Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - Deep Space Nine - Season 1 - Week 4

SEP wrote:
Moggy wrote:The Passenger

Iggy Pop?

Sadly no Iggy Pop

Oh don't worry, he shows up later.

I can't remember what I was thinking when I wrote that, but I'm pretty sure I already knew Iggy Pop had a cameo at some point.

Moggy has finished Star Trek. Well until tomorrow when the season finale of Prodigy comes out.

My official rankings:

1. TNG (starts slow, but overall an excellent show)

2. Voyager (I loved Voyager, it's very close to TNG for me)

3. TOS (I love the wacky 60s)

4. Strange New Worlds (this has the potential to climb higher!)

5. DS9 (when it's good it's amazing, but so much of it is gooseberry fool)

6. Prodigy (this has the potential to climb higher!)

7. Enterprise (decent, but rarely spectacular)

8. Picard (I liked it, but it's not ever going to trouble the top of my rankings)

9. TAS (it's ok, ropey animation kind of ruins it)

10. Discovery (it has great moments, but there's a LOT of gooseberry fool)

11-24. Anything else. Including a painful death.

25. Lower Decks (with a couple of exceptions, it's utter gooseberry fool)

Putting any Trek below Discovery, but especially Lower Decks, is a crime against humanity.

A new year, but old Trek.

Move Along Home

A really gooseberry fool Squid Games.

Meh.

The Nagus

Inconceivable!

If Ferengi don't have any education, how the hell have they become a space faring civilisation?

The episode wasn't terrible but wasn't terribly good either. It was nice to learn more about the Ferengi, but I find them quite irritating (other than Quark).

Vortex

Meh. Another absolute average adventure. And my alliteration is the most interesting thing.

That's actually a bit unfair. Quark getting in trouble was a bit of fun. And I'm interested in where Odo comes from, up until this episode I didn't realise his origin was a mystery.

Battle Lines

Mike!! With hair! I'm not sure I would have recognised him if it wasn't for the voice (plus Jonathan Banks name in the opening credits

)

I think the writers of this show care far more about Bajoran culture than I do. I couldn't give a gooseberry fool about the prophecies of a religious leader.

Overall it wasn't awful. But wasn't great either.

Haven't had many opportunities to watch Trek over Christmas so still playing catch-up a bit

A Man Alone

I think Odo is one of the stronger characters from early DS9 so this episode having some focus on him is on solid ground. The core murder mystery plot is a bit muddled, why aren't there more clones knocking about if any old smuggler can bash them out this easily?

Past Prologue

I always enjoy the Bajoran politics and aftermath of the occupation stuff that forms a lot of the focus of the first few seasons, this isn't necessarily one of the strongest examples of it but it does give us some more insight into Kira which is always welcome.

Garak is instantly the MVP of the show :datass:

Babel
I always wonder whether they scripted the bullshit the characters have to speak when infected in this or whether they just let them spout any old gooseberry fool!

This is probably the best episode since the opener - a good central plotline that draws in all the cast and gives them something to do and manages to build some good tension.

Captive Pursuit
A decent episode to get a lens to find out more about O'Brien, but otherwise fairly throwaway. Both the Chief and Commander bending the rules to let Tosk escape is another sign that this is going to be a show with a bit more moral grey area than the often black and white escapades of Picard's Enterprise.

Q-Less
Worst Q episode? Possibly (spoilers for beyond DS9)although he turns up a few times in Voyager I think and I can't recall how bad those are so we'll have to see if this is true... Actually scratch that he's in Picard S2 and that's gooseberry fool!

Boxing with Sisko is probably the only real highlight of an otherwise pretty dull episode

Apparently today's the 30th anniversary of DS9 starting, so congrats Sisko and Co. :toot:

The Storyteller

At one point I thought the old geezer was going to produce some stone tablets or part a sea.

This was pretty piss poor. The plot on DS9 was meh and the plot with O'Brien and Julian (the bits about calling him that were funny to be fair) was rubbish.

I feel like I'm being harsh with DS9 and I understand it's supposed to get better. But this is turning into a slog.

Progress

I assume we were supposed to be sympathetic to the old geezer, but he just seemed a miserable old sod.

