Riiiight...coz episodes like Duet, The Visitor, The Wire, Whispers, Necessary Evil, It’s Only a Paper Moon, Accession, Trials and Tribble-ations, Improbable Cause, Far Beyond the Stars, The Die Is Cast, In the Pale Moonlight, Rejoined, et al, were a total snooze fest!
I enjoyed DS9, including most of the episodes listed above, but like any 20+ episode season, there were hits and misses. It all depends on how many hits and misses there are. In my opinion, DS9, like TNG, was better when it came to standalone episodes. The Dominion War arc just wasn't very compelling, in my opinion.
I disagree completely on this point. The Dominion arc had many facets over the years which produced many excellent episodes and story threads, including Odo's whole backstory which in turn intertwined with the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, which led to shifting political alliances, including the Klingon empire and its internal power struggles, which also helped to reinforce Worf's character as a major player in Klingon affairs; and the whole tactical battle including the seeding of the wormhole exit with self replicating mines and then the final epic space battle. The Dominion arc in all its manifestations is what made DS9 great (as well as the many excellent standalone episodes).
It was a mixed bag and a huge lost opportunity, I thought. Some of that arc was fantastic - the occupation of DS9 in particular produced several great episodes - but other episodes played like a bad episode of Combat, replete with tired old war movie cliches. And then there was the lame deux ex machina wrap up to the pending Dominion invasion, which was just sloppy and stupid. At that point I kind of threw in the towel and never really took the show seriously again or followed it too closely. They spent way too much time in Holodeck Vegas and whatnot, and the characters gradually became very two dimensional over the final couple of seasons. What they did to Gul Dukat was criminal, and Garak didn't fare much better toward the end, although at least he got a bit of nice work in the finale. DS9 was actually best before the Dominion showed up, when they were dealing with the political machinations on Bajor and the repercussions of the Cardassian occupation. Even later, some of their best episodes revolved around that. Unfortunately, that first season in particular had a bunch of lame episodes that played like rejected 7th season TNG episodes. I'd actually tuned out of DS9 originally because of a string of those, and didn't return until I caught several of their better episodes in reruns. "Duet" was an incredible piece of work and should have bagged an Emmy. "Past Tense" was a gripping two-parter and an interesting glimpse into their past (and our future). "Improbable Cause" was pretty remarkable as well, along with "In The Pale Moonlight" - if more of the Dominion arc had been like those two, I would have liked it a lot more than I did.
Duet, Rejoined, The Visitor, Trials and Tribble-ations and Far Beyond the Stars are among my favorites. An episode I love that is never mentioned is Hard Time, an O'Brien episode in which he is sentenced to 20 years of virtual incarceration and has to rebuild his life. I only did one run through of the series and never got around to finishing season 7, so I don't remember Past Tense. In the Pale Moonlight didn't have the same effect on me that it had on others, probably because I had read about the episode and knew about the revelation, so it wasn't a shock to me.
The characters and plot lines, and really the entire premise of the show, bored me. That's not yo knock it for other people--I know it had its fans--but I just found it bland and it did not hold my interest. At the time, I had trouble differentiating it from Babylon 5, although I liked Babylon 5 a bit better (but not much).
Basically, all of the first three seasons and then I tuned in every once in a while to see what I was missing. When Voyager began, I started watching that, which I enjoyed more than DS9 but still did not think it was top-notch (although the finale was great). Later on, I remember tuning in to some of the episodes when the Dominion War was just starting and I didn't like it, validating my earlier feelings about the series.
Some more casting news. 1) We know about Michelle Yeoh - captain Georgiou of the starship Shenzhou. 2) Doug Jones will be portraying Lieutenant Saru, "a Starfleet science officer, and new alien species to the Star Trek universe". 3) Anthony Rapp will take on the role of Discovery's Lt. Stamets, science officer and astromycologist (a freaking fungus expert!). I don't really know any of these people, but the thing that I do like is that these feel like 'real' people, not random pretty, young things (though more casting to come). Give me a seasoned character actor anytime.
Doug Jones has a decent resume playing aliens and creatures from other dimensions. He was in Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies. Some might remember Anthony Rapp from Adventures in Babysitting and School Ties. And of course, Michelle Yeoh is famous for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Tomorrow Never Dies.
I'd potentially be very interested in this series, except it kind of grinds my gears that it's essentially 'on-line' only. Not a fan of watching things on my laptop's small screen, which is one of the main reasons we don't do Netflix or Amazon, or any number of other on-line pseudo-TV services. Or do they make cable-boxes that allow you to get on-line stuff through your regular TV? I have to confess I'm (obviously) pretty technically challenged about a lot of this stuff -- though to be honest, there's only about 10-12 channels (cable included) where 90 of our TV-viewing is centered.
The Dominion War was brilliant. Some of the standalone and comedy episodes that broke it up were terrible. I loved seeing an arc-driven, non-episodic Star Trek series.
A cheap cable from monoprice and a bit of googling will probably let anyone watch stuff from your laptop on your TV.
Many televisions have a Netflix button on the remote because the Netflix app is already built into the tv. As long as your tv is connected to your ethernet (with an Ethernet cable connecting your tv to your router) it simply connects to Netflix. If your tv doesn't already have Netflix built in, the Roku mentioned above does, as does the AppleTV (which is not a TV), etc. Once you use it, you will probably cancel your cable tv.
More bad news regarding Fuller's involvement in the show. Previously it was announced that Bryan Fuller would no longer be the showrunner. The official word from CBS was that he would still "continue to map out the story arc for the entire season" and "oversee the show with the existing writing and producing team". But in a new interview with Newsweek, Fuller says he's not involved in production or post-production. "I can only give them the material I’ve given them and hope that it is helpful for them. I’m curious to see what they do with it," Fuller said. I foresee stormy space weather ahead with a chance of strong solar winds and coronal mass ejections!
