4 ms·

Season 1 is a bit clunky, maybe that goes for some of Season 2 as well, I don't recall exactly. After that, it gets pretty good. A friend of mine gave me that

Season 1 is a bit clunky, maybe that goes for some of Season 2 as well, I don't recall exactly. After that, it gets pretty good. A friend of mine gave me that same heads up after encouraging me to watch it, circa 2010. I just can't remember if he said it's one or more seasons that you have to sort of slog through before getting to the good stuff. If I had to choose between watching again DS9 in its entirety or B5, I'd probably go with B5, but I found both enjoyable. If a third option was BSG (2004-2009), that would be my choice in a heartbeat.

bsder 4y ago
People often forget that the first seasons of Star Trek TNG and DS9 were ... not good. Actors and writers seem to need about a season to marinate. Straczynski knew what he wanted, and even he still took a season to dial stuff in.
- Sharlin 4y ago
  On the other hand, there have been plenty of TV series in the past 20 years where the first season is excellent and then the quality steadily drops in the later seasons.
  - akiselev 4y ago
    I think that might be due to a change in the predominant TV format. In the Star Trek era most flagship shows were shot in the planet/crime/monster-of-the-week format which would get better as the actors developed chemistry, their characters were fleshed out, and writers figure out what works best in the show. Nowadays, the flagship shows are either based on extensive literary works like Game of Thrones and Expanse which depend on the consistency of the writing and how easy it is to adapt, or they're concept shows like Altered Carbon that barely have an idea about what they're going to do with a full eight hour season when they shoot the pilot, let alone what to do for season two. The latter tend to work out really badly if they can't hang on to their writing staff See for example the 2011-2016 show Person of Interest that went from a mediocre if interest crime-of-the-week to possibly one of the best serialized science fiction TV shows about two AIs fighting it out (I'm rewatching it now due to the relevance)
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      I caught PoI for the first time during a trip in 2015, when I watched "If-Then-Else", an utterly gripping masterpiece of an episode. That probably spoiled me on the series as I still haven't made it through the first season. But I do know that the Samaritan plot awaits, so I'll get to it eventually.
    - fbdab103 4y ago
      Point of order, Altered Carbon is a novel series. Unfortunately, it is one of those where the producer knows better than the writer, and they upended the plot, for unknowable reasons. Spoilers: ..........in the book, the Envoys are the governmental elite special forces unit. In the show, the Envoys are now terrorists? Switches the allegiances of so many characters. Also weird manipulation of the historical timeline, seemingly just to bring a character into the plot.
  - zhengyi13 4y ago
    I think this is a function of shows knowing what they want to do early on, but also knowing that there's a really good chance that they'll be unceremoniously axed, so they don't invest up front in longer-term arcs. They get picked up for subsequent seasons, go soap opera, and then just rest-n-vest.
  - Kye 4y ago
    A little bit more than 20 years, but Earth: Final Conflict comes to mind. The vanishing character development of season 1 in season 2 was instantly tangible.
    - Izkata 4y ago
      Season 5 may as well have been a different show entirely. Forget character development, they dropped everything except two actors, including most of the setting and what little plot had developed.
- arp242 4y ago
  > People often forget that the first seasons of Star Trek TNG and DS9 were ... not good. The thing is you can safely skip those and pretend those episodes don't exist. There's actually episode guides for this [1][2] and I used this when I watched the show with my girlfriend a few years back. You could argue a bit about which episodes should or shouldn't be included, but reducing the entire show to about a quarter of "the good parts" is entirely feasible. With Babylon 5 that'll be a lot harder. Not saying you can't trim any of it, but substantially less. Note that for TNG it includes just 3 episodes for the first season; I'm pretty sure you can't reduce Babylon 5's first season to just 3 episodes without losing the plot. [1]: https://scribe.rip/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-the-next-generation-in-40-hours-c4a6762cbd3 https://scribe.rip/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-the-next-g... [2]: https://scribe.rip/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-deep-space-nine-in-82-5-hours-10acde591fd2 https://scribe.rip/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-deep-space...
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    I love DS9, rewatched it again during COVID. Lot of homerun episodes... but there were also a lot of episodes per season. And some of them were pretty painful. The good far outshines the bad, but it wasn't 100% homeruns for sure.
- XorNot 4y ago
  When you think about the production schedules are serial television of the time, it was also kind of insane: i.e. TNG was producing 26 episodes a season. They were basically scheduled to have to kick out an episode every 2 weeks for the run of the show. A lot of the rougher scripts of the era definitely make more sense when you realize the kind of crunch the production actually was under.
  - KingMob 4y ago
    Wasn't it every week for half the year, then? Barring stuff like holidays, seasons mostly kept to a once/week schedule.
    - XorNot 4y ago
      That was the release schedule, but the average is one every two weeks to hit it. If you were trying to get it all in the can before anything aired you'd be committing to finishing an episode per week. My understanding is that they split the difference: you needed to do most of your principle photography in the first half of the year, and then post-prod earlier episodes to account for delays.

bsder 4y ago

People often forget that the first seasons of Star Trek TNG and DS9 were ... not good. Actors and writers seem to need about a season to marinate. Straczynski knew what he wanted, and even he still took a season to dial stuff in.

