Star Trek: The Next Frontier

The setting, while not exactly Blade Runner territory, is a desolate space station -- a decidedly hostile environment. It includes a promenade with a space-age cash machine and a holographic brothel. Through it passes a contentious assortment of humans and aliens. Station Commander Benjamin Sisko, while as courageous and honorable as U.S.S. Enterprise captains James Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard, openly expresses his discontent with his hardship assignment.

What's going on here? Can this dark, gritty show really be the latest spin- off in the Star Trek saga -- that seemingly never-ending cult series about a Utopian future in which knowledge and technology conquer disease and poverty and all the races and species in the universe coexist in near perfect harmony? Yes, Mr. Spock, this is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a syndicated show premiering the week of Jan. 4. It takes Star Trek, created 27 years ago by visionary producer Gene Roddenberry, further into uncharted territory than ever before, and is the first Trek venture initiated since Roddenberry died last year. "We've managed to create conflict without breaking the ideals of what the show is all about," says co-executive producer Rick Berman. "That's one of our rules: You don't mess with Gene's vision. We bend things a little bit, but I believe we bend them in the same way that he would have."

They'd better. After all, a whole empire may be at stake. The initial 79 episodes of Star Trek, originally seen on NBC, are venerated as TV classics and are available on videocassette. A sequel series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, is in its sixth season in syndication and is seen by 20 million people each week, making it second only to Wheel of Fortune among syndicated shows. Six Star Trek movies have been made, grossing an aggregate of $500 million. There is a TV cartoon show, a theater-style attraction at the Universal Studios theme park and a legion of annual conventions of "Trekkers." A retrospective exhibit of Star Trekiana was held at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum earlier this year, and a chain of "virtual reality" Star Trek entertainment centers will open across the country next year.

In most ways, Deep Space Nine follows the familiar course charted by its predecessors. It is set in the same 24th century as The Next Generation and deals with many of the political situations introduced in that show. Familiar faces from older series pop up: Enterprise captain Picard appears in the pilot, and another Enterprise crew member, Miles O'Brien, has transferred completely to become chief operations officer for Deep Space Nine. "The synergy between the shows will become immediately obvious," says the other co-executive producer, Michael Piller.

The primary conflict in the new series is between the warmongering Cardassians, who gutted and abandoned the space station after being forced out, and the spiritually minded Bajorans, who have resorted to terrorism to end a century of foreign occupation in their homeland. The Bajorans' appeal for help to the Federation, the interplanetary U.N., brings Sisko and a motley crew of officers to Deep Space Nine. There they interact with a constantly changing cast of aliens who pass through the frontier outpost.