Photo: Paramount Plus
Space. The final frontier. These are the…
Plot twist, not a lot of voyages happening here.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the third television series in the Star Trek universe and the first to move away from the usual starship setting. It is set on a space station—the titular DS9—instead. I’ve seen mixed reviews of this setting. Some people love it, some think it’s too different from the other series to be “real” Star Trek. I agree it’s different. In a lot more ways than the setting. But I love it; that’s what makes it work.
If you’ve seen The Original Series (TOS) or The Next Generation (TNG), you’ll recognize some of the aliens on DS9. Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans, Bajorans, Cardassians, and Ferengi all appear frequently. It’s worth noting here, for readers who are unfamiliar with Trek but have hung on this far (thank you!) that all the aliens are humanoid. Star Trek doesn’t have too many truly bizarre or creepy aliens, so it’s a good choice if you’re interested in sci fi, but not crazy about weird creatures.
DS9’s similarities to other Treks pretty much end there, though. And, as I said, I think that’s good. The first two series provided plenty of stories involving starships and exploration. Choosing a different setting opened the doors—or should I say airlocks? —to new topics and plots.
This saves DS9 from what I’ll call “sequel syndrome,” where future iterations of a once popular show (or movie or book) are not as good. The later shows try to mimic the earlier shows too closely and become unoriginal knock-offs. DS9, however, was very original and very high quality. For me, the fact that DS9 was very different from its predecessors allowed me to watch it more open mindedly. Any time something happened on DS9 that didn’t “feel” like Star Trek, it didn’t bother me like it would have in TNG.
The Original Series and The Next Generation are both wonderful shows. They turned me into the nerd I am today. So, I’m not saying I like DS9 better. Frankly, I find it hard to compare it to the rest of Trek. Maybe that’s all people mean when they say it’s not “real.”
I don’t really care about that, though. Even if it wasn’t called Star Trek at all, I’d still love this show.
Watching the Show
A quick summary of my DS9 journey. I’ve seen the show 1 ½ times, in a sense. Because I don’t have whatever streaming services Star Trek is on, I watch it on regular old television, complete with Medicare and class action lawsuit ads. This means that I can’t pick whatever episode I want whenever I want it. The day I decided to start watching DS9, the channel was in the middle of airing the series. Since this is how I’d started the other Trek series, I thought nothing of it. A few episodes in I realized there were a lot of pieces I was missing. DS9 is much more serialized than the other two series I’ve watched.
I watched a season or two in the middle of the series, but then decided to stop until the channel got back around to the first episode again. So, I’ve seen some episodes once and some twice. This will be handy as a reviewer, since I’ll have both a first time and returning perspective.
If you’re going to watch this show, don’t do what I did. Start at the beginning. That’s where I’ll start my review.
Summary & Review
The show begins when Captain Benjamin Sisko – a popular character I just can’t love – takes over Terak Nor, a Cardassian space station taken over when the Bajorans were liberated from the Cardassian Occupation. That conflict acts as a backdrop for the whole show.
Now under Federation and Bajoran control, the station is called Deep Space Nine. It is a sort of military base/city.
The first few seasons of the show focus mostly on internal station matters and maintaining the uneasy peace between Cardassia and Bajor. About halfway through, a shadowy entity known as the Dominion begins to figure in most plotlines. The Dominion plays a bigger and bigger role in the story, culminating in war.
Now, it’s time to look at what makes DS9 so good in my estimation.
First and foremost, the characters. Actually, that’s pretty much the entire reason I love the show. I’m a fan of character driven stories, and DS9 is certainly that.
It has a large cast of regular main characters which grows as the series progresses. All the characters are different from each other. It’s a diverse show in more ways than just the appearance of the various people and species. Major Kira is a tough and cynical former freedom-fighter. Odo is a stoic security officer who hides his feelings, but certainly has them. Dr. Bashir is a brilliant young man with a cheerful disposition, but he has his share of secrets. Captain Sisko is passionate about his job, haunted by the death of his wife, and often full of contradictions.
And that’s only four of the characters.
All the different personalities and backgrounds of the characters are fascinating on their own, but the magic happens when these characters interact and form relationships. Every person on the station had differing ideas about every other person. If you were to try and diagram how all the characters connect, you’d need a lot of paper and pens. There are unlikely friendships, hidden loves, and bitter rivalries. And, at times, all these things seem to be in flux.
To top it all off, one of the main villains, Gul Dukat, is probably my favorite villain of all time. He walks the line between misguided man and total megalomaniac, a line many fictional bad guys fall to far to either side of.
None of the characters are the same at the end of the series, so none of the relationships are either. (This is an advantage of the serial format: it allows for more character development.)
If you are a Star Trek fan, I cannot recommend DS9 highly enough. I’m usually a purist when it comes to shows, but I completely disagree with most negative reviews of DS9. Aside from the few totally asinine episodes that seem to be a requisite for every Star Trek series, it checks all my Trek and sci-fi boxes even while questioning the status quo.
If you’re not a Trekkie, don’t let that put you off DS9. Its differences might be just what you needed. If you aren’t into sci-fi, but love stories driven by characters, mystery, and intrigue, DS9 would be a great foray into the genre.
If you are a writer, I also commend this show to you. So many aspects of it have impacted the way I look at storytelling. I’ll probably do a future post (or two or three) on what DS9 taught me about writing.
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