Star Trek: Prodigy has been cancelled. 
That was a show that had no right to be that good.
I’ve finished Deep Space Nine!
and I have some thoughts and here they are:
(spoiler tags don’t seem to be up and running yet and I’m not going into huge detail; but if you want to go into DS9 knowing nothing about it then best just scroll past this post).
First of all, @TAFH33 was absolutely right - it does indeed get better once Sisko loses his hair after the first couple of series. However, I’m not sure if this is because a) the writing and acting improves or b) because my memory of Next Generation was starting to fade and I wasn’t always comparing the two (to DS9’s massive deficit). I suspect it’s a bit of both.
So: did I enjoy it? Yes. Not as much as ‘Next Generation’ but enough to definitely justify watching the whole lot. A lot of the problems I had with it at the end were the same as the beginning: the vision of the future in STNG is just one I enjoyed spending more time in - a post-scarcity utopia where no-one worries about money >>>> infinitely going on about ‘gold pressed latinum’ and renting the holo-suites by the hour all the bloody time.
However, to be fair, some of the things that bothered me at the beginning were sorted out by the end. Both the Ferengi and the Kardasians were presented as much more multi-faceted by the end than they were at the beginning.
I really liked the way that they used the concept of The Trill to take a few tentative steps to explore gender and sexuality as well. Doesn’t seem very brave in 2023, but for the time having Dax kiss her previous wife must have been eyebrow raising (was this before or after Willow/Tara???) and it’s certainly further than STNG went: they rather danced around same-sex attraction when Bev Crusher fell for a Trill who came back female iirc. I also love how Sisko refers to Dax as ‘old man’ regardless of who the host is that’s wandering around the station.
Thing I didn’t realise until almost the very end (I think the only episode which has both characters in). This guy:
“Brunt! FCA!”
and this guy:
“Founder! I live to serve!”
ARE PLAYED BY THE SAME GUY. 
Over-arching story: I like that they took Odo’s origin story and ran with it but I’m not sure ‘The Dominion’ really worked for me as the central baddies. What was their motivation??? The liquid beings exist as part of ‘The Great Link’ on their liquid planet… What was in it for them trying to conquer the alpha quadrant??? What are they going to do with it??? I get that they’re cagey about ‘the solids’ and need to defend themselves from solids but why invade a whole new quadrant of the galaxy? Especially given that their invasion necessitates them working with not one but two races of ‘Solids’ (including The Vorta - love those guys. Weyoun gives Morne a run for his money as MVP of the whole thing). So yeah, it all feels a bit unsatisfying. They’re a hostile threat just… because? Maybe I’ve missed something.
Thinking of things that baffled me: why as the whole series headed towards its dénouement did they spend multiple episodes dicking around in the holo-suites with some rat-pack wannabee hologram? Seemed a bit of an odd priority as it all kicked off.
So yeah: not nearly as good as STNG, but a damn sight better than the Jason Isaac one or the chap-out-of-Quantum-Leap one.
7 strips of gold-pressed latinum out of 10.
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Yea, it’s good, but it’s no Babylon 5.
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I think you may have either gotten your T’s crossed or meant to post this in the Pumpkins thread(s).
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Whoops!.. Apologies.
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I love Quark and Brunt
And all the ferengi really
MOOOOGIIEEEE
The brunt actor is in tons of star trek stuff.
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Never watched DS9 really. I started it when it appeared on BBC and gave up after a few episodes because it just felt very safe Star Trek to me - in my mind Babylon 5 had already been on and impressed me (even with its fairly weak S1 in hindsight) by the time the Beeb started DS9 so I felt the lack of interest. I tried again with the first four episodes after Worf joined but once more I wasn’t feeling it. To me I just saw the same standard Trek episodes with a bit more character growth behind.
(Actually it’s kind of funny because these days I’m more with you on liking TNG’s pure utopian view but as a hot-headed 
18 year old, I wanted some ‘dark realism’ to my sci-fi, blah blah. Teenagers are so teenage 
, innit? )
Anyway, to address your point: it’s probably because at its heard DS9 was still always trying to be a week-to-week episodic show. Obviously serialised shows were out there dragging in audiences (Dallas and Twin Peaks are the biggies from my youth I remember) but the notion of that kind of long-running arc story in a mainstream sci/fantasy show really felt fresh when B5 did it.
