![]() While certainly not the first of its kind, it’s an early example of television’s growth from a medium for short stories to a canvas for sprawling odysseys. Star Trek: The Original Series and The Next Generation are timeless, but decades after their release, Deep Space Nine is the classic Star Trek series that feels the most modern. It is, however, perfect for streaming television, where Deep Space Nine found a new lease on life in the 2010s. Tuvix will never die Star Trek needs less logic and more crying If a viewer missed an episode, which was likely to happen, they could potentially miss key story or character developments, and even showrunner Ira Steven Behr admits in What We Left Behind that it was not a boon to the show’s ratings at the time. ![]() (In my market, DS9 ran on Saturday nights at 7 p.m., unless the Mets were playing a night game.) This was particularly problematic given Deep Space Nine’s commitment to serialized storytelling, which only deepend across its seven seasons. Just as importantly, the launch of both UPN and The WB in 1995 meant that first-run syndicated dramas were muscled out of prime time slots, and where Voyager aired nationwide on Mondays at 8 p.m., DS9’s schedule was erratic. Deep Space Nine enjoyed a few scant months as the only new Trek on television, after which it was essentially buried in favor of Voyager, the flagship series of the new UPN television network. Even after The Next Generation came to a close in 1994, Trekkies who were resistant to the off-beat space drama could simply wait for the premiere of its more familiar, less ambitious successor, Star Trek: Voyager, the following January. Viewers rejected DS9 for a variety of reasons, from the reasonable (“What happened to that tireless Star Trek optimism?”), to the ridiculous (“You mean the station just sits there?”). They’d be forced to clean up their own messes and rebuild the place - and themselves - a little differently each time.īut, for a franchise whose heroes champion “infinite diversity in infinite combination,” Star Trek’s fanbase has a predictable habit of dismissing the new and different. Consequently, this would leave the characters unable to simply wash their hands of the consequences of each episode and move on down the space trail. Instead of riding into a new town/planet, confronting a problem, and moving on, their new heroes would live on space station Deep Space 9, the future equivalent of a frontier settlement where adventure comes to them. If Star Trek was “ Wagon Train to the Stars,” as Roddenberry had often pitched it, Berman and Piller wanted their series to be Gunsmoke. Rather than simply send another Starfleet crew on a mission to go boldly where no one has gone before, creators Rick Berman and Michael Piller decided to take Star Trek back to its roots as a space western. (This was before Law and Order, CSI, or NCIS found massive success with exactly this model, juggling as many as three series at once with the premise Crime: But Elsewhere.) Spinning out of the smash hit Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine launched in first-run syndication on January 3rd, 1993, and it was immediately apparent that this wouldn’t simply be the same premise with a different cast. The show’s struggle for recognition is detailed in the 2018 documentary What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Deep Space Nine, which is essentially a love letter from the show’s former showrunner Ira Steven Behr to his cast and crew. Deep Space Nine was Star Trek’s problem child from the very beginning, and that’s exactly what made it so ahead of its time. As fans of the series - or its stars and producers - will tell you, it’s always been this way. Paramount’s relative quiet about the anniversary is disappointing, but hardly surprising. ![]() There are, after all, five new Star Trek shows to talk about, including a reunion of the beloved Next Generation cast due in February on Star Trek: Picard. ![]() An official anniversary logo and merchandise were rolled out, but with relatively little fanfare. Last week, when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine celebrated its 30th birthday, the official Star Trek social media presence marked the occasion with only the barest of acknowledgements: a congratulatory tweet asking fans to name their favorite episodes, a new listicle of great quotes from the series, and not much else. ![]()
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