Matt Zimmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
matt_zimmer) wrote2025-03-24 12:25 pm
matt_zimmer) wrote2025-03-24 12:25 pm
My 3 Favorite TV Shows: Part 1: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Major Spoilers)
There are plenty of movie buffs out there and a ton of comic book fans. As for as fictional mediums go, television was always the bastard red-headed stepchild compared to film and books. Movie critics do NOTHING but talk shit about it and you what? I do too. It doesn't stop it from the being the medium of entertainment I most consume and that I feel the most comfortable with.
Does TV suck? Righteously and almost always. But it's still where I get the bulk of my fiction, good and bad. And it probably always will be.
There are plenty of amazing TV shows on TV currently. I don't dig them all but I get the appeal. And TV did not used to be this level of high quality, if you can believe it. It used to be MUCH worse. There was a point in time in which Quantum Leap was the best science fiction series on television, which strikes me as a fucking travesty. Nevertheless, as a TV buff I have had MANY favorite shows over the years, mostly during my formative young adulthood. The thing all of these shows I loved have in common is almost none of them hold up in hindsight on any level. Many are outright cringe. I get WHY I loved Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, The X-Files, Quantum Leap, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Dinosaurs at the time for their uniqueness, but each of those shows were shows I thought were majorly sucky rewatching them years later. I'm sure plenty of kids who grew up in the 1980's were disillusioned when seeing a full episode of ThunderCats or Transformers as adults. My sensibilities are so different from when I was younger that I want to pick holes in Captain Fucking Picard! What is wrong with me?
There are exactly THREE shows from back in the day I loved that hold up equally well and contain the same magic today as back then (one of them lands even BETTER in hindsight). There are a few shows I still have great admiration for despite their imperfections (Farscape, Millennium, The Simpsons, Futurama, Gargoyles, Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Superman: The Animated Series) but only three shows I EVER saw as a youth wowed me decades later: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Twin Peaks, and Justice League Unlimited. This will be a 3 part essay on each of these shows, what they meant to me as a viewer and a writer, how they influenced my work (where applicable) and what the best and worst things were about them.
The first essay will cover Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
I tell people ALL the time that Gilda And Meek was mostly influenced by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Twin Peaks. When I explain the Twin Peaks influences to a person they become instantly readily apparent. But I don't know if a person who has ever watched every episode of DS9 could ever see its influence in Gilda And Meek. And it is ALL over it. Not Star Trek: The Original Series. Not Star Trek: The Next Generation or Voyager. All three of those other shows are somewhat explored in the Gilda And Meek sequel series F.I.S.H., and the allegories are entirely uncomplimentary to the Star Trek franchise as a whole.
Why do I love Deep Space Nine over all other Star Trek? ESPECIALLY anything Gene Roddenberry had to do with? I think a piece of low-hanging fruit was the morality was easier to accept. I found the "wonderful" future of humanity as posited by Gene Roddenberry, cold, unwelcoming, and frankly, boring. I would rather exist in the same pop culture era as Donald Trump than live in a supposedly Utopian society where the most cutting-edge videogame is Dixon Hill. Where people play classical symphonies in their spare time. I do not recognize my ideal future in these broken characters, and I don't want us to turn into that level of unfeeling moral scolds EVER. Where racism and colonialism is ALWAYS bad, unless the Federation does it, which makes it righteous. I love Star Trek. I do. But I feel very uncomfortable with the crazy things Gene Roddenberry believed humanity should aspire to. It suggested our cool and funky society as it was (and still is) was fucking low-class when compared to these utter prigs who teach calculus to 8-year-olds and insist in the future kids mustn't be allowed to grieve their dead parents, because grief is a negative emotion, and humanity will evolve beyond negative emotions in 400 years. Derp. (And this was a guy who insisted a psychiatrist be a bridge officer. For real.) It's not just pure bullshit. It's an insult to every decent person living in the now. And there were (and yes still are) plenty of them. But because most of us aren't playwrights in our spare time we are supposedly not as evolved as we should be. Calling bullshit on that.
Deep Space Nine didn't EXACTLY call bullshit on that idea (co-creator Rick Berman once described himself as the person who held Gene Roddenberry's Trill symbiont after he died, but I think their relationship was FAR more unhealthy than that. Berman was more like Roddenberry's bowel leech.) So DS9 could only go SO far in exploring the reality of humanity. But showrunner Ira Steven-Behr usually swung for the fences and did things with Star Trek that were so common sense it's almost frightening that not only would Roddenberry never have thought to do them, but that if he were alive, he would have stopped those awesome things in their tracks.
