Why didn't DS9 capture a large audience like all the other Treks?
- Thread starter ReadyAndWilling
- Start date
It looks like a qualitative change occurred in TNG ratings when DS9 came out. When DS9 came out, did TNG start on its own downward slope, parallel to that of DS9, VOY, and ENT?
Saquist
Commodore
No. TNG's downward slope was not parallel to DS9 VOY and ENT.
There really isn't such a thing as Trek Fatigue.
What the graph shows is that after a series of 4 bad movies and same old concepts Trek was suffering from lack of imagination.
No one really like DS9 when it first came out. But many got used to it as well as VOY. VOY had the most potential ans is the series that failed to live up to more it's potential than any other. In other words Trek was stuck in the 80's
There really isn't such a thing as Trek Fatigue.
What the graph shows is that after a series of 4 bad movies and same old concepts Trek was suffering from lack of imagination.
No one really like DS9 when it first came out. But many got used to it as well as VOY. VOY had the most potential ans is the series that failed to live up to more it's potential than any other. In other words Trek was stuck in the 80's
You're statement is contradictory. You said Trek failed due to a lack of imagination... yet DS9 was the only one to attempt to break the mold.
Where I lived, these shows aired alongside DS9 on Saturday nights starting at 6PM. It was a pretty good night for TV.
Those were great days-there were sci fi and fantasy shows all over tv, at different times especially on Saturdays.
Enterprise was canceled , Insurrections and Trek Nemesis and wasn't as well received, and DS9 and TNG gone- I think it was viewer's fatigue.
But with a twist- fatigue of lack of imagination.
Viewers were overloaded with too many treks at the same time and were very disappointed with what followed.
I anticipated Voyager, Enterprise and the last two movies, and was disappointed in them, although I did continue to watch Voyager.
Enterprise tried to break the mold too, with the opening theme song for example, but the whole thing just didn't work out...
I wish they had considered making a DS9 Dominion War movie during the time it happened instead of the TNG movie.
Enterprise was canceled , Insurrections and Trek Nemesis and wasn't as well received, and DS9 and TNG gone- I think it was viewer's fatigue.
But with a twist- fatigue of lack of imagination.
Viewers were overloaded with too many treks at the same time and were very disappointed with what followed.
I anticipated Voyager, Enterprise and the last two movies, and was disappointed in them, although I did continue to watch Voyager.
Enterprise tried to break the mold too, with the opening theme song for example, but the whole thing just didn't work out...
I wish they had considered making a DS9 Dominion War movie during the time it happened instead of the TNG movie.
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Poor scheduling, audience fragmentation, increased competition with other sf shows, and a primary narrative that became more and more serialized as the series went on are all factors that probably contributed to the series' declining ratings.
Was DS9 even syndicated to as many stations as TNG? I know that series got a bit of a free pass because Paramount bundled it with the original series, which was highly successful in syndication. How was DS9 syndicated in comparison? Not as favorably, I would guess.
Was DS9 even syndicated to as many stations as TNG? I know that series got a bit of a free pass because Paramount bundled it with the original series, which was highly successful in syndication. How was DS9 syndicated in comparison? Not as favorably, I would guess.
What was good and somewhat bad about DS9 was that it was a serialized series for the most part, with a lot more different things going on with new themes and storylines, which were different from TOS and TNG. With DS9, one had to follow the storylines from the very first show or one will get lost. Long story arcs lasting from one to all of the seasons.
DS9 is a show that has to be watched in a sequencee, while TOS and TNG (with some exceptions) were mainly independent episodes that casual fans can watch independently, if that makes any sense.
Story arcs are the main reason why I usually shy from Science Fiction beyond Trek. I have never watched Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, or much other science fiction/fantasy. TOS was just something that I grew up with, and then TNG was a hit, and then TNG opened the door to the other series.
DS9 is a show that has to be watched in a sequencee, while TOS and TNG (with some exceptions) were mainly independent episodes that casual fans can watch independently, if that makes any sense.
Story arcs are the main reason why I usually shy from Science Fiction beyond Trek. I have never watched Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, or much other science fiction/fantasy. TOS was just something that I grew up with, and then TNG was a hit, and then TNG opened the door to the other series.
Deep Space 9 was ahead of its time (along with the similar and equally good and unloved Babylon 5). Story arcs which last and build for multiple seasons are best enjoyed in this day of boxed CDs and widespread torrents.
