Lower Decks

This is as far away from traditional wisdom as I’m willing to go: no Star Trek had a better second season than ‘Voyager.’ Flush from a strong push in the early months of 1995, and thanks to some production and network quirks, a few episodes from that early run were held back for the new [...]

In 1995, Paramount achieved its greatest dream buy launching its own TV network with a Star Trek, something it had been trying to do since the 1970s. That show was ‘Voyager,’ conceived to replace ‘Next Generation’ as a traditional space-faring adventure and contrast to ‘Deep Space Nine.’ But it wouldn’t be entirely episodic, since it [...]

‘Next Generation’ had established a new mark for Star Trek TV shows with seven seasons, a full four more than the original series, which became the model for two of its three successors. So the fall of 1998 promised but one thing for fans who’d become so enamored of ‘Deep Space Nine’ the previous season, [...]

Here’s the start of the ‘Deep Space Nine’ its most fervent fans to this day will still remember vividly, entering into serialized territory for the first six episodes of the season, exploring the opening months of the Dominion War. What its curious competitor, ‘Babylon 5,’ had been doing for most of its run, and what [...]

Now, I assume it’s always preferable to truly enjoy the things you enjoy. I mention this because as far as comics go, I think 2010 has been a pretty good year so far. I won’t try and suggest it’s been a great year, with a lot of things everyone will still remember ten years from [...]

If the third season opened the series up and the fourth season made it go widescreen, then the birth of the ‘Deep Space Nine’ that most fans would truly recognize was the fifth, which premiered in the fall of 1996, the thirtieth anniversary of Star Trek. By the end of the season, the Dominion War [...]

The term “widescreen” has been used for certain large scale comic book storytelling in the past, and is meant to suggest a summer blockbuster scope. I’d suggest that starting in the fall of 1995, ‘Deep Space Nine’ got into widescreen mode, now that anyone who had been paying attention previously knew everything there was to [...]

I still consider this one to be my favorite season of Star Trek, and it’s not strictly because it was the first one I watched completely as first run material. It was the year ‘Deep Space Nine’ seemed to finally click on all cylinders, make bold strides toward the future, mold some definite franchise ground [...]

Up to this point in my Star Trek experience, I had been following the franchise in second run syndication, but finally, in 1994 (quite handily, with the still-memorable occasion of the broadcast of “All Good Things…” looming), I started catching it the first pass around, notably as ‘Deep Space Nine’ was wrapping up its second [...]

In January of 1993, Star Trek expanded once again, notably for the first time in its history to have two series run simultaneously on television (though it might be noted that competing crews had been a problem for fans since 1987, not just as a matter for debate but as a practical concern, between movie [...]