How Would You Change "Deep Space Nine"?

One good line doesn't make an episode.

 

ANY episode that involves Benjamin Lafayette Sisko planting a right cross in Q's kisser is automatically worthy.

Especially when it also caused that "you'll ravish me" outtake.

 

Another change I'd make... arrange so that Tom Riker and Ro Laren appeared a few more times, as surviving Maquis. Maybe have their story end with them escaping in the chaos of the war, and running off together.

Later on, we find out on Lower Decks that Tom cleaned out a Quark's franchise with his dabo skills, and he and Ro retired to a nice little moon together. They still bicker regularly... but they always make up.

 

I would have liked to see some sort of resolution to Tom Riker and Ro Laren. I don't really believe Tom cleaning out a Quark's franchise, though. The first day's casino training school is when somebody keeps winning and winning tell them "Hasn't this been fun" and give them a complementary beverage when they step away from the table....

 

If they hadn’t done the war arc or if they kept the series going for another couple of 26-episode seasons, I could see a bunch of followups for characters…

Cal Hudson’s and Ro Laren’s heroic demises when Cardassia joined the Dominion and they helped them wipe out the Maquis. They’d be tragic but lend even more menace to the new Dominion foothold in the Alpha Quadrant.

The return of Quark’s El-Aurian business rival Martus. Maybe the long-lived alien drops by to score a deal on something on his way out of this part of space before the war begins and he warns Quark to get out of Dodge before he gets killed too. Maybe the twist is he’s selling weapons or intel to the Dominion. He’s listened and knows which way the war’s going to go. Make yours and get out.

It wasn’t entirely clear to me Kang died at the end of “Blood Oath.” I could see his death be in a follow up episode. Maybe as a voice against rising star (Changeling) Martok and the Klingon return to the Old Ways. Each returning TOS Klingon could get their own episode to die in. “Blood Oath,” “Patriots,” and “Once More Unto the Breach.”

After Jadzia’s death, Data comes to visit Worf as representative of his old crew otherwise engaged on heading the First Fleet on the flagship in wartime. Only it turns out it’s the reassembled Lore reprogrammed by 31 to terminate Bashir. …thwarted, he’s reprogrammed by Sisko and Bashir to become their mole in the organization?

Klingon “Lower Decks”? Whatever happened to reprogrammed Kurn during the war—might his ship have crashed on a Cardassian prison world and his dying action been the liberation of one Sito Jaxa?

 

The return of Q. Come on, after the first one are we really going to leave it at that? Muahahahahaaaa. Q is fun but he’s best when he menacing, no…?

Later in the series, Q returns to show the new maybe-a-little-too-faithful Emissary the err of his ways. When Sisko mocks the notion that Q too might be worshipped as a god on some worlds, he challenges the idea that the Prophets are any more deserving. Q hurls Sisko into the distant future at the end of the thousand year Golden Age promised for the Bajorans once the Emissary fulfills his task. Only, it’s not what he expected. Bajor has known a thousand years of peace and prosperity but remains not very different from how they were a thousand years earlier. Yet the Federation has expanded throughout the galaxy and evolved beyond physical form. Q reminds him that Bajor was like this, “architects and artists, builders and philosophers,” hundreds of thousands of years ago, “when Humans were not yet standing erect”…then the Prophets began to “protect” them. Looking around, is The Sisko so sure that this is what is best for Bajor? Q returns Sisko to DS9 to reconsider if “the Emissary” should be more proactive in shaping the Prophets’, the Wormhole Aliens’(?) plan—one ultimately formulated by beings beyond time. Or if he really has gone native and maybe shouldn’t, for the Bajorans’ sake or his own, be there at all.

 

Biggest change I would make to DS9...

More focus on Federation politics. The Federation President would be a recurring character, maybe see some of what goes on in the Federation Council.

But more specific...

After Odo's secret that he abetted the execution of three Resistance members during the Occupation came to light in Season Five, I absolutely do not believe that the Bajoran Militia would have allowed him to retain his commission and posting as Chief of Security. He would have been either forced to resign or court-martialed. If it were up to me, Odo after that episode would have gone into business as a private detective on the Promenade.

 

That might have been a good way to bring in someone like Eddington. Odo gets the boot (for awhile anyway) so his Starfleet counterpart has to take over.

 

I imagine the Bajorans would want the new station chief of security to be a Militia officer. Kira and Odo were the only Militia officers in the station's senior staff, and I don't think the Bajorans would be okay with only having one Militia officer left there after Odo leaves.

 

Then they could give us Shaxxs 20 years early.

 

Followed by season nine and ten!

Now if that has happened before the opening credits and Q vanished never to reappear that would've been so much better

 

I'd like to see that in a series, but I'm not sure it would fit in DS9. After all the series takes place on a distant outpost, the first point of contact with species /civilizations such as the Bajoran, the Cardassians, or, later, the Dominion. I don't think that can be combined with a lot of emphasis on the inner workings of the Federation, which essentially would take place on faraway planets such as Earth, where the Defiant crew would only show up very occasionally.

I'm not so sure. Many 'grey' policemen or functionaries that weren't outright Nazi collaborators, but that had occasionally been complicit in helping the Nazis to apprehend and perhaps execute resistance fighters never were persecuted or even removed from power after the war. Those countries simply had bigger issues to deal with at that moment and they often couldn't replace able functionaries in short order (because they'd have to replace hundreds or even thousands of them). Why would it be any different on Bajor?

 

Maybe tone down the Pah Wraiths as this major threat? I didn't like how they dominated a lot of the seventh season.

