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Don't get it twisted - DS9 is the most beloved Star Trek at TrekCulture.
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00:00Revered as a true classic of the Star Trek universe and my all-time favorite series,
00:05Deep Space Nine gave fans the USS Defiant, the villainous Gold Ducat,
00:10Sisko's Baseball, and the Dominion.
00:12However, for all the great and the good that pervaded the seven seasons of cross-quadrant dealings
00:18that provided the hallmark of the third live-action series,
00:21there are a few questionable things that crop up during its run.
00:25These points just don't really make any sense or are unnecessary within the Star Trek franchise.
00:33Questionable also means actions, people, and objects that leave fans scratching their heads so much that it causes splinters.
00:41Now don't get us wrong here, DS9 is a fine, nearing perfect in my opinion, series
00:46that explores the perils of war and the intricacies of religion through a set of thought-provoking
00:51and at times truly outstanding stories.
00:54Yet for every Kira Norris, there's also a Doral or perhaps even a Rumpelstiltskin.
01:00More of these tend to fall into the earlier years of the series when it was still finding its feet
01:05and establishing its lore.
01:07However, they might just be unforgivable errors that nearly disrupted the flow of everything so much
01:13that even the Prophets were begging for linear time.
01:15If you've come looking for a high-end intellectual DS9, here you will be disappointed and I'm sorry.
01:22As we plummet to the depths of Rom's closet, I'm Brie from Trek Culture and here are 10 of the
01:27dumbest things in Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
01:31Number 10.
01:32Odo's Comm Badge.
01:34Let's start with a classic and a rabbit hole that might never end.
01:38While Deep Space Nine's head of station security becomes a clear security risk himself by the beginning of Season 3,
01:45there are character relationships which help to iron out that little wrinkle.
01:50The bigger issue is his shape-shifting ability.
01:53From the very start, it's clear that his appearance is the best approximation that he can manage to humanoid.
02:01This is backed up by the fact that his hair is based off of that of scientist Dr. Mora.
02:05By the alternate future in Children of Time, his ability to retain form and define features has become substantially better.
02:13So this then begs the question of how Odo's Comm Badge can exist.
02:18There are two options here.
02:20One is that it is a Comm Badge and is somehow hidden within each form he takes,
02:24whether it's a rodent in Man Alone or a spinning top in Shadow Play.
02:29However, that doesn't explain how it's seen to dissolve when Odo changes form or when moving around in a gelatinous
02:36state,
02:36such as escaping from the Cardassian storage locker in Emissary.
02:40Given the intricate circuitry taken to construct such a subspace communications device,
02:45it seems very unlikely that Odo could create its functionality in such a minute detail,
02:51given that he finds noses rather difficult anyway.
02:54Take into account as well that he not only maintains his humanoid form,
02:59but also has the clothing too, which is in itself textured and moves as he moves.
03:05There's a lot to be dealing with when taking a solid form is all I'm saying.
03:11Number nine, the only engineer in Starfleet.
03:14Bless.
03:15Aside from being the most important person in Starfleet history,
03:19Chief Miles Edward O'Brien has a really tough time when it comes to Deep Space Nine.
03:26There must have been occasions where he thought about requesting a transfer
03:29to go back and stand in the transporter room of the Enterprise-D.
03:33Evidently, a talented engineer, O'Brien is regularly tortured,
03:37not only by his storylines,
03:39but apparently by the fact that he's either the only engineer in Deep Space Nine,
03:44or the only one who actually knows what he's doing.
03:48Take Babel, for example.
03:50O'Brien is running around attempting to fix multiple system failures,
03:54which inadvertently leads to the release of the aphasia virus.
03:58Luckily, everyone recovers from their bout of story-borne illness,
04:01though Sisko is still peeved with the fact that his replicated coffee is still not right.
04:07Surely there's another engineer around to help.
04:09When Miles is away during the passenger and move-along home in Season 1,
04:14the references to his absence tend to lean on the concerning side.
04:19For the previous six years,
04:21O'Brien has mainly been responsible for the USS Enterprise's transporters,
04:25and not the whole engineering complement of a space station.
04:29Either his teams are woefully untrained on maintenance,
04:33or the station should be written off as a health and safety hazard in every respect.
04:38Deep Space Nine does right this wrong the further along we go,
04:42with shining examples of engineers perhaps exemplified by the ill-fated crewman Munez in Season 5's The Ship.
04:50Although, even by the time of the Bar Association,
04:53it's clear O'Brien likes to be busy rather than twiddling his thumbs in the transporter room.
04:58Number 8.
05:00Defenseless Nine.