The other plot wasn't too bad, but Nog is a terrible negotiator.

Overall, another basically solid but very meh episode.

If Wishes Were Horses

Julian in the friendzone.

Just got to the titles and paused. My prediction is that this is going to be an appallingly bad episode. Rumpelstiltskin :fp:

Ok it wasn't the heap of shite I was expecting when a fairytale character appeared. I'm still finding DS9 a chore to get through, but this wasn't too bad.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but why do Ferengi men like human women? Quark isn't the only one who seems to have a thing for human ladies. I think it was mentioned before that Ferengi women are completely dominated by the men, is it a turn on for them that human women will talk back to them?

The Forsaken

Fingers crossed that this is a Wheel of Time crossover. :datass:

Alas, no.

strawberry floats sake, I thought we saw the last of Troi's annoying mother when TNG finished. :dread:

Meh. Another of those episodes that isn't terrible, just completely bland and unremarkable. I think I'm getting to the end of S1 now, I'm hoping for an improvement for S2!

Feel like we need to start a "meh" tracker for Moggy's DS9 reviews! :lol:

Jenuall wrote:Feel like we need to start a "meh" tracker for Moggy's DS9 reviews!

There's not a computer in the world that could handle the amount of "meh" coming over the next few years.

I really enjoy The Forsaken because it made me like Lwaxana Troi. She ends up being a much better guest character in DS9 than TNG.

This is a pretty lame run of episodes though. If Wishes Were Horses is absolute shite.

Yeah likewise, I think it does a decent job of rehabilitating the character of Lwaxana. Still doesn't necessarily make it great TV though!

Moggy wrote:
Jenuall wrote:Feel like we need to start a "meh" tracker for Moggy's DS9 reviews!

There's not a computer in the world that could handle the amount of "meh" coming over the next few years.

Continuing with my own thoughts, I think I'm slowly catching up...

Dax
I think this is a decent delve into some of the backstory of Curzon Dax and the general dynamics and implications of the Trill symbiote status, but it lacks some of the heft and drive that the "legal drama" episodes of TNG had demonstrated prior to this.

Odo takes way too long to work out that Dax was having an affair with the murdered guys wife, he's clearly not as good a detective as he thinks he is!

The Passenger
Never really been a fan of this one, I think because the concept has quite a lot of potential but it's not really executed very well at all. The idea of a criminal who has evaded capture for so long and has found a way to transfer their consciousness into another host in order to survive could have been really interesting, I'd have liked to have seen a "hiding in plain sight" element to it with Vantika controlling the host and attempting to pass unnoticed by mimicking their actions/behaviour etc.

Siddig's performance when controlled by Vantika at the end is almost painful to watch, not sure what direction they were giving him and whether he was aiming for sinister but he missed by a strawberry floating long way!

Side note - having just poked about in Siddig's wikipedia page for the first time I have only just discovered his uncle is none other that Star Trek Generations Malcolm McDowell!

Move Along Home
I spent most of the rewatch of this episode thinking how much the Wadi from the Gamme Quadrant looked like they belonged in the MeowMeowBeanz episode of Community:

They don't actually look that similar, but I couldn't shake it once it popped in my head! :lol:

Either way this episode is a bit gooseberry fool. It's like the Gamma Quadrant equivalent of Knightmare or Crystal Maze but without any of the good bits.

That kid singing the alamaraine rhyme needs to get in the bin as well - shut up!!!

The Nagus
Quark is definitely one of the season 1 highlights for the show, and this is a decent Ferengi knockabout episode but they still haven't really found much interesting to say about them apart from possibly re-enforcing/referencing some outdated cultural stereotypes from the real world... :dread:

Sorry about the lack of involvment over the past few weeks.

Been off work and just not been near the forum as much. If it's any consolation I've not been streaming either, though I plan to be back to that on Friday.

Moggy wrote:Moggy has finished Star Trek. Well until tomorrow when the season finale of Prodigy comes out.

