It was so good, I am sad to have finished it.
Are there any canon DS9 comics, books, etc. that continue where it left off?
I’ve finished TOS and TNG, but neither left me with a feeling of sadness like DS9 has.
Don’t feel bad. You can just do what the rest of us do and watch it over and over again for the rest of your life. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched DS9, TNG, VOY, and TOS. Even ENT and TAS. dozens and dozens. I even put on episodes when I go to sleep as background noise.
For ever and ever…
So you watch nothing else? Just TNG, DS9 and VOY take forever to rewatch!
Well, there is a crowdfunded documentary (which I even funded years ago) whose name is based on the last episode of the show “What we left behind” and where you can see interviews with the cast and the original writers imagine what an eight season might have looked like.
It’s nice and they remastered several scenes of the show in high definition, so it’s worth a watch.
Then you can rewatch it over and over again. I’m doing my third rewatch right now. I have only rewatched TNG once and no other series is as amazing as DS9 to me (though I have rewatched several individual episodes across all series)
I know Andrew Robinson has written a novel about Garak, A stitch in time, which I understand is well regarded and Garak is such an interesting character that sooner or later I’ll check it out.
We feel your loss, but you should celebrate because it was so well put together and it had a charm no other series really had.
A stitch in time is a great read. Andrew even narrates the audiobook if you like those.
@ConstipatedWatson @NullaFacies i love that documentary.
You can watch the original version, Babylon 5. That’s pretty good too.
The original idea for the premise, quite certain. The original version is a bit of a stretch.
There was a court case over this. The court found that it wasn’t true that DS9 was based on Stryczynski’s pitch.
I was at a con in the early 90s shortly after DS9 had its first season. Rick Sternbach came out. He did an entire slide show of all the production design evidence they’d submitted to the court. They’d working on developing models for a space station for a show for a long time before. He had huge numbers of drawings. The big thing was the decision to switch from a Federation built mushroom shaped station to an alien design.
I finally suffered through the first 4 seasons of Babylon 5 this year. While there are good moments, the production values, writing, and acting are just not on a level with DS9. It felt like watching a big 3 network soap opera in space a lot of the time, with that same type of acting style. A couple of characters were great, but that’s it. DS9 was just a better made show all around. Babylon 5 proves that you can have great ideas, but if the entire production situation doesn’t come together in an equally high quality way, you aren’t going to get an equally good result that will hold up over time the same way.
If you’re looking for a great book about DS9 I cannot recommend A Different Trek by David K. Seitz highly enough.
It took some time to find its voice but when it did it became so amazing. You’re right there won’t ever be something like it. DS9 was sophisticated and nuanced.
Just compare it to modern Star Trek. In DS9 when the characters learn about Section 31 it’s a multi episode story and several characters almost go crazy from the realisation of what that actually means for the Federation.
In Discovery, everyone knows about Section 31. It’s a bunch of special ops badasses that interfere in sovereign societies’ politics and that’s A okay.
Deep Space Nine is the most idealistic Star Trek, even moreso then TNG. Don’t get me wrong I love both, but for the characters of TNG utopian idealism is easy. DS9 on the other hand tests its characters ideals. Its about maintaining Utopia in the midst of overwhelming adversity. Its characters question their idealism, sometimes they even compromise it, but in the end they are not found wanting. Its aspirational AF especially for the times we are living in.
Unfortunately it seems like for some of the lesser creators in charge of modern Trek cough Kurtzman cough all they took away from DS9 is darkness and edge. They are cynical and don’t really understand or appreciate the importance of idealism in Star Trek. They just saw Sloan as some kind of badass superspy and probably thought Bashir was lame and didn’t understand his problem with Section 31. At least it seems like positive Idealism has been re-injected into Trek through SNW. We as a society need it now more then ever.