Well, if we’re going to do threads for the various Trek series, it is my pleasure to be the one to make the Deep Space Nine thread. The best Star Trek series if I do say so myself. So go ahead, post all things DS9 here.
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I myself am in a rewatch with some friends on Discord. We’re about halfway through the series, through Season 4’s Return to Grace, watching an episode a week. One of the group hasn’t seen it before, and is enjoying it, though oddly she doesn’t like Garak.
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Not like Garak? How is that possible? Garak is awesome.
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He actually wasn’t very popular when the show was running
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How big was the idea of the morally grey, you’re not sure if they’re trustworthy type of character back in the mid-late 90s?
And actually, I thought he was popular, otherwise he’d have just been a one-off in the second episode. Maybe that was not true, or maybe it was Robinson who was popular with the people making the show or something.
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Yesterday we watched Duet from season 1. A sharper, scarier, twistier, more accomplished episode of Star Trek I can’t think of. Absolutely incredible dialogue between Nana Visitor and Harris Yulin. Yulin’s performance is absolutely stunning from start to finish – he’s utterly chilling before absolutely breaking your heart. An amazing performance. I’ll be looking out for him when he shows up in my Buffy rewatch!
Just one of the best episodes of Trek full stop!
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I definitely feel like Garak was a very popular character at the time the show was airing.
How big was the idea of the morally grey, you’re not sure if they’re trustworthy type of character back in the mid-late 90s?
I want to say very. I definitely remember people talking about “Faustian” characters back then, and you had similar popular characters of other types from around that time even if we specifically look at sci-fi. Ba’al from SG-1, Todd from Stargate: Atlantis, and Gaius Baltar from the Battlestar Galactica reboot all come to mind. These characters were all pretty popular but I think Garak was held to an even higher standard at the time cause DS9 as a whole was popular and well-received.
Also @taraoftraken I LOVE Duet and it is one of the first episodes I think of when I think of DS9.
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Yea I’m not sure I just know Robinson and some of the writers mention he wasn’t in that DS9 documentary they did a while back and were a little suprised about the popularity he has these days
I guess you could infer this also from how even though he has a big presence and big parts in certain episodes hes actually only just in 37 of the 176
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Someone gave Pale Moonlight a 3/5 and knocked it out of the highest rated spot.
One of two places we’ll ever see the station in high definition 
And also seeing how good it looks in widescreen makes it more of a shame that DS9 never got into the film side of the franchise.
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Funny to find this thread starting. The wife and I are currently meandering through a rewatch of this series. We just started in on season 6.
I’m struck by how impressed I am with the Ferengi characters. Quark is a fine character, but I’m partial to Rom and Nog.
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All three are great. But yeah, Rom and Nog’s growths are excellent character work.
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I said this in the Star Trek General Thread but it fits here:
The reason I bring it up again is because, to me, one of DS9’s greatest strengths is the realistic storytelling involving a space station.
Piggybacking on what you said, @TARDIS32, with Rom and Nog has great arcs. Rom, his recovery, the psychology of it all with the backdrop of the Dominion War, was great! Honestly, all major characters had meaningful arcs, too.
Example, Sisko’s character. Avery Brooks initially loved the characterization of his character as a strong father figure towards his son. This was at a time when too few shows depicted the strong bonds between Black families. He was later upset that the show’s ending made Sisko’s departure with the Prophets in the Celestial Temple seem final, leaving behind his son, wife, and unborn baby. Basically playing into the family abandonment trope he felt his character didn’t represent. While I think the writers could have addressed it better, to me his character arc of self sacrifice was amazing.
I’m also a huge fan Kira’s character transformation, growing with her trauma. Dr. Bashir from being cocky and immature, to experiencing the horrors of war, the arc involving his genetic manipulation, and Section 31 stuff. Odo with issues of identity and belonging. Worf and confronting his once idealistic views of the Klingon Empire.
I can go on forever, but my point is that this was strong stuff. To me, DS9 is simply good television. Next to Babylon 5, it’s probably one of the best depictions of life on a space station I’ve seen to date.
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You know, Quark was played by Armin Shimerman. He also played one of the first Farengi that appeared on the show, and was not happy about how they turned out.
“What we were told about the Ferengi and what we ended up with were like night and day. The Ferengi were going to be the new Klingons. They were never meant to be a comical race; they were meant to be ferocious and menacing. And unfortunately, they hired me to play one of the lead Ferengi, and I failed miserably.”
“I didn’t put it behind me for years; it was like sword of Damocles hanging over my head. All of my work on Deep Space Nine, for the first four seasons, was me trying to eradicate that original performance from everyone’s mind. It was my personal agenda to rectify the mistake I made–to take a one-dimensional character and make him a three-dimensional character.”
So Farengi as they are now owe a lot to him.
Oh, and he was also great as Principal Snyder on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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That’s the kind of woolly-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten.
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What do we think of Sons of Mogh? The ending where they wipe Kurn’s memory and turn him into a completely different person tends to be a controversial one.
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Is the thirteenth Doctor’s earring Bajoran cultural appropriation?
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I’ve spent such a long time without loging in the guide that I have only recently found about the TrekLog haha Do we have any idea how many story arcs DS9 (and the other series) have? I’ve suggested “Story arc: Dominion War” to 4 episodes, but there are a lot more (and I remember at least one VOY episode dealing with it). Stuff like “Federation-Klingon Empire” or “Federation-Romulan Empire” arcs are spread in several series (and, I’m sure, books).
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