Dukat loses his position in the Cardassian government following Indiscretion and becomes a space pirate in Return to Grace, but returns to authority in By Inferno’s Light. The fifth season devotes considerable energy to reversing a lot of the more striking choices made during the fourth season. However, they are also something a storytelling dead end, essentially an extended narrative stall before the production team can actually get to the story that they had been seeding since mid-way through the second season. They are bold and exciting, but also consistent and effective. They rank among the best seasons of Star Trek ever produced. These two seasons are the best seasons of Deep Space Nine ever produced. This is perhaps the most striking aspect of the fourth and fifth seasons of Deep Space Nine. Although it was never part of the staff’s original plans, they found a way to gracefully integrate their plans into this unanticipated development. ![]() Although it is essentially a narrative cul de sac, the conflict with the Klingons during the fourth season of Deep Space Nine remains narratively satisfying. Indeed, the writers very cleverly found a way to make the studio’s suggestions work in the context of the story that they were telling. ![]() There was a shapeshifter behind it all along.’ And that’s why we had to do that episode. It wasn’t the Klingons turning against us. By having that shapeshifter in there, we were saying, ‘Season Four wasn’t a mistake. So Apocalypse Rising was an important episode. I didn’t want to have the Klingons as our enemies … We wanted to let people know that we didn’t switch horse in midstream. We were moving back toward making the shapeshifters and the Dominion our enemies. So the seminal thing about our fifth season opener was that we wanted to get back on the track we’d anticipated being on a year earlier. Season Four threw us for a loop, with the whole Klingon thing, and bringing Worf into the show. ![]() As Ira Steven Behr explained in The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion: However, by the start of the fifth season, time had come to re-focus attention back on the original plan. The cliffhanger that had been intended to bridge the third and fourth season was reworked for the middle of the fourth season as Homefront and Paradise Lost, for example. This involved a massive retool of the staff’s long-term plans. They are a fixture of the franchise for a reason.Īin’t no party like a Klingon boarding party… More than that, the writers were asked to find a way to focus the show on the Klingons once again. The writing staff were asked to introduce the character of Worf on to the show, a beloved regular cast member of Star Trek: The Next Generation. ![]() It was perhaps the single largest example of studio meddling in the entire run of Deep Space Nine. Concerned about declining ratings, the studio had suggested a retool of the series. After all, the show had been consciously building up the Dominion since mid-way through the second season. The writing staff working on Deep Space Nine had originally intended for the fourth season of Deep Space Nine to focus on the threat posed by the Dominion to the Federation, exploring what it meant for Starfleet to confront such a terrifying new adversary. The fourth season had represented a sharp deviation from the story that the production team had wanted to tell. The Way of the Warrior brought Worf over and shifted emphasis to the Klingons.Īpocalypse Rising serves a very clear purpose in the larger arc of Deep Space Nine. The Search, Part I and The Search, Part II introduced the Defiant and retooled the show to focus on the Dominion. One of the luxuries of avoiding the traditional cliffhanger structures to bridge seasons was the freedom to begin each season with a relatively clean slate and introduce new elements. Indeed, the cliffhanger dangling from Broken Link recalls the endings of The Jem’Hadar or The Adversary.Īpocalypse Rising is also notable for being the first season premiere that is not positioned as a jumping on point, that is not intended to either expand the scope of the show or recruit new viewers. While Apocalypse Rising does resolve a cliffhanger left dangling by Broken Link, that cliffhanger was only really set up in the final two minutes of the episode. It is not a continuation of Broken Link in the same way that The Best of Both Worlds, Part II is a direct continuation of The Best of Both Worlds, Part I or that Basics, Part II is a direct follow-on from Basics, Part I. This is not to suggest that Apocalypse Rising is a more typical Star Trek season premiere.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |