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I've noticed several people linking to the series now that it's over, and to facilitate this, here is a link post. Introduction The Two DS9s - Did Deep Space Nine only get good in its later seasons? The Menagerie - Alien races on the show Looking for Ron Moore in All the Wrong Places - The obligatory Battlestar Galactica comparison What Does God Need With a Space Station? - Deep Space Nine's

Believe it or not, after seven installments there's still stuff left to say about Deep Space Nine. Here are a few topics that didn't grow into full-fledged essays: It's an axiom of television writing that romance, and specifically romantic pursuit, is interesting, but established relationships, and most especially marriages, are boring. Perhaps because it was generally strongest when telling

BENDER: Forget it, you can't tempt me. ROBOT DEVIL: Really? There's nothing you want? BENDER: Hm. I forgot you could tempt me with things I want. Futurama, "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings"If Deep Space Nine's character development has a theme, it is the loss of innocence, and of an idealized self-image. The characters who undergo this process most prominently over the course of the

The breathtaking awesomeness of Kira Nerys, which has been recurring theme in these essays, became apparent to me only a few episodes into my journey back through Deep Space Nine. Almost as soon as I came to this realization, I started pondering a question: how is that this fantastic character, who is strong, capable, confident, and decent, doesn't have pride of place in the pantheon of kickass

No one who watched Deep Space Nine's pilot episode, "Emissary," would have had any reason to expect a subtle, multi-faceted treatment of religion from the series. Though by no means disrespectful or dismissive of religion, "Emissary" treats it in a manner familiar from many other genre stories--the SFnal trope of alien (or human) gods who turn out to be aliens themselves, the fantasy standard of

It's impossible to come back to Deep Space Nine in 2007 and not be on the lookout for Ronald D. Moore, for his influence on the series and its influence on his later work. Deep Space Nine is where Moore made his bones, rising from staff writer to executive producer. It is also, of all the series he's been involved with, the one closest in topic, tone, and theme to Battlestar Galactica. Just in

A work of fiction passes Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For test if it features two women having a conversation about something other than a man. Deep Space Nine passes the Bechdel test, but not before it passes, several times over, its SFnal corollary by featuring two aliens having a conversation about something other than a human, the Federation, or Starfleet. Deep Space Nine, as I've

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the first three seasons of Deep Space Nine sucked. OK, so that's an overstatement. But there is a consensus among the show's fans that its early seasons were missing a certain component, and that Deep Space Nine didn't come into its own and earn the title of best Star Trek series until its fourth season, and until the addition of Worf, the Defiant,

Once again, this is my brother's doing. He's the one who, in the spring, suggested a return to yet another staple of our youthful TV watching, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. And it's partly the fault of the WGA, too. It's because of their still-ongoing strike that I had no new TV to watch, and so the last weeks of 2007 became dedicated to making my way through all seven seasons and 176 episodes