Shatner dises DS9?

space_invader64 · May 27, 2007, 07:44:34 PM

In Shatner's history channel special about star trek, he was harsh about Ira Stephen Behr's darker direction of DS9. Saying that people were to polite to point out that few were watching. I thought DS9 had fewer dud episodes that TNG or VOY and the Dominion War was the most exciting TV I have ever seen.

Rico should do a show that covers Call to Arms through Sacrifice of the Angles.

Dan M · May 28, 2007, 06:11:04 AM

Well, you're right that there were fewer duds, but the ratings were lower, something attributed by many, including TPTB, to the darker tone and the continuing storylines (the two best parts of the show).

Rico · May 28, 2007, 06:16:18 AM

I really enjoyed DS9 - but it was probably the one TREK series farthest away from the original TREK in style, stories, characters, etc. It also had many continuing arcs that could be hard to follow unless you watched all of it. One of the reason it's hard to cover the arc stories on the podcast, but I do plan on trying to in the future.

keozen · May 29, 2007, 06:28:27 AM

I must admit DS9 is my favorite of all the trek series so far.

The hard part I think was season 1 didn't grab enough people straight away, then as Rico said, there were a lot of arcs that made it hard for people to get into at a later date.

You can calculate the time when DS9 started getting REALLY good down to the second that Sisko's hair migrated from his head to his chin :D

space_invader64 · May 29, 2007, 03:57:28 PM

I like captian kirk but I really don't care for shatner. Even Will Wheaton has come down on him for his misstreatment of his fans.

I often feel like he didn't care about anything star trek that he was not in. It's my understanding that he didn't like any of the spin-offs.

The roast should have been on hbo or some other outlet. I thought it was too vulgar for much of the trekies.

Ktrek · May 29, 2007, 09:55:52 PM

Shatner has an ego as big as Texas. If he had been in DS9 you would never have heard a bad word from him about the show. I love all things Trek and I love Shatner as Kirk because that's what I grew up with. He will always be the space hero archetype to me. However, some of the things he does outside of Trek have irritated me over the years. I admire his ability to re-invent himself over and over though. I think many other actors might not have had much of a career after playing Captain Kirk as he did. Resiliency comes to mind!

Kevin

keozen · May 30, 2007, 03:07:48 PM

I'm not a lover of Mr Shatner anymore myself after also having a bad personal experience with the man, leaving me with the opinion that he has no real care for the fans and does a lot of it all just for the money. It's sad.

psikeyhackr · May 30, 2007, 04:30:02 PM

As an SF fan rather than a Star Trek fan I think DS9 is without question the best Trek.

If anything the fact that so many Trek fans don't like it that much is an indication of how true science fiction is kind of a fringe artform. STNG has this goody two shoes, cotton candy, botter won't melt in its mouth style that often made me want to puke. I wanted to shoot Picard in the head in the Pegasus episode. :shootgun:

I think the DS9 episode In the Pale Moonlight epitomizes the difference between DS9 and all of the other Treks. Good sci-fi should not be fantasy.

I think Jeffery Hunter would have made a better captain than Shatner. But TOS was stereotypical of the 60's. The relationship between Kirk and Spock was similar to The Lone Ranger and Tonto, the Green Hornet and Kato and Napolean Solo and Ilya Kuriyakin.

I loved tn in Mirror, Mirror when the Evil Spock told Kirk he had orders to kill him.

"Mr. Sulu, beam the ex-captain into space." ROFL

psik

space_invader64 · May 30, 2007, 05:08:48 PM

keozen, would you like to share your bad expierence with shatner? I've never met a star trek cast member. But I have met many rock stars. Most of them are good people but Vince Neil was horrable. He poped a towel at a girl wanting an autograph. I felt so sorry for her. The other bands at the show didn't care for him much either.

psikeyhack, I really agree with you about Pale Moonlight. Rico should totally review that one!

Locutus · May 31, 2007, 10:19:05 AM

Quote from: psikeyhackr on May 30, 2007, 04:30:02 PM
As an SF fan rather than a Star Trek fan I think DS9 is without question the best Trek.

