Deep Space Nine: A Re-evaluation.

I was one of those that taped B5 on VHS and would watch the episodes over and over, I would buy any magazine that had any articles about the show and knew each episode name by heart in order (no longer the case). Even after the show was done and into the 2000s I was collecting Trading Cards and remember paying $100 for a rare signed JMS special card that only dealers got cause you had to buy a case to get it. I read the novels.

I went to conventions, one of the best was an intimate one which only had like 30 people in a conference suite with Patricia Tallman. She did a signing afterwards and I gave her 4 "Lyta" cards to sign from my collection and I will never forget she picked them up looked at them and then gave me that look that said "You are one of those guys that will live in his mothers basement, be a virgin forever, and rant about you love of Star Trek on message boards." :laugh:

Ah those were the days.

I remember hounding C4 asking when they would air season 4. I had seen most of the first half of the season anyway as we used to get tapes sent from friends in the USA and when we showed them at Trek conventions the room was always packed. I also remember it was a bit of a thrill that we got the final episodes of season 3 before the USA. On the trading cards I was once lucky enough to get a Mira Furlan signed Delen card which I sold for £300. I couldn’t name all the episodes by heart in order, only for seasons 2-4. However for some strange reason I can still do it for all episodes of TNG.
 
If I remember correctly we also got the last 4 episodes of season 2 way before they aired in the US (there was a delay in filming due to flood damage). I remember being at a 3 day Quantum Leap convention (the one and only time I have stayed at a hotel for a con) and on the Sunday night around 6 everyone just disappeared to go watch the season opener for Season 3.

If I remember correctly S4 was shunted into a late night slot during the weekday and the final batch of S5 were shown in the morning after breakfast TV in the run up to Christmas? I have a vague memory of them being shown daily instead of weekly at that point.
 
I've got the box set. Er, I think a mod might come here in a minute.
 
I was one of those that taped B5 on VHS and would watch the episodes over and over, I would buy any magazine that had any articles about the show and knew each episode name by heart in order (no longer the case). Even after the show was done and into the 2000s I was collecting Trading Cards and remember paying $100 for a rare signed JMS special card that only dealers got cause you had to buy a case to get it. I read the novels.

I went to conventions, one of the best was an intimate one which only had like 30 people in a conference suite with Patricia Tallman. She did a signing afterwards and I gave her 4 "Lyta" cards to sign from my collection and I will never forget she picked them up looked at them and then gave me that look that said "You are one of those guys that will live in his mothers basement, be a virgin forever, and rant about you love of Star Trek on message boards." :laugh:

Ah those were the days.
So, do you and are you???? We all need to know
 
So, do you and are you???? We all need to know
Surely you can tell from my posts no :laugh:

Nope i do not live in my mother's basement but she is getting to the age where she is dropping hints she wants to come and live with me.

And not been a virgin since my high school days in the 90s.

I do rant about Star Trek on message boards though.
 
I think you have forgotten what 1998 internet was like. SMS had just become a thing for mobile, if you had internet at home you were likely on dial up if you were lucky or rich you might have had ISDN. When the Phantom Menace trailer debuted a friend and I went to a Internet Café (remember those) to watch it and it still took a while.

P2P file sharing stared the following year in 1999 and video file sharing started probably not long after that. I get what you are saying about the personal transfer but again it is very easy for us to say this in an age when we all walk around with a computer that is more powerful then the ones they used to render the CGI for VOY.

No, I worked in technology and was very aware of what 1998 internet was like - at that point even on a 56K connection it was entirely viable to transfer media since the internet was well underway never mind the much faster connections available at businesses and university. The idea that a sophisticated transfer system would be slower than a 56K modem is hard to stomach from that era.

Bear in mind Star Trek at times has been very good at looking forward so I think it's just bad writing they were looking so far backwards at that time even against the current technology.

I don’t know how the cast felt privately about Worf joining though I can’t remember reading anything negative about it. I think it would most likely been a mix of nervousness and excitement. The show wasn’t doing that great at the time, Season 4 was seen as a bit if a re-launch and Worf was a key element of that. I imagine some of the cast would have been looking forward to the show entering a new phase but at the same time aware that if it didn’t work out the show’s fate would hang in the balance.
Much of the cast have said in interviews they weren't happy about Worf joining Deep Space Nine although they had nothing personally against Michael Dorn:

The core cast of DS9 had been working together for three years before Dorn was introduced. Though Dorn was clear that he never felt any animosity from his co-stars, some of them were a bit resentful about his character being brought onto the show.

