Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Complete Series

This is not your Fathers Star Trek. The days of James T. Kirk have grown up. Not even the Next Generation series was as brilliantly written and filmed as Deep Space Nine. This series was a novel written for TV. A continuous story about a new Lt Ben Sisko as the first Federation officer taking command of a large space station for the Federation Of Planets. His beginnings are shaky trying to get used to a new command and his new home, DS9, located out in deep space, very far from Earth.Sisko soon finds his place with his staff and they slowly become more like a family in surreal surroundings. ST:DS9 has everything that a good novel should have. Love, hate, peace, war, duty, mystery, intrigue, wonderment, quality special effects, and friendship. Over time, we see every one of these aspects. We get to know each of the perfectly casted characters as if they are our own friends, and yes, enemies. We feel their pain, and their triumphs. In essence, Deep Space Nine becomes home, and the casts are our neighbors and friends who we care about.This series is not a video game designed around the special effects. Although there will be some good action and adventure, it is not the constant action adventure of the other Star Trek series. DS9 is a darker story about the characters and their lives. It is about the loyalty of duty and friends. It is about freedom and patriotism. It's about families. It is about many alien races working together, fighting in a common cause for the benefit of everyone. This series had a good budget which shows in the quality of the scripts, lavish sets, and very good special effects.Before the series ends, you will have laughed, cried, jumped for joy in victories, sat on the edge of your seat many times, and pounded your fist in hate and frustration for the bad guys. You can't help yourself. The stories draw you in like a dream you don't want to wake up from, just so you don't miss anything. My only regret at the end was that it ended. But as they say, all good things must come to an end. Deep Space Nine is for the true trekkie at heart that loves everything about the Star Trek universe. If that describes you, then DS9 will not disappoint you. I have watched this series in TV reruns maybe 5 or 6 times, and yet I just purchased the series on DVD. Am I crazy? Maybe a little, but I like to look at myself as a true fan, and a dreamer.UPDATE: Bad but a happy ending.....Most of the discs had problems with skipping, freeze frames, and many episodes would not finish playing near the end. I returned the set to the seller and got a refund. Then, I repurchased the series from an different seller, and found the same flaws in exactly the same time marks on the same disc number and episodes. I just returned the new set for another refund.Then I purchased the series direct from Amazon on sale. When I got the replacement, I noticed it was packaged differently. And every episode was much higher quality and without defects of any kind. Then it dawned on me that the packages I got from other dealers were either poor illegal copies, or much older repackaged defective packs being sold cheaper. Either way, be aware of this. Alawys buy directly from Amazon or only sellers that are fullfilled by Amazon. Many sellers get illegal copies packaged to look like the real thing, but they are not. But Amazon direct sales are always the real thing.

Although I am sure there are those who will disagree, DS9 represents the best of Trek. True, it is darker and not as rosy/hopeful as the Next Generation, and it does not resolve itself as neatly and happily as Voyager. I grew up on the original show, and loved it.DS9 started out shaky the first few seasons. I don't think the writers were sure what to do with it. They had the space station idea down (as opposed to the show being based on a ship) but weren't sure what else. In the bonus features, you can hear the writers talk about how they didn't get the Emissary concept at first, but ended up being glad they put it in there. Basically this show deals with religion, politics, war, and the concept of pre-destiny. It works in a wide arc, but brings things together in a conclusion in which not all the characters survive--in that sense, it is more "real" than the other versions of Star Trek, where everyone is generally happy and content and things usually seem to work out fine in the end.Although there are episodes here and there which fall short, it is worth making the journey through the entire series. Other reviews may focus on specific episodes, and there are several excellent ones, but this is about the series as a whole. As with all Treks, this one is character driven, and all the major characters take interesting journeys during the 7 year run of the series.I was not sure when the show's 4th season first premiered that adding Worf to the cast at the end of the Next Generation's run was a smart move (it seemed like a desperate move at the time) but it turned out to be brilliant, because it allowed us to delve more deeply into the world of the Klingons, how they view conflict, and how they achieve honor. The interaction of the cultures - the artistic, religious (and persecuted) Bajorans...the political, calculating Cardassians...The aggressive and honorable Klingons...the greedy Ferengi...the secretive and isolated Romulans...and the (not so) innocent Federation (thanks to Section 31) - makes for TV that does more than entertain. It elevates.If you like this show, and you have not seen the new version of Battlestar Galactica, you should. It was created by some of the same people, and takes some of these same concepts to an even higher place. I like shows that make you think as well as entertain you. DS9 will certainly make you rethink what you think you know about the Star Trek universe.

