The Controversies of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 

They sell this cereal at WalMart for 8 dollars a box. I don't believe anyone actually buys this stuff.

This cereal tastes like chemical coated cardboard. I gave it a try since the zero sugar but it is horrible. On top of the taste the price is 4x+ the price of brand name cereals per oz. Frosted Flakes 21.7 oz box is $4.48 or .$.20 an oz Magic Spoon is 7oz box at $8.47 or $1.21 (so in this case 6x the price)

Why do you have TDS bro? Trump ain't do anything to you, need to chill man.

All you had to do was review toys tv shows or games. But you just can't keep your mouth shut. 80% of America can not stand biden, and you choose the bad guy. Some people on your channel are having a hard time buying groceries because of the guy you support. Unsubscribed.

You have been exposed baby killer

Plain, simple Garak.

Garak and Quark made that show. It had a great cast with solid chemistry all around, but those two... oh, those two...

@@philliptivis3082 “Just like the Federation.”

And all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer.

@@tomkerruish2982 Yes, I agree with Sisko’s motivations. HOWEVER! That scenario just would not happen. At all. The Romulans would absolutely join the Federation coalition willingly.

@@poolhall9632 And the show’s been a lot better received now than it was when it aired.

I personally prefer the inspiration for the show but this is a close third best sci-fi, B5 (the inspiration I mentioned) and SG1 are the others.

Never watched it when it was on TV. I was a TNG Stan. It wasn't even on a spaceship. Then the pandemic hit and I saw a clip on RU-vid of Sisko slaping Garak and I was intrigued. 3 weeks later after watching all 7 seasons I had a new favorite star trek.

@@unc0mm0n2 Understandable - I grew up watching next generation with my family, but DS9 ran though my junior year of high school. I was allowed to stay up late and watch it. Picard is my favorite captain. DS9 is my favorite series. The best of both worlds, you might say😬

This!

True

season 1 was rough and then from season 5 and beyond went looking for every space shark to jump. I liked Babylon 5 better as both aired back to back but DS9 had some awesome characters. Its just a shame it took the writers quite a while to figure out how to write a single place story. DS9 could have been a lot better but what we got was pretty good just the pahwraiths thing was just to stupid.

​@@vonshroom2068Lol Um, no. Babylon 5 was garbage. I tried watching it as a kid and I couldn't even get through an entire episode. DS9 didn't really blossom until the end of season 2. But season 5 through 7 were just classic. The Pahwraith stuff was great. Most episodes that featured them or the Prophets were pretty good. Sounds to me that you're just a Babylon 5 shill.

@@scinnyc You're telling me that when Dukat pulled a heelturn and went full blown maniacly evil out of the blue was the best part? Did we watch the same show? I have the same issue with Kira and the domnion. Kira having the biggest hate boner for Dukat to the point she's actually considering boning the man. O'Brian was the better Kira when it came to the Bajor vs Kardasia issue and all his experience was a small conflict compared to a planetary occupation. Odo merely linking up with the changelings ending the entire conflict by curing them was another issue considering the other factions were already breaking away from the dominions founders being god. Yet none voiced and issue or did anything with it. Instead Dukat out of the blue goes off to become the Bajoran devil despite him having had several arcs where he came to terms with himself and was on the path to redeem and attone for his actions. But my main issue is Sisko who should have been locked up and put to trial every few times per season. Section 31 or not he's done some public crimes against groups of people even entire planets yet starfleet was perfectly fine with it because he was the prophet i guess? B5 is not everyones flavor for sure but they stayed true to their characters and kept the story going after a rough season 1 and ending still solid on a sabotaged season 5.

