Avery Brooks AND Andre Braugher?! Shit, that must’ve been fucking epic.
For the record, I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard people here say that “oh, Season 1 is a slog, but then it gets really good!” And now I learn that “Oh, actually seasons 1-3 aren’t very good…but after season 4 it’s amazing!”
I’m just saying.
Count me as another in the “it does not really get going until Season 04”. So many of the characters just begin to shine once the war gets going.
I loved seasons 2-7, but YMMV.
The war also introduces some AWESOME characters, like General Martok! LOVE that guy!
I love them now, after I saw the whole series and went back and watched from the beginning. At the time they were airing, I got bored with the show and stopped watching until Season 4 drew me back in with some amazing episodes.
I’m still reeling from the fact that anyone could enjoy Voyager. That show was almost a self-referential parody of all of the bad aspects of the Next Gen universe. Just horrible. I liked Enterprise a lot more than Voyager.
My thoughts exactly. Only person I liked on the ship was the Doctor, and he wasn’t on enough to keep me watching. I loved the guy who was the inspiration for the hologram doctor on Voyager visited DS9 though.
Ugh, Voyager. There is one word that still makes me shudder: Neelix.
Deep Space 9 was nearly-unbearable cheese until the end of season 3. Then it got good. And then we got “In the Pale Moonlight”, which is so good it doesn’t actually belong in a television sci-fi series (especially Star Trek). And don’t listen to the “It’s a Babylon 5 ripoff!” crowd. The similarities are skin-deep, and both shows stand on their own strengths (and weaknesses).
The thing with DS9 is that it spent a few years finding itself. They kept tweaking with the concept every season. Oh, we need a starship: Enter the Defiant. Oh, we need some more action: Enter Worf.
It was always the bastard stepchild. It began with TNG in its final seasons, and was overshadowed by that. Then Voyager came along and was the higher profile show, thanks mainly to the fact that it launched a new television network, whereas DS9 was still in syndication. And this was when syndication really started to collapse. Syndication worked great when there were 3-4 networks; you still had a lot of local channels around the country without a network affiliation. Then UPN and WB came around and snapped a lot of those up, and with them, a lot of evening programming hours.
But I think Voyager coming around was a blessing for DS9, because that meant Berman and Braga focused more on their new baby and let Moore, Wolfe, and company basically run wild on DS9. It’s interesting to hear after the fact how much the Trek establishment (ie, Majel Barrett) hated DS9 because of its concept of Federation at War.
Oh god, I still think that’s one of the best episodes of anything ever. SO love it. It also helps that Garak is my favorite character. But holy hell, I’m sure Roddenberry was spinning in his grave over that one.
It was - best play I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot.
As someone who watched both shows, it’s still pretty suspicious to me that Deep Space Nine only ramped up the war against the Dominion (which, as you noted, happened at the end of season 3) after Babylon 5 started the war against the Shadows (which really started during their season 2). Yes, there were enough differences to make the shows somewhat different, but it still rankles me that DS9 gets the credit for getting so serious and having an overarching storyline, when B5 had planned theirs out for years in advance, and had actually pitched to people at Paramount well before they came up with the idea of a Star Trek series set on a space station near a stable wormhole.
I see your point, but the fact that it’s a star trek series with both continuity and over arching plots on its own is cause for celebration I think. ;-)
My belief is Voyager sucked out all the suck from DS9: Voyager started half-way thru DS9 season 3; I’ve never thought it was a coincidence that was when DS9 started getting a lot better. Though whether that’s due to all the bad influences leaving DS9 or just karma, I’m not sure. :-)
Also, everyone who crows about B5’s “superiority” evidently self-administered ECT until they forgot how terrible the first season was. Would not want to have to decide which series got off to a worse start, B5 or DS9…largely because it would mean rewatching both.
Actually it’s not a coincidence at all. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga went to work on their new baby Voyager and left Ron Moore (he of later BSG fame/infamy depending on one’s perspective) and company to basically do their own thing. Freed from the stifling mediocrity of Berman and Braga DS9 flourished.
This relates to the similarities to B5 that Andy Bates mentions (which is a long-running conspiracy theory amongst B5 fans). Ron Moore basically outright lied to Berman and Braga about his intentions for DS9, assuring them that the whole Dominion War arc would only take a few episodes and not to worry, it’ll still be Star Trek.
As Andy mentions, the concept of a Space station as a gathering place for many alien species was originally pitched to Paramount, but it’s not exactly earth-shattering in its originality. The whole galaxy-wide war spanning multiple seasons arc may have been influenced by B5, but that’s very difficult to prove, and is very much in tradition of sci-fi being influenced and borrowing generously from others. It also came from the show-runners on the ground and went against the desires of the powers that be.
Did new Star Trek actually last more than one season? I thought that French captain sucked.
Last night I just watched “In the Pale Moonlight” last night for maybe the 7-8th time. I swear it’s still the best episode of any Trek I’ve ever seen. Dear lord is it amazing, ESPECIALLY Garak.
So I finally started to really dig into DS9 and I have to admit it really does improve quite a bit. The first 2 seasons are about as much fun as having teeth pulled, but after that you get some really good little arcs. Sure there are still some stinkers in the bunch (mostly involving time travel and the holodeck, but that’s just par for the course in Star Trek) but all in all it really is getting good. Glad I gave a 3rd (or is it 4th) try.
In the last few seasons the Ferengi episodes were the real groaners. I was glad that when Jeffrey Combs was guest-starring they specified which character it was going to be: Weyoun episodes were some of the best, and Brunt episodes were some of the worst.
(For those who aren’t familiar, Combs played two different characters on the show, both with lots of prosthetics so you really couldn’t tell. Weyoun was the diplomatic face of the Dominion, and Brunt was a Ferengi who was the villain in most of the awful comic-relief Quark episodes.)