Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Very dark. Ron Moore needs a cuddle. Dax and Worf are hot.

This is my most favorite of the Trek shows but I’d argue that it was a complete 180 from Roddenberry’s vision.

He rarely dealt with religion, and it was a central premise to DS9. In later seasons it was fairly dark compared to other Trek shows.

Characters died, lost limbs, dealt with PSTD. After season 3, there really wasn’t much exploration. It was a fight for their lives.

I’d argue that B5 did it as well or better, but this was an entirely different kind of show than all the others.

R2 B5 had Tracey Scoggins.

It took me three tries to actually watch this series all the way through and once I got through the first season and a half, i really enjoyed it. i would agree that it was more fleshed out than some of the other shows.

Always thought Kira Nerys came off as something of a bitch.

Louise Fletcher was cool.

R6 Nurse Ratched in space. Winn Adami was a great character up until the 7th season and the show imploded. The Bajorans characters had such nuance.

R7 the way they used the religion to manipulate people was very...true to history of religions on Earth.

Not as iconic as TOS, and its best episodes didn’t quite reach the heights of TNG’s best, but DS9 is the best Trek series when all is said and done. The depth and texture that they developed in (and between) so many different characters was (and remains) impressive. I’m not sure any other show (of any genre) was as good at building and exploring friendships and relationships as DS9.

I highly recommend the “What We Left Behind” doc that was released a couple of years ago.

R9 watched that. Fuck, they whinge.

The Starfleet people were a bore. The exceptional characters were a Ferengi and Cardassian spy.

I wasn't originally a fan, being very much a TNG fan and feeling like I was being left with a crappy substitute.

That said, Sisko's explanation of human existence to the Prophets in "Emissary" was amazing writing and acting, in my view.

I ended up being a huge Odo/Quark/Garak fan, less so with the others.

Even so, "Duet" was IMHO some of the best Trek ever.

Terry Farrell mentioned recently that Rick Berman made it rather easy for her to leave the show. She tried to negotiate a higher salary for the last season because she felt under-appreciated (financially, I suppose). Berman then responded "If you weren't here, you know you'd be working at Kmart." Quite a piece of work.

My memory.

It was great.

It sucked.

Jadzia Dax was the cuntiest cunt in the Delta quadrant

When Wil Wheaton asked for a raise on TNG, Berman suggested promoting his character to Lt. (Junior Grade) instead.

R18 Oh please. Wesley's pants didn't zip up the back for nothing. Wil was selling that hole every chance he got. Now he can't give it away.

Patrick Stewart was 47 when he first played Picard. Wil Wheaton is now 49.

I wish you hadn't done that. That was Weyoun's last clone.

r18, r19, r20 -- start another thread-- this is for DS9.

R22 Ease up, Wil.

We probably won’t ever know the whole story R13, but Farrell was not only let go of DS9 (as a major character), but Becker as well so ….

I can think of a few starring actors that have been replaced, and they were all known to be difficult.

Dax was just a little too smug a lot of the time for my taste. Don't get me wrong, it was in character - I gather all the joined Trills have a certain fortune cookie-esque quality, from living for as long as they have.

She was still more interesting than Bashir - even with the eugenics thing. Worf should have introduced him to the ancient Klingon fasting rituals - or was that fisting. Or perhaps Worf could have used his "pain stick" in him.

So anyway, Quark, Odo, Worf, Garak, Kira, and Rom. Discard the rest, though Sisko did have his moments.

Jake and Nog can share the life pod out of there with Wesley.

R25 Agreed. Star Trek never knows what to do with kids. The new series haven't attempted it. Riker and Troi's daughter brought annoying to a whole new level.

R26 Yes, they are either endlessly whiny or smarter than everyone else.

R5 R6 r7 I think the Bajorans had an uppity snobby condescending attitude in general.

I loved Michelle Forbes as Ro Laren. It's too bad she left to pursue a film career that never really came to fruition.

I remember in an interview Michelle Forbes said the Bajoran makeup felt like she was wearing a vagina on her forehead and nose 😆

I didn't like DS9 as a kid. I watched it as an adult and I understood it. It was overall the best series, even if it never got as much credit for it at the time.

