
Show HN: Star Trek DS9 Episodes Worth Watching - tessa_t
http://tessalt.github.io/ds9-episodeguide/
======
jerf
I'd be interested in a version of this for TNG as well. My wife recently
expressed interest in running through TNG on Netflix, but there's several
fairly bad episodes and a lot that are pretty tedious with little point. But I
sampled a few of the ones I remembered as being good, and seen through eyes
with 20 years more experience there's definitely more to them than I remember.
So I'm not intrinsically against the idea, but I don't want to walk through
the entire series.

For instance, we watched the episode where Picard is kidnapped by the Borg. As
a teenager, my drama-IQ was not so low that I entirely missed the major
storyline that Riker gets in that story about his career as he is challenged
by the up-and-coming Shelby, but I certainly see it much more clearly and with
far more nuance now.

~~~
jonnathanson
The problem with TNG is that it didn't necessarily get better in linear
fashion, the way one could argue that DS9 got better as it "found its voice"
and established a continuous storyline. TNG has some high points and some
clunkers in almost every season, though there are _slightly_ more low points
in the first two seasons. Having recently rewatched the run of the show, in
chronological order, I'd guesstimate that 10% of the episodes are bad, 50% are
decent, 20% are great, and 20% are spectacular. [1]

So something like this would be especially helpful for TNG, where a) there are
a lot of episodes in total, and b) there are no useful rules of thumb or
shorthand (such as "skip season X," or "it gets better beyond Y").

Now, the great news about TNG is that it's mostly episodic. Which means she
can watch any episode, at random, and enjoy it as a self-contained story.
(Aside from the two-parters.) TNG really lends itself to randomized viewing.
DS9 needs to be watched in chronological order (at least for the first-time
viewer). TNG can be watched in any order.

[1] Some people will find this assessment overly generous, and others will
find it overly harsh. That's the beauty of Trek fandom; there's plenty of room
for disagreement. :) Just about the only things TNG fans can agree on are
that: 1) Riker with beard > Riker without beard; 2) "The Naked Now" is
probably the series' worst episode, although it's enjoyable in a kitschy,
ironic sort of way; 3) Wesley Crusher sucks (although Wil Wheaton himself is a
pretty awesome guy).

~~~
nkohari
Hey, when I was 12, Wesley was pretty awesome.

~~~
jonnathanson
Was he? I mean, in theory, he was definitely there to provide the
pre/adolescent entry point into the show. So I get that. But I always hated
him. When I was 12, he was kind of a minor annoyance. Data was the greatest
thing since sliced bread. Riker completely puzzled me; I kept hearing about
how cool he was supposed to be, and to me, he just seemed like kind of a dick.
Worf was pretty cool. Geordi was ok, and he got a lot of good will for having
been on Reading Rainbow. Troi was annoying, but 12-year-old me really
appreciated her taste in spandex. Beverly Crusher was kind of boring. Picard
was pretty cool.

As an adult, I still find Wesley annoying (if, ironically enough, less so).
Data is still pretty awesome. Riker has grown on me in a way that I don't
think I would have been capable of appreciating as an inexperienced kid. He is
a nuanced character that you kind of have to have lived a little in order to
get. My opinion on Worf is largely unchanged, though his stock benefitted
retrospectively from his appearances on DS9. Geordi got better with the
benefit of time. Troi still bugs me; I find her one-dimensional with only
occasional chances to shine. (Probably not her fault. It seems that the
writers just didn't know what to do with her, other than consign her to
stereotypical, damsel-in-distress and love-interest tropes. Her mother, by
contrast, is a fantastic character, if a bit of a lightning rod amongst fans.)
Beverly Crusher grew on me a bit -- especially in contrast to Dr. Pulaski,
whose odd, technophobic Data-bashing felt really out of place in the 24th
Century. Picard went from being "pretty cool" to being, unquestionably, the
best thing about the show.

