ST: Deep Space Nine, Best and worst episodes

Cafe Society
1

The Voyager thread is still going, so why not keep the theme going.

I’m watching through the series in order for the first time and just finished In the Pale Moonlight. It took awhile for that one to sink in. It’s the only time Star Trek has had me in bed later thinking about what happened. It felt similar to what was going through my head when I walked out of the theater after seeing No Country for Old Men. I have a feeling Sisko just changed his life with that series of decisions that lead him down a path he wasn’t ready to go down.

2

There were so many different story lines in Ds9. It’s hard to remember them. O’Brian was my favorite character. I liked any story that focused on him. His back story as a former soldier fighting Cardassians gave him a lot of depth. That back story started on a great episode of TNG. They really explored it throughout Ds9. O’Brien switched from Infantry to Engineering to get away from the violence, but he got dragged back into fighting sometimes.

An early O’Brien episode is when he is arrested in a shuttle for smuggling Arms. He has to face a Cardassian court. One of the better early season episodes.

3

My favorite is “Tacking into the Wind”. Kira is leading a Cardassian resistance cell in a mission to steal a Jem’Hadar ship while Worf is having a sword duel with Chancellor “I decide what can and cannot be done” Gowron. I especially liked when Damar finds out that his family has been killed. He laments “What kind of people would give those orders?” Kira, not missing a beat and with just the right amount of snark replies “Yeah, Damar… what kind of people would give those orders?” Garak has several moments of awesome as well, particularly when Rusot is menacing Kira and trying to convince Damar to betray her as well. Garak puts a phaser to Rusot’s neck to remind him “I’m still here!”

Worst episode is hard to pick but I hated the (Jadzia) Dax drama episodes and Ferengi family hijinks. The baseball episode in Season 7 was pretty sucky too.

4

In the Pale Moonlight definitely a great episode.

Worst: Any Ferangi episode though Profit and Lace stands out as by far the worst. Considering how sexist Quark is supposed to be the notion of him undergoing a sex change in order to help women be equal on his home planet is not only horrible but unbelievable. The Ferangi in DS:9 really were annoying. In the first few episodes they really seemed to be darker and more aggressive then the bumbling fools of Next Gen but very quickly they were more and more humanized and also got a few episodes where we’re told their culture is just as valid as ours?!?!? I always hate that. It takes great writing to make a truly alien culture that makes sense and shares different values so is just as good but only different. It’s lazy sloppy writing to make a horrible alien culture but declare it equally valid just by pointing out a few flaws in human culture.

5

Another vote for Pale Moonlight…

Liked the Section 31 episodes and anything with a giant fleet battle. Star Trek space violence done right. DS9 benefited considerably from the switch to CGI. However, they still made liberal use of shitty, fake-ass off-world sets…but I think they shot on location when they could.

One thing that DS9 did very well (the other series, not so well) was their use of a strong, diverse and developed reoccurring character cast.

6

The Visitor had me crying like a baby when I saw it.

7

*Trials and Tribbles
*

/end thread

8

Trials and Tribble-ations, you mean. :wink:

Good - the Mirror Universe episodes

Bad - the Ferengi episodes

I never watched DS9 much, because I can’t stand Avery Brooks.

9

In the Pale Moonlight was an episode I liked. So were “Treachery, Faith, and the Great River”, and “Far Beyond the Stars”. Episodes I didn’t? Most of the Ferengi episodes, “Let He Who is Without Sin”, and I didn’t really like the Mirror Universe episodes.

10

Most of my favorites have already been named, but I’ll add Duet and most episodes with Weyoun. Love that guy!

I think the Ferengi episodes were hit-or-miss, there were some okay ones and some downright putrid ones. The Magnificent Ferengi was one of the latter.

11

I liked the Ferengi Episodes, but hated the mirror universe. Each their own, I guess.

Who Morns for Morn was a good one that hasn’t been mentioned. One of the best parts of DS9 was how they developed backstories for every character. Even Morn, who for most of the series was basically an extra in the background, got his own story.

I also liked the episode where Jake and Sisko build an ancient Bajoran ship, just because sailing around in an interstellar sailboat was pretty cool.

I rewatched the series a few years ago, and most of the worst episodes were bad simply because they were really forgettable. Especially in the first two seasons, there were a few episodes where almost nothing happens. There’s some minor conflict or sci-fi gimmick, they tread water for 40 minutes with some character drama and then the crew solves it in the obvious way or it just takes care of itself.

12

You’ve some gripe with the Intendant? That seems … unhealthy.

I think it’s telling that I really need to reach to think of bad DS-9 episodes (basically, all the Ferengi episodes). This series has ambition, and moral ambiguity, and it showed. I even thought the first season was pretty darned good - as a political science nerd, the way they examined the aftermath of empire and decolonization was pretty darned interesting. And “Duet” was great, though I thought the ending a little weak.

13

The difficulty was that it had Jake. Over the course of the show, Avery Brooks learned to act. I’m not convinced the kid who played Jake ever did. The only reason he isn’t viewed with as much animosity as Wesley, I suspect, is that the writers recognized that the actor was weak, and didn’t put him front-and-center nearly as much as Wesley.

