what i thought i hated

Recently, my brother insisted that I go through Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on Netflix. I wasn't interested. My family gladly ditched DS9 for Voyager in the old days. I referred to it as The Soap Opera of Star Trek. In other words, a complete waste of time. But he started watching it, and kept talking about how great it ends up being. At last he convinced me to give it a try.

It took me a very long time to get through the first two seasons. I still cringe when I think of those episodes. Horrid writing, abominable acting, and oh so much melodrama. Something is seriously wrong when the background characters are better acted than the main characters. So many times I swore that I would never watch another episode.

But then the writing started getting better. The acting improved (or, as Kim suggests, I'm just desensitized). The amount of melodrama decreased. And I found myself falling in love with Star Trek all over again.

It's definitely a different experience than the other Star Trek series. Mainly, the space station doesn't travel all over the place. Not only does this require more emphasis on character growth (which is handled very well), but it also increases the sense of home in the station, as the characters have their adventures on different planets and then return to it. Which gives the crew a bigger sense of family.

Then there is also the bonus of actually seeing battles take place, instead of having them imminent but narrowly avoided due to politics.