Why hasn't DS9 been represented in NuTrek?

Probably my favorite TOS episode of all time. The dark, tense episodes with heavy duty plots were always great and probably why I gravitate towards DS9 more than any other trek show, it just has great meaningful dramatic episodes.

 

Some vague possibilities here, not sure any of them are worth pursuing....

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-ds9-possible-spinoffs/

 

As a wise man once said: "Count your blessings."

 

That statue seems to show him as a transporter operator (chief). Which he was on TNG, not on DS9. So I'm not sure that one can count as a DS9 reference.

 

My order of preference on a potential new DS9 storyline and how its handled/who handles it:

1. DS9 writer(s) involved
2. A talented writer who knows DS9 inside and out is involved
3. No DS9 story ever happens


100. A modern team Kurtzman Star Trek writer(s) who doesn't understand DS9 are solely involved

 

To say DS9 is the best Trek of all time is a MASSIVE stretch and a personal opinion. VOY (at least to me) was better.

Lower Decks featured DS9 on several occasions and Mariner was stationed there as well.
Apart from a few characters, there might not be much of a reason to revisit it in huge detail (and lets be fair, LD should really do its own thing more).

Prodigy has VOY because Chakotay was/is its captain, and Janeway was put in as a training hologram... besides, VOY crew were directly responsible for bringing back plethora of technologies for UFP/SF which also contributed towards the creation of the Protostar and the Protocore.

Ds9 played a major part in the Dominion War yes, and potentially bringing Bajor into the Federation, but, that's pretty much all it did.
Sure, Sisko ended up with the wormhole aliens, but to be fair, I don't think it really distinguished itself compared to VOY.

Not to downplay what Ds9 did, but VOY crew did something no one in the history of SF managed to do.

Plus, I'm hardly against seeing what happened to DS9 and some of its crew... eh, probably things are more or less quiet there.

 

Not necessarily.
However (and whether you like it or not), it would have paved the way for future stories on how the UFP may have benefitted from that knowledge and changed it in the process.
In essence, you'd be writing your characters as people who left a bigger mark in Trek's history and might even need to be addressed again at some point.

Ds9 and its crew hadn't really done things like that.
War with another interstellar power? It happened.
Would it be nice to learn what happened to the Dominion, and some of the characters from Ds9?
Sure thing... but its also possible some other Trek will address that (Prodigy might still).

By that metric, ALL of Trek contains 'unrealistics levels in its story' to varying degrees. DS9 is no exception... in fact, it had multiple low points which made it utterly BAD to watch.
And unless I'm remembering things incorrecty, the main cast of virtually ANY series always managed to survive (except of course Jadzia who was written out of the show and therefore killed).

VOY also never 'consistently beat the Borg. In fact, in most of their encounters with the Collective, the crew barely managed to escape with their lives intact.
By the time VOY went up against the Tactical cube for example, it was only capable of surviving long enough to create a distraction for the away team (by that point the ship already had the benefits of various upgrades and 29th century drone who upgraded the tactical systems, and of course 7's assistance), and even when it fought together with a liberated Sphere against the Tactical Cube, they never won. Sure, they both managed to compromise shields in a single section of the Cube, but ultimately it was the Queen who destroyed it as she wanted Janeway dead.

In 'child's play' they managed to beam a torpedo inside a sphere which incurred moderate damage... never destroyed the SPhere... but it did disable it long enough for the ship to escape.
That showed some decent thinking on behalf of the crew in dealing with the Borg... and as we saw, the strategies they used had to change all the time.

The only exception to this was Endgame for obvious reasons - temporal changes and far more advanced technology which gets a free pass for the most part (and possibly the ending of Dark Frontier when Janway faced off with the Queen to retrieve 7 and finally when the Delta Flyer was being attacked inside the TW conduit on route back to VOY - which made the shuttle too OP to withstand all that barrage - although, it DID have the benefit of Borg shielding and again, 7 was helping)... here VOY ultimately managed to destroy the sphere, but only because they collapsed the conduit and the sheer force of that managed to obliterate the Sphere as they were going at extreme velocities - so THAT particular case works... its the Delta Flyer bit and Janeway facing off the Queen which are much weaker).

Dark Frontier would be the only outlier which gave the crew of VOY an 'unfair' edge over the Borg... but on the whole, the crew never really beat the Borg.

Why do people blame VOY for 'defanging' the Borg or have highly selective memory thinking the crew had 'outstanding' wins over them when they didn't?
Didn't FC movie do that by introducing the concept of a Queen into the Collective?