Let's take the Dominion War Arc. For many of Star Trek's Old Guard, it was an unforgivable violation of Gene Roddenberry's edict of exploring humanity's positive nature and commitment to overcoming violence. I'll discuss other reasons that mindset is backasswards in a bit, but despite it completely being wrong-headed for moral and ethical reasons, the truth is Gene Roddenberry WOULD have immediately squashed The Dominion War. It never would have happened if he were still alive when it aired. So if somebody wants to tell me that Arc was counter to Gene Roddenberry's entire philosophy I'll say, "It sure was."
Do you know what else is was? Damn good television. Hell, it was amazing television. Tell me why that should matter less than some unrealistic standards from a dead guy who clearly had no understanding of people or psychology to begin with?
Deep Space Nine was the first Star Trek series EVER to take many of the undesirable races Gene Roddenberry created for both The Original Series and The Next Generation and provocatively suggest they had many admirable qualities, the most notable being that they were the aliens species most resembling 20th Century Humans.
There are ugly stories of how the Ferengi were created, mostly down to Antisemitism on Roddenberry's end. The late Harlan Ellison has complained that Gene Roddenberry's notion of future diversity is actually utter bullshit when alien races like not only the Ferengi, but the Klingons and Romulans gave the franchise the permission to take shots at supposedly undesirable groups of people in the name of "allegory". The bottom line is if instead of creating sucky Jewish stereotype human characters, you create a group of money-grubbing aliens to show WHY Jews suck, you aren't actually selling anti-racism and diversity. And you never were.
Ira-Steven Behr took one look at the Ferengi, and decided instead of being the series antagonists and against everything the heroes ever stood against, they were the most recognizably human characters, and he made them so. Even better, DS9's main Ferengi Quark was routinely portrayed as the most morally consistent character of ANYBODY, humans included. Quark had a strict moral value code he almost ALWAYS followed, often even when it was inconvenient (or even detrimental) to his own personal interests. The Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition are for the most part a reprehensible set of moral instructions, but Behr cannily (and rightly) pointed out Quark always following and believing in them even when it was bad for him and his loved ones, suggests he walks the walk better than any self-professed "staunch Christian" who routinely ignores the Bible's strict rules, because hey, Jesus is my Shepherd and I shall be forgiven. Quark followed his moral code even when it was HARD. And that sort of genius subtext is part of why I loved Deep Space Nine so much. And I especially loved it whenever Quark called bullshit on the humans looking down at Ferengi for being greedy and immoral when nothing like slavery or concentration camps EVER existed in Ferenginar's history, so get off your high horse, Sisko. What I love about when Quark did that is that although he's right on the basic facts, he's not completely right on the subtext. The subjugation of Ferengi females, if not as ugly as concentration camps, is DEFINITELY a form of slavery, with the difference being that people like Quark don't understand that, so it's still going on. DS9 rarely makes characters entirely wrong (just Gul Dukat and Kai Winn would count as both). But it NEVER makes ANY entirely RIGHT either.
Another positive thing about Deep Space Nine that nobody gives it the proper credit for is the characters fight. Even the humans lose their cool and blow up at people they have little to nothing in common with. And there was very little conflict on The Original Series and Gene wanted even less on The Next Generation because he didn't believe humans should be in conflict with each other. Which again suggests the man understood NOTHING about people, much less society, and was the WRONG person to decide humanity's positive future.
How does one avoid violence and war? By talking shit out. Yes, by arguing. Debating. Finding common ground by actually discussing the problem instead of acting like no fucking problems exist. It's not only weird that Roddenberry was too dumb to know that, but there still exist Trekkies who will still defend that dumb idea of his to this day as if it's aspirational instead of utterly damaging on every political and social level you can imagine. The Cult Of Roddenberry is real, and for me more than a little bit terrifying.
Why It Still Holds Up
The real reason DS9 is the only Star Trek series in either the Roddenberry or Berman eras that still holds up is it is the first Star Trek series in franchise history to use serialized storytelling. At one point Star Trek: Enterprise also attempted this idea, much less successfully. Mostly because since DS9 was set on a space station, the actions the characters took, good and bad, had actual CONSEQUENCES and fall-out for the entire show from that point forward. The Enterprise can't just fuck things up via a Prime Directive screwjob, say "I wonder how this now-doomed species will cope with this horrible new reality we were partly responsible for...Oh well. Guess we'll never know," and go galivanting off to the next space adventure. Something bad happens on Deep Space Nine, things CHANGE and STAY changed, until something good happens. And sometimes it takes AWHILE for the good thing to happen. Deep Space Nine was frankly one of the first genre shows in general to do serialized storytelling besides Twin Peaks, and yes, Babylon 5. I have heard J. Michael Straczynski claim that Paramount ripped off Babylon 5, and while I haven't sat down and watched Babylon 5 in order yet (although I will at some point) I DID watch a LOT of it and was almost always underwhelmed. If DS9 ripped of Babylon 5, the major change they made was doing things right. I would not be highlighting that fact if I were Straczynski while Babylon 5 was so hit and miss.
