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And speaking of that...

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The third of the Star Trek franchise, and most certainly the darkest and most mature, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (often abbreviated to Deep Space 9 or DS9) was the first --- and only --- of the franchise not to be set on a starship. With the action centring around the Starfleet space station Deep Space 9 it left little real opportunity for the space exploration which had become part and parcel of Star Trek for over thirty years at that point, and would concentrate more on domestic issues than galactic ones, initially. It would also, rather inevitably given that both series were running at the same time, feature some element of crossover with Star Trek: the Next Generation, with Worf transferring to the station at the beginning of season four and becoming a regular and important character in the series, allowing for much development of the history and mythology of Klingons. Riker would make the odd guest appearance too, and in the very first episode Patrick Stewart starred as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, but soon the show was demonstrating that it could stand on its own, and guest slots were very limited.

As I wrote in my introduction to Babylon 5, there were many similarities between the two shows: both were set on a space station, the first time any sci-fi show had gone down that route, and given that they hit around the same time it was always seen as more than just coincidence. Both shows featured a multi-cultural, multi-species cast of characters, and both had a major war between opposing alien powers and humans which broke out in the third and fourth seasons. Both stations had maverick captains who would often bend the rules to get things done, Babylon 5 featured first a commander and then a captain, and there were echoes of this progression with Deep Space 9, as its CO began as a commander and was then later promoted to captain. Mind you, that’s the military for you. In fairness though, in Babylon 5 it was not the same man who was promoted through the ranks, whereas in DS9 it was.

But there were a lot of differences too. DS9 was commanded by a single father who brought his son along, and they lived there. There was no wormhole in Babylon 5, and the station orbited a (mostly) uninhabited planet, while Deep Space 9 was in orbit around the thriving world of Bajor. There were no ambassadors on DS9: certainly there were aliens, but they all worked for a living. Odo, the Changeling, was chief of security, Quark the Ferengi ran the local bar and casino, and Major Kira was in the Bajoran military. Although initially neither commander or captain really wanted the job, Benjamin Sisko was more vociferous in his resistance to the post than Sinclair in Babylon 5, and in the pilot episode came close to telling Picard where he could stick his job.

DS9 became famous too for being the first major sf series to cast a black actor in the top role. Avery Brooks, unknown to sci-fi at the time, took the helm of the huge station as Commander Benjamin Sisko, making him the highest-ranking black officer ---at least, in more than a bit part --- in Starfleet up to then. But it was its darker themes and its exploration of the grey areas within not only Starfleet, but war in general, that would gain DS9 its greatest accolades. People had often criticised Star Trek for its overly “happy family” attitude towards Starfleet. They were the good guys, and there was no hazy areas. Although in NextGen they began to break this down slowly, and as early as season one there was an outside threat to the Federation in the form of aliens trying to compromise and take over key positions in the govenment and military, it sadly went nowhere and was forgotten about. But the seeds had been planted, and would flower with this series, not only with the introduction of Section 31, but with the decisions, often brutal and uncompromising, that Sisko and his staff would be forced to make for the greater good. Even the aggressors in the Dominion War, which would not really get going until season three, were in ways a sympathetic race, oppressed and hunted for centuries until they fought back, though as Franklin said in Babylon 5 they were more like abused children striking back at their tormentors, and little sympathy was in the end wasted on them. Still, it showed that not every alien leader was a Hitler or a Kang. The reasons for the war are well explained and detailed in the series, and the lines between good and evil --- if such concepts even exist -- blur even more.

Deep Space 9 would also copy Babylon 5 in the idea of the story arc, where from season three onwards it really became one big story, and impossible to follow if you missed some episodes. This would be its blessing and its curse, its strength and its weakness, as many TV viewers would be unwilling or unable to put in the kind of work involved in keeping up with the multi-layered story arc, and would find themselves hopelessly lost. You could watch NextGen one week, miss ten episodes and watch the eleventh, and not really be any the poorer. Sometimes story elements would carry through, but rarely, and NextGen episodes were generally self-contained. But to watch DS9 you had to commit to it, and it demanded your full and undivided attention. Of course, like Babylon 5, Lost, 24 and later series constant watching rewarded you with surprising plot twists, revelations, answers to questions, shocks and cliffhangers. The level of detail and the quality of the writing in DS9 was second to few: only Babylon 5 could claim the same skill in character development, plotting and scene-setting. It truly was a novel for the screen, once it got going.

