DS9 vs. TNG

jchris

jchris

Science fiction fantasy
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Aug 9, 2011
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Why do you think most people prefer The Next Generation over Deep Space Nine?
 
TNG is more in the classic mold - DS9 didn't even have a spaceship for awhile and then it wasn't a flagship-type ship. And DS9 is a much darker, more morally ambiguous show than TNG which some people dislike. Plus, TNG simply came first - I always greet spinoffs and further spinoffs with suspicion and most people tend to bond with something earlier. TOS will always be special because of that and TNG will have the edge on DS9.

I personally loved DS9. (TNG sucked its first couple of seasons and DS9 sucked its first few episodes, but both became great.) I didn't get my hate on until Voyager. I gave that show way too long based on the TNG/DS9 principle - I figured it had to get better sometime. I cut off Enterprise almost immediately and still haven't seen the latest movie.
 
Good point. Star Trek involves trekking into space. DS9 didn't bother.

Are you referring to the new Star Trek by JJ Abrahms or whatever his name is? If so, I thought that was pretty good. You should give it a chance. It's very different, but very cool. I'd like to see a sequel.
 
jchris said:
Are you referring to the new Star Trek by JJ Abrahms or whatever his name is? If so, I thought that was pretty good. You should give it a chance. It's very different, but very cool. I'd like to see a sequel.
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Yep, that's the one I meant. I've heard mostly good things about it and I'm sure it is pretty good in many senses, but I've got my Kirk/Spock/McCoy. While I hate Voyager and it basically left the timeline, at least it was minimally furthering it. I think Enterprise's going backwards and the movie's starting over where we came in at are just bad in principle. If they're unable to advance the timeline, it's probably time to let the franchise go.
 
DS9 did its fair share of exploring the other side of the worm whole, but as was pointed out, the show was mostly about what took place on the station, so they were generally stuck there. On the up side, I think this forced them to make their characters better than the characters in other Star Trek shows.

I think the biggest problem with DS9 was the competition posed by Babylon 5. The audience that watch TNG was literally split in half for DS9. Although it was easy enough to watch both shows, I think many who watched one show would not watch the other.

I read somewhere on the net that while TNG had 11 million regular viewers, DS9 had near 6 million, and B5 had 4 or 5 million. I can't remember the exact figures, but these are close.
 
J-Sun said:
I think Enterprise's going backwards and the movie's starting over where we came in at are just bad in principle. If they're unable to advance the timeline, it's probably time to let the franchise go.
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Yeah, Enterprise was lame.

As for DS9, I guess the characters were potentially more interesting than TNG. It seemed like most of the stories were based on Worf, Picard, and obviously Data. Other than that, the other characters were rather empty. More strange alien characters in DS9. Maybe I'll go back to the dvds and see what I missed.
 
C Of K said:
I think the biggest problem with DS9 was the competition posed by Babylon 5. The audience that watch TNG was literally split in half for DS9. Although it was easy enough to watch both shows, I think many who watched one show would not watch the other.
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That's a good point - I was just thinking in terms of "within Star Trek", but you're right about external competition. Even for folks who did watch both, they might have had their "loyalty" divided. TNG didn't have such direct competition.

C Of K said:
DS9 did its fair share of exploring the other side of the worm whole, but as was pointed out, the show was mostly about what took place on the station, so they were generally stuck there. On the up side, I think this forced them to make their characters better than the characters in other Star Trek shows.
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jchris said:
As for DS9, I guess the characters were potentially more interesting than TNG. It seemed like most of the stories were based on Worf, Picard, and obviously Data. Other than that, the other characters were rather empty. More strange alien characters in DS9.
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Yeah, I think TNG had good core characters and the occasional interesting guest but DS9 may well have had the edge there. Garak is one of my favorites. :)
 
Garak was fantastic, and he's only one example. TNG was more like the original series. Because all their episodes were about exploring new and fantastic locations, the fantastic elements would often carry their story, so minor characters weren't required to make a great impact.

Because DS9 was so centralized around the station, they had far less of the fantastic to deal with. Spacial anomalies and other unusual occurrences did happen on DS9, but not on the same level as the other two shows. I think this required many characters to step up. O'brien became a huge character in DS9. Even Dumar was pivotal. Villians were constantly returning to further the overall plot. Kai Winn, Gul Dukat, Weyoun, Brunt F.C.A. (just joking with that last one)

Both DS9 and TNG are great shows. Star Trek took a true nose dive after those two went off.
 
