dramatic, it was dark, it was human. TNG is great, but DS9 is the best show in the franchise in my opinion

 

[Navaros]

No, they like TOS. They'll just have this snobbery about how only TOS and DS9 are "real Trek" and how horrible TNG/VOY/ENT are

TOS and DS9 are the only Trek shows with internal conflict (and hence DS9 is the only modern Trek show to have it), and conflict is the most essential part of any drama. These are facts. Additionally there are the other facts such as the DS9 is the only Trek show with significant character development.

There is nothing wrong with recognizing these facts and appreciating TOS and DS9 as the best Trek shows, and not giving undue credit to the other modern Trek shows as being just as good, because they unquestionably waylaid this basic principle of drama (conflict) for the sake of bowing to 'Gene's vision'.

It is snobbery & annoying to demand that everyone must view all Trek shows as equal or nearly-equal, which seems to be what you are suggesting must be done, when they very clearly are not.

As for those criticizing nuBSG, what does that have to do with the subject of TNG vs. DS9? Internal conflict does not mean a show has to be like nuBSG, as DS9 proves, as TOS proves, and which plenty of other shows also prove.

 

[GalaxyX]

TOS and DS9 are the only Trek shows with internal conflict (and hence DS9 is the only modern Trek show to have it), and conflict is the most essential part of any drama. These are facts. Additionally there are the other facts such as the DS9 is the only Trek show with significant character development.

There is nothing wrong with recognizing these facts and appreciating TOS and DS9 as the best Trek shows, and not giving undue credit to the other modern Trek shows as being just as good, because they unquestionably waylaid this basic principle of drama (conflict) for the sake of bowing to 'Gene's vision'.

It is snobbery & annoying to demand that everyone must view all Trek shows as equal or nearly-equal, which seems to be what you are suggesting must be done, when they very clearly are not.

As for those criticizing nuBSG, what does that have to do with the subject of TNG vs. DS9? Internal conflict does not mean a show has to be like nuBSG, as DS9 proves, as TOS proves, and which plenty of other shows also prove.

I agree with the character development thing. I disagree with the "internal conflict" needed in drama thing.

I think TNG did great at having little internal conflict, and yet having some great external conflicts.

I much prefer to see a unified team dealing with external problems than to see a team who's at each other's throats all the time. To me, character internal conflict is really taking the pussy way out in the writing world, because it's so easy to write.

TOS had a little bit, but DS9 cranked it up to the max (only nuBSG beating it out 15 years later)

If TNG was the Hilton in space, DS9 was All my Children in space.

 

[Cyke101]

TOS and DS9 are the only Trek shows with internal conflict (and hence DS9 is the only modern Trek show to have it), and conflict is the most essential part of any drama. These are facts. Additionally there are the other facts such as the DS9 is the only Trek show with significant character development.

There is nothing wrong with recognizing these facts and appreciating TOS and DS9 as the best Trek shows, and not giving undue credit to the other modern Trek shows as being just as good, because they unquestionably waylaid this basic principle of drama (conflict) for the sake of bowing to 'Gene's vision'.

It is snobbery & annoying to demand that everyone must view all Trek shows as equal or nearly-equal, which seems to be what you are suggesting must be done, when they very clearly are not.

As for those criticizing nuBSG, what does that have to do with the subject of TNG vs. DS9? Internal conflict does not mean a show has to be like nuBSG, as DS9 proves, as TOS proves, and which plenty of other shows also prove.

I agree with the character development thing. I disagree with the "internal conflict" needed in drama thing.

I think TNG did great at having little internal conflict, and yet having some great external conflicts.

I much prefer to see a unified team dealing with external problems than to see a team who's at each other's throats all the time. To me, character internal conflict is really taking the pussy way out in the writing world, because it's so easy to write.

TOS had a little bit, but DS9 cranked it up to the max (only nuBSG beating it out 15 years later)

If TNG was the Hilton in space, DS9 was All my Children in space.

Frankly, for all this talk about the glory of internal conflict in fiction (and yes, i like it too), DS9's senior staff had very little of it. A rivalry between Worf and Bashir for Dax was played off to humorous effect. Kira learned to like Sisko sure, but she wasn't cruel or arrogant at the core, either. Odo would sometimes defend Quark and vice versa. I think they're reflective of the station itself: the crew managed to stay together while everything else around them (people and events) slowly went insane.

With that said, I would have liked to have seen a Riker/Worf slugfest over Troi, only for the both of them to end up so exhausted that Riker gives one of his best friends his blessing. In return, when Troi dumps Worf (c'mon, y'know she did), Worf wonders if the fight was logical anyway... but Riker was so good that the fight was worth it, cementing the friendship even further. We saw this type of testosterone match in Enterprise, but everybody likes Riker and Worf much more

 

[Anwar]

Exactly, DS9 didn't really have much in the way of internal conflict. Most conflict on that show was from external sources, it's just that DS9 had more external forces due to the war setting than TNG did. As for TOS' conflicts, plenty of that came from external sources too or one-shot crewmembers never seen again. Though to be frank Spock's hypocrisy and McCoy's borderline racism got boring after a while.

