L
Lord Garth
Guest
Before I kick-start this thread proper let me say I'm continuing the tradition of non-regulars in starting up this thread. The other one is close enough to 1,000 and if it goes over the edge while I'm away then someone else would have to start up this one.
I first read about the DS9 in Star Trek Communicator in early-1992 when I was in seventh grade. I'd only been a Star Trek fan for about a year, having discovered it through the movies and daily reruns of TNG so, to my mind, the more, the merrier.
I saw the premiere on January 4, 1993 and it was an interesting night in more ways than one. The same night I was watching it, a bunch of 16-year-old punks in the house behind mine were playing loud rap music and throwing empty bottles of liquor at our house. My father had to call the cops. These kids had also spray-painted grafitti all over other people's fences, including a new one. They were no good and I'm sure most of them are in jail by now.
I'd recorded the entire episode so I was able to watch it again in peace. I was very impressed with "Emissary".
Unfortunately, as impressed as I was with the pilot, I wasn't so impressed with the episodes that came immediately afterwards both because the current season of TNG was better and because, being 13, the politics bored me to death. I stopped watching.
Some of the previews during the second season piqued my curiosity but I wasn't quite motivated enough to watch.
What finally drove me into watching DS9 again was the cancellation of TNG. VOY, which I was looking very much forward to, was several months away and I had to watch something, so I started watching DS9 with the third season and then never looked back.
I eventually got to see the first two seasons over the summer of 1997 and my overall opinion of early-DS9 definitely improved. The second season is hideously under-rated.
I posted a great deal on the Psi Phi DS9 board about DS9 so by the time I was completely posting on TrekBBS I was DS9'ed out.
During 1999 and 2000 the focus of my posting on TrekBBS was largely in GTD and FOT. In 2001 my focuses expanded to TOS as well. When the ENT Forum was created, I dropped FOT like a bad habit like everyone else and swithced over. ENT was an absolute war zone in those days. Imagine the ENT Forum being as bad as it can be, take that and multiply by 10, and then you've got an accurate idea of what it was like back then. I left the ENT Forum in October 2001.
In January 2002 I was made a moderator of GTD. I stayed there until January 2003 when I swtiched over to TOS. The TOS Forum had three moderators before I took the job. One who I thought undermoderated, one I thought overmoderated, and one who wasn't really there long enough before he moved out, so when I went into TOS I had to forge my own path from scratch, looking at what the first two moderators did right and wrong and then going from there. Moderating a series forum is very different from moderating a general forum because you have to make sure people don't accuse you of being biased in favor of the fans of that series and, at the same time, you don't want to be accused of overcompensation that's making you become not fair at all to the fans of the series. It was a difficult balance I had to find and it burned me out in the end, so I went back to GTD in October 2004.
In the year since I've branched out a bit, posting more in non-Trek forums and even accepting a position as admin. I'm a bit Star Trek-ed out to be honest and I probably would've resigned sometime in 2004 if not for the community here.
I first read about the DS9 in Star Trek Communicator in early-1992 when I was in seventh grade. I'd only been a Star Trek fan for about a year, having discovered it through the movies and daily reruns of TNG so, to my mind, the more, the merrier.
I saw the premiere on January 4, 1993 and it was an interesting night in more ways than one. The same night I was watching it, a bunch of 16-year-old punks in the house behind mine were playing loud rap music and throwing empty bottles of liquor at our house. My father had to call the cops. These kids had also spray-painted grafitti all over other people's fences, including a new one. They were no good and I'm sure most of them are in jail by now.
I'd recorded the entire episode so I was able to watch it again in peace. I was very impressed with "Emissary".
Unfortunately, as impressed as I was with the pilot, I wasn't so impressed with the episodes that came immediately afterwards both because the current season of TNG was better and because, being 13, the politics bored me to death. I stopped watching.
Some of the previews during the second season piqued my curiosity but I wasn't quite motivated enough to watch.
What finally drove me into watching DS9 again was the cancellation of TNG. VOY, which I was looking very much forward to, was several months away and I had to watch something, so I started watching DS9 with the third season and then never looked back.
I eventually got to see the first two seasons over the summer of 1997 and my overall opinion of early-DS9 definitely improved. The second season is hideously under-rated.
I posted a great deal on the Psi Phi DS9 board about DS9 so by the time I was completely posting on TrekBBS I was DS9'ed out.
During 1999 and 2000 the focus of my posting on TrekBBS was largely in GTD and FOT. In 2001 my focuses expanded to TOS as well. When the ENT Forum was created, I dropped FOT like a bad habit like everyone else and swithced over. ENT was an absolute war zone in those days. Imagine the ENT Forum being as bad as it can be, take that and multiply by 10, and then you've got an accurate idea of what it was like back then. I left the ENT Forum in October 2001.
In January 2002 I was made a moderator of GTD. I stayed there until January 2003 when I swtiched over to TOS. The TOS Forum had three moderators before I took the job. One who I thought undermoderated, one I thought overmoderated, and one who wasn't really there long enough before he moved out, so when I went into TOS I had to forge my own path from scratch, looking at what the first two moderators did right and wrong and then going from there. Moderating a series forum is very different from moderating a general forum because you have to make sure people don't accuse you of being biased in favor of the fans of that series and, at the same time, you don't want to be accused of overcompensation that's making you become not fair at all to the fans of the series. It was a difficult balance I had to find and it burned me out in the end, so I went back to GTD in October 2004.
In the year since I've branched out a bit, posting more in non-Trek forums and even accepting a position as admin. I'm a bit Star Trek-ed out to be honest and I probably would've resigned sometime in 2004 if not for the community here.
