a matter of personal taste. i dident liked alot of the stand alone episodes. and i felt there are too many of them and just wanted the main arc to progress
Is DS9 worth binging?
- Thread starter TechnoGoose
- Start date
A vast majority of the standalones added a great deal of nuance, character beats, and flavor to that world. Very important stuff that added greatly to DS9.
That's the thing. DS9 is not a serialized show the way modern shows are. There's no season long arcs that cover every episode. And even when one thing is big enough to be brought up again and again, it's usually in an ep that has a different unrelated story.
If you're just out for a show that only has one big storyline, DS9 is not it. (And if someone put together a "main arc only" watchlist, the result would make for some quite unsatisfying viewing.)
You're gonna get A LOT more standalone eps in seasons five through seven. Fair warning.
all of that is now considered filler by a lot of people, for some reason, even many who grew up with it and should know better.
Distractions? The main characters lives, the people who came and go through the station, and how everyone reacts to the threat of the Dominion differently is hardly a distraction.
And usually, when there was a "side story", it was a story worth telling. I don't consider it time wasted. Plus, this is '90s TV. Not 21st Century TV. It was still in the transition between episodic and serialized. The X-Files and Babylon 5 were the same way. You can't judge '90s shows by today's standards, you have to judge them by '90s standards.
For me, no episode of season 4 is boring or bad. Even "THE MUSE", which I would rate as the weakest of the season, still is about a 7.5 to me. And it's a cool concept (creativity vampire) coupled with a very sweet story (Odo/Lwaxana).
2 farangi episodes. one about the strike. the other where quark was misdiagnosed. the area 51 episode. personally i hated it. our man bashir. dident liked it all. the quickening. kinda pointless in my opinion. khales sword, i dident hated it but it was kinda pointless. the one episode where they rescue dukat's daughter. may be important, but the episode itself was boring. shattered mirror. dont like any of the mirror universe episodes, that is a partial list. i dident include the ones who were average to me. but just looking at the short synopsis of every episode and mind you, this is first watch. so i cant just go out of order when i know every single episode. my point is. the majority of season 4 is what other would call "filler" obviously its not really filler because there is no real filler in star trek but you get my point. the majority of season 4 are stories who do not have connections to the main arc in any way.
The episodes you listed:
"BAR ASSOCIATION" - Major step in Rom's development, with him ending up going on his own and becoming an engineer. Also the first time Leeta sees Rom in a different light, which leads to them getting married. Worf moving off the station to live on the Defiant.
"BODY PARTS" - Used Nana Visitor's real life pregnancy in the most imaginative way I've ever seen, which led to her living with the O'Briens for half a season. Illustrates just how nasty Brunt is. Great character episode for Quark. And ends with a scene that best illustrates one of the core philosophies of the franchise. (And why DS9 is the spinoff that best illustrates said core philosophy.)
"LITTLE GREEN MEN" - I'll agree it doesn't really add to the overall stories of DS9, but it was a fun episode.
"OUR MAN BASHIR" - We get a deeper look at Bashir's psychology through Garak. (Plus, Garak himself ALWAYS is worth a watch.) We get another subtle clue of Bashir's genetic enhancements regarding his hand/eye coordination. Plus... an extremely fun episode.
"THE QUICKENING" - Best character episode for Bashir. His arrogance got knocked down a few pegs. Plus, illustrates just how evil the Dominion can get.
"THE SWORD OF KAHLESS" - More Klingon lore is shown here. Also important for Kor, as we see this is his 'last chance for glory', which leads up to his final appearance in season 7. Also illustrates how easily religious iconography can get twisted, even among the best people and intentions.
"INDISCRETION" - Definitely important because it set a number of things in motion: Kasidy and Ben taking the next major step in their relationship, Dukat's fall from grace and his return by ending up joining the Dominion, introduction of Ziyal, first Breen appearance on DS9. Whether it's boring or not is very subjective.