~~~
LandoCalrissian
I actually really enjoyed Dr. Pulaski, but I'm pretty aware I'm in a small
group on that one. She was just so damn surly, which I thought brought a nice
contrast to the rest of the cast.

~~~
jonnathanson
I guess I have mixed feelings about her. She was definitely a character, and I
give her credit for that. She was _not_ out to win a popularity contest, or to
be Miss Congeniality. She was gruff, old fashioned, and smart. Sort of like
McCoy, but without the charm. But I just didn't buy her Luddite tendencies.
Her treatment of Data bordered on cruel, even if I understand that sometimes
she was doing it to make a point, or to test him in certain ways. But I just
didn't get where it came from. It felt odd. And I know this isn't necessarily
fair to Pulaski, but seeing as how Data is so gosh-darned lovable, her
antagonism towards him makes her unlovable by association. It's like having a
character whose defining traits include being mean to puppies. It's
just...hard to win people over if you're going to be that person.

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BigChiefSmokem
Call to Arms of course. This is the series where we actually saw the
Federation go to war (on-screen).

All the episodes revolving around Sisko as Emissary as well. Impressive
writing given the religious and philosophical contexts involved. It went over
a lot of peoples' head if they didn't follow the series since the pilot.

I know this is not a popular opinion but this is my favorite Star Trek series,
followed by TNG.

~~~
Pxtl
It's hard because the shows both have their own merits. TNG easily had the
best cast of any Trek show, but the show is limited by being allergic to
continuity and the uniformity of its all-military characters.

DS9's writing wasn't really any better than TNG - there were some great
episodes and many forgettable bits of filler. But DS9, in spite of its static
setting, had more room to grow thanks to being willing to let the story change
and develop, plus having a large cast of recurring characters _outside_ of
Starfleet/Bajoran military. The characters that made the show great were Winn
and Garak and Ducat and Wayoun and Quark - a stellar cast of recurring
villains and peripheral characters.

The problem is that the show tried to tries to force a Kirk/Spock relationship
between Sisko and Dax when they're just plain _bad_ actors. It's a shame since
the show was really built around them. Avery Brooks tries to sound intense but
he comes off just being a bad ham, and Terry Farrell tries to sound serene but
ends up just being wooden.

That and I'll never forgive the show for making me hate Worf. Seriously, DS9
Worf is a jerk.

~~~
djur
DS9's cast was much better than TNG's. Patrick Stewart is the only actor on
TNG I'd consistently rate above the bulk of DS9's cast.

~~~
philsnow
I love every TNG Q episode because there's something about the combination of
John de Lancie and Patrick Stewart.

None of Q's appearances on DS9 or VOY had nearly the chemistry.

I guess JdL wasn't a "cast" member of TNG though.

~~~
jonnathanson
Q was pretty clearly designed as an antagonist and foil for Jean-Luc Picard,
and he never made a lot of sense in the other series. He was brought into
those series, like the Borg, for ratings stunts. And it showed.

~~~
philsnow
mercifully, they didn't bring him into Enterprise

... right ? i don't know, i watched only a few episodes of enterprise

~~~
jonnathanson
Thankfully, the writers of Enterprise never panicked and pushed the Q button
the way Voyager's did. The Borg make a questionable and continuity-challenging
[1] appearance on Enterprise, but Q never does.

I watched all of Enterprise. It...gets better in Seasons 3 and 4. That's about
all I can say. The first season is pretty bad. Season 2 has a few good
episodes. In Season 3, things start to pick up a bit, and Season 4 is
legitimately interesting. The show never quite reaches the heights of TNG,
DS9, or TOS. But it gets pretty good. I'd only recommend watching it all the
way through if you're ready to wade past the early crap, though.

[1] This is kind of a mixed bag. The explanation for their appearance stems
from the events of _Star Trek: First Contact_ , in which a small detachment of
Borg drones are left behind on Earth in the 20th Century. So the timeline has
been altered a bit, and hence, those remnant Borg show up in Enterprise. On
the flip side, you'd think that an early encounter with the Borg would have
stuck in everyone's memory a little bit, and that Picard wouldn't have been
shocked upon first encountering them. The episode acknowledges the issue, at
least, and attempts to arrive at a workaround. The fix is clever, if not
entirely satisfactory.

~~~
philsnow
> The fix is clever, if not entirely satisfactory.

klingon augment virus, got it

~~~
jonnathanson
Ugh, don't remind me. That was the worst. Why can't shows just acknowledge
that makeup and effects change over time, and leave well enough alone? Augment
Virus was Enterprise's attempt to cave into fans' demands that Star Trek offer
an explanation for the TOS Klingons. If you ask me, Star Trek should've just
hand-woven that subject indefinitely.

DS9 handled the matter much more effectively in "Trials and Tribbleations."
Someone asked why the old-school Klingons had smooth foreheads, and Worf
replied "We don't like to discuss that with outsiders." Boom. Perfect
explanation. Funny, clever, and hand-wavy. Done.

