Deep Space Nine thoughts & questions

[los2188]

Recently, I've been re-watching Deep Space Nine and I just love the format of episodes in which they are telling one big long story. Things that happened in one episode is often relevant in continuing episodes and I really like that. It's funny, when DS9 was in production, I hated it, but at the same time, I never really gave it a chance. I watched maybe 2 episodes total. I was so loyal to TNG that everything else was just fluff. It wasn't until years later that I watched it, gave it a chance, and grew to love it. My question is this...what happened? Why were the ratings or popularity, according to many comments that I've seen here and there, so...lame? I mean I always understood why they brought the Worf character to the show, but it just seems to me that this is one of the most well written and thought out shows in the Rick Berman/TNG era. Was the show not properly pushed or something??

 

[Tosk]

My question is this...what happened? Why were the ratings or popularity, according to many comments that I've seen here and there, so...lame?

I can answer that by quoting you.

[...]when DS9 was in production, I hated it, but at the same time, I never really gave it a chance.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

DS9 made observations about humanity that contradict Roddenberrian wisdom and that weren't taken seriously until 2001. It was an 00s show that aired in the 90s.

Why did I hate the show when it aired? Because it contradicted Roddenberrian wisdom, of course. Humans didn't progress over time. Take away their creature comforts and they're a bunch of savage beasts, even worse than the farengi. HERESY, teenager me said!

I think it's the opposite, people wanted to love the show. The highest rated Star Trek episode in history? The Emissary. But the fact is the number of people who want dark serial shows is far smaller than the number of people who want optimistic light heartedness. DS9 is what we want, but it's not what most of the Neilsen audience wants, unfortunately.

 

[DS9forever]

I remember the actors commenting at the wrap party that Paramount never promoted the show adequately and focused more on Voyager. I think DS9's ratings were consistently better than VOY's throughout DS9's run.

 

[Angel4576]

In the first instance I remember hating DS9 on principle. The principle being that it wasn't TNG.

When I got over that, and gave the show a chance, I found that it was pretty good. Towards the end of the first season it got very good, and then during the second season it got even better. By the end of year 2 I'd been completely won over.

I stuck with Trek all the way through Voyager, through Nemesis, and through Enterprise, but for me, DS9 was really the last time that Trek was brilliant.

It also helped when I stopped comparing the show with B5 in my head, and just accepted them both for what they were, great shows.

 

[Cinema Geekly]

A lot of it was people not giving it a chance. Instead of feeling like a stand alone show it was made to feel like a TNG spin off while TNG was still on the air.

I ended up giving it a second look and it's become my favorite incarnation of Trek. Unlike most other Trek shows I felt like DS9 was consistently good right from the get-go. And there was so much character development, I felt more attached to those characters more than others just because so much time was spent on character driven story arcs.

And I'm saying this as a lover of all things Trek, but DS9 is just a stand out to me when it comes to story telling.

 

[MacLeod]

No doubt a number of factors

Increasing competition
Star Trek on a Space Station!
etc..

And of course tastes change over time.

 

[DS9forever]

A lot of it was people not giving it a chance. Instead of feeling like a stand alone show it was made to feel like a TNG spin off while TNG was still on the air.

^ Interesting point. Which is a pity, because, for me at least, DS9's second season is by far superior to TNG's final season. "Necessary Evil" aired at the same time as "Force of Nature". "Blood Oath" aired at the same time as "Journey's End". "Armageddon Game" aired the same time as "Sub Rosa".

 

[Worf'sParmach]

Wheiit first aired I thought that a Star Trek show that didn't have a ship or a Captain was dumb. TNG was still on so I didn't pay it any attention. Then when TNG finished I started watching it (S3) and I was hooked. But, I always felt like DS9 was the "Jan Brady" or Trek at the time. It only had 1 season to be the only Trek on TV.

I know it sounds cliche', but I really think it was ahead of its time. If it had come in today's era of cable networks producing original programming focusing on heavily serialized stories it would rock. We're talking Breaking Bad/Walking Dead awesome.

And I do believe someone posted here a long time ago some data that showed that DS9's ratings were better than VOY's despite all that.

 

[Photon]

I was just like you.

My story:

I tried to watch DS9 when it began and again when Worf switched over. Just couldn't get into to it. Early on, there's was some pretty lame episodes. I liked Emissary but the ones after that were (then) boring.

Space station=yawn
No capt=WTF?
Bajor/Bajorans=Yawn squared

Then in fall of 1995 tried it again. Didn't know who the Jem Hadar was or the Shapeshifter/Changelings that was referred. Pretty good episode, but I was lost. Quit on it.

Late one night, I got to watching Spike TV and Sacrfice of Angels was onl Holy Cow that was awesome, so I watched a couple of more and really liked it
Then I was stuck for a week away from home and little to watch so I began to rewatch a week of it (S7) and thourghly loved it. Started DVRing it and have been hooked ever since.

Again, what hurt:
1) Writing much like early TNG in S1-boring
2) Voyager coming on and stealing some thunder
3) Not having a ship until S3

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think it's also much easier to be interested in the Bajorans after having watched Battlestar Galactica's New Caprica arc. At the beginning we saw them through TNG filters: Bajorans are just another planet in the Federation's path of all-inclusiveness, and the Occupation was just Cardassians being generally evil. After Galactica, any reference of the Occupation makes us imagine the New Caprica arc, and we finally get the Bajorans the way Ron Moore imagined them.

IMO here's how I'd rank the various seasons of Trek in the 87-03 era.

A+:
DS9 6

A
DS9 3-5, TNG 3-6

B
DS9 1-2 7.second half
Voy 5-6

C
TNG 2 7
Voy 1-2 7

D
DS9 7.first half
Voy 3-4
TNG 1

F
Enterprise

 

[MacLeod]

I remember the actors commenting at the wrap party that Paramount never promoted the show adequately and focused more on Voyager. I think DS9's ratings were consistently better than VOY's throughout DS9's run.

