New Star Trek Series on CBS

[red snow]

I'm sort of releived they weren't allowed to do a Borg episode. I always feel it's hard to do one-offs with them as once they are around it's tricky to explain why they aren't constantly there. Plus, I feel like the Borg became a crutch to the franchise. Films are flagging - let's do a Borg film, Voyager is dull - let's have the Borg there (and then use the trope of something should be cooler because they can kill the cool things in terms of borg killers). They are one of the best aliens in tv/film but it sometimes highlighted all the other problems.

I've never reatched DS9 but at the time I watched them I thought it was pretty dull until the Dominion turned up and then it massively improved. Mainly because the characters became fallible.  In OS and TNG everyone was borderline god-like with their noble intentions and ways. DS9 brought us a captain who happily framed a ships explosion on the enemy in order to bring an ally into the battle (if i remember correctly) and i loved that. I can see how DS9 has become more popular with time as it seems all the popular tv nowadays is about morally corrupt people or good people put into morally questionable situations. DS9 vs TNG is a bit like House of cards vs West Wing. They are all great shows but there is a divide in terms of people being pure and impure.

[Impmk2]

4 minutes ago, red snow said:

DS9 brought us a captain who happily framed a ships explosion on the enemy in order to bring an ally into the battle (if i remember correctly) and i loved that. 

Not quite... He was actually pretty pissed when he found out what had happened. He was just pragmatic enough to keep it quiet and give the romulans a reason to enter the war.

[red snow]

19 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

Not quite... He was actually pretty pissed when he found out what had happened. He was just pragmatic enough to keep it quiet and give the romulans a reason to enter the war.

I really should find the time for a rewatch some time. It does ring a bell of how you'd expect the starfleet officer in charge to say "oh, this is wrong" but Sisco is defintely pragmatic.

[Lordsteve666]

I don't care if it's in either universe/timeline or whatever, I'd just be grateful it's getting made at all. SF & Fantasy shows are getting a lot of good interest these days and it's about dammed time someone had a decent stab at a Trek show that didn't just kiss the arses of the army of trekies ready to berate the makers for any minor inconsistency.

I'd love for a continuation of where Nemesis left off, even though it was a pretty poor film (none of the TNG films bar First Contact were that good). There's a lot of room for new story options if they don't spend too much time trying to appease militant trekies who insist on the colour of uniforms or what shape a warp core is meant to be.

Now......as for locking it behind some thrice cursed paywall bullshit, that can just go to hell right away. Locking away something as big as a new trek show in the year of it's 50th anniversary would be a very bad idea.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, red snow said:

I've never reatched DS9 but at the time I watched them I thought it was pretty dull until the Dominion turned up and then it massively improved. Mainly because the characters became fallible.  In OS and TNG everyone was borderline god-like with their noble intentions and ways. DS9 brought us a captain who happily framed a ships explosion on the enemy in order to bring an ally into the battle (if i remember correctly) and i loved that. I can see how DS9 has become more popular with time as it seems all the popular tv nowadays is about morally corrupt people or good people put into morally questionable situations. DS9 vs TNG is a bit like House of cards vs West Wing. They are all great shows but there is a divide in terms of people being pure and impure.

The Dominion do show up in the final episode of Season 2, after being teased for most of the second season. And there's plenty of excellent episodes in Seasons 1-2 as well. The "dull" accusation I think is a reference to the number of episodes which are focused on character-building rather than what's-blowing-up-this-week. Some of them aren't very well done but most are pretty good. A few, like Duet, are among the very best episodes of Trek ever written.

I'd certainly say that the whole series is worthy of a rewatch.

[Corvinus85]

I think I'll try giving DS9 a go, based on all these praises. I tried to watch it when it was released, and I was, I dunno, 12? and I definitely considered it dull, so never got into it.

