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STAR TREK DEEP SPACE NINE
EPISODE SYNOPSIS
As Star Trek: The Next Generation was seen to be reaching an empass where its future of episodic production was concerned, talk of a third Star Trek show was being considered. With one basic idea, Rick Berman, Gene Roddenberry's successor, enlisted the help of Michael Pillar, the Next Generation's most influential writer. The idea, albeit a extraordinary leap of faith where tried and tested Star Trek was concerned, was to dispose of the Starship idea as the main environment for the show and base it instead upon a space station.
Situated on the frontiers of the Federation, Deep Space Nine (DS9), formerly known as Terok Nor, was an alien station commandeered by the Federation after its prior evacuation by the Cardassians. Soon thereafter, the Bajoran wormhole was found, a spatial anomaly capable of transporting a Starship to the other side of the galaxy and into the Gamma quadrant.
The use of already established aliens, namely the Ferengi, Cardassians. and Bajorans provided the show with an instant familiarity to the Star Trek universe. With the crew of DS9 united under one flag, the twenty-forth century Star Trek universe had already been firmly established in the Next Generation. With little physical exploration at first, DS9 had to somehow live up to the Star Trek name as an arena for adventure and storytelling, based around the increasingly complex consistency of future history and technology.
They succeeded and DS9 became an instant success with many viewers, most of which made the natural move of watching the show due to their familiarity with the Next Generation. As the show progressed, it picked up its own loyal viewers and demonstrated once and for all that the deeply appealing richness of what Gene Roddenberry had envisioned wasn't due to the characters or the ship. Star Trek was a state of mind, and millions of people still wanted to share it.
DS9 has produced well over 150 episodes of Star Trek so far and shows no sign of stopping as the seventh series is currently in production. Proving that the Star Trek universe is flexible enough, DS9 has went where no Star Trek series had gone before and found itself one part of the galaxy and stopped there. DS9 has proven itself to be an invaluable addition to the Star Trek universe.
