Star Trek DS9 Reviews: From Start to Finish!

I figure, if we're gonna have a trend, I should jump on that bandwagon right now. And what better place to start than with the best Star Trek series out there?

1) The Emissary

The most cerebral opening for a Star Trek series since "The Cage", it is also my favorite Star Trek premiere. When I was younger, it bored me, but as I matured I saw more of what the writers were going for with this episode, and I appreciate it a whole hell of a lot more now.

It isn't easy to make Picard an object of scorn. Coming near the height of TNG's popularity, it was plenty ballsy to essentially make Picard the villain, the set-up for Sisko's general character arc. Yeah, we know what it was like for the Enterprise crew, but this episode showed us how the normal rank-and-file of Starfleet viewed PIcard, and it isn't very favorably.

Moving on from that great opening, we see once we reach the station that this is a very different kind of Trek. No clean hallways, no bright lights, no Hilton hotel lobby bridges. Life here will be hard, and people don't necessarily like each other. WHile everyone on TNG was one big happy family, it's easy to see that on DS9 everyone has their own agenda and they aren't shy to strongarm for it. We see Sisko use his position to manipulate Quark for his own purposes, something a little ethically suspect, and this is a good set-up for the way his character thinks throughout the series. Sisko is a man who isn't afraid to venture into the gray to get shit done.

In the end, this episode really sets the tone perfectly. No one is happy to be on DS9, except the arrogant Bashir, who doesn't know what he's in for. Once the wormhole is discovered, however, we get that sense of wonder and intrigue you expect from good science-fiction. SIsko's conversations with the Prophets provide both meaty characterization AND interesting philosophical questions. Compare this with Encounter at Farpoint and The Cage, and there's no doubt which series DS9 will mimic more closely. While there is an obligatory ship battle, it's clear that DS9 is not meant for combat. This is instead a show about characters and ideas, not fistfights. While the rest of season one will have a hard time matching the excellence of this story, the groundwork at least is laid for one hell of a good show.

Rating: ***** / *****

Good pilot!

My only major nitpick was that Sisco's wife (and kid?) were aboard the Saratoga during the Borg battle. One because I thought only the Galaxy class allowed families aboard as an experiment due to it's long-range basic mission, and two because they should have offloaded ANY non-combat personnel on the way to a freaking fleet battle.

I was also annoyed by how the Saratoga was under attack, but intact long enough for sisco to run around and find his wife and have long dialogs about it (and the sounds of battle died away for the touching scenes, then came back after), then blew up the instant his life pod was clear. All very convenient and obviously contrived.

Other than that nitpick, a brilliant pilot.

^That's why the Borg don't work in non-TNG series.

Crosis! Welcome back!! and you are spot on about The Emisarry. I'm looking foward to participating in this thread and hope that we make it to the end.

2) Past Prologue

People say the first season of DS9 was a dud, but episodes like this one show that isn't an entirely accurate description. An old Resistance acquaintance of Kira's comes to the station seeking asylum, and Kira convinces Sisko to grant it. This is clearly a Kira-centric episode, and since all we really saw of her in the pilot was a woman who seems way too volatile for no reason, it's good that we have an episode like this so early in order to flesh her out a bit. We see that there is more to Kira than bluster, and by episode's end we have a much better idea of the conflicted nature of her character. As much as she admires the Resistance, and as much as she also wants Bajor for the Bajorans, like Tahna does, she is able to be rational in a way someone like Tahna is not. THat doesn't mean it is an easy choice to make, though, and the episode ends with Kira wrestling with whether she made the right decision or not.

Aside from the main plot involving Kira, this episode is also notable for the first appearance of Garak, and for the appearance of Lursa and B'Etor. While the latter is mostly a gratuitous grab for TNG fans, the former is a perfect introduction for the man who would become one of the most intriguing characters in Star Trek. From the start, you get the sense that Garak is a suspicious fellow who knows far more than he lets on, mostly from the way he surreptitiously lays a hand on Bashir's shoulder in the replimat. In an episode that spotlights Kira's divided loyalties, we also get a sense of Garak's conflicting emotions as well, as he is keen to do what he can to curry favor with the Cardassians once more. One amusing highlight is the way Bashir is roped into Garak's spy game, which is the first seed of a long-standing character trait of Bashir's, culminating in "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges". While the actor for Tahna hams it up a bit ("I am KOHN MA! YARRRGH!"), that is I think the only real negative from what is a very good and often overlooked episode.

**** / *****

I like the way that this first meeting between Garak and Bashir sort of lit a fire under Bashir and sort of steered him towards "spygames" and covert operations... I wonder if this is why he engaged in holodeck fantasies and was later approached by Section 31 to work as an operative.


And how "flamboyant" was Garak then? I'm glad that he was told to tone it down a bit for subsequent appearences!

Well, the Saratoga was a TWOK-era Miranda class vessel, which was pretty outdated. I doubt it was intended to be used as a warship, more likely a science vessel. Jennifer Sisko was a scientist in the MU, so she might well have been a civilian specialist collaborating with Starfleet in our universe. (Keiko had the same deal going onboard the Enterprise.)

As for bringing Jake along, Sisko was the first officer. He could probably get away with it.

Yeah, that was stupid in hindsight.

Mind you, any other time, 39 to 1 would have been a cakewalk for Starfleet.

While the dialogue in "The Best of Both Worlds II" indicates that the fleet of 40 starships assembled to intercept the Borg at Wolf-359 was a carefully put together fleet, "The Emissary" makes the Battle of Wolf-359 much more a hastily thrown together last ditch effort by Starfleet.

Which I think is more realistic.

