I’m currently listening to ST:Outpost which is a lot like DS9. It tells the story of DS3 and it’s crew. DS3’s captain is extreme about waste management and has the station running at extreme efficiency, leaving it a barren and forgotten place where careers come to die. The crew have learned to deal with this and to make the best of what they have, which oftentimes involves some creative solutions.
It’s a full cast audio play on spotify. It has roughly 84 hours of story. I can heartedly recommend it.
7u5k3n@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Well it’s known that JMS pitched a space station show and was turned down… and then poof we get ds9.
Either way both are some of the best sci-fi ever.
nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Yup. DS9 originated as a rip-off of his idea once he got someone to pick it up because Paramount didn’t want anyone watching sci-fi that wasn’t Star Trek. But, it took on its own life and became another great series in its own right.
I am a big fan of both and argue that they are very different shows, with DS9 being a bit of a grittier Star Trek but B5 not just being another layer of grit but really being unafraid of directly portraying the consequences of allowing authoritarianism to persist unchecked and the suffering that it causes, without softening it with an alien species acting as a stand-in for the lust for power that some humans have.
Having re-watched B5 recently, except for the CGI, it holds up extremely well. Have been meaning to give DS9 another spin.
Also, DS9 has my favorite theme of any Star Trek series.
VindictiveJudge@startrek.website 1 year ago
Even JMS has actually admitted years ago that DS9 and B5 being in development at the same time was a coincidence. DS9 was already in early pre-production when he pitched B5 to Paramount. They turned him down, but also asked if he would be willing to retool it as a Trek show. Most likely, they hoped to recruit him as a DS9 writer and didn’t expect him to turn that down. Granted, it seemed super suspicious, but now that Paramount’s documentation has been released it’s pretty clear nothing nefarious happened. The DS9 showrunners weren’t even informed the B5 pitch had happened and the network didn’t interfere with DS9 much if at all, so the only cross contamination came from the handful of writers they shared, like D. C. Fontana.
swab148@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Oh boy, have I got something for you!
AngrilyEatingMuffins@kbin.social 1 year ago
B5’s security guard was supposed to be a shapeshifter. He should’ve sued, honestly. People thought he ripped them off because DS9 came out first.
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Straczynski also picked and write one if the best comic miniseries of the early 2000’s, too. Rising Stars was limited by the style of art that was popular in comics at the time, but if it’s one of the best, most cohesive stories ever to be seen in comics at that point. Frankly, I think it’s one of the examples of why comics started to be taken seriously as a storytelling medium, and it’s kind of a mystery why every other edgy early 2000’s comic got the Hollywood treatment, but Rising Stars seems to have been mostly forgotten. I mean, hell, if Cowboys and Aliens can get a major motion picture release and The Boys can be a massive hit, why can’t Rising Stars or Babylon 5 at least get some sort of animated series?
swab148@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Babylon 5 already had a series.