Loved it. I’m on my 4th pass through the entire series in order right now, matter o’ fact.
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Pretty much my only favorite thing about Enterprise is how much Jeffery is in it.
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Certain people seemed to show up repeatedly on the holodecks on both TNG and DS9.
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TNG started weak and ended strong.
DS9 started strong and ended weak.
Voyager sucked, and then sucked. . . and then sucked some more.
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Personally my favorite character is General Martok. J.G. Hertzler seems so natural at being a Klingon, it’s less like watching an actor being a character and more like him being himself. Kind of how Jeffery Combs is in Enterprise.
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I’ve been arguing for many years that DS9 was the best Trek. It’s characters had real lives: ambitions, fears, motivations, and anger. Especially anger. 1st season or 2 EVERYBODY was walking around pissed off. I loved that. TNG seemed like they were slipping Prozac and saltpeter in everyone’s food synthesizer program. “I’m happy, are you happy Jordy? Oh yes I’m happy, are you happy Counselor? Yes I’m happy…” The only characters that seemed to have personal ambitions were Worf and the freaking android who wanted to be a real boy.
And the Cardassians were terrific, complex villains, way more interesting than the Klingons. In some ways the Bajoran story arc is more relevant today than 20 years ago as we deal with the continuing aftermath of de-colonialization.
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It also helped that there was much less Comic Relief than in earlier Treks. Pretty much most of it came from the Ferengi, and the suits partially made up for that by having Andrea Martin do her usual star turn in a Ferengi ep.
If they only coulda lost that goombah Vic Fontaine it would have been darn near a perfect series.
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[quote=“gellfex, post:67, topic:84933”]
In some ways the Bajoran story arc is more relevant today than 20 years ago as we deal with the continuing aftermath of de-colonialization.
[/quote]
Yes. Like a million, billion times.
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Good to great Trek, but i prefer the show they copied it from: Babylon 5.
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Much has been made about how DS9 took from B5, and when both were still new I had a feeling that DS9 really was faltering until B5 came along. It seemed DS9 took on a “well, we can do story arcs too!” attitude, but I still found it less intriguing. It also felt too much like the writers never bothered to understand the Federation, how a post-scarcity, post-currency society could function, yet never gave up the pretence. It all felt like the studio bosses were in control and no real vision. No more Roddenberry, where B5 had JMS.
I would love to see a series based on Consider Phlebas, but alas, I fear chances of it died with Iain M. Banks.
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I would never say DS9 was better than TNG, but I wouldn’t put it the other way, either. But TNG was the Milky Way as it should be, and DS9 was the Milky Way as it is. People go on and on about who the better captain was, but here, there is no argument: Sisko.
Sisko had some really tough problems to solve, and simple homilies and taking the high road didn’t always work out. The writers didn’t rescue him as much, and he couldn’t simply hit warp and move away from the problems.
As for the last season going to the dogs, it’s still not as bad as what happened to 3rd Rock From the Sun.
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DS9 took on the unsavory topic of terrorism head-on well before the events of 9/11 seared it into the American consciousness: in the aftermath of the Cardassian occupation, with the shapeshifter scare on Earth and the struggle between security and liberty that ensued, and also with the plight of the Maquis. Star Trek always offered hope we’d be past petty greed and oppression in the future, but it was never so “pretentious” as to explain how it could be done. It would simply be settled and no one could imagine living any other way. But that also didn’t mean conflict would cease to exist in the universe, either, or that we would never wrestle with the value of freedom versus the threats against society.
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I’ve been watching them all for the first time. Can’t say I’m a huge fan of DS9, I found episodes dragged and half the characters were uninteresting. I adored Next Gen and right now am more than a little in love Janeway.
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Thank you!!!
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Just checking - I assume you mean “Nein”?
This is “Nien”:
(And FWIW, I agree with you. TOS or nothing!)
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There was a reason why TOS was explicitly told not to set any stories upon Earth of the time: it was because the stories were to be fables, avoiding all mention of how society within the Federation worked lest some contemporary social group get upset about it. There were other conceits as well, that space was so vast that even subspace communication was not instantaneous which was lost, alas. I think what made a lot of TOS stories work back then was the feeling that the Enterprise was truly on its own. In fact, the idea behind the Star Fleet was that life on Earth had become so tame that venturing out to the fringes of Known Space was a goal to itself. Even Harry Mudd traded not so much for money but for thrills.
I admit, I lost track of DS9 when Babylon 5 was running, but every time I checked in little things kept nagging at me, like how everyone was on the same clock, same day/night cycle no matter which planet they were on, how there was no sense of scale, how so many little things were taken for granted which should have been wildly different. Believe it or not, what I liked most about B5 was how it seemed space really was weightless, with no up or down – the Earthforce ships and Starfuries were good examples.
As far as moneyless societies go, the best take by far is still the Culture as envisioned by Iain M. Banks, with advanced AI managing resources in a post-scarcity society.
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We’re starting fights now?
Okay; listed in order of descending quality:
Farscape
Blake’s 7
Lexx
ST:DS9
Babylon 5
ST:TNG
ST:Voyager
ST:TOS
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Right made an arena we can do this properly.
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