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Comment by ramesh31 | Hacker News Reader

To anyone who's never watched DS9, do yourself a favor. Picard will always be the best captain, but DS9 was by far the better show episode for episode.

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As a fan of the original series and TNG, I tried watching DS9 and found it really boring. I've heard it gets better later on. Would you agree with that?

I think it’s unfair that you’re being downvoted because DS9 does have some of the worst filler episodes and is one of the slowest series to gain momentum. Season 4 to 9 of DS9 are pretty amazing but if you’re not a fan of the characters (as I wasn’t either) then it can be a real slog to get there.

My personal recommendation is to stick with it because the pay off with worth the persistence. But I cannot blame you for giving up when you did.

I feel like it doesn't really pick up until season 3. The first two seasons are semi required for some character building, but many of those episodes can be skipped. DS9 had the most depth by the end due in part from being on a space station instead of a ship.

I could say the same for TNG and Voyager as well (especially season 1 of TNG). The 90s era Star Trek series take a few seasons to find their footing and build some depth.

You really have to just grind through the first two seasons, as it's a ton of world bulding and character development, but that's the whole point of DS9. By the end of the series there are multiple incredible character arcs that put TNG to shame.

DS9 suffers from the usual "takes two seasons to get going" handicap common to Treks, but has the additional Bajor thing dragging it down. Is it the Israel-Palestine conflict or not? The show cannot seem to decide. The actors manage to be solid enough to redeem a lot of the show's problems, even non-regulars like Jeffrey Combs.

Basically, the Cardassians were an authoritarian, fascist regime bent on destroying a species different from them. With the brutal oppression, "work" / death camps, religion on one side, fascist regime on the other, a nebulous Gestapo-alike secret service, "pleasure" girls, etc.

Isreal-Palestine conflict is not the first one to come to my mind.

I was thinking more of the displacement of the people who had lived in one place by another group of people.

It's an amalgam of Palestine, the Irish Troubles and period since, and a smattering of pre and post WWII Jews (both Zionist terrorists and Israel, manifest in the prefederation period and competing factions corrupting the "interim" government). Theres even some north american first Nation material slyly slipped in there too.

I don't understand why people expect, let alone want, the Bajorans to be an exclusive representation of a single peoples or problem...

It's much more poignant as an abstract which can be used to review real issues through a figurative representation of the entire class of issues/peoples.

Absolutely, the show gets better as it goes on. As I recall, partway through season 3 is where it starts to really take off.

Though unlike with TNG, I wouldn't recommend outright skipping the first two seasons either. I actually enjoyed the early seasons of DS9 quite a bit on my recent rewatch of it. It's slow, but it's building to something. There's a lot of character development, and developing the setting as well(Bajoran politics, etc). I think jumping straight into season 3 would be very confusing and fall quite flat as a result of not having become familiar with the characters.

Everyone should watch season 1 at least once. Rewatches I usually skip it.

Yes. I think TNG is overall a better, comfortable show, but DS9 is more of a "space-opera" (akin to Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica), with a few one-offs episodes. Ronald Moore wrote both BS:G and DS9, so you see very similar styles between the two.

I couldn't get in to BSG either... too much glorification of the military and too much action for my taste.

Well it kind of ends with glorification of rebellion against corruption as a counterpoint to the earlier pro military stuff...

I skip Season 1 when I do rewatches. As with all Star Trek series, the first season or two can be dull. Season 1 of TNG was terrible.

The only Trek season 1 that I'll rewatch is Strange New Worlds. Recently introduced it to someone who had no meaningful experience watching Trek because they either kept falling asleep during episodes (TOS, TNG/VOY/DS9, DIS), or the barrages of references all went over their head and they lost interest (PIC, LD). But SNW hooked them immediately.

For all the whiz-bang flaws of Kurtzman-era Trek, they pretty much nailed that show's accessibility from the jump. Even better than Prodigy, which I liked but was more like a distant cousin.

Agreed, SNG is a truly excellent show, I can’t get enough of it. Though I’m worried Paramount is going to drop it. The open secret in streaming these days is that production and distribution costs far exceed revenue, and a reckoning has to happen at some point. SNG is the most expensive-looking show I’ve ever seen, except for actor salaries (which will only increase as the show succeeds).

So, I’m worried that Paramount execs will either cut the show after three seasons (the Netflix Maneuver), or demand steep cuts in production expenses (see late-stage “Enterprise”).

Edit: I’d say only “The Mandalorian” is more expensive to make, and as we know, Disney+ is losing huge amounts of money.

I just watched the pilot episode of SNW based on the high praise here, and found it corny, derivative, and predictable.

Pike seemed to be cast as a Kirk clone, and seeing the many of the rest of the crew as recast versions of characters from the original series just made it seem like the writers/studios have no new ideas. At least TNG (and the original series) tried something new.

I don't think I'll be watching any more of this show.

I actually loved it, but moreso for its quirky production choices (cinematography, lighting, etc.) and the interesting attempt at a directorial style which could be described as a cinematic-Shakespearean mashup. The stories were pretty good too, I thought.

It's ironic that the pilot gave us one of the best characters: Q. You can bank on TNG Ferengi episodes being terrible, DS9 Ferengi episodes being fantastic, and any Q episode being good enough to watch more than once. Like some of them were meh but they were all okay. The Q episode on DS9 was probably the weakest one, but that was Season 1 of DS9 so law dictates it is weak.

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