It was during 1993, midway through the sixth season of the beloved Star Trek: The Next Generation, that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, with all its grey-area political and philosophical themes, aired for the first time. Unlike the previous, “traditional” structure of the Star Trek series, where a crew of Starfleet officers explored the depths and wonders of the universe aboard a starship, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was instead set on an immobile Cardassian space station with a Starfleet and Barjoran crew. Today, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is considered to be one of the best incarnations of the Star Trek franchise, but its first season had an initially rocky start.

The opening episode of season one, “Emissary”, introduces viewers to the both thoughtful and strategic, yet take-charge Commander Benjamin Sisko, played by the talented Avery Brooks, who leads his diverse crew to the abandoned Cardassian space station that Starfleet now has current control over. Benjamin Sisko, now a single father to Jake Sisko, was deeply affected when Captain Jean-Luc Picard was assimilated by the Borg in “The Best of Both Worlds” and basically killed Sisko’s wife during the attack on Wolf 359. Just after the mixed Starfleet and Barjoran crew begin working alongside each other, they discover a stable wormhole, resulting in the Barjoran population looking at Sisko as the Emissary.

This was a solid opening to the series, however, the entire season (and the majority of season two) was not incredibly focused. Unfortunately, the main overriding plot does not come into play until the third season. Additionally, a lot of fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine say that the first season’s shortcomings were due to the stationary setting. Personally, I greatly enjoyed the stationary space station setting, finding it to be a nice change from a starship. And the crew still came into contact with new species, planets and problems.

However, what the first season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did well was begin developing the main characters early on. This was something that Star Trek: The Next Generation struggled with, as 90% of the character development throughout the seven seasons focused primarily on Picard, Data and Worf. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on the other hand had a number of episodes in the first season that enabled viewers to get to know the characters and naturally develop them, such as “Dax”, a courtroom-styled episode that looked into the background of Jadzia Dax, and the episode “Vortex”, which focused on shapeshifter Odo.

With good character development and a number of interesting episodes, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season one may not have had that focus or main plot that the rest of the series possessed, but what it did was establish the show’s tone as much darker and grittier than the previous incarnations.

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