DS9 vs TNG Popularity

[PorthosShadow]

It's because they didn't want to date the show by having them listen to more contemporary stuff. They figured that by using things we already considered classics, it would seem less dated than having them listen to Queen or something.

Somewhat backfired, because it made the audience think they were snobs.

I never really liked "Pale Moonlight" all that much, myself.

I always figured it had more to do with Parmound being cheap pricks and not wanting to clear music. Isn't it kind of strange how the only time you hear popular music in Star Trek are in the time travel movies like Star Trek (2009) or First Contact.

Maybe it's also an issue of trying not to appear overtly contemporary. But I would think that at least one person by the 24th century might still be a Depeche Mode or Queen fan, maybe?

 

[Nightdiamond]

It's because they didn't want to date the show by having them listen to more contemporary stuff. They figured that by using things we already considered classics, it would seem less dated than having them listen to Queen or something.

Somewhat backfired, because it made the audience think they were snobs.

I never really liked "Pale Moonlight" all that much, myself.

I always figured it had more to do with Parmound being cheap pricks and not wanting to clear music. Isn't it kind of strange how the only time you hear popular music in Star Trek are in the time travel movies like Star Trek (2009) or First Contact.

Maybe it's also an issue of trying not to appear overtly contemporary. But I would think that at least one person by the 24th century might still be a Depeche Mode or Queen fan, maybe?

I mean, Wesley was on board and some other human teenagers, I'm sure, why not other types of music?

Not to knock personal preferences, but it seems like the classical arts were the primary form of entertainment, at least on the Enterprise.

In one episode, Data who plays several instruments, gets a new girlfriend, who happens to play in an orchestra.

The same thing happens with Captain Picard, he meets a new woman, and they both happen to play instruments.

It was either classical music, the ballet, or theater.

The Klingons had their opera, but for some reason, that just seems right ..

Now DS9 didn't stray that far either, but the feel I get from it was that it was much more comfortable being a little contemporary.

The dialog seems more natural and interesting, especially when you take characters like Kira, Dax, Quark or Garak.

Even Chief Obrien seemed more different, more outspoken after he came to DS9.

I think TNG had certain ideas about what future society would be like, but the end product looked-sometimes-a little conformist and stale.

Early on in TNG the idea was stated that television didn't survive into the 24th century.

Later on in Voyager, we see Tom Paris watching it regularly (a simulation), and the crew is seen going to a simulation of a movie theater.

 

[Kirk1980]

That's because DS9 came second and years after the peak of both TOS nostalgia (cresting in 1991) and TNG's popularity. 1993 saw the start of TNG's final season and news about the new movie which would unite Kirk and Picard. DS9 didn't have much of a chance.

Plus, most affiliates which broadcast it yanked it all over the schedule. I just gave up after awhile.

I tend to dislike story arcs as most writers can't do story arcs, never mind trying to do a story arc which lasts even one season, never mind several.

 

[Hober Mallow]

DS9's pilot episode blew away TNG's best ratings, garning a whopping 21.0 overnight rating. If memory serves, the ratings dropped in half the following week, and the show very quickly settled into a rating that was slightly less than TNG's average ratings. Just pulling numbers out of my you-know-what, one week TNG would get an 11.0 rating, the same week DS9 might get a 9.0.

DS9's ratings held steady until TNG went off the air. Starting with DS9's third season, the ratings began a steady drop all the way to the end of the series. It seems once TNG went off the air, a good chunk of the Trek audience began to drift away... as I did around that time.

 

[Admiral Shran]

TNG also had more iconic characters. There was the bald, English captain, the android, the blind man, the Klingon, that empath woman, and THE BOY! DS9 had more everyman characters, there was the shapeshifter and woman with a worm in her belly, but the rest of them didn't stand out as much to casual viewers. Picard's a great character and I love him so I mean him no disrespect by saying this, but he was much easier to sum up than Sisko.

That's a good point. TNG had more "iconicly sci-fi" characters. There was an android, a Klingon, a woman with telepathic powers (sort of), and a blind man who was able to see.

DS9, on the other hand, had less indentifably "sci-fi" characters. There was 1.) a single father who happened to be a religious icon, 2.) a holocaust survivor with anger and post-traumatic stress isssues, 3.) a woman with a slug in her gut, 4.) an "everyman" with a wife and daughter, 5.) a greedy ultra-capitalist, 6.) a wet-behind-the-ears doctor, 7.) an ordinary teenager, and 8.) a shape-shifter. Odo was the closest the main cast got to an "iconicly sci-fi character."