05:02Aside from assigning a guy who runs the transporter room,
05:05and a total newbie doctor to the most remote outpost in the Federation,
05:09Starfleet lets the USS Enterprise do a runner while leaving the former mining platform
05:14with less defense than the 2024 Manchester United squad.
05:18And before I get any comments, no I didn't get that reference.
05:30Decked out with just six photon torpedoes and minimal phaser power,
05:34this, and we'll quote,
05:36remote outpost at the edge of the final frontier,
05:38gets a cheery wave and is left to its own devices,
05:42only for Cardassians to show up in a matter of minutes.
05:46Kira even stamps this very clearly on the hull
05:49when confronting the Cardassian trio of the Galar-class ships,
05:52stating that the Federation wouldn't leave them defenseless.
05:56It's a risky gambit that does pay off at least.
06:00While the first meeting between Sisko and Dukat isn't phasers at the dawn,
06:04it does bear ominous tones,
06:07and the subsequent discovery of the wormhole only adds to the tensions in the quadrant.
06:11Even when confronted with the potential contact from new and possibly hostile life from the Gamma Quadrant,
06:17it takes another three years before DS9 receives any form of additional installed protection.
06:23The Borg-busting USS Defiant is present from Season 3 on,
06:27but it does spend a large amount of its time away from its home base.
06:31At no point are there any other starships offering to provide backup should everything go south.
06:36It does eventually receive an upgrade with more than standard defensive armaments
06:41following its elevation from remote to the most important location in the quadrant.
06:47Still, there was a precarious three years before that time where it was just unprotected.
06:54That's a little bit dumb.
06:57Number 7. Prepare to dock somehow.
06:59The image of Deep Space Nine is now almost as iconic, if not equal to, that of the USS Enterprise.
07:07The sweeping pylons majestically arching into the night,
07:10the concentric circles marking out the sections of the station,
07:14and the fiddly docking ports.
07:17A firm statement of Cardassian dominance in the Bajoran sector,
07:21the Nor'Klass stations are a monstrous reminder of the occupation.
07:25However, when it comes to the practicality, they do leave more than a bit to be desired.
07:31Take the six pylons, for example.
07:34Park anything of a substantial size against one of them,
07:37and there's inevitably a traffic jam as ships attempt to arrive or leave.
07:42Curving them inward looks glorious,
07:44but in terms of practicality, their shape reduces the room for maneuverability significantly.
07:51Viewers have seen Dominion battleships and a Galaxy-class USS Enterprise docked there,
07:56but only ever one of them, and never anything else at the same time.
08:01This severely reduces the operational capacity of DS9.
08:05Perhaps the worst offender of this is the docking ring.
08:08With its recessed ports, ships are left to dock nose first.
08:12Both the USS Defiant and Martox Ritaran are fine examples here,
08:17and designed to fit and fiddle in ways for the crew to leave the ship via the nose section,
08:22which is just blatantly missing on screen.
08:25The only sensible way to dock at DS9 seems to be the limited runabout pads
08:30only used for non-Federation craft in the form of the Romulan shuttle from In the Pale Moonlight.
08:36Number 6. Plain Simple Ex-High-Ranking Cardassian Intelligence Agent Garak
08:42As the meme sort of goes, especially the plain simple tailors.
08:47Appearing only once in the first season,
08:50and having to wait until season 2's Cardassian for a reprise,
08:53Andrew Robinson's fantastic exiled station resident is a true highlight of the series,
08:59and one of my all-time favorite characters.
09:02Odo does, as with Quark, keep tabs on his activities,
09:05but given Garak's talents and history,
09:08that doesn't seem enough, and is quite clear on several occasions.
09:13Capable of sneaking a subspace communicator out to Gul Dukat in the way of the warrior,
09:18and more critically switching sides temporarily during Improbable Cause and the Dias cast,
09:25Garak is given significant free reign when it comes to his place on the station,
09:30probably up to the beginning of the sixth season.
09:32Even after torturing Odo for information,
09:36his sins are quickly forgiven and forgotten,
09:38which is odd.
09:40Even Quark never did that.
09:42There are advantages to his presence.
09:44I mean, he dropped Dr. Bashir into a changing room
09:47to overhear the Duras sisters' conversation.
09:50He knows one or two contacts in the Cardassian Empire.
09:53However, in the grand scheme of checks and balances,
09:57there's more than a swing towards highly dangerous than there is towards absolute ally.
10:02In Broken Link, Garak almost manages to fire on the Founder's homeworld,
10:07which begs the question as to why no one was checking on his whereabouts.
10:12Number 5. Mirroring
10:16A goateed Spock or a duplicitous Hoshi Sato might be conjured up in the mind when it comes to the
10:22mirror universe.