[red snow]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Dominion do show up in the final episode of Season 2, after being teased for most of the second season. And there's plenty of excellent episodes in Seasons 1-2 as well. The "dull" accusation I think is a reference to the number of episodes which are focused on character-building rather than what's-blowing-up-this-week. Some of them aren't very well done but most are pretty good. A few, like Duet, are among the very best episodes of Trek ever written.

I'd certainly say that the whole series is worthy of a rewatch.

I was watching it as a 13 year old at the time so things had to be pretty interesting to hold my interest and have me stay inside from 6pm-6:5

It's why a rewatch may add something for me although i still think I'd be prejudiced against Ferenghi and Vic Fontaine episodes.

 

2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I think I'll try giving DS9 a go, based on all these praises. I tried to watch it when it was released, and I was, I dunno, 12? and I definitely considered it dull, so never got into it.

This is probably how I felt about it being dull. Rainy days probably helped me stick with it plus the non-arc format did make it easy to drop in and out.

[Criston of House Shapper]

6 hours ago, red snow said:

DS9 brought us a captain who happily framed a ships explosion on the enemy in order to bring an ally into the battle

That's my favorite episode. I wish Garak was in every episode.

Sisko also poisoned a couple of planets to catch Eddington. Compare to that the boring and bland cast of TNG.

[drawkcabi]

I loved DS9 from the get go though I'll admit I liked TNG overall at first but once we got to the 5th season of DS9 and they had that 2 parter where Worf and Garak go behind Dominion lines and what happened with all the plot twists, I knew this series was a step above.

TNG had more universal appeal, casual fans who didn't consider themselves "Trekkies" really liked it. I'll never forget a quote I read back then in the TV Guide from Cyndi Lauper, they asked her what her favorite TV show and she said "Star Trek, any of them except the one that's on that dirty gas station."

and I realized this was how most of the casual fans who loved TNG probably felt about DS9 and I got the sads.

 

[Denvek]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Dominion do show up in the final episode of Season 2, after being teased for most of the second season. And there's plenty of excellent episodes in Seasons 1-2 as well. The "dull" accusation I think is a reference to the number of episodes which are focused on character-building rather than what's-blowing-up-this-week. Some of them aren't very well done but most are pretty good. A few, like Duet, are among the very best episodes of Trek ever written.

I'd certainly say that the whole series is worthy of a rewatch.

I've started rewatching it recently (still on Season 1), and there are some good episodes there (notably Winn's first appearance, when she's still just a Vedek and not the Kai). But they are all self-contained episodes like most of TOS and TNG were, when the general consideration of why DS9 is the "best" Trek is because of the serialisation that happened later once the Dominion arrived (and which I've heard somewhere was a reaction to the success of Babylon 5, which was a long-form story from the start)

[Corvinus85]

46 minutes ago, drawkcabi said:

I'll never forget a quote I read back then in the TV Guide from Cyndi Lauper, they asked her what her favorite TV show and she said "Star Trek, any of them except the one that's on that dirty gas station."

and I realized this was how most of the casual fans who loved TNG probably felt about DS9 and I got the sads.

 

While I don't think it's dirty, I do find the station's exterior unappealing. It doesn't look, to me, like something the Federation would build. More of a villain lair, if anything.

[MisterOJ]

1 minute ago, Corvinus said:

While I don't think it's dirty, I do find the station's exterior unappealing. It doesn't look, to me, like something the Federation would build. More of a villain lair, if anything.

Well, the Federation didn't build it...

[Denvek]

1 minute ago, Corvinus said:

While I don't think it's dirty, I do find the station's exterior unappealing. It doesn't look, to me, like something the Federation would build. More of a villain lair, if anything.

The Federation didn't build DS9 - it's a Cardassian station they took over after the liberation of Bajor.

[Corvinus85]

1 minute ago, MisterOJ said:

Well, the Federation didn't build it...

 

1 minute ago, Denvek said:

The Federation didn't build DS9 - it's a Cardassian station they took over after the liberation of Bajor.

haha, I had a feeling I was going to be taught right. But still, unappealing. That being said, I do intend to give the series a try in the near future.

