Star Trek Next Generation | the m0vie blog

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Cardassians (Review)

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Darren

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

Cardassians suffers a bit from the same problems that haunt Invasive Procedures. Here’s another solidly constructed piece of world-building featuring a wonderful guest cast and an intriguing high concept. However, in the midst of all this, it seems like the human (er, Cardassian) element gets a bit lost. It’s great to have Garak and Dukat back on the show, and it’s great to deal with more fallout from the Occupation, but Cardassians never makes the emotional connection that a story about war orphans probably should.

Keeping up with the Cardassians…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, Cardassian, deep space nine, Dukat, Elim Garak, Garak, Julian Bashir, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, world war ii | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – Worlds of Deep Space Nine: Unjoined (Trill) by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels (Review)

Posted on September 24, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. 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.

Worlds of Deep Space Nine was an ambitious project, but one that existed as a testament to the world-building that defined Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A series of six novellas published in three books, each covering one of five planets associated with the television show (plus Andor), the book series was intended to launch the unofficial “ninth season” of the show. Beginning unofficially with The Lives of Dax and A Stitch in Time, the idea was for the spin-off novels to continue to develop and expand the series’ loose threads.

It’s quite something that Deep Space Nine left enough fertile ground to support a relaunch that ran so long, covering story beats that couldn’t necessarily be included in the television show – Bajor’s admittance to the Federation, the rebuilding of Cardassia, the aftermath of the war. Unjoined builds off the Trill storylines running through Deep Space Nine, using the events from the “eighth season” (the books through Unity) as a stepping stone to explore Trill culture.

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: A Stitch in Time, Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, deep space nine, Ezri Dax, Federation, Julian Bashir, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, Trill | 2 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Lives of Dax: Reflections (Jadzia) by L.A. Graf

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. 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.

The Trill are an absolutely fascinating species, arguably much more so on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine than they were on Star Trek: The Next Generation. They were introduced in The Host as a race that was relatively straightforward – a bunch of symbionts living inside humanoid bodies. There was no indication that the host was anything but a blank slate for the organism inside to overwrite and control.

On Deep Space Nine, they became much more complex. The show’s first Trill-centric episode, Dax, pondered if it was possible to divorce the actions of the host from those of the symbiont, or vice versa. Though the episode in question wimped on giving a definitive answer one way or the other, the implication is that each Trill is a fusion of host and symbiont, rather than one dominating the other. Because of that, it seemed like the show always had trouble defining Jadzia (the character on the show) relative to Dax (the sum of lifetimes of experience).

As such, it’s hard not to pity veteran writers Julia Ecklar and Karen Rose Cercone (writing as “L.A. Graf”) for drawing the short straw and winding up writing the story from the anthology The Lives of Dax focusing on Jadzia.

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Benjamin Sisko, Dax, deep space nine, Jadzia, Jadzia Dax, Julian Bashir, star trek, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek, Trill | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Myriad Universes – Echoes and Refractions: A Gutted World by Keith R. A. DeCandido (Review)

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Darren

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is twenty years old this year. To celebrate, I’m taking a look at the first and second seasons. 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.

“What if” stories are inherently fascinating. Naturally, they are predicated on investment in the original story, but it’s always fascinating to imagine the branching possibilities, the ripples in the stream. Sometimes, these are used to explore the grand philosophical questions of Star Trek in a new light; to imagine how, were you to change one variable in a complex formula, the answer might be radically different.

However, Keith R. A. DeCandido’s A Gutted World feels different. It is a massive story, spanning a huge amount of time and space, drawing in a massive ensemble cast and gently probing the politics of five or six different Star Trek culture, as DeCandido explores what might have happened if the Cardassians never withdrew from Bajor, if Terok Nor never became Deep Space Nine.

To put it more succinctly, if the show never happened, but its central storyline still did.

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Benjamin Sisko, brave new world, deep space nine, Ferengi, jean-luc picard, Keith R. A. DeCandido, Klingon, List of Star Trek characters (G–M), Martok, Romulan, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Circle (Review)

Posted on September 21, 2013 by Darren

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

Drama naturally lends itself to a neat three-act structure. At the most basic level, it’s as simple as beginning, middle and end. However, it’s also a format taught in just about every screenwriting course, and it’s even used as the conventional model for those with more innovative approaches. With that in mind, it’s interest that Star Trek has done relatively few three-part stories. The Circle sits in the middle of the first such attempt, in the second season of the second spin-off. The format would not see use again for over a decade, when it would become a feature of the final season of Star Trek to air on television.

Given the franchise is relatively fond of two-parters, it seems strange that there haven’t been more attempts to extend that out an episode. Perhaps the reason is obvious. Of the three acts, the beginning and the end are the most essential. Both come with a certain in-built amount of energy. The first part introduces the problem, while the conclusion deals with it. However, it’s the middle which proves problematic. It’s the point in the story after you’ve set up the conflict, but before you resolve it. Given how much difficulty Star Trek: The Next Generation had with conclusions, imagine how difficult the second part of a three-parter would be.

Even when Star Trek: Enterprise adopted the three-parter format it ran into basic structural difficulties, with a couple feeling like a two-part episode with an additional prologue or epilogue added on. The Circle isn’t a terribly flawed piece of television, but it suffers from the fact that Star Trek has never really tried storytelling in this mode before.

The writing’s on the wall…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajor, Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, Cardassian, Circle, deep space nine, Federation, Homecoming, Kira, Kira Nerys, Nana Visitor, Odo, Quark, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek | 3 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 1 (Review)

Posted on September 19, 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.

Well, that was actually pretty satisfying. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has probably the most satisfying debut season of any of the Star Trek spin-offs. While the show’s first year can’t quite measure up to the very first season of Star Trek ever produced, it can hold its head high among the spin-offs. Although I will concede that the bar isn’t exactly high when it comes to measuring the first year of the tie-in television shows.

