deep space nine | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Emissary (Review)

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first season. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a phenomenal piece of television. It’s often a bit overlooked because of its unique setting. After all, the words Star Trek evoke space ships and new worlds – “new life forms and new civilisations.” As such, a Star Trek series about a space station feels counter-intuitive. “To boldly sit” is the hardly the most dynamic premise. And yet, despite that, there’s a very serious argument to be made that Deep Space Nine is the crowning accomplishment of television Star Trek. It’s certainly the last great attempt to boldly push the franchise forward, with Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise feeling just a tad regressive and conservative in comparison.

Indeed, Deep Space Nine represents a massive narrative leap forward from the success of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which remains one of the greatest science-fiction shows ever produced. For better or worse, Emissary makes it quite clear that Deep Space Nine is not an attempt to copy its direct predecessor, even if some of the other episodes in the first season might back-pedal a bit. In fact, it’s surprising just how well the pilot for this strangest of Star Trek shows holds up, suggesting a firmer grasp of its own identity than a few of the subsequent episodes could claim.

A Commanding presence…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, best of both worlds, borg, Cardassian, deep space nine, gene roddenberry, jean-luc picard, Next Generation, picard, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: Terok Nor – Day of the Vipers by James Swallow (Review)

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first season. Check back daily for the latest review or retrospective.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comes with back story. A lot of back story. In fact, the opening scene of Emissary establishes the show in the context of The Best of Both Worlds, Part II, introducing a lead character whose tragic origin is rooted in an encounter that we had only fleetingly glimpse in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Due to the setting and nature of the show, history and continuity were major parts of Deep Space Nine‘s identity, and a large part of what set the show apart from its predecessors. (And successors, for that matter.)

Although the Klingons would dominate the show’s fourth season and remain a presence throughout the show’s run, and the Romulans might occasionally be glimpsed lurking in the back ground, the series largely focused on two alien races that had been introduced in The Next Generation. The Cardassians had been introduced in the show’s fourth season, in The Wounded, and the Bajorans first appeared during the fifth season in Ensign Ro.

Officially part of The Lost Era series of novels designed to flesh out the history of the shared Star Trek universe, the Terok Nor trilogy exists as a bridge into Emissary, something of an extended history lesson that contextualises the events of Deep Space Nine by providing an account of the Occupation of Bajor, an atrocity that only ended shortly before Emissary actually began.

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajor, Bajoran, best of both worlds, Cardassia, Cardassian, deep space nine, Dukat, Emissary, Final Reflection, Ico, Sisko, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: Early Voyages #1 – Flesh of my Flesh (Review)

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness this month, we’ll be running through the first season of the classic Star Trek all this month. Check back daily to get ready to boldly go. It’s only logical.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

In the late nineties, Marvel were publishing Star Trek comic books. One of those books, perhaps the book garnering the most critical praise, was Star Trek: Early Voyages. Written by Dan Abnett and Ian Edginton, the series was intended to follow the mission of the USS Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike. Published monthly, the comic is perhaps the best indication of what a Star Trek show starring Christopher Pike might have actually looked like. Although the series was cancelled suddenly after only seventeen issues, ending on a cliffhanger, it is still a fascinating look at what might have been.

Looks like they’ve hooked a Pike…

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: borg, Christopher Pike, Cold War, dan abnett, deep space nine, Hulu, J. J. Abrams, Pike, spock, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: enterprise, Star Trek: The Animated Series, star trek: the next generation, StarTrek, USS Enterprise, William Shatner | 5 Comments »

Is Star Trek on Television Dead?

Posted on May 23, 2009 by Darren

I saw Star Trek last night and was quite impressed – it is one of the best movies in the franchise (albeit not the best). It riproared effectively and gave us a brilliant look at the Kirk/Spock relationship, which is one of the oddities of the show – how such an impulsive, womanising and irrational man would develop a lifelong friendship with such a stoic and logic individual was always a slight mystery to Star trek fans. Still, there is a world of difference between the television shows and the movies, and I wonder if we’ll ever see another Star Trek show back on the airwaves?