DS9 Writers

[DeepSpaceWine]

I always found the kids on TNG annoying as hell too. Nothing against kids, it just doesn't belong there. Just like Lwaxana Troi doesn't belong there either. Hmpf.

I was a kid during TNG's run and I found the kids to be annoying as hell too . Wesley was my least favorite character on the show. If they were added to give the kids someone to watch in the show, it didn't work. Well, it seems to have done for the girls, but that was perplexing because he was a dweeb and that was before geek became chic. "Rascals" was interesting seeing made into a story for a show not solely aimed at kids (usually that is a cartoon or live-action kids show plot), but "Imaginary Friend" was annoying and even as a kid one could empathise with Picard in the turbolift with all those kids in "Disaster". "Suddenly Human" and "Hero Worship" were among the crappier episodes.

Lwaxana seemed to grate on the nerves more than most kids did. She had an obnoxious, imposing personality. The actress did drama well though ("Half Life", "Dark Page"). I think because she was like a character out of a sitcom (the mother-in-law) and that didn't really have a place in a drama or sci-fi for that matter.

Yeah, my understanding was that the writers decided sometime in the early second season to build up to a big end-of-season reveal about the Dominion, and that they started planted the seeds with "Rules of Acquisition," (purposefully doing it in a Ferengi episode so that people wouldn't take it seriously). But I hadn't heard of them thinking about it at all in the first season.

Yes, it was "Rules of Acquisition" (or "Rules of Aquisition" if you want to talk the *first* usage of the Dominion), "Sanctuary", "Shadowplay". "Vortex", "The Alternate" alluded to Odo's people. The slow growth makes sense. DS9 crew was slowly exploring further and further from the wormhole and based on on-screen maps and comments, the wormhole and adjacent space is 2-4 dozen or so light years past the Dominion's border. It's frontier space beyond that which they can safely hold with current quantities of Jem 'Hadar, only being space they step up patrols into after Season 2. How else could some advanced governments exist independent of the Dominion? (Paradans of "Whispers", the "Hard Time" people). Just as Star Trek Star Charts screws up some of the details with Voyager's 7 season maps, the Gamma Quadrant map has atrocious scale (Founder Homeworld/Omarion Homeworld 5000ly from the wormhole. Really?)

The Hunters of Tosk were to be a part of the Dominion (Jem 'Hadar ship navigators) but they were cut. Why I have no idea since "Captive Pursuit" was one of the best episodes of DS9, the best of Season 1, and both Tosk and the Hunters were cool. That neither was revisited in the series was one of the greatest travesties of DS9 (up there with the travesty of transexual Quark in "Profit and Lace").

 

[Jarvisimo]

Wow... Season 4 of Voyager was really amazing. Especially the two parters. Scorpion, and Year of Hell. Then in Season 5 somebody got the brilliant idea to bring a child on board as a recurring guest star. Wtf... what were they thinking. Hello? This is a science fiction series not a soap opera for children.

To be honest, I think they should have been having children for a long time by that point in their journey. They were facing a seventy year journey at the start of the program, who was going to be flying the ship in twenty years' time? Forty? Sixty?

Having a child onboard was great, though from what I remember poorly, poorly used. But there should have been many more children; realistically, a group of 140 adults trapped together (with a miraculously wonderful health service) would produce quite a few children.

But then, this is Voyager, that failure of inspiration!

 

[MacLeod]

^I would say it was more of this

Pilot episode: Ship gets losts in Delta Quandrat
Final episode: Ship gets home

As they already knew how it weas going to end they wrote it for that rather than looking at from an in universe point of view. How would these characters react to a couple of generations long journey.

 

[Jarvisimo]

As they already knew how it weas going to end they wrote it for that rather than looking at from an in universe point of view. How would these characters react to a couple of generations long journey.

Exactly, of course these factors were problems, hence my lack of inspiration comment. Perhaps Trek television really suffered from its traditions by Voyager and Enterprise, and the sense of control of elements which pervades these later series.

