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Notes -
I've been catching up on some Star Trek since I was a teen when a lot of these aired. And holy cannoli the first episode of DS9 has to be the heaviest ever.
Sisko is assigned to DS9 and is meeting with Picard about it. Sisko expresses this assignment isn't to his preference and Picard starts giving him the "Starfleet duty" lecture and Sisko erupts in his face saying to cut him some fucking slack, he is raising a kid by himself because his mother died on a ship that he helped the Borg destroy when he was Locutus. 🤯
Despite also popping Picard's bubble he makes it clear that he's not some career obsessed owned-Starfleet loser who uses it as an excuse to never start a family.
In addition to rebuking Picard, he's also a sensitive enough black man that he can cry on camera (while the wormhole entities ask him why he dwells on the memory of his wife's death) but he is still hard ass enough to blackmail a ferengi into keeping his shop open in exchange for not putting his nephew in prison.
A very different Trek.
DS9 really was lightning in a bottle that'll probably never be topped(in Star Trek).
I attribute this to two reasons; one, alot of the actors were classically theater trained, yes, Avery Brooks amoung them.
Two, the initial show producers who's names I have forgotten later switched thier full attention over to Voyager, which gave DS9 alot of slack for the kind of stories they could tell, which is why the later seasons are so much better, even excusing the typical 'finding thier groove' thing so many TV shows have.
Plus, it's the only time we get to see Robert House and Andrew Ryan go at one another.
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It's interesting that all the 90s era Star Trek shows seem to follow this pattern: A great pilot episode, then a weak season 1, then gradually improve over time. I agree with you that the pilot of DS9 is a great, and I love most of the show, but season 1 was unfortunately a mess.
Normally I think network TV follows the opposite problem. The pilot episode is a mess, everything is crammed into too little time since they're basically establishing and advertising the entire show. They're not even sure if it's going to be produced yet, so they don't want to put too much money into it, and the actors are all still learning their role. If it does get produced, I usually like the rest of season 1 the best, since that's when the writers and producers can really put into place the ideas they had that inspired the show. But then if its good and gets renewed, it tends to go down in quality over time, since they run out of ideas and feel a need to continuously escalate and "jump the shark."
90s Star Trek was really something else. I miss it so much.
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DS9 has its stinkers, but at its heights it's easily the best Star Trek by a wide margin. I'd still put Babylon 5 a little higher, but it had steep competition from DS9 in a way that no other Trek of that generation, or the current gen, could or was even trying to supply.
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First time watch, not rewatch?
In hindsight, DS9 doesn't start to get frequently great until the very end of season 2, despite having a relatively strong pilot for a Star Trek show, just to warn you. You might be tempted to just skip ahead a couple seasons, and indeed early DS9 mostly lets you get away with that (like most 90s-era TV shows, producers didn't dare risk losing an audience who missed one episode and hence they pushed for low levels of arc-plot and continuity), but definitely find some watch guide to consult if you do. There are some good early episodes that are worth watching because their character development makes later great episodes even better, there are a few great episodes ... and IMO there's one of the best episodes in all of Star Trek, just plopped into Season 1 because that's where they needed it for one character's arc.
I never saw the pilot episode. This clears up a lot of confusion. In the later episodes when the prophets are speaking to him I had no fucking idea what was going on, not realizing they're entirely in his head and using figures from his memory to speak to him.
The most vivid episode was the one where they try to trick that... Romulan senator into believing the Dominion plans to attack them. But then he discovers the Federation faked the evidence and he's enraged and then his ship just ... suspiciously ... explodes and they were all oddly okay with this?
I guess also that episode where it cold opens to Worf having rough dry humping sex with Dax?
Gene Roddenberry passing away early in TNG is probably the best thing to happen to the show. He never would have let the Federation get so dark, though he would've probably kept the rough Worf/Dax sex scene.
Unfortunately it's a double-edged sword. If you listen to the writers talk about TNG, it's clear that TNG was good in spite of him and not because of him. Some of the best stories (e.g. Picard's story in "Family" in S4) they did were shot down by Roddenberry because "people in the future wouldn't act that way", and the other producers had to fight with him to get the stories approved. But on the other hand, stuff in DS9 was already getting dark enough that the writers were seriously risking the setting not working as a positive vision of the future any more. And when you get to nu-Trek, that is completely gone, with the Federation being outright villains in Picard. So while Roddenberry could be unreasonable about his vision at times, it turns out that having someone like that at the helm was important to make sure that the writers didn't just completely disregard the fact that Star Trek is supposed to be an optimistic future, not just today's problems but 300 years from now.
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"All" was two people, one of whose first reaction was to beat the other to the ground after finding out about that last twist, so I wouldn't say he was 100% okay.
The operative who orchestrated it was 100% okay with it, sure: "And if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal... and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain." Best quote in the show.
But the full reason it was one of the best episodes ever was watching that furious Starfleet officer struggle to become okay enough with it: "So, this is a huge victory for the good guys! This may even be the turning point of the entire war! There's even a "Welcome to the Fight" party tonight in the wardroom!... So... I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover up the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all... I think I can live with it... And if I had to do it all over again... I would. Garak was right about one thing – a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So, I will learn to live with it...Because I can live with it...I can live with it. Computer – erase that entire personal log."
The thing about the Trolley Problem is that in its classic formulation it feels simple enough: you pull the lever and the trolley kills one person, but thanks to you the trolley didn't kill five. 5>1, yay you! But what if we replace the inanimate trolley with a conniving human being, and your push enables cold-blooded murder? What if you're only in a position to give and take lives because you took oaths you've now spat upon? What if there was nothing but the fog of war to inform you about how many people were really going to be hurt on each track, or about how badly? What if you can't even ask another trustworthy soul about whether you did the right thing, because the utilitarian decision's effectiveness relies on your continuing ability and willingness to lie about it? Is this still a situation where cold utilitarian calculation trumps virtue ethics? Would you go full Kant and immediately reveal the truth to everyone, damn the consequences?
Okay ... I haven't actually watched all of DS9 in decades ... but when was this? How did I forget this? Was it bad enough that I've actually blocked it out?
Re: Worf Dax scene
He's probably thinking of the cold open to "Sons and Daughters", though the scene sounds more like the one at the end of "Looking for Par'Mach In All The Wrong Places". Idk, there's several Dax Worf scenes, including one with Ezri in "Penumbra".
Rereading the post, I think it's implied that it's not in "In the Pale Moonlight" which of course cold opens with:
Which bookends the ending you allude to:
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