Sharlin 4y ago
On the other hand, there have been plenty of TV series in the past 20 years where the first season is excellent and then the quality steadily drops in the later seasons.
- akiselev 4y ago
  I think that might be due to a change in the predominant TV format. In the Star Trek era most flagship shows were shot in the planet/crime/monster-of-the-week format which would get better as the actors developed chemistry, their characters were fleshed out, and writers figure out what works best in the show. Nowadays, the flagship shows are either based on extensive literary works like Game of Thrones and Expanse which depend on the consistency of the writing and how easy it is to adapt, or they're concept shows like Altered Carbon that barely have an idea about what they're going to do with a full eight hour season when they shoot the pilot, let alone what to do for season two. The latter tend to work out really badly if they can't hang on to their writing staff See for example the 2011-2016 show Person of Interest that went from a mediocre if interest crime-of-the-week to possibly one of the best serialized science fiction TV shows about two AIs fighting it out (I'm rewatching it now due to the relevance)
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    I caught PoI for the first time during a trip in 2015, when I watched "If-Then-Else", an utterly gripping masterpiece of an episode. That probably spoiled me on the series as I still haven't made it through the first season. But I do know that the Samaritan plot awaits, so I'll get to it eventually.
  - fbdab103 4y ago
    Point of order, Altered Carbon is a novel series. Unfortunately, it is one of those where the producer knows better than the writer, and they upended the plot, for unknowable reasons. Spoilers: ..........in the book, the Envoys are the governmental elite special forces unit. In the show, the Envoys are now terrorists? Switches the allegiances of so many characters. Also weird manipulation of the historical timeline, seemingly just to bring a character into the plot.
- zhengyi13 4y ago
  I think this is a function of shows knowing what they want to do early on, but also knowing that there's a really good chance that they'll be unceremoniously axed, so they don't invest up front in longer-term arcs. They get picked up for subsequent seasons, go soap opera, and then just rest-n-vest.
- Kye 4y ago
  A little bit more than 20 years, but Earth: Final Conflict comes to mind. The vanishing character development of season 1 in season 2 was instantly tangible.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    Season 5 may as well have been a different show entirely. Forget character development, they dropped everything except two actors, including most of the setting and what little plot had developed.
arp242 4y ago
> People often forget that the first seasons of Star Trek TNG and DS9 were ... not good. The thing is you can safely skip those and pretend those episodes don't exist. There's actually episode guides for this [1][2] and I used this when I watched the show with my girlfriend a few years back. You could argue a bit about which episodes should or shouldn't be included, but reducing the entire show to about a quarter of "the good parts" is entirely feasible. With Babylon 5 that'll be a lot harder. Not saying you can't trim any of it, but substantially less. Note that for TNG it includes just 3 episodes for the first season; I'm pretty sure you can't reduce Babylon 5's first season to just 3 episodes without losing the plot. [1]: https://scribe.rip/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-the-next-generation-in-40-hours-c4a6762cbd3 https://scribe.rip/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-the-next-g... [2]: https://scribe.rip/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-deep-space-nine-in-82-5-hours-10acde591fd2 https://scribe.rip/maxistentialism-blog/star-trek-deep-space...
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  I love DS9, rewatched it again during COVID. Lot of homerun episodes... but there were also a lot of episodes per season. And some of them were pretty painful. The good far outshines the bad, but it wasn't 100% homeruns for sure.
XorNot 4y ago
When you think about the production schedules are serial television of the time, it was also kind of insane: i.e. TNG was producing 26 episodes a season. They were basically scheduled to have to kick out an episode every 2 weeks for the run of the show. A lot of the rougher scripts of the era definitely make more sense when you realize the kind of crunch the production actually was under.
- KingMob 4y ago
  Wasn't it every week for half the year, then? Barring stuff like holidays, seasons mostly kept to a once/week schedule.
  - XorNot 4y ago
    That was the release schedule, but the average is one every two weeks to hit it. If you were trying to get it all in the can before anything aired you'd be committing to finishing an episode per week. My understanding is that they split the difference: you needed to do most of your principle photography in the first half of the year, and then post-prod earlier episodes to account for delays.