Season 5

[Pemmer Harge]

Cohesive? I don't know. For me, that season was all over the place. Klingons, Dominion, attempts at comedy (unsuccessful for the most part) and a continuation of Season 4s unfortunate trend of focusing many episodes on one main character (and guest stars) only. Starting at around this point, it sometimes felt as though you didn't even see some of the characters for several episodes.

It's a big canvas, with a lot of plot threads and characters, but yeah, I do think that season 5 is where it all comes together as a cohesive whole.

Take the Klingon plotline, which is sometimes erroneously characterized as irrelevant to the overall DS9 storyline. In actuality, the Klingon's crippling of Cardassia is what causes Dukat to seek alliance with the Dominion, thus the tension with the Klingons in season 4 and early season 5 leads directly to the events of In Purgatory's Shadow/By Inferno's Light.

Sisko's developing role as the Emissary and original mission to bring Bajor into the Federation cross paths with the looming conflict with the Dominion in Rapture.

The Maquis storyline is directly impacted by the Dominion's alliance with Cardassia as seen in the contrast between For the Uniform and Blaze of Glory. And of course Call to Arms is a beautiful climax to all of this. A lot of important character stuff comes to fruition in this season as well.

I do think, however, that season 5 only really stands out in this way once the whole saga is known, and that the quality is pretty similar episode-to-episode in season 5 and a bunch of other seasons.

In a sense, the season is all over the place, but that's because Deep Space Nine was all over the place. There were many different aspects to the show - Bajor, the Cardassians, Klingons, the Dominion, the Gamma Quadrant, traditional Trek-style stories, comedy. I think that the greatest strength of Season 5 was that it dealt with all of these aspects and did it very well and with an exceptional level of consistency. To me, it felt like the year that really summed up what Deep Space Nine was about and perfected the formula they'd been developing since Season 2. Seasons 6 and 7 were a bit different what with the dominance of the Dominion War over the show. It may well have been a necessary change to stop the series stagnating, but it didn't feel quite as satisfying to me as Season 5.

I like Season 3 almost as much, but most people don't seem to like that one to the same extent.

 

[Navaros]

Starting at around this point, it sometimes felt as though you didn't even see some of the characters for several episodes.

That's one of the main reasons why DS9 is great. They would focus on telling the best story, not dividing the episode up so that everyone gets a certain amount of screen-time. Doing it that second way results in much more shallow stories and characters, and therefore a worse show all-around.

If anything, DS9 would be even better if they did more of disregarding the main cast. Heck, ideally, DS9's shouldn't even have a main cast, but instead should pick the best characters for every story with no consideration whatsoever for the actors' names, pay scale etc. Many of the best episodes feature only one or two members of the main cast in a significant way, i.e. The Wire, Treachery, Faith, and the Great River, It's Only a Paper Moon, etc.

 

[C_Miller]

Starting at around this point, it sometimes felt as though you didn't even see some of the characters for several episodes.

That's one of the main reasons why DS9 is great. They would focus on telling the best story, not dividing the episode up so that everyone gets a certain amount of screen-time. Doing it that second way results in much more shallow stories and characters, and therefore a worse show all-around.

If anything, DS9 would be even better if they did more of disregarding the main cast. Heck, ideally, DS9's shouldn't even have a main cast, but instead should pick the best characters for every story with no consideration whatsoever for the actors' names, pay scale etc. Many of the best episodes feature only one or two members of the main cast in a significant way, i.e. The Wire, Treachery, Faith, and the Great River, It's Only a Paper Moon, etc.

That's kind of like Lost. Over the course of the six seasons, they had 30 main characters at one point or another. Now, not all of these characters appeared in every episode. In fact in one episode they focused entirely on two guest stars and the only time any "regulars" appeared was in stock footage. And, except for the first season when all of the regulars were in one general spot, there wasn't a single season where anyone particular character appeared in every episode.

Lost isn't for everyone, but this seems to be what you describe.

 

[Damask]

If anything, DS9 would be even better if they did more of disregarding the main cast. Heck, ideally, DS9's shouldn't even have a main cast, but instead should pick the best characters for every story with no consideration whatsoever for the actors' names, pay scale etc. Many of the best episodes feature only one or two members of the main cast in a significant way, i.e. The Wire, Treachery, Faith, and the Great River, It's Only a Paper Moon, etc.

That would have been fantastic. Pretty much like The Wire where everyone thinks they know who the main characters are in Season 1 and then it changes over the course of the other seasons.

 

[Eddie Roth]

You're right about the Lost comparison - they did it that way and it worked. I may feel that way about DS9 because, for a Trek show, that kind of approach was 1. unusual (TNG had always found ways to give everybody some participation) and 2. the show itself started out differently in the first couple of seasons where they did manage to include just about everyone. After several years in which you grew to love all of these characters, it was unfortunate to see many of them sidelined so often - or at least that's how it felt to me. Quark, for example, was a major (and refreshing) character in the first two years or so, but then gradually ceded screentime to the rest of the Ferengi cast and the stronger focus on Dominion stories.

Take "Progress" from Season 1, an episode I just rewatched a few days ago (and one of that year's best, I might add): The main plot is about Kira and her interaction with a guest star, the farmer Mullibok who's reluctant to leave his home to allow his moon to be used for energy extraction. But it includes significant scenes for both Sisko and Bashir. The subplot focuses on Jake and another guest star, Nog, as they trade stuff back and forth to make a profit - a story that also features Quark and Odo. The only two characters who don't really participate in the story are Dax and O'Brien. And that is one of the episodes in which the focus is really heavily on one character.

It's a gradual change that happened there, is all I'm saying. But it may have been for the best, because even after seven years, you were still left wanting to know more about the main characters, which cannot be said about all Trek shows.