Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Deep Space 9

I have been reading LARP Trek and decided that I would watch DS9 to get in on the in jokes. I was a huge fan of Star Trek: TNG, but for some reason, I never really got into DS9. I remember being excited about the show, thinking Dax was hot and liking Bashir, but it wasn't appointment TV for me. So I caught a few episodes from season 1 and a random episode here and there.

DS9 is available on amazon as part of my prime account so I figured I would give it a go after becoming more interested in the show from the LARP trek comic. I also know people with the highest praise for the show, but I have to wonder what flavor of crack they are smoking. I pressume cherry. Season one is horrible (what I have watched so far). Seeing the wormhole and space station all I can think about is that I should watch Babylon 5 again. The acting is very weak, but event that is way above the writing. I understand that they are trying to make every episode charactercentric as a form of introduction but it is painfully obvious that is what they are doing and the solution to whatever problem is either a McGuffin or the problem solves itself(dropped storylines). The only good performances are from O'Brien and Dax. Sisko is painful to watch sometimes.

One of things I have picked up on is the premise of a higher power in the show. As a high school kid, when the show came out, I should have been able to pick up on it, but I don't remember. They absolutely hit you over the head with it. You have the orbs and the kai of course, but you also have the episode where O'Brien is chosen to be a prophet to deliver the village. I know that was technically an orb magic thing too, but...Then there is the hand of God opening the wormhole. Now as a kid, I thought that was a pretty cool and amazing piece of work. It really was great for a tv show at the time. It looks really, really bad now.

My conclusion at this point is that I will still try and watch the rest of the season and may give season 2 a shot, but LARP trek is actually coming off as more interesting and better written. I guess B5 had a rough first season as well, but it is very obvious that this was complete ripoff of B5 in a Star Trek universe. Even the religious themes, which B5 handles brilliantly, were copied.

5 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

I come from the other side - never got into Babylon 5. DS9 was definitely my favorite of all the Star Trek series.

Bob/Sally said...

I'm with Alex - I never really got into B5 (I think it was the obvious CGI that turned me off), but I quite liked DS9.

It did take a while for the cast and writers to gel, but it's worth sticking with. By season 3, TNG was over, and many of the writers moved over to DS9, which is when it really took off.

The Angry Lurker said...

It got better as it went on, the Dominion was a good storyline!

SteveB said...

I didn't mind DS9 when it was out, but I think it was where I started to get Star Trek burnout. I gave up I think right when by all accounts it got very good.

C R Ward said...

I loved Babylon 5! :-)

DS9 gets much, much better after Worf joins the cast. I mean, Worf!