10:23However, DS9 was the biggest advocate for the parallel timeline.
10:28Well, pre-discovery.
10:30With five outings tying in the alternate versions of the main and secondary cast,
10:35yeah, we're even looking at you, Vic Fontaine.
10:38The big klaxon that can be heard in the background now
10:41is a reminder of just how difficult it can be to get into this universe in the first place.
10:45The original series, Mirror Mirror,
10:48required a transporter and a parallel set of skills,
10:51sorry, conditions,
10:52to make it all work.
10:53By the time of the Emperor's New Cloak in DS9's final season,
10:58there seems to be a regular bus service in operation.
11:02While it was customary for everyone in the main cast to appear at some point
11:07within the framework of the alternate 24th century,
11:09it wasn't necessarily Mirror.
11:13The original Federation was downtrodden rather than being the oppressors of the original series,
11:18and it steadily got easier to cross.
11:21Considering the bells and whistles for potential domination and infiltration,
11:26Smiley strolls onto DS9 as though he's been following a public footpath,
11:30and then there's the idiocracy of the Ferengi stealing a Klingon cloaking device
11:34to get the Nagus back.
11:36Dumbing down the potential and the darkness of the Mirror Universe,
11:39made all involved on both sides of the coin,
11:42look increasingly stupid.
11:44And as for the Vic Fontaine appearance,
11:47well, it's a little too far out of left field to make much sense,
11:50though luckily he doesn't last for very long.
11:54Number 4, Mpok Nor.
11:57As if by magic, another station appeared.
12:00Portrayed on screen at a fabulously jaunty angle
12:04so as not to be confused with its fully operational counterpart, Terok Nor,
12:08Mpok Nor was conveniently forgotten about for a whole five years.
12:13And then Starfleet remembered it existed
12:15and decided to drop on by for an away day
12:19to scavenge parts for their main base of operations in that sector.
12:22Echoing ghost stories,
12:24the eponymous episode from the late fifth season
12:26also highlighted the hazards of the Nor'Klass station.
12:30But what really concerns here
12:32is that this place has been completely unchecked
12:34since the departure of the Cardassians
12:36and is just packed full of useful materials.
12:40Aside from the sleeping Cardassians and the psychosis-inducing gases,
12:44this is a perfect holiday spot
12:46at a commutable distance from Bajor.
12:49It's rather odd that it's not a location
12:51that the Dominion ever considered using
12:53when they made their incursion into the Alpha Quadrant.
12:56More palm-to-the-face inducing
12:58has to be the fact that by DS9's seventh season,
13:02Dukat has managed to reactivate and repopulate the station
13:05with his own cult,
13:07seemingly without anyone even noticing.
13:09It all seems a bit off
13:11given that the war footing the Quadrant is on,
13:14and Paknor wasn't manned and repaired,
13:16or at the very least monitored
13:18given its proximity to both Bajor and the Wormhole.
13:22Tactically, that's a misfire of quadratic proportions.
13:27Number three, Alamarain.
13:30So as to not make this list predictable,
13:33let's move along home right now.
13:35This far, no further.
13:36A toss-up between the fluffiness of the Dal Rock
13:39and the Wadi's attempt at tabletop gaming
13:41was always going to land Corkside up.
13:44However, these two episodes do carry one similarity.
13:48The problem is that neither actually needed to happen.
13:52The villagers of the storyteller
13:53cause and defeat the angry Cumulonimbus cloud,
13:56and just seemingly never question
13:58why it's only their village that's ever attacked.
14:00But yet, move along home is just a little bit more silly.
14:05Located in the very early days of DS9,
14:08when character exploration and establishment
14:10were key to the future of the series.
14:12The infamous episode almost manages
14:15to disassemble four of the main cast
14:17in just 45 minutes.
14:19The game itself has a great buildup,
14:21yet it fails to deliver anything at any point,
14:24aside from making Avery Brooks dance,
14:26and some tragically quotable lines
14:28that have been served with classic reverence
14:30in Lower Decks.
14:32It affects nothing.
14:33The reasons for Sisko, Kira, Bashir, and Dax
14:36to be within the game are non-existent,
14:38and at no point is anything reasonably explained.
14:42Also, there seems to be no repercussions
14:44for the kidnapping and imprisonment
14:46of Starfleet officers.
14:53An unusual entry now focusing more
14:57on the storytelling narrative
14:58rather than a place, person, or situation.
15:01Both All Good Things and Endgame
15:04deal with time travel,
15:05and somehow DS9's closing chapter
15:08manages something similar,
15:10if not immediately obvious.
