For someone who wants to see the Dominion War arc, but doesn't want to watch all 7 seasons, is season 4 the best place to recommend they jump in?
Is season 4 good for jumping in on Dominion War?
- Thread starter Starfleet Engineer
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^ Those episodes only introduce the Dominion, the Federation doesn't go to war with that power until the last episode of season 5.
If you only want to see Dominion war episodes, skip most of the series and just watch the war episodes in season 6 to 7. You don't need any of the context of the first 5 seasons it's all covered in the previously on Ds9 montage at the start of season 6.
Also half the episodes in season 6 and 7 don't even directly involve the war they are set on Deep Space 9 during the war. So don't expect to see a lot of action.
If you only want to see Dominion war episodes, skip most of the series and just watch the war episodes in season 6 to 7. You don't need any of the context of the first 5 seasons it's all covered in the previously on Ds9 montage at the start of season 6.
Also half the episodes in season 6 and 7 don't even directly involve the war they are set on Deep Space 9 during the war. So don't expect to see a lot of action.
I'm aware of them as introductory episodes. I just tend to think if you're wanting to watch the Dominion war arc, it would be necessary to see their introduction.
^ Those episodes only introduce the Dominion, the Federation doesn't go to war with that power until the last episode of season 5.
If you only want to see Dominion war episodes, skip most of the series and just watch the war episodes in season 6 to 7. You don't need any of the context of the first 5 seasons it's all covered in the previously on Ds9 montage at the start of season 6.
Also half the episodes in season 6 and 7 don't even directly involve the war they are set on Deep Space 9 during the war. So don't expect to see a lot of action.
The Jem'hadar were not a random race. ISB and RHW developed them to be a specific enemy for the series leading to some larger conflict. By all means, someone could skip those episodes in seasons 2-7 that are not germaine to the Dominion War, but plenty of work is developed on the war before A Call to Arms. Ignore what came before is akin to talking about WWII only in terms of what happened after September 1, 1939.^ Those episodes only introduce the Dominion, the Federation doesn't go to war with that power until the last episode of season 5.
If you only want to see Dominion war episodes, skip most of the series and just watch the war episodes in season 6 to 7. You don't need any of the context of the first 5 seasons it's all covered in the previously on Ds9 montage at the start of season 6.
Also half the episodes in season 6 and 7 don't even directly involve the war they are set on Deep Space 9 during the war. So don't expect to see a lot of action.
Your opinion will now be appropriately weighted.
If I was trying to get someone into DS9 I'd tell them to start at Season 4. I don't have as many issues with the first 3 seasons as some people do but I can see how Season 1 and 2 would be a bit of a struggle for casual viewers. Season 4 hits it out of the park from the start and from there on in DS9 rarely misfires for the rest of the series.
Not really, DS9 seemed to be ramping up towards a war with the Dominion at the end of season 3, however season 4 spends more time with a war with the Klingons.
The war only actually starts at the end of season 5 in A call to arms when Sisko decides to mine the entrance to the wormhole. Before then its bits and bobs but no full scale war until then.
There's episodes in season 3 which lay important background information, like The Abandoned. You don't need to see all of season 3 but you need to see a few key groundlaying episodes.
SUre you could start at S4. But If I had to pair down to just Dominion centric episodes
S2
The Jem'Hadar
S3
The Search, Part I
The Search, Part II
Improbable Cause
The Die is Cast
The Adversary
S4
The Way of The Warrior
Homefront
Paradise Lost
Return to Grace
To The Death
Broken Link
S5
Apocalypse Rising
The Ship
In Purgatory's Shadow
By Inferno's Light
Call To Arms
S6
A Time To Stand
Rocks and Shoals
Sons and Daughters
Behind Emeny Lines
Favour the Bold
Sacrfice of Angels
One Little Ship
In The Pale Moonlight
Tears of the Prophets
S7
Image In The Sand
Shadows and Symbols
Treachy, Faith and the Great River
The Seige of Ar-558
Penumbra
Till Death Do us Part
Strange Bedfellows
The Changing Face of Evil
When it Rains
Taking Into the Wind
Extreme Measures
The Dogs of War
What You Leave Behind
Of course their are others that touch on the war, allude to etc... Not to mention great episode which have little or nothing to do with the war.
S2
The Jem'Hadar
S3
The Search, Part I
The Search, Part II
Improbable Cause
The Die is Cast
The Adversary
S4
The Way of The Warrior
Homefront
Paradise Lost
Return to Grace
To The Death
Broken Link
S5
Apocalypse Rising
The Ship
In Purgatory's Shadow
By Inferno's Light
Call To Arms
S6
A Time To Stand
Rocks and Shoals
Sons and Daughters
Behind Emeny Lines
Favour the Bold
Sacrfice of Angels
One Little Ship
In The Pale Moonlight
Tears of the Prophets
S7
Image In The Sand
Shadows and Symbols
Treachy, Faith and the Great River
The Seige of Ar-558
Penumbra
Till Death Do us Part
Strange Bedfellows
The Changing Face of Evil
When it Rains
Taking Into the Wind
Extreme Measures
The Dogs of War
What You Leave Behind
Of course their are others that touch on the war, allude to etc... Not to mention great episode which have little or nothing to do with the war.
Instead of showing my wife the whole series, I started with season 4 for the Dominion War saga.
So I'd say yes.
