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Andy Griffith Show in Space?

A

Aaron Snyder

Ensign
Newbie
I'm rewatching DS9 for the first time since the 90s and I was curious if anyone else found similarities with it and the Andy Griffith Show?

Both focus on a widower in a position of authority that has to teach his son life lessons, etc. He has an Aunt Bee style matriarch in the form of Dax. He has a mischievous Ernest T. Bass character in Quark, an Otis character in Morn, and a hot headed deputy in Kira. He often has to lend a hand to help the townsfolk (station personel) with their personal issues. Too top it off, the pilot practically starts with Sisko and Jake fishing. DS9 often gets wacky visitors (the Nagus, Lwaxana Troi) just like Mayberry.

I could be grasping at straws here and I know later in the show there's a major war and that will change everything but the first two seasons definitely have a Mayberry vibe for me.
 
Aaron Welcome to the show, and WOW!
Your above comparison never occurred to me, but it is tickling my brain and making me laugh!

Dax Aunt Bea! :lol:

Would Howard be Odo?
Mr. Darlin certainly as Dukat
I could see some Lwaxana in Aunt Bea's friend, Clara!
I suppose the squad car would be the runabout; Yangtzee or Rio Grande, your choice!

But, what of Barney!???


This really made my morning! Good Fun and nice, wacky connection! I LIKE!!
 
I don't think that there was a direct effort to make Mulberry in space, but the Andy Griffith Show was obviously a prominent part of American culture. I could see that the tropes influenced the producers, even at a subconscious level. I can see the resemblance most strongly in Sisko being a single father.
 
So then, when Barn has his bullet in his uniform shirt pocket, before he puts it in his gun, is that like a phaser on "stun"?
 
HIjol said:
But, what of Barney!???
Click to expand...

Thank you for the welcome! There's no exact fit for Barney, but I think either Kira or Odo could work.

Kira is the first officer as Barney was the deputy, so there's a similarity as far as position goes. Barney would get hot headed and rash and would need to be restrained by Andy. The same situation seems to frequently arise with Sisko and Kira. To Kira's credit Barney was never tortured as a prisoner of the Cardassians.

On the other hand Odo kind of shares Barney's dedication to justice. They both have a no nonsense attitude when it comes to establishing law and order. One major difference is that Barney isn't a shape shifter (that we know of).
 
I've read that they actually had this show, starring a widower and his son in a frontier setting, in mind:

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(It actually started in 1958.)
 
As a resident expert on Mayberry (not Mulberry, as someone said lol), I would definitely say Bashir was Barney-like with women, especially early on in DS9, but there's not a great fit for Barney on DS9. I think the suggestion that Lwaxana would be Clara is great. There's really not much that's similar in the two that's not also similar on a lot of other shows over the years, other than the single Dad. But I like any thread on the BBS that references TAGS. :techman:
 
Starfleet Engineer said:
there's not a great fit for Barney on DS9.
Click to expand...

Sure there is: Alexander Rozhenko.

As for the OP, no, DS9 is nothing like the Andy Griffith show. Some very board similarities might exist, such as that Alexander is a bumbling loser just as Barney is a bumbling loser, but those types (or any of the other types that occur in both shows) are so common that for both shows to have them essentially means nothing.

Going with that kind of logical, one could just as well say that DS9 is like the Andy Griffith show because both shows feature male characters, or because both shows features human characters, or because both shows feature characters who were born on planet Earth.
 
It's not that it is the Andy Grifith show in space. It's that both this show and the Andy Grifith show were pulling from some classic Western tropes, and changing them up into a differing setting. They were both playing with the Small Town/Frontier Town settings. It didn't come from the Andy Grifith show. The same things could be found in most Western shows going back to radio.
 
Come to think of it, the Andy and Barney are not unlike Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
Sokath! HIs eyes uncovered!
 
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