I remember when the show had the balls to kill off the recurring character of Tora Ziyal (played by 3 different actresses) and then managed to reference her at least a couple of times afterwards. I think Melanie Smith was my favorite Tora.

It was a great death in that it had long-lasting repercussions which eventually led to Jadzia's death when Gul Dukat lost his mind afterwards.

This show came on on Saturday mornings when I was in college. I watched most of the episodes suffering the worst hangovers. I really enjoyed Nurse Ratched in this.

[quote]Agreed. Star Trek never knows what to do with kids.

I hated Nog at first, then they let him buck Ferengi traditions and join Star Fleet, prove that he was competent, get permanently injured then recover and grow into a fine officer. I don't think we've seen that before or since. He got a complete arc that took him from civilian to Lt. Junior Grade and it didn't really feel rushed. He was never know it all like Wesley or as annoying as Jake was until he grew up. After Jake did I was fine with him working as a reporter and popping up in Sisko and Kasidy's lives when she was around. It was nice to have a kid that wanted nothing to do with being a member of Star Fleet.

Not had nice arms

And then there was Ezri, oh god. They should have just killed off Dax completely.

Naomi Wildman worked quite well opposite Seven, imo. They stopped short of making her a know it all, and small dosages she was fine.

DS9 is tied with TOS as the best. Large stretches of TNG are not very good at all.

I too loved the explanation of human existence to the Prophets in Emissary. I have to say the final episode was too much pew pew and fantasy, and let down the series, but overall, DS9 really stands the test of time.

[quote] And then there was Ezri, oh god. They should have just killed off Dax completely.

The thing with Ezri was that the writers realized that the kinds of stories they could tell with a Trill who hadn’t been prepared to be Joined were the kind of stories they could have been telling the whole time, so they kind of went nuts with the concept.

R13 He was right about Terry Farrell. She was outclassed by every actor she was in a scene with, except Alexander Siddig from time to time. She was not a good actor and her lines always seemed forced. She was just a pair of tits. Jeri Ryan from Voyager took up the big tits role, but she could actually act.

As an adult I grew to enjoy Ezri in the short time we had with her.

They obviously had to get the Jadzia comparisons out of the way and once they did it was nice to have someone who definitely was not Dax on the ship. However, I felt like they made her a bit too green at times. If she was going to be a counselor then they should have let her do that without her constantly self-guessing herself while looking for Sisko's approval. She had lifetimes of experience but didn't always seem to really take advantage of that.

As a kid I was pissed that we didn't get more Jadzia and Worf and that they killed her off in such a lame way. If she was going to go down I wanted her to go down fighting.

DS9 altogether is my favorite of the ST shows, although I admit that I've not seen all of Voyager.

I enjoyed the Vic Fontaine character, especially in the episode where Rom is recovering from his injuries. James Darren did a great job with that character. And the casino caper episode was fun. Especially, Quark's expression as the whole team, dressed in Las Vegas garb head for the holo suite.

This is the only complete DVD set I have of any of the ST series.

R37, I think your assessment is a bit harsh. Her first season was rough because nobody knew how to play a two-hundred year old character in a 27 year old body. By year two Farrell was able to carry episodes. What she couldn't handle with acting skills, she made up with personality, and I think she got away with it just fine. I wouldn't over-estimate her acting skills, but she brought a star qualities like nobody else on the show. And I think that may have been the aspect where she felt under-appreciated. Colm Meany is a great actor. But he did not rake in the viewers for the show. For teenage boys she WAS DS9. And she was sorely missed once she was gone. Berman certainly let go a huge asset, even if it was not acting.

R33 r36 The reason Ezri was annoying as fuck is that the actress that played her, Nikki de Boer was just as annoying.

If you saw the movie CUBE she was just really annoying mathematical "prodigy" . Sure Jan.

The retard was the only one that survived at the end.

Odd comment. A lot of us were teenage boys watching and loving DS9, and none of US were mooning over Jadzia.

