It’s taken me a little while (I actually wanted to wait until after I had watched the entire run of DS9 yet again), but here it is, the fourth part of my series on the entire Star Trek franchise. Part one looked at the whole franchise, part two examined the original series, and part three was all about Next Generation. This one will look at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, otherwise known as The Best Damn Star Trek Show Period.
Yep, that’s right, I’m gonna start this off by throwing a stake in the sand. In my opinion, Deep Space Nine is - by far - the best Star Trek show. It may not have dudes in skirts like Next Generation, or the charm of Kirk and Bones, but what it has in spades is character development, something each of the other shows had to find time for among all the other stuff they had to deal with every week.
It was a side effect of the premise, of course. Being stuck in one place (as opposed to every other series’ problem of having to come up with interesting and original stuff every single week), Deep Space Nine looked inward. We got tons of character development on the show, plus loads of new details about the societies of races that were already pretty well established (Humans, Klingons, Romulans) and even more on the ones that were either slightly established or merely referred to loosely before (Ferengi, Cardassians and Bajorans to name a few). Example: did you know there’s a president of the Federation? There is, and he’s kind of a lame duck during wartime. The funny thing is that a lot of the best known races were completely ignored by DS9. This is a show with only a handful of Vulcans. The Romulans are much better represented here.
With all that time to work on their backstories and motivations, the writers really went to town making the characters shine. In part one, I mentioned that I thought that Odo is the best developed character in the entire franchise…and that’s true. His arc is completely fleshed out over the course of the show’s run…he goes from being a gruff introvert to understanding who he is and where he comes from. His relationship with Major/Colonel Kira isn’t simply tacked on…it’s established early and develops very slowly and believably (unlike, for example, the very clumsy “relationships” on Voyager or Enterprise which were painful to watch).
Commander/Captain Sisko’s arc isn’t quite as complete…his ultimate fate feels unfinished at the end of the series. But the steps along the way are excellent. His early reluctance to take the position on DS9, his long-term (and again, believable) relationship with Kasidy Yates, his relationship with his son (Jake, the anti-Wesley Crusher), and his changing relationship with Bajor all felt right for the character. There are even well-developed quirks like his love of baseball, his initial distaste for the Vic Fontaine holosuite program or his obsession with the traitor Eddington. These all just fit in with the character, and add a dimension sorely lacking from any other Star Trek lead.
But really, virtually every character on the show has his or her moment. Some of the best episodes belong to Miles O’Brien, who was at best a third-tier character on Next Generation. His relationship with his wife Keiko feels completely real (the punchline to “Armageddon Game” is a great little insight into their marriage). Worf does some great growing as a character once he comes on board, Julian Bashir could easily have fallen into cliche territory, but nope, he’s very well developed, with a nice arc of his own (that crisscrosses with the Dax storyline).
If any character is slighted at all, it’s Quark. His storyline is hijacked by his brother Rom and nephew Nog, who each get more of a complete arc than he does. But really, where was his story going to go? Kira is also left without a resolution, but the implication at the end seems to be that she’s the new captain (or colonel for that matter) of the station, so I guess that’s a resolution.
Pinpointing the high point of the entire show is virtually impossible. Probably my favorite episode is “Hard Time” from season five. In this episode, O’Brien is wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to 21 years of virtual incarceration. It represents only a second in the real world, but in his mind, he was in jail for 21 years. What follows is less a story about serving time, and much more a surprisingly raw story about coping with post traumatic stress disorder. It’s a tough episode, and shows what a great actor Colm Meaney truly is.
A pair of Nog episodes are other high points for the series: “Valiant” from season six is a really well written episode about a ship run by overzealous cadets that’s cut off behind enemy lines, and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” from the last season is another excellent PTSD episode (oddly enough), where Nog copes with the loss of his leg by retreating into the holosuite. Aron Eisenberg may not be the world’s greatest actor, but he pulls off this episode well enough, and he’s flanked by some great actors to help carry the load.
Some of my other favorites include, “Badda-Bing Badda-Bang” (the shameless Ocean’s 11 knockoff episode…it’s obvious everyone was having a great time), “The House of Quark” (where Quark goes against the Klingon empire), “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?” (the episode with The Doctor from Voyager, in which we learn of Bashir’s sordid past), “Blaze of Glory” (the resolution of the Eddington storyline) and the series finale, “What You Leave Behind” (which is easily the best final episode of any of the Star Trek shows).
Low points are few and far between, a rarity for any sci-fi show that lasts for seven seasons. The two worst episodes I think are “Move Along Home” from season 1 and “Change of Heart” from season 6. “Move Along Home” is just a stupid episode. This was early on, when the show was having a hard time establishing an identity…it features an alien race that visits the station for the first time and brings along with them a game that they trick Quark into playing. And wouldn’t you know it, while the game itself appears to be played with oddly shaped marbles and Pocky sticks, it’s actually being played by the entire senior staff of the station, who are in mortal danger. Woo. It’s a really stupid episode, particularly because there doesn’t seem to be any actual game here. To the people outside it seems to be played by hitting your Pocky sticks and acting all excited when someone moves a marble from a plexiglass floor to another. But to the people inside the game, it’s actually a bunch of ridiculously easy puzzles? I don’t get it.
As for “Change of Heart”, it’s just a frustrating episode. It focuses on the weakest character on the show - Jadzia Dax - and her relationship with Worf. And while Worf’s side was never in question (Michael Dorn has that role down pat), Terry Farrell never seemed comfortable as Dax, particularly not in episodes like this one that required her to show a range of emotion. It’s also frustrating because you leave this episode thinking that these kids are going to make it, only to have her die a few episodes later.
Another general low point for the series (even if none of the episodes were particularly bad) was its continued reliance on the Mirror, Mirror universe. They dipped into that well one too many times. The episodes aren’t bad by any means, but they’re just repetitive. And it’s a little weird how they had to keep updating the cast of characters in the evil universe to reflect cast changes in the series (although I will admit to getting a chuckle out of seeing Vic Fontaine show up). Mostly what annoys me about them is the character of the Intendant, also known as Evil Kira. She has every evil cliche down pat. Wearing skin tight lycra? Check. Way too much makeup? Check. Overtly sexual? Check. Bisexual? Check. Chews up dialogue in a “sexy” way? Double check. All that, plus a tinfoil headband. By the end it got pretty painful.
The final season of the show, usually a low point for most series, is actually quite good here. The addition of Ezri Dax is a good one (and quite welcome). Not only is Nicole deBoer a welcome addition to the cast, but her character added something to the series as well. Although her presence on away missions was terribly confusing, in truth, it was no more absurd than any of their away missions. What military organization sends the entire senior staff of a major strategic outpost out on virtually every offsite mission? But I digress.
The point I was making, is that the last season is great. The storyline of the series doesn’t conclude until right up to the last episode, so there’s no time for an extra, unnecessary ending. There’s one final scene, and yes, it’s very, very sentimental, but I love that. It doesn’t even feel tacked on, given these characters and the relationships that have visibly developed between them all over the course of the series. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I loved Vic Fontaine. He’s such a stupid character for a sci-fi series, but man, that cat can really swing.
Deeps Space Nine has aged remarkably well. It got a bum rap as the anti-Star Trek series because of the lack of the whole “boldly going” schtick but DS9 did more than any other show to fill in the blanks of the races, characters and universe. If you can stand things like character development and storytelling, this should be your favorite Star Trek series. It certainly is mine.
Next up: Voyager. Ugh. But hey, at least it’s better than Enterprise…
