It could be many other colonial powers too. The "helping the poor noneuropean societies modernize" meme was used by French, Dutch, Belgian, American... even as they exploited the labor with horrible working conditions and took the natural resources mainly for the benefit of the colonial power. Easier than admitting to themselves what they were doing.
What do some fans see as DS9's flaws?
- Thread starter DS9forever
- Start date
Ah, right. I suppose the term 'pacific theatre' put me on the wrong footing, it made me think of the Japanese-American war efforts and actions specifically (which I don't know too much about). I agree that there seems to have been no specific Cardassian 'holocaust program' and in that respect perhaps it more resembles what the Japanese did.
There was a separate thread about parallels with colonialism a few months ago. I think it was not only British colonialism that showed this paternalistic attitude, but more generally European colonialism, and more especially so during the 19th and early 20 centuries. (In yet earlier centuries, there seem to have been even less qualms about it, so also less need of such a 'justification').
EDIT: saw only later kkt had already said the same thing about colonialism.
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DS9 is overall pretty solid with huge potential, up until its final seasons due to a lot of missed opportunities of what they could've done with the show. Here's some of my thoughts.
1) Vic Fontaine: already explained ad nauseum in another post about how much I hate him. The absolute worst character in Star Trek. Season 6 and 7 waste too much time with them doing silly stuff on the holosuite and I find every episode with him unwatchable. I still don't understand his appeal.
2) Ezri Dax: I don't find her character necessarily bad, but it came out of cost. Season 7 spend too much time developing her. Considering it's the last season of the show, I find it useless to develop a whole new character from scratch just for one season. I can't help but also think that it made Jadzia's death a bit unconsenquential.
3) The Dominion War arc was completely rushed. No time to slowly develop anything, the whole thing feels like is in warp speed. It ended so suddenly, in the last possible minute of the finale. What about a couple of episodes dealing with the aftermath of the Dominion War or resolving some minor threads?
4) I didn't liked the Odo and Kira pairing. I prefered when their relationship was platonic, but at least it gave us some interesting stories. When it happened, I really didn't think that Auberjonois and Visitor had a good chemistry on screen.
1) Vic Fontaine: already explained ad nauseum in another post about how much I hate him. The absolute worst character in Star Trek. Season 6 and 7 waste too much time with them doing silly stuff on the holosuite and I find every episode with him unwatchable. I still don't understand his appeal.
2) Ezri Dax: I don't find her character necessarily bad, but it came out of cost. Season 7 spend too much time developing her. Considering it's the last season of the show, I find it useless to develop a whole new character from scratch just for one season. I can't help but also think that it made Jadzia's death a bit unconsenquential.
3) The Dominion War arc was completely rushed. No time to slowly develop anything, the whole thing feels like is in warp speed. It ended so suddenly, in the last possible minute of the finale. What about a couple of episodes dealing with the aftermath of the Dominion War or resolving some minor threads?
4) I didn't liked the Odo and Kira pairing. I prefered when their relationship was platonic, but at least it gave us some interesting stories. When it happened, I really didn't think that Auberjonois and Visitor had a good chemistry on screen.
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1. Vic Fontaine becoming a regular player was an awful development, the only espisode he belonged in was the one where Nog fought PTSD.
2. The mirror universe episodes are mostly skipable, they went to this well over and over again despite having little of interest to say. Plus what happens in the mirror universe is inconsequential to the regular universe, these episodes always lacked dramatic tension even if Dominatrix Kira is fantastic strutting around in high heeled riding boots.
3. Replacing Dax in season 7 was done poorly. Although Ezri was a well written character, devoting half of the final season getting us invested in Dax 2.0 didnt have a pay off, they should have given Ezri HALF the episode time in the first half of the season.
4. The Ferengi were ruined by the end of the series. A once formidable and somewhat exotic foe was revealed to be simplistic and the final arc of making Rom Grand Negus was the final hack move.
5. Turning Dukat into a cartoony villain near the end of the show was a bit rich and basically removed a lot of dramatic tension from the show and the character himself. It feels like Damar was sort of gifted the redemption arc a character like Dukat deserved, even Kira missed out on being a part of that.
