Deep space 9 revisited

I remember the DS9 sets to be a good bit off putting in the early days. I had been used to Federation Starships for years, and now I'm presented with crazy "Gear teeth" doors and weird Cardassian oval screens. But on reflection all of it made sense. It was supposed to be oppressive and alien, especially given the cold industrial nature of what it was designed to be.

The subtile idea that the Starfleet and the Bajorans managed to bring warmth and a sense of home to the place kind of adds to the theme of DS9 too.

Probably budget limits to what they could pull off. OPS alone was an ambitious set design for a Trek show, which up until this point had mostly had generic corridors and modular rooms. Also add in an internal 2-level street in the form of the Promenade and you're really pushing out the boat with set designers. It was a ballsy move too, since they could only easily use those sets for DS9 / Cardassian scenes. In the past, Enterprise sets were generic enough to be redressed to whatever they needed (How many times have we seen the Battle Bridge reused over the years?).

It's true though. Following the repairs to DS9 not a lot really changed. You got a couple more LCARS units and other Federation tech around the place over time, but that was mostly it. The real major change was the introduction of the Defiant sets which gave us occasional breaks from Cardassian design.

The battle bridge itself was a reused set, like a lot of TNG sets.

It's possible DS9 couldn't be retrofitted easily. A lot of the technology was incompatible with Federation technology and couldn't be easily reproduced either. The upgrades they did do, like the Way of the Warrior weapons upgrades, seemed to be Cardassian and you could infer they were other left behinds moved from Bajor.

The incidental music in season 1 was grating

Its funny because I had been catching random episodes from season 4 & 5 recently on the sci-fi channel and I had the same thoughts, it holds up magnificently.

I only ever dipped in and out of trek when originally screened.

Recently After we finished the Expanse. One of the kids talked me into rewatching trek. So re watched DS9, then Voyager, almost finished TNG.

Ds9 stand out as far better written with exception of towards the end here the writers lost their minds with Dukat character and all that religion crap.

Yeah, could have done without a lot of the dark Prophets (Can't remember their name. It's been years since I rewatched). The biggest problem I had with that storyline was the descent of Dukat. Up until then he was a brilliantly interesting character. Not eeeeeeevil. Just doing what he thought was right for his people. The relationship between him and his daughter was also well portrayed. I know, his mind was fractured by the end but it was sad to see such a complex and interesting antagonist go that way.

There wasn't such a regular antagonist before or since, which is a bit telling, regarding Trek's reluctance to try something new. The closest one came to a regular baddie apart from Dukat was The Borg Queen in Voyager. But she was such a moustache-twirling eeeeevil caricature, and they had de-fanged The Borg so much that they were pretty pathetic by the end.

Disco had baddie of the season but they were so forgettable: Season 1 was Jason Isaacs/Eeeevil Michelle Yeoh. Isaacs started as a morally-interesting Federation officer but then went full-camp along with Eeeeevil Yeoh once thesilly Mirror Universe pops up. Then you had, yhat? Ammmm.... Evil AI or something? Can't remember. Then idiotic eeeeevil Orion and Warp-destroying crying alien. Then not-at-all-Interstellar worm-hole and its not-at-all-Arrival aliens.

Enterprise had brief period of semi-interesting baddies for one season then straight back to the oldest cliche in the book: Space Nazis.

Picard had... I don't know....at all!

Strange New Worlds? Too early to tell but, given the decision to focus on a (Largely) episodic nature, we probably won't get a baddie with such focus.

True. But he could have just done bad things to redeem his bad self. The arc is completely off the wall.

I would guess Discovery took inspiration from Dukat final arc. Which why that show is a gibbering mess.

The anti-Profits were the Pah-Wraith, and did get pretty tedious. Similarly with Dukat's plot towards the end.

In some re-watches near the end of season 7 I'll even go so far as skip over the Kai Winn / Dukat bits to get to the far more interesting war segments. In comparison, Dumar seriously comes to his own as a far more interesting character, and his scenes with Weyone are a highlight of Season 7.

On watching Season 1 lately I can kind of see what they were trying to do with the Pah Wrath and Dukat. Much like with TNG finishing off with a story that ties with Encounter at Farpoint, I think they were trying to do the same for DS9. The show started with the Prophets & Dukat, and I guess they wanted to end the story with them. The ideas on their own were good, but I feel like they could have done something better with Dukat and Kai Winn's story. They kind of drag it out a bit over the run of the multi-part finale and they could have trimmed a good bit of the scenes where Dukat is just hanging around the Kai's palace. Would have been more interesting if Dukat had tried to use the opportunity to supplant Winn for control of Bajor, instead of a silly cartoon-villian vendetta with Sisco.

His realisation after Kira's "Yeah Damar. What kind of people?" is about as perfect as you could get.

There was an oversight with the last 10 episodes that meant a lot of extra Dukat/Winn stuff had to be added or they'd be missing for a five(?) episode chunk in the middle so if it feel like water treading filler, it is.

Only if the writers of that arc followed them... linear existence my foot.

Worf and Klingons in general are so much fun in the old series.

Complete buzz kill in Discovery.

I would prefer the Ds9 to the classic TNG shows. But I take your point DS9 isn't really the same mindset? as the TOS, TNG, Voyager.

I think Voyager turned into Janeway saved the day way too much, too much about her. Which stopped most characters from delivering too far. It completely neutered Chakotay into mostly irrelevance.

Garak was such a good character, Nog losing his leg was a brilliant storyline aswell

Between conflicts with the Dominion, the Klingons, the Ferengi. I found it really hard Keeping Up With The Cardassians.

Lol good one.