I just finished watching DS9 Season 5 Episode 5 ‘The Assignment’ and as much as I loved it, I couldn’t believe the treatment they gave Keiko. It was a tense episode and I enjoyed seeing O’Brien getting psychologically tortured and I laughed at first at the treatment of Keiko but by the end of the episode I felt really bad about how she was portrayed.
The whole dragon lady dynamic is fun for a while but it gets old fast and you start feeling bad for the character.
I also loved the part in the episode where it’s O’Brien’s birthday and everyone instead sings ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’ … it’s a whole musical rights issue where someone has to be paid for the performance of the song ‘Happy Birthday’ which is why they didn’t use it … yet another torturous addition to the life of O’Brien.
Some of that- particularly the first season- was probably from the fact that Paramount stole the idea from JMS’s show bible for Babylon 5. JMS had pitched bab5 to Paramount as one of the first groups to go with and they more or less kept his early-edition show bible.
not saying DS9 is a bad show or ragging on it, but the idea for running a show on the station and being… politically “intriguing”, as well as a fair amount of the darker themes came from that bible. Bab 5 later got reworked into a slightly different direction. but that’s why the first seasons of the two shows were so similar.
fortunately, JMS kept it isolated to speculation rather than legal action and we got two great shows. (he didn’t blame the writers for DS9, but rather Paramount.)
that said… if you haven’t watched babylon 5… you should probably check that out at some point.
The more I watch, the more I learn and the more I’ll probably watch Babylon 5 … thanks!
I love the cliff notes of B5, but, good gods, the acting and writing was horrific.