Particularly in retrospect, while it may be non-essential, I really enjoy the way "Rules of Acquisition" discusses The Dominion as an entity but it's brought up in such an oblique manner that I don't think any viewer would have been surprised if it had never come up again.
There's also "Sanctuary"(?), though I think The Dominion is even more of a sidebar there.
Either way, I like how they drop hints of things to come in S2 well before "The Jem'hadar".
There's also "Sanctuary"(?), though I think The Dominion is even more of a sidebar there.
Either way, I like how they drop hints of things to come in S2 well before "The Jem'hadar".
There are episodes in seasons 3-5 that don't advance the story but they lay the groundwork for the Dominion arc. Especially the episodes that teach you about the Gem'Hadar and Vorta. If you skip The Abandoned you won't see the Gem'Hadar later in the series in the same light, same with To The Death.
No. Season 4 got derailed off of the Dominion War story and onto a random ad hoc Klingon War story. That happened as a result of Worf joining the show as a publicity stunt.
You should be aware that DS9 does not really work in the way how your OP is hoping that it does. Many - if not most - of the Dominion War-related episodes are not broken down neatly into categories of "this is a Dominion War episode" or "this is not a Dominion War episode."
I would argue that lots of Dominion centric episodes are missing from MacLeod's episode list. But that's not MacLeod's fault, because no easy or definitive way exists to define whether an episode qualifies as a "Dominion War/Dominion Centric" episode or not.
The only way to receive a full & proper experience of the Dominion War is to watch all of the episodes that are in any way related to it. That list would be much larger than the one posted in this thread.
Where you jump in depends on how much you want to skip...but the more you skip, the less you will get out of the show, so skipping comes with that trade off.
For the full Dominion experience, I recommend to start with the Season 2 finale (no Dominion content appears in the series before this point) and keep watching every episode from that point on (albeit every season has bad episodes, so they won't all be great...but many will).
If you want to watch even less than that but still get a pretty good Dominion experience, I recommend starting at Season 5 and keep watching from that point on. Season 5 is when they move off of the Klingon War derailment track and back onto the mainline Dominion War track.
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Must one watch the entirety of "Shadowplay" in order to hear one line of dialogue about the Dominion? In general, it's unnecessary. Everything contained in that one line is repeated in future episodes, but in greater depth. Indeed, the backstory to the episode had probably no place in the episode as originally written (escape from a virtual prison), and that one line was likely dropped into the episode at the insistence of Piller and Behr to get the audience accustomed to and curious about the Dominion.
Anyone who wants to just get the Dominion story should feel good about starting with Jem'hadar and skipping to those episode in which they are part of the plot. Everything one needs to know is repeated along the way. If they want to become aficionados like some of us (raises hand), they can include those episodes in their eventual rewatch.
I came in here to post the exact same thing. She hated DS9 and gave up. I showed her that episode and we marathoned the rest.
Everything you need to know about the Dominion is in the first few minutes. They're the bad guys, they're a threat and thanks to the opening scene's, you know who they are and why they're a threat.
Watching episodes for one random line about the Dominion may be unnecessary, but in general, DS9 does not operate by featuring the Dominion in episodes via one random line. Rather, in general, DS9 weaves Dominion themes throughout many episodes, but many or most of those episodes are not explicit/overt "space battle war" episodes.
The phrases "part of the plot" and "everything one needs to know" must inherently be subjectively defined. What criteria, precisely, determines whether the Dominion is "part of the plot" or not? I am arguing that no such good & objective criteria exists, except by including all episodes which feature any Dominion-related content.
For example, MacLeod's list of "Dominion Centric" episodes exclude several episodes which have devoted part of their budget to pay Jeffrey Combs money to guest star as Weyoun, the Dominion's chief spokesman. By what criteria would a list like that disqualify those episodes as "Not Dominion Centric" episodes, or even as episodes with "plots that don't involve the Dominion"? In my view, if Weyoun is in them, they are automatically Dominion Centric/Dominion War-related plots, even if the "war" is not the main plot, and even if the Dominion characters receive only a minority of the screen-time. To exclude episodes that feature Dominion-based content from lists of "Dominion War" episodes requires an opinion-based judgement call on the part of the list's author. But the viewer who never watches the episodes that aren't included on a subjectively-determined list may well have different opinions and may well have made different judgement calls to those of the list's author, if only that viewer was aware of the war-related content that he or she is missing by adhering to an author's list.
Note: I'm not picking on MacLeod. Other fans who make similar lists for viewers who have asked questions similar to the original poster's always run into the exact same problem. The problem is inherent in the question itself: "Which episodes are Dominion War episodes?" That question erroneously assumes that DS9 neatly divides any given episode into the binary of: "Yes - this is a Dominion War episode," or "No - this is not a Dominion War episode." For the most part, DS9 does not actually make neat divisions like that. Rather, more often than not, an individual episode is - simultaneously - in some ways a Dominion War episode, and in other ways not. And so, list authors who try to ramrod those episodes into a binary list of "Yes" or "No" have an impossible task.
By the same token, how is "everything one needs to know" determined? Yes, one could skip episodes of DS9 and still understand the plots of the non-skipped episodes perfectly...and in that respect, one would indeed receive all the information that one needs to know. But, one could just as easily argue that understanding the plot is not sufficient for receiving all of the information that one needs to know. To skip Dominion content is to skip character nuances and relationship dynamics that are an essential part of what makes the Dominion War interesting. For some viewers, those nuances and dynamics may not be need to know, whereas for other viewers, they may indeed be need to know.
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