[DaveSumm]

I always respected their balls in making it Cardassian, on top of all the other reasons it was already gonna be controversial, they thought they'd strip the series of its clean and shiny whites of the federation. I think it was a good way of representing just how not in charge they were, and how they could easily be construed as intruding where they weren't welcome.

My favourite moment in any of the openers is the camera panning round to a tiny station in the distance just as that lower octave kicks in in the music.

[Aemon Stark]

2 hours ago, Denvek said:

I've started rewatching it recently (still on Season 1), and there are some good episodes there (notably Winn's first appearance, when she's still just a Vedek and not the Kai). But they are all self-contained episodes like most of TOS and TNG were, when the general consideration of why DS9 is the "best" Trek is because of the serialisation that happened later once the Dominion arrived (and which I've heard somewhere was a reaction to the success of Babylon 5, which was a long-form story from the start)

DS9 never did any true serialization until the beginning of Season 6 and did only once more at the end of Season 7. I disagree that most early episodes were necessarily "self-contained". They weren't serialized, but there was certainly a lot of continuity and development. Season 2 opened with a three-part premiere about an attempted coup on Bajor. It's a lot of, well, Bajoran stuff, which I think didn't hold my interest so much when I was 12. Now, though, it's really detailed and interesting, especially following on the Season 1 finale which introduced then-Vedek Winn. 

Otherwise Season 2 developed the Maquis (far more than Voyager ever did!), hinted at the Dominion throughout, and gave us one of the best Garak episodes ever, "The Wire". I definitely don't remember getting much into DS9 while TNG was still on the air, but I remember watching that episode a few years later in repeats and being blown away. 

2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

While I don't think it's dirty, I do find the station's exterior unappealing. It doesn't look, to me, like something the Federation would build. More of a villain lair, if anything.

Deep Space Nine (or Terok Nor rather) is, in Sisko's words, a "Cardassian monstrosity". 

I don't think we've talked enough about the most awesome of Trek alien races, namely the Cardassians and their various representatives in Dukat, Damar, and most of all "plain simple" Elim Garak. 

[drawkcabi]

23 minutes ago, Aemon Stark said:

DS9 never did any true serialization until the beginning of Season 6 and did only once more at the end of Season 7. I disagree that most early episodes were necessarily "self-contained". They weren't serialized, but there was certainly a lot of continuity and development.

Absolutely. I always found it outstanding how the writers built upon what happened in the pilot and some episodes of season 1 and 2 to give the series a feeling that it was always intended (true not a serialization) but to have an arc throughout. At least to me it felt that way.

After Kahn, Dukat is the best individual villain Trek has had (Borg being a collective villain).

Speaking of The Borg and DS9 though, I only read one of the books, it was an early one by Peter David. at the beginning of the the book he had a Borg cube trying to come through the wormhole and was promptly blown up coming through. It was an expression only of the book's author (but one of the best) and the books are non-canon and it wasn't the show writers doing it, I thought that was a fun way of saying, "yeah we're not doing that here."

And I love SF Debris' take on The Sisko (first name: Don't Fuck With)

[Aemon Stark]

I like Khan, but I don't think there's much comparison here. Dukat is a fully realized character developed over dozens of episodes over seven years. 

I think this scene really shows why Dukat works so well as a character... and even an appealing villain. 

[RumHam]

10 minutes ago, drawkcabi said:

After Kahn, Dukat is the best individual villain Trek has had (Borg being a collective villain).

Whaat. I think you're confusing the awesomeness of Wrath of Kahn with the character himself. I mean it's not even a fair comparison really . Khan got at total of 2-3 hours of screentime and Dukat got way more. 

[drawkcabi]

Sorry but no, after what Kahn did to Kirk, what no other villain could ever do, Kahn is number 1 in my book. Dukat got episodes of character development and nuance, yes and that helped make him great, but the characterization we got of Kahn in one episode and then his reemergence in a movie after 20 years of pain and hating gave him a powerful presence that for me just can't be topped.