Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Season One (part 2) - re:View
Comments (51)
ow The Star Trek ReViews are my favorite episodes. I started watching TNG after the best of vids. I’m in season 5 currently. Now I know what is gonna be next! 😀 👍.
I have never watched any classic trek growing up but I always tune in to listen to you guys discuss it.
Mike talks here about how Odo can perfectly replicate all kinds of shit, but his approximation of a humanoid looks weird and doughy, but don't they address that at some point? In my brain, at least, the story is that they found Odo pretty young and he wasn't as good at shapeshifting, so he was trying to mimic humanoids perfectly and was just bad at it. Later, when he got better at shapeshifting, his identity was already tied up in that specific imperfect impression of a humanoid, so he kept that as his identity, even though he could have been a more convincing person if he so chose. I didn't make all that up in my head, did I? Haha because if I did that's the finest headcanon I've ever come up with.
I'd like to suggest doing a 'broadcast order' watchthrough, at least starting with the last seasons of TNG when DS9 started. (There are broadcast order lists online with dates for each episode.) It's incredible to go from some of the worst of TNG to some of the best episodes of DS9 - the difference is pretty staggering at times, haha! I haven't finished my watchthrough yet. I'm very curious to see how it goes with latter DS9 episodes when Voyager starts up.
Another vote for RLM to re:View Babylon 5. I think Rich bounced after the pilot (understandable), but much like TNG, things get so much better, esp. seasons 2-4. Everything Mike and Rich were (rightly) gushing over for Duet, you'll find in B5, especially the interactions between Lando and G'Kar.
As someone who only finished DS9 for the first time in 2020 (just before lockdown hit!) and absolutely loved it, I was delighted to hear that Babylon 5 and DS9 have close similarities because it means I get TWO cool sci-fi shows. Keep meaning to watch it. I even tracked down Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors because the Babylon 5 creator worked on it! It is that fun kind of “kitchen sink” sci-fi like He-Man.
Noiselund.... new song dropped!! LOOK AT ME!! BA BA BA!! Mike and RLM Crew... you're now pop stars!!
QUESTION: What's y'all's viewpoint of Babylon 5? When DS9 came out, the complaint amongst nerdery was J. Michael Straczynski had pitched B5 to Paramount who rejected it and then coincidentally developed their own space-station-based show when Warner Brothers announced B5. (Per wikipedia "Straczynski stated that, even though he was confident that Deep Space Nine showrunners Rick Berman and Michael Piller had not seen the material [B5 pitch bible], he suspected that Paramount executives used his bible and scripts to steer development of Deep Space Nine"). I think the Minbari were supposed to be shape-shifters until DS I do vaguely remember when DS9 introduced The Defiant, the reason given was essentially that you couldn't have adventures on a station. Straczynski countered that a space station by its nature had all sorts of strange and unusual visitors. (I may be misremembering all of this. Forgive my elderly memory.)
A thing I vividly remember about B5 was episode X featured a big space battle near the station. A B-plot in episode X+1 involved repairs to the station after the big space battle. That sort of episode-to-episode continuity was unprecedented in a science-fiction show. Similar thing: Early Season 1 episode featured a MacGuffin device where people were cured by taking "life-force" from another person (The doctor who owned it was played by June Lockhart!). The cliffhanger for Season 1 was that the security chief got shot. "Why don't they use the life-force doohickey?" fans complained (expectations having been set by Star Trek where things exist and are never heard of again after the thing's episode). But by golly, the cliffhanger was resolved by the captain and the medical chief using the Life Force thing!
I'm really hating the result of mergers and corporate shenannigans in Europe. Where did old Trek go?
Only one performance away from perfection. Nana Visitor's crying. It's like a seagull at a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. But, I forgive her. She's a happy girl.
Even if you guys don't cover the whole show season by season, I would love if you covered the rest of the show in a series retrospective or something. Want to hear you guys talk more about Gul Dukat, Jadzia and their contract issues and, somewhat related, pah wraiths. Regardless, great stuff!
Who in the DS9 production/writing team decided to shift to a hybrid serialized/episodic form at the end of season 2? DS9 did it so well, and it hasn’t been replicated (no pun) since for other ST series.
I think Mike and Rich have erased “Star Trek Insurrection” from their minds. Well done.
The movie where a staggeringly hypocritical Picard became everything that he raged at in "Journey's End" and "Preemptive Strike" is best erased.
As a “normie”, I’m sold!
if we end up getting Soylent Green style voluntary suicide chambers I would choose to watch Mike and Rich talk about Star Trek in my final moments instead of the nature film
The suicide chamber is from "The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert W Chambers BTW..
please watch all the star trak seasons and talk about them forever
FYI you can buy all 7 seasons of DS9 on the Apple TV app (works on most TVs) for $79 and the quality is as good as the DVDs. Conveniently stream without ads.
it's been a while since the last Trivia episode... DS9 Trivia Showdown???
