"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (1993-1999), Created By Rick Berman and Michael Piller

[jasonc]

Deep Space Nine (DS9) follows TNG in the Star Trek television franchise, and precedes Voyager and Enterprise (which is in fact a prequel).  You might say that the DS9-era represented the high water mark of the franchise, as TNG had proved both a financial and critical success, and the associated films were chugging along nicely.

In terms of story, DS9 was deeply impacted by both the Battle of Wolf-359 and the Cardassian Wars.  The show's lead character, Benjamin Sisko lost his wife at Wolf-359, an event that haunts him throughout the series.  And the eponymous space station's position as a former Cardassian stronghold and subsequent strategic location near a wormhole to the gamma quadrant provides much plot fodder.

I think DS9 is largely seen as quite successful, with many fans preferring the later episodes to the earlier ones.  About ten years ago I bought season one on DVD and wasn't that impressed with the first ten episodes, but I'm ready to give it a second chance.

I'd be interested in running through each episode much like Don did with TNG, but more towards the style I used in the Spooks forum.  Please let me know if you are interested.  I like using letter grades, along with a quick synopsis and analysis.  But I'm flexible on the exact system used.  I do think some rating mechanism is useful though.  This is a point of contention between me and Don, but I'm hoping we can work something out.  My position is that some sort of empirical score, while somewhat artificial, is still quite useful to quickly discern a general difference or similarity of opinion between us.  You could read two analyses and still not be quite sure.

[DanielK]

DS9 Rewatch, from my friend Keith.

[DonRocks]

On 7/17/2014 at 2:15 AM, DanielK said:

DS9 Rewatch, from my friend Keith.

I'm watching SE1 EP1, "Emissary" - would you tell us about your friend Keith, his website, and what to look for there?

[DanielK]

On 8/26/2018 at 12:35 AM, DonRocks said:

I'm watching SE1 EP1, "Emissary" - would you tell us about your friend Keith, his website, and what to look for there?

Keith is a professional sci-fi/fantasy author who was done a number of media tie-ins over the years. He's one of the in-house media reviewers for the publishing house Tor. Besides current movies/shows, they contract him to re-review seminal sci-fi shows and movies, such as TOS, TNG, DS9, the Trek movies,  etc.

I've known him for more than 25 years. When my first kid was born, Keith named a character after him in the book he was working on at the time, a Spider-Man tie-in novel.

Keith has forgotten more about the Marvel universe than I will ever know.

[Rieux]

A friend once said DS9 is the perfect DC show because, fundamentally, it is about visions of governance. 

[leleboo]

I have now rewatched DS9 more than TNG (amazing, I know) and I come to a new appreciation for it each time. The fully-drawn characters, the exploration of different species beyond Cold War analogs -- let's not forget that TNG was created by Gene Roddenberry and still pre-Berlin Wall coming down -- and some really great acting even in the face of occasionally crappy scripts make it really watchable. I think DS9 is one reason I'm not upset by Discovery being less "episodic"...DS9 did a number of long arcs, and had many more through-lines than its predecessors, so while Discovery is really not Trek-y in the episodic way, I feel that it draws on the character development that DS9 pioneered for Trek.

Plus Section 31. Because duh.