If it was a hastily assembled efforts by whatever ships happened to be within 36 hours of Earth (Wolf-359 is 36 hours from Earth at Warp 9, do the math) then the fact that the Saratoga did not drop off its civilians and families makes more sense.

Do you really think a starship captain is going to off load his civilians in shuttles and lifepods in the middle of nowhere.

Rejoined best trek kiss.

I expect in a fictional TV show they could come up with a starbase or nearby planet to drop them off, yes. Or just be smart enough to NOT have had a family aboard a Miranda.

I here navy plans on putting kiids on carriers..

Actually, when 9-11 occurred, a U.S. supercarrier (I think it was the Constellation) was having one of those events where family members of the crew come aboard. Tiger Cruise I think it is called.

The ship was preparing for combat operations with some 900 civilian crew members aboard.

Baba, don't derail the thread with your silliness. On topic or go away.

What are the odds of that?

Cool!

I was sort of playing around with doing this when I finished TNG but I'm not sure I'd have the energy to write so much.

I loved DS9 though. It was full of win from beginning to end. There are maybe 23 or 24 episodes I would dispose of...

Everyone forgot about this?

The next 20 episodes suck so...

Anyone ever play that DS-9 video game, The Fallen? I remember liking it back in the day except for the way you could get ambushed via transporter.

(Not meant to derail the thread- just sayin'.)

Robotech do you have a dominion wars poster on your war?

I liked The Fallen, but it had some serious bugs, lacked the voices of Avery Brooks, Colm Meany, and, I believe, Alexander Siddig (the replacement for Colm Meany was especially awful), and had some very expansive levels that frequently lacked direction. It was, overall, a decent game, but the Voyager-based FPS, Elite Force, was far superior.

It also screwed up some stuff that bugged me, like, amusingly enough, the font on the hulls of the ships, scale, etc. I think that the uniforms used on the down Miranda class ship were wrong too, given the timeframe, but from how inconsistently Trek has handled the TNG-to-DS9 uniform conversion, I'm willing to cut that some slack.

Wrong font!

sorry about the delay. Had my stepdaughter's birthday this weekend, and things have been hectic since I haven't been in the office much this past week. Anyway,

3) A Man Alone

Bleh. No real lasting characterization in this ho-hum sci-fi mystery. Killing your own clone is still murder? Then Riker's in trouble for all those clones of himself he killed in that one TNG episode (whose name escapes me). It was a convoluted scheme, too convoluted for me, honestly, and what's worse, the Bajoran "racism" against Odo seemed a few years too late. After so many years of being security chief, they still treat him that way? I didn't really buy it. It didn't help that the guest-star was so incredibly douchebaggy that he was completely unsympathetic. All in all, there isn't much I can say about this episode. It's pretty much forgettable, and I had forgotten about it actually until I saw the ep again. Oh well, not every episode can be absolutely fantastic.

** / *****

4) Babel

I actually really like this episode. I used to think it was silly until I found out that there really is an aphasia type of virus, and then I liked it a lot more. I do wonder, though, how many booby traps and things of that sort were left on the station. This and the Cardassian trap Dukat had to come and help fix come to mind right away. It seems like between the Resistance and the Cardassians, DS9 is a floating death trap. Regardless, I enjoyed the way the episode played out. Seeing Bashir realize he was getting aphasic was a particularly enjoyable scene. I also loved the way Kira resolved the problem of the unhelpful Resistance member, by getting him sick as well. Nothing motivates someone more than having their own life on the line. There were also some nice character touches for Sisko and Jake. I think the writers did a very good job with the relationship between those two. It's incredibly easy to believe they are father and son, the interactions between the two of them speak volumes. Not a particularly memorable episode, but still enjoyable to watch at least.

*** / *****

Would Stack Pierce have made for a superior Commander/Captain Benjamin LaFayette Sisko

How do you mean? Remember, there were three years in between the battle of Wolf 359 and Sisko taking command of DS9, so the Saratoga crew were wearing the correct uniforms, IIRC. You are right about the clumsiness of the uniform transition, though.

I was referring to the Ulysses from The Fallen. The Ulysses crew were wearing either the colored-shoulders uniforms or the gray-shoulders uniforms, I can't remember which. Either way, they should have been depicted as wearing the colored-front uniforms.

Of course, they royally fucked up the uniform stuff there. DS9 introduced the colored-shoulders uniforms, but it was obvious that it wasn't an instantaneous fleetwide transition, as the crew of the Enterprise wore the colored-front uniforms until Generations, in which it was depicted that the crew was transitioning at that time.

When First Contact introduced the gray-shoulders uniforms, though, they showed up promptly the next season on DS9 (which I'm A-OK with, as they're easily the best-looking uniform of TNG-era Trek).

So, I suppose it's possible that the colored-shoulders uniforms had been introduced to the Ulysses crew, being one of the initial ships to receive the uniform rollout, but I think that requires even more fanwanking than actually giving this that much thought to begin with.

They switched over mid-season, actually.

I thought that the FC uniforms showed up on DS9 during the same season that the movie was released.

Either way, sometimes it takes time for a change to take effect throughout an organization. The Air Force changed their BDU-type uniforms to a tiger stripe pattern two or three years ago, but yesterday morning when I was getting coffee, I saw an AF guy wearing the old woodland pattern BDU.

Oh, I've never played the game, sorry! speaking of uniform gaffes, did anyone notice the two fellows in the background, standing next to the Klingon during the scene in "Tears of the Prophets", wearing the late model TNG uniform? I checked Memory Alpha, and they noticed too, apparently.

I remember seeing the same thing on TNG when they changed uniform styles for Season 3. The regulars all had the new threads, but you'd occasionally see extras with the 1st and 2nd season uniforms.