DS9 is just a soap opera but in space.
When does it get good?
Like every Star Trek when a main characters hair changes. TNG Rikers beard, Ds9 bald Sisko
I was going to joke that it gets good in season 3? Season 4? And it turns out that it is season 4!
DS9 is probably the best-written Star Trek show, but what worries me is how many of its fans think that Sisko’s war crimes are “badass” and that his worldview should be emulated. Many DS9 fans seem to think that the show’s shades of grey renders the Roddenberry vision on display in TOS and TNG invalid - dismissing it with “it’s easy to be a saint in paradise”.
There are a lot of things to criticize with Discovery, but what it absolutely nailed was the Lorca twist. Lorca arguing about how rules are made to be broken, sometimes you gotta commit a war crime or two, and “context is for kings”, was a perfect summation of the mindset of these kinds of Trek fans. So when it was revealed that he was actually from the universe where humanity had given in to this mentality and thus failed to create the Federation, that was the perfect “sci-fi twist” that Star Trek excels in.
I enjoy DS9, but not uncritically.
I love DS9, but Sisko should have been court martialed.
What war crimes did he commit?
S5E13 “For the Uniform: he hunts down that Marquis spy and poisons the atmosphere of Maquis colonies, forcing evacuations. Deliberately targeting civilian habitats to make them uninhabitable is a straight up war crime.
Please Sir, may I have some pixels?
DS9 had Garak.
<End thread>
There’s hope for you yet, doctor.
The characters in DS9 went on lots of Treks. Like the time Miles lived out decades in an alien prison only for it to really happen in his head. Or the time Miles was replaced by an alien who didn’t realize he was the impostor. Or that time Miles was kidnapped and put on trial by the Cardassians. Or that time…
You would think with how hard it is to get into the Academy, how many qualified people they have to turn away, and with the fact that they don’t have to pay for pensions in a post-scarcity utopia, that the Federation would have a more rigorous mandatory early retirement policy. Like, how many times do they let an officer be “Inner Lighted” before they tell them, “sorry, we know this isn’t fair. This isn’t on you. But at this point, your brain has been hijacked and influenced by alien technologies on multiple occasions. We frankly have no idea what those machines did to you. This isn’t meant to be a punishment to you, but we simply cannot have someone so potentially compromised working such a dangerous position.”
I’m sorry, but from a purely HR and risk perspective, after going through a fraction of what he did, Miles O’Brien should not be working as the Chief Engineer of one of the most strategically important defense facilities in the Quadrant. He could be compromised and not even know it. How do they know that time in the mind prison didn’t also condition him into a sleeper agent of some sort?
After a certain amount of trauma, you would think they would just start mandating officers take early medical retirement. Not a judgment, just risk management. Hell, I would think after a single instance of an officer having their mind hijacked by an alien device, that at a minimum the victim would be transferred out of a front-line role, to somewhere where less sensitive.
Your point is well made but for the record O’Brien wasn’t an officer and never went to the academy. He even jokes about having to call Nog ‘sir’ when he becomes an ensign.
You’re right. But assumedly it’s just as hard to become an enlisted member of Starfleet than it is an officer. When you have hundreds of worlds and trillions of citizens, you’re never going to have a shortage of potential applicants for your fleet. Unless you’re fielding millions of ships, there will never be a shortage. Even if only rare societal oddballs found the idea of serving appealing? Well 1% of a trillion is still 10 billion. The point is, that for every one person we see on screen, there have to be thousands of potential replacements, each just as qualified and driven.
And that’s also why they likely wouldn’t mind asking compromised people to resign. After all, getting in in the first place is essentially just an act of extreme luck. Everyone there knows they beat a bunch of folks just as qualified as themselves to get their seat. If you view your position as largely due to chance, then if fate hands you a curve ball and also takes that away from you due to chance? Well that seems reasonable.
I get the point you are making and I mostly agree with it. My one main argument is to ask if the other people really are just as qualified though? Just taking O’Brien again, he is 45 when his son is born in DS9 having at that point been in Starfleet for over 20 years and served in over 200 combat engagements. That’s not an amount of, especially hands on, experience that the average anyone is going to have at enlistment time.
On the other hand at the end of the series he goes to teach at the academy so I suppose you could argue that what you are positing is exactly what is being done to him there. Being rotated off the front line and put in a place where he will have access to mental health resources. It’s also mentioned in Voyager where they have crew that they talk about wouldn’t have made it on a starship and would have been turfed to a star base or similar had they not been stranded in the delta quadrant so it may be that what you are describing happens to everybody who isn’t a main character anyway.
