This documentary is the ultimate tribute to Deep Space Nine. Soforah and I slowly became “niners” throughout the years and, now, it has become our favourite show in the Trek universe, if not in the entire world of TV shows.
We love the story, the setting and the universe of DS9 but what makes it special is the character development. Each character has been so fantastically matured during each episode that watching the show is like growing with them. That’s exactly what this documentary puts in the spotlights, the characters and the actors behind them.
During the show, Ira Behr and his team work on what would be a new DS9 season. While I’d be very excited to see it happen, I’m also scared that it would damage something as perfect as DS9.
Anyway, if you even remotely enjoyed Star Trek – Deep Space Nine, you have to watch this documentary, not only for the nostalgia but also to realise just how much pioneering the show was.
There are only three TV shows that I would give a 10 on 10: Star Trek – Deep Space Nine, Star Trek – Voyager and Breaking Bad. We love them so much that we watch them every Sunday evening for more than 15 years. Last Sunday, we’ve completed a rerun of Deep Space Nine and I can say that it still deserves its place as one of our favourite TV shows ever.
Sunday evening is not the funniest evening of the week, it’s the end of the only two days left free by our corporate overlords. As such, it’s an evening filled with anxiety. Deep Space Nine, with its soothing opening credits and and its far-from-this-world theme has helped us make of that evening a soft transition between the freedom of the week-end and the return to the endless grind that are our daily jobs.
I could talk for hours about what makes it so special to us but its real quality lies within the casting and the character development. From the friendship between Odo and Qwark, O’Brien and Bashir or Jake and Nog to the hatred between Sisqo and Dukat, the relationships between the characters are evolving through each adventure lived by the crew of the space station, until its conclusion in the last episode titled “What You Leave Behind”. When you spend months watching characters going through hundreds of different scenarios, it almost feels as if you’ve lived with them…. So, when we reach the conclusion, it’s always very emotional. I’d lie if I would say that our eyes weren’t a bit red when we watched the show finale.
This Sunday, we’ll start a rerun of Voyager. Another crew, other adventures…
“Vic Fontaine was a 24th century Human hologram on Deep Space 9 created as part of a program simulating 1962 Las Vegas on Earth. He was a singer-entertainer who ran Vic’s Las Vegas Lounge. His holoprogram, along with his charming personality, quickly became a favorite among the DS9 crew and was frequently accessed.” (source: Memory Alpha)
I love Vic Fontaine, he is awesome. We’ve just re-watched the episode that introduces him – “His Way” – and I bet you can easily guess the reference. Just like Frank Sinatra, Vic is classy and a straight talker too. He is such a great addition to the cast of Deep Space Nine, he fits perfectly in the ambiance of the space station and I’m delighted to know that our rerun has finally reached the episodes featuring the old crooner.
In Deep Space Nine’s sixth season, Quark is tasked by the Grand Nagus to assemble a team and rescue his mum from the Dominion. To do so, he hires a crew of Ferengis and plans to negociate an exchange of prisonners. The Vorta in command of the Jem’Hadar is no one else than Iggy Pop!
The DS9 writers had actually wanted Pop to play a role the third season, but he was unavailable due to a music tour he was undertaking in Spain. Ira Steven Behr is an Iggy Pop fan and pushed for his casting as Yelgrun three years later. A few days before filming his DS9 role, he was injured in a mosh pit during one of his concerts but played the role anyway. (source: Memory Alpha)
This is the second time that we watch Deep Space Nine but, for some reason, I absolutely didn’t remember this amazing episode, one of my favourites!
We’ve just completed a complete rerun of Breaking Bad. We love the show and, once again, we’ve had an amazing time in Albuquerque. But this post isn’t about all that is good in the show. It’s about a specific episode that we didn’t remember from our first run.
In the final season (s05e09), Badger and Skinny Pete are smoking weed at Jesse’s when Badger shares his idea for a Star Trek script. That is golden! (especially for Star Trek fans like us)
Badger is my favourite character in the serie and I honestly wish that he was my neighbour in real life.
I was 17 years-old when Smells like Teen Spirit came out. I had friends who were also into grunge music, we were spending all of our time together and we were going twice (sometimes even three times) a week to a bar that was filled with other grunge people, most of whom were playing in bands. We had goatees, we were wearing t-shirts of bands and flannel shirts and we were living around grunge music. We didn’t give a damn about much, all that mattered to us was to get drunk on loud music and to give the world the middle finger.
We were meeting new people all the time, at concerts, at bars, at parties, everywhere there was beer and music. My friends even bought a van and we were coming back from music festivals with more people than we came with.
https://youtu.be/6CBjJhDDunQ
Eventually, everything started to change… The essence of being grunge was to be alternative and, when everything started to turn commercial, most people moved on… Some of us got jobs, other moved on to electro music, the world changed again and, just as it came, the grunge era disappeared.
Even if alternative music still exists, the new sound is different. It’s hard to explain, but something simple and pure that belonged to that time is gone. The 90s had their very own soul, something that can’t ever be reproduced.
Inge, who’s from another part of Belgium, has lived the same experience. More than two decades later, we still both prefer our grunge playlist than the new alternative music.
I wanted to write a post about Star Trek: Picard, but I realized that my feelings toward the franchise are very close to my feelings towards music. That’s why I just rained my teenage nostalgia over you.
Before going any further, let me get this straight: TNG, Voyager and DS9 are the only real Star Trek to me. Some will agree, some will stop reading my blog, but that’s my ST world and no argument will change that.
Voyager controls are more “Star Trek”
Those three shows were simple, each episode was a little adventure in itself. It wasn’t overloaded with CGI or modern tricks to make the experience more futuristic. A simple crew, with an incredible alchemy, living simple adventures in space, that’s what Star Trek is and will always be to me.
Just as with grunge music, the world of Star Trek has lost its simplicity and, with it, all that made it a show that I could watch every Sunday evening until my last day.
Picard is a good science-fiction show but, even if I was very happy to see Seven of Nine, Riker and Troy back, it isn’t Star Trek to me.
I could continue my analogy but I think that you get my point. Modern days have brought many good things, but complicated scenarios in TV, sophisticated sounds in music and CGI overload in cinema came at the cost of simplicity. And, to me, it seems that we’ve lost more than we’ve won.
