Hardcore Trekkies feel passionately about all things Star Trek, and often a divisive issue is the love-it-or-hate-it battle lines drawn around Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Although universe creator Gene Roddenberry gave his approval for the show’s concept, his death in 1991 made it the first of the television series to be produced without his direct involvement. Deep Space Nine premiered in January 1993 (while The Next Generation was still on the air) and ran until June 1999. The show broke with the formula of other Star Trek series in that it was set on a space station instead of a starship, the first to star a black actor as captain (Avery Brooks as Captain Benjamin Sisko), and the first to habitually showcase personal conflict between the crew members (Roddenberry had favored always having a unified front with other Star Trek crews).
Out now is a box set of the complete series of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine featuring all 176 episodes across 48 (DVD) discs along with multiple bonus features tied to each of the seven seasons. Notable extras include “New Station, New Ships” (where Robert Legato, Dan Curry, and Robert Sternbach discuss the design process for the show, including that of the space station and the Cardassian warships), “Mission Inquiry: Far Beyond the Stars” (an examination of the thirteenth episode of Season 6, the metafiction storyline featuring almost the entire cast portraying human characters in 1950’s New York), and “24th Century Wedding” (a featurette where the cast and crew discuss Worf and Dax’s Klingon wedding). If you were hoping this release would be a beautiful restoration from the original 35mm film like those Next Generation season sets that started to roll out into the market in 2012, though, you may be in for a bit of a letdown… Mega fans will recall that Deep Space Nine was released back in 2003 (also on DVD) in single season sets, and this is really just a re-packaging of those into one large box set. The bonus content is also the same (with the exception of some Best Buy-exclusive features that were found in the previous release) and even the menus are unchanged. So basically, the only thing that differentiates this set from simply combining the previous individual season sets is a) the newly designed packaging and b) the price.
The price, however, is quite relevant: if you’re looking to purchase all the seasons to keep on the shelf in hard copy, on Amazon you’re looking at a per-season cost of between $27-$69 each for the 2003 individual sets, so when you consider that you can currently snag the box set of the complete series there for only $70.60, it starts to make a lot of sense. Alternatively, if you just want streaming access to the episodes and don’t care much about the bonus content, you can also find the entire series included with membership on Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu.