Yeah, it seems almost like a perverse point of pride that the weirdos who join Starfleet don’t really participate fully in planetside culture, and getting retired from it would almost like a kind of death or imprisonment. Now, why Picard and O’Brien don’t get assigned to a cushy Starbase gig in Sol is beyond me. Those two are, mentally, hundreds of (very traumatic) years old each.
Oh look, another episode of the suffering of Miles O’Brien
At least we missed the suffering of that time Miles O’Brien (and Defiant Crew) got trapped back in time on a planet unable to return to their families
There is a line you see quoted from time to time the ST:TMP novelization, which I understand Gene Roddenberry had a real hand in crafting.:
We are a highly conservative and strongly individualistic group. The old customs die hard with us. We submit ourselves to starship discipline because we know it is made necessary by the realities of deep-space exploration.
He seems to have struggled with what his vision for a future society would be, versus the realities of making a sellable media property in the late 20th century. He posits that our Starfleet friends are actually socially conservative space cowboys by the standards of the UFP, which makes it easier for the audience to identify with them without compromising the rest of his post-scarcity utopian vision (e.g. that same passage indicates that James Kirk was partially named after his mother’s first “love instructor”). However, it also means we’re seeing a bizarre subculture of quasi-exiled psychological luddites who take on the eldritch horrors of service in Starfleet in return for not being slapped down into conformity.
It’s clearly not a guiding principle for how Starfleet is generally portrayed in ST media, but it’s interesting to think of them in terms of being distinctly apart from the rest of humanity while dedicating themselves to protecting it and expanding its understanding of the universe.
I like ds9 cause Sisko ain’t afraid to punch a mother fucker in the face on occasion.
I just noticed, exactly where did Sisko hit him the first time? It was sporting of Q to be able to feel the punches!
DS9 has better character chemistry than the other shows. It also has a solid mix of both serious and humorous episodes.
Plus they also got that polycule thing going on at that space station
Is that polycule situation actually canon or just meme material?
I mean, there is the whole Keiko x O’Brien x Kira x Shakaar Edon situationship.
Bashir x Leeta with their open relationship at the end
DS9 had a lot of changing romantic relationships compared to other shows.
Keiko being more okay with Miles and Nerys potentially becoming a thing than Miles or Nerys were was definitely an interesting way to take that.
Keiko being like: Miles you are NOT letting the woman carrying your child go on a romantic secluded getaway by herself!
That was wild.
Miles ruining that end tho with the “unless…”🤦♂️
You too, can realize your dreams of running a concentration camp turned space strip-mall! Sign up for the Federation Navy today!
Setting the story on a station allowed the “trekking” to be more psychological and philosophical. Has trekking the stars changed us as much as we’d like to imagine? We’re more open-minded as a result, but where are the limits of tolerance? Where are there still blind-spots? An excellent inversion of the Star Trek formula that builds out the whole “Western, but set-in-space” by playing off of something like Gunsmoke more than Wagon Train or whatever.
Well, if your biggest point of criticism is that they are not travelling around enough…
Deep Space 9 was peak Star Trek in so many other ways, who cares they’re not on trek? By that measure, ENT would probably rank highest. Or even worse, Voyager.
(I didn’t make this meme)
I did hear that criticism many times (e.g. they had to add in the Defiant to make the show interesting). But I agree with you.
Yeah I love the show after but ds9 vs any other shows is a depth vs breath. Ds9 had some of the most complex characters in all of star trek. Because of that push and pull between the writers and Berman. Those first few seasons let you do character driven stories and flesh out the world. Then that paid off in dividends in the later seasons when they starting doing plot driven serial stories. Plus they were not to drop a epistolic story right in the middle of a longer story arc. To give the audience a breather/ palette cleanser.
Unlike today where each season is a bloated movie where the plot is find the mcguffin that will save the universe every season. Like a crappy railroaded D&D campaign.
Eh. It’s still Star Trek. I think the hangup on traveling is silly. The wormhole serves the same role as a narrative device as the warp drive. The original idea, before the Dominion War came along, was that the station would regularly have the same kind of weekly “planet of the week” encounters as other Star Trek shows. And the series does have many episodes like that, episodes like Meridian. I’m referring to bottle episodes, episodes focused on a single novel planet, culture, or ethical dilemma.
The idea was that because the station is at the mouth of a newly discovered wormhole, that the station would get that story mechanic while the characters stay in the same spot. Instead of the entire crew visiting new planets, new planets would effectively come to them. Delegations from new worlds would pour through the wormhole, providing opportunities to explore new cultures and civilizations. And Federation explorers could go through the wormhole and have their adventures shown on-screen or be discussed back on the station. An example of this can be found in Captive Pursuit.