@@vonshroom2068 You missed the entire reason of why Dukat was such a great villain. He teetered between "good" & evil for years until his true nature finally manifested itself. But Dukat was actually never good. It was all about trying to convice himself and others that he was...mostly Major Kira. All of this is revealed in the 6th season episode called "Waltz". Dukat was a complex villain with a lot of layers...but deep down, he was always a ruthless villain who saw Bajorans and other alien species as inferior and expendable. And if you like Babylon 5, more power to you. It had a strong following early on and I remember when it first aired and my mom's friend's son was really into it. But it just wasn't my cup of tea. I did have some of the Micro Machines ships from the series though

Got to meet several folks over the years, but heading to the What We Leave Behind screening at Paramount was the cherry on the cake... well, as was meeting Rene and Andrew (Robinson) there

Wow, you saw Rene before he passed.... I'm jealous.

My favorite too. It’s the workspace comedy Start Trek. Sure there was a terrible war, but the characters shined through, and it was the optimism and mercy of Star fleet that defeated the Dominion.

It's absolutely my favorite Star Trek show, and always will be.

Qa'Pla!

Yeah, Babylon 5 on Sunday afternoon and DS9 on Monday night. Eating good as a Sci-fi fan.

I still remember when Neelix being a creep with Kes on Voyager was one of the biggest letdowns in my nerd circle, those were good days. Hell, we even had the X-Files and Earth: Final Conflict on too. Now we have Discovery, thankfully ended, and The Acolyte, with everything else on hiatus.

🙋🏼‍♀️

A breath of fresh air because it was how Babylon 5 did things.

@@Smileybeeblevrox Please, _don't_ start that up. Whatever similarities the two shows started out with, they went in very different directions pretty straight from the start, I watched and loved _both_ shows; _Babylon 5_ was a serial Epic Space Opera with heavy Fantasy trappings, while _Deep Space 9_ was a darker exploration of the universe of _Star Trek_ with themes of war, religion, and recovering from a fascist occupation, and eased into more serialized storytelling as much as they could get away with it. They're both _rad_ shows and I love them both for their own qualities.

I hated that they began making Quark “nicer.” Very unwelcome character progression.

@@AaronLitz but similiarities can't be discounted either. I don't think anyone seriously copied anything on purpose but considering that writers generally like to talk about the things they write especially when trying to sell their idea I wouldn't dismiss that some ideas got passed around and got remembered later. And that tracks why they start off similar but then go in their own directions as it would only be the general ideas that would get stuck in someone's mind. Which is kind of how most creatives operate, there are so many who want to have their own spin on something or hear an idea and then develop it into their own probably forgetting where the initial kernel came from.

What is wring with this galaxy? SMH.

He just wanted to help!

It's on Cardasia though....

@@DavidTSmith-jn5bs aka parts of the surface which have not been bombed by the dominion.

Child labor was abolished! Medical care improved! Food rations INCREASED!!!

punched Q in the face too.

@@RahhmiPoofs And he never came back.

He didn't nuke it, he used a bioweapon

​@@grandmufftwerkin9037 Given what we found out later about Sisko being half wormhole entity, I've theorized that he actually hurt Q in a super dimensional way, so Q knew he wasn't dealing with a mere human and either lost interest or decided to not risk more serious injury.

@@SchlossRitterthe q were way more powerful than the wormhole aliens. They couldn’t exist outside the wormhole and they could be destroyed by chroniton radiation. And only speak in riddles.

The shapeshifter remark was a joke about how many different characters the actor played throughout the franchise

@@johnhughes6487or just lazy or AI writing.

@@Bored_Barbarian If you've watched SG long enough, you would get their sense of humor and not even accuse them of lazy or AI assisted writing.

​@@johnhughes6487I think there's an even better joke they could make about Weyoun being technically multiple characters. Since we can't be sure how many of the Weyouns appeared on screen, we can't know how many Star Trek characters Jeffrey Combs has played.

Jeffery Coombs could possibly be called a shapeshifter with all the rolls he played (Brunt, Weyoun, Tiron), Weyoun however was not a shapeshifter. The joke may have landed better if worded differently

Considering just how many characters were utterly boneable on that show regardless of gender... ... my body is ready!

I'm on Season 5, my first full watch through (I saw some episodes back in the 90s). It's just an amazing show!

