Star Trek: Deep Space Nine S01E01, "Emissary" (1993) TV Episode Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back with my pilot episode review of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "Emissary". I did a review of the novelization for this episode almost two years ago so it'll be interesting to talk about the actual episode itself. There will be some spoilers, because it's a 30 year old show and I have things I want to talk about. So let's get into it.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the one Star Trek series that I haven't watched all the way through at least once, and it's the only series that aired from 1987 and 2005 that I didn't watch as it was airing. While it's consistently the best written and acted of all the Star Trek shows, it's also the darkest of the classic Trek shows and I don't mean in terms of the visuals being that the space station isn't as well lit as the interiors of a Federation starship. The show deals with alot of adult themes that TNG wasn't allowed to tackle, outside of a few specific episodes, and that Voyager couldn't tackle because it was a network series, and Rick Berman was wary enough of DS9 tackling those topics in the manner that that show did. So, outside of "Emissary" I didn't see a single episode of DS9 until it was on in reruns when I was in high school in the early to mid 2000s. And even then, I've never sat down and watched the entire series all the way through before.

Of all the pilot episodes I've watched so far, "Emissary" is the best. It's well written, well acted, and well paced. There's never a moment where you feel it slow down the way "Encounter at Farpoint" does at the halfway mark. It also sets things up for later in the series with everything going on with Bajor and the precarious nature of Starfleet's presence in the Bajoran Sector. 

The characters are also really likeable. From the minute he appeared on screen, Benjamin Sisko, played by the fascinating Avery Brooks, was likeable. His relationship with his son, Jake, played by Cirroc Lofton, feels natural and effortless, and Sisko is just a great person, but he feels like a real person, which wasn't the case with TOS or TNG. Of course, Chief O'Brien, played by Colm Meaney, is from TNG, but he's always felt like a real person, even though we didn't learn his name until season 2, and didn't know he had a first or middle name until season 4. I thought it was a good move to put him over on DS9 because we got to spend alot more time with him that we weren't able to on TNG, being that he wasn't a main character on TNG. 

However, I think the character who has the most growth in this episode, besides Sisko, is Kira Nerys, played by Nana Visitor. She starts off being opposed to having Starfleet on the station, being that Bajor had just been freed from the Cardassian Occupation, and the government immediately called in the Federation. But, as the episode goes on Kira begins to realize that if Bajor is going to lay claim to the Wormhole, and keep the Cardassians away from it, the Federation will be able to help them with that. We also don't get as much with Dax and Bashir or with Quark as we do in the rest of the series. Which is fine, but Bashir wasn't great for most of this episode. Obviously he gets better as the show goes on, but here, Bashir was my least favourite character.

Sisko adds something to Picard's story because this is the first time that we've met a survivor of the Battle of Wolf 359 from the TNG season 3 finale and season 4 premiere, "The Best of Both Worlds". We've seen Picard go through what he did when he was Locutus, but we've never seen  it from someone else's perspective and how they might feel being forced to confront Picard again, knowing that he was Locutus, the threat that killed their partner and hundreds other sentient beings, even though deep down, they know that Picard wasn't in control of his actions. It's also the first time we see the actual battle being that TNG only showed the remains of the Starfleet vessels after the battle, and the psychological impact being Locutus had on Picard. 

Overall this was a great start to a wonderful, yet different, Star Trek series. I'm going to do a full review of the series at some point, because I am fascinated by the show's production and how it got made despite everything against, as well as the more recent popularity of the series being that it wasn't popular when it originally aired from 1993 until 1999. I think alot of it has to do with the show's release on DVD as well as on streaming. But, that's a discussion for another time. For now I highly recommend watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine if you've never watched it before.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for this week. I'll be back next week with more reviews and blog posts. Including the first episode of a series that I am very well aware of, but have never seen a single episode of. So that should be interesting. So until then, have a great rest of the weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.