I loved Deep Space 9 when it first came out, but I could never hope to watch every show or follow every nuance of the story: most people have more to do in life than watch television.
But now I can watch the entire story in order and at my leisure. Plus Wikipedia and other internet resources ensure that I can cross-reference and research every point or character which might have escaped my notice.
I remember way back in the day, complaining about the increasingly difficult to comprehend arc of the X-Files. "Why can they not just produce more simple one-off stories, so I can understand it and enjoy on the rare occasion I get to watch it?" Huge ratings are generated by casual viewers like myself: and casual viewers can only watch the occasional episode or perhaps season.
I loved Deep Space 9 when it first came out, but I could never hope to watch every show or follow every nuance of the story: most people have more to do in life than watch television.
But now I can watch the entire story in order and at my leisure. Plus Wikipedia and other internet resources ensure that I can cross-reference and research every point or character which might have escaped my notice.
I remember way back in the day, complaining about the increasingly difficult to comprehend arc of the X-Files. "Why can they not just produce more simple one-off stories, so I can understand it and enjoy on the rare occasion I get to watch it?" Huge ratings are generated by casual viewers like myself: and casual viewers can only watch the occasional episode or perhaps season.
From someone who was a first-run viewer of late TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT, here's what I remember on it.
Someone actually compiled all the ratings into a graph. Cool. A few years ago I saw it all in table form. From the actual numbers I saw, DS9 beat VOY every week except for at least part of VOY's Season 1 and maybe "Equinox" beat "Dogs of War" (DS9's lowest rated episode). DS9's ratings were sometimes harshly affected by holiday weekends (e.g. Memorial Day weekend). Some years they did well, some years they had crappy ratings. It was independent of the quality of the episode (some crappy eps got good ratings, some good eps got crappy ratings). Some eps even had better ratings in summer/reruns than in their debut.
Before people talk about DS9's complexity & serialized nature, that only got established later on. DS9's ratings declined before that. DS9 wasn't known for being serial in like 1993-95.
And people debating DS9's competition- Hercules, Xena, and Earth: Final Conflict were competition. They were all syndicated shows competing for people's attention in a crowded syndicated market. Babylon 5 (PTEN was a glorified syndication package) too. Star Trek wasn't on cable til late 1998, Stargate was unknown then, being on Showtime Fri nights. You can't think solely in terms of sci-fi competition.
Trek fatigue is a concept being retroactively applied. It became popular during ENT's run and now people try to apply it onto the 1990s. It was not commonly talked about during DS9 & VOY's run.
Now onto what others mentioned.
* Season 1 was pretty bad, not Season 2 so much. All the annoying Bajoran stories are what drove people away, myself included (intermittantly saw Season 2, years later I saw all of it and I wished I was watching it because it was good, gradually watched Season 3 more and became a regular viewer again). "Move Along Home" was actually one of the more interesting episodes considering episodes like "Progress", "The Storyteller", "In the Hands of the Prophets", which drove people away. "Duet" reinforced this too (great episode, but at the time got lost in all the Bajoran navel-gazing).
Then there are the several subpar episodes, a rather empty Q episode, "The Passenger", "The Forsaken", "Dramatis Personae". And there was this whole unknown space on the other side of the wormhole basically left unexplored. Only Season 2 started to explore it. "Captive Pursuit" was an amazing episode at the time which enticed people with the Gamma Quadrant. Season 1 was a load of subpar episodes, bland space station drama (which also hurt Babylon 5 til they started their intrigue & action plots).
This was the most active element I would say that drove people away. Notice after Season 2, Bajoran episodes are fewer and tend to have more action ("Shakaar", "The Darkness and the Light", etc). Season 1 sucked badly. It had nothing you would want to draw you in and everything you didn't want to drive you away.
* The Dominion was cool, mysterious, but yes, not being introduced til the Season 2 finale/Season 3 hurt the show. Star Trek, like Batman, is partially defined by its villains. The Klingons & Romulans were a big draw (not quite villains in TNG but still), then the Borg were huge. All DS9 had early on was the Cardassians, who weren't quite good A-list villains (good B-list ones though).
