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A guide to DS9 episode plots
(startrek.website)
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this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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Risa
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I haven't yet been able to watch DS9 from beginning to end .... I've seen episodes here and there but never saw the entirety.
So my question is
What about these Garrick episodes I keep hearing about?
From someone who did the same: there is no way to understand what DS9 is about without watching it end to end, it's just designed differently than TNG or TOS or Voyager, which were made for people to catch individual episodes and feel like they watched something. DS9 has intricate plot points that expand over an entire season, and then on into the next. I thought I knew what the show was about, but I was so very very, wonderfully wrong! Instead of it being my least favorite, I see now that it's the deepest of them all, though they all have their individual contributions, especially for the historical time they were released in.
So my advice is to wait until you have a few hours, then watch all of season 1. You'll be glad you did, and can decide when to find time to continue with season 2.
Learning about Garak will be infinitely more satisfying that way:-). He is one of the most "interesting" characters on the show, but really when you think about it, they all are.
To borrow a quote from B5, "No one here is exactly what he appears."
Except Garek, obviously. He's merely a simple tailor.
I dunno, man. I heard he used to be a gardener.
OK FINE I will watch DS9 again, convinced me.
Friggin Risa strikes again.
We are sneaky that way. :-)
Somehow at the same time I also convinced myself to rewatch Babylon Five, go figure:-P.
Me watching DS9, you watching B5…
Everybody you interact with lately (including yourself) has a surge of good taste!
Injecting those shows into our thoughts, is what gives us culture! :-P
Best reply I've ever recieved on the question. Thanks for that.
There's only two of us in the house and only one of us like watching Star Trek which makes it very hard to find time to watch on my own. We like watching TV and movies together but when your significant other doesn't like what you like, it isn't easy to watch what you want on your own time.
I think the estimate is that DS9 has 126 hours of content across all episodes ... now I just need to set aside about five days alone and without sleep to be able to watch it all.
If anything the anticipation of watching the series is very exciting for me.
Thanks again for the great response!
Or if you only have 82.5 hours available, check out the episode recommendations at https://medium.com/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-deep-space-nine-in-82-5-hours-10acde591fd2 I found it a great way to watch it in a slightly condensed form, focussing on the main themes.
Thank you for your kind words.
Actually there is a chance that your housemate might like DS9, even if they do not like other more canonically "sci-fi" shows - much more than others like TNG and Voyager, it returns to the roots of TOS and then blows way past them in offering "grit" and "grime" and dirty nasty backstabbing surprises, which were more or less absent from the more sanitized, pristine & safe spaces of e.g. TNG. Like, by offering a new set of bad guys to explore each week, those other shows focused more on exploration and "us vs. them", whereas DS9 by re-using the same cast was able to delve deeper into drama and in particular "us vs. ourselves" matters.
As one example, if you devoted your entire life to fighting terrorism - the raping & pillaging of your people - and then one day woke up to find that you had become the very thing that you used to fight against, would that bother you? Take note that such thoughts are not everyone's cup of tea, and just b/c DS9 offers more "drama" / deeper character development than other Star Trek shows (which take multiple series to get time to dip into such back-stories), doesn't mean that they will automatically like it!! But there is a chance that they will, at least?
Also, rather than binge it, personally I think I would recommend watching an episode a day and then NOT watching another until you've had time to "digest" that, b/c it does deal with weighty matters and for me at least although I had the opportunity to do it either way, I found that more fun. But ofc you have to do whatever you can find to work for you!:-P
Garak? Why, he’s just a simple tailor
There are no Garak episodes. Why would anyone want to watch an episode about a mere tailor
Garak: "Do you know what the sad part is, Odo? I'm a very good tailor."
I always loved that ... in an age of replicator technology, instant manufacturing and duplication, automated systems and digital recreations ... no one ever finds it unusual that there is an individual of the species that was a former military opponent posing as an old school clothing merchant on a space station.
It would be like having a simple humble scientist from 1940s Germany working as a common rocket engineer in the American space program in the 1960s .... weird right?