Currently rewatching DS9 with my fiancée - she's a massive Star Trek nut and has watched almost everything else there is, but bizarrely enough hasn't watched more than a handful of DS9 episodes! I have fond memories of the first 5 seasons of DS9 from my childhood, though I never saw the final couple of seasons, so thought the only right thing to do was a complete series marathon.

Though she's got a soft-spot for TNG, she can't stand the first couple of seasons where it's closer to Gene Roddenberry's vision of the series. In fact, she generally feels that each Trek series usually takes a season or two to find its feet - DS9 has surprised her in this regard, as she feels it's really hit the ground running and has a clear idea of what it wants to be. We've been quite surprised with how established some of the characters feel already at only 8 episodes in, though we're also noticing the production team's attempts to continually tie things back to events seen in TNG to try to give the audience some familiarity (e.g. O'Brien becoming a main character in this series, the flashback to the Battle of Wolf 359 and appearences from the two Klingon sisters, Vash and Q spread throughout the early episodes).

A lot of people prefer TNG because of its episodic nature and themes of exploration - however, I think we're enjoying DS9 because of its more serialised nature, and the mixture of political and religious elements which feel quite current and relevant even 22 years on. It certainly feels like it's exploring its premise more successfully than the subsequent Voyager, which although we both love it, we'll admit doesn't fully utilise the ideas of the crew being cut off from the Federation and only having finite resources to rely on. In many respects, it could probably have been closer in tone to the Battlestar Galactica reboot if it had, though whether that would be right for a show in the Trek universe would be up for debate. Would have definitely helped it to carve out its own more distinct niche, though, even if it'd been a controversial decision.
 
TNG is popular because it was closer tot he original series in style. ds9 while you look at it in retrospective was so much better a fresher take on star trek was radically different.
 
TNG and DS9 are both my favorite Star Trek series. TNG took the idea of peaceful space exploration from the original series and improved it. They had solid main characters and humanitarian (if you could call it that) ideals that haven't gotten old to this day.

DS9 didn't explore the universe as much, but they excelled at character development and world building in general. They tackled political and religious aspects of life, and had incredible and diverse supporting and recurring characters. Because they weren't always moving on to the next planet in each episode, they dealt more with long-term consequences.

In my mind these two shows define the Star Trek universe.
 
J-Sun said:
I personally loved DS9.
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DS9 was the best Trek because it imitated Babylon 5. I am a science fiction fan not a Star Trek fan. DS9 was the closest Trek got to real SF. Roddenbery's utopian humanism is fundamentally a fantasy. But lots of people love it.

One of the best scenes in DS9:

Another one:

psik
 
(Trying to keep the embeds-per-post to a minimum.)

On different notes, I have to post one of my favorite scenes of one of my favorite characters:

and, on the other hand, there's this great scene from this great episode
 
There was less sci to watch during the first run of next gen. ds9 is much more darker.
 
Now that all the Star Trek series are on Netflix, I want to start watching one as a family show. It's down to TNG or DS9. With TNG I watched the first couple seasons when they aired and then caught an episode or two a season. Maybe watched three episodes of DS9 when it aired.

How much does DS9 rely on knowledge of TNG? Will my kids have trouble following anything if DS9 is their first exposure to Star Trek?

For both TNG and DS9, is there a recommended episode/season to start with to get past the weak beginnings fans have mentioned in this thread?

Cheers.
 
MWagner said:
How much does DS9 rely on knowledge of TNG? Will my kids have trouble following anything if DS9 is their first exposure to Star Trek?

For both TNG and DS9, is there a recommended episode/season to start with to get past the weak beginnings fans have mentioned in this thread?
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In my rarely humble opinion DS9 is the best Trek. The only thing better is Babylon 5.

I would suggest watching the two part TNG episode, The Best of Both Worlds, where Picard becomes a Borg in order to better understand the pilot of DS9. The "Q Who" episode might make sense also to introduce the Borg.

Q Who (episode)

The Best of Both Worlds (episode)

Oh yeah, who are the Bajorans anyway?

