Product Description
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20 episodes on 6 discs: Emissary Part I, Emissary Part II, Past
Prologue, A Man Alone, Babel, Captive Pursuit, Q-Less, Dax, The
Passenger, Move Along Home, The Nagus, Vortex, Battle Lines, The
Storyteller, Progress, If Wishes Were Horses, The Forsaken,
Dramatis Personae, Duet, In the Hands of the Prophets.
.com
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Of all the spinoff TV incarnations of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine
had the hardest job persuading an audience to watch. By all
accounts, Gene Roddenberry had concerns about the idea before his
death in 1991. It took two more years to develop, and when it
finally aired in 1993 reasons for that concern were evident right
away. The show was dark (literally), characters argued a lot, no
one went anywhere, and the neighboring natives were hardly ever
friendly. Yet for all that the show went against the grain of the
Great Bird's original vision of the future, it undeniably caught
the mood of the time, incorporating a complex political backdrop
that mirrored our own.
In the casting, there was a clear intent to differentiate the
show from its predecessors. Genre stalwarts Tony Todd and James
Earl Jones were considered for Commander Sisko before Avery
Brooks. The one letdown at the time was that Michelle Forbes did
not carry Ensign Ro across from The Next Generation, but when the
explosive Nana Visitor defiantly slapped her hand on a console in
the pilot episode, viewers knew they were in for a different crew
dynamic. In fact, the two-part pilot show ("The Emissary") is
largely responsible for DS9's early success. Mysterious,
spiritual, claustrophobic, funny, and feisty, it remains the most
attention-grabbing series opener (apart from the original
series') the franchise has had. The first year may have relied on
a few too many familiar faces--like Picard, Q, and Lwaxana
Troi--but these were more than outweighed by refreshingly
detailed explorations of cultures old and new (Trill, Bajoran,
Cardassian, Ferengi). As it turned out, Deep Space Nine was the
boldest venture into Roddenberry's galaxy that had been (or ever
would be) seen. --Paul Tonks
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Set Contains:
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The first season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine follows the same
pattern as the Next Generation sets (
/exec/obidos/tg/stores/series/-/717/${0} ): four episodes per
disc, very good Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 surround sound, English
subtitles, and one disc of bonus features. Those features total
about 75 minutes, including an 18-minute documentary "Deep Space
Nine: A Bold Beginning," a profile of Kira Nerys, makeup and
props spotlights, and other short segments, all incorporating a
variety of cast and crew interviews from 1992 (the beginning of
the series), 1999 (the end), and 2002. It's good stuff, but Star
Trek television DVDs seem overdue for a commentary track on at
least a few episodes.
The packaging is noticeably different. Instead of TNG's heavy
cardboard box and foldout disc trays, DS9's trays are bound in a
book format, which makes the discs much easier to get to; on the
downside, the outer plastic sleeve seems more susceptible to wear
and tear. Another benefit is that the set occupies almost 50%
less shelf space than a season of TNG, meaning that from the
Original Series ( /exec/obidos/tg/stores/series/-/572/${0} ) to
TNG to DS9, each series is getting more compact, which is a
welcome development for Trekkers who had been considering renting
a storage unit to house their collections. --David Horiuchi
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