 

[rahullak]

I like both, but DS9 is just a superior show in every regard. The characters are more interesting, the stories are more involving and rarely rely on reset buttons, plus DS9 has Garak, Dukat, Weyoun and Martok, can TNG really top that?

This. And mind you, I LOVE TNG. But it really can't hold a candle to DS9. DS9 made such better use of an ensemble cast and recurring characters (who seem almost indistinguishable from mains later on), had way more plot threads and elements which carried over and didn't end in a given episode, and while I like TNG's cast, DS9's was (ironically, considering all the aliens it had), for lack of a better word, more human. They were more flawed, more real, and that made them way easier to get close to and care about what happens to them. And as an added bonus, it has the coolest battle scenes in all of Trek.

I like TNG's cast, and I love TNG as a show for all the neat stories it told. But DS9 as a show, aside from what I like about the show on its own merits, took elements that TNG started and did a better job with them (Cardassians, the Maquis, Worf, etc.).

THIS. And i would also like to add that it is slightly unfair to compare TNG and DS9. TNG was started almost as a relaunch of Trek on TV in the late 80s. A lot of stories that were told always had a greater positive-hope for-the-future endings that were kept (i think deliberately) episodic (except for a few two-parters and some recurring themes/references). TNG was always about stretching the realms of possibilities when it came to imagining what the universe could consist of and the strangeness of it. TNG also had character-development but it always played a slightly subservient role to the story and Picard and Data got the chunk of it.

By the time DS9 came about, many of the fantastic big ideas that could be thought of in a Trek through space had already been shown (omnipotent beings, traveling to the centre of the galaxy, planetary disasters, weird space phenomena etc. etc.). DS9 was necessarily (imo) driven to delve deeper into character development, look at political story arcs across multiple episodes, and literally play with the lives of the characters. It also helped that WAR is always a crowd-puller (), and a war told as brilliantly as was done in DS9 just couldn't be beaten.

So, all in all if you forced me to compare, I'd have to say DS9, but I'd always look at the two as two different species created as a result of the needs of their time and were equally successful in fulfilling that need. Cheers.

EDIT: I concur that DS9 had less internal (defined as being within the crew of DS9) conflict amongst some of the characters than could've been. But the character-conflict created between Dukat and Sisko, Weyoun and Sisko, Klingons and Starfleet, the love-hate between Odo and Quark, the love-craziness of Odo, Odo's conflict with his identity, Garak's smooth manipulation, and Sisko's fight with his compromise of his ethics was all well thought-out.

 

[Anwar]

Well, Sisko's "battle with his morals" thing wasn't THAT great. I mean seriously Garak did all the work for him and killed Vreenak, not Sisko himself. Sisko didn't know what he was doing. Then there was the whole thing with "Far Beyond the Stars" and how Sisko keeps going on about how "the dream will never die!" when he accepted Garak's plan and destroyed the dream himself, and this never bothers him later on. If they had shown him to be more bitter and harsher as a result or more averse to Garak-style scheming (or become more Machiavellian as an opposite) THEN it would've been better thought-out.

 

[rahullak]

Well, Sisko's "battle with his morals" thing wasn't THAT great. I mean seriously Garak did all the work for him and killed Vreenak, not Sisko himself. Sisko didn't know what he was doing. Then there was the whole thing with "Far Beyond the Stars" and how Sisko keeps going on about how "the dream will never die!" when he accepted Garak's plan and destroyed the dream himself, and this never bothers him later on. If they had shown him to be more bitter and harsher as a result or more averse to Garak-style scheming (or become more Machiavellian as an opposite) THEN it would've been better thought-out.

Correction: "....THEN it would've been better thought-out" in your opinion.

Garak may have killed Vreenak, but Sisko knew he was unleashing a morally questionable Garak...he just did not know to what extent, which is what he regretted.
I think the way the show portrayed this was well in keeping with Sisko's character. It was a single incident and a decision he regretted taking, but his strength of character does not allow him to become "machiavellian as an opposite" or "bitter and harsher" in any extreme way. He also deletes his personal log, as if to put the whole matter behind him and of course to not let it become official in any way.
I see it as having been "just right", and imho this is how the writers viewed the character of Sisko.

 

[Anwar]

That Sisko confessed to everything on his log and then deleted it showed that he pretty much couldn't just live with it, otherwise he'd never have confessed (and then deleted it once he got it out of his mind). I've seen Pale Moonlight and while it was enjoyable and anti-Trek, I still don't think it was that great because it didn't change his character one iota and makes him (and the writers) out to be major hypocrites later on.

 

[LaBarre]

There is no show down.

Without TNG there would have been no DS9 - nor anything else that followed in its wake, up to and including the latest NuTrek movie.

TNG is the anchor of the ST universe.

 

[Anwar]

Well, the anchor of the Modern Trekverse. Without TNG Trek would have been off the air after TFF.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

This thread has actually got me wondering. With all of the "DS9 had the better characters - Garak, Martok, Dukat, etc"... is this actually a GOOD thing?

