In 1993, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine left the dock, and I missed it. Seagulls in its wake buzzed my ears while I held a ticket I’d never get to use. I caught the show’s pilot, was fairly impressed, and saw a few episodes over the next few years, but my experience was the same for many viewers at the time: the show lost me, because it was remarkably different in format. Or, more to the point, brave.

Brave, because it was essentially one long serial, departing from the episodic approach that worked for prior Treks (and indeed, much of television to that point). That represented a colossal gamble for the show’s writers, stars, and crew, and from what I understand that gamble paid off. The problem is, their roll of the dice kept me away from the table. I’d catch one of these random installments between going to classes, extracurriculars, graduating, enduring failed romances, experiencing my work-intense years in college, etc, and my response was always the same.

I’d pop on the TV, and be almost surprised by DS9’s presence in the cathode tube. Then, bewildered. “Founders?” I’d ask. “When did Worf join up?”, etc. Onward fled my university years, and the station orbited in their distance, sighted at random but never sought, like Polaris–an unneeded constant in the face of my modern life. Then it ended, and that was that.

In mid-2012, I decided to rectify what I thought was an oversight on my part. My wife and I had just finished watching every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation–virtually all of them were first viewings for her–and I envied her experience. I wanted to share it. So we agreed to start Deep Space Nine, from scratch. A year later, I started tweeting quick reviews with the tag #DS91sttime, but I wanted more room to share my thoughts.

And here we are.

As I watch episodes of Deep Space Nine, I’m going to post reviews to this blog, and I’ll be leveraging that hashtag, too, so either keep an eye on that, or feel free to follow me on Twitter. I’ll provide longish reviews from the middle of season three, which I’m currently viewing at the time this post is made. To catch up, my next will be an overview of what worked, and didn’t (and man, that will be a long list) in seasons one and two. Because, honestly–this show took its time getting up to gear.

I’ll be sending regular announcements as new reviews go up.

Stay tuned.