Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series review....

Warning: If you are not into Star Trek, skip reading this post.

Personal (b)log. Stardate [-4] 82231.06.

I always wanted to start a post with that. :-)

It took me several months, but last night I finally managed to finish viewing all the DVDs of my Star Trek: Deep Space Nine compilation. The last episode, What You Leave Behind was well thought out, and was a fitting conclusion not only to a story arc which lasted more than ten episodes, but a series which lasted all of seven seasons.

There's no way around it, so I'll just say it. I've seen virtually all of Star Trek: The Original Series (ST:TOS), Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (ST:DS9) and Star Trek: Voyager (ST:VOY), not to mention the first couple of seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise (ST:ENT). As it turns out, and surprising even to me, I actually like ST:DS9 and Captain Benjamin Sisko more than any of the other series, or any other commanding officer. Surprising because I actually held the series in low regard compared to the others before I saw it. Really now. Star Trek without a starship? After completing the series, I realized that my first impressions of the series were entirely wrong.

ST:DS9 is a far cry from Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future paradise where Earth has finally eliminated greed, crime, poverty and all social ills from human society and replaced them with exploration, the pursuit of knowledge, and cooperation with species from other planets. While this was the core of ST:TOS and ST:TNG, the producers of ST:DS9 took it one step further and created a darker, grittier version of the Star Trek universe which included in its main plot line a civilization culturally based in religion recovering from hostile occupation (the Bajorans), another civilization bent on power and conquest (the Cardassians), a wormhole to a distant region of the galaxy, and an invasion from a foreign power the likes of which the Federation has never seen before (the Dominion).

What's so different about ST:DS9 is that it takes place aboard a space station. As such, story arcs can be much more continuous, more serialized, rather than the episodic style of a starship based series. Since Deep Space Nine is also a port, the main characters have the opportunity to meet other characters and other species as well as those in the other series. However, the semi-fixed setting makes for deeper character development, environment interaction, and more detailed and continuous story arcs than it would be possible if the series was set on a starship. Eventually we end up with a series which deals more about real world issues, such as society as a whole, human relations, tradition, religion, patriotism, war, love and friendship, loyalty and treachery, diplomacy and espionage, politics and corruption, life and death, more than any other series. In fact, the introduction of many negative elements in the series only succeeded in making ST:DS9 more believable and realistic (well, for a sci-fi show). Because of the Dominion Wars, ST:DS9 has also the distinction of perhaps being the most action-packed of all the series. The battle scenes with hundreds of starships all at once are just simply awesome.

Captain Benjamin Sisko is also a character of much depth, seemingly more human than any of his predecessors, perhaps even more like you and me, than any other Captain in Star Trek. He started off as a Commander, and only earned a promotion to Captain midway in the series. He lost his wife in the confrontation with the Borg at Wolf 359 (ST:TNG, The Best of Both Worlds), and was a single parent for the duration of the series. On his shoulders was also placed the burden of being Emissary to the Prophets (ST:DS9, The Emissary), a religious title conferred on him by the people of the planet Bajor, something which he didn't really care for at the start, but a role he grew into nonetheless as time went by. A responsible and principled Starfleet officer, an iconic religious figure, a friend to everyone, a father to his son, a brilliant strategist and tactician, and a soldier on the frontlines to an impending invasion of the Alpha Quadrant. I don't think any other captain, including the legendary Captain William T. Kirk and Captain Jean-Luc Picard come anywhere close to what he has gone through, or to what he has accomplished.

Definitely one of the better series to wave the Star Trek banner. It does not only live up to the franchise's name, but made it much more than it was.

Links:

STARTREK.COM
Cut & Paste Star Trek Date