That the main cast was overshadowed by the secondary? Certainly that's not a writer's goal, to originally craft characters that are so dull and uninteresting (I'm exaggerating a bit to make a point) that they need to create a new set of characters to engage the audience?

Something I never thought about until now. It almost seems to me that the TNG cast stands firmly on their own, while the DS9 cast (which also happened to use TNG support) needed an external boost.

 

[barnaclelapse]

Well, the anchor of the Modern Trekverse. Without TNG Trek would have been off the air after TFF.

Pretty much, yeah.

 

[startrekwatcher]

This thread has actually got me wondering. With all of the "DS9 had the better characters - Garak, Martok, Dukat, etc"... is this actually a GOOD thing?

That the main cast was overshadowed by the secondary? Certainly that's not a writer's goal, to originally craft characters that are so dull and uninteresting (I'm exaggerating a bit to make a point) that they need to create a new set of characters to engage the audience?

Something I never thought about until now. It almost seems to me that the TNG cast stands firmly on their own, while the DS9 cast (which also happened to use TNG support) needed an external boost.

Exactly. For the most part barring Kira, Odo and later season Sisko--the main cast of DS9 weren't that compelling. It was the second tier of characters like Martok, Weyoun, the Founder, Damar, Dukat, Garak that were the interesting bunch and they sadly only started to feature, not coincidentally, in what I consider the show's best years S5-7.

There was a reason why the writers wisely chose to really make them the focus of the final season or the Occupation arc and relegating O'Brien, Bashir, Jadzia, Quark to the sidelines. I know some fans didn't like that but I loved it.

TNG, on the otherhand, had a nice group of characters apart from wonderful secondary characters like Guinan, Barclay, Keiko, Alyssa.

 

[rahullak]

That Sisko confessed to everything on his log and then deleted it showed that he pretty much couldn't just live with it, otherwise he'd never have confessed (and then deleted it once he got it out of his mind). I've seen Pale Moonlight and while it was enjoyable and anti-Trek, I still don't think it was that great because it didn't change his character one iota and makes him (and the writers) out to be major hypocrites later on.

You obviously have strong views about this. To each his own.

I think the writers did a wonderful job, and not being a writer on any show myself (yet ), I really don't think I'm qualified to be critiquing writers and their shows. Other than being an armchair critic, whose inexperienced views would matter little or not at all. But if I had to start nitpicking, I'd have a few quadrillion things to say about Voyager, all of which would surpass the "flaws" in DS9 in my opinion.

 

[DevilEyes]

This thread has actually got me wondering. With all of the "DS9 had the better characters - Garak, Martok, Dukat, etc"... is this actually a GOOD thing?

That the main cast was overshadowed by the secondary? Certainly that's not a writer's goal, to originally craft characters that are so dull and uninteresting (I'm exaggerating a bit to make a point) that they need to create a new set of characters to engage the audience?

Something I never thought about until now. It almost seems to me that the TNG cast stands firmly on their own, while the DS9 cast (which also happened to use TNG support) needed an external boost.

The only problem with that argument is that it is completely wrong.

The main characters on DS9 were not overshadowed by the recurring ones, and were certainly not dull or uninteresting. Quite the opposite. Sisko, Kira, Odo, Quark, Jadzia Dax were all wonderful and compelling characters (I'm intentionally not mentioning Worf and O'Brien for the obvious reason, even though O'Brien got waaaay more development in DS9 than in TNG). In fact, DS9 has the distinction of not having any weak links in the cast, which can't be said for other shows - even Bashir, who was the weakest link in the early seasons, got some good storylines and character development in the last few seasons. The entire cast of DS9 played wonderfully off each other.

On the other hand, what did TNG have? Picard, Data, Worf... and that's about it, really, the rest of the cast was rather dull and uninteresting.

This thread has actually got me wondering. With all of the "DS9 had the better characters - Garak, Martok, Dukat, etc"... is this actually a GOOD thing?

That the main cast was overshadowed by the secondary? Certainly that's not a writer's goal, to originally craft characters that are so dull and uninteresting (I'm exaggerating a bit to make a point) that they need to create a new set of characters to engage the audience?

Something I never thought about until now. It almost seems to me that the TNG cast stands firmly on their own, while the DS9 cast (which also happened to use TNG support) needed an external boost.

Exactly. For the most part barring Kira, Odo and later season Sisko--the main cast of DS9 weren't that compelling. It was the second tier of characters like Martok, Weyoun, the Founder, Damar, Dukat, Garak that were the interesting bunch and they sadly only started to feature, not coincidentally, in what I consider the show's best years S5-7.

There was a reason why the writers wisely chose to really make them the focus of the final season or the Occupation arc and relegating O'Brien, Bashir, Jadzia, Quark to the sidelines. I know some fans didn't like that but I loved it.

TNG, on the otherhand, had a nice group of characters apart from wonderful secondary characters like Guinan, Barclay, Keiko, Alyssa.

Um... to each their own. But, while this may not have been your intention, you've perfectly described most of the cast of TNG. They were nice. Not interesting, not compelling, not complex. Nice.