Odo was one of DS9's most popular characters (him & Quark were the top 2 in 1994), and what I recall at the time, the Founders & Jem'Hadar were considered somewhat cool villains that people were curious about because you knew so little about them. Borg were hive cyborgs with advanced technology from far away. Klingons & Romulans were already generally known about, but the Dominion was mysterious.
* T&A. Seven was memorable, but she didn't join til Season 4. The only T&A before then would have to come from Torres or Kes... or Janeway. Thus, T&A is irrelevant before 1997.
* "That other show". I actually think this might be another big reason. When TNG & DS9 were on for 1.5 years, TNG had all the attention after people tuned out after giving "Emissary" the best syndicated rating ever. Despite people bashing Season 7, people were interested in seeing TNG thru to the end and they had a hyped countdown for the last 10 episodes (Season 7 for a sci-fi show was big back then. Most had only gone 4 or 5 seasons). TNG had a very big stature and its series finale even made the cover of TV Guide and got quite a bit of attention (like many stations showing it in a special time, primetime during the week).
DS9 was on in syndication and as independent stations became network affiliates (of WB, UPN), syndicated shows tended to get almost no advertising outside of the time blocks syndicated shows were on (i.e. you might see a DS9 commercial during Hercules, Xena, Earth: Final Conflict and vice-versa, but not a DS9 commercial during Buffy, Voyager, etc). Voyager, as part of a network, and the flagship show for that network, got a lot of advertisement. DS9's treatment vs. VOY was a reflection of new networks forcing syndication to the margins of the tv schedule rather than any special favoritism.
Ratings for syndicated shows across the board were declining over the mid-late '90s. They were hit the hardest first and networks started to feel it a little then but not significantly until the '00s. As for any formal study, maybe ask the people who run the Tv by the Numbers website. They of all people would know.
* Part was cable becoming an increasing draw for people (more people getting cable. Cable was rather early in its history in 1993 but by 1999 was well established and becoming a hub of entertainment activity). With so many channels, it can draw a lot of people away, even though each channel's audience is tiny compared to broadcast tv.
* Part was the syndicated market being oversaturated. There were hordes and hordes of shows. If I remember correctly, the 1996-7 season had the most shows in syndication of any season.
* And part was the rise of UPN & WB. This gobbled up a lot of independent stations and their primetimes, forcing syndicated shows to all compete for a finite amount of space on Saturday & Sunday out of primetime as networks had exclusivity to primetime. Remember, Fox gobbled up a lot of stations, and in larger cities, Telemundo and/or Univision did too. There were loads of independent stations before the mid '90s.
* Combine an oversaturated market + ex-indy station's primetime being locked up= this forced many shows to late night Sat or Sun, like after 11PM. If you're on the air Sun or Mon morning at 12AM or 1AM, what kind of ratings do you think you're gonna get vs. something Sat or Sun from 2-6PM?
* The internet as a major medium for entertainment mainly became a factor in the '00s. It was almost non-existent early in DS9's run and by the mid-late '90s, when the internet truly "arrived" for many people, it was web 1.0 and remember, people are more prolific websurfers now than then. Projecting web 2.0 (youtube, facebook/myspace, hulu, blogs, etc) back onto the internet of the '90s will give you a completely false sense of what the '90s internet was.
Of course, DS9 was one of the most prestigious syndicated shows in the '90s, so usually got one of the better slots in Saturday or Sunday afternoons/early evening. Also note many independent stations also showed sports, particularly baseball and basketball (before regional sports channels arose on cable). On WGN, the Cubs frequently pre-empted or pushed around DS9, as well as Hercules & Xena (basketball didn't because they play games in primetime, not the afternoon, though others noted basketball pushing DS9 around in their market).
And DS9 had very wide coverage. It was one of the top syndicated shows. Any station getting synd. shows would want DS9 back in the early/mid '90s. After 1995 or 1996, Baywatch's ratings really started to tank and while Hercules & Xena were hot, those 2 shows + DS9 all shuffled among #s 1, 2, and 3 in syndicated programs (not counting game shows). By 1998 it was going lower, but it was still in the top picks of all synd. shows.
It's rather ironic, DS9 fans whining like the Bajorans that made people tune out in the early seasons and focusing obsessively on Seven's T&A when DS9 had better ratings than Voyager across its run. Too complex/serial, no T&A, it was the middle child, etc... all rather cliched explanations when the real reasons are mundane and tied to the changing tv landscape of the '90s and the timeslots DS9 occupied.