My official rankings:

1. TNG (starts slow, but overall an excellent show)

2. Voyager (I loved Voyager, it's very close to TNG for me)

3. TOS (I love the wacky 60s)

4. Strange New Worlds (this has the potential to climb higher!)

5. DS9 (when it's good it's amazing, but so much of it is gooseberry fool)

6. Prodigy (this has the potential to climb higher!)

7. Enterprise (decent, but rarely spectacular)

8. Picard (I liked it, but it's not ever going to trouble the top of my rankings)

9. TAS (it's ok, ropey animation kind of ruins it)

10. Discovery (it has great moments, but there's a LOT of gooseberry fool)

11-24. Anything else. Including a painful death.

25. Lower Decks (with a couple of exceptions, it's utter gooseberry fool)

Congrats on finishing it all!

Not sure I've ever done a proper ST show ranking, but I guess this would be it...

01 - DS9
02 - TNG
03 - TOS
04 - VOY
05 - SNW
06 - PRO
07 - LOW
08 - ENT
09 - DIS
10 - PIC
11 - TAS

We might disagree on Lower Decks, but I'm glad you enjoyed Prodigy. :wub:

A wee touch behind myself (As always :lol:

)

I'll get the thread up to date for the weekend and we can soldier on.

TAS at least has some charm to it, PIC is just pure gooseberry fool and such a waste of potential (up there with Bale amirite!?)

I still need to watch the likes of Prodigy, Discovery and Strange New Worlds before I can do a full ranking (I also don't think I ever watched all of Enterprise)

Jenuall wrote:TAS at least has some charm to it, PIC is just pure gooseberry fool and such a waste of potential (up there with Bale amirite!?)

I still need to watch the likes of Prodigy, Discovery and Strange New Worlds before I can do a full ranking (I also don't think I ever watched all of Enterprise)

It's got some charm, but it wears out pretty quickly. It's cheap looking, the stories aren't generally great and it's not something I really want to watch again.

The only reason I put Picard above it was that Picard season 1 was just about ok (Bang average at best). It was season 2 that REALLY shat the bed, and season 3 may still redeem it.

You really should get on the other new shows to be fair, especially Prodigy and Strange New Worlds.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:
Jenuall wrote:TAS at least has some charm to it, PIC is just pure gooseberry fool and such a waste of potential (up there with Bale amirite!?)

I still need to watch the likes of Prodigy, Discovery and Strange New Worlds before I can do a full ranking (I also don't think I ever watched all of Enterprise)

It's got some charm, but it wears out pretty quickly. It's cheap looking, the stories aren't generally great and it's not something I really want to watch again.

The only reason I put Picard above it was that Picard season 1 was just about ok (Bang average at best). It was season 2 that REALLY shat the bed, and season 3 may still redeem it.

You really should get on the other new shows to be fair, especially Prodigy and Strange New Worlds.

It's the Paramount Paywall that's putting me off more than anything, that and not being arsed to find other means to watch them at this point - I'll get there eventually!

I'm definitely hopeful that Picard S3 will be better than 2 (but then I was hopeful about 2 as well at one point... :dread:

)

Putting any Star Trek below Discovery is criminal.

Lagamorph wrote:Putting any Star Trek below Discovery is criminal.

I'd put Lower Decks below the Discovery of asbestos.

Still a bit behind schedule on this!

Vortex
Decent enough episode, Odo is lead on a bit too easily for my liking though. I get that he would be desperate to find out more about his own kind but he's supposed to be a security/detective type - he should have been able to tell he was getting tricked!

Battle Lines
They really struggle at times to come up with sensible ways of justifying who goes out on these missions in order to satisfy the plot - Bashir here is just like "meh I'm bored so I'll come on this random trip through the wormhole" - and oh look they discover some strange shenanigans that benefit from a Doctor being present! I thought this was supposed to be a station on the edge, frontier medicine! Surely it being a bit slow right at this second doesn't mean the chief medical officer can just strawberry float off on a jolly?! :lol:

Still, decent episode and always nice to see Mike Ermentraut

The Storyteller
Shite episode - Chief O'Brien becomes the cheerleader for some Bajorans who for some reason decided that the way to solve their problems ages ago was to cause a killer cloud to appear and force them to work together...

Oh and the Jake/Nog B-plot is crap as well.