But basically, I'd have liked the show to go on after the end of the Dominion War. Either one proper season or two, short ones ala season one. Have Garak and Odo leave, obviously, and go from there. Basically keep the first half of What You Leave Behind as The End of the War, and go from there. Maybe really end the show on Bajor's admission to the Federation. And I guess the Dukar-Win-Sisko subplot saved for that very last episode as well.

 

I don't agree. I mean, the series already featured as recurring characters the First Minister of Bajor, the leader of Cardassia, and the Chancellor of the High Council of the Klingon Empire. Even the Praetor of the Romulan Star Empire made an appearance. And on numerous occasions, Sisko is faced with decisions that would realistically be made at the presidential level -- whether to leak to Cardassia that the Klingons were invading; whether to mine the Bajoran Wormhole; the entire plan to trick the Romulans into joining the war. I'm not saying the President should appear nearly so often as characters like Martok or Garak -- but the President should at least have appeared as often as Gowron.

There's a pretty big difference between a city cop and the head of security for the Republic of Bajor's most important (possibly their own) starbase. That's the issue -- even if they can't get rid of every beat cop who might have helped the Cardassians once or twice, keeping the head of security of their most important outpost is a much bigger issue -- and it's not like they would realistically lack for applicants.

 

Much as I like DS9, this is one of the aspects I think is very unrealistic, and therefore a potential weakness of the series. Sisko is introduced as a low-level commanding officer on a remote and not-too-important outpost, not even a Captain yet by the beginning of the series. And yet, at the end of the series he routinely makes decisions that indeed realistically should have been taken at far higher levels. Now, in itself this is a traditional element of Star Trek - a Captain making decisions that are actually beyond his pay grade in a remote corner of the galaxy because he cannot communicate with Starfleet Command, or at least not in a timely fashion. But Sisko wasn't in such an isolated situation, and, moreover, his decisions usually did not just impact the Planet of the Week, but often the future relations of two or more major powers.

As soon as the key importance of the station for the Federation became clear, realistically I think a far more senior commander (I'd say a Fleet Captain at least) would have taken Sisko's place, and Sisko would either have been placed under him, or relegated to a different posting. The first is more likely though, given his religious status on Bajor, in which capacity he still would have been the best man for Picard's assignment to prepare Bajor for admission into the Federation. And even that more senior commander, taking up the Starfleet side of responsibilities, would not have been allowed to take the kind of decisions Sisko made in the series, except in an extreme emergency.

But I admit that a lot of the great stories we got now in that case couldn't have been told in quite the same way.

 

Regarding leaders of political powers appearing on DS9...

It made sense that Shakaar appears a couple times. The station is in their own star system.

The leader of Cardassia... yes, the self appointed leader Dukat appeared, but really, had he not gotten Cardassia in bed with the Dominion, he would still be a Gul. Damar as leader was on the station only once, which was for the 'peace talks in "STATISTICAL PROBABILITIES".

And the Romulan Praetor only appeared because Bashir was on Romulus during that conference in "INTER ARMA ENIM SILENT LEGES". Federation President Jaresh Inyo appeared in more episodes than he did. ("HOMEFRONT"/"PARADISE LOST" two-parter.)

As for Gowron, you make a valid point there. He appeared in twice as many DS9 episodes as he did in TNG.

But overall, I don't think the inner workings of Federation politics would have really worked on DS9. They are too far from the core worlds. Gowron appearing as often as he did can be justified by the fact Klingon space is closer to that area and Klingons are more about the thrill of battle than a typical Federation citizen, especially a politician. I doubt the Federation president even leaves Earth.


Regarding Sisko making the big calls...

The minefield was actually an order given to him by Starfleet. He might have suggested mining the wormhole to Starfleet, but during the wardroom meeting, he said Starfleet agreed that the Dominion ships must stop coming through.

Same with bringing the Romulans into the war... he did tell Starfleet the idea, and they gave it their blessing.

Leaking to the Cardassians that the Klingons were coming was probably the one thing he did fully on his own, since the Federation condemned the invasion but they wanted to stay out of the situation.

 

Damar was a recurring character from season four onwards. How often he was on the station per se is not the issue; the issue is how often he appeared on the show. (He was on the station throughout the S6 occupation, though.)

According to the maps, Klingon space is actually supposed to be on the other side of the Federation from Bajor.

I mean, if the President of the United States never left Washington, I doubt they'd be able to do a very good job. If the Federal Chancellor of Germany never left Berlin, I doubt they'd do a very good job. If the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom never left London, I doubt they'd be able to do a very good job.

Okay, but then, I think we should have seen the President and his staff making that decision and authorizing Sisko.

 

When Sisko was on subspace talking to admirals on Earth, they could talk back and forth with no delay. None of this, tape your message and in a few days their reply should have got here. That means Starfleet Command would have the big calls sent up to them, instead of made by Sisko in the field.

Being in charge of a space station with thousands of civilians plus starfleet and Bajoran crew is a big job. Once it was clear the station would be a long-term thing they should have made him a commodore, at least. Once he was also Admiral Ross's chief of staff in the war, he should have been an admiral. (But TPTB probably didn't want him outranking Kirk, Picard, etc.)

 

Sisko really should have been a commodore.

 

No, the issue was how often leaders of different empires appeared. Damar was not leader of Cardassia until after Dukat lost his marbles down the turbolift. And as I mentioned in my post, Damar as leader of Cardassia was only on the station in "STATISTICAL PROBABILITIES".