 

[Anwar]

It's funny, when TNG said that TV as a 20th century person knows it ceased to exist by the mid-21st century it sounded crazy. But as it stands, right now TV as we know it IS being phased out more for web-original entertainment and entertainment-on-demand. So again, Trek has predicted something relatively accurate.

 

[DevilEyes]

2.) a holocaust survivor with anger and post-traumatic stress isssues

Rather, a former freedom fighter/terrorist with anger and post-traumatic stress issues. Which was much more interesting and edgier, anyway.

 

[Baconnaise]

2.) a holocaust survivor with anger and post-traumatic stress isssues

Rather, a former freedom fighter/terrorist with anger and post-traumatic stress issues. Which was much more interesting and edgier, anyway.

Both of you are right.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

I'm sure the fact that DS9 was highly serialized played a large part in it. A casual viewer would simply be lost if they picked up an episode from the later seasons.

Actually, the majority of DS9 episodes, even in the latter seasons, were standalones. While the show did do much more with story arcs, particularly late in its life, than TNG (to its credit), it's something of a myth that it was "highly serialized."

I'm not knocking the show - big fan here - but the way folks sometimes describe it you'd think it was Star Trek's version of "24." When in fact most of the episodes were fairly accessible to first-time viewers.

 

[Withers]

I was originally a big TNG fan. I only got into DS9, hardcore, after the fact. I'll say this; a decade after each of them and I have a much easier time watching DS9 than I do TNG. That show just isn't aging well. The more time goes on the more their approach to the Universe seems... arrogant and condescending. DS9 has that failing (by virtue of having Starfleet officers aboard) every now and then but, because they aren't just running around meeting new people, it happens a lot less. I realize it was Roddenberry who dictated "no conflict between the crew" but still... you watch enough of that, where no one ever has a disagreement and you do so in todays climate and suspending disbelief to enjoy an episode about the Crystalline entity becomes a little more difficult than maybe once it was. I, by no means think DS9 was flawless, but for me it is a lot easier to watch 10 years after than TNG.

-Withers-​

 

[Myasishchev]

It's funny, when TNG said that TV as a 20th century person knows it ceased to exist by the mid-21st century it sounded crazy. But as it stands, right now TV as we know it IS being phased out more for web-original entertainment and entertainment-on-demand. So again, Trek has predicted something relatively accurate.

Though that makes the answer to the country music guy (iirc) extremely disingenuous, since the medium of the moving picture has survived and will continue to survive probably forever, in some form or another, although the medium of the video game seems to predominate in the 24th century.

When Harry Kim sees 20th century TV and starts future-wanking about how he can't imagine not being part of "the story," he's just revealing a bias. A bias no doubt arising from the fact he's addicted to holodeck pornography.

 

[Nightdiamond]

Good call on that, but I just noticed something;

According to the episode, Data says that this particular form of "entertainment" became obsolete a little after 2040.

DATA
That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year
Two Thousand Forty.

And this was from around 1988.

Not so much the method of viewing, but the actual entertainment itself.

I think T.N.G was implying that sitting down and watching activity on a screen was abandoned by future humans, as if it were deemed detrimental or something.

Once again, the idea that might have been suggested?

'Let's explore the finer arts, intellectual pursuits,reading, music, science, etc, and avoid that primitive form of entertainment'....

So this is how the country guy responds;

SONNY So, what do you guys do? I mean,
you don't drink -- no teevee -- kind of boring, isn't it?

(Data is at a loss of words)


If people still watch the news, award shows, sports, speeches on some type of screen, then just the name for it has changed, but it's still the same form of entertainment.

Was T.N.G really implying that people from 2040 onward stopped viewing their entertainment, even on a computer?

It does seem like a intriguing prediction, but whenever I think about those skirts that both men and women were wearing for the part of the first season, and then dropped rather quickly....

Relating this to the topic, it kind of shows how DS9 and Voyager were more comfortable with contemporary things surviving into the future, like watching a movie, rock and roll, and baseball.

 

[Kegg]

I mean, Wesley was on board and some other human teenagers, I'm sure, why not other types of music?

In a nutshell: Go watch the episode "Suddenly Human." It's an episode of Star Trek that actually has a human teenager rocking out to his preferred taste in music, some sort of Talarian stuff.

It is extremely dated and so very, very eighties, for music from an alien planet in the future.

Hell, go watch Forbidden Planet and listen to the symphony of the Krell; it sounds like the same 1950s experimental soundtrack of the actual movie (which is because that's what it is!) And so on.