To quote Lower Decks:
Mariner: I think it was the chef in the biolab with the sniper rifle that can shoot through walls.
Freeman: You always pick the chef.
Mariner: Yeah, because we have replicators. Why is there a chef? That's just shady.
I mean...no? The scenario you described uses identical skill sets, which was also desperately in need by the USA at the time, whereas Germany wanted to kill the scientist plus their entire family and all of their friends bc of their ethnic background so... it rather seems inevitable that the immigrant would want to use their skills to the best and most profitable effect?
That said, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, for he is a humble tailor and that is all... :-P
I was being stupid .... I was referring to ... Wernher von Braun
Basically a Nazi scientist who helped to build Germany's rocket program during the last half of the second world war.
After he was captured, the Americans took him into the states, completely ignored his Nazi past and allowed him to build what would become NASA and the American rocket program.
He was an obvious Nazi supporter and member ... but the Americans completely white washed his past, ignored his past ties, and based a lot of the early development of the US rocket program on the help of Nazi scientists. It's pretty twisted when you think about it ... if humanity ever gets to the level of development of the Star Trek timeline ... it will have been made possible by Nazi scientists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
You know more about the depths of that story than I do... I can only guess that some kind of "strategic thinking" went on there, balancing right vs. wrong morality with the practical need to have superior technology, essentially turning him into a "brain drain" scenario where the USA took advantage of the technology from Germany (rockets go further with higher precision), in order to use it against Russia (both in rockets meant for warfare plus also as demonstrated in a show-off capacity for the space race). And that is even assuming that he was a "real" Nazi supporter, and not just trying to blend in as a Jew (which would be bad enough, to be a "collaborator", but you get what I am saying: easier to make an exception for, especially if there was some evidence of him protesting in underground ways, as opposed to a full-on die-hard actual Nazi).
Something similar happened recently when Biden met one of the royalty responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and decided to call him out for that murder, but when the response was "what was that? I couldn't really hear you there..." just dropped the issue entirely rather than pursued it. It was not even a slap on the wrist, and was less even than a phrase stated loudly enough to be heard (a whispered thought then?) regarding the torture, interrogation, murder and actual dismemberment of that journalist... but in return, the Saudis helped lower gas prices. And lest you think this was all about money, that in turn helped blunt the whole "thanks Biden" (sarcasm for high gas prices, as if Trump had literally nothing to do with that) that Republicans were trying to use at the time to get more seats in Congress and set up for the next Presidential race, which in turn ties back to Supreme Court seats and all sorts of things.
I am fond of quoting that literal hero Jon Stewart who once said "liberal media aims to be correct, while conservative media aims to be effective". Maybe somewhere we need to find a balance, in maintaining our morality while also not taking it to the grave with us - or perhaps the latter is what needs to be done? But if so, it seems better to do that intentionally so worth thinking through and wrestling with the truth to determine what we can "compromise" on, and what we absolutely, simply, can NOT without losing who & what we are.
And believe it or not, yes this is all absolutely, entirely, 100% relevant to the OP: Star Trek is infamous for wrestling with precisely these kinds of plots - even TNG and Voyager that were more often episodic lets-go-forth-adventuring-today styles occasionally had them (remember that time Picard was dying from his bad heart due to his poor judgement in his a youth, and Q offered him an alternate life where he would not be a captain anymore, but he could do science and really enjoy it, thus making him choose b/t a longer life that he would enjoy vs. a shorter one lived to the fullest, basically a It's a Wonderful Life parody? and ofc "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!!"); but DS9 really just immersed itself and flat lived in this space.
TLDR: you are going to REALLY enjoy watching DS9, even if you need to do it alone:-). (again, make sure to give yourself adequate time to think them through, not just watch them all back-to-back, or you will miss so much!)
View it as a luxury service. Even in a world with replicators, people enjoy cooking but see it as more special. Getting your clothing made or adjusted by a tailor is also a sort of luxury. There's a certain touch that comes with a person creating a thing that you can't get from a computer.