I also thought the Ferengi episodes were the best.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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DS9 is probably the best-written Star Trek show, but what worries me is how many of its fans think that Sisko's war crimes are "badass" and that his worldview should be emulated. Many DS9 fans seem to think that the show's shades of grey renders the Roddenberry vision on display in TOS and TNG invalid - dismissing it with "it's easy to be a saint in paradise".
There are a lot of things to criticize with Discovery, but what it absolutely nailed was the Lorca twist. Lorca arguing about how rules are made to be broken, sometimes you gotta commit a war crime or two, and "context is for kings", was a perfect summation of the mindset of these kinds of Trek fans. So when it was revealed that he was actually from the universe where humanity had given in to this mentality and thus failed to create the Federation, that was the perfect "sci-fi twist" that Star Trek excels in.
I enjoy DS9, but not uncritically.
I remain quite annoyed by how the major driver for resolving both the Borg and Dominion conflicts hinged on a very illegal, extremely immoral thing that someone did.
DS9 had the Morphogenic virus that Section 31 unleashed, and Voyager had the neurolytic pathogen.
It being the thing that won the wars in the Federation's favour ends up implying that it would not have succeeded without either of them, and that all their talk of morality was simply pretence.
It defeats the entire point of the Federation existing, as part of them having those moral stances in the first place was that they could succeed without having to stoop to underhanded means like their peers did. It might be a harder road, but ultimately more rewarding.
Going by those two conflicts, if you're in a war with the Federation, and they don't see you as an organic humanoid, they will happily have someone attempt/commit genocide on your populace to win, allow it to happen by inaction, or reward them for it. There's no real difference between the Romulan Star Empire or the Federation, except that the Federation pretends to be moral.
Many DS9 fans seem to think that the show's shades of grey renders the Roddenberry vision on display in TOS and TNG invalid - dismissing it with "it's easy to be a saint in paradise".
It might be easy to be a saint in paradise, but the Federation is proof that it's possible to begin with. It won't be easy, but that hardly means it's impossible.
It's also one of the things about the DS9 mirror universe episode that ticks me off. "Mirror, Mirror" ended on a nice, optimistic, hopeful note, where for the Terran Empire's flaws and atrocities, being ethical was ultimately a more successful strategy, and that with time and much work, they too, could be like the Federation. DS9 throws all that out the window with "Spock's reforms softened the empire, causing its destruction", and the hopeful ending, that anyone, even the worst civilisation seen thus far, could become like the Federation, was ruined.
As it turns out, you can only be the Federation, if you're human, in this universe, with this perfect set of circumstances. Anyone else would be making a fatal mistake.
Its particularly irritating in both those cases, because there's groundwork in both DS9 and Voyager to end the war through other means. DS9's ending of the war could be done through helping/freeing the Jem'hadar, talking with the Vorta, and convincing the Founders solids aren't actually all that bad. Same for the Borg, where Voyager very clearly states many a time that what the Borg seek is perfection, and they believe assimilation to be a manner of achieving it. It would not be a great stretch for Voyager to repeatedly interact with the Borg, and eventually convince them that cooperation is a superior method, gradually pushing toward the end of the war in so doing.
Instead, what we got took the easy route, where the Dominion were forced to the negotiation table in the face of extinction, and Borg civilisation/the Collective was outright destroyed.
Its just a terribly cynical viewing of the Federation, where they can only succeed by being underhanded, or having people "do the dirty work" for them. If that's the case, why does the Federation even exist to begin with? It may as well be an empire like any other.
I love DS9, but Sisko should have been court martialed.
What war crimes did he commit?
He was accessory to assassinating a romulan diplomat to get them into the dominion war.
S5E13 “For the Uniform: he hunts down that Marquis spy and poisons the atmosphere of Maquis colonies, forcing evacuations. Deliberately targeting civilian habitats to make them uninhabitable is a straight up war crime.
The characters in DS9 went on lots of Treks. Like the time Miles lived out decades in an alien prison only for it to really happen in his head. Or the time Miles was replaced by an alien who didn't realize he was the impostor. Or that time Miles was kidnapped and put on trial by the Cardassians. Or that time...
You would think with how hard it is to get into the Academy, how many qualified people they have to turn away, and with the fact that they don't have to pay for pensions in a post-scarcity utopia, that the Federation would have a more rigorous mandatory early retirement policy. Like, how many times do they let an officer be "Inner Lighted" before they tell them, "sorry, we know this isn't fair. This isn't on you. But at this point, your brain has been hijacked and influenced by alien technologies on multiple occasions. We frankly have no idea what those machines did to you. This isn't meant to be a punishment to you, but we simply cannot have someone so potentially compromised working such a dangerous position."
I'm sorry, but from a purely HR and risk perspective, after going through a fraction of what he did, Miles O'Brien should not be working as the Chief Engineer of one of the most strategically important defense facilities in the Quadrant. He could be compromised and not even know it. How do they know that time in the mind prison didn't also condition him into a sleeper agent of some sort?
After a certain amount of trauma, you would think they would just start mandating officers take early medical retirement. Not a judgment, just risk management. Hell, I would think after a single instance of an officer having their mind hijacked by an alien device, that at a minimum the victim would be transferred out of a front-line role, to somewhere where less sensitive.
Your point is well made but for the record O’Brien wasn't an officer and never went to the academy. He even jokes about having to call Nog ‘sir’ when he becomes an ensign.
