Re: Deep Space Nine: For the Fans
I can understand people not liking anything, or people who like anything. Hell, different tastes. I hate any ice cream with nuts in it. My wife loves it. Just different tastes.
Back to the show.
You know, the thing that really gets me is how relevent DS9 seems to be years later, far more so then almost any other show. I watch DS9, and the way they fleshed out the storyline seems to have a lot more impact with me now then it did even when it was original.
Storylines about the horrors of war (I'm thinking episodes in which Jake/Bashir were trapped in a hospital tending the wounded; or Nog coming back missing a leg and dealing with psychological trauma).
This was the trek that dealt with all of those issues. In say, TNG, you had Wolf 369, and then, two episodes later, everyone was back to exploring and things were right in the world.
In DS9, friends they knew died or were killed in those events and they struggled with it. By the time we hit Season 2, you had some absolutely great episodes that explored the impact of war and living under oppression that had occurred in a society.
The second season storyline regarding "The Circle" was, I thought, original thought. Here was a group of people on Bajor who were sick of being oppressed. And they could not see any difference between being oppressed by Cardassians vs. being "helped" by the Federation. They just wanted to be left alone.
At the time, I thought it was very interesting storycraft, a different take on how people might view the federation, and how xenophobia might form into a society. But you look at those episodes now, and they take on a strangely different meaning in the way world events happen.
Sanctuary, also in the same season, was a very Israeli-Palestinian type episode; a wayward people who thousands of years ago called bajor their home tried to come home.. only to be rejected and forced to move on.
Episodes surrounding the maquis gave them meaning.. why were they doing what they were doing. They weren't all "starfleet traitors" most of them were simple farmers and the former oppressed. You could sympathize with them.
I thought the show improved every season it was on, but I agree with some assessments that Season 2 was just a breakthrough season of what was going to happen in the future. It took Trek in a whole knew direction. It took concepts that were glanced over in the other series and focused on them and thought about their longterm impact. There were very few "resets" in the show. Things that happened in episode X were remembered in Episode Y, and sometimes with terrible consequences.
The later episodes of DS9 have such a different feel now that watching them now gives them a whole new context to evaluate them with.
When I go back and watch TNG, I feel like I'm watching a good scifi show that is occassionally great. DS9 is one of those shows, like current BSG, that manages to tell a story about our society represented in SciFi. It takes the larger issues that everyone deals with and frames them in a different way so they have meaning that can be changed and thought of by the audience.
Watching a show in which a space-alien baby tries to mate with the ship (Voy, TNG) may be fun, but the meaning doesn't change because of the watcher.
Watching an episode in which people fight for xenophobic possession of their homeland 8 years ago can be seen today and you feel it differently now then you did then.
To me, that's part of the artistry of DS9, that it's shows have such base themes so well played that we can relate them to real world events and it makes us think about the show being presented differently.
I enjoyed DS9 when it was on the air. Years later, I really love what this show did, all the way through.
