For those who watched DS9 during its first airings, did it seem odd to you that Vic Fontaine/James Darren sang entire songs in the later seasons of DS9?
I only finished watching DS9 recently and just found it really odd. It seems out of place in the regular TNG/DS9 format, didn’t drove the plotline forward, and sometimes felt just like a filler.
(I don’t mean to be disrespectful, I like the character and the actor can sing well, I am just curious why the producers made that decision).
I felt the same way. I wonder if it hit different on TV at the time.
I found it weird when it aired. My recollection of watching it on TV as a teenager was that Vic became a big presence in the show very suddenly (I may be misremembering and it’s been a while since I rewatched DS9) and the amount of screen time they devoted to him in late s6 and s7 felt odd.
Yea I wonder that too. At times the character worked rather well, but overall, IMO, it stands out as weird.
But, like you, I wonder if a Sinatra homage was just a much more natural and emotionally impactful thing for the mature fans (ie Boomers) watching in the 90s. I’d bet that it was at least less weird. Like at most they thought, “huh, writers are Sinatra fans … ok” … ?
Sinatra and ‘lounge music’ made a big comeback in the nineties with younger people then in their early twenties, that would Gen X, not the boomers.
Gen X thought the late 50s and early 60s were interesting 30 years later.
The Bond revival was also in full swing with that age group too, which is why we got Bashir’s Bond hijinks combined with lounge culture.
James Darren was the real deal as a lounge singer. His career was trending upwards again during the show because of the lounge culture trend.
I’m also going to make a pitch for holodeck/holosuite episodes. I would absolutely argue that in the 90s they weren’t filler at all.
They aren’t as interesting now because they are too close to technology that we use everyday. That’s likely why we aren’t seeing Holodeck episodes in the same way in the new era.
While virtual reality, and shared role playing games are deeply established now through massively multiplayer games and discord, Star Trek in the 90s was actually doing its s job as a science fiction show imagining what people could do with VR and what could go wrong.
Taking it back to TOS, a shore leave planet that turned out to have interactive holographic characters and an operating system gone wrong wasn’t a trope, it was an entirely new concept. More, it built on the psychological thriller concept of imaginary things becoming real and dangerous that was at the core of The Cage and the MGM movie Forbidden Planet that inspired Roddenberry.
In both the Berman era and in TOS, virtual reality shows were a key way to explore character development, relationships and team development within the ensemble of characters.
DS9 ‘Only a Paper Moon’ is a deep dive into withdrawal from reality due to trauma. I would say it may not be as successful now because it’s too on the nose and less allegorical given the way gaming and VR are used by many with trauma and anxiety as coping mechanisms.
Great post. Thanks!
(Please can we stop stereotyping people by age. I saw DS9 the first time around and I’m not a Boomer. )
Star Trek has always had light moments in episodes. So this was nothing new. It was the case until the early 00s that many shows had an occasional musical interlude or even an entire musical episode. Sometimes celebrities would appear and do a whole song or their act.
That’s starting to happen again even in Sci-Fi. eg The Orville has had a few musical numbers. Also, keep watching SNW 😉
I’m sorry … really didn’t mean to offend or even stereotype too much, and I didn’t mean to invoke “boomer” in any negative sense here and could have just referred to the simple fact I was point out … which was that a 30 year old in the 90s would have been more familiar with Sinatra and the vibe of that scene than a 30 year old in 2020.
Only if that thirty year old in the 2020s had a poor cultural upbringing. I was seven when DS9 started, fourteen by the time it ended and only thirty-seven now. I’m well aware of Sinatra and the Rat-Pack and the Vegas scene.
That’s a bit judgmental, anrbitrary and even culturally hegemonic don’t you think? I was slightly older than you at the same time and couldn’t have given a fuck about the rat pack at the time (or now TBH) but was happily listening to Bach and blues and engaged with other things. Are you from the USA by any chance? (I’m not).
No, I’m British.
And yet you continue with stereotypes based on age.
Well I implied “more likely to be familiar”, on which I could have been more clear.
Otherwise, as far as my presumptions go, I’m theorising on a population level here, and am presuming generations have cultural differences. Stereotyping, IMO, can be done accurately enough if done from a statistical perspective which basically guarantees a degree of centrality as well, and this is the important bit many fail to recognise, a degree of variation.
I’m not trying to tell anyone who or what they are based on one particular trait. Just speculating as to a statistical factor that may exist at the aggregate level.
A 30 year old in 1995 would be a Gen Xer.
My recollection is that it was the younger adults in their 20s who were into the lounge culture revival in the 90s.
Older boomers would have been in their teens the first time round for this music. It wasn’t so much for them.