I'm not saying VOY doesn't have its low points, but to me, it was certainly more appealing than DS9.
And like it or not, the VOY crew distinguished itself in Trek history.
Also Disco had the USS Nog in the 32nd century.
So, in this regard, I don't think DS9 was neglected. I think it was represented in just the right amounts... and as we saw from Lower Decks, more is yet to come.

 

I think them winning at all is outstanding enough. Also, TNG defanged the Borg. VOY made it worse.

 

Again, VOY crew never 'won' against the Borg... not really.
They got away... and had big help in the process. Don't see how VOY made it worse... they worked with what TNG set up.

 

I posted this elsewhere, but I had a dream a few weeks ago that the TNG crew reunited in season 3 to bring back Sisko and it ended up being a TNG/DS9 bash.

So I'm gonna stick with this headcanon for now.

 

Voyager made the Borg very petty. And, yes, they did win, because they basically were able to be assimilated, infiltrate, and suffer minimal side effects, beyond a minor recovery time.

But, since this is the DS9 thread I'll link to a similar discussion in the Voyager subforum.

 

Like it or not, DS9 is probably the most popular series here on the excellent Trekbbs.

 

I mean, it's not my favorite but it definitely holds my most rewatch value, after TOS. It feels the most lived in, the most relatable in terms of both optimism and human struggle, which is a hard balance to hit. It's not perfect by any stretch, but I find the characters more compelling in terms of personal investment, and struggles that go along with the story.

More on topic, why do I think DS9 hasn't been represented as much as other shows is that DS9, more than any other show, is the most self-contained. TOS and TNG were very open ended, and one ended satisfactorily , then was undone unsatisfactorily. TNG ended open ended then ended unsatisfactorily. DS9 ended open ended enough to leave possibly but the story it was telling was wrapped up well enough. So, it's like how do you go "Hey, I want to continue this" when it feels very complete?

For what it's worth I feel the same way about the Star Wars films. The OT just is such a nice wrap up, the "happily ever after" style that I don't need anything beyond that. Would it be nice? Maybe, but in the end having the story just be done is, as the kids would put it, very satisfying.

Mileage will vary.

 

I don't mind a few DS9 characters branching into Star Trek Picard era shows . But if they ever do a full fledged DS9 centric story, do it right or don't do it at all!

 

but that’s the question isn’t it. What is “doing it right”? There will never be a consensus.

 

Indeed. "Right" to me might look like a character piece following up on Bashir and Dax and their life now working at an Academy satellite campus.

 

Exactly. It’s a “beauty in the eye of the beholder” thing. Like how some people prefer Discovery S1-2 in the 23rd Century and others prefer S3-4 in the 32nd.

 

If you want to see it in that context, had Janeway and friends failed in their mission, Voyager would not have returned from the DQ, but otherwise things would have stayed pretty much as they were. The Borg still would have been a threat, as they were before Voyager. On the other hand, had Sisko failed, Janeway would have found no friends or family to return to. The AQ would have been under Dominion control and the Earth population most likely eradicated (at least, Weyoun was seriously considering that), and perhaps even all of humanity. There would have been no more Federation, no more Klingon empire, and in time, no more Romulan empire. Only Dominion.

Then again, that doesn't say too much because ALL Star trek crews have saved humanity, I think (not entirely sure about some of the newer series).

Agreed. Of course all crews will win, against the odds. Perhaps Kirk 'really' shouldn't have survived against the Doomsday device, or Picard against the Borg. The main cast dying would be a downer.

You're right in that I shouldn't have said 'consistently beaten the borg', but 'beaten the odds'. Confronted against the borg, I consider any result beyond escaping assimilation more than one, perhaps two times, as 'beating the odds'. The borg were established as a species so powerful that a single cube could bring the entire federation to its knees, and indeed would have, were it not for the extraordinary willpower of locutus-picard to mutter 'sleep, Data, sleep'.. A lone starship surviving again and again and again simply stretches credibility too far for me. I know that by necessity they must win (or at least survive) each time, but I think in that case they simply shoud have had less run-ins with the Borg to keep it at least slightly believable. Instead, they chose to de-fang the Borg, and make them look incompetent. Much as they did with the Q.

Yep, that was FC's 'fault' - though understandable for narrative reasons.

 

"Lower Decks" is packed with DS9 references, but the serious shows do seem to be lacking in the DS9 department.

Dax would by far be the easiest character to bring back, for obvious reasons.

 

From the latest LDS episode:

Spoiler

And the special guest stars are...

Spoiler