Teenage boy != straight

R42 I remember straights liking DS9 for the action, not the boobs. They went apeshit over Seven of Nine on Voyager though.

We called Ezri Dax "The TwinkleTrill", r33

I actually liked Cube

I could recognize that Seven of Nine was sexy on Voyager but only because, from my gayling perspective, I wanted to be her.

On the other than, I never felt that way about Jadzia.

Then again the only eye candy we got was an occasional guest star like Vedek Bareil Antos / Philip Anglim, Jack / Tim Random or Bashir when he wasn't being utterly lecherous.

This show never had a Trip Tucker, early Riker, Tom Paris or really any of the Voyager men.

As an adult I would have found Sisco attractive but as a kid he was too dad like.

All of the Voyager men were bleghhh… and the show too.

DS9 may not have had classic pin ups. But when you take a look at Sisko chilled and cross legged on the defiant, about to lay down some new badassery, or Odo, deliberately moulding himself into a Bajoran uniform every day as a sign of his loyalty and sense of justice, or even Edddington, a dutiful Maquis to the end, it’s hard not to feel certain stirrings of good feeling for the graceful masculinity the show had. Not classic DL hotness, I grant you, but almost the hotness that Kirk and Spock radiated. Like when Kirk and Spock are saving the silicon creature in the ‘Devil in the Dark’ - flashings of a humane, charming, warm masculinity that stirs the heart.

The Voyager men may look a tad better, but their characters are more homunculi than men.

[quote]As an adult I would have found Sisco attractive but as a kid he was too dad like.

There's a nice moment in the DS9 documentary where they talk about Avery Brooks not being allowed to shave his head for the first few seasons. To a person, the entire cast seemed disgusted by it (because the producers were being completely racist about it), and then when he's finally able to, Penny Johnson Jerald commenting how sexy she thought it was and how she loved touching it.

For Brooks, DS9 was a job. One he took very seriously, but just a job. Despite not being close to the rest of the cast, every single one of them clearly respects the hell out of him.

R48, I just loved Sisko and Yates together on the show. I think the issue was, me being young originally and the first season of the show is super intense. I don't think he got to relax and actually have fun until later. Sisko was always clearly in charge. He'd give you a look and you'd just KNOW you had to do what he said. With Janeway/Archer the lines were blurred a bit. Picard was somewhere between. He almost treated Dr. Crusher like an equal but he'd never be so easy on Worf.

Kira was an incredible character, wonderfully acted by Nana Visitor. The warmth, grit, energy and humanity in that character were really touching. I miss Kira.

[quote] wonderfully acted by Nana Visitor. The warmth, grit, energy and humanity in that character were really touching.

In every one of her characters

I always thought that Nog had an unrequited crush on Jake.

DS9 had its ups and downs. But the way it developed the dominant, traditional Ferengi culture into a spot-on critique of free-market capitalism was brilliantly done.

Example #2: How traditional, dominant Ferengi culture positions unions and collective bargaining in popular consciousness

In this clip, Quark is told that Ferengi females can generate profit outside of their unpaid labor confined to the home:

((This series had so much comedic, incisive social critique that was artfully interwoven in-between main-plots. I don't forgive trek creators for not pushing the envelope enough when it comes to non-heterosexual representation, but credit should be given where credit is due in other areas))

[quote]I don't forgive trek creators for not pushing the envelope enough when it comes to non-heterosexual representation, but credit should be given where credit is due in other areas

I will give credit to DS9 for pushing the envelope as much as they did, given what they were up against. Of course, they had Dax kissing her former wife, but the Mirror Universe was bi as hell. And one of my favorite moments was in an early episode when there's a Ferengi woman disguised as a man who gets feelings for Quark, and when Dax asks "him" about it, she doesn't blink an eye that a male would have feelings for another male, and is just surprised that she's a woman.

I loved this show a lot as a teenager, and having seen an episode fairly recently, I think it really holds up.

It’s a lot less black and white than the other Trek series, and I think the acting is the best of any of the series too. The actors playing Odo, Quark, Kira and Garak were really outstanding. Avery Brooks chewed the scenery a little too much for my liking, but he was very charismatic and always watchable.

