I think one of the reasons for how memorable a Sci Fi series becomes and thus the likelyhood of it being re-run is partly what it had to compete against in its own time.

For example Star Trek TOS - what competition did it really have "Lost in Space" "Land of the Giants" Hey No Contest.

Star Trek TNG of course was still able to ride the wave produced by Star Wars and there was not much else in space based Sci Fi on TV at the same time. Added to that the big screen follow-ups to ST TOS helped to keep the ST flame alive without directly competing with TNG for air time.

DS9 on the other hand did not have such an open field most especially as other posters have already mentioned it was running head to head against another series set on a space station B5. I will not repeat all the other very valid points that previous posters have made comparing the two but as the newboy on the block B5 had the advantage of being fresh it was never going to be burdened by the ST Goody two shoes Federation legacy. Also the effects sets and everything else had that more gritty "post Alien" look which was more in tune with today's audiences rather than the neat clean antiseptic look of ST.

Once you moved on to Voyager and Enterprise then of course they were competing against the likes of SG1, in all respects the field was now much less open than it had been for ST TOS. I feel that this may be a major contributing factor to how a series is viewed any space based Sci Fi today has to try much harder to outshine and make its cultural mark than three or four decades ago, thats the whole problem with nostalgia is that it gives you a distorted view of the past.

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They are showing DS9 re-runs on Virgin 1 here in the UK, usually weekdays at 20:00 and double bills on Saturday and Sunday from 14:00

I quite liked DS9 out of all the franchises, as for Enterprise I liked that too and Virgin 1 are doing re-runs of that as well, but why did the last episode have to be made into an addendum for the Pegasus episode in TNG?

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Fame, glory adventure, a cyber warrior craves not these things.

gi'me Blake's 7 anyday.

Because Berman and Braga suck. They couldn't just let the last season stay in someone else's hands, especially when Manny Coto was doing a better job than they had, so they had to wrest control of the finale and put their own ham-handed amateurish spin on it. At least that's my opinion on the subject.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

It seems to be supported by the Captain's Log DVD set. All three Enterprise episode picks were B&B. None were Coto's. And they claimed that the awful finale somehow polled first as the fan choice of all things. (I'd like to insist that all future B&B-run polls be monitored by UN observers.)

Curiously enough, Scott Bakula's pick (Captain's Pick) happened to be the episode they were filming (the warp-3 flight-test episode) when BA got his tour of the set.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Voyager fell flat on its face, badly managed, poorly executed. The DS9 series had some great actors and some very good episodes but if you ask me Babylon-5 was a much better show. I also think DS9 'borrowed' a lot from B-5, much of the 'borrowing' happened soon after Paramount got their hands on draft JMS pitched.

And as is said all over this board, what you think is not important. This stupid idea needs to die. It's another conspiracy theory with enough information out there to show that it's absurd.

Got evidence? Please present it. Politely.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

You first.

Me first what? I didn't assert anything. You did.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

It is a pretty big coincidence that two shows that both were the name of a space station with a number in their title got started at about the same time.

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Both involved a planet that had been occupied for generations by a militaristic empire. (Bajor/Narn)

Both had an empire that was trying to regain its past military glories. (Cardassian/Centauri)

Both involved an advanced yet enigmatic and manipulative race of aliens seen as religious figures, who sometimes helped and sometimes hindered other species. (Vorlons/Prophets)

Both had idealistic young doctors who came to practice "frontier medicine" and examine aliens, and both had illegal secrets and bad relationships with their fathers (To be fair, most Star Trek characters seem to have bad relationships with their fathers.)

Both had a race with bony heads who had fought humans in the past and had a strained relationship with humans which sometimes broke into violence. (Klingons/Minbari)

Both involved an enemy who could hide easily and had fanatically loyal followers (Shadows/Changelings)

Both had an organization in their own government that acted illegally and traitorously (Psi-Corp/Section 31)

Both built up to a galactic war.

Both got a fancy new warship built with groundbreaking but tempermental technology (Defiant/Whitestar)

Both had sucky last seasons.

EDIT: Forgot to add, both also had high-ranking traitors try to take over Earth's government; successfully on B5, not quite on DS9.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

No, I didn't, at least not on the subject at hand, a B5/DS9 copy conspiracy.

(For a forum about science, there is quite a tendency here for people to get sloppy with the facts as soon as a subject in which they're emotionally involved comes up!)

And the side you would appear to have taken and been defending (that there was such a copy conspiracy) was the side that did make an assertion to start with in here, not the other way around.

(For a forum about science, there is quite a tendency here for people to get sloppy with logic as soon as a subject in which they're emotionally involved comes up!)

I don't want to get involved in the debate, nor do I want to hijack the thread. I've seen statements from DS9 show-runners saying that they didn't steal ideas from DS9, but I don't have any links handy, nor do I have the time or desire to get involved in this right now.

I do want to address two points mentioned above, though.

-Most Federation space stations have numbers in their designations (since the original series), and we'd heard of a DS# station before DS9 came out.

-The bony-headed, violent Klingons with a history of fighting humans is older than JMS's proposal to paramount by at least 4 years. That's not a valid comparison for your side of the argument.

The rest of noclevername's statements are just as flimsy.

There's also a tendency to read things into what is said that weren't actually said. I took no one's "side". I asked for information in response to Tobin Dax's post, that's all. He said there's "enough information out there", so I wanted to see some.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I thought DS9 had some great episodes and some fantastic actors but it was a very different show to Gene Roddenberry's original vision and what it didn't have was originality. The B5 concept by JMS was pitched to Paramount in the years 1998-1989, for those counting that's at least two years before DS9 was created. Now given the fact that one precedes the other, and that Paramount had seen the Joe Michael Straczynski's 'Bible' way back in 1989, I think it's fair to say that they may have worked some of those Babylon Five 5 elements into their new DeepSpaceNine product not too soon after turning JMS down.

One thing I can say about DS9 in its favor...great music. No I am not talking about the sound track, though that wasn't bad, I mean Vic Fontaine. I am sorry, but I love Frank Sinatra lounge lizard type music. I love the song at the end of 'Finding Nemo' it is oen of my favourites.
Plus the characters had conflict with one another, something 'the master' Gene Roddenarry didn't want. I am sorry, but here I think he made a mistake. Story is about conflict, and inter-character conflict can be one of the greatest kinds.
I can't compare it to B5 because I have never seen B5. Sorry.

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[emphasis mine] As with CT's who paint the Gubbmint as a single monolithic being, I have to ask, who are "they"? Did Berman and Piller ever see the B5 pitch?

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