Not widescreen as advertised. =(

Over the last seven or eight months I have watched every episode of the seven seasons of Deep Space 9 and my overall summary is that when it is a science fiction show, it is a very, very good, in fact one of the best examples of the genre. Of course over 176 episodes quality is variable, and much of this comes when it isn’t being a sci fi show, of which more later.The set up is that the Cardassian Empire is withdrawing from the planet Bajor after a long occupation and bloody guerrilla war. The Federation has arrived to help Bajor rebuild in the hope of eventual admission to the Federation. Heading the mission is Commander Benjamin Sisko who takes over a Cardassian mining station, renamed Deep Space Nine. This immediately gives DS9 a different feel from other manifestations. The static location allows a move away from the “monster of the week” style of the endlessly moving spaceship and allows for a deeper development of a wider range of supporting characters, and for politics to pay a much greater (and fascinating) part. That said, the development of long term story threads only really happens as the series progresses, season 1 is much more classically episodic. In the very first episode a wormhole opens near the station, giving access to a distant part of the galaxy, the Gamma Quadrant. The wormhole itself is inhabited by a race of aliens who live outside the constraints of linear time, and who are known to the Bajorans as the Prophets, around whom they have established a religion. Sisko, in encountering and speaking with the aliens becomes a figure of religious importance, the Emissary. This is one of the three main problems I had with the series, and the reason for the title of this review. My taste is for hard sci-fi, and there was the possibility of exploring the relationship between the religious Bajorans and the secular federation. There is also an argument for saying that any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic to outsiders and that the worm hole aliens fall into such a category. However, Sisko himself, and indeed the series, move from scepticism to embracing the religion. In possibly the most significant event in the whole series, in season 6, the aliens become a literal deus ex machina. This lends air of what Robin Ince and Brian Cox in their excellent podcast, “The Infinite Monkey Cage” describe as Woo, as as wooooo ghostly spirity things woooooo. The nadir, the tipping point for this step over the line from sci-fi into fantasy is an episode called Rapture in season 5, which I have seen praised elsewhere but which for me was an exercise in shark jumping. Sisko receives visions from the prophets, goes bat-manure crazy, ends up directly frustrating the purpose of his Star fleet mission but still keeps his job rather than being withdrawn from the front line and put into therapy.Returning to season 1, the best episode is probably Duet which involves one of the leading characters, Major Kira Nerys, Sisko’s Bajoran deputy, interrogating a Cardassian war criminal. As well as being a superb standalone episode, this brings together three of the strongest elements of the show. Firstly Major Kira, played by Nana Visitor, is fierce, tigerish, but also deeply wounded by her past as a freedom fighter, in which she was virtually a child soldier. The tables are turned on her during the interrogation and she is forced to confront the morality of her own actions. This is one of the most enduring themes of DS9, possibly the defining one - the balance between morality and necessity in time of war. The third great element of the episode is an entire race - the Cardassians. They are magnificent, haughty, arrogant, domineering. There are undoubtedly an enemy from a Starfleet perspective, but they are allowed develop far beyond moustache-twirling villains, with a rich and ancient culture. Two of the best characters in the whole series are Cardassians. Garak, played by the superb Andrew Robinson is exiled from his home world and works as a tailor on DS9. However, right from his first appearance it is clear that he is a devious operator, constantly enveloping himself in a fog of equivocation, hiding a mysterious past which may or may not involve the Cardassian secret service,the Obsidian order. The other is Gul Dukat, governor of the enslaved Bajor, who becomes the series’ Swiss Army villain, fitting into a number of different roles, some of them verging on the sympathetic. Actor Mark Alaimo brings real depth to the character at least until the final season when the writing lets him down by making him pantomimic and loses him in a fog of metaphysical woooooo. We see the best of Dukat in his evolving interaction with Kira which deepens through the series. Returning to Kira momentarily, Nana Visitor has great fun enthusiastically chewing the scenery as her evil twin in a mirror universe, first encountered in the original series.Season one introduces us to the other major characters, most notable of whom are Constable Odo and Chief O’Brien. The former is a changeling, able to change shape at will. At the start of the series he is unsure of his origins. Played by Rene Auberjonois (who was memorably the priest in M*A*S*H) he plays the role taken by Spock or Data in other incarnations, the outsider observing humanity, albeit in this case a rather snarky, sardonic one. Colm Meaney is everyman O’Brien, in a wonderfully naturalistic performance, despite having at least one deeply harrowing episode thrown at him in every season. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) is a young woman carrying a three hundred year old symbiote, previously carried by Sisko’s mentor Curzon Dax. She is a sort of ladette, drinking, gambling, and going off on crazy missions with Klingons. She is the early aspirational love interest for Dr Bashir (Alexander Siddig). His is a character which grows and develops through the series, starting as hopelessly naive and gauche, but eventually, through the trials of the war and an unlikely friendship with O’Brien becoming much more rounded and mature. And then there is Quark. On his own, Quark is fine. He is the bar tender on DS9 and a member of the unrelentingly acquisitive, mercantile, capitalistic Ferengi, who could be seen as representing 20th century humanity in contrast to the idealistic federation. The problem is the rest of the Ferengi, Quark’s brother, his nephew, his mother and the leader, the Grand Nagus played by Wallace Shaun. He is an actor of whom I could forgive a great deal for the Princess Bride, but not this. There are frequent episodes which focus on the Ferengi, and these are intended to be humourous, are universally awful, and could easily be dropped from the series at no cost to the whole. The problem is the spectacularly bad acting, which seems to consist of shouting, cackling and bad scenery chewing. Armin Shimmerman who plays Quark is at his best in one of the most enjoyable episodes of season 6, Far Beyond the Stars, when Sisko dreams himself as a struggling SF writer in the 50s, with the rest of the crew populating the publishers office and Shimmerman is human.The first two seasons are primarily concerned with Bajoran politics, the ongoing relationship between Bajor and Cardassia, and the armed truce between Cardassia and the Federation. This truce is threatened by the Maquis, rogue humans settling in the buffer zone between the two powers and who feature across a number of seasons. Season 2 ends with the first contact with the Dominion, an aggressive Delta Quadrant power who eventual provide the major protagonist for the Federation. Season 3 sees a gradual change of focus from Cardassia and Bajor to the Dominion and introduces the final major character, Klingon Starfleet officer Worf, following O’Brien from The Next Generation. The role of the Klingons is almost emblematic of a lot if what happens in DS9. At times they are hopelessly two dimensional. Take an actor, make him/her wear a wig and some prosthetics, and endlessly repeat the words “warrior”, “honour”, “victory”, “blood wine” and generally stomp around like an adolescent heavy metal fan. However, bring in a quality actor, in this case J G Hertzler as General Martok, and something much more interesting and intelligent starts to happen.Seasons 4 to 7 while remaining to a degree episodic are primarily concerned with what eventually becomes a war with the Dominion and include a number of multi-part story arcs. Amongst the standalone episodes,mention must go to Season 5’s Trials and Tribble-ations, which, in a tribute to the 30th anniversary of the Original Series, inserts the DS9 crew into the original classic episode. This is probably the only time a humourous episode really works, and the moment the DS9 crew first encounter the original Enterprise is memorable.Meanwhile, the Dominion story thread introduces the second great villain, Weyoun, a member of the Vorta, the Dominion officer class. Like all of the other stand out characters, his prominence is primarily a result of the actor’s skills. He is a gloriously oleaginous totalitarian diplomat. Actor Jeffrey Coombs is notable for also playing the least objectionable Ferengi, financial enforcer, Brunt, at least once playing both characters in the same episode.And so I must come to my third major problem with the series. It gives me no pleasure to say this, as the actor’s heart is so clearly in the right place, but I was never really convinced by Avery Brooks as Sisko. In the early times his acting is sadly simply wooden. He improves but he is often often guilty of being actorly, overly stagey, using bizarre intonation. Now while strange delivery of lines brings us right back to Kirk, Shatner probably got away with it by playing a straightforward larger than life action hero. Brooks tries to play a more nuanced, sometimes morally compromised character (particularly in the excellent Season 6 episode In the Pale Moonlight), which makes his lack of natural speech patterns stand out more.And so, in summary, I really enjoyed DS9, and would agree with those who rate it the best Star Trek series. It isn’t perfect, but that would be impossible in a series so long. It is at its best when it is both hard sci-fi, and is using sci-fi as a vehicle for exploring the nature of the human condition. Also, a series this long has no hiding place for poor acting, and the characters who shine do so primarily as a result if the skills of those portraying them. In contrast, the series doesn’t work where the Ferengi take front stage, and where things move into the realm of fantasy and low budget mysticism. A case in point of the series working without any of the metaphysical nonsense would be the Season 7 episode Tacking into the Wind. This is an absolutely terrific story, and is totally devoid of any of the elements of wooooooo which form a significant part of the wider terminal storyline.

This DS9 set which was purchased for £42.99 has all seven seasons plus extras but is housed in terrible DVD cases.The Original Series and Next Generation were housed in large four to six centimetre deep cases. These are a plastic book format, two discs per page, one on either side, plus you could lift the entire book out of the case and read the inner sleeve listings. This is a good system; it makes the discs easy to remove, replace and mark your place in the series.However, this is not the system adopted for this version of DS9, and without a doubt, it is the worst DVD case that I have ever encountered. The cases are still four to six Centimetres deep but a very different book format is being used. On the left-hand side of the inner case, four discs are held in deep spindles two on top of two, and overlapping each other. The data surface of the upper disc is touching the title surface of the one below it. The likelihood of them being scratched is high. There are two inner pages, again with four overlapping discs on each side and the inner back of the case is the same as the front.As you progress through the series and watch each episode in the order they were aired, you will have to remove the discs that are before it in the spindles. Look at the pictures I have provided and you’ll see what I mean. To get at disc two, disc one has to come out first. To get at disc four, you have to remove discs one, two and three. You are forced to do this on every page!They are also awkward to remove as the holding spindle is so deep, you end up forcibly bending the disc in order to remove it. Again, the likelihood of them being damaged or scratched is high.When compared the DVD cases of The Original Series and Next Generation, you have to ask why that system wasn’t used, it is obviously superior.Then there is the inner sleeve with the listings of each season and episode. But because the inner case spindles are fixed and holding the discs, you cannot read it, you have to remove the sleeve from the cover in order to read the list. Stupid or what?I am not happy with this set and I will be returning it. I’m sure others who have purchased this set will do the same. I suggest you avoid.

I love this series (probably even more than Star Trek Next Generation) as this series is not dominated by only a few senior officers but by a number of characters played with wit, a lot of funny dialogues and scenes and one learns a lot about certain alien humanoid groups which, in the other Star Trek series, were depicted very one-sided. All in all my personal favourite of all Start Trek series (I have all of them). A pity that this series also didn't make it past the seventh season.

Like all the other Star Trek spin-offs, this takes a while to get used to but after a few episodes your feelings towards it start to change. The old formula involving a group of likeable personalities who function as a family still works. So it's well worth buying. I have to say though that the stories where you get enmeshed in a character's personal problems or Ferengi politics are my least favourite, and frankly rather tedious. I much prefer the ones where vast battles take place and major issues of intergalactic politics are at stake! Major/Colonel Kira is seriously sexy. Doesn't Quark work as a character! Nice to see Chief O'Brien getting more exposure than he did in The Next Generation. Interesting, and pleasing, that religion and its devotees are treated with more respect than in the other Star Trek series, though it is rightly made clear that religious leaders are not free from personal ambition and that this can be corrupting and dangerous. One thing, though. I know there's supposed to be a universal translator at work, but why is it that no matter how far one ventures into the universe - and we are to venture even further in Voyager - the aliens one encounters not only speak perfect English, but the US version of it with the same accents and expressions. And they've gone metric...

DS9 over several watches since it first aired on TV became my favourite of all the Star Trek Series and this boxset is a great compact upgrade to save a little space on the shelf. It comes with a cardboard outer sleeve to hold both parts season 1-4 and 5-7 in their own large cases which looks great on the shelf. The large cases are fairly decent for what is a budget packaging with the discs been doubled stacked my copy arrived with only one disc not on the spindle but was held tight and had no scratches on it.The exact same packaging applies to the Star trek Voyager if your looking to pick up both these boxsets.