Season 4 is widely accepted as being a near perfect season of TV with few to n o bad episodes. Episode guides that tell you what episodes you must watch and what episodes to skip are generally like "watch all of season 4." I agree, but that being said, season 6 is, by far, my favourite season of DS9. I envy you and wish I could erase it from my brain to watch again for the first time.

Oh you are in for a _treat,_ and I wish I could be there with you to share in what you are about to experience.

It is one of the greatest stories ever told. You will enjoy how it gets better and better the end is absolutely epic. I envy you seeing it for the first time.

It gets better. I was a teenager when it first aired and didn't like it. As an adult I watched the entire show and loved it.

You like a simple tailor? How boring 😊

Damar went from freighter crewman to one-ship crusader, to right-hand man, to murderer/traitor-executor, to puppet leader of his people, to ragtag revolutionary who finally understood the errors of his ways and his former cherry-lensed views on the occupation of Bajor and Cardassian arrogant imperialism...and he wasn't even a main character until the end. That was a hell of a show.

I would argue it is pretty self evident that DS9 took more than just a little inspiration from B5. The broad strokes are too similar, both in its depiction of war and its treatment of religion.

Ikr

I call bullshit on Rick Berman denying any knowledge of Babylon 5 or its story arc. What's that old Hollywood saying? If you're going to steal...steal from the best.

Just finished it never finished when I was younger much younger was great show 👍🏻

But so do the other classic Star Trek shows, too...

Babylon 5 was better :p

Yep. Ratings declined sharply with both VOY and later ENT.

@@destinycaptain247 to be fair, there were far more television options at that point than durying the TNG heyday. So many cable networks launched in the 90s, diluting ratings for almost everything.

100% this. That's what I feel was so genius about the Dominion War arc, the writers introduced and did not shy away from the absolute ugliness, horrors and hopelessness of open war (as much as they could get away with on network TV anyway) but also consistently showed a Starfleet and Federation that was holding onto their ideals and identity by their very fingernails in the face of all that ugliness and horror and hopelessness.

@@Dargonhuman In The Pale Moonlight isn't just a great Star Trek episode, it's a great war drama.

Agreed. Captain Benjamin Sisko is my favorite Starfleet Captain. Avery Brooks did an outstanding job bringing Sisko to life.

absolutely agreed

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes!!

Brooks also protested the "Ocean's 11"-like holosuite heist episode (whatever it was called, I forget) as it was originally written, pointing out to the producers/writers that in the time era the heist was set in, black people were not welcome at finer establishments such as the one being portrayed, which led the writers to give Sisko a speech in the episode about that. And, he directed "Far Beyond the Stars", which as you probably already know is a stand-out episode in Star Trek, dealing with racism and bigotry against black people. And he starred in "American History X", which is an excellent and very thoughtprovoking and intense movie. Also, he is said to have formed a very tight relationship with Cirroc Lofton (who played Ben Sisko's son Jake in the show, for anyone not in the know), being a sort of nurturing mentor and father figure for Cirroc from what I understand, which I always thought was really sweet and admirable. :) And then there's loads more of course. So the guy is basically as much a fighter for his causes and as well-informed in real life as Ben Sisko ever was on screen... Brooks not your average run of the mill actor, that's for sure. :)

I loved it as a kid... and loved it MORE when I rewatched alot of it as an Adult. Quark's Federation speech was classic.

@@lennyvalentin6485 As a non-USian, the episodes about black people in the US felt so very heavy-handed.

Wow, I havnt thought about Bondsteel in 20 year! I was an Albanian Linguist in the USAF during the conflict.

At the time it looked like it. My family has a lot of Trekkies in it, and when DS9 premiered I was the only one not saying "I ain't watching that trash." I remember loads of opinion pieces in the newspapers (remember those?) of people complaining Star Trek was dead and DS9 killed it.

But...did it almost kill the franchise??

I mean, Treks viewership numbers consistently dropped on average after TNG wrapped, until the Enterprise finale. Dunno if it almost killed it, but it certainly started a trend that killed it on TV for a while.