There was a game from 2000 that had questions from all three TNG era shows (except for VOY6-7 which didn't exist yet.
Wonder what Colin and Jim are up to..
"Star Trek has never handled romance well." Biiiiitch are you fo' real? You're talking about the show with Jadzia and Worf! Their sex is so good that Jadzia ends up in the infirmary as often as O'Brien! You can't just go around making such proclamations. Who do you think you are? Rich Evans?
this was great! I hope you guys go though them all !
"They become good friends later." Mike, they become the two best friends thay anyone's ever had. How dare you.
Yay 🫶🫶
A lot of good classic Star Trek episode could be stage plays. Nicholas Meyer also said a lot of TOS episodes could be radio dramas.
For the longest time I couldn't put my finger on why I hated Vedek Winn so much. And then it clicked when the term Karen started to be used in society. She was the original Karen.
I was an OG complainer about Star Trek back in the days, particulary during those first couple of seasons of TNG. No Kirk/Spock/Bones dynamic and a lot of the plots were like, oh noes! There's an impending catastrophe. But if we modulate the whoozits or reverse the polarity or whatever it's solved. Yay! DS9 had actual conflict and drama like TOS. That was the only new trek I was down with for a while. TNG got MUCH better later, as we know. But I was all in shipping Odo and Kira. I love the episode where, due to temporal anomaly shenanigans, Kira meets an older, suave Odo. Up there with The Locket from Farscape. In shipping you have to have your seed planting episodes like those two, and your cooler episodes, where you put the chill on the shipping in question, like where Odo blows off the rebellion like a character breaking jerk towards the end of the series.
The Storyteller cloud monster clearly predates their sorting out the Prophets and Pah-Wraiths thing. It has zero to do with anything that come later. It's the biggest "never mind" since TNG's equally stupid Conspiracy.
On to season 2!!
That's what I love about storytelling (in the Star Trek franchise pre modern Trek). When the writers take elements of other stories and connect them meaningfully with their new story. Like the Kodos episode where they took elements from Hamlet and even gave the story a new meaning which is that "you might think you're protecting a loved one, but in reality make their situation much worse." Or the 'Yell at Clouds" episode in DS9 that features a similar conflict as "The Paradise Syndrome" where the guy who should've become the new medicine man of the tribe is accidentally sidelined by Kirk. So the guy wants to kill Kirk. Or when people have to be resettled for whatever reason in TOS, TNG, DS9, and who knows if also in VOY, and each time the episode tells a similar conflict between characters in a very different way.
What an absolute delight this was. It's been years since I've seen DS9, but I think I should rewatch. Please do one for season 2!
Love when they reminisce about star trek. I'd love to have them watch The Orville. The first 2 episodes are Rough with Seth McFarland humor, but it gets way better. I think they'd like it. Way better written than modern Trek.
Rich has mentioned that he genuinely likes The Orville. Idk if Mike has checked it out yet. I didn't like that the first season was so comedy heavy but once I hit season 2 and things got serious, I was hooked.
Never watched DS9. This series is making me consider watching it.
and so far they've only reviewed the weakest season
I kinda imagine Rich and Mike do this endlessly. If you were to break in the Red Letter Media studio on a random holiday in the middle of the night these two are going to sit there and talk Star Trek. There might not be a camera running, they might not notice you stealing naked Sylvester Stallone, but they'll be there talking something Star Trek.
On the podcast DS9 rewatch that Terry and Armin are now doing with Garrett and Robbie from Voyager, Armin mentions several times that Quark and DS9 was his chance to correct his TNG version of Ferengi.
Regarding Battle Lines, Kai Opaka's exit from the plot was a saintly death, to which Kira was able to bear witness. That gives Kira the motivation of a true believer when butting heads with Kai Opaka later on. Doing it far away in the Gamma Quadrant let it be Kira's story alone. Also, one of the delights of watching old television is seeing random guest stars who went on to do greater things, and we got to see Jonathan Banks (of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) in a wee bit part, which was a real treat.
Sisko ends up having more regard for that clock than Picard ends up having for the Kurlan naiskos. Also, Lwaxana comes back to DS9 twice more, but both episodes are ridiculous.
Bring it on!
Fine. Ill rewatch DS9.
I recommend Starfleet Academy. It hearkens back to days when Star Trek really MEANT something, you know?
I was tired of working anyway. This is more productive.
It's 4am here in Australia and I'm wondering if this is also more productive than sleep.
If you keep releasing episodes like this then I'm never going to get around to killing myself.
Trek RLM media is always the best RLM episodes.
Perfect! This will cure my sinus infection!
RLM: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's sinus infections.