I've decided to collect a few thoughts I've had about Star Trek: Deep Space 9. There are some spoilers for particular episodes and the general thrust of the show.
Not just a Babylon 5 knock-off
When I was a teenager in Israel in the 1990s, there was a sense of rivalry between fans of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and Babylon 5. Sure, I knew many of people who were fans of both, but since they were both in the same niche of a space station-centric longform science fiction drama, and since there were a lot of specific parallels, and even a story about how one stole the premise from the other, there was definitely tension.
For broadcast availability reasons, it was B5 which I ended up watching through, while I only watched DS9 sporadically. I was left with a sense that the former was superior to the latter. I was taken in by the attempt to make a mature piece of work: a TV novel, and avoiding kids and cute robots. But recently I have achieved a more nuanced perspective.
After an almost complete rewatch of B5 last year, I did a complete watch-through of DS9 earlier this year. And I feel I should have given the latter a fair shake earlier. No, it isn't a TV novel. There is a TV novel hiding there, maybe about 5 seasons of it, but it is also attempting to be a particle of the week Star Trek series, and manages to pull that off, as well. The characters are very well-written, engaging, and grow with the plot and the passage of time.
One thing that stands out is how the kids affect the story. The parental relationships add a depth and sense of stakes to the world that, with all of the dramatic development in B5, just wasn't there. Seeing the world through the eyes of Jake and Nog as they grow up, seeing the emotional toll that long parting has had on the O'Briens and the Siskos when those occurred, the fear for Jake and Molly's welfare when they were out of sight, were irreplaceable. Similar situations in B5 involved adults being concerned for their adult relatives, relationships which we were only introduced to remotely, so the impact was lessened. No children grew up on B5, either, instead just coming in for a plot point and leaving.
So I don't think JMS got more maturity out of the bargain. Cute robots were absent in both, though, and neither felt neglected as a result.
Vic Fontaine as an artificial gamemaster
As part of the transition from a paramilitary ship to an essentially civilian space station, the public holodeck became a set of private holosuites, run by everyone's favorite Ferengi bar-owner, Quark.
I didn't cover the holodeck or the holosuite in my talk about virtual reality in fiction and reality, because at that point it had been a while since I've watched The Next Generation or DS9, and frankly, it's a very weird entity, that benefits from thinking more in terms of role-playing games, and specifically, live action role-play. In the holo experience, a program creates artificial beings and an environment, which react to the real visitors naturally, and/or according to the program's dictates. The visitors are expected to dress for the occasion, and also play their parts - so this sits somewhere between augmented reality and larping. There is some interlock that prevents real people from being injured, which is occasionally deactivated to add more tension, but otherwise, the experience feels real. There is a finite room which can be seen when the program is shut down, but the visitors are able to feel like they are moving freely in an open-ended environment, when necesary.
In story terms, the holo experience seems to be a place for unrealistic crossovers to happen with in-fiction logic: TNG's Data can match wits with Moriarty, the crew can play Robin Hood's Merry Men, and, in DS9, a somewhat sanitized experience of 1960s Vegas is recreated, hosted by a lounge singer modeled after Frank Sinatra - Vic Fontaine. In time, the various crew members become his friends - he is very helpful and insightful, especially when it comes to their love lives.
One of these crew members is Quark's nephew, Nog. We have watched him succeed in achieving his dream of joining Starfleet, taking part in battle, and losing his leg. A few episodes later, in "It's Only a Paper Moon", he is back to the station, with leave to acclimate to a prosthetic and become rehabilitated. He visits the Fontaine program to cheer up, and then decides he wants to recover there.
This pushes the boundaries of the program as we have seen it so far: instead of watching a show and getting some advice from Vic, Nog is taken backstage. And an entirely novel part of the premise is revealed: the management of the casino and lounge, and particularly, its finances, which according to Vic, confound him. After an altercation with Jake, Vic tells Nog that he has to improve his attitude or he will not be allowed back to the lounge - until this episode - the only attraction of this program. Nog is finally convinced to have a look at the finances, and, in typical Ferengi fashion (the less said about a race of big-nosed aliens with a natural talent for money, the better), has an easy time sorting them out, and starts investing time in improving the profitability of the place, and even expanding it.
The fascinating thing about all this is how much this holo experience moves towards being an ideal role-playing game. Nog is able to be swept up by a part of the imaginary or simulated world that was only created to engage him, that wasn't planned in advance. This is something a good gamemaster would do; indeed, the framework, which does not require Nog to roll any dice or understand new behind-the-scene rules, much less reprogram anything, makes this closer to an ideal Blackmoor phenomenon, engaged with through pure larping. In our world, it would be very difficult to reproduce the freedom of this experience as a larp, because it would beg the question of how the new systems are designed and made to seem and sound and feel real, and where the new players required, or their clothes, would come from, and how they would be trained.
Odo as a literal referee
Earlier in the season, in "Take Me Out to the Holo-Suite", Captain Sisko manages to convince members of his crew to join him in playing Baseball against a team of Vulcans lead by an old nemesis of his. Since an actual Baseball court would be difficult to recreate on the station, it is reproduced in one of Quark's holosuites.
As we've discussed, holosuite programs are more than capable of creating people with complicated personalities, and a programmed umpire (Baseball referee) would have a perfect view and understanding of the situation in the field, but Sisko insists on having a person do it, specifically Odo. He wants a real person. He doesn't explain exactly why - it seems he mostly rejects a holosuite umpire on principle as what Solok, his nemesis, would do - but later something happens that is apparently not exactly according to the rules as, possibly, a holosuite umpire would do it: one of the Vulcans runs into the dugout without having touched base. Since he can't single out the Vulcan who had run in, he goes to them, one by one, touching them with the ball. It turns out that the one who had run in is the last in the seating order, and as soon as Nog gets to the player right before him, he runs and attempts to make home plate, but Jake is able to catch Nog's ball and tag him, anyway.
Had this been run by a holosuite umpire, maybe something like the MLB rules would have been used, and the runner would have been called out as soon as he entered the dugout. But instead, it was Odo who indicated that something was wrong, in his typical gruff manner, adding to the suspense and thrill of this small victory.
Sisko cheers and comments that it is this unpredictability of Baseball which he loves about the game. And having a living referee, one who can make mistakes, or idiosyncratic judgments, is part of what allows for this exciting unpredictability. Even in this, a competitive game with overall much stricter rules than any role-playing game.
Why was O'Brien self-conscious about his models?
As the series progresses, Bashir and O'Brien bond over holosuite experiences reproducing various desperate historical combat situations. The last one they repeatedly attempt is the Battle of the Alamo. In addition to playing at this scenario on the holosuite, O'Brien starts investing in recreating the Alamo Mission and the order of battle in miniature. And it is fascinating that he is repeatedly teased about it, with others constantly calling them toys, which he rebukes by stating that "it's not a toy - it's a model!" It's interesting because by the time DS9 was produced, actual model armies and miniature warfare were pretty well established as a grown-up hobby, particularly historicals.
This does remind me of a story suggesting why the author Robert Louis Stevenson gave up on miniature wargaming, which he enjoyed playing with his step son in Switzerland: apparently a friend mocked him so badly for playing a children's game that he never did much more with it, much less publish the rules he used, a loss to the history of wargaming.