​@@Plapradthat lasted about a season. It was getting solid ratings in subsequent seasons until syndicators started shuffling it around the schedule just as it became more serialized. It was timeslots that hurt the show and the franchise.

@@Plaprad I wouldn't say DS9 killed Star Trek, but it's clear that once TNG went off-air and DS9 took over, a lot of viewers started to lose interest in Star Trek, viewing figures continued to decline, so much so that Paramount got desperate with some of the more radical story telling on Star Trek, the dominion war, bringing Seven of Nine in VOY, because they needed to bump viewing figures up, they were trying all sorts to try and bump viewing figures, until they give up after ENT series. The irony is, TNG had a bad start, and a lot didn't think a new crew could replace the original, but for many, TNG ended up being better than the original for many and Star Trek was really popular just before TNG ended, so much so that that everyone was shocked they took it off-air with how popular it was. With that said, I enjoyed DS9 when watching it as a kid, but it wasn't hard to see the flaws on why Star Trek ended up in decline, mainly because the vision of Star Trek changed into a darker, more moody Trek, which went against everything that Star Trek was all about, and Star Trek went downhill ever since to what we have today. Star Trek needs to get back to basics in what made Star Trek great in the first place with TOS and TNG, whiles giving it a modern take, a continues story line and a brighter, more well lit future, which is really what Star Trek was all about in the first place.

Go to the timeout corner.

this ruined the franchise, this was like the 6th episode or so, and so many people quit the show after this one, it didn't recover for a long while

Oh no that's gonna be stuck in my head...AGAIN. haha

Nooooo!!!!!!😅😅😅😅

Even though this episode is bad, it has Armin Shimerman absolutely /going/ for it as Quark begs to not have to choose for someone to die.

Ever since DS9, Trek has gone down hill. It reached terminal velocity in 2019.

So, wait, what is Malcolm McDowell's epic full name then? ... Wait, Dr. Tolian Soran and Dr. Julian Bashir are _related?!_

Trek has always been a rollercoaster of quality, ups and downs, highs and lows, and even "loop-the-loops" (and any number of alternative spellings) in terms of doubling back on, and repeating, narratively and success/failure. Regardless of all that, DS9 is not the culmination of all that is Star Trek, nor was it the most successful entry in the franchise.

​@@orinanime It has the overall best storyline, character development, and episode consistency. I love TNG, but there were a lot of stinkers throughout the series.

Lower Decks reversed the trend. Not saying it's better than DSN but it's hugely better than everything since DSN.

They don't even MAKE Star Trek anymore.

@@igrim4777 LD has some, SOME, good moments. But 90% of that show feels like Star Trek meets Family Guy. Which is odd considering Seth McFarlane's Orville feels more like actual Star Trek (though season 1 is more like Galaxy Quest).

Same

Agreed

Yup

The answer to Kirk or Picard is always Sisko. THE Sisko.

Yeah

😂 when was star trek g rated? TNG had people exploding in season one and later crusher boned a candle ghost. TOS frequently had sexual assault and literal jack the ripper.

@cf8023 In it's own way, TOS was full of horrific moments. Off the top of my head: in "The Ultimate Computer", Scotty and his engineering assistant are ordered to deactivated the M5 unit. Engineering guy grabs a tool and goes to the wall socket that M5 is plugged into. A laser beam errupts from nowhere and instantly reduces engineering dude to nothing. There's no fanfare. The guy doesn't even get to scream. He's just instantly vaporized while about to do his duty. It's an image that has stuck with me my whole life.

He’s The Sisko, first name - “Don’t F with.”

Damn. This is even funnier than the Chuck Norris memes in this theme.

The Defiant's real name is "The Ben Sisko Mutha-F***ing Pimp Hand", but Starfleet decided that was too long

Yeah and he punched Q too. Dude punches everything. Its the Sisko way.

"The best diplomat I know is a fully activated Ben Sisko."

What are you talking about?

​@@null6634danny got exposed for the communist he is. He hates America and us.

Great, it only took about thirty years to get that jingle out of my head the FIRST time! 😡🎶

If you listen closely in star trek online, you can hear that jingle playing on the monitors of the promenade.

