How Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Was Beaten By The Chicago Cubs
This is a rant that’s been brewing for nearly two decades. Dear Tribune Company: WTF were you thinking by pre-empting Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for Chicago Cubs games?!
Yes, I get the politics. The Tribune owns the Cubs and DS9 was aired on the Tribune’s TV station, WGN-9. Meaning that every time there was a Cubs game it was a near-certainty that DS9 would get pre-empted. Actually it was worse than pre-emption, because they always jumped into DS9 episodes “already in progress,” sometimes by a half hour or more. That’s enough to make any fan madder than a pack of rabid Cardassian voles.
Thus was DS9 completely ruined for me. I enjoyed the first couple of seasons but once the pre-emption started, I simply gave up. This was in the days before DVRs and Netflix, and syndication was years away, so it wasn’t like you were going to be able to watch it later. Sometimes they’d re-air that day’s episode late at night… but it was never on the schedule and seemed to be a last-minute decision. I wasn’t about to stay up all weekend long to see if they might deign to do so.
Such a shame, too, because there was a lot of good stuff in DS9 that I quite enjoyed once I had a chance to watch it properly. Like Far Beyond The Stars, which as far as I’m concerned is one of the best stories ever, not just in Star Trek but in science fiction as a whole. The pilot episode Emissary is also notable for the kickass way a grieving Sisko lashes out at Picard, whom he views as the reason for his wife’s death during the battle against the Borg at Wolf 359. Many fans felt it was about time somebody gave Picard attitude, and Avery Brooks delivered in spades. I would totally have him at the negotiating table over Picard. None of this diplomatic bullshit, no sir.
It’s ironic that baseball was the cause of DS9′s Chicagoland pre-emption given the role baseball played in the series itself. Eventually I got caught up via re-runs, but it was never the same. At least Voyager was on Wednesday nights and wasn’t likely to be interrupted by wrestling (not until Tsunkatse, at any rate). To this day DS9 remains my least favorite Trek. I’m not sure if I liked the Voyager (and later Enterprise) crews better, or if the continual disruptions of DS9 left a bad taste in my mouth.
4 Comments to “How Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Was Beaten By The Chicago Cubs”
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Yes, I missed B5 for just those reasons. I like the fact that we are seeing a move toward webisodes and other creator-controlled media because it seems to me that the people who create a franchise are far more likely to nurture it than the money-counters. Ironically there’s probably more money to be made that way.
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David Guidry says:
What made the preemption even worse was when they would re-air it on a different day… after another &%$#$-(;’%$-%#@ Cubs game, with the obvious outcome. This *could* have been a cash cow for them; instead they were LOSING money propping up their loser of a team (and I was a Cubs fan back then). The only truly safe time you could watch the show was in the baseball offseason, *if* they would bother to rerun the season.
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Problem with the reruns, it was hit or miss, so you never got to see the whole season. And they would do REALLY STUPID things like missing critical story arc episodes (which, when dealing with the Dominion plotline, was exceptionally annoying).
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