DS9 lasted for seven seasons, over the course of which the series totally changed its look and its ethos. In the beginning it was pretty much self-contained stories that never linked to each other, but as the series found its feet and went from season to season these sort of episodes became more and more scarce as the main story began to build. And what a story it was!

CAST
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AVERY BROOKS as Commander (later Captain) Benjamin Sisko: When Sisko arrives at Deep Space 9 he is not looking forward to his new command. He has recently lost his wife in the Borg attack at Wolf 359 (See season four of Star Trek: the Next Generation) and is posted to the space station along with his son, Jake. The loss of his wife has shaken him and he confides to Picard that he may be thinking about resigning from Starfleet. In the end of course he does not, and goes on to become the central figure in the galaxy’s biggest and most important conflict since Earth faced the Borg.

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NANA VISITOR as Major Kira Nerys: Bajorans have their surnames first, so the Bajoran military attache to Deep Space 9 is addressed as Major Kira, not Major Nerys. She is there to observe and protect Bajoran interests, as the station has been occupied at the request of the Bajoran government in response to the withdrawal of their enemies and oppressors the Cardassians, and the later discovery of a wormhole just beyond their planet, which will provide commerce and travel, will also be of strategic military importance. The Bajorans (somewhat, again, like the Narns with the Centauri) have just ended a war against the Cardassians, who occupied their planet and who would surely claim the wormhole as theirs were the Federation not protecting it. Major Kira does not like or trust Starfleet, believing they are here for their own interests (she’s right of course) but over the run of the show she not only begins to distrust them less but forms a strong bond with Sisko, becoming his right hand.
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TERRY FARRELL as Jadzia Dax: First introduced in NextGen, trills are a race of symbiotic beings, who bond with a host body and then live in concert with it. Dax is a symbiont, a trill who has had several bodies, as the aliens live much longer than most other races including humans, and whose previous host, Curzon, Sisko knew well. This makes it a little awkward when he has to face the young female Jadzia, who has all Kurzon’s memories, but they remain fast friends.
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ALEXANDER SIDDIG as Doctor Julian Bashir: Arrogant, opinionated and with an ego the size of the space station (hey! Are we talking about Dr Franklin here?) Bashir is a young doctor who requested posting to DS9 because, as he says himself with naive excitement, he wanted to practice "frontier medicine". He’s young and handsome and thinks he knows it all, but like every other character here he develops significantly over the course of the series, till at the end he’s virtually unrecognisable from the man we see in the pilot.
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COLM MEANEY as Chief Miles O’Brien: One of the very earliest transfers from NextGen, O’Brien began as helmsman in that series and was later promoted to Transporter Chief, but it is as Chief Engineer that he transfers to Deep Space 9, with a reputation for being able to fix anything from a broken transporter coil to a broken heart. Well, maybe not the last. He is Irish though!
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RENE AUBERJONOIS as Odo: Initially an unknown lifeform who was left behind by the Cardassians when they abandoned Deep Space 9 at the end of the Bajoran War, Odo later is revealed to be of the race known as Changelings, who start up the whole Dominion War. At the opening of the series though he is the station’s chief of security. Odo (no other name) is able to change his form into anything he desires, does not need sleep and has little either in the way of emotions or humour. He has, however, a very serious and almost fanatical devotion to the rule of law.
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CIRROC LOFTON, as Jake Sisko: I’ve always had something of a problem with Jake being a main character. He does come into his own later in the series admittedly, but for most of the first and second season he’s just an incidental character, mostly running around with his Ferengi contemporary Nog, and getting into trouble as teenagers do. Bah! Still, at least he’s not Wesley Crusher!
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ARMIN SHIMERMAN as Quark: One of the funniest and most popular characters in the series is Quark, the Ferengi owner of the bar on the Promenade, the leisure centre of the station. He is devoted to making a profit at any cost, tight as anything and always looking for the next big deal he can secure. He treats his staff like slaves and his family worse, and has little time for humans, though he and his cohorts provide both the best moments of comic relief and paradoxically some of the deepest moments of pathos in the series. Through him and his contemporaries we learn a starshipload more about the Ferengi, who only feature briefly and in line-drawing mode in NextGen.

Of course, there are other characters, many of them, but some only feature from time to time, while others will be important but are not introduced into the storylines till later. As ever, as these appear I will note them and let you know how important they will turn out to be.