Why I Love It
It was a purely enjoyable TV show. The Holosuites will never replace Call Of Duty or Super Mario, but it's about time Star Trek pointed out the real advantage of the technology is perfect safe sex simulation. And while the James Bond-style and Vic Fontaine Holodeck programs aren't exactly as fun as modern videogames, the difference between them and Dixon Hill and Sherlock Holmes is that they actually ARE fun and enjoyable on every level. There were also a ton of cool spaceship battles, something utterly frowned upon before the Alex Kurtzman era, but something that was always awesome. I believe in DS9's future because it wasn't the Fucking Underpants Gnomes. Humanity is in bad shape ->->-> Steal Underpants ->->-> Communist Utopia! How the fuck would that even WORK? DS9 doesn't answer those questions (although the current Paramount+ show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds did an admirable job TRYING to do so in its Pilot) but DS9 said that if it was easy to be a saint in paradise, the road to paradise was never easy. And it's something you have to fight for to keep. It won't simply keep existing because you deserve it by virtue of being virtuous. It can be tenuous and one must be vigilant against bad actors at all times.
Oh, yeah. Only original Star Trek show that hold up in the modern era. Very much so.
How It Influenced Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse
The biggest Deep Space Nine influence is not readily apparent. But I mentioned DS9 was the most purely enjoyable Star Trek. That's what I took for Gilda And Meek. Entirely.
There is plenty of enjoyable fluff out there, but the thing I took from DS9 that I try to put in every issue of The Un-Iverse I can is DS9 made me feel good unexpectedly. And not always because of good things happening to the characters. For the series' most melodramatic and best shocking twists, DS9 didn't kill off a bunch of characters (although the way Jadzia Dax went out still pisses me off). Many of those twists were brilliant, and instead of feeling shitty over loss and grief they filled me with evil joy. DS9 was one of those shows that whenever they did a "Whuh oh!" twist, I almost never cringed. I almost always screamed out in wicked pleasure. I'll give you some examples in a bit.
The part of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine I took for The Un-Iverse is the fact that I believe GOOD surprises are FAR better than bad ones. And the sad truth is DS9 probably should NOT be getting this level of credit from me for that decades later. Why not? Because that should be a fucking COMMON viewpoint, and not an entirely awesome and subversive one! But the shitty Game Of Thrones / misery porn pop-culture landscape wound up the way it did instead. Gilda And Meek is me getting back to surprising the reader by making them feel unexpectedly good, and giving them things they always wanted, but were too shy to hope for, because fuck it, this is genre, and whenever we watch a TV show, we sigh in resignation over the fact that we are invariably about to be harshly judged and punished for the apparently unforgivable sin of having to audacity to actually like a show, and care about what happens to the characters. Plenty of sad things happen in The Un-Iverse, but they are the RIGHT sad things, and The Good Hurt, and never, EVER lessen or diminish the GOOD surprises. My mandate is giving the reader everything they ever wanted, even stuff they didn't KNOW they wanted at the time. And they didn't KNOW they wanted it because they had been conditioned to believe they never deserved it, so don't get your hopes up for them to be repeatedly stomped on for the crime of having them in the first place.
Best episode(s):
Most people LOVE Season Four's "The Visitor", Season Five's "Trials And Tribble-ations", and Season Six's "In The Pale Moonlight" best, but I have a different favorite pair of episodes (both two-parters). "The Visitor" is indeed a true masterpiece, and one of the best examples of Good Hurt ever devised, back before Joss Whedon really even got started. It's such an amazing episode that TV Guide included it in an anniversary poll for the greatest Star Trek episodes of all time, sort of as a bone for DS9 fans who were not represented at ALL in any of the other choices. And TV Guide's Editor's were SHOCKED that "The Visitor" won the poll in a landslide. Because it was the best episode of the ones listed. By far.
"In The Pale Moonlight" is a great episode too. I recently heard some criticism about how it makes excuses for Sisko's shitty actions, but that's entirely wrong-headed. In fact, the episode is so memorable because it doesn't take a stand either way over whether Sisko's actions were right or not, and allowed the viewer to decide for themselves as if they were adults, who didn't need their treacly moral spoonfed for them. (Matt Zimmer landed on the side that Sisko did nothing but dick moves in that episode).
Out of the three most-loved episodes, "Trials And Tribble-ations" is my least favorite, and it's probably NOT a coincidence it's the writers' least favorite beloved episode too. Whenever a fan tell Behr that's their favorite episode he sighs in frustration. Because that was the TOS tribute episode. It's not REALLY a REAL Deep Space Nine episode. As wonderful as it is, it is not a remotely accurate example of what Deep Space Nine was at its best. And this is speaking as someone who LOVED that show's other comedy episodes. Because they were all DS9's comedy. This was too focused on the larger franchise for the Anniversary, and doesn't feel entirely like Deep Space Nine.
