News Behr: Deep Space Nine Too Different For Some

[Spot261]

I always felt the Ferengi were an antisemitic caricature like Watto from The Phantom Menace.

More an anti capitalist caricature, but they had to do something with the race that had fell flat as villains in TNG. They took their defining characteristic and made it into a point of comedy rather than the intended menace. In many ways Orions were (and are) more representative of what was intended for the Ferengi.

 

[Jayson1]

I don't see why people always go to the Jewish angle with the Ferengi, first. I mean I can see why people might consider it but to me the Ferengi are a almost a clear attempt at social commentary of the 1980's, Wall Street loving,greed is good, Reaganomics mindset. Maybe if they had been created in any other time than the 80's I would have gone with the Jewish angle, first.

Jason

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I always felt the Ferengi were an antisemitic caricature like Watto from The Phantom Menace.

I’m not sure I agree with that. Any alien race that prioritizes profit can be associatively linked to Jewish stereotypes, but unlike Watto they have no Jewish-specific features or accents.

If you accuse any portrayal of a profit obsessed race as being about Jews, aren’t you the one making the connection between the two?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

And TNG couldn't begin to do stuff like "Sons of Mogh" and the arc culminating with the all-time great "For the Uniform". (Never mind the sheer awesomeness of the arc that led to another all-time great, "In The Pale Moonlight".)

And I was technically older as well. Time and maturity...

DS9 has an amazing balance on future idealism steeped in reality. Most Trek shows have something of interest, but DS9 is, to this day, my favorite Trek incarnation. Followed by TOS (warts and all)...

I think Sons of Mogh is one of the series worst episodes. The resolution was absurd and unmade s good character in an awful way.

 

[kkt]

I think Sons of Mogh is one of the series worst episodes. The resolution was absurd and unmade s good character in an awful way.

What would have been a good resolution to the problem? What happens to a Klingon younger brother whose older brother is disgraced? It seems contribed for it to be a reflection on the younger brother.

 

[Jayson1]

I’m not sure I agree with that. Any alien race that prioritizes profit can be associatively linked to Jewish stereotypes, but unlike Watto they have no Jewish-specific features or accents.

If you accuse any portrayal of a profit obsessed race as being about Jews, aren’t you the one making the connection between the two?

I didn't even know people thought of Watto as a Jewish stereotype until literally right now. I never noticed it.

Jason

 

[JirinPanthosa]

What would have been a good resolution to the problem? What happens to a Klingon younger brother whose older brother is disgraced? It seems contribed for it to be a reflection on the younger brother.

Kurn could have joined another family in secret without losing his memory. It might be too close to the Redemption arc. Or, they could have come up with some Klingon ritual for the younger brother to cast a dishonored older brother from the family. He could have sided with Gowron and been part of the showdown to expose him as a changeling.

 

[Vger23]

I wasn't a fan of DS9 in the beginning either (although I LOVED "Emissary" as a pilot), but it wasn't because of how different it was. In fact, the promised differences are absolutely what appealed to me.

I wasn't a fan just because it was dreadfully dull for most of the first two seasons. Like, more dull than TNG, which was saying a lot back then. It wasn't until the USS Odyssey was destroyed that DS9 grew the beard. Everything after that moment is pretty much gold.

 

[kkt]

Kurn could have joined another family in secret without losing his memory. It might be too close to the Redemption arc. Or, they could have come up with some Klingon ritual for the younger brother to cast a dishonored older brother from the family. He could have sided with Gowron and been part of the showdown to expose him as a changeling.

Hm, yes, having Kurn side with Gowron could have made for some great drama. Brothers on opposite sides of a war.

 

[Nakita Akita]

The biggest thing that kept me from liking it when it was first on is Quark. And a friend of mine recently said something similar. "Stories about a Ferengi trying to make profit, who cares?"

But I also didn't like how they reversed some of the things TNG did, and had the Federation doing some things the Federation described to us in TNG would never do.

The utopia concept is sweet.
It is relaxing to turn on the TV and think of the world were you are just perfect the way you are are. No need to go outside your comfort zone or stress about anything.
And Picard is the captain that really feels the Federation security blanket securely around his shoulders. This enables the over the top superiority treatment to be acceptable and believable.
I had been a legislative aide and was in the Army when this show was on. Lol.
Let me tell you about a wake up call to reality, the US legislative process and the military.
If you want to see conniving and back stabbing, illegal and illicit behavior, those were two premier places to see it.
For me the ONLY thing that makes the show good is that Strwart was able to act well enough to be convincing in his role of a total believer in the goodness etc. of the Federation and Starfleet.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

The utopia concept is sweet.
It is relaxing to turn on the TV and think of the world were you are just perfect the way you are are. No need to go outside your comfort zone or stress about anything.

