LUCIDMEDIA

9 Reasons Why DS9’s the Best Modern Trek

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Friday, 28 August 2009 08:48

The National Fan Expo is this weekend and one of the Guests of Honour is Avery Brooks, known to millions of sci-fi fans as Captain Benjamin Sisko from Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Now DS9, which went off the air following a seven-year run in 1999, can easily be classified as the red-headed step child of the Star Trek franchise. Not as successful as The Next Generation and not given the studio and network attention lavished on Voyager and Enterprise, Deep Space Nine was allowed to flourish in a world by itself. Look closely and you can see that in spite of everything, this series stands tall as The Best modern Star Trek series produced. Let’s look at some of the reasons why.

1) Cause & Consequence

What immediately set DS9 apart from its predecessors was the fact that it took place on a space station rather than a starship. The Federation outpost Deep Space Nine was located near Bajor, a planet ravaged by 60 years of occupation by the villainous Cardassians. The discovery of a permanent wormhole, offering near instantaneous travel to the other side of the galaxy, makes DS9 one of the Federation’s most important holdings. Because of its unique structure, DS9 showed the long term consequences of characters’ actions, the writers couldn’t just move on to a new planet at the end of the episode. As a result, some storylines on DS9 continued through the whole of the series creating the most continuity driven show of the Trek franchise.

2) Issues Driven

It’s often been said that some of the best Star Trek episodes have come out commentary on issues facing the times. Like how the Original Series tackled racism and the Cold War, or Next Generation with topics like terrorism and euthanasia. On Deep Space Nine the two recurring themes were war and religion. The final two seasons of the show chronicled the Dominion War, a galaxy-spanning conflict between conquerors from the Gamma Quadrant and an alliance between the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans. During this time episodes on sacrifice, loss, familial strain, and moral compromise were recurrent. Throughout the series, DS9 often dealt with the debate between church and state through the Bajorans, race of spiritual people whose religious leader is also their head of state. Adding to the complications is the fact that Capt. Sisko is considered a religious figure amongst the Bajorans; they call him “The Emissary” for being the one who discovered the wormhole and making contact with the aliens inside. According to Bajoran teachings the wormhole is the Celestial Temple and is home to their gods, The Prophets.

3) The Dominion: The Anti-Federation

The Original Series had the Klingons, Next Gen had the Borg and DS9 had the Dominion. Shortly after making contact with the Gamma Quadrant on the other side of the wormhole, it wasn’t too long before the Dominion came knocking, and it was immediately apparent that they meant business. The Dominion was an empire of conquerors. Whereas the Federation was a peaceful alliance of hundreds of planets, the Dominion either gained your obedience or squashed the population of your planet like an ant hill. The ones doing the squashing were the Jem’Hadar, a race genetically-engineered for war by The Founders, who maintained obedience over their soldiers by making them addicted to a drug only they could provide. The other part of the equation was the Vorta, the Dominion’s administrators who, like the Jem’Hadar, regard the Founders as gods. While not as physically imposing or as ferocious as the Jem’Hadar, the Vorta more than make up for it in wiliness and craftiness. In later seasons, the Cardassians joined the Dominion in order to regain power in their part of the galaxy.

4) A Cast of Thousands

Deep Space Nine had nine main characters but behind them were dozens of secondary and tertiary ones that added depth and variety to the series overall. Because of the setting of the show, a space station home to 5,000 humans and aliens, several characters not listed in the main cast made their mark on the series over its seven years. So much so that by the seventh season an entire episode could focus on two of those characters, like “It's Only a Paper Moon,” which featured the holographic lounge singer Vic Fontaine helping Ferengi Officer Nog recuperate after losing his leg in a battle with the Dominion. Other stand outs included Marc Alamo’s multi-dimensional villain Gul Dukat, the Cardassian spy turned tailor Garek played by Andrew Robinson and Kai Winn, the self-serving religious leader of the Bajorans played by Academy Award winner Louise Fletcher.

