I just started watching DS9 on Netflix. I really wanted to post to see what other people thought of the series. The only other season of Star Trek I've seen start to finish was TNG which was very recently. What does everyone think of DS9? When do you think this show gets good, or was it always good? Right now, I sort of don't like DS9... It had a horrible first episode and Major Kira (sp?) ... omg I hate Major Kira. She flies off the handle, disobeys orders, asks for favors that could potentially jeopardize treaties or good relations among races... don't get me started on episode 15. Then episode 19 where she is like "HE'S THE ENEMY RAWR!" and Sisko is like "you sound very impartial, I'll go ahead and let you lead the investigation PFFFFFT!" srsly Sisko? http://www.trekbbs.com/images/smilies/scream.gif
Just started watching for the first time
- Thread starter Garren
- Start date
I loved it from the start too, with Kira being my favourite character, because she wasn't the same buttoned down Starfleeter like the rest of the crew--gave an interesting new angle as well as some much needed conflict in the beginning. By the end you will see just how much she has grown.
Coming right after TNG (which is much in the same vein as TOS), DS9 can be a little difficult to warm up to. It is a different Trek. With a ship you can leave your troubles behind. On a station, that doesn't happen. As the series goes on, issues build upon each other, like layers of an onion. That's the best aspect of DS9. its complexity. That is why it gets better as it goes on.
On a personal level, I will admit I also had a hard time with Kira at first. She can be a little shrill (a fact even Nana admits). She tones it down after the first season. But that's first season-itis. Actors are finding their characters. thats pretty much true for any show. Kira is shrill, Bashir is immature, Sisko is aloof, etc.
Hang in there. By mid-second season when the episodes begin compounding on each other, that's when the good stuff starts. By the Fourth, I'm sure you'll be a full-fledged Niner.
On a personal level, I will admit I also had a hard time with Kira at first. She can be a little shrill (a fact even Nana admits). She tones it down after the first season. But that's first season-itis. Actors are finding their characters. thats pretty much true for any show. Kira is shrill, Bashir is immature, Sisko is aloof, etc.
Hang in there. By mid-second season when the episodes begin compounding on each other, that's when the good stuff starts. By the Fourth, I'm sure you'll be a full-fledged Niner.
DS9 is awesome. Kira is awesome. It definitely takes a couple seasons to hit a groove.
If you are judging it by TNG logic though like I did when I was 13 you'll probably hate it. Not everybody is a paragon in DS9. You expect Kira to be perfectly well balanced fresh off fighting the Cardassians her entire life? TNG says "This is a world where humans are perect". DS9 says "Here is how these humans from the perect moral paradise act when confronted with a universe that isn't perfect and people who grew up as slaves in constant terror of persecution".
Sisko let Kira lead the investigation despite not being totally objective because he trusted her professionalism and because her request had the subtext "Just give me a chance here, I promise I won't railroad him without evidence".
You'll appreciate it more if you watch it with an open mind without the expectation of moral perfection from all characters all the time.
If you are judging it by TNG logic though like I did when I was 13 you'll probably hate it. Not everybody is a paragon in DS9. You expect Kira to be perfectly well balanced fresh off fighting the Cardassians her entire life? TNG says "This is a world where humans are perect". DS9 says "Here is how these humans from the perect moral paradise act when confronted with a universe that isn't perfect and people who grew up as slaves in constant terror of persecution".
Sisko let Kira lead the investigation despite not being totally objective because he trusted her professionalism and because her request had the subtext "Just give me a chance here, I promise I won't railroad him without evidence".
You'll appreciate it more if you watch it with an open mind without the expectation of moral perfection from all characters all the time.
I was lukewarm towards it until the S2 finale, when it really goes for broke- it's a bit unfocused until that time.
On rewatching I enjoyed the earlier seasons more, but yes mid-to-late S2 is where the getting gets good.
On rewatching I enjoyed the earlier seasons more, but yes mid-to-late S2 is where the getting gets good.
I just finished watching the entire Series about 2 months ago approx?
It was my second viewing of the series. My first viewing was ages ago (like maybe 10 years ago?).
I absolutely hated the first viewing, and used to turn it off, sometimes not finishing episodes.
My second viewing was much better. The series was picked on too harshly in my opinion, and at the time, what I felt were shortcomings of the show in regards to the Star Trek universe, were really the shortcoming of the (sometimes horrible) acting.