You're right. But assumedly it's just as hard to become an enlisted member of Starfleet than it is an officer. When you have hundreds of worlds and trillions of citizens, you're never going to have a shortage of potential applicants for your fleet. Unless you're fielding millions of ships, there will never be a shortage. Even if only rare societal oddballs found the idea of serving appealing? Well 1% of a trillion is still 10 billion. The point is, that for every one person we see on screen, there have to be thousands of potential replacements, each just as qualified and driven.
And that's also why they likely wouldn't mind asking compromised people to resign. After all, getting in in the first place is essentially just an act of extreme luck. Everyone there knows they beat a bunch of folks just as qualified as themselves to get their seat. If you view your position as largely due to chance, then if fate hands you a curve ball and also takes that away from you due to chance? Well that seems reasonable.
I get the point you are making and I mostly agree with it. My one main argument is to ask if the other people really are just as qualified though? Just taking O’Brien again, he is 45 when his son is born in DS9 having at that point been in Starfleet for over 20 years and served in over 200 combat engagements. That’s not an amount of, especially hands on, experience that the average anyone is going to have at enlistment time.
On the other hand at the end of the series he goes to teach at the academy so I suppose you could argue that what you are positing is exactly what is being done to him there. Being rotated off the front line and put in a place where he will have access to mental health resources. It’s also mentioned in Voyager where they have crew that they talk about wouldn’t have made it on a starship and would have been turfed to a star base or similar had they not been stranded in the delta quadrant so it may be that what you are describing happens to everybody who isn’t a main character anyway.
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Oh look, another episode of the suffering of Miles O’Brien
At least we missed the suffering of that time Miles O’Brien (and Defiant Crew) got trapped back in time on a planet unable to return to their families
There is a line you see quoted from time to time the ST:TMP novelization, which I understand Gene Roddenberry had a real hand in crafting.:
We are a highly conservative and strongly individualistic group. The old customs die hard with us. We submit ourselves to starship discipline because we know it is made necessary by the realities of deep-space exploration.
He seems to have struggled with what his vision for a future society would be, versus the realities of making a sellable media property in the late 20th century. He posits that our Starfleet friends are actually socially conservative space cowboys by the standards of the UFP, which makes it easier for the audience to identify with them without compromising the rest of his post-scarcity utopian vision (e.g. that same passage indicates that James Kirk was partially named after his mother's first "love instructor"). However, it also means we're seeing a bizarre subculture of quasi-exiled psychological luddites who take on the eldritch horrors of service in Starfleet in return for not being slapped down into conformity.
It's clearly not a guiding principle for how Starfleet is generally portrayed in ST media, but it's interesting to think of them in terms of being distinctly apart from the rest of humanity while dedicating themselves to protecting it and expanding its understanding of the universe.
DS9 had Garak.
There's hope for you yet, doctor.
I like ds9 cause Sisko ain't afraid to punch a mother fucker in the face on occasion.
I just noticed, exactly where did Sisko hit him the first time? It was sporting of Q to be able to feel the punches!
DS9 has better character chemistry than the other shows. It also has a solid mix of both serious and humorous episodes.
Plus they also got that polycule thing going on at that space station
Is that polycule situation actually canon or just meme material?
I mean, there is the whole Keiko x O’Brien x Kira x Shakaar Edon situationship.
Bashir x Leeta with their open relationship at the end
DS9 had a lot of changing romantic relationships compared to other shows.
Keiko being more okay with Miles and Nerys potentially becoming a thing than Miles or Nerys were was definitely an interesting way to take that.
Keiko being like: Miles you are NOT letting the woman carrying your child go on a romantic secluded getaway by herself!
That was wild.
Miles ruining that end tho with the “unless…”🤦♂️
Please Sir, may I have some pixels?
Well, if your biggest point of criticism is that they are not travelling around enough...
Deep Space 9 was peak Star Trek in so many other ways, who cares they're not on trek? By that measure, ENT would probably rank highest. Or even worse, Voyager.
(I didn't make this meme)
I did hear that criticism many times (e.g. they had to add in the Defiant to make the show interesting). But I agree with you.
Yeah I love the show after but ds9 vs any other shows is a depth vs breath. Ds9 had some of the most complex characters in all of star trek. Because of that push and pull between the writers and Berman. Those first few seasons let you do character driven stories and flesh out the world. Then that paid off in dividends in the later seasons when they starting doing plot driven serial stories. Plus they were not to drop a epistolic story right in the middle of a longer story arc. To give the audience a breather/ palette cleanser.
Unlike today where each season is a bloated movie where the plot is find the mcguffin that will save the universe every season. Like a crappy railroaded D&D campaign.
Eh. It's still Star Trek. I think the hangup on traveling is silly. The wormhole serves the same role as a narrative device as the warp drive. The original idea, before the Dominion War came along, was that the station would regularly have the same kind of weekly "planet of the week" encounters as other Star Trek shows. And the series does have many episodes like that, episodes like Meridian. I'm referring to bottle episodes, episodes focused on a single novel planet, culture, or ethical dilemma.
The idea was that because the station is at the mouth of a newly discovered wormhole, that the station would get that story mechanic while the characters stay in the same spot. Instead of the entire crew visiting new planets, new planets would effectively come to them. Delegations from new worlds would pour through the wormhole, providing opportunities to explore new cultures and civilizations. And Federation explorers could go through the wormhole and have their adventures shown on-screen or be discussed back on the station. An example of this can be found in Captive Pursuit.
Narratively, a wormhole functions the same as a warp drive. The story just brings the universe to the crew, rather than the crew to the universe. But narratively it makes little difference. You would think Trek fans more than anyone would appreciate that motion is relative in space.
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You too, can realize your dreams of running a concentration camp turned space strip-mall! Sign up for the Federation Navy today!
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