MY personal favorite episodes are a pair of two-parters. The best one was Season Five's "In Purgatory's Shadow" / "By Inferno's Light". I'll give the edge to the first half as the best DS9 episode ever. SO much evil joy to be had! Enabran Tain is Garak's father! General Martok is in a Dominion Prison camp! As is DR. BASHIR? What da fuck?! Who has been replaced by a Changeling on the show for weeks on end which made rewatching the mid-part of the season a hoot! "By Inferno's Light" is no slouch regarding Evil Joy Twists either. Gul Dukat cuts the cord from any ill-advised, half-assed redemption arc, and secretly forges a pact with the Dominion. The Cardassian / Dominion Alliance and the reinstatement of the Klingon Khitomer Accords in the episode drove every major bit of DS9's arc until the series finale. You might have been inclined to feel ripped off the spaceship battles are averted in the second part, but the tension in the episode was so damn thick I was relieved instead.
My second favorite (two-part) episode was Season Three's "Improbable Cause" / "The Die Is Cast". DS9 liked pairing up Garak (The greatest Star Trek character of all time, played perfectly by Andrew Robinson) with a member of the main cast to watch the fur fly. Garak spent much of "In Purgatory's Shadow" / "By Inferno's Light" driving Worf crazy for the sound reason because he could, and it was so fucking easy (and fun). Odo endures that specific torture here. But things turns serious in the second part when Garak, a former intelligence agent in Cardassia's shady spy agency the Obsidian Order, is forced to torture Odo for REAL, and finds he has no taste for it anymore. Leave it to Deep Space Nine to make a viewer feel sympathy for a torturer. Hell, they made me feel sympathy for Major Kira and she was a fucking terrorist! DS9 knew exactly what buttons to push.
And this two parter also filled me with my share of evil joy. First in realizing the entire Romulan / Cardassia attack on the Founder's former homeworld was a trap designed to destroy their combined fleets. And that the persnickety Romulan aide who doesn't remotely like or trust "Mr. Garak" is a Changeling in disguise who lets Garak and Odo escape the massacre because "No Changeling has ever harmed another." And hey! Spaceship battles and 'splosions! Sweet!
Worst episode(s):
I think Season Six's "Profit And Lace" would be an easy choice under most circumstances. It is certainly the most notable episode to not remotely hold up in today's climate. With Quark's sex change operation and the guy he's trying to do business with repeatedly trying to rape him played for laughs, it's not just politically incorrect. It's gross on every level.
But really, I'm gonna be weird and say the worst episode never aired, or was even made. Nana Visitor who played Major Kira put her foot down and vetoed it. And frankly, I thank God she was cast, because if she hadn't refused to play the scene, somebody else might have been dumb enough to, and the entire series would have been ruined. Would it still have influenced Gilda And Meek? I shudder to think. For the better or the worse? The fact that it could be either is chilling to me.
Ira Steven-Behr, bless his simple heart, was dumb enough to think it would be an interesting idea to have Kira and Gul Dukat have an affair.
This is the grossest and most offensive idea not only ever posited on that series, but I will go out on a limb and say in Star Trek history too.
Basically the surrogate for repressed Jews during the Holocaust, the most kickass and admirable character female in Star Trek history, was gonna decide to fuck Star Trek's Adolf Hitler. Because it would be juicy. I've known about this story for decades. But seeing the look Nana Visitor gives Behr in the documentary "What We Left Behind: Looking Back At Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" is positively chilling, because I firmly believe that woman could have murdered him in that moment. Behr embarrassedly backtracks, says it was just an idea, and the actual written script involved Kira's mother, but Visitor gave a real-world reason she was cast as the most pitiless, fearsome, and dangerous woman in Star Trek history. Why is Behr still in the room and not running away in the other direction upon getting that look from her? I get why he's whining the idea never made it to script. It is literally his ONLY defense against an idea that vulgar. If that script had been written, and upon reading if, if Visitor had read it and first-degree murdered Behr on the spot, if I were on the jury, I'd refuse to convict her. And I wouldn't settle for creating a hung jury. I'd do my damndest to convince the other 11 people in that jury room that the bastard had it coming. Because he would have.
Should you watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?
I think so. The Pilot is heavily tied to Star Trek: The Next Generation (Patrick Stewart is the Special Guest Star) so if this is the first Star Trek series you've ever seen you might be a little confused. But it turns into its own thing in the following episode and pretty much EVERY episode after that. Should you watch The Next Generation first for context if you've never seen Star Trek?
I wouldn't. If you've never seen Star Trek, it's probably because the premise doesn't sound like your cuppa cha. You'll be frustrated by Next Gen right quick and decide not to bother with DS9. If you've seen the Original Series and The Next Generation but avoided DS9 because it's supposedly "dark and gritty", let me assure you that is bullshit and always was. DS9 is the most purely enjoyable Star Trek show of them all.