Nana Visitor is one of the worst actresses in Star Trek. I'm sorry guys, but she sucked.
You are absolutely right, she flies off the handle, is bitchy, bitter, and just throws temper tantrums at will.
She gets marginally better, like a 20-30% improvement in later seasons?
The show really shines though with Quark and Odo, that's the real reason to watch the show. Anytime one of those 2 is on screen, you have a ball. When they are playing off each other, those episodes rival the best TNG episodes IMO.
I, being a huge TNG fan, can confidently tell you that TNG's strength was when it was doing very high concept Sci-Fi, and it got bad when trying to do political episodes.
DS9 is the reverse. It does its worst when trying to do the Sci-Fi stuff (comes off as a really bad TNG clone)
But it excels at the political stuff, which doesn't really kick in until Season 3, and even then sporadically until about mid Season 5?
I now can say I don't think about them as competing series, but rather complimentary.
I love TNG for different reasons than I love DS9, and neither series is really a competitor to the other IMO.
It's no coincidence that DS9 gets significantly better at the very tail end of S2/beginning of S3: That's when writers for TNG began fully moving over to DS9 (most notably, IMO, being Ronald D. Moore). As with the first couple seasons of TNG, there are still some gems within S1 and S2.
I can't even adequately express how much I disagree with this. There is nothing in it that comes even close to reality as I understand it.
Nana Visitor is in fact the best actress ever to appear on Star Trek, and created the best female character ever on Star Trek. She and Odo were the ones I connected with instantly on starting the show, because they had actual personalities. They were not the cardboard cut-out perfect humans of TNG. They were people, not colourless exposition machines.
All of the reasons for her behaviour were right there on the screen, and if you think all of it was pointless or just random shouting for no reason, then frankly you weren't paying attention. As someone upthread explained, if you think a person who spent every day of her life fighting for basic existence, who first picked up a weapon and killed a person at the age of 12, wouldn't have anger issues and difficulty adjusting to being a bureaucrat with more aliens in uniform telling her what to do, well I just don't know what else can be done to explain it to you.
As for the rest, I agree wholeheartedly that DS9 is at its best when doing political intrigue and not when doing sci-fi. Thankfully they quickly realised that themselves, and then the show went from strength to strength.
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You don't have to apologize for having an opinion...not even one that isn't shared by very many people.
Demonstrably not true:
- Terry Farrell was persistently out-acted by other people playing her part: Rene Auberjonois and John Glover were both better Daxs.
- Terry Farrell's poor acting contributed to two of Trek's worst episodes, most notably Meridian, in which she failed to create chemistry with her co-star and did some silly writhing at the end.
- The writers and producers had so little confidence in her acting that when it was revealed that the Dax symbiot was a murderer, they thought it better to keep the character asleep.
Nana Visitor wasn't even the worst actress on DS9. You might dislike the character's personality, but Visitor portrayed the character as conceived, and she gave the writers room to play with and develop it in later seasons. Terry Farrell contributed no more than a pretty face until Worf came along.
C'mon now, Meridian would have been just as dire no matter who was in the Dax role.
I think Frakes really wanted to make it special, and choreographed some complicated camera work (which Farrell ruined with her faked girlishness.)
I find that out of all the people who eventually loves DS9, roughly half loved DS9 right from the start. The other half only starts loving DS9 in season 3 when tweaks were made to the show.
I find it odd that people often say that DS9 "got good" in the third season, when I felt it was more or less in the same league as the second season. Still good, but it's not like it suddenly stepped up to a new level. They do get the Defiant introduced, but I don't think it's such a radical change beyond that and we don't even get much of the Dominion. It still feels very much like early DS9 with the heavier emphasis on Bajor's recovery. For me, where the show really steps up is in the fourth season with "The Way of the Warrior" and in a sense that is a reboot of the show because of the new emphasis on war and of course Worf is added bringing a new dynamic to the cast.
^By the end of season 2, there was already: Dukat, Garak, Winn, the Jem'hadar, the Dominion, the Vorta, the Obsidian Order, the Cardassian dissident movement, Odo's growing presence, Kira's growing subtlety, etc. The quality could vary from episode to episode, but many of the elements that made the latter seasons distinctive were already in place.