Narratively, a wormhole functions the same as a warp drive. The story just brings the universe to the crew, rather than the crew to the universe. But narratively it makes little difference. You would think Trek fans more than anyone would appreciate that motion is relative in space.
(I didn’t directly addressed you, just the opinion formulated in the meme).
I mean, I get that the show could feel a bit slow and light in the first two seasons sometimes. But on the other hand, the first thing it does is introducing Picard’s perfect foil as the new commanding officer by questioning Picard and his role during the Borg crisis.
Most interesting start of any Trek show if you ask me.Also the themes the show worked with, the character developement, even the continuation and expanding of TNG topics like Klingon and Ferengi culture and society.
BRB, wrote myself into wanting to rewatch.
(I love the polite, parenthetical clarifications you’re writing to each other.)
If you prefer bottle episodes, then DS9 earns its nickname of Deep Sleep 9.
That is so wrong I doubt you’ve ever seen an episode.
There’s more to that universe’s structure than exploration vessels.
Q, is that you?
Gotta punch 'em, just to be sure.
It’s the only Star Trek where most of the trekking is done around the main characters rather than by them. But it’s still relevant to the stories!
I like ds9 but any captain who justifies warcrimes is disqualified from best trek.
So… All of them?
I also LOVE star trek but as someone generally for peace and a decentralized, just world, I can’t pretend that Starfleet isn’t a thinly disguised military.
I absolutely think the heart of the show shines through, but the Liberal influences can often insert our failings as perfectly normal. Things that would not appear just or equitable in a socialist society like The Federation, are placed in as sort of accepted and normal.
I can’t pretend that Starfleet isn’t a thinly disguised military
Disguised how? It’s literally Federation’s military.
True. When it comes to wars it is, however the writers are SOOO adamant that they are a “exploration and science corp” when in peace time.
They ARE an exploration and science corp in peacetime.
we only saw like 3 minutes of seven as an official capatain. she wins by technicality here.
Seven is amazing
she is. she’d also be insulted to win best captain on the grounds of fewest crimes commited. probably maroon the picard kid on a prewarp planet for the crime multiplier stats.
Agreed but in part thats because they still needed to ground the story for everyone to relate and . . well . . *gestures to everything*
Good point. I can absolutely see that.
I feel TNG and Voyager never outright justified it, but rather found a way to minimize and debate it and try their nest to end up on the most moral objective whereas sisko let the ends justify the means and then said he’d do of again lol.
I hated that episode when I saw it the first time. I felt it betrayed everything I imagined Starfleet to stand for.
Rewatching the show last year…when it came up again, I got it. Something about the Dominion war changed the context.
I hadn’t actually seen anything else from that season the first time around. It made a difference.
I think Sisko gets misunderstood on this point. It’s not unlike Picard in First Contact, when he starts to take the Borg incursion too personal. Or analogous in some way to the “Corrupt Admiral” trope. It’s not to Gene’s utopia views for sure, but it shows real fallible characters and the story of them.
I did appreciate it from his perspective honestly. I just felt that it was too neo liberal for my tastes and in part abandoned the secular humanism part I love about trek.
Certainly not the best series.
I’m just happy “what’s the best Trek” is as debatable as “what’s the worst Trek”
Not every franchise has that.
Agreed.
(It’s Academy that’s the worst)
There are a few great episodes in
Harry Potter in SpaceStar Fleet Academy!We’re all entitled to our opinions
Are they? At least in my circles, DS9 and then Voyager are pretty universal as those answers.
I love DS9, but I would rather watch TNG than Voyager.
Early voyager (especially Neelix) hurts to watch. Once they pick up Seven of Nine and they make the doctor more of a crew member it’s really really good, but as a whole, if I had to choose to only watch TNG or Voyager again, TNG would win.
That’s because the EMH rulez. 🤘
Well played.
Oh, I meant Voyager being the worst Star Trek, sorry.
Arguably TOS is the best in the plow sense.
(The plow is the greatest invention of all time in that the resulting food surplus enabled all the subsequent inventions).
Which series would you rate the highest? For me, probably TNG, largely on the basis of nostalgia. I haven’t really watched any recent Trek, though, so I may lack some basis for comparison.
TNG is my favorite, but TOS isn’t far behind.
I say that TOS is the best because everything comes from there. Arguably the further they get from cowboys-in-space the further they get from the heart of trek.
DS9 was the saloon.
People like the dominion war…?
