I meant on average, those lows are pretty bad. Although, I am exaggerating, there aren’t that many.
And Lower Decks. So good.
Unfortunately Season 7 also had a lot of mediocre episodes. Along with Sub Rosa and Masks and Genesis, which were terrible.
I just remember watching season 7 at the time it was airing and being really relieved that the show was ending so that we wouldn’t get even more embarrassing episodes like Genesis.
Damn right. I’d like to think these amazing episodes overcome the…terrible episodes of the season.
I have to get around to watching DS9 some day. I was a TNG fanatic at the time DS9 started, but really hated Sisko at the start and my enthusiasm for having Colm Meaney on the show quickly got reversed when I saw his role and felt he was trying to stretch far beyond his acting capabilities. And the worm-hole plot and fixed station were just dull, so I bailed relatively early in the first season.
…then I later caught a few snippets or out of context episodes a few seasons in and it seemed so much better - they had the Defiant, it had evolved into a war series with lots of continuity, the Romulans and Klingons had a sizeable part, Odo was suddenly very interesting given the role of his race…and, to my surprise, I actually really liked Sisko now that he was a bald badass. But I still only saw a few snippets.
Sisko seemed sort of like Riker – once they changed the character’s hair style by making him bald/giving him a beard (which wasn’t exactly in style like it is today) - they suddenly seemed to be much better characters, heh.
Maybe they should have given Bakula a goatee and Janeway a Mohawk and they could have redeemed those shows too.
Posting this again for anyone thinking of taking the DS9 plunge.
I will also suggest a review podcast called The Gamma Quadrant for those embarking on their DS9 journey
I listened through The Gamma Quadrant my first full time through the series. Having a podcast to listen to at the end of each episode certainly made the bad ones a lot more enjoyable.
Thanks again for linking to that episode list. I used it up until around the 4th season when I started watching everything. The early episodes that it recommends are really quite good, especially the ones with Garak, and it skips over the episodes that bored me back when it was on air.
I’m into the 5th season now. I’m most impressed with the recurring characters like Garak, Dukat, and Winn. Have I mentioned yet that I like Garak? He’s gotta be one of my characters from anything ever. I hear the phrase “moral ambiguity” thrown around a lot, but DS9 actually got it right. The bad guys are still pretty bad, but they don’t know that they’re the bad guys. The good guys aren’t perfect, but they still mean well. And then there’s Garak, who is just too awesome to be judged.
I do still have some minor complaints. The main characters are interesting but I don’t find them particularly likable. And I’ve got a lot of issues that stem from the way American serialized TV shows are written versus Asian dramas and telenovelas, but I need to let those percolate in my brain for a while longer.
It would be interesting if some Chinese [edit: or Korean] company licensed Star Trek and developed their own series.
Yeah, I would love to see what weird planets they would imagine. And you can learn a lot about a culture from how it imagines the future to be, so I wish we had more sci-fi from Asia.
I started rewatching it last week and I think it’s fine to just start watching from season 2 once you know who the characters are.
A few episodes are skippable, but overall they’re generally pretty good, even the fluff ones. That said I completely skipped a couple that didn’t interest me and were basically TNG episodes (oh we time traveled/visited a planet and weird things happened).
Thankfully I seem to be past the “something horrible happens the Chief and he’s also shirtless or naked” phase it was going through.
I think the best TV is when the characters aren’t “too” likeable. Consider The Wire. Or Twin Peaks. Or even something older, like Cheers. Interesting is better than likeable.
Voyager sucked, but I really like Richard Picardo’s work, especially in Stargate Atlantis.
I wish he went by Ricardo Picardo though.
I’m still surprised Robert Picardo is going by Richard.
This is Captain Jean Luc Ricardo Picardo of the U.S.S. Whoopsiedaisy…
Only among his closest friends. Don’t tell anyone though. It’s a secret.
I guess Roberto Picardo works too. Not as well, but whaddayagonnado.
I believe you mean’t the USS Whoopiegoldberg.