Someone actually compiled all the ratings into a graph. Cool. A few years ago I saw it all in table form. From the actual numbers I saw, DS9 beat VOY every week except for at least part of VOY's Season 1 and maybe "Equinox" beat "Dogs of War" (DS9's lowest rated episode). DS9's ratings were sometimes harshly affected by holiday weekends (e.g. Memorial Day weekend). Some years they did well, some years they had crappy ratings. It was independent of the quality of the episode (some crappy eps got good ratings, some good eps got crappy ratings). Some eps even had better ratings in summer/reruns than in their debut.
Before people talk about DS9's complexity & serialized nature, that only got established later on. DS9's ratings declined before that. DS9 wasn't known for being serial in like 1993-95.
And people debating DS9's competition- Hercules, Xena, and Earth: Final Conflict were competition. They were all syndicated shows competing for people's attention in a crowded syndicated market. Babylon 5 (PTEN was a glorified syndication package) too. Star Trek wasn't on cable til late 1998, Stargate was unknown then, being on Showtime Fri nights. You can't think solely in terms of sci-fi competition.
Trek fatigue is a concept being retroactively applied. It became popular during ENT's run and now people try to apply it onto the 1990s. It was not commonly talked about during DS9 & VOY's run.
Now onto what others mentioned.
* Season 1 was pretty bad, not Season 2 so much. All the annoying Bajoran stories are what drove people away, myself included (intermittantly saw Season 2, years later I saw all of it and I wished I was watching it because it was good, gradually watched Season 3 more and became a regular viewer again). "Move Along Home" was actually one of the more interesting episodes considering episodes like "Progress", "The Storyteller", "In the Hands of the Prophets", which drove people away. "Duet" reinforced this too (great episode, but at the time got lost in all the Bajoran navel-gazing).
Then there are the several subpar episodes, a rather empty Q episode, "The Passenger", "The Forsaken", "Dramatis Personae". And there was this whole unknown space on the other side of the wormhole basically left unexplored. Only Season 2 started to explore it. "Captive Pursuit" was an amazing episode at the time which enticed people with the Gamma Quadrant. Season 1 was a load of subpar episodes, bland space station drama (which also hurt Babylon 5 til they started their intrigue & action plots).
This was the most active element I would say that drove people away. Notice after Season 2, Bajoran episodes are fewer and tend to have more action ("Shakaar", "The Darkness and the Light", etc). Season 1 sucked badly. It had nothing you would want to draw you in and everything you didn't want to drive you away.
* The Dominion was cool, mysterious, but yes, not being introduced til the Season 2 finale/Season 3 hurt the show. Star Trek, like Batman, is partially defined by its villains. The Klingons & Romulans were a big draw (not quite villains in TNG but still), then the Borg were huge. All DS9 had early on was the Cardassians, who weren't quite good A-list villains (good B-list ones though).
Odo was one of DS9's most popular characters (him & Quark were the top 2 in 1994), and what I recall at the time, the Founders & Jem'Hadar were considered somewhat cool villains that people were curious about because you knew so little about them. Borg were hive cyborgs with advanced technology from far away. Klingons & Romulans were already generally known about, but the Dominion was mysterious.
* T&A. Seven was memorable, but she didn't join til Season 4. The only T&A before then would have to come from Torres or Kes... or Janeway. Thus, T&A is irrelevant before 1997.
* "That other show". I actually think this might be another big reason. When TNG & DS9 were on for 1.5 years, TNG had all the attention after people tuned out after giving "Emissary" the best syndicated rating ever. Despite people bashing Season 7, people were interested in seeing TNG thru to the end and they had a hyped countdown for the last 10 episodes (Season 7 for a sci-fi show was big back then. Most had only gone 4 or 5 seasons). TNG had a very big stature and its series finale even made the cover of TV Guide and got quite a bit of attention (like many stations showing it in a special time, primetime during the week).
DS9 was on in syndication and as independent stations became network affiliates (of WB, UPN), syndicated shows tended to get almost no advertising outside of the time blocks syndicated shows were on (i.e. you might see a DS9 commercial during Hercules, Xena, Earth: Final Conflict and vice-versa, but not a DS9 commercial during Buffy, Voyager, etc). Voyager, as part of a network, and the flagship show for that network, got a lot of advertisement. DS9's treatment vs. VOY was a reflection of new networks forcing syndication to the margins of the tv schedule rather than any special favoritism.
