Tuesday, March 19, 2024

DEEP SPACE 9 : My 30 years to Complete

 

Another thing I finally caught up with today. Changing countries 3 times and "life", got in the way of doing somethings. I had seen Season 1 & 2 in Japan in the 1990s. Like ST:TNG and EVANGELION, it was on at 2AM on a Wednesday morning, so I used to record episodes to VHS tape.  

About 5 years ago I almost bought the DS9 Complete Box set at JB-HIFI in Chatswood, Sydney. They were not unreasonably priced. Don't remember now why I didn't, except maybe that with all the free to air digital TV channels and the PVR I had, it was difficult to watch the programs I auto recorded each day/ week as it was. I had plenty to watch if I wanted to waste some time. Had the Sci-Fi channel and 7MATE with all those car shows.  For example Sci-Fi had Stargate Atlantis, which I had never see, with several consecutive episodes on each day.  I had my PVR automatically recording all these, so I could watch them later. I had to make the time to watch, then delete episodes so the massive 6TB HD wouldn't fill.  

A few months back I finished all of VOYAGER on Netflix too.  I don't remember when I got to see the first episodes of that, but must have been the same way via VHS tape.  I have no memory how many seasons of any of these shows were shown.  It wasn't prime time TV in Japan.

Seeing DS9 & Voyager earlier would have helped with getting some of the things PICARD Seasons 1 to 3 had in it, I guess.

I took the approach  of watching DS9 in 82 hours.


The episodes that focus on the core story. Except I would still say some of these aren't really core, even if they are nice character studies. Quite a commitment. I watched an episode, or 1.5 episodes a night for many weeks, then the last 6 all today.

In the 1990s,  I manage to see BABLYON5, all 5 seasons, via swapping Japanese music CDs for VHS tapes of episodes taken from the Satellite feed before the advertisements were inserted with a guy in Louisiana USA. A friend of a friend.  Didn't get the opportunity to do something similar with the Star Trek shows.  

As the comic says, sitting here typing this, I am struck that it took 30years to see it all. Finally, thanks to my wife getting a NetFlix subscription, and not having anything she wanted to watch. 

Deep Space 9 was a very different Star Trek, that had discarded some of the creators rules for its world. It was better for doing that.  

Compared to Babylon5, which was written by the focused creator for the last seasons, DS9 was all over the place. Some stories were so random. Some were completely amazing, such as things involving  Section31. 

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