Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ended in 1999 after 7 seasons but didn’t jump into feature films like The Next Generation. Here’s why.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ended in 1999 after 7 seasons but didn’t jump into feature films like The Next Generation. Here’s why.
I mean, DS9 wasn’t as popular as TNG back then – both in terms of ratings and fan reception. Many considered it the black sheep of the Trek family. Berman focused on Voyager. So it was chrystal clear to every fan with even half a brain that DS9 would never get a movie. Perhaps Voyager had a tiny chance but by the time it concluded its run viewership had been in steady decline, and then Nemesis tanked.
Voyager had consistently mediocre writing. I, somewhat cynically, always thought the reason moore did Battlestar was to show everyone what Voyager could have been.
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Ohh man, the “demon planet” melting voyager clone episode really set my teeth on edge with this.
Super interesting premise, the metal clones fly out on their own ship, invent/discover new warp tech that is super useful, almost get to earth, but then begin to melt. People die, Tom gets dark and broody in a realistic way, but then as its getting good they all start to die to wrap it up in one episode. So they super warp home to the devil planet, but they realize they arent going to make it, so they fire off a “stable bouy” about who they are/what they learned. By pure, totally realistic happenstance, this buoy both doesn’t survive and the actual voyager is passing nearby at the time, just close enough to see their destroyed remains.
In the insane vastness of space, the chances of these two ships with vastly different propulsion capabilities passing by each other in the very minutes one of them disintegrates is so unlikely as to be nearly impossible, and of course it failed in a way that fully resets any boons actual voyager might have gained from it.
It would have been way more poignant to have the bouy survive, but to have voyager well past it, not able to learn from it because they had gone beyond. To never have them even see or interact with their copies, just to have those copies set out on their same journey but fail, with only a lone bouy to remember them by. A true reminder, a real boon, but one outside of voyagers reach by random chance. Actual life.
But nah, just reset the whole promise of the episode in the last 2 minutes instead.
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However what I don’t think is justified is the label as one of the worst Star Trek episodes. Is it nuts? Yes. Is it annoying that they have the technology to bring everyone back to Earth and simply de-lizard them after the trip, and then it’s never brought up again? Also yes.
But it’s nowhere near the worst episodes because it’s neither offending and un-Star Trek (like TNG’s Code of Honor) nor is it boring. It’s actually pretty entertaining for the first 35 or so minutes. It just goes off the rails at the end.
Paris is genuinely entertaining in it. The look of perverse amusement as he pops his own tongue off, total brilliance. It’s the exact amount of goofy that the premise demands.
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If it weren’t for tuvok and the doctor I don’t think I could have finished that series. It’s the only trek I’ve never really rewatched too. Not counting the modern shows.
I think you’re not too far off.
Here is an excerpt from The Fifty Year Mission (book 2) by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross. I highly recommend those books. They are super insightful about the behind-the-scenes stuff from the first 50 years of Star Trek.
I want CBS to, on hands and knees, beg RDM to fix Trek now. Oh I’d squeal like a 60s girl at a Beatles concert.
God damn. I’m almost done watching DS9 for the first time right now and was planning on diving into Voyager right after. But this makes me not want to.
Voyager is alright. It’s just very uneven. What drags it down is that the producers only very rarely took big swings that had a lasting impact on the characters or the show. Voyager excels at being episodic television. There are a bunch of stinkers (as there are on any TV show) but when it’s good, it’s really good. It has some of the best Trek episodes.
Maybe use an episode guide with ratings (for example Jammer’s Reviews, Ex Astris Scientia or IMDb) and skip the episodes with low ratings.
That’s really interesting, thank you for going to the effort to share those page.
Its odd that Voyager had a better chance at a film. DS9 had better ratings when they were both on and received more critical acclaim. Yet somehow Voyager has remained more in the popular consciousness and had more enduring popularity. I think a lot of it had to do with Berman favoring Voyager. Its reruns also saw a lot more syndication. I was a teenager in the 2000’s so I only ever saw reruns of 90’s trek growing up and it was usually Voyager and rarely TNG. I never saw any DS9 until it became available on streaming.