I hated any episode that featured Kai Winn.
I only watched DS9 when I caught it on TV, which wasn’t often. I enjoyed most episodes I watched but didn’t really get the chance to follow the long story arcs.
Perhaps I should add DS9 to my LoveFilm queue…
I loved Kai Winn up until Season 7. Same with Gul Dukat. These are not by coincidence.
One of the best Odo moments was in an episode where he was held captive with another person. I think it was Kira?? It grew past the time for him to relax and release his shape. Odo is very proud and wants to be respected. Finally he can’t hold shape any longer and turns into a puddle in this persons lap.
It was very well done and touching. Reveled a lot about Odo and his need for respect. He never forgot the humiliation of being a lab specimen.
It was Lwaxana Troi and they were trapped in an elevator.
I think it also revealed a lot about Lwaxana Troi’s character, too, who was portrayed as a raging harridan most of the time.
Oh, Lwaxana Troi thanks. It’s been awhile since I saw it. It was really good.
One of my favorite shows.
The first two seasons are weak (although not as weak as TNG or Babylon 5’s first seasons) but there are some good things. Season 3 picked up quite a bit, although it’s still uneven. It would almost be easier to list the episodes from S4, 5, and 6 that aren’t really good. S7 was mostly pretty bad, but the season-long arc was action-packed enough that you could ignore some the bad stuff (like Dukat’s wild transformation, Ezri, and the literalization of the Prophets).
S1: “Duet,” “In the Hands of the Prophets”
S2: “Necessary Evil,” “The Wire,”
S3: “Heart of Stone,” “Improbable Cause,” “The Die is Cast”
S4: “The Visitor” (easily the best of the whole show) “Little Green Men” (best Ferengi comic relief show) “Our Man Bashir,” “Homefront,” “Paradise Lost”
S5: “The Ship,” “Trials and Tribble-ations,” “For the Uniform,” “Call to Arms”
S6: “Waltz,” “Far Beyond the Stars,” “In the Pale Moonlight”
S7: “The Siege of AR-558,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,”
DS9 also relied less on techno-babble solutions to problems. Not saying they didn’t like to reroute power through the main deflectors to increase the yield of their tachyon pulse…they just did it less than TNG…and significantly less that VOY.
Bashir always seemed to be brewing up some medical marvels…but at least he had a backstory that offered some credibility toward his apparent genius.
I second previous comments regarding Jake. The writers clearly knew what he was good for and kept his stories and importance on a short leash. They came close with Nog though…I thought they begin to push that character a bit too far near the end of the series.
I loved Duet. I’m kind of kinky, and sort of have a thing for Gul Dukat, pre him going batshit insane. I loved it when he was bad, with a tiny bit of goodness in there.
For similar reasons, I also like any Garak episode.
Even if most people loved the Dominion War stuff, that’s when I kind of lost interest. The show lost all the lovely nuances and grey shades and just reverted to goodies vs baddies complete with Evil Red Glowing Eyes. yawn
Oh, and of course any Ferengi ep is automatic fail.
What’s the one where they put everything on hold to save their holographic buddy Vic?
I actually thought Rom (Nog’s father) was the worst offender in the ‘unexplained genius’ category. Nog went to the academy, and even after that, wasn’t that overly brilliant, at least by Star Trek standards. Rom goes from being an over-worked waiter at a bar to number-two engineering guy without any training.
But that aside, agree that DS9 was still far less obnoxious with that kind of thing then any of the other Treks.
What was the deal with suddenly getting a bunch of fans of lounge music on the writing staff?
My best DS9 would be “In the Pale Moonlight”
My worst would be the baseball episode where they played the Vulcans. I know Vulcans have this feeling of superiority when it comes to humans, but they are normally not such dicks about it.
The first two Ferengi episodes with the Grand Nagus weren’t so bad. “The Nagus” was okay, even if Rom trying to kill Quark was wildly outside of what his character would be after season 1. “Rules of Acquisition” where Quark tried to open up a trade deal with the Dominion with the help of the female Ferengi who was posing as make was pretty good too.
Clearly you haven’t seen “Enterprise” (although that is probably for the best).
I liked the episode where Odo and Kira find the planet where the Founders live. Odo meets his people and discovers they are the oppressors and enslavers of that part of space.
Best:
Looks like I’m one of the crowd on this one - ‘In The Pale Moonlight’ is my favourite episode of DS9. Runners up include the episode immediately preceding it, ‘The Inquisition’, ‘Duet’, ‘The Wire’ and ‘The Assignment’. DS9 certainly had better characters than Voyager (with a couple of exceptions) and on the whole did serious episodes much better than that show or TNG.
Worst:
As with Voyager some of the worst episodes of DS9 were set on the holodeck (or holosuites). The Vic Fontaine episodes such as ‘His Way’ were awful. I like Quark, but some of the Ferengi episodes were crap, particularly (not sure why) in the later seasons. But the worst trait of DS9 was that some episodes were just downright dull. ‘Meridian’, ‘Melora’, ‘The Muse’, and my pick for most tedious Trek episode ever (featuring my two least favourite DS9 characters, Ezri Dax and Worf), ‘Afterimage’ from series 7.
Ah yes, all that panda. Good times.
I’ll echo what a lot of people have been saying about liking “In the Pale Moonlight” and “Far Beyond the Stars”, though I was hoping the follow-up episode to FBtS would’ve been better but it was just kind of dull with Sisko being in the insane asylum.
I didn’t. Winn was freaking intolerable until her face heel turn…or heel worse heel turn, I guess. Just so smarmy and utterly false.
As such, almost any episode dealing with the Bajoran religion before that and after the death of Opaka (who I was fairly fond of) is on my list of worst. The ones that dealt with only the Orbs and didn’t get into the politics were fine, but for the most part, there was way too much of Kai Winn’s railing against Sisko or politicking against Bareil or other Vedeks…or the Provisional Government…or Starfleet…or…
So…yeah…Winn ruined a lot of episodes for me.
I always wondered if the Peace with the Dominion would have held. There were a lot of planets in the Dominion besides the Founders. Plus The Jem’Hadar were still around. I’m not sure making peace with the Founders was enough to remove the threat.
It’s similar to the Shadow war on Babylon 5. After the Shadows left there was another season dealing with other bad guys that supported & worked with the Shadows.
That’s a lot like asking if making peace with Washington would end a war with the US, because there are other states, and the US army is still out there. The Dominion is an oligarchy, and the Vorta and Jem’Hadar are both genetically engineered to prevent any change to that.
Some of the Dominion’s Alpha and Beta quadrant allies could still be a threat, but the Cardassians were defeated (partially because a significant portion had turned against the Dominion), so that basically leaves the Breen as the only real threat, IIRC. And if they continued their belligerence, they’d be standing against the three major powers in the region - the Federation, and Klingon and Romulan empires - so even they’re not a major threat.
This list right here could’ve been written by me. Man, I love this show… I even liked Ezri, and Dukat and Winn in the last season, and Odo and Kira’s romance… And Jake, and Nog, and Rom…
But even I can’t sit through some of the Ferengi episodes… ugh. If I hear the word Moogie, I’m out…
All time fave: Necessary Evil (with Pale Moonlight a close 2nd)
Worst non-ferengi episode: Sanctuary, or Melora. or maybe that on Risa with Vanessa Williams. or anything with Vic other than Paper Moon.