2. The mirror universe episodes are mostly skipable, they went to this well over and over again despite having little of interest to say. Plus what happens in the mirror universe is inconsequential to the regular universe, these episodes always lacked dramatic tension even if Dominatrix Kira is fantastic strutting around in high heeled riding boots.
3. Replacing Dax in season 7 was done poorly. Although Ezri was a well written character, devoting half of the final season getting us invested in Dax 2.0 didnt have a pay off, they should have given Ezri HALF the episode time in the first half of the season.
4. The Ferengi were ruined by the end of the series. A once formidable and somewhat exotic foe was revealed to be simplistic and the final arc of making Rom Grand Negus was the final hack move.
5. Turning Dukat into a cartoony villain near the end of the show was a bit rich and basically removed a lot of dramatic tension from the show and the character himself. It feels like Damar was sort of gifted the redemption arc a character like Dukat deserved, even Kira missed out on being a part of that.
Can I just say season 6 and 7? 
OK, mostly just the horrid character stuff of the later seasons. Bashir's genetic secret undid an amazing character arc built up over four years; Sisko as part-prophet, Alexander being an idiot and Worf being a terrible father (so much for the lessons he learned in "Firstborn"), killing Jadzia off, Odo and Kira getting together, what they did to Dukat's character in the final season, dragging the Dominion war on too longer...
I appreciate lots of these things will be seen as good things by some fans, but for me they all impacted negatively on a show I loved.
I know most people swoon and gush over the later episodes, but for me, season 1-4 (and most of season 5) is where it's at.
OK, mostly just the horrid character stuff of the later seasons. Bashir's genetic secret undid an amazing character arc built up over four years; Sisko as part-prophet, Alexander being an idiot and Worf being a terrible father (so much for the lessons he learned in "Firstborn"), killing Jadzia off, Odo and Kira getting together, what they did to Dukat's character in the final season, dragging the Dominion war on too longer...
I appreciate lots of these things will be seen as good things by some fans, but for me they all impacted negatively on a show I loved.
I know most people swoon and gush over the later episodes, but for me, season 1-4 (and most of season 5) is where it's at.
^ yeah Moore was a military man and they were all of a generation where WWII were the heroes of the last Great War. And they did WWII in space for two seasons. A lot of good stuff in there, interesting arc experiments, but it didn’t have to be that long or one-note the entire time, and it didn’t have to be WWII. The over the top yet mundanity of red eyed villains and having to destroy and evil book no one’s ever heard of or cared about til two seconds ago also just kind of meh.
And I agree about the character work. We’d seen Worf become a better parent on TNG. Bashir as genetically-engineered didn't make sense (retconned his own internal mono/dialogue from earlier in the series) and we didn’t get enough out of it; he wasn’t that super duper most of the time though he should have been uncomfortably more, given his abilities. Plus, can you imagine if the Romulans were like if Starfleet’s letting this slide then fuck it and started engineering half their crews like that? There had to be agreements/reasons everyone wasn’t genetically engineering left and right. Anyway, I blame Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, who was every writer’s wet dream at the time, one by one making every mundane human cast member on the show now a brooding supernatural being with interesting story arcs.
The more nuanced work they did with Bashir earlier in the series, the more realistic bastard in Dukat in “The Maquis” two-parter for example, other stuff, were turned up to 11 later in the series. I mean Rom and Leeta too, come on, that for me was almost misogynistic. The classic Hollywood fantasy of nerd writers. And Heaven forbid a “male” and female character just be friends on a TV show; Odo and Kira were straight out of a Soap Opera. Plus he was 17 years older than her in the real world, and that never quite gelled for me. It was just eh.
There’s a lot to love in the show, even in its flaws, but yes it did have them.