Will it give you context for Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse? In one upcoming case regarding a major Un-Iverse spoiler, I half-worry too much so. If you HAVE to go through one of the most major upcoming pleasurable Un-Iverse twists blind, wait. That's my advice.
Does TV suck? Righteously and almost always. But it's still where I get the bulk of my fiction, good and bad. And it probably always will be.
There are plenty of amazing TV shows on TV currently. I don't dig them all but I get the appeal. And TV did not used to be this level of high quality, if you can believe it. It used to be MUCH worse. There was a point in time in which Quantum Leap was the best science fiction series on television, which strikes me as a fucking travesty. Nevertheless, as a TV buff I have had MANY favorite shows over the years, mostly during my formative young adulthood. The thing all of these shows I loved have in common is almost none of them hold up in hindsight on any level. Many are outright cringe. I get WHY I loved Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, The X-Files, Quantum Leap, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Dinosaurs at the time for their uniqueness, but each of those shows were shows I thought were majorly sucky rewatching them years later. I'm sure plenty of kids who grew up in the 1980's were disillusioned when seeing a full episode of ThunderCats or Transformers as adults. My sensibilities are so different from when I was younger that I want to pick holes in Captain Fucking Picard! What is wrong with me?
There are exactly THREE shows from back in the day I loved that hold up equally well and contain the same magic today as back then (one of them lands even BETTER in hindsight). There are a few shows I still have great admiration for despite their imperfections (Farscape, Millennium, The Simpsons, Futurama, Gargoyles, Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, Superman: The Animated Series) but only three shows I EVER saw as a youth wowed me decades later: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Twin Peaks, and Justice League Unlimited. This will be a 3 part essay on each of these shows, what they meant to me as a viewer and a writer, how they influenced my work (where applicable) and what the best and worst things were about them.
The first essay will cover Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
I tell people ALL the time that Gilda And Meek was mostly influenced by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Twin Peaks. When I explain the Twin Peaks influences to a person they become instantly readily apparent. But I don't know if a person who has ever watched every episode of DS9 could ever see its influence in Gilda And Meek. And it is ALL over it. Not Star Trek: The Original Series. Not Star Trek: The Next Generation or Voyager. All three of those other shows are somewhat explored in the Gilda And Meek sequel series F.I.S.H., and the allegories are entirely uncomplimentary to the Star Trek franchise as a whole.
Why do I love Deep Space Nine over all other Star Trek? ESPECIALLY anything Gene Roddenberry had to do with? I think a piece of low-hanging fruit was the morality was easier to accept. I found the "wonderful" future of humanity as posited by Gene Roddenberry, cold, unwelcoming, and frankly, boring. I would rather exist in the same pop culture era as Donald Trump than live in a supposedly Utopian society where the most cutting-edge videogame is Dixon Hill. Where people play classical symphonies in their spare time. I do not recognize my ideal future in these broken characters, and I don't want us to turn into that level of unfeeling moral scolds EVER. Where racism and colonialism is ALWAYS bad, unless the Federation does it, which makes it righteous. I love Star Trek. I do. But I feel very uncomfortable with the crazy things Gene Roddenberry believed humanity should aspire to. It suggested our cool and funky society as it was (and still is) was fucking low-class when compared to these utter prigs who teach calculus to 8-year-olds and insist in the future kids mustn't be allowed to grieve their dead parents, because grief is a negative emotion, and humanity will evolve beyond negative emotions in 400 years. Derp. (And this was a guy who insisted a psychiatrist be a bridge officer. For real.) It's not just pure bullshit. It's an insult to every decent person living in the now. And there were (and yes still are) plenty of them. But because most of us aren't playwrights in our spare time we are supposedly not as evolved as we should be. Calling bullshit on that.
Deep Space Nine didn't EXACTLY call bullshit on that idea (co-creator Rick Berman once described himself as the person who held Gene Roddenberry's Trill symbiont after he died, but I think their relationship was FAR more unhealthy than that. Berman was more like Roddenberry's bowel leech.) So DS9 could only go SO far in exploring the reality of humanity. But showrunner Ira Steven-Behr usually swung for the fences and did things with Star Trek that were so common sense it's almost frightening that not only would Roddenberry never have thought to do them, but that if he were alive, he would have stopped those awesome things in their tracks.
Let's take the Dominion War Arc. For many of Star Trek's Old Guard, it was an unforgivable violation of Gene Roddenberry's edict of exploring humanity's positive nature and commitment to overcoming violence. I'll discuss other reasons that mindset is backasswards in a bit, but despite it completely being wrong-headed for moral and ethical reasons, the truth is Gene Roddenberry WOULD have immediately squashed The Dominion War. It never would have happened if he were still alive when it aired. So if somebody wants to tell me that Arc was counter to Gene Roddenberry's entire philosophy I'll say, "It sure was."
