Trekrospective

On the topic of decade-old TV shows, and because I'm a huge nerd, I've been re-watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine recently. The first couple of seasons (before the Dominion War) weren't nearly as dull as I remembered them. Less shooting and explody things, sure, but there also wasn't a single "Oh no, the holodeck is malfunctioning!" episode in there, which is quite a virtue for a Star Trek show. Ignoring the two child actors (which should be illegal) and some irritating Quark-centric comedy relief episodes, there are some complex and dark storylines and characters (like Garak) that set it way apart from the rest of Trek - the other four shows had a nasty habit of cannibalizing everything prior like nerdy vultures. DS9 had the same kind of social commentary with a political skew to it, making it at least tied for my favorite series with TNG. I also can't help but think that it was a good thing the show ended before 2003 - a major character who had been a terrorist resisting a brutal occupying army probably wouldn't have gone over very well.

As a side note, poking around IMDB in a where-are-they-now sort of way (an alarming number of the cast doesn't seem to have worked since,) I stumbled across this:

My god, he's a Monty Python character. There are some who call me... Tim.