Am I alone?

[RaymondJames]

Is it just me or does anyone else hate the first episode/pilot of Ds9?

The best things were wolf 359 clips, the Sisko hates Picard and meeting th enew characters but other than that it was just not up to par even for a pilot.

 

[indranee]

you are.

 

[backstept]

pilot episodes are rarely the best in a series, because they have to to a ton of legwork to get you the viewer up to speed on all the characters, and setting etc

 

[highlander]

I don't hate it. It's a pilot and as said above it takes it's time setting up for things to come. In my opinion it is way better than "Encounter at Farpoint". Although being a niner I'm kinda biased.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

pilot episodes are rarely the best in a series, because they have to to a ton of legwork to get you the viewer up to speed on all the characters, and setting etc

Agreed.

DS9's pilot did what it needed to do in introducing the major characters as well as Dukat. It got us familiar with the idea of having non-Starfleet characters as main characters for the first time on a Trek show. It got us introduced to the idea of a show taking place on a Cardassian-built space station as opposed to a Federation-built starship named "Enterprise". It got us used to the idea of the primary character (Sisko) as a single parent, and gave us some backstory about him....plus introduced the concept of the Emissary. Plus introduced Dukat as his chief nemesis.

It introduced the Prophets, the Wormhole, and gave us the basic concepts behind the religion and the religious hierarchy on Bajor as well as the basics of the Bajoran/Cardassian conflict and ongoing issues. Because never before had we had a Trek show which was tied so closely to a single planet and culture. And in DS9's case, we almost had two such planets: Bajor, and secondarily, Cardassia.

Finally, we had some action - through the Wolf 359 sequences, the wormhole sequences, and the sequences related to when they were moving the station.

Emissary had a tremendous amount of work to do as, at the time it aired, there had never EVER been seen a Star Trek show of this type. The TNG pilot didn't have nearly as much work to do - a Federation ship called Enterprise, a single captain married to his job, no non-Starfleet main characters, no Nemesis to set up...no particular planet to tie in, no religion to tie in. Nothing like that. It was TOS, only modernized a bit, was all. Not so with DS9.

Me? I'm thinkin' they didn't do so bad for 90 minutes worth of episode.

Certainly beats TNG's craptacular and extremely dated pilot. And sets up the story just as well as VOY's pilot and ENT's pilot. Since TOS didn't really have an official pilot...well, I'm just not seeing what the beef is.

 

[DanCPA]

I enjoyed DS9's pilot... While not the best Trek pilot, it did the job it had to do

 

[Anthony Sabre]

Hate is too strong a word. But I do clearly remember disliking both Sisko and DS9 after Emissary ended. Obviously changed my mind after that.

 

[Colonel Green]

I liked the pilot a HELL of a lot more than the following couple seasons.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

I hated it at first because of all the prophets scenes but now I think they are absoloutly fantastic and a great way of getting Sisko to deal with his greif.
I think it's the best Pilot out of TNG, VOY, ENT, DS9, with maybe some compitition from Caretaker.
As for TOS well thats in a league of it's own with the Cage.
I do think they overdid the Kira thing tho...

they practically screamed it at us "SHES VERY ANGRY!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU GET IT !!!!!!!!!!!!! SHES REALLY ANGRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

 

[Lateralus]

The first episode, IMO, was great. Especially given the bar set by other shows.

In fact, I think DS9 had the strongest first season of any Trek series aside from the Original.

 

[maxsideburn]

I think the pilot (well that and the first two seasons) are why so many other trekkies just don't get DS9. Honestly I thought it was pretty lame myself, but I love DS9, my favorite trek series.

 

[DarkHelmet]

I thought it was a great pilot, surpassed IMO only by Enterprise's pilot.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

I do think they overdid the Kira thing tho...

they practically screamed it at us "SHES VERY ANGRY!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU GET IT !!!!!!!!!!!!! SHES REALLY ANGRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

I agree with you on this bit.

Because of this, I didn't like Kira very much at all, at first. I love her now. In fact, after Sisko she is my second favorite DS9 character.

But back then I really thought she was way too hostile.

 

[Moocey]

pilot episodes are rarely the best in a series, because they have to to a ton of legwork to get you the viewer up to speed on all the characters, and setting etc

Agreed.

DS9's pilot did what it needed to do in introducing the major characters as well as Dukat. It got us familiar with the idea of having non-Starfleet characters as main characters for the first time on a Trek show. It got us introduced to the idea of a show taking place on a Cardassian-built space station as opposed to a Federation-built starship named "Enterprise". It got us used to the idea of the primary character (Sisko) as a single parent, and gave us some backstory about him....plus introduced the concept of the Emissary. Plus introduced Dukat as his chief nemesis.

