Spoilers Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

[Willie the Duck]

Harry - Captain, we're caught in a very dangerous situation, far from any support, and could be badly damaged if we try to escape the obvious way.

Janeway - Ramming speed, Mr. Paris.

Depends on which Janeway she was this week. I always felt like she and Spike from Buffy were in a competition for who could collect more mutually exclusive inconsistent characterizations.

And how many shuttlecrafts and crew members has Voyager lost? I guess they can make new shuttlecrafts but maybe they should be recruiting aliens along the way? Of course, the aliens are almost all hostile or annoying.

They really amped up the return-to-status-quo mentality. The ship is always understaffed because of the first episode disaster, but subsequent casualties do not degrade them further. They are always resource scarce and looking for resupply, but the shortages never get worse. We're told they are in short supply, but they always have auxiliary craft and photon torpedoes to use (and they do, sometimes with reckless abandon). Damage to the ship happens (and kudos to the effects team for applying it to what I think is the last physical model used as the primary external reference), but never in a way that lasts (and thus has to be tracked by continuity specialists, etc.).

I always wondered if this was more because the writers were writing scripts that didn't engage the specific-series-concept (and thus had shuttles and crew people to burn same as ToS or TNG), or if there was some edict on high about keeping continuity so viewers could miss episodes or see them in any order, etc.

 

[payn]

Just read the man, the inspiration, Cheers actor George Wendy passed away.

 

[jian]

“Duet” is fantastic!

Rewatched it recently. It remains fantastic but it’s also very obviously a very thespian bottle episode, which isn’t a bad thing at all. DS9 was lucky with its theatre-trained actors.

 

[jian]

It sounds like where you originally left off watching it is where it really started to improve. It took at least a couple of seasons for the actors to truly find their footing and grow into the characters. I have always found Major Kira's character to be particularly engaging. An officer, working under a Federation commander, on a Cardassian station, owned by Bajor, who is a career officer/former freedom fighter/terrorist and devoutly religious. Nana Visitor had to do one hell of a balancing act with that.

One thing that came up in the documentary and in other writings is that DS9 was a really intense acting setting - all the actors took it really seriously and were extremely professional, even grim, about their craft and method acting. Apparently Michael Dorn was quite surprised about this when he joined (since TNG was much more light-hearted) and he helped everyone relax a bit.

 

[jian]

Minor spoiler text meme.


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The question came up of whether there’s a gay bar on DS9 and since it’s where Lieutenant Transgender, Dr Twink, Gay Tailor, Dr Twink’s other boyfriend, and Constable No Gender hang out, it’s probably Quark’s.

 

[Pale Violet Light]

Payn said:

I… yeah can’t say B5 is a better show in any measure after a recent rewatch. The DS9 bench is just so much deeper. Though I’m sure the budget was a lot bigger as well. I say that as someone who enjoyed B5 a lot.

Interesting. I recently forced my wife to watch B5 and was worried she’d hate it, but she rather loved it, even without my thick nostalgia goggles. Held up much better than I expected (though we decided to skip Season 5, barring the finale).

 

[payn]

Interesting. I recently forced my wife to watch B5 and was worried she’d hate it, but she rather loved it, even without my thick nostalgia goggles. Held up much better than I expected (though we decided to skip Season 5, barring the finale).

B5 isnt bad, it just doesn’t have what DS9 had going for it. It’s effects are bad, it’s actors are not as good, it’s writing doesn’t have the benefit of experience the trek crew had coming off successful years with TNG, etc.. DS9 was simply executed at a higher level.

 

[jian]

So here we go - our personal rankings of the best DS9 episodes.

I’ll start with what are probably relatively uncontroversial choices for best episode and move on to more personal choices.

Duet: An amazing thespian bottle episode, but also arguably the first episode where DS9 really showed us what it could do.

Best line: “My men understood that and that’s why they loved me… And they’d come back covered in blood but they felt clean. Because they WERE clean!”

In the Pale Moonlight: Generally considered one of the best episodes of any Trek series, except maybe for…

(Best line: “Because I can live with it. I… CAN live with it.”)

Far Beyond the Stars: My personal choice for the best DS9 and Trek episode. Sometimes hard to watch, though.

Best line: “I am a human being. You can deny me all you want, but you cannot deny Ben Sisko. He exists!”

 

[jian]

On to my (occasionally very) idiosyncratic choices for favourite episodes.

The House of Quark: The most Quark episode ever, where he is 100% magnificent and 100% Ferengi.

Best line: “No glory. No honour. And when you one day tell your children how you came to power, I hope you remember to tell them how you heroically killed an unarmed Ferengi half your size.”

Heart of Stone: Honestly a distinctly mixed episode but notable for Odo’s clear eyes about his heartbreak and for Nog’s first steps on his new path.

Looking for par’Mach in all the Wrong Places: Because it’s a fitting sequel to House of Quark, and because it’s the start of my favourite romance in Star Trek.

In Purgatory’s Shadow/In Inferno’s Light: The classic Dominion War two-parter and of course a crowning moment of awesome for Worf, as well as the proper introduction of my favourite Trek character, General Martok.

Best line (of course): “I cannot defeat this Klingon! I can only kill him. And that no longer holds my interest.”

Sons and Daughters: Another Martok episode, notable for showcasing his leadership style even in a family dispute.

Best line: “Lie to yourself if you must. But not to me.”

 

[payn]

Heart of Stone: Honestly a distinctly mixed episode but notable for Odo’s clear eyes about his heartbreak and for Nog’s first steps on his new path.

"First steps on his new path" is under selling it. This has one of television's finest scenes.