Lower Decks

The 1998-1999 season was the last time Star Trek would overlap itself on TV, ending a seven year stretch that saw the franchise reach the apex of its cultural appeal at the time, and its steady decline. ‘Star Trek: Insurrection’ would be released in the middle of the season, marking the first of two nails in the coffin of the film series from this incarnation, proving that even the once-mighty ‘Next Generation’ crew was not immune from this loss of interest, even though, two years earlier, it had just reached perhaps its widest mark of approval with ‘Star Trek: First Contact.’ So while ‘Deep Space Nine’ completed its seven year run, ‘Voyager’ was about to find out if it could carry the weight of expectations. Its fifth season would be crucial indeed.

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For some reason, Star Trek was never really good about changing cast members. The original series completely recast itself once, but it was between pilots, so no one ever really knew, before adding Chekov (the shaggy-headed Russian meant to boost popularity) in the second season. ‘Next Generation’ lost Yar in the first season, switched doctors in the second (before quickly switching back in the third). ‘Deep Space Nine’ brought in Worf in its fourth. But it’s safe to say that no Star Trek ever affected a complete reinvention with the addition of a single character like ‘Voyager’ did with Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan).

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In the fall of 1996, the franchise was celebrating its thirtieth anniversary, which was an event every incarnation got to celebrate. But perhaps more importantly, ‘Next Generation’ got to enjoy its most obvious parting gifts to the two shows that immediately succeeded it, thanks to the success of that winter’s ‘Star Trek: First Contact.’ Midway through its fifth season, ‘Deep Space Nine’ inherited the distinctive new movie’s uniforms. And midway through its third, ‘Voyager’ inherited the Borg.

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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 season that started in the fall, but even from that point, the show only seemed to grow stronger and more bold, building the first true long arc of the franchise, at the same time that ‘Deep Space Nine’ was only just getting the hang of the Dominion, and getting a tad scuttled in its own efforts by the same studio (remember that ‘Voyager’ debuted during the other show’s third season, and so was in its second season as the older show went on to its fourth, with the debut of Worf and infusion of Klingons). How’s that for revisionism?

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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 was equipped with the high concept of a Starfleet crew abandoned far from home, and forced to join with rebels who had previously rejected everything it had stood for.

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‘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, that this would be the final year of the show. Unburdened but still energized, the creators knew the best way to impress was to take out all the stops, which included limiting the writing staff to just the core names (at least in the final teleplay credits) that had developed over the past few seasons, who seemed to have the whole thing mapped out just nicely.

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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 would become popular with ‘Battlestar Galactica’ and ‘Lost,’ a total immersion in storytelling, the show was now ready to exploit its own way.

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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 had begun. What else do you need to know?

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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 know about the particular circumstances of the station at the edge of the final frontier. Now it was time to have a little fun.

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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 of its own. More importantly, the actors themselves really seemed that much more invested in the material, and maybe that’s what makes all the difference with these things. I know I talked a lot about confidence when ‘Next Generation’ hit its own third season, which on that show meant simply earning the right as the second incarnation of Gene Roddenberry’s vision, but here, there was half a season where the series was going to be the only Star Trek on TV, and then all the attention would go from the end of the predecessor to the beginning of a successor. It was if ‘Deep Space Nine’ was saying, yeah, we’re definitely here, too.

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