When I watched TOS I did a final wrap-up to summarize best and worst episodes, time for the same here.
Links to all episodes and ratings can be found in the Trek Index.
Season-By-Season Ratings
My hypothesis is that the series was solid and even from the start, and the ratings will bear that out. Gimme a few minutes to do math, be right back…
…OK, I’m back. Here they are:
| Season | Avg Rating |
|---|---|
| 1 | 3.4 |
| 2 | 3.6 |
| 3 | 3.8 |
| 4 | 3.7 |
| 5 | 3.8 |
| 6 | 3.6 |
| 7 | 4.1 |
Yeah, definitely consistent. Just slightly lower season one, and just slightly higher season seven. Even though I was complaining a bit down the stretch about them getting bored with the characters, they never stopped making good shows. The final arc’s MVP push puts it at the top.
Comparing to my seasonal ratings of TOS, its first season (the best), slots right in the middle of DS9 seasons. Season 2 was about as good as DS9’s least good (not bad) but the cruddy TOS Season 3 lags behind everything.
Worst Episodes
I already had an excuse to cover this in my write-up of “Prodigal Daughter.” When considering the worst, there were two clear choices: “Meridian” and “Profit and Lace.” But on the whole I had very few 1- or zero-star-rated episodes. I may have mentioned elsewhere this show is good.
Best Episodes
I gave out a probably over-generous 5-star ratings to 44 episodes this series. Forty-four! About 25% of the episodes. Well, they were good! So I won’t list them all here since they’re in the Index, but I’ll try to narrow to a top ten:
| Episode | Title | What episode was that? |
|---|---|---|
| S6E13 | Far Beyond the Stars | The one where they are all SF writers, and we don't know if they live in our universe or we live in theirs. |
| S6E18 | Inquisition | Mindbender intro to Section 31 |
| S5E25 | In the Cards | Best Jake & Nog farce episode where they are trying to obtain a baseball card for Sisko |
| S6E2 | Rocks and Shoals | Sisko has a tactical showdown with a group of Jem'Hadar and Kira has to work for Cardassians |
| S5E22 | Children of Time | Time-loop one where the DS9ers encounter a society descended from...the DS9ers. |
| S3E9 | Defiant | Duplicate Riker resurfaces as a Maquis agent |
| S7E22 | Tacking Into the Wind | Best episode of the final arc, Kira dealing with Cardassians and Worf with the Klingons. |
| S6E7 | You Are Cordially Invited | Lead-up to Worf and Dax's wedding. |
| S7E10 | It's Only a Paper Moon | Nog heals by crashing with Vic Fontaine. |
| S1E15 | Progress | Self-sealing stem bolts & yamok sauce |
I’ve leaving a ton of good ones out, obviously. 34 more didn’t make the list. And plenty more 4- and 3-star ones behind that.
Final Thoughts
When I finished TOS I found it an easy call to say TNG was better, and it’s just as easy to say DS9 is better than TNG. All are good in their own ways but DS9 is a complete show in a way its predecessors weren’t. I don’t know why it isn’t part of the cultural canon they way the others are. I guess by the time it came around there had been enough Trek that people knew if they were going to like it or not, and self-sorted appropriately.
Welp, all done. Good use of 176 hours to watch, and mediocre use of however many hours to write them all up. I can’t really believe I bothered with the latter, but I’ve been glad to have done it, if not to be doing it. Thanks to anyone who read any of this for some reason!
Congratulations! Always pleasing to see a project through. Next, Babylon 5!
Haha, going to need a few years off before doing more show blogging…but maybe?
Well done! Glad you liked the show as much as you did. You going to watch Picard? If so, you should blog it.
I started out incessantly commenting, and dropped off once I stopped reading these at home and started reading them on my cell phone at work so a final few responses:
Odo’s your favorite?? Odo is the worst! He’s a collaborator who almost got Rom killed because he was too busy having sex with a Nazi. He’s a pubescent teen acting like a gruff old man. Screw him.
I liked Dukat and Winn a lot more than you. I’m glad you ended up liking Eddington.
You made a lot of hay about Jake receding from the show, do you think the back half of the show needed more Jake or to cut him altogether?
So glad you did this. It was a ton of fun to read.
Really appreciated your reading and all the comments, thanks! Your thoughts were missed down the stretch.
Can’t argue with anything you said about Odo. He was probably my favorite through the middle seasons, though by the end, I dunno. Some days Sisko, some days Kira, some days Worf. Among the regulars. Some days Martok, some days Garak, some days Rom. I hated Winn throughout and was over Dukat once he became a cult leader. I do think Marc Alaimo absolutely killed it though. They were so lucky to have all these amazing guest regulars, they made the show.
re: Jake: I thought the level of Jake content was fine, I just got obsessed with how Cirroc Lofton remained in the opening credits to the end despite the show running out of ideas for him in like season 5. (Obviously I know nothing about producing a TV show, so I don’t know how credits work or anything.) All the aforementioned guest stars and even Vic Fontaine (Vic Fontaine!) got more love the last few years.
Kira was pretty consistently my fav character.
I’m sure that Lofton stayed on the credits because he had a contract, what I always wonder about are the scenes (not just in this show but all of older style television) that exist only to give a cast member a token scene in an episode where they have nothing to do. Do the actors demand them? Do the contracts stipulate them? Are they there for the fans of the character or so that the causal viewers don’t forget about the character? I’ve never read/heard a rationale.
Hey, I just watched What they Left Behind, a recent documentary about the making of DS9. It’s a lot of fun.