~~~
djur
Unfortunately, that joke on DS9 (which I absolutely love) was taken as
establishing as canon that TOS-era Klingons actually looked different. A sane
person would interpret it as a meta joke in an episode full of them, but these
are Star Trek fans we're talking about here.

That still doesn't justify Enterprise trying to explain it. If one must insist
that there be an in-universe explanation because of the DS9 precedent, just
say Q decided to mutate the entire species for a hundred years as a lark.

~~~
jonnathanson
The classic "a wizard did it" defense. :) Come to think of it, that's just
about the only potential appearance of Q in Enterprise I would have tolerated.
"Oh, they look different? Hmmm. Q did it."

~~~
Pxtl
My favored approach would be to just do it off-camera.

One episode right at the end, Klingons show up looking de-Klingon'd. "What the
hell happened to the Klingons?" Klingons won't say.

Sometimes, the audience just doesn't get to know.

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joeroot
I like the idea, however I'd disagree with the heuristic used. DS9 was really
the first Star Trek series to introduce story arcs, and as such, skipping the
wrong episodes leads to a confusing experience. I'd argue that in order to
avoid missing out on important chunks of the arc, hand curation is really the
only viable option (maybe text-clustering of plot narratives might work?).

Personally, as a huge DS9 fan, I think that you should watch every episode.
Each episode adds colour and depth to the series' characters, and in my
opinion makes it the most rewarding Star Trek series.

~~~
danielweber
I tend to be of the "watch it all" camp, since even mediocre episodes make the
excellent episodes much more rewarding. And you don't know which is which
going in.

That said, "Profit And Lace" has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

~~~
delecti
As bad as it is (and it really was retched), even "Profit and Lace" plays into
the larger storyline of Ferengi women gaining civil rights.

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MattGrommes
This is a cool idea. I'd like to see it for more shows. With so many shows
available on Netflix/Amazon/etc. it's hard to figure out what I should watch
when a show has hundreds of available episodes.

In the case of DS9, it's funny that it pretty much matches my experience in
that there are very few early episodes then when the big Dominion storyline
starts it includes almost all episodes for the last 3 seasons. DS9 became such
a great show once Sisko shaved his head and got the goatee. :)

~~~
CJefferson
I've been doing this for Stargate by reading the reviews on Gateworld.

On advantage of gateworld which this website misses is that they rate episodes
both on quality, and importance to the ongoing plot. I have chosen to watch a
couple of episodes which, while rated lowly (mainly because they were
disappointments after buildup), are important to the ongoing plot of the show.

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jorgeleo
"Because nobody cares about the Ferengi"

MOOGYYYYYYY!!!!

Now seriously, the ferengy were supposed to be there for some humor scenes,
and they developed the ferengy society considerably. Female liberation, the
challenge of the responsability of the first child vs. the youngest. Etc.

Sisko accepting that Jake dated a Dabo girl...

I disagree that Ferengies are unimportant in the ST universe. They have a
role.

~~~
ejr
I enjoyed "Magnificient Ferengi" in particular. An all Ferengi episode that
featured virtually every prominent character of the race except the Grand
Nagus.

Edit: It seems even on the list, there is Season 3, "The House of Quark"

~~~
tessa_t
Important to establish Quark's relationship with that klingon lady though...
it comes up later.

~~~
ejr
Ah yes, involving Worf in "Looking for ParMach in all the wrong places".

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dcc1
The whole series is worth watching

Right now TV is in its "golden age" but there are no good sci-fi tv shows
(hell even the word "scifi" is dirty somehow now, see > SyFy-lis).

Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Outer Limits all gone replaced by
Vampires and all sorts of supernatural rubbish.