Ratings for syndicated shows across the board were declining over the mid-late '90s. They were hit the hardest first and networks started to feel it a little then but not significantly until the '00s. As for any formal study, maybe ask the people who run the Tv by the Numbers website. They of all people would know.
* Part was cable becoming an increasing draw for people (more people getting cable. Cable was rather early in its history in 1993 but by 1999 was well established and becoming a hub of entertainment activity). With so many channels, it can draw a lot of people away, even though each channel's audience is tiny compared to broadcast tv.
* Part was the syndicated market being oversaturated. There were hordes and hordes of shows. If I remember correctly, the 1996-7 season had the most shows in syndication of any season.
* And part was the rise of UPN & WB. This gobbled up a lot of independent stations and their primetimes, forcing syndicated shows to all compete for a finite amount of space on Saturday & Sunday out of primetime as networks had exclusivity to primetime. Remember, Fox gobbled up a lot of stations, and in larger cities, Telemundo and/or Univision did too. There were loads of independent stations before the mid '90s.
* Combine an oversaturated market + ex-indy station's primetime being locked up= this forced many shows to late night Sat or Sun, like after 11PM. If you're on the air Sun or Mon morning at 12AM or 1AM, what kind of ratings do you think you're gonna get vs. something Sat or Sun from 2-6PM?
* The internet as a major medium for entertainment mainly became a factor in the '00s. It was almost non-existent early in DS9's run and by the mid-late '90s, when the internet truly "arrived" for many people, it was web 1.0 and remember, people are more prolific websurfers now than then. Projecting web 2.0 (youtube, facebook/myspace, hulu, blogs, etc) back onto the internet of the '90s will give you a completely false sense of what the '90s internet was.
Of course, DS9 was one of the most prestigious syndicated shows in the '90s, so usually got one of the better slots in Saturday or Sunday afternoons/early evening. Also note many independent stations also showed sports, particularly baseball and basketball (before regional sports channels arose on cable). On WGN, the Cubs frequently pre-empted or pushed around DS9, as well as Hercules & Xena (basketball didn't because they play games in primetime, not the afternoon, though others noted basketball pushing DS9 around in their market).
And DS9 had very wide coverage. It was one of the top syndicated shows. Any station getting synd. shows would want DS9 back in the early/mid '90s. After 1995 or 1996, Baywatch's ratings really started to tank and while Hercules & Xena were hot, those 2 shows + DS9 all shuffled among #s 1, 2, and 3 in syndicated programs (not counting game shows). By 1998 it was going lower, but it was still in the top picks of all synd. shows.
It's rather ironic, DS9 fans whining like the Bajorans that made people tune out in the early seasons and focusing obsessively on Seven's T&A when DS9 had better ratings than Voyager across its run. Too complex/serial, no T&A, it was the middle child, etc... all rather cliched explanations when the real reasons are mundane and tied to the changing tv landscape of the '90s and the timeslots DS9 occupied.
Its hard to say what went wrong with DS9, its clear that something did. To quote James T. Kirk, 'it was the best of times, it was the worst of times'. Also, 'it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness'.
I think thats a pretty good way to describe DS9, it really does seem to have an unrivaled mix of awesome and awful. It was the only Trek that was character driven instead of plot driven, so it had some incredible characters, such as Dukat, Odo, Kira etc. Unfortunetely, it also suffered from some of the worst characters, such as Worf, Dax and other Dax. This was more of a problem than someone like Troi on TNG, because of the whole character driven thing.
Then they had the great storylines, but they all got screwed up. The Dominion were great when they first came in, but then they got mixed up with the whole pah'thetics stuff.
TNG had its poor moments, but I think it was consistently stronger, and the fact that it was plot driven helped make up for any inconsistencies in quality because almost every show was a new show that didnt really require any previous viewing. It was also the most Star Trek Star Trek. People can talk all they want about how the sci-fi market became saturated, and Im sure that didnt help, but Ive always felt like a bigger problem was not the initiation of other shows like Star Trek, but Star Trek becoming like other shows. Theres really nothing out there like TNG and TOS.