 

[TheGodBen]

They could have played some Dire Straits, their music is timeless.

 

[Pemmer Harge]

I mean, Wesley was on board and some other human teenagers, I'm sure, why not other types of music?

In a nutshell: Go watch the episode "Suddenly Human." It's an episode of Star Trek that actually has a human teenager rocking out to his preferred taste in music, some sort of Talarian stuff.

It is extremely dated and so very, very eighties, for music from an alien planet in the future.

Who's to say music won't sound like that in the future? We're always getting revivals of some earlier pop music style!

 

[CaptainStoner]

There are a lot of factors. The main one I think was having TNG heavily playing in reruns, usually in the dinner-time slots. Initially DS9 would follow TNG, then DS9 got bumped later and later.
For me, and I suspect for many around my mid-thirties age, I just didn't have time to watch DS9. I was entering the workforce and there were other things to do. Whereas TNG was something I watched through middle and high schools.

 

[Hober Mallow]

It's funny, when TNG said that TV as a 20th century person knows it ceased to exist by the mid-21st century it sounded crazy. But as it stands, right now TV as we know it IS being phased out more for web-original entertainment and entertainment-on-demand. So again, Trek has predicted something relatively accurate.

Though that makes the answer to the country music guy (iirc) extremely disingenuous, since the medium of the moving picture has survived and will continue to survive probably forever, in some form or another, although the medium of the video game seems to predominate in the 24th century.

Maybe, but back then I thought, "Pffft, yeah right, TV going away, whatever!" Now the idea of television disappearing doesn't seem all that crazy.

 

[Nightdiamond]

Good catch- I was searching for an instance in TNG where there might have been some type of different music playing.

I just think that by the 24th century, there would have been more styles of music available to enjoy, even on a starship.

Without hearing them, didn't that seem to make some things about 24th century human society seem odd or out of place?

The way TNG tended to picture elements of future human society ....there's something about it that seemed a little conformist or stuffy.

I was just studying the hairstyles of what human wore, and just about all of them were really standard looking. No real variation in style

When Sisko went bald and grew the beard,it was like it was a message that it was finally ok to be a little contemporary in appearance.

Janeway went from wearing her hair in a bun, to a more sleeker looking hairstyle. Same thing with Kira.

The food? No mention of pizza, burgers, hot dogs, popcorn or things like that for TNG, they are mentioned on later Trek series.

I have to admit, I think TNG gave us more classic sci fi than DS9 did.

I also remember when Yesterdays' Enterprise and Best of Both Worlds was the Domion war of TNG. Those were the episodes everyone had to watch.

 

[DevilEyes]

It's funny, when TNG said that TV as a 20th century person knows it ceased to exist by the mid-21st century it sounded crazy. But as it stands, right now TV as we know it IS being phased out more for web-original entertainment and entertainment-on-demand. So again, Trek has predicted something relatively accurate.

Though that makes the answer to the country music guy (iirc) extremely disingenuous, since the medium of the moving picture has survived and will continue to survive probably forever, in some form or another, although the medium of the video game seems to predominate in the 24th century.

Maybe, but back then I thought, "Pffft, yeah right, TV going away, whatever!" Now the idea of television disappearing doesn't seem all that crazy.

If by that you mean literally having a TV and watching it - that process seems underway, although it's not nearly as widespread as some people seem to suggest - but TV programmes and stations are very much alive and kicking and don't seem about the disappear. It's just that many people now prefer to watch those programmes in a different way - on their computers, online or downloaded, on DVD etc.

 

[Mr. Scott]

DS9 was much more serialized especially towards the end of the series.

For example, TOS and TNG are very similiar in that each episode was independent of another, and it is fairly easy for non-Trekkers (or casual viewers) to watch the show. DS9 was much more for the Trekker, in that the stories were fairly intricate. I started watching DS9 out of sequence, and it took me a bit to know what a Founder, Prophet, Celestial Temple, Dominion etc. DS9 reads somewhat like a book, and it needs to be read from Chapter 1 to Chapter 7. Starting to read from Chapter 3 and one gets lost (a bit......)

This is the main reason why I don't get into most Sci-Fi like Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica. There is a lot of back story in Sci-Fi which is why it is still somewhat of a niche market in broadcasting. Besides Trek, I am not that much of a sci-fi fan, except for the special effects. I like sci-fi films, because they tell the whole story in a limited amount of time. Watching a whole series requires much more attention to backstory.

TNG had little back story. DS9 a lot more. More casual fans liked TNG. Trekkers and fanboys like DS9 more.