Hi there, Niners! Shatnertage here. I've just wrapped up a thread on the Voyager forum detailing my experiences watching that show for mostly the first time, and at the urging of folks on and off TBBS I'm going to spend the next few months watching Deep Space Nine.
I haven't posted much in this forum because this is now the sole Trek show that I'm not that familiar with. Some background: I grew up watching TOS and TAS in the 1970s; young as I was, I considered TOS a more boring, far inferior version of TAS at first. I tuned in eagerly for TNG as a freshman in high school, and then was bitterly disappointed along with my fellow Trek cabal-mates in the namby-pamby captain and the fact that they let a kid pilot the ship. Needless to say I got over those issues by about the time season 3 rolled around.
I remember watching "Emissary" and some early DS9, but because of my work/school schedule being pretty hectic I didn't watch much scheduled TV outside of MST3K and a few HBO shows for most of my college years. I've seen probably more than a dozen but less than two dozen DS9 episodes, scattered throughout the run. I remember one where Kira's boyfriend got a brain transplant, and one where Worf told Garak he wasn't his type. With one notable exception, it's all kind of hazy, though I know that there was something called the Dominion War, which I'm assuming we won.
I'm in a place now where chilling out to 42 minutes of simultaneously nostalgic and novel entertainment is pretty good. Watching the show with me will be my charming wife, who's endeared herself by pointing out continuity errors and logical impossibilities in plotlines--and agreeing with me, even when no one else did, the the White (actually ivory) Tux was not Janeway's finest hour fashionwise. We've also got a 3 year-old whose favorite Voyager character was Seven (why? "I like her sound" was her response) but who's also a fan of Picard and, for some reason, Degra. And there's a newborn who, at this stage, is mostly going to lead to many "too tired...didn't watch last night" posts.
I know that this show's been discussed and discussed and discussed for years now, but it's (mostly) new to me, and I found that sharing my thoughts with people in the Voyager Forum really helped me appreciate the show much better. Big thanks to everyone who regularly commented over there--it made the whole experience much more fun.
I'm going to approach DS9 the same way I approached Voyager--I won't read anyone else's reviews before watching. When I watched Enterprise two years ago I made the mistake of reading as many reviews as I could before and while I was watching. Some of them, like Jammer's, were pretty good, but some of them, like that bizarre "First TV Drama" site, were pretty bad, and tended to focus me on the negative.
I tend to enjoy both serious character exploration and the more light-hearted stuff. My absolute favorite moment in Voyager was the tease for "Tinker, Doctor, Tenor, Spy," but the final scene of "Counterpoint" is right up there, too. I try to focus on the positive, but, having been pooped on more than once over the past few weeks, when an episode poops on me, I'm not shy about raising my voice about it.
So hopefully if the kids cooperate I'll have something to write about tonight.
I haven't posted much in this forum because this is now the sole Trek show that I'm not that familiar with. Some background: I grew up watching TOS and TAS in the 1970s; young as I was, I considered TOS a more boring, far inferior version of TAS at first. I tuned in eagerly for TNG as a freshman in high school, and then was bitterly disappointed along with my fellow Trek cabal-mates in the namby-pamby captain and the fact that they let a kid pilot the ship. Needless to say I got over those issues by about the time season 3 rolled around.
I remember watching "Emissary" and some early DS9, but because of my work/school schedule being pretty hectic I didn't watch much scheduled TV outside of MST3K and a few HBO shows for most of my college years. I've seen probably more than a dozen but less than two dozen DS9 episodes, scattered throughout the run. I remember one where Kira's boyfriend got a brain transplant, and one where Worf told Garak he wasn't his type. With one notable exception, it's all kind of hazy, though I know that there was something called the Dominion War, which I'm assuming we won.
I'm in a place now where chilling out to 42 minutes of simultaneously nostalgic and novel entertainment is pretty good. Watching the show with me will be my charming wife, who's endeared herself by pointing out continuity errors and logical impossibilities in plotlines--and agreeing with me, even when no one else did, the the White (actually ivory) Tux was not Janeway's finest hour fashionwise. We've also got a 3 year-old whose favorite Voyager character was Seven (why? "I like her sound" was her response) but who's also a fan of Picard and, for some reason, Degra. And there's a newborn who, at this stage, is mostly going to lead to many "too tired...didn't watch last night" posts.
I know that this show's been discussed and discussed and discussed for years now, but it's (mostly) new to me, and I found that sharing my thoughts with people in the Voyager Forum really helped me appreciate the show much better. Big thanks to everyone who regularly commented over there--it made the whole experience much more fun.
I'm going to approach DS9 the same way I approached Voyager--I won't read anyone else's reviews before watching. When I watched Enterprise two years ago I made the mistake of reading as many reviews as I could before and while I was watching. Some of them, like Jammer's, were pretty good, but some of them, like that bizarre "First TV Drama" site, were pretty bad, and tended to focus me on the negative.
I tend to enjoy both serious character exploration and the more light-hearted stuff. My absolute favorite moment in Voyager was the tease for "Tinker, Doctor, Tenor, Spy," but the final scene of "Counterpoint" is right up there, too. I try to focus on the positive, but, having been pooped on more than once over the past few weeks, when an episode poops on me, I'm not shy about raising my voice about it.
So hopefully if the kids cooperate I'll have something to write about tonight.
I'll finish that Babylon 5 thread eventually, I just haven't gotten around to it. My life has been very busy ever since I discovered Minecraft. I have to finish that thread before I can move on to DS9, and I really want to do DS9, so it will definitely happen, maybe.