I must say, I preferred the Bajor/Cardassia storylines more than the wormhole/religion storylines.

[quote]I loved this show a lot as a teenager, and having seen an episode fairly recently, I think it really holds up.

Out of every pre-Disco show, DS9 is the most like a contemporary show. While it's still not as heavily serialized, it's much moreso than the others. I'm not going to be surprised if Strange New Worlds has a similar vibe, given that they're leaning into a more character-arc based format.

R56

I don't remember a lot of Dax's plotlines, but this thread is maybe prompting me to rewatch the series.

I wouldn't be surprised if those storylines or scenes like you mentioned broadened my thinking about gender and society. I think people really underestimate the power of speculative fiction--fantasy, sci-fi, horror. These genres fundamentally pose questions of "What if?" and carry the potential of challenging people's conceptions of what is possible--not just metaphysically or technologically, but also socioculturally. I think, in terms of fictional genres, they are, by definition, uniquely positioned to challenge the status quo and 'consensus reality'.

I mean, especially 'pre-internet/early-internet', shows like DS9 and other speculative fiction really stretched social boundaries. I should re-watch, but I also want to re-watch Next Generation and I don't know if I can suffer through season 1, lol. :O

This is the one show that needed more females.

1 = full female cast member = Kira, 2 = the other half & half Dax (who is killed off because of $ & maybe other reasons) which it what it takes to get a 3rd female cast member 3 = Ezri (my favorite out of the trio).

Even the female guest stars came up short when compared to the male guest stars in numbers & appearances.

So out of 5 finished trek shows = Uhura (who wanted to leave if her show was renewed the next season), Troi, Kira, Janeway (who almost quit after season 6 of hers), Torres, T'Pal & the Asian female on Enterprise are the 7 females who did complete runs of the shows.

Voyager had 6 males complete their cast member runs so it's shocking when you compare the male cast stability on these trek shows which usually outnumber the women 2 to 1.

Chapel (mainly a recurring guest star), Rand, Crusher, Yar, Pulaski, Guinan (never a full time cast member), Ro Lauren (refused to be in DS9 from the start or would've take Kira's cast status), Keiko (refused to join DS9 on a full time basis), Kes, Seven Of Nine (who wanted to quit after her first season due to the outfit & Mulgrew's antics) all struggled to solidify their spotlight on their respective shows.

[quote]This is the one show that needed more females.

That's actually why Ezri happened. They realized S7 would have been "The Boys and Kira."

What's the best thing about Sisko? That he's a REALLY good father.

R52 I can picture some nights Jake and Nog jack each other off in the holo suite. Well Nog jacking him off. Jake will be stoking Nog's lobes.

All-day virtual convention to celebrate the show's 55th anniversary. Interestingly, the clips they use for DS9 are in HD...

R62 don’t be gross. Anyway, they’re both believable straight.

R.I.P. Eddie Paskey, Lt. Leslie and "Star Trek" regular:

I rewatched it recently and I think, out of all the Star Trek series, DS9 has stood the test of time the best. It has far fewer bad episodes than TNG or Voyager and by being deeper in subject matter means it's a lot less repetitive.

Although it's bad episodes are REALLY bad.

R56 In the DS9 documentary, I seem to recall the wonderful Andrew Robinson (Garak) unhesitatingly stating that his character was gay and obsessed with Dr Bashir. I was surprised by this, as much as I had enjoyed the show I had never noticed that nuance.

I give the producers a lot of credit for acknowledging that they fucked it up with Garak and should have had the balls to let him be gay.

I thought it was pretty obvious he was gay

Eh, I never liked Garak’s gay subtext. For one it was this dated idea of a predatory older queeny gay futilely toying with a younger wide eyed guy in a waspish way. Not cool. Secondly it just turned this alien character (a Cardassian) into a humdrum highly specific 20th century trope. Also not cool.

