In it's first year this felt like a "Star Trek" series with no ambition and little progress but with a cool premise. Then suddenly it started to become bolder and more interesting. It dared to go deeper into religion, politics and character studies than any of the other Trek series did on the air. Today I would say that this series began a kind of production that we would later see on cable with long-running story arcs, a huge cast list and pushing the envelope on what was allowed on TV. The last 10 episodes of this show (and beginning of the 6th) was like seeing a long-running 10 episode HBO series on syndicated TV to be blunt. I also liked that this was "Star Trek" where the leads were flawed and not perfect so they actually had to have internal fights with themselves and their own demons at times. They even managed to make their villains three-dimensional and sympathetic and I liked them all. What would have helped the show would have been an even healthier budget would have given some scenes better effects, more action and detailed battle sequences as this show had bigger ambition and tried to be more epic than what they really could manage to get through on screen. Some lousy embarrassing comedy and weak B-plots ruined some episodes too but this show produced some magic moments and is the show that has more hits than any of the other newer Trek shows that I have seen so far. This is the one show that deserve a revisit if one only skip over most of the filler episodes in season 1, 2 and major part of the third one.

Well, it's the best Star Trek Show that was produced in that era (and it's definitely way better than Discovery). And I'm saying that although I grew up with TNG and still think that Voyager's Seven of Nine is the best character in all of those shows of that era. TNG was still too much like the original series. Voyager felt too isolated from the Federation (well that's the point of that show I guess). DS9 was bolder. It experimented more. It explored more races, more worlds, was able to create realistic, credible and intriguing characters (especially the female characters are strong) and their relations among each other in that interstellar melting pot. The show touched religion, politics, racism and the universal concepts of love and friendship. All neatly bound together by the most dramatic and most ambitious overarching storyline of any Star Trek show. In the streaming era, DS9 non-serial story telling is perfect (while it may have contributed to show's low rating back in the TV era). Seasons 1 and 2 are weaker - just like TNG they needed time to explore what to do with the show (and how to overcome the disadvantage that a space station can't fly to other worlds and explore space). Not everything was great though. Some lighthearted episodes are mere fillers (they probably produced too many episodes per year!), some races are big stereotypes (but often great fun for the same reason), sometimes the mystic elements (that were admittedly always part of Star Trek) are a bit too dominant and too silly, and the whole stage design isn't very flashy (but memorable and unique thanks to Cardassian architecture but I never got my head around how small the promenade looked like and how few people actually filled the station although the station was clearly a behemoth), sometimes it has too much of a shallow soap opera appeal to it and the last season - however great the overarching story line comes to a conclusion - feels somehow out of place (which is the fault of the guy who denied Farrell a new contract so that Jadzia had to die this pointless and not very well-written death. I mean, Ezri was also a strong character but it took too much time to really get to know her and to care for her).

Wait, this was Star Trek set on a space station? I mean, sure it was a good show, I can respect it for what it was, but TNG came out when I was 7 and, well, the 7 year-old in me would have LOVED THAT.

Had it come out when I was 7, it would have been better than TNG. I would have taken the Pepsi Challenge and gone DS9 all the way.

But... it dropped when I was 13. The 13 year old version of me loved it, I mean, there were some morally unscrupulous characters. There were some serious,y flawed characters, and they were all thrown together in a Space Station... yeah, that works and it works well.

My only regret is that it didn't come out when I was younger, because it would have been the greatest show ever then.

I've been reading through Fredric Jameson's book on science fiction and utopia lately, and was shocked by his lack of commentary on the _Star Trek_ franchise. In many respects, _Star Trek_ is the most significant work of 20th-century Utopian fiction, certainly the one with the most lasting cultural footprint. The changes of the franchise across its history also seem to support Jameson's thesis in quite a neat fashion - that the decline and demise of the Utopian fiction has been the result of the enclosing of our creative imagination to think of new possibilities beyond postmodern capitalism.

_Deep Space Nine_ represents this fractious relationship with Utopianism in culture at large. By the time of this series, Roddenberry's Utopian vision has been mostly destroyed: the Federation is a decadent bureaucracy; its commanding officers willingly dirty their hands to get the job done; humanity no longer has the ability to use its own creative powers to solve its problems - it must appeal to quasi-religious entities for its salvation. The conflicts between Sisko and his superiors more often resemble moments of hopeless bureaucratic entrapment in _The Wire_ than any kind of Utopian fiction. In contrast to the communistic sentiments (albeit of a non-Marxist kind) of both _Star Trek_ and, to a lesser extent, _The Next Generation_, _Deep Space Nine_'s depiction of perpetual compromise as a necessary political tool expresses a decidedly conservative worldview. Its later season war focus served to further exacerbate these existing strains on its Utopian framework (its criticisms of the hopelessly naive Federation politicians and their inability to serve the Federation's military needs could easily be mistaken for contemporary warhawk rhetoric).

Yet, interestingly, the series itself contains an episode which affirms the positive relationship between Utopian fiction and contemporary political struggle. In the famous episode, _Far Beyond the Stars_, Sisko's character - under the influence of spiritual intervention - imagines himself as Benny Russell, a black science fiction writer in 1950s America who attempts to get his story published, against the racialist pressures of his time. Russell's story - through its meta-textual incorporation of _Deep Space Nine_'s universe and the crew of the titular space station - envisions a post-racial political order in which black Americans can live and work together without identity divisions. The story not only acts as a means of conceptualising potential futures for an oppressed race in the past, but it also makes a general comment about the function of Utopian fiction - that it exists as a means of projecting onto the future possible alternatives to current social and moral conditions. By imagining a political order which is post-racial and expressing it in fiction, Russell is able to suggest that such a future is possible for his people; _Star Trek_ - at its roots - fulfills this same role in our world. I suspect that this nod to Utopianism-as-method is expressed unconsciously, given that the writers tend to focus on the superficial anti-racist text when speaking about the episode retrospectively.

This dichotomy at the heart of _Deep Space Nine_; its simultaneous commitment to Utopianism as a means of political and moral struggle and its desire to ground this Utopianism, thereby negating its revolutionary power, is in many respects what lends the series its dramatic tension and why perhaps, in a cultural age as cynical as this one, people still continue to enjoy it. That said, I think its deeply ambiguous attitude towards Utopianism as a political methodology is ultimately negative, particularly now that we can see how it served as the foundation for the relentless cynicism and mean-spiritedness of _Star Trek_'s contemporary incarnations. This is a terrible shame, not because I have any special love for the _Star Trek_ franchise, but rather because it could be the potential foundation for a re-vitalised, popular Utopianism.