I liked TNG for its message. However, it seems that not everyone was receiving the same message. Some of us, like me, thought there was an optimism that our problems can be solved. Others saw a future in which we simply lapsed our problems. DS9, asking how our problems are solved, appealed only to the former group.

 

[Jayson1]

I liked TNG for its message. However, it seems that not everyone was receiving the same message. Some of us, like me, thought there was an optimism that our problems can be solved. Others saw a future in which we simply lapsed our problems. DS9, asking how our problems are solved, appealed only to the former group.

I think the optimism pulled me in but I also felt I needed that optimism personally at that time in my life. I still like it on that level. It's just my tastes have matured as I got older but the show still has a place in my heart and I still like watching it for that optimism even if I can see the flaws from a artistic level such as a lack of internal conflict. It helps that Pillar helped max out every inch of potential from the concept.

Jason

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I think the optimism pulled me in but I also felt I needed that optimism personally at that time in my life. I still like it on that level. It's just my tastes have matured as I got older but the show still has a place in my heart and I still like watching it for that optimism even if I can see the flaws from a artistic level such as a lack of internal conflict. It helps that Pillar helped max out every inch of potential from the concept.

Jason

I completely appreciate that love for TNG. It might be too easy to blame that series for not showing problems being solved. It was a counterpoint Ronald Reagan's conservatism, a type of optimism that purported that we already lived in the best possible society that had no problems to be solved.

 

[Roundabout]

DS9 is the kind of show that might be easier for an adult to grasp and appreciate.

When DS9 originally aired, I couldn't get into it; maybe because I was young and an idiot back then, and also because it aired contemporaneously with TNG. It was so different than TNG, and DS9 was not what I expected of a Star Trek show.

I didn't become a DS9 fan until many years after it ended its original run. By then, I had a more cynical view of things and the times were different as well. When I watched the show when it was in reruns, I liked it from the outset, from season 1 on wards.

I didn't think the early seasons were boring or anything of the kind. One of my favorite season 1 episodes is "Progress". There might not always be a happy ending. DS9's stories and characters, especially Kira and Odo, are more engaging and at a more deeper level that I didn't get with TNG, and probably not with TOS either.



I am curious how a scifi fan (a youngster and an adult) but a newbie to the Star Trek franchise, without any Trek baggage, would react to watching DS9 today for the first time.

 

[Nakita Akita]

DS9 is the kind of show that might be easier for an adult to grasp and appreciate.

When DS9 originally aired, I couldn't get into it; maybe because I was young and an idiot back then, and also because it aired contemporaneously with TNG. It was so different than TNG, and DS9 was not what I expected of a Star Trek show.

I didn't become a DS9 fan until many years after it ended its original run. By then, I had a more cynical view of things and the times were different as well. When I watched the show when it was in reruns, I liked it from the outset, from season 1 on wards.

I didn't think the early seasons were boring or anything of the kind. One of my favorite season 1 episodes is "Progress". There might not always be a happy ending. DS9's stories and characters, especially Kira and Odo, are more engaging and at a more deeper level that I didn't get with TNG, and probably not with TOS either.



I am curious how a scifi fan (a youngster and an adult) but a newbie to the Star Trek franchise, without any Trek baggage, would react to watching DS9 today for the first time.

Unfortunately I think possibly an older person might, big might like the show,
But a younger person, or teen, I just couldn't see it.
Limited "action" scenes and what there is are surely not as fabulous as the GCI now that looks blurry and choppy, you know, the stuff everyone oohs and aahs over now.

Also, "relationships" ????
How can we know what the pair did unless we get to watch them doing it?
No nudity?
Is this a show for little kids?
Sadly I honestly think that a show like this, more about dialogue and 'human' interactions and emotions may never be big again.
I don't watch hardly any modern TV but when I happen to stupidly pause the channel on a newer show, I'm seeing some dialogue, but it seems trite and only applicable to the characters on the show, or I see gratuitous 'nudity' as much as can show on over the air USA TV. Gratuitous in that about 90+% is purely about sex.

I see over the top blood and gore too.

I think thought provoking shows that can be duscussed out side the context of the show itself are mostly if not completly gone.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

Limited "action" scenes and what there is are surely not as fabulous as the GCI now that looks blurry and choppy, you know, the stuff everyone oohs and aahs over now.

My son loves space battles, remastered or not. I think that adults are the ones who mostly fret about such things.