I think DS9 was probably caught more between wanting to be like old style Star Trek because that was what ST was all about, and exploring this new long-form storytelling. I feel like DS9’s style it definitely caused them issues because at the time I recall Voyager being pitched back to the more regular Star Trek TNG style of show.
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DS9 was only allowed 9 story arc shows a season by their producers. That’s why it feels like so much filler is getting in the way of the main plot.
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What a bizarre rule to have to follow! Very strange. Didn’t really notice it until the end of the final series when I was all “why the hell are we back in the holosuite? The Dominion invasion is imminent, I don’t care about this Sinatra Knock off and his set list issues!”
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Anyway, having watched DS9, I thought I would start watching the original Star Trek.
- This is a great idea! You will have an interesting time watching them.
- This is a terrible idea. They haven’t aged well and you’ll give up long before the end of the first series.
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This was the point that the only TV show that did long term serialization was Babylon 5, and it was running concurrently with DS9. They’re also the producers who insisted that there would be no serialization in Voyager, which took away pretty much anything interesting from that show’s premise.
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x files had a similar rule iirc
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I mean I’m sure vast sections haven’t aged at all well but still I seem to remember the ones I’ve seen were definitely an interesting watch.
And then you can watch Wrath of Khan again after you’ve seen Space Seed.
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So I’m now about 12 episodes into the OG Star Trek and I have some onions to share with you.
Probably the most interesting thing about it is the sexual politics. A lot of which is just wild: you can tell a lot about the cultural tensions of the era from watching this.
The thing that really sticks out to me is how ‘non-linear’ the march of progress is. In the pilot episode (1965), which Netflix starts with, Cpt Pike is in charge of the Enterprise and his first officer is a woman: Una Chin-Reily (Number 1):
She’s confident, competent and takes charge of things when Pike is snatched by aliens. The pilot isn’t without its issues in how it deals with her (and the other women) but: it shows a woman on the bridge in a position of command.
Fast forward to '66 though and The Enterprise looks very different. Spock is the only character who carries over to Kirk’s Enterprise: it’s otherwise a totally different crew and, notably, there are no women in positions of authority. You’ve got Uhura on comms but she has a fairly minor role and she’s the only woman on the bridge (apart from when Kirk’s Yeoman brings him his tea and he complains bitterly about having a female Yeoman at one point).
All of which is to say that I imagined a linear timeline from ‘less progressive’ to ‘more progressive’ as time goes on but that’s clearly not the case. I do wonder if maybe the female ‘number one’ is a factor in the pilot being rejected/unaired and they had a more conservative approach to broaden the appeal of the Kirk Star Trek???
TLDR: some great moments in the first twelve episodes of Star Trek, but also it’s a little bit:
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The network hated the idea of a woman on the bridge and made Roddenberry get rid of her. They also hated Spock, but Roddenberry won that argument.
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Fucking knew it! Dicks.
Also adds to my general feeling that new Star Trek series should do what STNG did and look forward in the timeline rather than try to do the Kirk/Pike era over again.
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So today over breakfast I watched episode 15 which confused the living fuck out of me.
In this one the Enterprise encounters Romulans for the first time. The guy who plays the Romulan commander is the actor who plays Sarek, Spock’s Dad, in STNG etc. I was utterly baffled… Was there going to be some big reveal about how they were Vulcans all along? How come Spock didn’t recognise his dad when he appeared on screen?
It was only when I looked up online that I discovered he wasn’t playing Sarek, he was playing a totally different pointy eared dude. Hey ho.
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Lower Decks has gone off Amazon 
I don’t have it to check but I assume it’s on Paramount now?
Turns out I’m being an idiot cos when I opened the show on the app it defaulted to the paid-for version of season 3, ie
But I can confirm it is still on there, it’s just that Prime is a poorly made product
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