Did you imagine a third Star Trek series would follow TNG?

[Joeman]

That idea certainly didn't seem ridiculous to me at the time. My idea of a show about space exploration was just that, exploring space. I never expected the 4077th to zip around to different planets.

Really? Exploring space doesn't mean running around looking under every space rock you can find. It means actually learning about other societies in space. It can easily be argued that DS9 does more exploring than TNG.

I certainly would not argue with that, NOW. I had a different outlook on it in 1993, which was my point. Up to that time my only real experience with watching a space show was TOS and TNG (other than maybe Lost in Space). A show set on a stationary space station seemed boring (keep in mind, I'm not much of a geek). Hober said that that way of thinking was ridiculous, and I'm saying it's not, or at least it wasn't uncommon. I know I'm not the only one who felt like that when DS9 came out.

 

[Hober Mallow]

That idea certainly didn't seem ridiculous to me at the time. My idea of a show about space exploration was just that, exploring space. I never expected the 4077th to zip around to different planets.

Sounds like you simply assumed DS9 was supposed to be about space exploration in the first place, which would certainly color your opinion of it even before it went on the air.

More Star Trek is always a good thing.

I would have said the same thing until the last two Trek series came into being.

 

[RobertScorpio]

TNG-Voyager-Enterprise are all, IMO, clones of TOS. I liked DS9 because it tried to do something else. And when DS9 was over, and I tried to watch Voyager, I just found Voyager to be TNG-lite, and Enterprise even more so...Good shows, but ultimately all the same..IMO...

Rob

 

[Navaros]

And, when you heard that a third series was announced, what was the initial reaction?

My initial reaction was: "I wonder if this show will be as bad as TNG and nothing at all like TOS (like TNG is not). I sure hope it is a great show like TOS. But it probably will instead be as bad as TNG." When I watched the DS9 pilot as a kid during it's network premiere, my suspicions were confirmed, so I never watched another episode of DS9.

That changed a couple of years after DS9 went off the air in first-run. In starting to watch reruns by happenstance, I discovered that DS9 evolved into a much better show than what it started out as in the pilot, and on the whole, is actually by far the closest in spirit to TOS out of any Trek show.

However, my views of the pilot haven't changed much. I still don't think it was unreasonable to tune out after watching it. I still find it very boring when I rewatch it as an adult. I'm so glad they dumped the uninteresting TNG formulas (space disease of the week, Q annoyance of the week etc. etc.) out of DS9 after Season 1.

 

[Joeman]

Sounds like you simply assumed DS9 was supposed to be about space exploration in the first place, which would certainly color your opinion of it even before it went on the air.

We're going in circles here, but that's okay.

No. I knew exactly what the show was, which is why I wasn't interested at the time. I enjoyed shows about space exploration (TOS and TNG), and the premise of DS9 sounded boring (at that time). In hindsight it's one of my favorite shows.

 

[Hober Mallow]

We're going in circles here, but that's okay.

No. I knew exactly what the show was, which is why I wasn't interested at the time. I enjoyed shows about space exploration (TOS and TNG), and the premise of DS9 sounded boring (at that time). In hindsight it's one of my favorite shows.

Fair enough.

 

[indolover]

i only liked DS9 from season 4.

DS9 was a great series, but the premise was off in the beginning. I thought it would have been dull since the show was not based on exploration, which is the basis of Trek as an ethos.

i think it got good when Sisko and co. discovered the Dominion. before then, IMO, it was meh.

 

[Withers]

I thought it would have been dull since the show was not based on exploration, which is the basis of Trek as an ethos

I just don't know about that. There are more ways to "explore" than actually going out to find strange, new worlds. I think DS9 was every bit as much about exploration as any of the other shows only it was about discovery of self more than discovery of other selves.

-Withers-​

 

[RobertScorpio]

I thought it would have been dull since the show was not based on exploration, which is the basis of Trek as an ethos

I just don't know about that. There are more ways to "explore" than actually going out to find strange, new worlds. I think DS9 was every bit as much about exploration as any of the other shows only it was about discovery of self more than discovery of other selves.

-Withers-​

and, on top of that, TNG was, I think, running out of ideas in season 7. After 79 TOS and 177 TNG episodes, I pretty much thought they had done as much as they could do with 'ship in space' episodes. I think I was right..

Rob

 

[Solarbaby]

I was drooling when I heard of DS9. And when it was released there was a huge competition on the radio to win a satellite dish to celebrates its realease on sky(uk) tv. I wasn't sure whether Gene Roddenberry would approve the show which made me have reservations.

I was so gutted we didnt have sky. I was desperate to watch it. I ended up watching the video at a star trek club I used to go to once a month and everyone enjoyed it. It was picked up by the BBC a year later where I watched in great anticipation and wasn't impressed at first. It wasn't until the Jen'Hadar that I really got into it. I liked this show more than the others becasue of the huge story arcs.

 

[USS Kongo]

When I first heard about DS9 (before the series aired), the big joke among friends of mine who were Trek fans at that time was the tagline that we made up: "To Boldly Sit..." We were making fun of the fact that it was a station-based show.

After I've finally seen it, I really enjoyed watching the series. Everything wasn't presented as being so neat and perfect as it was on TNG; it was very gritty (for a Trek series, at least). And I agree that DS9 was about exploration--and not only the physical exploration of planets. It also dealt with the exploration of the inner self, as well.

I've been watching DS9 again recently, and it holds up far better today than either TNG and Voyager.

Sean

 

[Joeman]

"To Boldly Sit..."

I would have loved that at the time. Obviously my friends and I just weren't that clever. But yeah, that's how I was looking at it when I heard about it coming out.

 

[RandyS]

More Star Trek is always a good thing.

