How do Voyager fans feel about DS9?

[andersonh1]

I'm more of a DS9 fan who grew to like Voyager. DS9 appealed to me from the start, even more than TNG. I'm a recent Voyager convert, and honestly I think it's moved above TNG in my estimation as well. DS9 is still my favorite Trek after the original though.

They're both good shows. I think I preferred DS9's long-term character growth and story-building approach over Voyager's episodic approach and more static characters. But both have something to offer the Trek fan.

 

[kipron]

When it comes to DS9..I'd rather watch Babylon 5.

As for Voyager, surely nBSG is the series to which it should be compared?

 

[kimc]

As for Voyager, surely nBSG is the series to which it should be compared?

A lot of Voyager fans, myself included, love nuBSG. However, to me they're as different as apples and oranges.

 

[JustKate]

I liked both shows a lot (I liked/loved all of them except ENT), and sometimes loved them both. I liked VOY's characters better (with certain exceptions), but DS9 was generally (with certain exceptions) much better written. Much better.

So it's hard to pick. At least lately, though, I find myself more drawn to DS9.

 

[Bluesteel]

I was VOY fan who grew up to like TNG and then DS9. Now I can barely stand VOY. I'm going to buy the 7 DVDs to give it a fair shot but I still like DS9 the best. It's the first ever TV Show DVD collection I bought.

 

[Akiraprise]

I like DS9, but I prefer Voyager


A lot of my problems with DS9 back when it was first airing was seeing it at all. It was constantly preempted for sports. Then the station would put it on late at night at different times. I'm talking like at 1:05AM or something. As the show became more serialized it just became too hard to keep up with what was going on. So I tuned it out and never watched it all the way through until SPIKE aired it a few years ago.

Voyager on the other hand was never preempted. Different station. So I watched it first run all the way through. So, it became my favorite Trek. Even though TNG was awesome too.

 

[Geckothan]

I'm in your poll, screwing with your percentages.

 

[Anika Hanson]

There is no option for liking voyager but prefering DS9. That pretty much sums up how I feel about DS9.

 

[TheGodBen]

That's because this poll is for people who list Voyager as their favourite Trek show, or for people who just want to crew with the percentages. The poll for DS9 fans is in the DS9 forum.

 

[Lucky Charms]

I'm a big Voyager fan but I still think DS9 was far superior in story tellling.
By the time Voyager ended I still didn't feel I knew the characters as intimately as I did DS9's.

I like both show, but also agree DS9 had the better story lines overall. Plus DS9 has one of the best series endings of any show.

 

[Emnabtond]

The poll choices are really unbalanced and adding in the "I'm not a Voyager fan but I want to screw with the percentages" option basically bandjaxed your entire poll. Well done

 

[TheGodBen]

Everything I do is banjaxed in some form, so this is nothing new.

 

[PSGarak]

I screwed with the percentages, and I'd do it again given the option. Thanks for giving us a fun option.

 

[Orac Zen]

I consider myself a fan of TOS, TNG and Voyager in pretty much equal measure.

I enjoyed DS9 a great deal for probably three seasons, despite the fact that I only really liked Kira as a character (and to a lesser extent Odo and Garak - and I liked them based more on the brilliance of Auberjonois and Robinson than anything else) - and I'm someone who has to like the characters in a show, otherwise I find it next to impossible to give a damn about what they do. The other characters did little or nothing for me, and Quark is one of the very few TV characters I actively dislike (as Neelix is to some people, Quark is to me, only multiplied a hundredfold). I was able to...well, look past all that for a while, I suppose. But I found the Dominion war genuinely boring and unengaging, and thanks to the increasing focus of the series on said war my enthusiasm for the show died almost overnight. I fully intend to give DS9 another go at some stage but in all honesty I'm in no hurry to make it happen.

None of the poll options work for me so I won't vote.

But after 14 years you just learn to live with perpetual attacks on what you enjoy.

Or you could just get the hell over it, accept that other people are just as entitled to their opinion as you are to yours, and find something worthwhile to get "irritated" about. Dredging up the past, or tarring current posters with the brush of past behaviour, is just stupid and it has to stop.

[...] but when I watch, I jut can't get past the acting in DS9. It felt forced to me. The best actors on DS9 were the secondary/recurring guest characters, which is a good thing, because they were legion. But the main cast .... meh.

Visitor and especially Auberjonois aside, I agree completely. Brooks in particular grates; acting ability seems to be one of those things that's very much in the eye of the beholder at times and in my eyes he's an awful actor. To each their own, though.

VOY had the better main cast and they also had good chemistry together.

Beltran aside, I agree completely with this, too.

I really cared about the entire crew in a way I struggled to do with DS9.

Agreed again. (I like it when people articulate these things for me. )

When it comes to DS9..I'd rather watch Babylon 5.

This I can agree with, too. Even though that's (yet) another incredibly puerile online "rivalry" that I'm well and truly over.

As for Voyager, surely nBSG is the series to which it should be compared?

I cannot agree with this, mainly because the 10 or so episodes of nBSG I struggled through were 10 of the most excruciatingly boring "hours" of television I've ever seen. Whatever else it did, Voyager never bored me. To each their own, however.

