D is for Deep Space Nine, how to raise Geeks

Sometimes there is a TV show you love insanely way more than makes sense. That is how I feel about Star Trek and Deep Space Nine in particular. Let’s look at the awesomeness of Deep Space Nine and look at how to raise little geeklings

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My love of Star Trek

Actually, I love Star Trek.  The day Leonard Nimoy passed away I realized one of my first memories of a movie was Star Trek 2, and Star Trek the original series (TOS) is certainly one of my earliest TV shows (I remember hiding behind the couch because the Vorta from Devil in the Dark scared me).

But when it came time to introduce my kids to Star Trek I started with Deep Space Nine.  I was originally going to start with TOS but at the time I was listening to a podcast called Trek Companion that was discussing all of the episodes and my kids were intrigued by Odo and they wanted to understand what was going on in the episode “Heart of Stone” from the 4th season (and yes I do have large number of episode names memorized, at one point I had all of TOS and STNG (Star Trek the Next Generation) and a few random ones from DS9 memorized (that one hasn’t been on in reruns as often).

But to understand that episode they needed to watch all the rest of Deep Space Nine, so we started at the beginning and played them selected episodes.

Why start with Deep Space Nine

It’s the most fully formed and fleshed-out Star Trek show.  Now, I may be biased, but if you look at the different shows here are the problems with them.

• Star Trek TOS- Captain Kirk chases skirts.  I mean I love the guy, and he’s my second favorite captain for sheer audacity, but there’s some definite silliness going on there.  Captain Sisko is a one-woman man, and he starts out the show as a single Dad.  I give him total props for being a great Dad.
• Star Trek the Next Generation- the Federation is full of itself.  I mean really, the Prime Directive?  I’ve joked with Jeff you could make a drinking game and get pretty soused off the number of times Picard lectures another civilization on its’ choices.  Captain Sisko realizes the Federation isn’t perfect and he’s not perfect either.  But he makes progress
• Star Trek Voyager- To be honest, I just didn’t like the crew as much, and it also falls prey to the “We are the perfect Federation” mindset sometimes.  And I hated the whole Chakotay/Seven of Nine storyline.
• Star Trek Enterprise- This one annoyed me frequently because it felt like they wanted to have some of the concepts of later shows but knew it made no sense because it was a prequel show.  And the finale…… That finale was horrible.

But, back to Deep Space Nine, let me tell you how we’ve used it so far apart from bonding as a family.

Using Deep Space Nine to teach with

Deep Space Nine presents the most balanced representation of the world.  Since they have to stay in the same place for years on end you got to see people grow and change.  You also got to see how a government and religion interact in a realistic manner.

We used it to talk about castes in India last year when in Deep Space Nine Fourth Season another emissary comes forth and reinstates the caste system of Bajor.

We used it to talk about religion and government throughout the entire show, and how faith can be helpful or it can hurt as we saw cultists rise up and try to destroy their world, but we also saw people of faith be very giving or willing to lay down their lives for others.

We talked about keeping promises to friends and why that can be hard in Deep Space Nine Second Season.

So there’s a lot to talk about in it.  We’ll have similar things as we watch each different Star Trek show.