one of the aspects of DS9.

I can't go to sleep for a while after seeing them.

A truly epic story. Plus Walter Koenig!

IMO, a far better show. Characters that grow and change, some wickedly good story lines and a much less simplistic world view presented.

some of the questions it posed - without necessarily giving an answer -

- civil rights vs security against terrorism

- questions as to where to draw the line of neutrality, resistance and collaboration in wartime

- individual vs collective guilt

- whether some crimes could be forgiven

- and yes, whether some people could change.

Also - we saw all sorts of Bajorean religious figures, good, bad, brave, cowardly

The good guys were the good guys and the bad guys were the bad guys. In some stories, a given character might flirt with a turn but ended up back where they were or it was just a ruse of some type.

Farscape has more moraly ambigious characters (as well as the standard good guys and bad guys) that grow and change as the series progresses. The journey of Crais from two dimensional bad guy to his heroic end is very well done. As well, the view one gets of Scorpius changes as more and more is revealed of his motives and history.

It's fine if you think Farscape was better (I don't but I liked the actors and enjoyed when they came on to Stargate).

But the idea that no characters ever changed and were set in stone?

Kira had a complete change in her character, both professionally and personally. Sisko completely changed from a bitter and depressed widower into the confident emissary of the prophets he became. We watched Nog change from a typical Ferengi criminal into a SF officer. We watched Dukat literally go all over the place. We watched Damar do a complete 180 too.

We saw growth from Worf who was a different character than what he was on TNG.

About the only character who didn't change was Jhadzia.

the most impressive character developments of the show (or any show, really)...

Ive seen them all before, but never in order. It is a good and overall enjoyable show. I cannot imagine how they come to end a show like that. There is no easy way to do it.

I would echo both of the other suggestions. Babylon 5 was excellent, even if one of the characters became a RW talk show host later. More gritty, more realistic, I found it a better story. It deserved more runs, it deserved to be as big as star-trek. In my opinion.

Farscape was also very intriguing. But I would only recommend starting to watch that show if you are aware and ok with the fact it ended before it was completed. They canceled the show before the intended story had been completed.

I liked seasons 3 and 4, but there were a lot more clunkers IMO, including most of season 5 in B5 than in DS9. When Bab5 was good, it was as good as anything out there, but it was uneven IMO. DS9 got rid of most of it's clunkers in it's first couple of seasons (when admittedly it wasn't very good, much like TNG, much like B5) hit it's stride in season 3 and then was sustained excellence from 4 to 7.

Just looking for something to kill time one evening.

And I think I grossly unappreciated this show when I first watched it. Maybe it was the best Trek spin off, at least now I would agree it is an arguable point.

Joe Straczynski pitched Babylon 5 to Paramount. They rejected it but assured him that his idea was safe with them. Then they quickly announced the remarkably similar DS9.

but no evidence at all other than they are both on a space station. DS9 was developed by Berman, Piller and Rodenberry and even Strac says he doesn't think any of those three folks knew of Bab5 or the pitch he gave Paramount.

Plenty of differences right from the start. But let's look at the similarities.

Wormholes v. warpgates. Wormholes actually appeared in TNG as a plot device so saying their use means it was ripped off of Strac isn't very compelling.

Space stations as a the setting. Starbases have been around since the original ST so again, pointing to the setting and saying, see, ripped off, isn't very compelling.

Shapeshifting. We saw it in ST V (an otherwise horrible movie, did they rip that off from him too?).

A female first officer. Heck, that's in the pilot for the original ST.

An officer who is a Commander leads the station. Totally different rank structures, the equivalent for Sisko to the B5 rank would be Captain.

It's all just superficial stuff that doesn't survive an initial examination IMO.

that's not what he said at the time, on GEnie.

he also said at one point that a two parter on DS9 where there is near martial law on Earth was stolen from Bab5 (as if somehow he wasn't content with arguing the idea was stolen, now he believed that they were stealing from him as they aired years into their runs)...

But then later he admitted they were actually an homage to a movie and retracted his claim. He struck me as a guy who leaped right away to they stole from me, but then (somewhat to his credit) had to retract later when it became obvious to him that might not be the case.

They had some surface similarities, but were clearly different shows in many ways.

Last edited Tue Jan 31, 2012, 01:33 PM - Edit history (1)

When will they make a movie so they can let Sisko out of that damn wormhole? My gawds, he's been in there with the Prophets for 13 years now. Even if they did it as a direct-to-DVD release, I'd still like there to be some closure.

I never liked the Sisko joins the Prophets ending. Heck even killing him off would have been better.

Given all the threads they had to tie up, though.. gah.

(I've always loved the final shot of the series, though.)

What I like about things like Hulu and Netflix and all the DVDs out there, is that it is possible to watch an entire series in fairly short order.

I have found that when I do that I get a lot more -- and often something very different from the experience than if I'd watched it when it was first on.

that the Bell riots had a profound effect on her childhood. Given her current dedication to making the world better, she's not exaggerating!


I've said for years, that if I had to design a Religious Ed course for teenagers, it would all be showings of certain movies and shows!