When I began a recent re-watch of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I was glad to finish the show’s rocky first season. It was a slog, like the work one has to put in before delving into “the good stuff.” I recently picked up the blu ray of the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise. While there are a couple of nice episodes, there are quite a few I’d forgotten entirely because they were so bland. There are more I would like to forget. Star Trek: Voyager‘s first season is the single largest missed opportunity in the history of the franchise.

So Deep Space Nine‘s first year doesn’t have to do that much beyond “not sucking” in order to earn the coveted title of “best pilot season of a Star Trek spin-off.” However, as I watched the season, I was continually impressed with the quality of work done. There are a few duds (and a few classics), but the first year demonstrates remarkable insight into what is unique about the show’s premise. It doesn’t always have the courage to follow through on that promise, but it at least acknowledges it.

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Captive Pursuit, deep space nine, games, Ira Steven Behr, Move Along Home, Next Generation, science fiction, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, star trek: the next generation, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Television, video games | 5 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – In the Hands of the Prophets (Review)

Posted on September 19, 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.

Both Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation allowed their first seasons to run an episode too long. The City on the Edge of Forever, the penultimate episode of the first ever season of Star Trek, is a genuine classic. I don’t envy any story that has to follow it, especially not something as mediocre as Operation — Annihilate! While Conspiracy, the second-to-last episode of the first season of The Next Generation, is hardly a classic in the same league, it does up the stakes on the show’s first year, and tie up a dangling plot thread. The Neutral Zone, on the other hand, is a bland return to form, with a particularly insufferable b-plot.

So the excellence of Duet might offer the viewer cause to worry. A penultimate first-season episode which is significantly above average? One would be forgiven for wondering if the first season might have been best served to wrap itself up at that point, going out in a high, safe in the knowledge that it had contributed one classic episode to the Star Trek mythos and with the potential to offer quite a few more. Quit while you’re winning, and don’t tempt fate with another superfluous episode.

In the Hands of the Prophets, however, puts those fears to rest. Serving as a companion piece to Duet, it’s another one of those “only on Deep Space Nine“ stories, closing out the first season with a reminder of what makes the show unique. In the Hands of the Prophets is another classic piece of Deep Space Nine. It might not pack quite the punch that Duet did, but it’s a compelling piece of drama which demonstrates just how much Deep Space Nine has to offer the Star Trek mythos.

Beyond belief…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, deep space nine, Emissary, gene roddenberry, Jake Sisko, Kira Nerys, kirk, Operation: Annihilate!, paradise lost, Prophets, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, science fiction, Sisko, Star Trek Into Darkness, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, star trek: the original series, StarTrek, Winn | 13 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Duet (Review)

Posted on September 18, 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.

And here we hit the first truly classic episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Positioned almost at the very end of what has been a fairly uneven season of television, Duet firmly demonstrates that this spin-off can hold its head tall among the other franchise installments. Duet isn’t just a quintessential Deep Space Nine episode. It isn’t just a classic Star Trek episode. It is an absolutely beautiful piece of allegory, a stunning character study and a probing exploration of collective guilt and responsibility.

J’accuse…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, Cardassia, Cardassian, deep space nine, Duet, Elim Garak, Götz George, Kira Nerys, Odo, Robert Shaw, Roland Suso Richter, Rules of Acquisition, science fiction, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek | 5 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Dramatis Personae (Review)

Posted on September 17, 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.

Dramatis Personae tends to get lost in the shuffle at the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s first season. Sitting between two of the season’s most generic Star Trek stories (If Wishes Were Horses… and The Forsaken) and two distinctly Deep Space Nine classics (Duet and In the Hands of the Prophets), it’s easy to see why Joe Menosky’s tale of repeated history tends to get overlooked. It manages to sit quite neatly in both camps, as a generic Star Trek tale and as something more specific to Deep Space Nine.

After all, possession stories are scattered throughout the Star Trek mythos. Star Trek: The Next Generation was quite fond of have various members of the crew impersonated or doubled or controlled by a variety of alien influences. Dramatis Personae also feels like a very Joe Menosky script, linked by various thematic connections to the writer’s work on both The Next Generation and later on Star Trek: Voyager.

And yet, despite all those links, Dramatis Personae feels quite anchored to Deep Space Nine. It’s hard to imagine the dynamic working with any other Star Trek cast, even Voyager‘s Maquis and Starfleet ensemble. There’s also the sense that the episode’s pattern of repeated history feels more in keeping with Deep Space Nine‘s perception of history than any other Star Trek show’s.

The man with the plan…

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Filed under: Deep Space Nine | Tagged: Bajoran, Benjamin Sisko, deep space nine, Dramatis Personae, Galactic quadrant (Star Trek), Jake Sisko, Joe Menosky, Kira, Kira Nerys, Klingon, Quark, René Echevarria, Sisko, Star Trek Next Generation, star trek: deep space nine, StarTrek | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – The Forsaken (Review)

Posted on September 16, 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.

Following on directly from If Wishes Were Horses…, The Foresaken combines another bunch of familiar Star Trek clichés into a plot that fells like it has been elsewhere. To be fair, the “malfunctioning computer” plot is a plot that lends itself to a Star Trek setting, and the key is the execution of that most familiar set up. The franchise has done it quite well in the past. I’m fond of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s foray into the subgenre with Disaster. Even Star Trek: Deep Space Nine would do a number of later episodes working quite well from this starting point – Civil Defense and Starship Down ranking quite highly.

The problem with The Foresaken, then, isn’t the fact that it falls back on a bunch of familiar Star Trek clichés, but it fails to use them to tell an especially compelling story.