I would have said the same thing until the last two Trek series came into being.

Point taken, but even VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE had their good points. They were just fewer than the first three.

 

[RobertScorpio]

More Star Trek is always a good thing.

I would have said the same thing until the last two Trek series came into being.

Point taken, but even VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE had their good points. They were just fewer than the first three.

Well, I take it to mean that he thought Enterprise/Voyager proved that too much Trek ISN'T a good thing..and I totally agree.

Rob

 

[Hober Mallow]

It's funny, I remember a Rick Berman interview with some magazine -- Starlog or Cinefantastique, I can't remember which one -- where they were talking about the then new show DS9. The interviewer jokingly asked Rick Berman about what they were going to do for the next Trek series, and Berman basically laughed it off as funny idea, all but saying there's no way he'd want to churn out another one. About a year later Voyager was announced.

 

[RobertScorpio]

It's funny, I remember a Rick Berman interview with some magazine -- Starlog or Cinefantastique, I can't remember which one -- where they were talking about the then new show DS9. The interviewer jokingly asked Rick Berman about what they were going to do for the next Trek series, and Berman basically laughed it off as funny idea, all but saying there's no way he'd want to churn out another one. About a year later Voyager was announced.

I remember that interview too...I guess he was ingoring the formula...

LOYAL TREK FANS + ANYTHING TREK RELATED = $$$.

Rob

 

[RandyS]

It's funny, I remember a Rick Berman interview with some magazine -- Starlog or Cinefantastique, I can't remember which one -- where they were talking about the then new show DS9. The interviewer jokingly asked Rick Berman about what they were going to do for the next Trek series, and Berman basically laughed it off as funny idea, all but saying there's no way he'd want to churn out another one. About a year later Voyager was announced.

I remember that interview too...I guess he was ingoring the formula...

LOYAL TREK FANS + ANYTHING TREK RELATED = $$$.

Rob

Ah yes, the bottom line.

 

[Spork111]

It's funny, I remember a Rick Berman interview with some magazine -- Starlog or Cinefantastique, I can't remember which one -- where they were talking about the then new show DS9. The interviewer jokingly asked Rick Berman about what they were going to do for the next Trek series, and Berman basically laughed it off as funny idea, all but saying there's no way he'd want to churn out another one. About a year later Voyager was announced.

It's actually pretty telling of what was going on at the time. I've heard that it was the studio that really pushed for Voyager, and Rick Berman was reluctant about doing another show. As I recall, he was basically told by the studio that they would respect his decision, but if he didn't want to do it, they'd find somebody who would. Naturally, Berman thought that it was better him than someone else.

I take it that the studio had a lot of the same concerns regarding DS9 - it was stationary and quite a departure from the other shows. I'm guessing they wanted to be safe and have a "replacement" for TNG that would carry on the same style and format, while treating DS9 like the secondary show. Ultimately, I think DS9 became the beneficiary of a kind of "benign neglect" - with Berman and the studio a bit more focused on VOY, the staff of DS9 was able to really push the envelope in ways that I don't think it ever would have if it had been the only Trek show on the air at the time.

As an aside, when I was a kid my parents knew the stand-in for Patrick Stewart on TNG, and I remember even he used to joke about how DS9 was a Star Trek that "never goes anywhere" and that the series would probably fail. He seemed to imply that a number of folks involved behind the scenes had some serious doubts about DS9 when it was just starting up...

 

[RobertScorpio]

It's funny, I remember a Rick Berman interview with some magazine -- Starlog or Cinefantastique, I can't remember which one -- where they were talking about the then new show DS9. The interviewer jokingly asked Rick Berman about what they were going to do for the next Trek series, and Berman basically laughed it off as funny idea, all but saying there's no way he'd want to churn out another one. About a year later Voyager was announced.

It's actually pretty telling of what was going on at the time. I've heard that it was the studio that really pushed for Voyager, and Rick Berman was reluctant about doing another show. As I recall, he was basically told by the studio that they would respect his decision, but if he didn't want to do it, they'd find somebody who would. Naturally, Berman thought that it was better him than someone else.

I take it that the studio had a lot of the same concerns regarding DS9 - it was stationary and quite a departure from the other shows. I'm guessing they wanted to be safe and have a "replacement" for TNG that would carry on the same style and format, while treating DS9 like the secondary show. Ultimately, I think DS9 became the beneficiary of a kind of "benign neglect" - with Berman and the studio a bit more focused on VOY, the staff of DS9 was able to really push the envelope in ways that I don't think it ever would have if it had been the only Trek show on the air at the time.

As an aside, when I was a kid my parents knew the stand-in for Patrick Stewart on TNG, and I remember even he used to joke about how DS9 was a Star Trek that "never goes anywhere" and that the series would probably fail. He seemed to imply that a number of folks involved behind the scenes had some serious doubts about DS9 when it was just starting up...

When VOYAGER was in the planning stages and news had been released, i actually asked Jeri Taylor at a convention in LA (at the LAX airport hotel I think..cant really recall) who they had casted for the captain. At this point they hadn't casted "him" (her words) but it could possibly be a "her", which got a buz from the crowd.

Someone next to me asked if Thomas Riker would be part of the crew...and she said, her words again, that it had crossed their minds but most likely not...

Damn!!! I would love to have seen THOMAS RIKER on that show...especially with the Maquis thing going on.

Thats the one thing I really didn't like about Voyager. I think the Maquis meshed into fast with the Federation ship. I believe a shakey alliance, with both crews on their ships, would have provided the drama that show seemed to lack...

Rob

 

[Keith1701]

At the time, TNG was high in the ratings, and it was great to be able to continue with another great series in Deep Space Nine.