Progress
At times this seems like a decent enough episode, the interactions between Kira and the stubborn holdout are nice at times, but ultimately it doesn't really feel like it goes anywhere or tells us anything interesting about the characters or situation

The Jake/Nog B-plot is slightly better this time, even if just for the fact we get to hear the stupid way Nog says "Opportunity" about 50 times.

If Wishes Were Horses
Bashir dreaming up a horny Dax is probably the most entertaining bit here, otherwise it's a bit meh.

The solution ending up as "just think positive and believe what you want to happen!" is just that little bit too cheesy for me, and it ends up being yet another "alien race wants to learn more about others by being complete dicks to them" episode, which TNG has probably already worn out by this point! Do these banana splits ever re-appear, I can't recall? Feels like a contender for a Lower Decks episode.

Also, the idea that Baseball is a good enough sport to go global and have major teams in London is annoying to me - can't US writers just accept that nobody else wants to play their shitty sport? (yes I know it's also big in other places like Japan as well - shh! :lol:

)

The Forsaken
Touching moments between Odo and Lwaxana are the highlight here. Another case of Bashir being roped into a story with little to no logic behind it - "Ah yes, we've got some ambassadors visiting the station, who shall we get to do the menial task of escorting them around? The Chief Medical Officer of course!" :fp:

Dramatis Personae

Oh another energy being that takes over the crew. How original.

The best episode for a while. It was fun seeing the crew act differently and hamming it up. Finally Odo actually had something to do other than bitch at Quark or tell kids off. :lol:

Duet

"Imagine living through that pain, that sorrow.....do you think they like to gamble?" :lol:

At last, a truly fantastic episode of DS9! For most of the episode it played out like a Nazi war criminal trial, before taking a very different turn..

The guy playing the Cardasian was excellent and Kira was brilliant.

Not just a (the only

) good episode of DS9, but one of the best Trek's I've seen so far.

Keep it up DS9, you could be a great show if you did more stuff like this!

In The Hands Of Prophets

After the amazing Duet....this was disappointing. The Bajoran religion isn't very interesting and the overall plot was quite meh.

As usual with DS9, not gooseberry fool, just meh.

But why did O'Brien get so angry with the lollipop salesman? I thought it was going to turn out to be a plot where the lollipops were making people violent, but it was just O'Brien being a dick and the salesman was just strawberry floating with him? :lol:

And that's season 1 over with. Overall it's been the worst season of Trek I've seen. And I include the Animated Series in that. It'd have more going for it if it had lots of truly bad episodes, but it's just so brain numbingly mediocre. We can't expect Duet quality every episode, but they could at least try to be interesting/exciting.

Let's hope season 2 improves things!

The Homecoming

Not too bad. The rescue was quite exciting and The Circle branding Quark while wearing creepy masks was well done.

I'm not sure if this is a two parter or if DS9 is now going into a long continuous story. Is this the first time Trek hasn't used the same title and had "part 1" in the title?

The Circle

Looks like it's going to be at least a 3 parter.

I guessed the twist way before it was revealed. But despite that, the political intrigue was pretty engrossing. Odo and Quark were fun, I hope Deputy Quark is a permanent thing. :lol:

The more religious side was less welcome. But easily ignored.

Again not too bad, DS9 is still a very long way from the best of TOS and TNG though.

The Siege

The standard DS9 review applies here "not terrible but not great".

It's nice to see a 3 parter, it's just a shame they didn't do 3 parters for some of the more interesting TNG stories.

The Bajoran v Kardassian stuff has been going on for a while now and just isn't very interesting. But there was some nice political stuff, a bit of action and then a pretty rushed ending. Guys, you had three bloody episodes, cut out some of the other bollocks and concentrate on a satisfying ending.

Invasive Procedures

Why don't starships and space stations have CCTV cameras?

Sisko can fight! Taking on a Klingon in a fist fight? And winning! Even Quark had a go! :shock:

Back to the old complaint here, a badly rushed ending ruining what would have been a good episode. There was about 4 minutes left when Sisko confronted and shot whatshisname-Dax. And they explained nothing about whether Quark was forgiven.

Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - Deep Space Nine - Season 1 - Week 4

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