Some might say TPTB focusing on VOY actually helped DSN in terms of the stories they were able to tell as TPTB weren't really keeping an eye on it.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

That's very true. I remember they designed one entire Voyager episode around having The Rock in it for two minutes. Voyager's writers were slaves to the promo, DS9 could just hang back and tell the story they wanted.

 

[Jimi_James]

I would agree with the idea that while being the middle child within the Trek Family, might have hurt DS9's ratings during its original run and could possibly be linked to the reason why we'll never get a proper DS9 movie, that level of...neglect, aloud the writers to take far more risks than TNG or Voyager were capable of.

 

[M.A.C.O.]

The ratings chart tells the story... You can see the ratings for DS9's launch episode being the highest among all the others. It had the benefit of airing when TNG was still at the height of it's popularity. People saw it, and weren't impressed with what they saw. A space station, religious mumbo jumbo, whiny alliens, no starships only shuttlecrafts. Yeah no wonder DS9 ratings took a dive after the pilot.

Problem with DS9 I feel is the first 3 seasons were boring. TNG kept it light and adventure of the week. Tune in for a new adventure. Not your fancy try back next week.

DS9 had a shaky start. The preachy, whiny, and unsympathetic Bajorans grated my nerves

Dax was a know it all Spock type who borderlined Mary Sue with all her talents and knowledge

Odo hadn't been developed yet

The constant trolling by the Cardassians got annoying really fast. Not like they didn't have a government to run or anything.

DS9 didn't feel like a space station. It felt like a space mall with Sisko as the GM.

Season 4-7 we saw a change for the better for DS9. Unfortunately it came at the expense of ripping out things established by TOS and TNG. Breaking Kirk's greatest achievement the Khitomer Accords from Star Trek VI, and undoing TNG's Redemption storyline and by changing Gowron's character and making the Klingon Civil war a long forgotten footnote. The Dominion War was toyed and teased by the show runners for the better part of season 3, 4, 5, and finally jumped off in season 6. The first 6 episodes of season 6 to be exact. The the stories go back to episode of the week for specific characters with a mad dash to end the Dominion War in the last 9 episodes of season 7.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

DS9 really did develop the characters unlike any other series. A prime example of this is Jadzia. If you were to just take a look at her in any S1 episode and compare it to any S6 episode people might question wtf? She goes from being very Spock-esque to more of a "party girl", but if you watch all the episodes in between you see that at the beginning she is not long Joined, has a lot going on in her head as she tries to find the balance, but then embraces all her previous hosts have to offer and starts living her own life.

On the DVDs the producers said about how she was originally conceived as an old soul in a young body, but found that over time she was the one person always up for an adventure.

All the others developed along the way as well and without too much studio scrutiny and influence (as they were focused on TNG films and then VOY), they could think outside the box and do things differently. I think that DS9 being ignored made it a better series--just imagine how badly it could have gone if it'd gotten the VOY treatment! ::shudders::

 

[Angel4576]

just imagine how badly it could have gone if it'd gotten the VOY treatment! ::shudders::

Jeri Taylor would probably have insisted that the Dominion War be wrapped up inside two episodes, and at the end of it, something happened to reset everything to being the same as they were beforehand......

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

just imagine how badly it could have gone if it'd gotten the VOY treatment! ::shudders::

Jeri Taylor would probably have insisted that the Dominion War be wrapped up inside two episodes, and at the end of it, something happened to reset everything to being the same as they were beforehand......

Exactly. Just imagine the horror!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

DS9 had a shaky start. The preachy, whiny, and unsympathetic Bajorans grated my nerves

Dax was a know it all Spock type who borderlined Mary Sue with all her talents and knowledge

Odo hadn't been developed yet

The constant trolling by the Cardassians got annoying really fast. Not like they didn't have a government to run or anything.

DS9 didn't feel like a space station. It felt like a space mall with Sisko as the GM.

You see, that's how I felt when the show was on, but right now I find DS9 the easiest to go back to out of any Trek. Bajorans unsympathetic? Yes, by TV standards they are unsympathetic. That's what makes them more interesting than the cast of Friends, the scirpt makes no attempt to manipulate you into liking them. It doesn't cue when when to laugh and when to go 'Awww', it just presents them as they are, with the politics and the failings we have in real life. DS9 challenged the illusions of television, and at the time those were the illusions people wanted.

It's kind of ironic, when Galactica first came out it was praised for doing the exact same things DS9 was hated for. And DS9 is the one new fans have the easiest time connecting with too.

 

[dub]

I think what made DS9 fail for me during the time it originally aired was as others have mentioned, I initially thought the premise sounded boring. But more than that...having watched the entire series now, I really believe another reason the show failed was because the main characters, guest characters, relationships, alien species and ongoing threads became so complex, it was hard to jump in and catch an episode here and there and just enjoy it on its own. TNG was more episodic. This is oversimplifying it and certainly there are exceptions, but in TNG the characters simply weren't as multi-dimensional, so the shows were more about the individual stories than they were about complex character development, recurring guest characters or ongoing threads. I'm not knocking it, because I certainly enjoyed TNG. But by its nature it's much easier to catch random episodes of TNG here and there and know what's going on, skip around and still have the same basic set of defined characters. DS9 on the other hand was always adding characters and threads here and there and bringing them all back, so if you tuned in at random (as I did), you were just completely lost and uninterested. While I found the idea of a space station with shuttlecraft boring, I still tuned in from time to time hoping to love it. It never happened during its original run. But now that I've watched the entire series on Netflix, it's my favorite. Isn't that funny!