I think that sub-text is made up in hindsight to make the relationship look more woke than it actually was. (Although his relationship with Zyal looked wrong and icky, too.) Garak was initially interested in Bashir because he was an easy target to spy on. I never got a vibe beyond mutual intellectual attraction. At some point it turned into a mutual cat-and-mouse game between the two of them and later maybe even mutual respect. But I call b/s on Garak being sexually attracted.

Garak didn't strike me as an old queen. More like an asexual/opportunist. He didn't seem smitten with Bashir, more like Bashir was a soft target for someone whose bread and butter is gathering intelligence. Robinson very badly wants to be 'the first gay character in Star Trek' to cement his legacy as an actor.

Wasn't there a gay subtext with Dax and Worf. That the symbiot was a male and in one episode was put in a male body while Dax was injured and needed time to heal? That Worf accepted that his love could be a male?

I don't remember that story on DS9. Could it be you remember the Beverly Crusher story when she fell in love with a Trill who was parked temporarily in Riker's body and then moved permanently to a female host?

r74 wasn't Her symbiot a male anyway? Sisko called her Old man. That would make Dax a space Trans woman.

The old man was Curzon, the host before Jadzia. He was the one Sisko got to know first.

Terry Farrell was clearly out of her element on the show. Her bad acting stuck out like a sore thumb. Compare her to the blonde bimbo on Voyager. She could act.

I remember being amused at the addition of the Defiant as an effective admission that the "stay at the station all the time" model was just tired.

I do think that sticking with the Cardassian station instead of a Federation one was the right choice.

But as with Voyager, the most enjoyable characters were the ones with the disposition for annoyance.

The Odo/Quark dynamic was certainly better than the nearest Voyager counterpart - Neelix/Tuvok. But then, it took me many episodes to get past the point of just wanted to behead Neelix.

It was a decent ensemble cast, but if I had to pick a single character I would say it was the story of Kira. TNG was Picard's story. Voyager is harder to pin down. Probably Paris came the furthest in terms of atoning for past mistakes - I still think that having him not specifically be the character that RDM played who was responsible for the cadet pilot's death was a mistake. I get why they did it, but I think they missed a chance to give him a bit more to work with. Kim bounced from being too cadet-y to whiny (the actor showing throw I think). Neelix and Kes were just annoying. Chakotay they just never seemed to find a good place for. Yes, talking about his heritage was good, and the dynamic with the former Maquis members, but otherwise he was just kind of there. Seven and the Doctor probably had the most interesting dynamic.

[quote]Terry Farrell was clearly out of her element on the show. Her bad acting stuck out like a sore thumb. Compare her to the blonde bimbo on Voyager. She could act.

The problem was that they didn't have any idea who Jadzia was for the first season or two, and she wasn't skilled enough to find ways to make the vague material work. Once they figured her out, around the time they started giving her a personality who loved all things Klingon and was kind of a wild child, and especially once they paired her with Worf, it clicked.

R80 No she was just a bad actress. Part of the problem is that the rest of the cast and the supporting cast was exemplary, so her mediocre acting stood out more. The writers didn't know what to do with Bashir either but Siddig eked out a passable performance.

R81 Yes, until they pulled Section 31 and the genetic enhancement stuff out of their ass, he didn't have much to do but play darts with Miles, have lunch with Garak, and admit to Odo that he had no clue how to treat Changelings.

I enjoyed Terry Farrell as Jadzia. And I prefer scientist Jadzia to kick-ass, sexually aggressive Jadzia.

"That was an earlier host Meryl Dax - she was actually a good actress and not so annoying."

Attention Bajoran workers…

R85 I in particular loved the replicator being used as a lethal weapon - overdue. Of course, the Cardassians also routinely used force fields that were fatal to the touch as well - they didn't put up with shit.

[quote] In the DS9 documentary, I seem to recall the wonderful Andrew Robinson (Garak) unhesitatingly stating that his character was gay and obsessed with Dr Bashir.

Yes, he did say that - with the caveat though that he said it specifically for the first season only. Not sure if he got notes, different direction. But I got the impression from his statement that the subtext was not there anymore after season 1.

I am rewatching the show right now, and yes, it holds up very well. It's still my favorite Star Trek show.

Mine’s too r87!