And I agree about the character work. We’d seen Worf become a better parent on TNG. Bashir as genetically-engineered didn't make sense (retconned his own internal mono/dialogue from earlier in the series) and we didn’t get enough out of it; he wasn’t that super duper most of the time though he should have been uncomfortably more, given his abilities. Plus, can you imagine if the Romulans were like if Starfleet’s letting this slide then fuck it and started engineering half their crews like that? There had to be agreements/reasons everyone wasn’t genetically engineering left and right. Anyway, I blame Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, who was every writer’s wet dream at the time, one by one making every mundane human cast member on the show now a brooding supernatural being with interesting story arcs.
The more nuanced work they did with Bashir earlier in the series, the more realistic bastard in Dukat in “The Maquis” two-parter for example, other stuff, were turned up to 11 later in the series. I mean Rom and Leeta too, come on, that for me was almost misogynistic. The classic Hollywood fantasy of nerd writers. And Heaven forbid a “male” and female character just be friends on a TV show; Odo and Kira were straight out of a Soap Opera. Plus he was 17 years older than her in the real world, and that never quite gelled for me. It was just eh.
There’s a lot to love in the show, even in its flaws, but yes it did have them.
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I'd say my biggest gripes involve Jadzia--but not her death. I think she had to die in order to utilize the Dax character to its full extent.
But we learned virtually nothing abo⁸ut Jadzia herself in 6 seasons. In the one episode where she's actually separated from Dax, she spends most of it unconscious! Even when she dies, we don't hear of her family except Worf. I don't think Jadzia even had any relatives at her wedding.
And not utilizing Terry Farrell after Jadzia's death. Farrell left the show because she didn't want to keep being a regular, but said she'd do a guest appearance. So why not habe Ezri meet her through a dream, the Mirror Universe, time travel or that ghost-ritual?
The rest of my gripes with the show are really just small specific things on this or that episode.
One thing I never thought of on my own, but someone once pointed out that DS9 never had any Bajoran Starfleet officers, despite Bajor being so crucial to the series! That was a huge missed opportunity.
But we learned virtually nothing abo⁸ut Jadzia herself in 6 seasons. In the one episode where she's actually separated from Dax, she spends most of it unconscious! Even when she dies, we don't hear of her family except Worf. I don't think Jadzia even had any relatives at her wedding.
And not utilizing Terry Farrell after Jadzia's death. Farrell left the show because she didn't want to keep being a regular, but said she'd do a guest appearance. So why not habe Ezri meet her through a dream, the Mirror Universe, time travel or that ghost-ritual?
The rest of my gripes with the show are really just small specific things on this or that episode.
One thing I never thought of on my own, but someone once pointed out that DS9 never had any Bajoran Starfleet officers, despite Bajor being so crucial to the series! That was a huge missed opportunity.
Are there people who readily admit to not liking DS9 because it had a black lead? Dear god.....
The Bashir genetic enhancement was one of the show's biggest, most mind-bogglingly stupid decisions that did (almost) ruin the character and, as you point out, 100% did not jibe with what we knew about the character.
In early seasons, Bashir was deeply arrogant. Boastful. He was immensely proud of his impressive achievements and wasn't shy about telling anyone about them. He was also a professional tennis player who very nearly pursued that as his career.
How does that fit with someone who was "hiding" his "enhanced" abilities all along and was afraid of being discovered? The answer: Not at all.
So Bashir was purposely "throwing" all those darts games with O'Brien. But apparently not his professional tennis matches.
A far, far better choice would be that Bashir learns that he's been genetically engineered in the episode. That his gifts weren't simply the product of hard work, but that he had been given a huge advantage in childhood. That would have given the episode and the character an actual arc and a point: Bashir grapples with this horrible revelation. Instead, he just reveals that he's been keeping a secret this whole time. Yawn. That story went absolutely nowhere, made no sense and nearly blew up the character. At least the writers eventually had the good sense to downplay all his new superpowers.
And even Siddig himself admitted he hated the change and purposely tried to tank his own line readings so they wouldn't give him any more of those speeches where he demonstrates his computer-like brain.
Such a catastrophic miscalculation from the usually great Ron Moore.
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Bashir will always be my favorite character from DS9. I preferred the enhanced version. Early Bashir was a dick.