Dr Who is the only interesting scifi show now worth watching, for the most
part...

~~~
chrisgd
Check out the 100 on the CW. Seriously

~~~
nitrogen
It's not in the same optimistic genre as Star Trek TNG, but the 100 is
watchable. It has a younger cast, so it might be better at getting younger
viewers into sci-fi. Other current sci-fi, also not in the TNG genre but still
enjoyable: Continuum, Defiance.

~~~
pwelch
Dr Who is really the best one right now.

Continuum is pretty good but it's no Star Trek/Stargate.

Falling Skies is okay but I don't think it's technically Sci-Fi.

We could really use some new Sci-Fi shows.

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IgorPartola
The remade Battlestar Galactica series had one horrible episode: "Black
Market". I think everyone agrees that it's not good. However, if I was a first
time watcher and someone told me to skip it, I would not have done so. I guess
I like to watch the entire show and form my own opinions.

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dobbsbob
DS9 gets good as soon as Sisko has the goatee. TNG post beard as well. If you
watch DS9 Ep 04x02 you'll notice a familiar phrase shouted by the hilarious
klingon guy 'we do not forgive, or forget' which was played in a raid chatroom
back in 2004 and soon afterwards appeared in call to arms threads

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Nux
The right way to watch Star Trek is to go through all of it.

~~~
ghaff
Well, the point is that--for most shows and most people--the idea of jumping
into a previously aired series requiring a 100+ hour commitment to work
through is daunting, to put it mildly. Given the amount of TV hours I budget,
I know it's a non-started for me; I still haven't made it all the way through
the Sopranos. There are a lot of shows--even many with well-defined arcs--that
lend themselves to a "20 hour version" or so approach capturing both the
overall flow and feel of the series. I'm not sure it works for everything--not
sure about BSG or Lost for example--but I think it works pretty well for most
of Star Trek.

~~~
Nux
Well, we definitely have different ways of watching stuff.

Which such good stuff such as ST, there are not enough episodes. I wish there
were more. "It's the journey that matters!"

Re BSG, you DO NOT want to skip episodes, there's even a "right" order:
[http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/battlestar-
gal...](http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/battlestar-galactica-
viewing-order.html)

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DevX101
If you want to do this for the X-Files and follow the story arc while skipping
all the 'Monster of the Week' stuff, you can do so with this episode guide:

[http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Mythology](http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Mythology)

~~~
AndrewBissell
The problem with that approach is that the MotW episodes include some of the
X-Files' very best, and the Mythology became very weak and incoherent in the
later seasons. I think you'd at least want to mix in some of the best MotW
eps, and probably all the Lone Gunman ones as well.

~~~
uxp100
Yeah, actually if one HAD to skip either Mythology or MotW, skip Mythology.

~~~
cmdrfred
Once they got rid of Mulder I didn't see the point.

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yurisagalov
tldr; season 1 and 2 are weak, and then they find their pace and things are
amazing.

More seriously, though, I'm so glad In The Pale Moonlight is ranked as one the
top episodes (three episodes are ranked 9.5). I think it's one of the best
episodes of television and Star Trek in general, and it's certainly one of my
favorite episodes of DS9.

(in case anyone doesn't remember, it's the episode where Sisko gets the
Romulans into the war with Garak's help, and has a final monologue in lines
with "I can live with it" \--
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-YyL7X4CWw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-YyL7X4CWw))

~~~
Jare
That episode in particular is my personal high point of anything Star Trek, by
far.

~~~
digisign
... and all it cost was the self-respect of one star fleet officer.

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angersock
I wish somebody would do something like this for Babylon 5--shame they only
made four seasons and no movies.

~~~
nkoren
Five seasons and a number of TV movies:

[http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html](http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html)

The "P5 rating" for each episode tends to be a very reliable indicator of its
quality. That said, B5 cannot be watched out of sequence, and there are _very_
few episodes which one can skip, due to the nature of the story arc.

~~~
angersock
You can skip most of the first season without too much detriment, maybe up
until the last six episodes. It had a lot of onboarding, and honestly served
mainly to get audiences used to the style of the universe and that things were
not just rubber-mask villain-of-the-week nonsense (the passing of Ivanova's
father, for example).

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EGreg
My favorite part of the site is:

"Disagree with my choices? Fight me irl. Or submit a pull request."

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Tiktaalik
Cool idea.

A helpful next feature would be to somehow show the skipped episodes so the
user could take some action to peek at the synopsis and rating to see if they
really wanted to skip it.

Another helpful feature would be to tag all the episodes by character and
theme. A user could be a huge fan of say, Jake episodes and Bajor oriented
episodes, and if they came across such an episode with a low score, they might
decide to watch it anyway.