I don't get the fanboys who dig in for one show or the other - cake is great; however loving cake isn't going to stop me from loving pie also! If I love cake AND pie, I get twice the yummyness! Why on earth would I pick one show and dis the other? Makes no sense. B5 and DS9 are tremendous TV shows each in their own way. Just like I always loved Star Wars AND Star Trek (another weird dork war that never made sense to me.)

@lennyvalentin6485 I have a friend who wears a shirt that says Star Trek in the Star Wars logo design. When it pisses someone off she does the Vulcan salute and says "May the Force be with you." It kills me every time.

@@mattwilson8298 :DDD

DS9 copied it from Babylon 5.

In fairness, the complaints back then about serialization were legit as, outside of VHS recorders and something called TiVo that no one knew what to make of (and didn't come out until 4 years into DS9's run), there were no viable ways to catch up on a serialized show if you missed a few weeks, short of waiting for summer reruns and even then hoping you were able to be home to watch the episode(s) you missed - but that also meant not watching the rest of the current season until well after the finale and avoiding people talking about it at work/school or while hanging out. On the flipside, also to be fair, these days, with "seasons" of shows being between 6-12 episodes as opposed to the 28-30 episodes back then, anything that doesn't move the plot forward or develop a character is seen as wasteful filler. With a 28 episode run, you can stop the main story (actually you kind of _have_ to stop the main story) for a standalone story that has nothing to do with anything several times and still have enough episodes to finish out the overarching story, as X-Files did frequently. But, when the show only has at most a dozen episodes, any episode not about the overarching story means that story arc has to be crammed into an even shorter run time.

@@Dargonhuman 24 and then Lost was what got people conditioned to serialized tv.

Same. My parents took me there when I graduated and we went on the motion simulator ride at least a dozen times. That was in 2001 (Sept. 10 to be precise... yea the next morning killed the vibe) so I never got to do the Borg one later, and I still regret that.

Full on. Can’t watch it enough.

They were both great; Ezri's quiet takedown of 'Klingon Honor' while sitting with Worf at the end of the series is one of the best scenes in Trek.

@@DavidDouglas-q7v I’m a little ehhhhh on Ezri and Bashir’s relationship considering how he pined for Jadzia (and again, the untimely death when she was so good with Worf) but it at least doesn’t make the show worse or have a sour note to end on

What was especially egregious was that on the last episode every major character got a quick little flashback montage spanning the different seasons, all except Jadzia Dax. Heck, Worf's flashback only shows him coming to the station, a couple of other clips, and then some interactions with Ezri Dax. Not one scene of him and Jadzia courting each other or getting married. Terry Farrell's contributions to the show are completely ignored and forgotten. Makes it hard for me to watch that final episode.

@@RyanAlcantaraThe lack of flashback to Jadzia was because the producers weren’t able to obtain Terry Farrell’s permission to use her likeness in the montage. It wasn’t an oversight or deliberate omission; they wanted to use clips for the montage and didn’t have the opportunity.

@@RyanAlcantara I think in my first watch the episode that elevated the series for me was the one where some wingnut demanded the Dax symbiont be transferred to him…just to have its benefits? And that experience later on where Odo got Curzon in him, it was BEGGING for an equivalent Avatar episode (though Unalaq and Vaatu made that way more difficult by wiping away the access to everyone else), even from a 2018 perspective

Never gets old

Never gets old

Harry Kim says hello as does Torres

That's because it was clear that the writers had no idea what to do with the rest of the cast, as some of the worst episodes of Voyager were the ones that weren't about Doc, Janeway and Seven, particularly the Chakotay and Paris episodes for some odd reason.