Lot of good thoughts in the recent comments here and I agree with a lot of it!
1) Odo/Kira was a huge mistake. Even the actors campagined against it. They should have just remained good friends. There's no reason you can't depict a meaningful relationship without it devolving into romance. Odo getting his heartbroken were some of the most powerful, most resonant episodes of the entire show. And the producers just chuck all of that and give him a (frankly unearned) happy ending. It was a disservice to both characters and to the quality drama they had already mined from the subject. Bleh!
2) Ferengi. What more needs to be said? Generously, maybe 20% of the Ferengi-centric episodes weren't unwatchable dreck. Quark (and even Rom) deserved better. It also didn't help that the uber-talented Andrea Martin declined to continue appearing as Moogie and they were saddled with the vastly inferior Cecily Adams as a replacement.
3) Dukat post-Waltz. Waltz was basically the end of the character. Afterwards, this complex, compelling villain became a one-note cartoon. And, of course, he was saddled with the terrible...
4) Pah-Wraith storyline. Perhaps wanting to kill two birds with one stone by tying up the Kai Winn and Dukat at the same time, (not to mention some Prophet business), the producers' answer was to give us some absurd nonsense about cursed books and evil spirits and a bunch of other dreadful hookum that should have been kept a million lightyears away from Star Trek. It made Beverly's ghost boyfriend from TNG look restrained by comparison.
5) For that matter, the show dug way, way too hard into the mystical nonsense with the Prophets, particularly in the later seasons. One of the worst aspects of this was how Sisko was conceived by a Prophet who had literally stolen an innocent woman's body and, without her consent, used it as vessel for procreation. Utterly disgusting and horrific. I have no problem with Sisko joining the Prophets at the end of the series (as it brings things full circle), nor with the Prophets occasionally popping up in episodes like "Sacrifice of Angels", but as the show went on, the use of the Prophets got worse and worse. Bleh.
6) Dominion War. I never thought the Dominion War was rushed, per se, and I certainly enjoyed most of it. But I don't like how it came to dominate the series in the later years. I'm one of the few fans who actually preferred DS9's early years when the show was weird and surprising and experimental. Look at something like Season 2, where all the episodes are odd and different and distinct from each other. I miss that goofy, oddball DS9 and preferred that over "the war show."
7) Ezri Dax. It's not that I didn't like the character, but as another commented mentioned, she got WAY too many dedicated episodes in the final season, while poor Jadzia got very little love from the writers over the years and decreasingly few showcase episodes.
1) Odo/Kira was a huge mistake. Even the actors campagined against it. They should have just remained good friends. There's no reason you can't depict a meaningful relationship without it devolving into romance. Odo getting his heartbroken were some of the most powerful, most resonant episodes of the entire show. And the producers just chuck all of that and give him a (frankly unearned) happy ending. It was a disservice to both characters and to the quality drama they had already mined from the subject. Bleh!
2) Ferengi. What more needs to be said? Generously, maybe 20% of the Ferengi-centric episodes weren't unwatchable dreck. Quark (and even Rom) deserved better. It also didn't help that the uber-talented Andrea Martin declined to continue appearing as Moogie and they were saddled with the vastly inferior Cecily Adams as a replacement.
3) Dukat post-Waltz. Waltz was basically the end of the character. Afterwards, this complex, compelling villain became a one-note cartoon. And, of course, he was saddled with the terrible...
4) Pah-Wraith storyline. Perhaps wanting to kill two birds with one stone by tying up the Kai Winn and Dukat at the same time, (not to mention some Prophet business), the producers' answer was to give us some absurd nonsense about cursed books and evil spirits and a bunch of other dreadful hookum that should have been kept a million lightyears away from Star Trek. It made Beverly's ghost boyfriend from TNG look restrained by comparison.
5) For that matter, the show dug way, way too hard into the mystical nonsense with the Prophets, particularly in the later seasons. One of the worst aspects of this was how Sisko was conceived by a Prophet who had literally stolen an innocent woman's body and, without her consent, used it as vessel for procreation. Utterly disgusting and horrific. I have no problem with Sisko joining the Prophets at the end of the series (as it brings things full circle), nor with the Prophets occasionally popping up in episodes like "Sacrifice of Angels", but as the show went on, the use of the Prophets got worse and worse. Bleh.
