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Comment by lathiat | Hacker News Reader

Deep Space Nine did this well too. New Star Trek not so much and I miss each Episode being individually enjoyable.

I don’t agree DS9 did that (aside from the aforementioned episode). DS9 was the darkest and most heavily story arc dependent entry of all the 90s (and earlier) Star Trek series. Though Enterprise and onwards do take Star Trek in another direction (as you said too). I think DS9 would be Star Treks best example of a story arc emphasis and gritty character development (Sisko is very much an anti-hero at times. In fact every leading character has a spot light shined on their flaws. And as for the villains; they’re fleshed out and really disturbing at times (like the episode where Gul Dukat and Sisko are stranded on a planet and Dukat tries to convince Sisko that he’s actions during the occupation were justified - that has some really chilling moments). SG1, on the overhand, kept the “evilness” of the bad guys on a much lighter scale.

The Orville is a stronger example of a Star Trek-style show that balances all the same elements as SG1. The The Orville is written more as an out and out comedy, perhaps even a parody, with some drama elements rather than a drama with some comedy elements (like SG1 was).

I’d mentioned elsewhere about the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) hitting the same comedic tones too.

I think by "did this well" the parent comment is saying "mixed episodic and arc content well".

I did comment on arc as well, albeit I focused most of post on the comedic style so my points about the arc might have gotten lost.

Take the last 3 series of DS9, very few of them can be watched without understanding the context of the wider arc. SG1 went a little this way with the last two series too but the Ori arc was quite a departure from the rest of the show (even to the extent of having different leading staff).

The Ori arc does get a little darker (albeit not significantly so), introduces more space battles (now that Earth has spaceships of their own) and really brings the “battle of the gods” plot to the forefront (like DS9s Prophets vs Pah-wraiths) so there’s definitely a lot of crossover between the two franchises there.

But I feel the real genius in SG1 was its main arc that preceded the Ori; which is also the significant body of the shows work too.

> SG1, on the overhand, kept the “evilness” of the bad guys on a much lighter scale.

"those lying, scheming, no-good-for-nothing, slimy, overdressed stylemongers"

> DS9 was the darkest

While this is true in many of the plots and themes explored on the show, especially the Dominion War, it by no means meant the show always took itself super seriously. In fact there is much more humor and general levity on DS9 than TNG which felt more stuffy and righteous.

It wasn't outright comedy besides a few episodes (Little Green Men, Our Man Bashir, Take Me Out to the Holosuite, Ferengi episodes), it was natural banter between character pairs (Odo and Quark, Bashir and Garak, Bashir and O'Brien, Worf/Martok/Sisko, Jake and Nog, the entire extended Ferengi family, etc.). Often episodes would be structured with a "serious" A-plot and a more soapy B-plot where most of the shenanigans would take place.

It's part of the reason DS9 felt, to me at least, more real and lived-in than TNG. TNG was promoting an ideology, a religion of sorts. Very aristocratic, many sacred cows. You would not expect humor to show up much for such people. DS9 on the other hand showed people living in a less than ideal situation, dealing with a galactic shitstorm that washed up on their shores. One of the ways real people deal with such situations is humor.

Granted this was the 90s, since 9/11 TV shows, including Star Trek, became more dark for the sake of being dark. Seemed like Archer was torturing people every other episode at times, and I'm not sure he knew how to smile. And for the epitome of "dark and super srs", look no further than nuBSG, where characters could not even take a dump without Irish bagpipe music being played over it.

Yes I miss the 90s. A lot of what I said about DS9 applies to Babylon 5 as well.

> In fact there is much more humor and general levity on DS9 than TNG which felt more stuffy and righteous.

While I agree TNG was more “stuffy” the examples you’d described were no different to the lighter elements in TNG. Eg most of the sub-plots that involved either Data were like that. Most of the Q episodes too. There was plenty of banter on TNG, what DS9 did differently was showed people being snarky with each other. Every episode of DS9 had someone delivering a cutting putdown to a colleague. This was something TNG lacked (because Gene Roddenberry didn’t think it worked with his vision but he was dead by the time DS9 was being written).

> A lot of what I said about DS9 applies to Babylon 5 as well.

B5 was originally pitched to the same network as Star Trek (Paramount?) but was rejected. Then a few months later DS9 was being produced. Straczynski (the creator of B5) had accused DS9 of ripping off his ideas. And to be fair there are parallels to his show: darker plot with a story arc about impending war based on a space station that hosts an array of aliens who don’t all get along. Even the worm hole idea could be related to the jump gates in B5 - both are subspace portals created by ancient aliens.

But you can also see a lot of parallels between SG1 and B5/DS9 too so it’s fair to say all art inspires other art.

I do miss 90s SciFi too and agree with your points about how dark things have gotten these days.

I actually feel TNG lost a lot of humor and levity and amusing banter after season 2. I know I'm in an extreme minority when I say I prefer the first two seasons of TNG over the rest. Yes most of the great, classic episodes are from season 3 on, but the filler in between became much less enjoyable. Too serious and dour for the middling forgettable plots being presented. Picard smiled more in the first 2 seasons than the rest combined.

> Most of the Q episodes too

Those were the worst Q episodes though (granted "I am NOT a merry man!" might alone have made Qpid worth it). Q was at his best when he was taken seriously by the crew, not treated as an annoying but harmless diversion.

As far as DS9 ripping off B5, there are some surface level similarities, but in the end the shows and characters and plot are very different and since the usenet wars of the 90s seem like a lifetime ago I think the shows can stand on their own without bringing up JMS's butthurt.

I was more saying that B5 as well did not take itself too seriously in the day-to-day, despite the very serious and deep themes the show explored. That show had plenty of time for stupid jokes and amusing banter. A lot of people found the acting on it to be too cringe/soapy. Well maybe that's why I enjoyed TNG season 1-2 so much...

Aside from “Q who” all of the earlier Q episodes were terrible. But the later ones are much better at using him for comic relief without going into the realm of absurdity.

> As far as DS9 ripping off B5

Just to be clear, I wasn’t voicing my opinion when I posted that. I was just reporting on the speculation.

There’s more to the story than what I’ve posted too. Lots of hearsay published from people who were on the inside at the time too. I don’t think we’ll ever know for certain but personally I don’t think it really matter if DS9 took ideas or not anyway because (and as I said earlier) all art copies each other. It’s not like Straczynski invented SciFi.

> but in the end the shows and characters and plot are very different

Of course they are. Even if Paramount did steal ideas from B5 (and I’m not suggesting they did) Paramount would still have to write it in a way that differed otherwise they’d have been clearly open to litigation.

> I think the shows can stand on their own without bringing up JMS's butthurt.

Straczynski wasn’t butthurt. He was the one who argued against litigation and even defended some of the writers on Star Trek.

> Well maybe that's why I enjoyed TNG season 1-2 so much...

I’m guessing you’re a fan of TOS as well? It sounds like you’re more a fan of Roddenberry’s influence on TNG than his other writers.

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