One of those actors was Alexander Siddig, who played Dr. Julian Bashir. In an interview with TrekMovie.com last month, Siddig revealed that he and his costars were “a bit offended” by what they considered an obvious ratings grab. He said the cast felt that introducing an existing character was unnecessary as their ratings were fine where they were. They were frustrated that the people behind the show didn’t think they could get the audience they were looking for on their own.

Dorn told TrekMovie.com that he figured this would be the case when he got onto the set. In another interview with TrekNews.net in 2012, Dorn admitted that he did get the feeling that everyone was a little annoyed by the idea of him coming in to “save” the series.

However, he emphasized in both interviews that all of his castmates were very professional and never let their feelings about his addition show. He revealed that it took about six months for the cast to warm up to him. Once they did, his relationship with everyone was really wonderful. He told TrekNews.net that his DS9 costars are still some of his closest friends in real life.

Worf ended up appearing in 108 of the 178 episodes of DS9. His character was explored in-depth, as promised by the showrunners, and his appearance did end up boosting ratings. DS9 ran for seven seasons, just as the showrunners had hoped, and Worf was there until the end.

It was good to see how well the DS9 cast did actually get on in real life in the recent documentary unlike Voyager which seemed to have a lot of problems behind the scenes.

While there were questionable tech plot points on voyager I don't think that's one of them.

If I recall at that point they've already been warned off by the owners. If there's the potential of cyberattack but you want to give private messages crew members then it absolutely makes sense to load them onto independent pads.

We know the array is capable of faster rates as it was later used to transmit the doctor. I'd have to re-watch the episodes but weren't the messages you're talking about being retrieved from backup storage rather than a live transmission?

We're told the array is semi-abandoned and given what we later see of the hirogen's priorities it wouldn't be a stretch to say that backup storage isn't maintained and was defaulting to a very slow fallback mechanism.

Just look up the details of the backup communications equipment on recent spacecraft launched in the present day. The low gain antenna on Nasa's Mars Perseverance rover launched last year can manage a just a few bits a second at best:
The point about the Doctor backs up my point and it's so ridiculous I didn't think it was worth mentioning. The idea that a highly complex and vast piece of software could be copied over but a simple audio or message couldn't is just so silly and it's lazy writing to get the Doctor onto the Prometheus.

You're correct the messages were being transferred from the station not a live transmission but that should be much easier and quicker since it was just a local transfer. The arrays are clearly extremely powerful capable of allowing real time communication across vast areas of space so it just doesn't make any sense apart from a badly written plot point the transfer would be so painfully slow.

The Mars rover is not powered by a quantum singularity nor capable of communicating across light years distance yet it's not far off the transmission speed.

Going back to the original point I was making by putting too much of an emphasis on technology even aside the bad writing it's always going to age it and while there's areas in DS9 that are similar, it feels like there was less focus on the technology than there was on Voyager.
 
Much of the cast have said in interviews they weren't happy about Worf joining Deep Space Nine although they had nothing personally against Michael Dorn:

It was good to see how well the DS9 cast did actually get on in real life in the recent documentary unlike Voyager which seemed to have a lot of problems behind the scenes.

Actors and their egos. :D
 
Bear in mind Star Trek at times has been very good at looking forward so I think it's just bad writing they were looking so far backwards at that time even against the current technology.
Someone came up with such a good real world example I am happy to have it as my own head cannon. Folks like me at work can have up to 800 unread emails, so if there were urgent orders it would make sense if someone was running around delivering Pads.
 
A while back I bought a second hand copy of season 2. Disc 4 had a a circular scratch that was close to and parallel to the edge of the disc and it's cloudy appearance clearly showed it had laser rot. I got my money back and they let me keep the discs. I thought the other discs were fine but I played disc 1 tonight. The first episode was fine but the second had problems right from the start. On checking it has exactly the same kind of scratch as disc 4. What the hell was the previous owner doing with this set?

I've now got to decide whether to try for another second hand copy. I guess I'll have if I want to find out what happens to Benjamln Horne.

Bri
 
A while back I bought a second hand copy of season 2. Disc 4 had a a circular scratch that was close to and parallel to the edge of the disc and it's cloudy appearance clearly showed it had laser rot. I got my money back and they let me keep the discs. I thought the other discs were fine but I played disc 1 tonight. The first episode was fine but the second had problems right from the start. On checking it has exactly the same kind of scratch as disc 4. What the hell was the previous owner doing with this set?

I've now got to decide whether to try for another second hand copy. I guess I'll have if I want to find out what happens to Benjamln Horne.