5) Fallibility

As opposed to the upstanding and morally righteous characters in Next Gen, DS9 featured ones that were fraught with human flaws. In the sixth season Capt. Sisko manipulated the Romulans into joining the war effort by faking evidence of a planned Dominion invasion of their space. Dr. Bashir hid for years the fact that he was mentally and physically enhanced by his parents though the use of eugenics, a major crime in the Federation that could have cost the Doctor his commission. The shape-shifting security chief Odo spends a lifetime looking for his race, only to discover that his people are the Founders of the Dominion, making him an outcast when he refuses on a moral basis to help his people conquer the Federation. DS9 also added a shade of grey to the Federation itself by introducing the shadowy Section 31, a clandestine organization whose morally ambiguous function is answerable to no one but themselves.

6) The Best Stunts

On the few occasions that the studio did pay close attention to DS9, it was usually over a matter of ratings. In the fourth season, a studio mandate forced writers to add Lt. Worf (Michael Dorn) from The Next Generation to the cast in order to generate buzz. But what could have been a “jump the shark” moment became an important addition to the cast as Worf switched specialties from security to command, became more invested in the spiritual side of his people and even became a romantic lead marrying his fellow officer Jadzia Dax in season six. Stunt casting was also big on DS9. SCTV’s Andrea Martin played the mother of Ferengi bartender Quark, Frank Langella played the disgraced First Minister of the Bajorans and Iggy Pop made an appearance as one of the Vorta. The biggest stunt of all though was season 5’s “Trials and Tribble-ations” in which the DS9 cast was digitally inserted into the classic, Original Series episode, “The Trouble with Tribbles.”

7) The Writer’s Room

Deep Space Nine was created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller, but after the first year and half their focus shifted to Voyager. Most of Deep Space Nine’s run was overseen by Ira Steven Behr, and much of its gritty realism is credited to his influence in the Writers’ Room. After DS9, Behr went on to supervise the relaunched Twilight Zone and super-powers series The 4400. Battlestar Galactica’s overseer Ronald D. Moore was also a writer and producer on DS9, as were Michael Taylor, David Weddle and Bradley Thompson who Moore later recruited to join the Battlestar writing staff. René Echevarria went on to produce the short-lived but critically acclaimed Now and Again before penning scripts for Medium. And Bryan Fuller, the creator of Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies and one of the major creative forces of Heroes, contributed a couple of story ideas when he was a staff writer on Voyager.

8) The Ongoing Mission…

Joss Whedon has been thrilling Buffy fans by giving them her continuing adventures in the Dark Horse Comic. But back in 1999, someone at Pocket Books, publisher of all Star Trek tie-in novels, had the idea of turning the DS9 line of books into a Season 8 of the series, with each volume constituting an “episode” and the writers working from a central, planned arc. The new book series followed the continuing adventures of those that remained on DS9 following the series finale as peace and order are restored to the galaxy and the Bajorans move closer to Federation membership. Interestingly, it’s through the books that Michelle Forbe’s Next Gen character Ro Laren finally made it to Deep Space Nine. During the pre-production phase of the series development, Forbes was offered the chance to make her character a permanent addition to the new series, but she politely turned it down.

9) Best Captain Since Kirk?

Jean-Luc Picard gets a lot of the best press, but ask any one that knows the burdens of military command and they’ll tell you that the best Trek captain was Benjamin Sisko. Not only did Sisko occasionally demonstrate that fallibility mentioned above, sometimes being outwardly opposed to Federation policy he’s forced to enact, but he also had the most involving personal life of any of the Star Trek Captains as well. Sisko was a single father trying to raise his son in a less than ideal environment while trying to get over his own personal ghosts following the death of his wife. Eventually, Sisko found love again with a freighter Captain named Kassidy Yates, and his son Jake grew up to be writer. Sisko also had to deal with the fact that he was a religious figure to the Bajorans, which initially made him uncomfortable, but it was a role he later came to accept and even embrace.