What They Left Behind...

You know that when a two hour documentary opens with a song...

Okay.  That actually tells you nothing.

When a documentary about Star Trek - Deep Space Nine opens with the actor who played Quark's brother, Rom (Max Grodenchik) singing "I left my Quark...and Captain Sisko" to the tune of "I left my heart in San Francisco", THAT tells you something.

 

Somehow, even though I remember hearing about this when it was being put together, I totally missed the release of "What They Left Behind", a two hour documentary about the seven season show.

It's out on Blu-Ray and DVD and worth the price of the disk and the effort of hauling that old player out of the attic and firing it up.  It's two hours of fascinating, fun, sorta sad, definitely joyous vignettes with the actors, writers, creators and crew that is interwoven with a fictional "Season 8" premier episode.  It touches on many of the issues that the show touched on and doesn't pull its punches.

This documentary is as good in its way as the show it is documenting.  It details a LOT that I'd either never noticed or just plain missed even in my multiple watchings of the show.  It even touches on what the writers didn't do and that's something you don't usually see in documentaries.  

I've said MANY times that Deep Space Nine is my favourite Star Trek of all time and despite my growing love for Lower Decks, DS9 still tops my list, every time.  It's 7 seasons that had a PLAN.  It wasn't necessarily fully formed on day one of shooting and it had to rethink things along the way (Ezri Dax, I'm looking at you) but if you binge the seven seasons (I have, more than once) you see that this is the show that LOST fans thought they were getting when they signed up in the first season.  

You may recall that I'm deeeeeep into my "watch everything I own" project and it will FINALLY come to a conclusion some time in the spring this coming year.  As the years have passed, I find that there's some go to entertainment that I watched back at the beginning of the project that I cannot wait to get back to six years later.  Top of the list is another binge of DS9. It had been Batman The Animated Series, which was the very first thing I watched when I started to work my way through my DVD collection but after watching What They Left Behind, I'm almost at a point of sneaking a binge of DS9 in.

Not doing it, but the temptation is there.

I assume that DS9 is streaming on Paramount's service and elsewhere.  Or, you know....on DVD.  I don't know if I'd suggest watching the documentary before or after you binge the seven season arc of Deep Space Nine, but I strongly, wholeheartedly recommend you do both.  It's a journey not to be missed.

Stick around for the very, very end.  Longest, most detailed post credits scene, EVER.  So good.

And after watching this, I soooo want them to do Season 8!