"SHATTERED MIRROR" - I can understand people not liking it simply because of it being in the Mirror Universe. DS9 did have diminishing returns with each trip there. But it did continue the arc of that storyline, whether it is liked or not. Plus it gives full closure for the Siskos regarding Jennifer. (And damn awesome battle sequence with the Defiant.)
I can keep going with the rest of the season, but I don't think I need to. Season 4 DEFINITELY moved a lot of things and stories and arcs along.
As Donlago pointed out, DS9 might not be the series for you.
I gotta admit, I'd put a lot of them at the bottom of my season 4 rankings too. Our Man Bashir, Sword of Kahless, Body Parts...
Little Green Men's premise is so absurd they wouldn't have even touched it on Lower Decks or The Orville. The comedy characters accidentally time travel back to 1940s Roswell when they're just flying to Earth? That's a Futurama premise. And the series had only just done Past Tense!
The Quickening though, that's one of the best Bashir stories in my opinion. And I was surprised by how great Bar Association was.
Little Green Men's premise is so absurd they wouldn't have even touched it on Lower Decks or The Orville. The comedy characters accidentally time travel back to 1940s Roswell when they're just flying to Earth? That's a Futurama premise. And the series had only just done Past Tense!
The Quickening though, that's one of the best Bashir stories in my opinion. And I was surprised by how great Bar Association was.
To be fair, "Past Tense" was dead serious and "Little Green Men" was a comedy. So, it's like comparing apples and oranges.
Maybe, but that didn't occur to me in 1995, since none of those shows existed yet.
I chalked it up as, "It's a Ferengi Episode!" By those standards, it was one of the better ones. And I was really interested in the whole Area 51 thing at the time.
The cast has much better chemistry on DS9 than TNG, where they are all basically satellite characters of picard. They intentionally corrected TNG mistakes... Quark was Guinan done right, Nog was Wesley done right, Rom was Geordi done right etc. so the Ferengi are also done right. Meanwhile they all end up working together despite their differences. While they werent much for peaceful resolution, since it is more of a dark and controversial theme, it is no worse than the Borg... and we know what happens when Q shows his smirking face on the station.
I originally cringed when I saw that Chief Obrien was cast on the show, since it looked like a doomed spinoff... but I have to say that he saved the show, and made it even better than TNG.
You seem very strongly geared to the idea that there must be a season arc, and every minute of every episode must be spent furthering that arc.
If an episode is good, it's good, I don't care if it doesn't further the season arc. Now if you don't like an episode due to personal taste, fine, but that doesn't make the episode pointless.
This expectation seems to come from a population used to 21st Century streaming of series, each season only having 8-12 episodes so there isn't any room for anything but furthering the season plot.
I kind of like the old days when you got 22 episodes in a season so there was room for the series to breathe and you could have some fun side episodes and have time for characterization.
And a few dud eps didn't potentially bring the whole season crashing down.
I generally agree with this statement... if it were a series other than DISCO. Bad writing is still bad writing, and adding more episodes of bad writing just compounds the problem.
Well, that's kind of a question of whether you believe the writing was innately bad, or whether it felt bad because the writers were being forced to write to a certain formula that more episodes would have helped to ameliorate. For my money, usually episodes weren't bad, just painfully average, and better when the secondary characters got more to do.
This is why I take episodes as individuals. I don't care about the arc as first priority. If I enjoy an episode, great. If not, arc or not, I'm skipping. I don't do the suffering through an episode bs.
since i'm now in season 5 and i do like the stand alone episodes in that season then it may be the quality of those episodes and not that they are not advancing the plot. i just dont like many episodes on season 4, a problem i dident had with seasons 3 and 2. 1 was like that with alot of episodes. season 4 just start strong and then getting too sidetracked until the very end. in the final episode they address something that happend in season 3 final episode. so if lets say you took your time and had breaks in the middle then you could forget it upon first watching of the series. now, as i said previously. if you dont like an episode and then you dont like another episode and that cycle goes on, then its de-motivating you to continue and you will just take long breaks until you come back to it.
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