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).
It felt totally natural to me watching it first time round. It’s part of DS9’s thing to be about a group of people who stay in one place and have lives and relationships. And it’s part of DS9’s thing to throw in stuff and let it grow if it works.
It balances against the harsh darkness of the main storyline, and in a 26 episode series you can’t just bash out war after war after war episode - everyone needs a break.
Probably also helps that it’s likely cheaper than other stuff to produce and means they can save some budget for a space battle in another episode.
It also fit, IMO, with the reality that they were on the frontier and in a war. Which from memory was made explicit when the program was introduced.
Whether you liked it or not, I think it made plenty of sense in universe.
Most people here are ignoring the main reason: the writers were just a bunch of baseball loving rat pack fans who took their love of those things maybe a little too far. In the case of baseball, we only had Take Me Out to Holosuite to deal with (which is a great episode–provided you like baseball, I suppose). In the case of the rat pack, we inexplicably got Vic Fontaine who you either love or hate. I wouldn’t hate Vic Fontaine so much myself if they didn’t force him to basically take up the space that Quark’s Bar was supposed to be, and for him to be an integral part of the show so late in the series. And yes, the musical numbers take up too much time, if you ask me.
Cause he was cool as hell. Him working with Nog was some of the best television ever. Only dumb thing was him being a person in the mirror universe. But that is minor. The singing after Jadzia died was gut retching.
I think Vic Fontaine is one of the weirdest things in Star Trek, and that’s saying something. I couldn’t believe he had such a big part in DS9. I enjoyed some of it and I always crack jokes about him so it was definitely entertaining but just so very weird.
I think I get what he was supposed to be, it’s kind of like when they send comedians and singers onto military bases to boost morale of the troops. It was just such a weird choice to have that style of music. It felt totally out of place to me, and I’m sure it was seriously uncool at the time it was on TV.
Imagine being 15 or something and trying to persuade one of your friends that DS9 is amazing and really cool (which it was and is), so they come round to watch an episode with you and it’s Vic Fontaine.
I felt the same way. I wonder if it hit different on TV at the time.
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!
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