Do you know what else is was? Damn good television. Hell, it was amazing television. Tell me why that should matter less than some unrealistic standards from a dead guy who clearly had no understanding of people or psychology to begin with?
Deep Space Nine was the first Star Trek series EVER to take many of the undesirable races Gene Roddenberry created for both The Original Series and The Next Generation and provocatively suggest they had many admirable qualities, the most notable being that they were the aliens species most resembling 20th Century Humans.
There are ugly stories of how the Ferengi were created, mostly down to Antisemitism on Roddenberry's end. The late Harlan Ellison has complained that Gene Roddenberry's notion of future diversity is actually utter bullshit when alien races like not only the Ferengi, but the Klingons and Romulans gave the franchise the permission to take shots at supposedly undesirable groups of people in the name of "allegory". The bottom line is if instead of creating sucky Jewish stereotype human characters, you create a group of money-grubbing aliens to show WHY Jews suck, you aren't actually selling anti-racism and diversity. And you never were.
Ira-Steven Behr took one look at the Ferengi, and decided instead of being the series antagonists and against everything the heroes ever stood against, they were the most recognizably human characters, and he made them so. Even better, DS9's main Ferengi Quark was routinely portrayed as the most morally consistent character of ANYBODY, humans included. Quark had a strict moral value code he almost ALWAYS followed, often even when it was inconvenient (or even detrimental) to his own personal interests. The Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition are for the most part a reprehensible set of moral instructions, but Behr cannily (and rightly) pointed out Quark always following and believing in them even when it was bad for him and his loved ones, suggests he walks the walk better than any self-professed "staunch Christian" who routinely ignores the Bible's strict rules, because hey, Jesus is my Shepherd and I shall be forgiven. Quark followed his moral code even when it was HARD. And that sort of genius subtext is part of why I loved Deep Space Nine so much. And I especially loved it whenever Quark called bullshit on the humans looking down at Ferengi for being greedy and immoral when nothing like slavery or concentration camps EVER existed in Ferenginar's history, so get off your high horse, Sisko. What I love about when Quark did that is that although he's right on the basic facts, he's not completely right on the subtext. The subjugation of Ferengi females, if not as ugly as concentration camps, is DEFINITELY a form of slavery, with the difference being that people like Quark don't understand that, so it's still going on. DS9 rarely makes characters entirely wrong (just Gul Dukat and Kai Winn would count as both). But it NEVER makes ANY entirely RIGHT either.
Another positive thing about Deep Space Nine that nobody gives it the proper credit for is the characters fight. Even the humans lose their cool and blow up at people they have little to nothing in common with. And there was very little conflict on The Original Series and Gene wanted even less on The Next Generation because he didn't believe humans should be in conflict with each other. Which again suggests the man understood NOTHING about people, much less society, and was the WRONG person to decide humanity's positive future.
How does one avoid violence and war? By talking shit out. Yes, by arguing. Debating. Finding common ground by actually discussing the problem instead of acting like no fucking problems exist. It's not only weird that Roddenberry was too dumb to know that, but there still exist Trekkies who will still defend that dumb idea of his to this day as if it's aspirational instead of utterly damaging on every political and social level you can imagine. The Cult Of Roddenberry is real, and for me more than a little bit terrifying.
Why It Still Holds Up
The real reason DS9 is the only Star Trek series in either the Roddenberry or Berman eras that still holds up is it is the first Star Trek series in franchise history to use serialized storytelling. At one point Star Trek: Enterprise also attempted this idea, much less successfully. Mostly because since DS9 was set on a space station, the actions the characters took, good and bad, had actual CONSEQUENCES and fall-out for the entire show from that point forward. The Enterprise can't just fuck things up via a Prime Directive screwjob, say "I wonder how this now-doomed species will cope with this horrible new reality we were partly responsible for...Oh well. Guess we'll never know," and go galivanting off to the next space adventure. Something bad happens on Deep Space Nine, things CHANGE and STAY changed, until something good happens. And sometimes it takes AWHILE for the good thing to happen. Deep Space Nine was frankly one of the first genre shows in general to do serialized storytelling besides Twin Peaks, and yes, Babylon 5. I have heard J. Michael Straczynski claim that Paramount ripped off Babylon 5, and while I haven't sat down and watched Babylon 5 in order yet (although I will at some point) I DID watch a LOT of it and was almost always underwhelmed. If DS9 ripped of Babylon 5, the major change they made was doing things right. I would not be highlighting that fact if I were Straczynski while Babylon 5 was so hit and miss.
