Deep space 9 revisited

Did she pack in her military career then to become a full time sculptor in the end?

I hate that woman.

Great character though.

Oh my child.

There was a bit of a an in Universe perspective shift on the Prophets' relation to Bajor at some point too. In Emissary they seemed disinterested in the planet but by season 7 had timeywimied Sisko's birth and he was now half prophet all along.

"The pope says it's OK" isn't really an excuse for going along with a bad idea.

Not lauded but accepted even though it was a terrible idea.

If the next pope decided it was ok to discriminate against gay people again but only the hardliners actively did it, the others going along with it give it a kind of legitimacy.

I've brought this up before, but I often (in my head) compared post-occupation Bajor to post-independance Ireland. The Bajorans seemed to have replaced Cardassian domination with Religious domination by Kai Winn and the Vedek Assembly. Similarly, post-independance Ireland swapped control from Westminster to de-facto control from the Vatican for many decades up until pretty late in the 20th Century.

I wonder if there was potential there to further expore how religious organisations can fill power-voids like that. There was also some scope to look more into religious fundamentalism, but they seemed to save that for the Pa'raith Cult which I feel limited them. The whole D'Jarra thing could have been an interesting concept to go deeper into, especially given how willing many Bajorans were to adopting a caste-system like that. Star Trek has always been good at bringing up analogies of things like discrimination, and I feel they missed an oppertunity there.

Has anyone ever figured in what episode of DS9 it is that the imposter replaces Bashir and Mortok?

It's something I have been meaning to do.

But just like here, the numbers who consider themselves Catholic in Poland is dropping. Only took one generation.

The whole Bajor / Prothets thing was a bit of a turnoff for myself back in the day. On rewatching I'm respect more of what they were trying to do with the whole concept of a people using faith to cope with the horrors of violent occupation.

But back in the day, the Bajor-centric episodes of DS9 seriously put me off watching the show. They were an unwelcome distraction to the Starfleet adventures I had wanted to see. It wasn't really until Season 3 and the arrival of the Defiant (and Voyager S1 ending up being a massive let down) that I gave DS9 another shot and by then the Bajor-centric stuff was toned down in favor of Galactic affairs and the start of the Dominion Cold War.

But on later watches, I began to give S1 & S2 another shot, and it was then that I started to warm up to what they were doing. The Bajor stories had a deal of nuance to them built up with some pretty good dialogue. Kai Winn ended up being one of the most intentionally hateful characters Trek has ever offered, and that is all thanks to the Bajor stories.

I now kind of wish that they did more work exploring Bajor's role in the wider galaxy after Starfleet won back DS9 from the Dominion. It's kind of assumed that the Bajoran Republic joins the Federation Alliance against the Dominion, but we never get fully confirmed on screen beyond them being a signatory to the Treaty that ends the war. All we really get is that sillieness in the finale with Winn and "Angelo" trying to unlock the Fire Caves. They should have maybe fleshed out Bajor more when we were coming to the end.

I just finished Season 3 myself. Keep in mind, Season 3 was essentially pre "soft-reboot" when we got Worf, a new intro, and a new bald Sisco hairstyle. So within the short span of one season post-TNG they had managed to introduce the Defiant, make pretty good use of that ship, recreate their own Wolf 359 battle in The Die is Cast and seriously build up The Dominion as the new villian of Star Trek. All while beefing up Quark & Garak's respective backstories, launching Nog's path to joining Starfleet as well as setting Jake up for his journey to becoming a writer (which pays off really well).

God I miss when one season of television could manage that much. Now we're stuck with 10 episode seasons…which are often spilt in half to make mini-seasons…it's just not the same.

I remember that one! Star Trek Monthly wasn't it?

It does look cool, although looking now it almost seems like a giant Worf head has somehow gotten stuck on a docking pylon and is thinking "How the f*ck did I get stuck here?! Why is everyone firing at me?! You are ALL without honor!"

Although Season 4 is often seen as the Soft Reboot for DS4, Season 3 had a certain renewed feel to it. As you said, we got the Defiant, was got an expansion of The Dominion and we even got the Generations Comm-badge just to underline how this show had emerged from the TNG era.

From my delving into Memory Alpha, it appears that ST:Generations actually happens during the events of DS9 Season 3. The exact point isn't specified but the Enterprise D is lost during this time.

Putting Voyager Season 1 to one side, DS9 Season 3 kind of acts like a bridge between the TNG Trek of the 80's and this "New" Trek of the 90's. This would be the standard we'd get for the next 5 years up until the DS9 finale and would include the better seasons of Voyager, and First Contact.

Im re-watching it from the start, even though I wanted to skip straight to Season 3, I thought Id give it a go. For sure they were finding their feet for S1 and S2, but there are some good episodes in there. Reckon though if it was now, the show would've been cancelled after a season, I think back then they gave things a bit more of a chance. In the Documentary the writers talked about wanted to "Serialise" the show but Paramount resisted this wanting every episode to be stand alone.

Many successful series do poorly in series1 and it's touch and go to get renewed. Breaking bad etc.

I would not call it drab.

I would. Was one of the things that put me off DS9 when it first aired.

It's all greys and browns, it is drab but it s kind of imposing and overbearing too. Suits the Cardassian hat to a T.

Also something I've noticed on a rewatch is that the seasons were 26 episodes long! When you consider that Strange new worlds only produces 10 episodes a season(and most other shows are the same) it seems like an insane work load for cast and crew. They must've all been exhausted at the end of each season.

Plus having such long seasons, meant there didn't have to be as intense a focus on the core characters for the whole time. With a 20+ episode season, you'd have a Data episode, a worf episode, a Riker episode, a Troi episode...and so on.

So while the work went on longer throughout the year, perhaps it was a little less intense than consistently saving the galaxy with the same people (or person, cough Burnham) for the entirety of a modern season.

Of course the unsung hero of those long seasons is plain and simple character development. TNG, DS9, Voyager...all cancelled within a season or two under today's model. There's no room to breathe anymore with 10 episodes, no time for slower burning and deeper character development, no time to simmer and marinate anymore. It's all flash in the pan stuff, and while some of it is good (SNW etc), I've yet to see anything like The Inner Light, or Far Beyond the Stars etc that we'll be talking about in 30+ years either.

I just accept you have filler episodes. I don't really mind. Makes the better ones sweeter.

Tbh it takes time to build a story and characters and build up peak in a story.

For sure