If anything the fact that so many Trek fans don't like it that much is an indication of how true science fiction is kind of a fringe artform. STNG has this goody two shoes, cotton candy, botter won't melt in its mouth style that often made me want to puke. I wanted to shoot Picard in the head in the Pegasus episode. :shootgun:

I think the DS9 episode In the Pale Moonlight epitomizes the difference between DS9 and all of the other Treks. Good sci-fi should not be fantasy.

I think Jeffery Hunter would have made a better captain than Shatner. But TOS was stereotypical of the 60's. The relationship between Kirk and Spock was similar to The Lone Ranger and Tonto, the Green Hornet and Kato and Napolean Solo and Ilya Kuriyakin.

I loved tn in Mirror, Mirror when the Evil Spock told Kirk he had orders to kill him.

"Mr. Sulu, beam the ex-captain into space." ROFL

psik

I have to say, that seems a bit harsh, what? TNG never felt like a bunch of goody goody's, they acted like they were in the military, albeit a bit removed from the Earth navy I was in. The had and used the chain of command, they followed orders, and faced consequences when they didn't, and if everything was bright and shiny, it was only because, militarily speaking, you polish the balustrades to a high gloss so the captain won't notice the dirt under the carpet, even though he knows it's there. The idea is that, even in a highly idealized galaxy, you still have to deal with many unsavory characters and aspects, and the show reflected a very 80's feeling of Bringing Civilization to the Savages, but with the concept of the Prime Directive to keep them from abusing their power.

It's all checks and balances.

Flights of fancy and extrapolation is what scifi is all about, IMHO. Take a principle, then stretch it out to have some fun with it. TNG did that all the time, and much less "fantastically" than Voyager, where they hardly even spoke English, just technobabble.

DS9, while my favorite Trek, had some issues as well. Sisco could be a bit of a prig when he got down to it, and the ending was ... just ... awful.

psikeyhackr · May 31, 2007, 07:06:01 PM

The problem with criticizing Star Trek is that it is so variable. There are so many different writers that it doesn't have the consistency of Babylon 5 which was almost entirely written by JMS.

The Pegasus episode is the one that bugs me the most. Picard deliberately turned off the cloaking device revealing its existence and capabilities to the Romulans. But there had been a previous episode The Next Phase where the Romulans had had an accident trying to develop that same technology and had tried to destroy the Enterprise.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TNG/episode/68634.html

It is curious how they don't point out Picard's nonsense in the summary. LOL

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TNG/episode/68554.html

In Picard's position I would have left a photon torpedo inside the asteroid to detonate after the Enterprise had escaped possibly with a prerecorded transmission telling the Romulans I would rather destroy the Enterprise then let them get it. And then return to Star Fleet as slowly as possible telling La Forge to study that device and build a duplicate for the Enterprise. I would only use it in a life or death situation but I would rather be court martialled for having an illegal device than have my ship and crew destroyed.

The episodes where Picard keeps people from stealing dangerous material from his ship, Starship Mine, and where he helps pirates put together an ancient Vulcan relic with psychic power, Gambit, are more my style. Picard left the dude that played Tuvoc strapped down in sick bay to be killed by that baryon sweep.

I wasn't in the military but I was in the first draft lottery for the Vietnam War. I distinctly remember watching that on TV and wondering what I was going to do if I got a low number. It is now 30 years since that war. Do you ever hear our capitalist economists talk about planned obsolescence of automobiles or how much we lose on depreciation of that garbage every year? It is funny how some people complain about Star Trek being Communist. ROFL

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Trek-Marxism.html

Check out The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl for some prophetic sci-fi. I am not concerned about trivia like shine and polish. The US killed 3,000,000 Vietnamese for some bad algebra.

http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?t=28529

psikey

Hancider · May 31, 2007, 08:49:58 PM

Well I am wondering if this doesn't have something to do with the fact that Roddenberry and a lot of the TOS episodes created a much rosier picture of the future without racism and war and that DS9 pretty much bucked a lot of those trends. I remember hearing that Gene didn't like all of the racial and violent overtones in Star Trek 6, especially when it portrayed the characters in a less than goody two shoes light that was prevalent in the TOS period. I think that DS9 having more complex main characters in it and my word a full scale war in the later series probably doesn't adhere itself very well to TOS crew and fans.