It introduced the Prophets, the Wormhole, and gave us the basic concepts behind the religion and the religious hierarchy on Bajor as well as the basics of the Bajoran/Cardassian conflict and ongoing issues. Because never before had we had a Trek show which was tied so closely to a single planet and culture. And in DS9's case, we almost had two such planets: Bajor, and secondarily, Cardassia.

Finally, we had some action - through the Wolf 359 sequences, the wormhole sequences, and the sequences related to when they were moving the station.

Emissary had a tremendous amount of work to do as, at the time it aired, there had never EVER been seen a Star Trek show of this type. The TNG pilot didn't have nearly as much work to do - a Federation ship called Enterprise, a single captain married to his job, no non-Starfleet main characters, no Nemesis to set up...no particular planet to tie in, no religion to tie in. Nothing like that. It was TOS, only modernized a bit, was all. Not so with DS9.

Me? I'm thinkin' they didn't do so bad for 90 minutes worth of episode.

Certainly beats TNG's craptacular and extremely dated pilot. And sets up the story just as well as VOY's pilot and ENT's pilot. Since TOS didn't really have an official pilot...well, I'm just not seeing what the beef is.

What you said.

 

[Apogeal Alpha01]

Not with you. Emissary was so good that most of the rest of the season paled by comparison. With hindsight, they aren't as bad as I thought they were then, but still, it was the best episode of season 1.

I wasn't sold on Brooks totally that first episode because of parts of his performance in the wormhole, but I loved him everywhere else.

 

[Worf412]

they practically screamed it at us "SHES VERY ANGRY!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU GET IT !!!!!!!!!!!!! SHES REALLY ANGRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

Hahaha, yes.

They also beat us over the head with the "Also, she was in the Resistance" stick quite a bit.

 

[tomalak301]

I've come to enjoy Emissary more with each viewing and passing year. It's probably because the first time I was 10 years old and I thought it was kind of boring (But came to really look forward to the series every week just because it was Star Trek and that was the Golden Era) but it's great now. I think I still like Caretaker as a better pilot though because there is more action and they do a better job setting everything up. Still, all the Trek pilots have thier ups and downs, but Emissary is more up than down.

 

[Jono]

^ I was in the same boat, I was about 11 when I saw Emissary and only the Borg battle and a bit of the Cardassians attacking the station at the end held any interest for me. I didn't even get into the series until season 4 or 5. When I first saw Caretaker, I would have rated it above Emissary purely on the battle scene at the end with Chakotay ramming that huge Kazon ship.

My opinion has since changed and I really enjoy Emissary now and rate it as my favourite pilot. I really enjoy the fact that they had Sisko break down in tears and admit he was trapped by the memory of his wife's death...very powerful scene.

 

[Unicron]

I do think they overdid the Kira thing tho...

they practically screamed it at us "SHES VERY ANGRY!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU GET IT !!!!!!!!!!!!! SHES REALLY ANGRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

I agree with you on this bit.

Because of this, I didn't like Kira very much at all, at first. I love her now. In fact, after Sisko she is my second favorite DS9 character.

But back then I really thought she was way too hostile.

On the plus side, while Kira's character was a little cliched in the pilot, it was nice to have an outsider's perspective on the Federation - someone who wasn't so eager to just accept them as the good guys.

 

[Navaros]

I have mixed feelings about Emissary.

As a kid it totally put me off of DS9 when I watched it during it's original airing. I always loved TOS, but couldn't care less about all these weird aliens DS9 was acting like I should care about. And for the most part, it was just talking, as opposed to TOS which had plenty of action too (the Wolf 359 intro was way too short to makeup for this shortfall). When the Prophets were possessing Jake and asking "What is baseball?" in a voice that makes it sound like they have severe cognitive problems (to put it politely ) I had had enough, and tuned out DS9 from that point on. It was only as an adult after DS9 had gone off the air, that I happend upon DS9 again and realized it was a great show.

Looking back on Emissary now, I can respect that at least they were trying to establish some meaningful plot points in the pilot. Which IMO is more than can be said of any other Trek series, which didn't even bother to establish any meaningful plot points because of their episodic nature.

Having said that, I still find Emissary to be a very boring episode. I still couldn't care less about Bajorans or the Prophets and still find them to be boring & extremely annoying. I have no idea why Emissary is generally so highly regarded as being entertaining to watch, or among DS9's best episodes. I wouldn't even put Emissary in DS9's top 50.