Things had to happen in certain ways: the idea of 7 seasons (why did a Trek show need 7 seasons?); the idea that meant that a season had to equate to a calendar year (preventing any interesting narrative surprises); the resistance to any visual or aesthetic change and growth, seen mostly simply and disturbingly (from a normal POV) in the characters who never did their hair differently day-to-day, or rarely wore different costumes, or showed any sign of our daily and weekly variation; the old design tropes that had become infallible - including that ships had to have 2 nacelles, a saucer and a hull, that all an alien species' uniforms were all the same (compared to the variety of Klingon uniforms seen in TUC), that all Romulans and Vulcans had the same unsexy hairdo (bar, refreshingly, Tim Russ); etc...

It is interesting that the series most flagrant with these tropes (which were established in TNG in some healthy extent but calcified within Voy & Ent) - that enfant terrible DS9 - many of us regard as superior for variations of this flagrancy.

 

[DeepSpaceWine]

To be honest, I think they should have been having children for a long time by that point in their journey. They were facing a seventy year journey at the start of the program, who was going to be flying the ship in twenty years' time? Forty? Sixty?

I thought the backup plan was when they all got too old, Seven would just assimilate them into a Voyager collective and have the nanoprobes counteract the geriatrics


Yeah, it seems unbelievable to have just 2 children (1 conceived pre-launch, 1 late in the series) on a ship of < 150 after 7 years (and the Mercury Meltaways had 1 ensign have a kid too). I think 2 things were going against the ship becoming a community with families:
1.) Delta Quadrant is no place for children. Being stranded on the other side of the galaxy, yet not having settled down, instead being constantly onto the move into the unknown, an unknown which also has big bad Borg. The crew's couples could be very weary of that great unknown and the prospect of having a kid only for them to get assimilated. Seven is a living example of what becomes of the assimilated.

Other starships roam known space with known threats usually at bay. DS9 is a space station in stable space, some tension, but nothing unusual til the Dominion came. Look at the Equinox, they had no kids. They were the worst case scenario of what lies in the great unknown.

2.) College dorm atmosphere. Thinking back on Voyager's run, how the crew interacted, it looked very much like a college dorm. It felt young, less formal (except for RA Tuvok and Chancellor Janeway. Chakotay was like the cool native american/hippie who graduated ages ago but never really left the college town) and they seemed to adapt to being stranded with a sense of adventure or maybe they needed to find a silver lining in that cloud (instead of coffee) to keep themselves from being consumed by despair. College students aren't in family mode. They're in learning & exploring mode (intellectually, socially). Some couples that do become married and have kids meet up in college, but usually they hold off until they're out of college. Voyager might have the same self-prohibition in place.


Ultimately Voyager was approached as a standard episodic show for television. They didn't think of building a strong supporting cast, like have beautiful, intriguing Ensigns Jetal & Ballard fraternizing with Kim in the mess hall every now and then, then suddenly disappearing without a word, only for the viewer to find out years later what happened. Or what happened to the Delaney Sisters once Seven commandeered their role (or as some viewers accused, one pair of 'twins' replacing another pair of twins). They totally neglected one extra who would of given the stranded in the Delta Quadrant experience a unique perspective- the old gray-haired black dude in blue who was always in the mess hall.

Think about it. He's the oldest person on Voyager (minus Tuvok) with a 70~75 year journey, he's guaranteed to die in the Delta Quadrant far from his family. He will never be able to have his grandchildren on his knee to tell stories of all his travel from decades in Starfleet. While he may be older and more resigned to fate, his being stranded had an extra layer of loneliness. He's old and guaranteed to be buried far from his ancestors and relatives. His children and grandchildren won't have a real grave to visit, just a placeholder marker.
(He 1st appeared in early Season 2, "Parturition"? and was last seen in early Season 4, last appearing right before "The Killing Game", making me think he was that casualty that was mentioned as having been killed by the Hirogen. Maybe he was killed by a Silver Shikari or hunters wanting something like hunting an old sabertooth tiger, old and frail, but a survivor that has seen many other hunts. And for him to always be in the mess hall makes it seem like he's semi-retired)

They could have filled the idle chatter scenes with some of the main cast interacting with these extras. They would have really fleshed out the Voyager crew (maybe even endearing the show with viewers more. Voyager had some issues in that dept) and the Delta Quadrant experience. It would have been much better than the inane scenes these usually were.