It's okay to skip these six episodes when rewatching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's cast is fantastic, but, in season 1, the characters and their relationships were still develiping.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 1 has more episodes that feel disconnected or like filler than any other season of the show. There are a few DS9 season 1 episodes where characters' actions don't fully align with their characterizations, or where artifacts of great significance appear only to never be referenced again. On the whole, a few episodes just don't feel up to par with the rest of DS9. While it is always good to see every episode eventually, there are a few episodes in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 1 that aren't truly essential.
6 "Babel"
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1, Episode 5
"Babel" comes early in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 1, and it uses a lot of classic Star Trek storylines. A virus infects the space station, and, over time, more and more crew and civilians are infected. This kind of mystery plague shows up in a lot of different Star Trek shows - a space plague even features in the pilot episode for Star Trek: Lower Decks - but "Babel" does not do anything particularly interesting with what is otherwise a fairly standard plot.
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The highlight of the episode is Chief Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney), who spends the episode trying desperately to keep Deep Space Nine from falling apart while getting sick himself. Deep Space Nine famously has a repeating storyline where "O'Brien must suffer," and "Babel" could be the earliest example of this. However, most other "O'Brien must suffer" episodes are more interesting than "Babel," and Meaney's performance alone isn't quite enough to save an otherwise mediocre episode.
5 "Q-Less"
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1, Episode 7
John de Lancie is always a delightful presence in Star Trek, but his first and only appearance as Q on Deep Space Nine is less than fantastic. Q doesn’t have a lot of chemistry with Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) - a fact he calls out after Sisko punches him. In Q's other Star Trek episodes, his godlike powers make almost anything possible, but in "Q-Less" his powers feel underused. Q appears and disappears, and tortures his old flame Vash (Jennifer Hetrick), but, otherwise, the immense power of the Q continuum doesn't factor into the episode.
There are better episodes with Q in other shows, and there are better episodes with unexplained anomalies on DS9.
Beyond Q, the rest of the plot of "Q-Less" also doesn't stand out. Vash's crystal is a space egg, but for most of the episode it feels more like a McGuffin rather than a truly cool space artifact. Both Vash and Q feel like holdovers from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the episode just seems to be missing that Deep Space Nine flair. There are better episodes with Q in other shows, and there are better episodes with unexplained anomalies on DS9. Skipping "Q-Less" does not mean missing very much.
4 "The Storyteller"
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1, Episode 14
Early Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes put a lot of effort into world-building the Bajoran culture and religion. DS9 episodes like "Battle Lines" and "The Hands of the Prophets" strike the perfect balance between relevant details and exciting storylines. Unfortunately, "The Storyteller" doesn't have a lot of either. Most of the story takes place in a Bajoran village, where Chief O'Brien and Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) end up participating in the culture's ancient storytelling rituals.
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Neither the village's rituals nor the fact that the village apparently has a fragment of a Bajoran Orb of the Prophets comes up again on Deep Space Nine. So, the episode's primary plot is disconnected from the rest of the show and is not particularly interesting in and of itself. The highlight of the episode is the B-story with Nog (Aron Eisenberg) and Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton), but it does not quite do enough to make "The Storyteller" worth watching.
3 "If Wishes Were Horses"
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1, Episode 16
"If Wishes Were Horses" is one of the goofiest episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and whether or not that goofiness is effective is a matter of personal taste. That being said, "If Wishes Were Horses" feels tonally out of place among the rest of Deep Space Nine's more dramatic episodes. Similarly, having the literal fantasy being, Rumpelstiltskin (Michael John Anderson), appear in an episode of Star Trek with no holodecks or holosuites involved is pretty jarring.
All the strange phenomena in the episode are never seen again on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
But what ultimately makes "If Wishes Were Horses" fall short as an episode is that the incredibly powerful aliens who end up being behind all the strange phenomena in the episode are never seen again on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. They cause more trouble and do more impressive feats of magic than Q in his one episode, and they came through the wormhole. It seems like these immensely powerful beings that seem at least somewhat friendly to the Federation should have made an appearance in the Dominion War. But they don't, so you can skip "If Wishes Were Horses."
2 "The enger"
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1, Episode 9
The biggest problem with "The enger" is that its cool premise means that it had the potential to be a very good episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Over the course of the episode, a dangerous criminal manages to transfer his consciousness from his dying body into Deep Space Nine's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Julian Bashir, and the crew of the space station struggles to keep up with him. Ultimately, it feels like a lot of DS9’s cast had to be dumbed down for the plot to work, otherwise they would have figured out what was going on too soon and there would be no story.
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Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) has literal centuries of experience and is close with Dr. Bashir, and it still takes her most of the episode to figure out what's going on. The other big problem with "The enger" is that the consciousness transferring technology seems like it should have been groundbreaking in the Star Trek universe. Despite its theoretically limitless potential, the technology is never mentioned again. On the whole, "The enger" promised a lot and only delivered a little, and it isn't tied into any of DS9's other, more interesting storylines.
1 "Move Along Home"
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Season 1, Episode 10
Like "If Wishes Were Horses," "Move Along Home" is yet another goofy episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 1. After the station's senior staff get sucked into a board game that the Wadi ambassadors brought from the Gamma Quadrant, "Move Along Home" primarily takes place within that game. For most of "Move Along Home," the stakes seem to be literal life or death, but in the episode's conclusion, it is revealed that all the danger was a quirk of the game, and everyone is fine.
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Practically speaking, the ultimate stakes of "Move Along Home" are just miscommunication. On the whole, "Move Along Home" is easily one of the worst episodes of Deep Space Nine. If you skip it, you really aren't missing anything. Instead, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has some of the greatest political storytelling in the franchise, and any episode like “In The Pale Moonlight” is always worth a rewatch.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Release Date
- 1993 - 1999-00-00
- Network
- CBS
- Showrunner
- Michael Piller, Ira Steven Behr
WHERE TO WATCH
- Writers
- Rick Berman, Michael Piller
- Franchise(s)
- Star Trek
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