 

[brisco darlin]

Did not like it at all.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

None of the poll options work for me so I won't vote.

Agreed. I do like Voyager, but I prefer to watch either TNG and DS9, as those two are the shows I enjoyed the most. I did watch Voyager on TV here, but got annoyed with the network here, and switched to hiring videos to watch both Voyager and DS9 in the later years. I'm planning on one day in the future watching it again.

When it comes to DS9..I'd rather watch Babylon 5.

This I can agree with, too. Even though that's (yet) another incredibly puerile online "rivalry" that I'm well and truly over.

Back in the day, I was never interested in Babylon 5 at all. I knew what some people thought of it, but wasn't gonna buy the DVDs for a show I had zero interest in. Soon I'm gonna watch the show for the second time, as I want to enjoy it for a second time. As I did for the first time.

To each their own, however.

I said something similar to one of the guys here, in reference to music. We all have our own taste in everything, and that is what makes it interesting about being a human being. As the world would be very pooring if everyone liked the same thing.

 

[Kegg]

I read a Discover magazine article that said, among other things, that online sites are not representative but rather associative; people of like minds find each other. So, that's just the way it is around here.

The internet also gravitates towards cult fandoms. It's less that these people are in a majority and more that they're willing to spend hours online debating the minutiae and arguing for the importance of their preferred TV show/book/movie/pinata.

TV shows tend to live and thrive on a fandom who are just the regular sort of joe who turns in every week but otherwise lives a relatively normal life and certainly isn't blogging or aguing about the show online.

Deep Space Nine is, well, a cult within a cult. I think this is because it's a series that rewards devoted loyalty - it has numerous elaborate arcs that could be bewildering to the casual viewer (alright, not as excessive as a lot of other TV shows, but if you've never seen an episode and tune in and people are talking about the aftereffects of the Klingon-Cardassian war and Bajoran reconstruction and Ferengi thievery combined maybe with Odo's tortured relationship with his people it might be a trifle much).

Further, it takes itself pretty seriously. A lot of fandom wants their choice of geeky pursuit to take itself seriously, to prove its merits as a sweeping work of epic drama. DS9 isn't just some outer space show, it's about politics, war, death, religion, crossdressing! Um. And, understandably, anything that doesn't quite fit that mould may be scorned (the crossdressing or Ferengi in general).

The strictly cult popularity of Babylon 5 and the remake of Battlestar Galactica exists for precisely these reasons, also.

Now, Star Trek: Voyager is the opposite of this. There are very little arcs to speak of, and a bare minimum of internal continuity - you can more or less watch the episodes in any order and know exactly what's going on. And the show is forever ignoring or stepping away from having any dark and gritty consequences - our heroes' morals emerge mostly unscathed, there's no soul-searching in the manner of "In the Pale Moonlight". And so on.

However, the show does fit a lot better the audience perception of what a Trek show ought to be, since it's quite clearly modelled on the TNG formula.

There did seem to be an overabundance of Niners on the board in the first half of this decade, so much so that it allowed O'Brien to win one of those semi-annual Best Trek Character polls running.

O'Brien!

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Come on, O'Brien! Colm Meany is pretty awesome.

As for Voyager, surely nBSG is the series to which it should be compared?

I cannot agree with this, mainly because the 10 or so episodes of nBSG I struggled through were 10 of the most excruciatingly boring "hours" of television I've ever seen.

Then surely that's a good basis to consider nuBSG comparable? If you enjoyed VOY and nuBSG bored you to tears, then clearly VOY was executing a similar premise but doing a better job of it in your opinion.

 

[KimMH]

I had a torrid fling w/ nuBSG and have held a torch for Bab5 many years but Trek is my first and true love.

I quite expect the TAS in my Christmas stocking or there will be trouble in my house as it is the only Trek series I have never watched. Really.

Other than TAS, I have never met a Trek series I did not madly deeply and truly love. TOS is the gatekeeper that showed me the way in but I love every other series that has existed and each one for different and same reasons.

The poll seems to me to be in harmless fun but has offered Voyagers and DS9ers a chance to talk. How bad could that be?

 

[Timewalker]

I enjoyed a few individual episodes of DS9, but nearly all of Voyager. The only DS9 characters I liked were O'Brien, Bashir, Garak, and Lwaxana Troi. There were lots I hated. The Dominion War bored me utterly.

Therefore, I said Voyager is superior. That is borne out not only by my enjoyment of the TV show, but also I enjoy Voyager fiction more, and also fanfic. I've been indulging shamelessly in a steady diet of Voyager fanfic lately, and only one DS9 short story, which was pretty forgettable.

And Voyager inspires me to write my own fanfics and think about some of the issues raised. DS9 doesn't inspire me at all.

 

[May 20]

Asking me to choose between VOY and DS9 is like asking me which child I love more or which flavor of ice cream is my favorite.

It can't be done.

I love both show equally but for different reasons. Today I want to watch VOY; yesterday it was DS9; tomorrow -- well, who knows? I might break out the TNG. *shrug*