14

And who would have guessed Morn’s wife was so hot? Mmm.

ETA: Not really his wife, I know.

15

I think people hated Wesley more for the stupid “boy-wonder” plots the writers gave him then his acting (even if you think Weaton was a bad actor, he was hardly the only one in that series). The DS9 writers were pretty careful not to make the same mistake with Jake.

I actually thought the acting was pretty good all around, especially for a sci-fi show, which almost always suffer in that regard. Some were better then others, but even Jake I didn’t find distractingly bad.

16

I knew, but thats just because the guy won’t shut up about her, or anything else for that matter.

17

House of Quark was a Ferengi episode I liked. I’ve heard Profit and Lace is terrible, but I haven’t made it that far yet. I haven’t come across any episode that I’ve hated yet, but there were some boring ones. Most of those were in Season 1 or 2. Ever since The Dominion, Defiant, and the Klingons have shown up, it’s mostly been great. I remember trying to get into this show in the first season or 2 and then giving up when TNG went off the air. I should have stuck with it!

18

“In the Pale Moonlight” is one of my favorite episodes of any show. Plus, it (along with “Far Beyond the Stars,” another DS9 highlight) spawned one of the more mesmerizing internet memes out there.

Any episode focused on Garak is gold. This goes double for those that dealt with his relationship with Enabran Tain (“The Wire,” “The Die is Cast,” etc). Robinson’s performance in “In a Pale Moonlight” almost (almost!) outshines Brooks’s.

Love “The Visitor.” Sisko’s relationship with his son gets more development in this one episode than any character relationship got in the entirety of TNG or Voyager. It’s one of the two episodes of any show I’ve ever seen that has made me cry (“The Body” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer being the other).

I always really enjoyed the relationship between O’Brien and Bashir as well. Bashir, especially, surprised me as a character that I initially expected to hate (“oh God, another brash, overconfident young asshole”) but quickly grew to love for his enthusiasm, moral compass, curiosity, and always-hilarious ability to put his foot in his mouth.

And of course, Kira and Odo are just wonderful, wonderful characters, and there are numerous brilliant episodes focused on their complex relationships with their respective home cultures. DS9 always shone brightest when it dealt with the political and social upheavals happening on Bajor (and, by extension, Cardassia and among the Founders), and these two characters were always in the thick of it. Brilliant acting from Visitor and Auberjonois helped, of course.

I must admit, though, that I never really bought the romance between Kira and Odo - they had far more chemistry as the closest platonic friends on the show, IMO.

19

Amen, on that one, with the most infamous being Profit and lace, which was a big bag Of “ewwwww”.

It starts off with Quark telling telling one of his employees that she’ll be fired if she doesn’t sleep with him. Charming. But his brother comes in and tells him that Mom’s coming with the Nagus. Ma shows up and quark says something like “What are you doing, Ma! You’re supposed to be naked”. Damnit TV show, you made me sit through interspecies sexual harrasment; you are NOT going to show me alien old woman nudity. I don’t WANT to know where the waddles are on a Ferengi.

Anyway, it turns out that this whole thing is some weird Trek allegory on the equal rights amendment. Timely as ever. It seems that Ferengi women can’t wear clothes in public or participate in any business transaction. This is followed by much leering at Quark’s brother’s wife (stop it, TV show! just stop it!)

The plot settles down from here and we learn that if Mom can prove her business sense to a bunch of other Ferengi, then all Ferengi women can start wearing clothes and buying stuff. Oh, they’ll get to vote too, I think. The plan doesn’t work when Mom falls over dead in Quarks quarters. This is unfortunately played for comedy. Dead old women are funny. But the plan must go on, for some reason, so… and this hurts me to type…

…they put Quark in drag. But it get’s worse… after a few jokes about hormones it is revealed that Quark underwent a sex change (Damnit, TV show! I’m warning you right now!).

OK. Quark goes to the meeting, where he/she is sexually harassed, which is played for laughs. I don’t know if this is supposed to be a reference to the beginning of the episode or not as at this point I’m searching for my Ryobi so I can drill a hole in my head and bathe my brain in bleach. Later on there’s a scene where some old Ferengi lecher chases transgendered Quark around a table saying stuff like “my lobes burn for you!” Then Quark kisses the guy. I’m not sure if this is some kind of milestone in Trek history because it shows a transgendered dude kissing another dude, bu Aw fuck it, I don’t want to even think about it anymore. This episode almost gave me an aneurism.

It ends with women’s lib, a now male Quark getting in touch with his feminine side, more Trek “humor”, and a monkey twitching on his floor next to a cordless drill and a bottle of bleach.

20

Especially since, while one could see Kira being attracted to Odo - at least the fellow looks Bajoran-ish - there’s really no reason at all for Odo to be attracted to anything Bajoran-shaped. Or anything at all, for that matter - do the changelings even reproduce sexually?

But the tense, thoughtful conversations between them during the Cardassian occupation of the station more than made up for it - I bought them as close friends trying to figure out just what the hell they were going to do in an impossible situation.