Why I Love It
It was a purely enjoyable TV show. The Holosuites will never replace Call Of Duty or Super Mario, but it's about time Star Trek pointed out the real advantage of the technology is perfect safe sex simulation. And while the James Bond-style and Vic Fontaine Holodeck programs aren't exactly as fun as modern videogames, the difference between them and Dixon Hill and Sherlock Holmes is that they actually ARE fun and enjoyable on every level. There were also a ton of cool spaceship battles, something utterly frowned upon before the Alex Kurtzman era, but something that was always awesome. I believe in DS9's future because it wasn't the Fucking Underpants Gnomes. Humanity is in bad shape ->->-> Steal Underpants ->->-> Communist Utopia! How the fuck would that even WORK? DS9 doesn't answer those questions (although the current Paramount+ show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds did an admirable job TRYING to do so in its Pilot) but DS9 said that if it was easy to be a saint in paradise, the road to paradise was never easy. And it's something you have to fight for to keep. It won't simply keep existing because you deserve it by virtue of being virtuous. It can be tenuous and one must be vigilant against bad actors at all times.
Oh, yeah. Only original Star Trek show that hold up in the modern era. Very much so.
How It Influenced Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse
The biggest Deep Space Nine influence is not readily apparent. But I mentioned DS9 was the most purely enjoyable Star Trek. That's what I took for Gilda And Meek. Entirely.
There is plenty of enjoyable fluff out there, but the thing I took from DS9 that I try to put in every issue of The Un-Iverse I can is DS9 made me feel good unexpectedly. And not always because of good things happening to the characters. For the series' most melodramatic and best shocking twists, DS9 didn't kill off a bunch of characters (although the way Jadzia Dax went out still pisses me off). Many of those twists were brilliant, and instead of feeling shitty over loss and grief they filled me with evil joy. DS9 was one of those shows that whenever they did a "Whuh oh!" twist, I almost never cringed. I almost always screamed out in wicked pleasure. I'll give you some examples in a bit.
The part of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine I took for The Un-Iverse is the fact that I believe GOOD surprises are FAR better than bad ones. And the sad truth is DS9 probably should NOT be getting this level of credit from me for that decades later. Why not? Because that should be a fucking COMMON viewpoint, and not an entirely awesome and subversive one! But the shitty Game Of Thrones / misery porn pop-culture landscape wound up the way it did instead. Gilda And Meek is me getting back to surprising the reader by making them feel unexpectedly good, and giving them things they always wanted, but were too shy to hope for, because fuck it, this is genre, and whenever we watch a TV show, we sigh in resignation over the fact that we are invariably about to be harshly judged and punished for the apparently unforgivable sin of having to audacity to actually like a show, and care about what happens to the characters. Plenty of sad things happen in The Un-Iverse, but they are the RIGHT sad things, and The Good Hurt, and never, EVER lessen or diminish the GOOD surprises. My mandate is giving the reader everything they ever wanted, even stuff they didn't KNOW they wanted at the time. And they didn't KNOW they wanted it because they had been conditioned to believe they never deserved it, so don't get your hopes up for them to be repeatedly stomped on for the crime of having them in the first place.
Best episode(s):
Most people LOVE Season Four's "The Visitor", Season Five's "Trials And Tribble-ations", and Season Six's "In The Pale Moonlight" best, but I have a different favorite pair of episodes (both two-parters). "The Visitor" is indeed a true masterpiece, and one of the best examples of Good Hurt ever devised, back before Joss Whedon really even got started. It's such an amazing episode that TV Guide included it in an anniversary poll for the greatest Star Trek episodes of all time, sort of as a bone for DS9 fans who were not represented at ALL in any of the other choices. And TV Guide's Editor's were SHOCKED that "The Visitor" won the poll in a landslide. Because it was the best episode of the ones listed. By far.
"In The Pale Moonlight" is a great episode too. I recently heard some criticism about how it makes excuses for Sisko's shitty actions, but that's entirely wrong-headed. In fact, the episode is so memorable because it doesn't take a stand either way over whether Sisko's actions were right or not, and allowed the viewer to decide for themselves as if they were adults, who didn't need their treacly moral spoonfed for them. (Matt Zimmer landed on the side that Sisko did nothing but dick moves in that episode).
Out of the three most-loved episodes, "Trials And Tribble-ations" is my least favorite, and it's probably NOT a coincidence it's the writers' least favorite beloved episode too. Whenever a fan tell Behr that's their favorite episode he sighs in frustration. Because that was the TOS tribute episode. It's not REALLY a REAL Deep Space Nine episode. As wonderful as it is, it is not a remotely accurate example of what Deep Space Nine was at its best. And this is speaking as someone who LOVED that show's other comedy episodes. Because they were all DS9's comedy. This was too focused on the larger franchise for the Anniversary, and doesn't feel entirely like Deep Space Nine.
