TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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I think DS9 and some other shows of the era really hit the sweet spot here. They were mostly contained episodes, but there were overarching narratives lurking in the background, sometimes occupying an episode or two, or a subplot here and there, blowing up around season finales and premiers, although once war broke out the ones that didn't do much to acknowledge it admittedly felt a bit out of place. That method of storytelling also forced the writers to at least consider character developments that had occurred in prior episodes and not simply ignore them in the name of the quest for syndication.
The modern format can make for some truly great TV (Andor, e.g.) and freeing up the run time without reducing the budget can mean beautiful looking shows, but they don't work well when you're basically filming an overlong first draft of a movie script, rather than writing a story (or two or three) that's meant to occupy 8-12 hours. I also agree with the others who say that a gap of more than a year (and even that much, really... it used to be three or four months) puts all but the most anticipated shows at a huge disadvantage, and god help you if you cast kids in S1.
DS9 is a funny example because (relative to contemporary shows TNG and Voyager, but other TV of that era too) they oftentimes doesn't wrap up the philosophical/moral/ethical conundrum neatly by end of episode and leave things more open or unresolved or ambiguous, which is simultaneously dissatisfying and refreshing IMO. Also, I think some of their best episodes from a conceptual perspective ended up a bit clunky in execution, like they don't have enough time to properly explore the subject at hand in only one episode so they squeeze it into a more superficial plot that then as a result feels a bit drawn out (also Star Trek dialogue usually ranges from mid to meh--with a few standout lines sprinkled in--which unsurprisingly taints the acting too). There are a number of single-episode plots that were good but could have been great if they'd given them more time to marinade over multiple episodes, but they already had a huge number of balls in the air for an episodic show in terms of plot and character development, so maybe that would have been disastrous to attempt idk.
Agreed, and it absolutely depends on the episode. Also agree that they sometimes (often?) bit off more than they could chew, but in general they weren't so disastrous that I didn't appreciate the effort. I imagine there was a lot of compromise and horse trading on those scripts, and people were probably relieved to get out something as good as they got. I like to imagine the Ferengi episodes were generally the penance exacted from writers who insisted on too much self-respect.