15:12There are two threads here to consider.
15:14One is that Sisko and the Federation-slash-Klingon fleet
15:18travel all the way to Cardassia Prime
15:20in order to end the war
15:21and bring the Dominion to justice.
15:24Interwoven with this,
15:25we have a second storyline
15:27wherein Dukat and Kai-Win
15:28travel to the fire caves beneath Bajor
15:30to awaken and release the Pa Wraiths.
15:33Ultimately, it becomes the setting
15:35for the final fisticuffs
15:36between Sisko and his Cardassian nemesis.
15:39Now, let's place this into a bit more context.
15:42The journey to Cardassia Prime
15:45including a stock footage space battle
15:47and the subsequent drink
15:48or lack thereof
15:50in the halls of government
15:51take all the first half
15:54and trickle into the second hour.
15:56Sisko then travels back to DS9
15:59to celebrate the end of the war
16:00before he's interrupted
16:02and has to travel to Bajor
16:04for his last stand.
16:06Consider that while all of that happens,
16:08Dukat and the Kai
16:10take a walk down into the fire caves
16:12and commune with the resident Pa Wraiths
16:14before the arrival of the emissary.
16:16From an episode perspective,
16:18the two stories weave together
16:19and provide balance versus narrative.
16:22However, in terms of the passage of time,
16:25it makes absolutely no sense at all
16:27that these events would take place
16:28at the same time.
16:30Sisko manages to travel across
16:32a not-so-insignificant amount of space twice,
16:34and in that whole period,
16:36the two antagonists on Bajor
16:38have managed a few hundred feet underground.
16:41They must be some slow walkers.
16:45Number 1.
16:46And you're in the room.
16:48Truly the Ferengi laser whip
16:50of the Deep Space Nine experience
16:52is the thankfully short-lived
16:54holographic communications array
16:55used in just two episodes,
16:58Dr. Bashir, I presume,
16:59and for the uniform.
17:01Seemingly an inspired story choice,
17:03the holographic communications device
17:05offered a new way of storytelling.
17:08Characters didn't just need to be
17:09on the view screen
17:10or heard over the speakers
17:11because now they could be seen
17:13on the bridge
17:14or in Sisko's office
17:15in a full life-sized three-dimensional view.
17:18On paper, this probably reads well,
17:20but in Execution on 1990s TV,
17:23it just couldn't pull off
17:25making the whole process
17:26less than awkward.
17:28In For the Uniform,
17:29it does mean that Sisko
17:30can have a series of visceral one-to-ones
17:32with Eddington,
17:33who also happens to have such a device.
17:36In Dr. Bashir, I presume,
17:38the presiding admiral
17:39is in the room
17:40for the key conversations.
17:41However, in the staging,
17:43it's more than clear
17:44that we have an actor
17:45standing in a nicely lit rectangle.
17:47In Universe,
17:48it makes perfect sense.
17:49And it's a bold step forward.
17:51But in terms of an absorbing story,
17:54it's just not that clever.
17:56Discovery achieved the same effect
17:58with better results,
17:59making the characters
18:00appear to be more projection
18:01than physically present.
18:03Ditched after just two episodes,
18:05the writers realized
18:05that it distracted
18:06from the feel of the series,
18:08leaving characters to stand motionless
18:10and recite dialogue.
18:12So why so dumb
18:13and why at the top of the list?
18:15Well, because it's a brilliant concept
18:18that it wasn't ready for its time
18:20and sadly wasn't completely thought through
18:22before its execution.
18:31Hi, I'm Duncan Relic,
18:32no relation,
18:34and I collect relics
18:35from before the burn.
18:38Thanks to a temporal wormhole,
18:40I now have an unlimited supply
18:41of Trek culture T-shirts
18:43and I'm selling them to you.
18:48You could be wearing
18:49this stylish down and up T-shirt.
18:52Or, how about this fish-watching design?
18:56Bright yellow on black.
18:57The colors I'd use in thumbnails,
18:59I tell you that for nothing.
19:00I plan to take these designs
19:03and transfer them
19:04via quantum duplication
19:06onto hats, mugs,
19:08and posters.
19:09So look out for those.
19:11Back!
19:15Treat this unlimited supply
19:17as a limited time deal.
19:19Get your T-shirt quick.
19:21Who's your daddy?
19:33And those were
19:3410 of the dumbest things
19:35in Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
19:38If you liked this video,
19:40then go ahead and leave it a thumbs up.
19:41It actually really does help.
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19:59under the handle
19:59TrekkieBri.
20:01I've been Bri from Trek Culture
20:02and until next time,
20:04don't forget
20:04to live long and prosper.
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