@@Dargonhuman lol chakotay's focus eps were prob the worst. Whenever i do a rewatch i either skip them or just put it as background. like Tattoo...that boxing one...or when he's trying to help that lizard prove humans exist...didn't help they hired that fake Native american consultant😅

You need to learn to count. There are eleven Star Trek series that have been produced. Let me list them for you. Star Trek Star Trek: The Animated Series Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - My personal favorite of all Star Trek series Star Trek: Voyager - My second least favorite of all Star Trek series Star Trek: Enterprise Star Trek: Discovery Star Trek: Picard Star Trek: Lower Decks - An excellent animated series with quite a few funny moments. I do wish it relied less on fan service for its humor, though. Star Trek: Prodigy Star Trek: Strange New Worlds As you can see, that makes eleven Star Trek series that have been produced not counting the Short Treks. Perhaps you should consult with a doctor to check for memory loss and cognitive decline. Forgetting that six other series have existed is quite the problem considering how high profile the franchise is and the fact that you watched and enjoyed five of them. One would think that you'd be aware of the other six.

Stolen material from B5 creator.

@@Smileybeeblevrox Nope, not even a little.

Kirk is an adventurer, Picard is a diplomat. Sisko is here to kick ass and chew bubblegum and they stopped making bubble gum a century ago.

While I still personally like Kirk the best, Sisko is a very *VERY* close second.

​@@nobodyimportant2470: To try and take (or bend?) a page from another comment thread-- Bubblegum refuses to be chewed by Sisko because it'd rather see him kick more ass. (Not sure if that's any good, but I'm far from just a "simple tailor".)

What I found interesting about DS9 was that it was a Trek show where humans were in the minority instead of the majority. If you meant that the show featured characters that BEHAVED in the most human way, I strongly agree. For example, before this show, I never took the Ferengis seriously. Not only did this show changed that perspective for me, I felt that the Klingons were more three-dimensional than they were even in TNG and the Cardasians, while starting out as evil, changed into heroic characters near the end of the series (except for Gul Dukat, of course).

@@DavidTSmith-jn5bs I said most human but I guess the better way to describe it that they are more like real people not just Characters the Klingon's were expanded upon, The Bajoran's had their own culture and beliefs then the Ferengi, The Cardassian even the Villains with the Dominion and the changelings it all went beyond one dimensional which was we have seen in TNG and on the original series.

@@fredsorre6605 I know that's what you said but my point expanded on the idea that even in Trek, humans were in the majority (including human-looking aliens) and DS9 was the exception.

Armin Shimerman said in interviews that was the specific reason he took the role of Quark, since he played the Ferengi leader in TNG's "The Last Outpost" and always felt bad for his involvement in that portrayal of the Ferengi - he felt his portrayal of Quark was a redemption of sorts and helped alleviate that guilt

That one and the one where Quark tries to have himself killed to not break a contract then complains about every single method of dying are some of my favorite Quark episodes. Oh, and the one where Quark and Odo are trapped on a planet and have to work together to survive.

@@Dargonhuman Both of those are classic Quark moments! There's also when Quark, Rom and Nog accidentally go back in time and "The Magnificent Ferengi" episode.

@@cinemaarts8795 oh yes that's also a great one, though I don't consider it specifically a "Quark" episode as Rom and Nog both had equal great moments. That was more of a family episode in my mind.

I'm working towards buying a box, but I need to figure out how to unload all of these stem bolts.

​@@christopherlundgren1700😂😂

I found a couple of old Reddit threads from over a decade ago that try to convert gold pressed latinum into US Dollars, and back then most people agreed that a slip of GPL is roughly equivalent to $2 USD in 2012, which is about $2.74 today with inflation. From their website, a 4-box bundle of Magic Spoon is $39 before shipping and tax, or just over 14 slips of GPL. 1 strip of GPL is 100 slips, and 1 bar is 20 strips, so that means 14 slips are 0.007 of a GPL bar, but that's also for 4 boxes. Dividing by 4, and one box of Magic Spoon will cost 0.00175 of a bar.

Magic spoon cereal tastes like gasoline smells.

@@TheMysteryDriver but ... I like the smell of gasoline... Maybe I should try a box?

The treatment they used to pitch the show was 24 pages. It wasn’t the Silmarillion. It had a couple of one-liner story springboards, not detailed synopses of entire seasons.