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aenean
This reminds me of a similar exercise to find the optimal viewing order of
Battlestar Galactica episodes, movies, web-series, deleted scenes, extended
episodes, etc.

[http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/3641/what-is-the-
vi...](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/3641/what-is-the-viewing-
order-of-the-re-imagined-battlestar-galactica)

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whosbein
Thanks! I was looking for a new show to binge-watch on Netflix.

I wanted to point out that (after just now checking) Netflix isn't consistent
with their two-part show listings as they relate to Netflix's episode number.
For example, the two-parter of S01E01-02 and S04E01-02 are listed as one
episode on Netflix. S02E20-21 are listed as two separate episodes. It gets out
of sync with the guide. Not a huge deal, just need to make sure to pay
attention to episode title as opposed to episode number.

~~~
smorrow
Some, not all, two-part Star Trek episodes get remade as one ninety-minute
thing, which might be what's causing that.

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smorrow
Just watch all of them. Yes, the first two seasons are weak... not as much as
the first two of TNG or Voyager though...

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gwy
The Graph TV for DS9 might accomplish a similar goal, just using a different
ratings dataset (IMDB) and visualization.

[http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0106145](http://graphtv.kevinformatics.com/tt0106145)

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wmil
I find using SFDebris' score works well for all Trek series.

[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/SFDebris](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/SFDebris)

~~~
tessa_t
These do look better. I just chose TV.com because the data seemed easiest to
scrape.

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bjourne
You can safely skip all the episodes where Kiera is an evil vixen in a weird
parallel universe. Also those where O'Brien gets tortured again. Those are
just cringe-worthy.

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TheRealPomax
This is great for the less popular star treks... got one for Voyager, too?

~~~
ghaff
Voyager is actually a pretty good example of a show that was... flawed... in
many ways but which nonetheless had some pretty good episodes that could be
enjoyed in relative isolation. For some reason, some of the time travel mini-
arcs worked pretty well for me--perhaps because they existed somewhat outside
of an overall story arc that never completely clicked for me.

~~~
danielweber
A lot of the greatest hits of Voyager outright contradicted each other. "Blink
Of An Eye" is a wonderful piece of sci-fi, but it totally doesn't fit in the
Trek world.

There was a move _away_ from continuity after DS9, which given the larger pace
of television since then looks downright silly today.

~~~
ghaff
>There was a move away from continuity after DS9, which given the larger pace
of television since then looks downright silly today.

Well, we're in a phase where much of the better television is indeed very arc-
centric. I'm not convinced that's an unalloyed good although it's a fairly
natural outcome of a variety of factors including on-demand viewing and serial
TV being something that can 't really be replicated in movies (for the most
part). On the other hand, there are certainly examples of historical TV SF
that haven't been serialized and, in the case of The Twilight Zone, were
purely anthologies.

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robinhoodexe
As pointed out, disable your adblock on the site if it's empty.

~~~
giaour
At first, I thought the empty list was the point of the site.

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dbg31415
Best Star Trek.

~~~
peatmoss
At the time, I thought it was utterly forgettable and stopped watching after
the first season. I netflixed it a couple of years ago and was surprised to
find myself very pleasantly surprised at how good the writing was. I'm
inclined to agree with you, even if the original series holds a special campy
place in my heart (no, I'm not old enough to have seen it in its first run).

Then I watched Voyager hoping it too was better than I remembered. It was not.

As an aside, I've been enjoying the youtube series "Star Trek Continues."
They've done a great job of capturing the aesthetic of the original. I'm
hoping they'll have some new episodes soon.

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el_fong
tessa thanks so much for creating this. i grew up loving ds9 and have a crush
on Morn. thanks again tessa

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arkaeologic
fight me irl.

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nnnnni
Surely it's nothing but the Wesley Crusher episodes.

~~~
pessimizer
According to my mother, the best episodes can be judged purely by Sisko screen
time.

~~~
ejr
Your mother is an excellent judge of sci-fi character.

I've seen many arguments that the role of Sisko was heavy handed in many ways
and there are some truth to that, but with the exception of a few, any episode
featuring the brilliant Avery Brooks is likely to be a good one.

~~~
pessimizer
My mother's interest in Avery Brooks is probably a bit more base than that:)

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skrowl
How many people clicked it expecting a blank page or "There are none" or
something like that?