Ensign Ro (episode)

psik
 
I agree that DS9 is the best but I think it's ironically the least "Trek-like." (And, for family viewing, not that either is pure solid G or anywhere near R, TNG is definitely the more "innocent" of the two.) If you want to watch Roddenberry's Platonic Ideal of ST, then go with TNG. But I'm a historically-minded person and would recommend starting with TOS, except that's apparently already off the table. If you do start with TNG, you need to start somewhere in season 3 or so. It was not good at first. As far as needed backgrounding for that, though, I don't know. I'll also defer to psik on the background for DS9. All I know is that DS9 also started slow but found its legs much more quickly. The episode where I first was extremely hopeful that I'd found a winner was "Captive Pursuit" (s1ep6). Tosk! As far as DS9 relying on Trek, I don't think it does overmuch. There are more references to TOS than TNG, really (tribbles, etc.), except for the obvious crossover of O'Brien and Keiko and the later arrival of Worf and frequent connections with Jadzia and with Gowron and others showing up. So maybe watch "Heart of Glory" (s1, but still...), "Sins of the Father," "Reunion," and "Redemption Pts. I & II" and other Worf/Klingon-centric epsiodes. But, really, I figure, while you'd miss resonances between the shows, there wouldn't be anything that DS9 doesn't re-explain or that would leave you totally lost.

And, to second psik - Ensign Ro/Michelle Forbes rocks, so definitely don't miss that one.

Oh yeah, and you should watch Q episodes because they're great and because he makes a few appearances on DS9. Oddly, he never worked anywhere near as well on DS9 without Mon Capitan John Luck Pickard but, still...

I dunno - why not watch them all?
 
J-Sun said:
I dunno - why not watch them all?
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So that's what we've done. I read some re-watch guides to avoid the real clunkers (and Star Trek has a fair share), and ended up watching about two-thirds of the episodes of TOS and then two-thirds of TNG.

I had assumed that it was only nostalgia that made TOS so great in my memory, and my kids wouldn't like it. To my surprise they loved TOS, and were lukewarm to TNG. They said they preferred the strong characters in TOS, and the tensions in the relationship between Kirk, Spock, and Bones. They also found a lot of TNG episodes boring.

For my part, I have a lot more appreciation for TNG than I did when it originally aired - I only watched the first couple seasons at the time. It's still tea-and-an-afghan-blanket TV compared with TOS. I loved the lurid, pulpy tone of TOS, with the eerie lighting and bombastic music. When I think of TNG what comes to mind is ambient ship noise and beige lounges. But when TNG is good it's very, very good. The best 20 or so TNG episodes are great SF and great TV. And Stewart is the best actor to appear in any Star Trek series, by a wide margin.

I've now moved on to DS9 without the kids. I only ever watched a handful of episodes when they initially aired, so I'm going in pretty much cold. Halfway through season 3 now, and I can see why it's held in such high regard. There's definitely more complexity and subtlety than the other series. I thought I'd hate how the Ferengi are featured, but Armin Shimerman makes Quark one of my favourite characters.

However, watching DS9 immediately after TNG has marred my enjoyment of DS9 for a couple reasons:

1) The digitally remastered TNG in HD looks great. Reverting from that to the SD of DS9 sucks. The sets look so dim and soupy.

2) I'm not a fan of Nana Visitor as Kira. She's a decent actress, but I just don't buy her as a hard-bitten, former terrorist. When I found out Michelle Forbes was originally offered the role (presumably resuming her role as Ro) it made Visitor even more disappointing. Forbes would have been perfect.

So far DS9 hasn't approached the best episodes of TOS or TNG in quality, but I'd say there are fewer clunkers too. And I understand things really pick up in seasons 4 and 5.
 
Rewatching is always fun. 2 years ago I did every episode of every show. DS9 takes a little while to really shake things out. In my opinion so did TNG. Riker didn't even have facial hair in season 1. DS9 needs time because it's a different type of show. I think it really starts to find it's stride near the end of season 2. It could be sillier than any of the other Treks but it could also be more dark and more serious. It becomes more serialized than it's brethren. Aspects and consequences from the Dominion war last throughout the series.

It has the biggest and best space battles. We get the biggest and best look at the Klingon empire. Sisko does things that no other Commander/Capt. would do. Maybe Kirk but even Kirk never killed a planet to make a point. The episode "In the Pale Moonlight" is considered by a lot of fans and critics to be the best episode of any Trek.

I'm not saying it's my favorite because they're all my favorite. I could make an argument for any of them to be the best. Even Enterprise
 
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