Bri
Not sure how much you are buying them second hand by Amazon currently has the whole set for £51.74 which is just over £7 a season.


They have a good deal on Voyager as well at £47

Amazon product ASIN B00F37VHVQ
 
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Not sure how much you are buying them second hand by Amazon currently has the whole set for £51.74 which is just over £7 a season.


They have a good deal on Voyager as well at £47

Amazon product ASIN B00F37VHVQ
Thanks. I already have season 1 and 4 and I'm not at all sure I want the entire series. My plan is to take it one season at a time. My knackered season two set was only £3.99 delivered which would have been brilliant if it had been in the good or very good condition it was claimed to be. I've ordered it again this time for £4.77 delivered. It's due to arrive by Wednesday.

I already have the entire Voyager series which I bought a combination of mainly new when many of the seasons where going cheap in HMV and second hand. We're watching season six at the moment. Much to our surprise we've come across a bunch of episodes we don't remember seeing.

Bri
 
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I went to conventions, one of the best was an intimate one which only had like 30 people in a conference suite with Patricia Tallman. She did a signing afterwards and I gave her 4 "Lyta" cards to sign from my collection and I will never forget she picked them up looked at them and then gave me that look that said "You are one of those guys that will live in his mothers basement, be a virgin forever, and rant about you love of Star Trek on message boards." :laugh:

You misread that.

She wanted you, there and then. You blew your chance.



🤔
 
Well my second season 2 set has arrived. Sold by World Of Books and described as in very good condition. The outer cardboard box is damaged, generally tatty and with a CEX sticker on it. Most of the disc holders are damaged so the discs are loose and at least three of the discs have scuff marks on them. If this is what they call very good condition I'd hate to see their average or poor condition discs. I have complained.

Bri
 
I had to request a refund on the season two set. I bought it from World Of Books via eBay. eBay have contacted me saying that they have instructed WOB to refund my money and I can keep the discs. If I get the refund from WOB then this will be the second time this has happened on this season. It maybe that I can put together a complete season two set with decent cases and the cardboard box but I'm really hacked off by this experience. I don't want to go through this again if I decide to go for season three.

Bri
 
How long does it take you to watch a series?

If you bang through them quick...... Netflix sub for a couple of months. 30 days free if you haven't had one before. (Not anymore it seems). £5.99 for SD, £9.99 for HD, £13.99 for UHD.
Split it with a friend or family member.

Just an option.
 
How long does it take you to watch a series?

If you bang through them quick...... Netflix sub for a couple of months. 30 days free if you haven't had one before. (Not anymore it seems). £5.99 for SD, £9.99 for HD, £13.99 for UHD.
Split it with a friend or family member.

Just an option.
Many thanks for your suggestion. Most free trials I've had of watching stuff online haven't worked well. Extremely poor picture quality for the most part. Generally watching a 20+ episode season takes us an age as we rarely watch more than a couple of episodes a week. So I'd prefer to stick to DVD but I'll consider it.

Cheers
Bri
 
£6 per season brand new vs £4-5 used and battered.

Seems a no brainer to me if you're interested enough, it gets better after Season 1 and continues to do so for the next few seasons.
 
Indeed it would be a no brainer if I didn't already have two seasons and I wanted the entire series. I remember not liking the later stuff at all hence my wish to buy it at a reasonable price one season at a time.

Bri
 
Seasons 4/5/6 are the high points with The Dominion War.

The final season really just ties up a lot of things and has some excellent standalone episodes. but after the pace of the previous seasons is a bit more relaxed.
 
Seasons 4/5/6 are the high points with The Dominion War.

The final season really just ties up a lot of things and has some excellent standalone episodes. but after the pace of the previous seasons is a bit more relaxed.
I'm afraid the Dominion War was quite tedious for me. At the time I couldn't get into it at all.

Bri
 
Good Lord you're trying your very best to get me to buy the entire series. Do you have shared in the company?

😆
Bri
No such luck I am afraid, just trying to help a fellow Star Trek fan get a good deal.
I'm afraid the Dominion War was quite tedious for me. At the time I couldn't get into it at all.

Bri
The later stuff is absolutely brilliant, DS9 has always been about the Dominion conflict and all the rich supporting characters. The general consensus is that S4 onwards it is at its best.
 
I'm afraid the Dominion War was quite tedious for me

Personal opinion only - its the superb seasons 4, 5, & 6 which are all about or leading up to the Dominion war that climax the series.

I'm afraid the Dominion War was quite tedious for me

Then I'd honestly quit now as theres no point in buying any further. However we were all just trying to help you. :thumbsup:
 

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