Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1993

In it's first year this felt like a "Star Trek" series with no ambition and little progress but with a cool premise. Then suddenly it started to become bolder and more interesting. It dared to go deeper into religion, politics and character studies than any of the other Trek series did on the air. Today I would say that this series began a kind of production that we would later see on cable with long-running story arcs, a huge cast list and pushing the envelope on what was allowed on TV. The last 10 episodes of this show (and beginning of the 6th) was like seeing a long-running 10 episode HBO series on syndicated TV to be blunt. I also liked that this was "Star Trek" where the leads were flawed and not perfect so they actually had to have internal fights with themselves and their own demons at times. They even managed to make their villains three-dimensional and sympathetic and I liked them all. What would have helped the show would have been an even healthier budget would have given some scenes better effects, more action and detailed battle sequences as this show had bigger ambition and tried to be more epic than what they really could manage to get through on screen. Some lousy embarrassing comedy and weak B-plots ruined some episodes too but this show produced some magic moments and is the show that has more hits than any of the other newer Trek shows that I have seen so far. This is the one show that deserve a revisit if one only skip over most of the filler episodes in season 1, 2 and major part of the third one.

Well, it's the best Star Trek Show that was produced in that era (and it's definitely way better than Discovery). And I'm saying that although I grew up with TNG and still think that Voyager's Seven of Nine is the best character in all of those shows of that era. TNG was still too much like the original series. Voyager felt too isolated from the Federation (well that's the point of that show I guess). DS9 was bolder. It experimented more. It explored more races, more worlds, was able to create realistic, credible and intriguing characters (especially the female characters are strong) and their relations among each other in that interstellar melting pot. The show touched religion, politics, racism and the universal concepts of love and friendship. All neatly bound together by the most dramatic and most ambitious overarching storyline of any Star Trek show. In the streaming era, DS9's non-episodic story telling is perfect (while it may have contributed to show's low rating back in the TV era). Seasons 1 and 2 are weaker - just like TNG they needed time to explore what to do with the show (and how to overcome the disadvantage that a space station can't fly to other worlds and explore space). Not everything was great though. Some lighthearted episodes are mere fillers (they probably produced too many episodes per year!), some races are big stereotypes (but often great fun for the same reason), sometimes the mystic elements (that were admittedly always part of Star Trek) are a bit too dominant and too silly, and the whole stage design isn't very flashy (but memorable and unique thanks to Cardassian architecture but I never got my head around how small the promenade looked like and how few people actually filled the station although the station was clearly a behemoth), sometimes it has too much of a shallow soap opera appeal to it and the last season - however great the overarching story line comes to a conclusion - feels somehow out of place (which is the fault of the guy who denied Farrell a new contract so that Jadzia had to die this pointless and not very well-written death. I mean, Ezri was also a strong character but it took too much time to really get to know her and to care for her).

PS: Original quality looks horrible. Yes kids, that's how TV looked back then. Sadly, DS9 - for various reasons and unlike TNG- can't be remastered in HD in the traditional way. But recently I happened to notice that upscaled version popped up all over the Internet. Naturally, I can't provide the sources. They are probably fan-made works w/o proper permission. AI upscaling looks astonishingly impressive though.