6) Dominion War. I never thought the Dominion War was rushed, per se, and I certainly enjoyed most of it. But I don't like how it came to dominate the series in the later years. I'm one of the few fans who actually preferred DS9's early years when the show was weird and surprising and experimental. Look at something like Season 2, where all the episodes are odd and different and distinct from each other. I miss that goofy, oddball DS9 and preferred that over "the war show."
7) Ezri Dax. It's not that I didn't like the character, but as another commented mentioned, she got WAY too many dedicated episodes in the final season, while poor Jadzia got very little love from the writers over the years and decreasingly few showcase episodes.
Long ago when I wasn't happy with how the series turned out in season 7 I thought that the show's final episode could be 'Sacrifice of Angels' in beginning of season 6. But it's been a long time since I revisited those episodes so that storyline might not work as the final episode.
Might actually work. Just have a coda where Worf and Dax get married, and you're good.
Too much filler and repetition. Because DVDs and binge watching wasn't really a thing when it aired, you have a lot of episodes that restate a lot of stuff earlier episodes did in case you missed something. I found this the most frustrating part of my binge watch during lockdown.
The other thing I didn't like was that the Klingons became more cartoonish as they were developed in this series. The Ferengi went the opposite route. They became less cartoonish and more developed by time the series ended. They were ridiculous on ST:NG.
The other thing I didn't like was that the Klingons became more cartoonish as they were developed in this series. The Ferengi went the opposite route. They became less cartoonish and more developed by time the series ended. They were ridiculous on ST:NG.
One thing that’s really odd in retrospect is the way Ferenginar is simultaneously an absolute libertarian capitalist nation and also the most heavily regulated economy in the galaxy.
A lot of it arises from the early TNG portrayal as a capitalist caricature and DS9 trying to take what they did and build it out. But it just makes no sense. You can’t be absolutely for economic freedom and also have an entity like the FCA with absolute power to seize a person’s wealth and blacklist them.
A lot of it arises from the early TNG portrayal as a capitalist caricature and DS9 trying to take what they did and build it out. But it just makes no sense. You can’t be absolutely for economic freedom and also have an entity like the FCA with absolute power to seize a person’s wealth and blacklist them.
Both the FCA and the Grand Nagus are DS9 creations. I’ve liked some of the stories to come from them, but they don’t make sense as a laissez-faire capitalist society. I guess it was a step too far for Trek to come up with a number of competing interstellar corporations running all-things Ferengi. Maybe now post-Game of Thrones?
But it would be cool to have basically competing warlords who control everything from their version of Amazon or Apple to battle fleets go at it with one another. The fleets themselves being independent privateers made daimons with sanction.
But it would be cool to have basically competing warlords who control everything from their version of Amazon or Apple to battle fleets go at it with one another. The fleets themselves being independent privateers made daimons with sanction.
Racism might be one of humanity's greatest evils, but we haven't managed to make it extinct... yet. Still, considering that there are people alive today who remember WHITE and COLORED restrooms and drinking fountains, it's unquestionable that progress has been made.
The whole business with Zek and Ishka was a mistake anyway. What's the point in creating a fascinating non-human culture, then dismantling it in the most stupid and unrealistic manner possible. Seriously, what they did with the Ferengi was the equivalent of Klingons all over Quo'nos stripping off their armor and singing "Give Peace a Chance".
I could've done without the fan service which increased season after season destroying the series' own concept of stepping far away from the franchises clichés. By the time we get to its final season, the DS9 world appeared more closer to the Star Trek establishment which made it familiar grounds than the alien nature it once had.
^I do recall the first scenes of Sisko being aboard DS9. Vedeks, Bajorans and Quark eyeing him warily. It gave a great eerie feel of being in a truly alien environment. But of course you couldn't expect it to stay that way. After living somewhere for seven years, that place becomes home, more or less.
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