MY personal favorite episodes are a pair of two-parters. The best one was Season Five's "In Purgatory's Shadow" / "By Inferno's Light". I'll give the edge to the first half as the best DS9 episode ever. SO much evil joy to be had! Enabran Tain is Garak's father! General Martok is in a Dominion Prison camp! As is DR. BASHIR? What da fuck?! Who has been replaced by a Changeling on the show for weeks on end which made rewatching the mid-part of the season a hoot! "By Inferno's Light" is no slouch regarding Evil Joy Twists either. Gul Dukat cuts the cord from any ill-advised, half-assed redemption arc, and secretly forges a pact with the Dominion. The Cardassian / Dominion Alliance and the reinstatement of the Klingon Khitomer Accords in the episode drove every major bit of DS9's arc until the series finale. You might have been inclined to feel ripped off the spaceship battles are averted in the second part, but the tension in the episode was so damn thick I was relieved instead.
My second favorite (two-part) episode was Season Three's "Improbable Cause" / "The Die Is Cast". DS9 liked pairing up Garak (The greatest Star Trek character of all time, played perfectly by Andrew Robinson) with a member of the main cast to watch the fur fly. Garak spent much of "In Purgatory's Shadow" / "By Inferno's Light" driving Worf crazy for the sound reason because he could, and it was so fucking easy (and fun). Odo endures that specific torture here. But things turns serious in the second part when Garak, a former intelligence agent in Cardassia's shady spy agency the Obsidian Order, is forced to torture Odo for REAL, and finds he has no taste for it anymore. Leave it to Deep Space Nine to make a viewer feel sympathy for a torturer. Hell, they made me feel sympathy for Major Kira and she was a fucking terrorist! DS9 knew exactly what buttons to push.
And this two parter also filled me with my share of evil joy. First in realizing the entire Romulan / Cardassia attack on the Founder's former homeworld was a trap designed to destroy their combined fleets. And that the persnickety Romulan aide who doesn't remotely like or trust "Mr. Garak" is a Changeling in disguise who lets Garak and Odo escape the massacre because "No Changeling has ever harmed another." And hey! Spaceship battles and 'splosions! Sweet!
Worst episode(s):
I think Season Six's "Profit And Lace" would be an easy choice under most circumstances. It is certainly the most notable episode to not remotely hold up in today's climate. With Quark's sex change operation and the guy he's trying to do business with repeatedly trying to rape him played for laughs, it's not just politically incorrect. It's gross on every level.
But really, I'm gonna be weird and say the worst episode never aired, or was even made. Nana Visitor who played Major Kira put her foot down and vetoed it. And frankly, I thank God she was cast, because if she hadn't refused to play the scene, somebody else might have been dumb enough to, and the entire series would have been ruined. Would it still have influenced Gilda And Meek? I shudder to think. For the better or the worse? The fact that it could be either is chilling to me.
Ira Steven-Behr, bless his simple heart, was dumb enough to think it would be an interesting idea to have Kira and Gul Dukat have an affair.
This is the grossest and most offensive idea not only ever posited on that series, but I will go out on a limb and say in Star Trek history too.
Basically the surrogate for repressed Jews during the Holocaust, the most kickass and admirable character female in Star Trek history, was gonna decide to fuck Star Trek's Adolf Hitler. Because it would be juicy. I've known about this story for decades. But seeing the look Nana Visitor gives Behr in the documentary "What We Left Behind: Looking Back At Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" is positively chilling, because I firmly believe that woman could have murdered him in that moment. Behr embarrassedly backtracks, says it was just an idea, and the actual written script involved Kira's mother, but Visitor gave a real-world reason she was cast as the most pitiless, fearsome, and dangerous woman in Star Trek history. Why is Behr still in the room and not running away in the other direction upon getting that look from her? I get why he's whining the idea never made it to script. It is literally his ONLY defense against an idea that vulgar. If that script had been written, and upon reading if, if Visitor had read it and first-degree murdered Behr on the spot, if I were on the jury, I'd refuse to convict her. And I wouldn't settle for creating a hung jury. I'd do my damndest to convince the other 11 people in that jury room that the bastard had it coming. Because he would have.
Should you watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?
I think so. The Pilot is heavily tied to Star Trek: The Next Generation (Patrick Stewart is the Special Guest Star) so if this is the first Star Trek series you've ever seen you might be a little confused. But it turns into its own thing in the following episode and pretty much EVERY episode after that. Should you watch The Next Generation first for context if you've never seen Star Trek?
I wouldn't. If you've never seen Star Trek, it's probably because the premise doesn't sound like your cuppa cha. You'll be frustrated by Next Gen right quick and decide not to bother with DS9. If you've seen the Original Series and The Next Generation but avoided DS9 because it's supposedly "dark and gritty", let me assure you that is bullshit and always was. DS9 is the most purely enjoyable Star Trek show of them all.
Will it give you context for Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse? In one upcoming case regarding a major Un-Iverse spoiler, I half-worry too much so. If you HAVE to go through one of the most major upcoming pleasurable Un-Iverse twists blind, wait. That's my advice.