Finished my long-stalled-at-s07 DS9 watchthrough the other day and was taken aback at the self-indulgent flab larding the finale. Vic Fontaine! Clip montages of not one, not two, but THREE – no, FOUR – character relationships in the final, post-plot twenty minutes! Good Prophets, how terribly lazy and disrespectful of your actors, your characters, and your fans!
I will say this: clearly the end of the Dukat/Nurse Ratched/Pah Wraiths plot, in conjunction with the endless endings and clip montages, convinced Peter Jackson to follow suit over the last, oh, TWO HOURS of his LoTR films.

To be sure, the final season of TNG was a mix of bad scripts sloppily produced and payoff material reflecting expertise and experience. The final season of DS9 doesn’t even rise to the level of hot mess: it’s all about fanmilking, stem to stern. What a goddamn shame, and what a disrespectful thing to do to the actors, writers, crew, and fans of the show.

I gave up on the watch-thru last year at the top of s07 when the Space Jesus stuff kicked into overdrive. Then I nudged it along a bit at a time but when they started cramming Vic Fontaine stuff into every third episode for a while, with full-length songs that didn’t advance the plot or convey character information, I started yelling “LAZY!” at the screen.

I guess you made it through the baseball episode without losing your mind.

And killing off Jadzia Dax at the end of s06 over the actress’ reasonable contract request for pay parity! Christ! The whole season is an outrage.

they have a thoughtful man – soon to be a father – throw himself and what appears to be an actually supernaturally resurrected being into a lake of equally supernatural fire in the final episode. because that’s what Starfleet’s all about.

Now that I think about it, I remember that this was Ron Moore’s show. He has a problem with stupid supernatural plotlines and finales, apparently.

Actually, the *whole* season’s not an outrage. Major Kira finally gets to wear something that is not a space leotard.