The thing that interfered with my ability to follow DS9 when it was first broadcast was how tightly serial it was. (This is not a complaint as I actually think in hindsight it’s something awesome about DS9, but it bears thinking about in context.)
In the pre-binge, pre-DVD, pre-online-episode-recaps era TV viewers sometimes had to just miss a couple episodes of something because of real life, busted VCR timers, or whatever. You could hope to catch what you missed months later in rerun season or years later in syndication, but that was it. Missing a stretch of TNG or Voyager was no big deal in the vast scheme of things, you could generally just jump right back in and keep enjoying the plot of the week while any really necessary missed details would be filled in more often than not. Miss more than a couple DS9s in a row and, if you were particularly unlucky, those were huge arc episodes and suddenly the entire plotline was twisted in some other direction and you could really struggle to understand what the hell was going on or get back into it.
I was a devoted 1980s/1990s Trekkie, but not until the digital era have I been able to actually sit and watch and enjoy DS9 all in a row as intended.
Yeah, I think I bounced off of DS9 like 3 times before I managed to get past the start. After that it gets great though
The thing that interfered with my ability to follow DS9 when it was first broadcast was how tightly serial it was. (This is not a complaint as I actually think in hindsight it’s something awesome about DS9, but it bears thinking about in context.)
In the pre-binge, pre-DVD, pre-online-episode-recaps era TV viewers sometimes had to just miss a couple episodes of something because of real life, busted VCR timers, or whatever. You could hope to catch what you missed months later in rerun season or years later in syndication, but that was it. Missing a stretch of TNG or Voyager was no big deal in the vast scheme of things, you could generally just jump right back in and keep enjoying the plot of the week while any really necessary missed details would be filled in more often than not. Miss more than a couple DS9s in a row and, if you were particularly unlucky, those were huge arc episodes and suddenly the entire plotline was twisted in some other direction and you could really struggle to understand what the hell was going on or get back into it.
I was a devoted 1980s/1990s Trekkie, but not until the digital era have I been able to actually sit and watch and enjoy DS9 all in a row as intended.