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Was ds9 the saddest ending?

I always saw the DS9 ending as bittersweet insofar as the crew survive and have a brighter future ahead of them albeit the great cost. Kind of like the S1 finale of Daredevil: Hell's Kitchen is safe and there is hope for the mean streets - but it took a lot of bloodshed to get to that point.

I like the term bittersweet than sad because I didn't consider DS9's ending sad. Life does go on on the station, even if some of the crew had left.
 
I like the term bittersweet than sad because I didn't consider DS9's ending sad. Life does go on on the station, even if some of the crew had left.

"the more things change, the more the stay the same"

Which compares well with

"Second star to the right, and straight on til morning"
And
"Five card stud, nothing wild, and the sky's the limit."

Which I consider the final lines of TOS and TNG.

"Set a course for home" just didn't do it for me - could have been a line from the pilot.

"Computer, end program" and "space, the final frontier...has gone before" were a great way to finish that era of trek too. Not great for enterprise, but a great way to take Trek off the screen for the first time for the first time since the 70s.
 
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Interestingly, "Set a course... For home" was the line from the pilot. I believe that was the intent. The journey was over, they had come full circle.

DS9's ending was sad. They're all splitting up, and Sisko is gone, but at the same time, each character won the lottery, and got a great big reward, except for Jake & Kira. I love that shot of them in the window more than anything else. I'm so glad they used those two.

Each show has that emotional moment. Kira & Jake, Janeway seeing earth and telling Chakotay to take the helm, T'Pol giving Archer a hug, and I probably get the most emotional at Picard sitting down at the Poker table, I don't know why. They all feel earned.
 
He spent all his free time on vision quests, when he should've been in that flight simulator.
 
However, Turnabout Intruder was the saddest ending in its own special way.

There's nothing sad about that episode other than Janice Lester was a mentally ill woman who couldn't accept that her mental illness was what drove her (and the man whose body she tried to take over) apart originally and so she did what she did in the episode. What was truly sad is that it was the last episode of the show, and that despite the engineered by Roddenberry writing campaigns, the show didn't do well enough to be renewed for a fourth season (and of the three shows being shot by Desilu/Paramount at the time, should have been the one to have been keep going.)
 
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No. Sisko still has a 1-up and will be back someday. If it were truly sad they would have killed him and he would have stayed dead.
 
There's nothing said about that episode other than Janice Lester was a mentally ill woman who couldn't accept that her mental illness was what drove her (and the man whose body she tried to take over) apart originally and so she did what she did in the episode. What was truly sad is that it was the last episode of the show, and that despite the engineered by Roddenberry writing campaigns, the show didn't do well enough to be renewed for a fourth season (and of the three shows being shot by Desilu/Paramount at the time, should have been the one to have been keep going.)
Oh, Turnabout Intruder was a pretty weak episode. Not the worst, but really weak. Weak motivation, Kirk spurned her once and she spent, what, a decade plotting revenge? Why is her doctor helping her? If you love someone you try to keep them from doing stupid and criminal things, not help them along. Only good part was the crew's reaction to Lester/Kirk's actions.
 
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Yeah. Enterprise had a really awful ending episode, but those last few moments... I cannot tell you just how broken and sad myself and a couple of my friends were when Star Trek died. That's what it felt like. Like a friend had just died. DS9 had a great ending. Sad? Maybe, in a way. But fulfilling. Everything was as it should be, dramatically speaking.

When Enterprise went it took what felt like one last bastion of positivity, the final curtain on the 1990s. I mean I cried. I really did. It felt like it book marked the end of my childhood for certain. Adulthood was looming straight ahead, and that show that had simply been there since before I was even old enough to remember, was now gone. Probably forever. I honestly would never have guessed that just a mere three years later I would see this

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Where that lump returned to my throat. Star Trek is alive. There's still a pulse.
 
Cheers! To tears.
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(Continued)
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And a toast to the 90's.
 
Since DS9 had the most realistic approach to human (and alien) nature the Finale was quite fitting after a prolonged and very bloody war has ended.

They capped off all characters in a good and realistic way, people evolve and their life circumstances change.. especially at the workplace. I don't know about a single workplace that has people in their 20s and 30s stay together unchanged for more than a couple of years, people take promotions or simply change jobs/companies when opportunities present themselves and that's just the way of life.

Not everybody got the happy ending they deserved.. Kira and Odo split up when he returns to the Founders, Sisko joins the Prophets and leaves Jake and Cassidy (with child) behind and Bashir and O'Brien part ways but i liked this very much and it was central to why i think DS9 was the best Trek show because it treated its character realistically and was consequential in its approach.
 
DS9 & TNG have the best TV finales though DS9 is more of a sad one because the DS9 family was broken up as everyone went there different ways.

DS9's finale was the best ending in terms of how it handled the characters of the show. The show took it's time to focus on all the characters alongside the main story and in doing so, not only did it wrap up the main arc of the show "The Dominion War" but each character completed their own arc's.

TNG was more about story (The Trial of Humanity by the Q, which started in the pilot episode) rather than the characters getting any sort of proper send off but this made sense due to knowing TNG would carry on as movies. If you consider Nemesis the proper send off for TNG then it failed in almost every way that TUC succeeded in when it ended the arc of the TOS crew.
 
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DS9 easily has the saddest, most bittersweet, melancholy ending of them all for me.

And that's why DS9 is so great...because it's the most realistic of the endings. At the end of DS9, the characters still feel real...things have happened..huge things, with repurcussions...yet life goes on. Being in Starfleet can't always be happy endings and perfect victories.

I thought DS9's ending captured that feeling wonderfully well.
 
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