@nintendoboy16 said:
@lundy86_4: I've heard that it was. And it's basically the KOTOR II of Star Trek in how it deconstructs that franchise, except that Seth is a huge sci-fi fan and even got Star Trek actors on his cartoons. Hell, I just watched the episode directed by Jonathan Frakes.
I'd say Deep Space 9 was the KOTOR II of Star Trek.
The problem with the prior shows (and consequently after) it's about humanity being challenged. But the crew characters themselves are always, or very close to perfect, being the ones doing the judging, typically with a warp up at the end summarizing it all.
Deep Space 9 compared to these show, has bias, crooked, arrogant, hate-filled characters. It's a catalogue of flawed individuals being challenged, not just by by external but internal challenges. That's just inherently more interesting, leading to better TV.
How many of the main crew of TNG were actually that memorable outside of Picard, Q and Data? Q himself being a court-jester antagonist.
The antagonists as well are also wholly different from the norm.
In Star Trek: Discovery it's right-wing Trump Voters, thinly veiled as Klingons. The problem here isn't that it attacks right-wing voters, it's that those are easy targets, and it's done as subtle as a brick with easy answers. It's boring, and there is nothing interesting about them in the slightest and just doing a real world comparison by default, doesn't make good sci-fi. You have to actually do something of value with it.
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Compare that to Deep Space 9, the Dominion are essentially Nazi's.
But... They themselves were persecuted to the point of excitation, that made them xenophobic, isolationists. They have an understandable motivation that made them this way.
Likewise, everyone within their empire is a victim.
The Jem Hadar are killing machines. But they are designed that way, with a short life-span deliberately addicated to a drug to control them like an animal. Designed to kill, then die.
The Vorta act as politicians, and we get a back-story of how they use to monkeys that saved the life of a changling, rewarded for serving them, but generically engineers to see them as god, removing personality traits not useful, like vision.
The Cardassians who jump aboard, themselves Nazi's (more or less), end up being conquered, turning into a rebellion as the Bajorans did against them.
Instead of a villain of the week who comes in and blows stuff up, the Dominion are mentioned seasons in advance off-hand, make an announcement, warning The Federation to stay-out, slowly come over the worm-hole to make political gains, and eventually attack them when they are incited, the Federation making the first move.
Deep Space 9 handled everything with complexity and managed to humanize the antagonists just as much as the protagonists. Where as in other Star Trek shows, the Federation has abit of a superiority complex, which is exactly what Gene R wanted, and was sort of worse for it.
Basically, Deep Space 9 is really, really, really, really good.
Apart from the PS2 fire-cave end, that was shit.
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