They were shows which had a lot of sci-fi integrity, in that most of their offerings were pure sci-fi 'what if stories', that havent ever really been replicated. The Best of Both Worlds was a hundred times better than any Dominion War show, because they took all that potential and concentrated it into one show (two if youre being picky), focusing on what made the borg interesting and exploiting the character dynamic already established on the show. DS9 took all the potential of the Dominion and strung it out over five seasons. That has its own rewards, in its own way its as good as the TNG method, but its also exactly what any other show would done.
We never had to sit through tons of storyline involving the romances of Riker/Troi and Picard/Crusher. If TNG had been DS9 then many whole episodes would have been devoted to this. One episode of DS9 has Ezri and Bashir repeatedly being awkward around each other in a way that Ive seen on many a stupid romcom or sitcom. Similiarly, on TNG there was very little sittin around and talking, there was the odd friendship and poker game, but mostly everything that went on involved the story, characters didnt stray to far from their roles as captain or science officer or engineer.
DS9 is actually my favourite show, so please dont think im saying it wasnt a great offering, I just know it has a lot of flaws which became more of a problem in VOY and ENT. It represents a point where Trek was still doing great things, but also when it had started to become 'just another show'. I think thats why it hasnt maintained such an audience as the other shows.
I think thats a pretty good way to describe DS9, it really does seem to have an unrivaled mix of awesome and awful. It was the only Trek that was character driven instead of plot driven, so it had some incredible characters, such as Dukat, Odo, Kira etc. Unfortunetely, it also suffered from some of the worst characters, such as Worf, Dax and other Dax. This was more of a problem than someone like Troi on TNG, because of the whole character driven thing.
Then they had the great storylines, but they all got screwed up. The Dominion were great when they first came in, but then they got mixed up with the whole pah'thetics stuff.
TNG had its poor moments, but I think it was consistently stronger, and the fact that it was plot driven helped make up for any inconsistencies in quality because almost every show was a new show that didnt really require any previous viewing. It was also the most Star Trek Star Trek. People can talk all they want about how the sci-fi market became saturated, and Im sure that didnt help, but Ive always felt like a bigger problem was not the initiation of other shows like Star Trek, but Star Trek becoming like other shows. Theres really nothing out there like TNG and TOS.
They were shows which had a lot of sci-fi integrity, in that most of their offerings were pure sci-fi 'what if stories', that havent ever really been replicated. The Best of Both Worlds was a hundred times better than any Dominion War show, because they took all that potential and concentrated it into one show (two if youre being picky), focusing on what made the borg interesting and exploiting the character dynamic already established on the show. DS9 took all the potential of the Dominion and strung it out over five seasons. That has its own rewards, in its own way its as good as the TNG method, but its also exactly what any other show would done.
We never had to sit through tons of storyline involving the romances of Riker/Troi and Picard/Crusher. If TNG had been DS9 then many whole episodes would have been devoted to this. One episode of DS9 has Ezri and Bashir repeatedly being awkward around each other in a way that Ive seen on many a stupid romcom or sitcom. Similiarly, on TNG there was very little sittin around and talking, there was the odd friendship and poker game, but mostly everything that went on involved the story, characters didnt stray to far from their roles as captain or science officer or engineer.
DS9 is actually my favourite show, so please dont think im saying it wasnt a great offering, I just know it has a lot of flaws which became more of a problem in VOY and ENT. It represents a point where Trek was still doing great things, but also when it had started to become 'just another show'. I think thats why it hasnt maintained such an audience as the other shows.
DS9 Worf & Ezri Dax were bad characters but I don't know if I'd put Jadzia Dax as worst than Troi. Troi's episodes weren't that good (save "Face of the Enemy") and while Jadzia Dax came off as understated, subtle until Klingon pheromones turned her into a female Curzon Dax, which could be construed as bland or boring, she got a fair number of good episodes- "Blood Oath", "Dax", "Equilibrium", "Facets". As the science officer, she was shoehorned into into being the partner for others, like "Shadowplay" & "The Quickening", "The Sword of Kahless". I think that's where people might've seen her as forgettable if she's just the #2 in many other people's adventures.
Ezri, they should of just given the Dax symbiote to a Trill on Trill. Anyone else would be a pale impersonator. They shouldn't have even tried. Garak could have filled the empty slot in the credits. He was appearing often late in the series.
Ezri, they should of just given the Dax symbiote to a Trill on Trill. Anyone else would be a pale impersonator. They shouldn't have even tried. Garak could have filled the empty slot in the credits. He was appearing often late in the series.
