#oneaday Day 15: Station on the Frontier

Right! Yes. I was going to talk about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, wasn’t I. Okay, let’s do that.

I love Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but I had a bit of a curious introduction to it. I grew up watching the endless reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation on BBC2 at 6pm; that tended to coincide with family dinner time, so we’d often watch it on the kitchen TV while having our food. When Deep Space Nine launched in 1995, though, I feel like our family were initially a bit resistant to it. It was, after all, very different from what had been, at that point, the only two prior Star Trek series; for one thing, there was very little actual “trekking”, what with it being all set in one location, and the tone was very different from the optimistic nature of The Next Generation.

I kind of drifted away from it because of this; I personally hadn’t really found anything to dislike about it, but the fact my parents didn’t seem to enjoy it as much meant that I didn’t derive quite so much pleasure from it if it happened to be on around dinner time. (And of all the Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine is arguably the one least appropriate for dinnertime viewing — not because it’s particularly gory or anything, but simply because its rather bleak tone and uncompromising look at certain less glamorous aspects of life among the stars made it more of a “primetime evening” sort of show.)

I watched the odd episode here and there, but I didn’t keep up with it. That all changed, however, when I spent a couple of weeks in London with my brother for my Year 10 work experience placement. Rather than be placed in the boring old local industrial area like most of my peers, I made arrangements to do my work experience in the PC Zone offices, since my brother was editor there at the time. I had a thoroughly enjoyable time, but that’s probably a story for another day.

No, the thing I particularly remember from that trip, besides my time in the office, was some discussion over Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s fourth season — which had recently started being broadcast on Sky satellite TV at the time, as I recall; the BBC’s reruns were a few seasons behind — and was just starting to come out on VHS cassette. I heard such enthusiasm for the new episodes from my brother and his peers that I wanted to find out a bit more about it for myself. So one lunchtime, I took a trip to the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, which was within walking distance from the Zone offices on Bolsover Street, and picked up video “4.1: The Way of the Warrior”. And I watched that feature-length episode that evening on my brother’s TV.

I was blown away; this was damned good TV, though I was quite conscious that I had clearly missed some rather important story beats somewhere along the way. Who were the Dominion? Why was Sisko now a captain, not a Commander? Why was he bald and bearded? Who was Kassidy Yates? What was up with the Klingons being all weird, after years of them being “no longer the bad guy” in The Next Generation?

I was confused, but enthralled nonetheless; after I got home, I started collecting the VHS cassettes from season 4 onwards. In retrospect, this was an enormous waste of money and space, since each tape only included two episodes and cost about £14.99, but as a teenager living out in the country, I didn’t have much else to spend my money on at the time other than video games. I built up quite a collection, and also, on someone’s recommendation, picked up the “3.1” volume “The Search”, which helped me understand a bit better who The Dominion actually were.

After some time, though, I drifted away from Deep Space Nine again. As before, it wasn’t that I disliked what I was seeing, but there were other factors at play — perhaps most notably the dawn of DVD as a distribution medium. By the time I got to university, DVD players were becoming much more accessible, and I was excited by all the movies I could now watch in what was, at the time, spectacularly good picture quality. I think at that point, collecting VHS tapes started to feel a bit less desirable — particularly since, as a student, I was living in a relatively limited amount of space.

As I recall, it took quite some time for all the Star Treks up to that point — The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager — to make it to DVD, and I just sort of got out of the habit of watching them. There was always a little voice at the back of my mind, though, that said “one day, you should watch all of Deep Space Nine and Voyager“. (I had, by this point, seen all of The Next Generation multiple times.)

I never quite got around to doing that. I started watching Star Trek on US Netflix for a while, but got fed up with having to use a VPN to do so, since they weren’t on UK Netflix at the time. Then I pretty much fell out of the habit of watching long-form TV and movies altogether; I much preferred the more active sense of entertainment I was getting from video games.

Cutting out many intervening years in which nothing of any real relevance to this story occurred, for my birthday this year I was fortunate enough to receive a box set of Deep Space Nine from my brother, who, true to what he had always said, left a note saying “it’s still the best one”. And so, having set up my now-mostly dormant PS4 (my PS5 plays all my PS4 games now) in the bedroom, I decided to start watching an episode or two before going to sleep of an evening.

As I type this, I’m about two-thirds of the way through Season 3, and I am absolutely loving the show. It shows its age in some ways — an episode set in “the future” of the time when it was broadcast turned out to be 2024, for example — but it’s definitely got it where it counts. Strong characters, excellent acting, compelling storylines, and above all, plenty of variety.

I’m not sure why my parents and I ever thought Deep Space Nine was “boring”. Because it absolutely is not, even in the first three seasons, which are commonly regarded as “the bit before it gets really good”. Some shows are epic in scale, while others are tight, character-driven pieces — and beneath it all, there’s a sense of coherence that The Next Generation didn’t really nail until its later seasons. This latter point is perhaps best exemplified by how, for quite some time, the best way to get The Next Generation VHS videos was not on an episode-by-episode basis, but in box sets that were each themed around a particular element of the show, such as Data, Q or the Borg. (I had several of these; they were cool display pieces as well as being pretty good value!)

Deep Space Nine is from that point where American television really seemed to latch on to the fact that audiences enjoy serialised stories. Sure, it’s a risk — with heavily serialised shows, you run the risk of alienating anyone who isn’t on board from the start — but Deep Space Nine manages to remain mostly accessible throughout, as shown by my jumping in at The Way of the Warrior all those years ago, while truly rewarding those who are in it for the long haul.

It’s been a real pleasure to return to a series that, in retrospect, I’ve always liked a great deal. I feel I’m getting more out of it now than I did when I was younger — and this time, this time, I’m going to make it all the way to the end. I’m just a little sad that I never did so before several of the cast members passed away. But their memory shall live on.

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