As I've noted in the Voyager thread, I finally made it through the series and was pretty disappointed. But I asked myself: why was I disappointed? And I have to say, Deep Space Nine is pretty much why I was disappointed.
Deep Space Nine was the trek that showed me what I thought Trek could become. Often, in TNG/TOS etc. we get the broad overview. Federation comes to a planet, interacts, and leaves.
Deep Space Nine took the other approach: what really happens in the longterm on any planet? How do people really interact? This hard look at it raised all sorts of questions that I found compelling on an every week basis.
The conflict between the Bajorans and Cardassians took on a Post-WWII Eastern Europe / holocaust tone, and was fleshed out with great episodes (Waltz, Duet) which nailed the sort of holocaust denial that is still serious debate.
"In the Pale Moonlight" may be one of the best character SciFi episodes of Star Trek ever to air. In so many of the previous trek, simple answers and simple solutions prevail. Here, someone trying to do the right thing ends up with terrible consequences, but because of the results, ends up feeling as though he can live with them.
Deep Space Nine was the trek that when I watched I found the most plausible. Very rarely dealing with "abracadabra" technology, DS9 focused far more on what the technology as a given meant to the people. People on the planet, around it, etc.
Characters were not perfect. Unlike Voyager, where characters would clash and all would be well by the end, in DS9, a character could decide they hated another character.. and it stayed that way until there was reason to change. Once Sisko decided he disliked Kai Winn, we began to develop real conflict between the two.
I'll admit, I found the bajoran subplot, with all that happened on their planet, to be the most interesting. The show managed to effectively delve into a recovering economy, a semi-theocratic state and develop how it could come out of a period of oppression. The way the bajorans, and maquis were handled made me love the show.
Whereas TNG had a maquis episode which basically ended "they are wrong, too bad" DS9 had episodes where many members sympathized. Yes, they were wrong, but hey, there is something wrong with this whole situation. Commander Eddington's character, someone so spun up in the idea of being a great emancipator was sharply written and while you didn't agree with the character, his motives were well defined.
I've tried to go back and watch big swaths of TNG on Spike and elsewhere. And the stories just don't mean as much years later. Too little at stake, and while there are some great episodes, there aren't a ton of them. We often praise how good the "Best of Both Worlds" I & II are, but in part, it's because it fed into how the show worked. We learned nothing about the Borg, they were unknown killing machines, and you couldn't do anything but think of them as evil.
While the founders/dominion were evil, by the time we were in Season 5/6, the Klingons/Romulans had tried to destroy their homeworld, we'd see where the dominion from their viewpoint, and like Eddington - while you knew they were wrong, their story was told well enough that you had a feeling why they were motivated to do what they did.
I can sit and watch most DS9 episodes and feel involved in it. So, there's my opening praise of the show. Now that the series is being sold at a nice mark-down at many places, maybe more will discover it
Deep Space Nine was the trek that showed me what I thought Trek could become. Often, in TNG/TOS etc. we get the broad overview. Federation comes to a planet, interacts, and leaves.
Deep Space Nine took the other approach: what really happens in the longterm on any planet? How do people really interact? This hard look at it raised all sorts of questions that I found compelling on an every week basis.
The conflict between the Bajorans and Cardassians took on a Post-WWII Eastern Europe / holocaust tone, and was fleshed out with great episodes (Waltz, Duet) which nailed the sort of holocaust denial that is still serious debate.
"In the Pale Moonlight" may be one of the best character SciFi episodes of Star Trek ever to air. In so many of the previous trek, simple answers and simple solutions prevail. Here, someone trying to do the right thing ends up with terrible consequences, but because of the results, ends up feeling as though he can live with them.
Deep Space Nine was the trek that when I watched I found the most plausible. Very rarely dealing with "abracadabra" technology, DS9 focused far more on what the technology as a given meant to the people. People on the planet, around it, etc.
Characters were not perfect. Unlike Voyager, where characters would clash and all would be well by the end, in DS9, a character could decide they hated another character.. and it stayed that way until there was reason to change. Once Sisko decided he disliked Kai Winn, we began to develop real conflict between the two.
I'll admit, I found the bajoran subplot, with all that happened on their planet, to be the most interesting. The show managed to effectively delve into a recovering economy, a semi-theocratic state and develop how it could come out of a period of oppression. The way the bajorans, and maquis were handled made me love the show.
Whereas TNG had a maquis episode which basically ended "they are wrong, too bad" DS9 had episodes where many members sympathized. Yes, they were wrong, but hey, there is something wrong with this whole situation. Commander Eddington's character, someone so spun up in the idea of being a great emancipator was sharply written and while you didn't agree with the character, his motives were well defined.
I've tried to go back and watch big swaths of TNG on Spike and elsewhere. And the stories just don't mean as much years later. Too little at stake, and while there are some great episodes, there aren't a ton of them. We often praise how good the "Best of Both Worlds" I & II are, but in part, it's because it fed into how the show worked. We learned nothing about the Borg, they were unknown killing machines, and you couldn't do anything but think of them as evil.
While the founders/dominion were evil, by the time we were in Season 5/6, the Klingons/Romulans had tried to destroy their homeworld, we'd see where the dominion from their viewpoint, and like Eddington - while you knew they were wrong, their story was told well enough that you had a feeling why they were motivated to do what they did.
I can sit and watch most DS9 episodes and feel involved in it. So, there's my opening praise of the show. Now that the series is being sold at a nice mark-down at many places, maybe more will discover it