Agreed, I like Jadzia more. What I said was that her character flaws were made worse because of the fact that DS9 was a character drivern show, whereas TNG was plot driven. No characters on TNG were really that developed, they fulfilled their roles on the ship, and they became interesting because they were well realised, and their varied values were challenged by the story of the week. On DS9 all characters moved through multiple arcs, and were definetely different people at the end of the show than at the start. Usually the plot was there in order to make some impact on the characters, and those changes would be felt for sometime afterwards. This works great with people like Kira or Bashir, but its hell for a character like Jadzia, because you have to devote episodes and arcs to a character who the writers very quickly felt uncomfortable with.
Say what you want about Troi, but at least we never had to watch her courting Riker, or preparing for their wedding, or going to Risa to talk about their feelings. Even the immense cluster**** of the TNG movies only made us see part of their wedding.
This is not true.
What about Picard, and Data especially? Not to mention Worf and O'Brien. Yes, even while they were still on TNG, these characters were developed quite a bit. Think of all the Klingon episodes. O'Brien even got married on TNG, and had several episodes in which he, a "minor character", figured prominently, as well as numerous appearances in many episodes. Admittedly, Riker, Troi, Crusher, and Geordi were not developed as much, but this does not negate the point. Certain characters of TNG were quite thoroughly developed.
This is a wonderful post that needs love. You hit the nail on the head.
One thing I'd add is the fact that many of the smaller stations in the 90s began to start their own news cast at 10 pm. Growing up in the late 80s/Early 90s TNG would be on at 10 PM in my market. If your Fox affiliate didn't have a 10 PM newscast then there was probably a good chance TNG took that time slot.
Once TNG ended it seemed like many of the fox affiliates, and other independent stations, began their own news dept. Perhaps due to the rise of UPN/WB shortly afterwards?
Voyager got a stable timeslot in prime time. DS9 got bounced around to where it'd fit. A lot of times this would be at like 2 am. The fact that DS9 still had stronger ratings shows just how dedicated it's fanbase was!
Not that the ratings stuff isn't interesting but it hasn't been important regarding the show for over a decade now. I think what's important is that it was a good seven years. I have very fond memories of the show and at least once a year pull out the DVD's and watch it all the way through.
Maybe it would be better to say that they werent developed within the show, but were basically done when it started. Im not saying Picard and Data were not just as good as the characters on DS9, but they didnt really get developed throughout the series. You could turn on any two episodes of TNG and probably get the same Picard and the same Data. With Picard there is obviously his time as Locutus, but while that does influence some later episodes, theres very few of those. I may be wrong, but the only episodes after BOBW that are heavily influenced by that show are 'Family' and 'I Borg'. It may get mentioned at other times, like in 'The Drumhead', but its only really a passing reference.
Data doesnt really change at all, he doesnt become any more human or seem to learn anything. Im not saying this is a bad thing, because TNG was just that type of show, and the character was perfect to bounce stories off. The show wouldnt really have worked as well if he had become more human. Remember the emotion chip?
There just isnt really an arc for Data or Picard.
And yes, O'Brien did get married, but that wasnt an O'Brien story, it was only part of a Data story, and that episode also had the whole Romulan spy thing! It wasnt about the wedding as much as Data's reactions to it and a good chance to show Data's way of looking at human relationships. I dont think you can compare this to, say, the wedding of Worf and Dax, which had been built up over several seasons, and was the main part of that episode. Keiko didnt even appear until she got married!
Again, I want to stress that Im not calling TNG worse than DS9, Im just saying that these were two very different shows. In answer to the question of this thread, I partly think the fact that every character in DS9 needed an arc was what may have brung the show down a bit.
Wait, I thought TNG went on to be very popular...?
Oh wait - you weren't talking about TNG? (I guess I should have realized that since you used the word 'mediocre' rather than 'atrocious').
Seriously though - season 1 of DS9 was weak, but it had some great episodes, and season 2 was very good and severely underrated, although it had a stretch of average and bad episodes in the middle, but it also had a great stretch at the end. It's no worse - and it's in fact possibly better than season 3, and I see no reason to lump it as one of the "bad seasons"; people just seem to do this because of the myth that the show only got good after the Dominion was introduced, which is not true at all (IMO).
