Well, I'll give you my impressions of DS9. Back when it premiered, I was in full Trek mode, since DS9 actually began while TNG was still running and going strong. So everybody was onboard with TNG, and saw DS9 as a way to get more of that goodness. And I watched the season premiere, "Emissary" and uh... yea, it left me cold. I did not like it. The characters were all kinda unlikeable, the new station looked ugly and decrepit, and the Cardassians were the main antagonists, even though we didn't know a whole lot about them. All we knew was that they'd once enslaved and occupied Bajor. And that whole theme seemed to be what the show was ultimately going to be about... the Bajorans and their planet Bajor. Which wasn't all that interesting to me, at all. Cause they're just... aliens with ridges on their nose and weird earrings. I mean, they weren't terrible, but this was gonna be the focus of the show for entire seasons. Unlike TNG, where you'd hop from planet to planet with each new episode. There was exploration and seeking out new worlds and bolding going and all that jazz. With DS9, the station just stayed stuck near Bajor and that's what you got. Bajor and their weird religion and religious leaders and their politics and that wormhole off in the distance... which had some decent CGI effects for a TV show back in the day but still... those effects got old after a couple episodes. Kinda like TNG's tedious saucer separation maneuver. Thank god they stopped that after "Best of Both Worlds."

So yea... DS9 in the early seasons was just really dull and boring and terrible. I didn't care about Bajor and its religion about weird lightbulb things. Those Prophets, ya know? I definitely didn't care that Sisko was kinda their messenger and had visions. Frankly, I find Avery Brooks a pretty bad actor. He really seemed to be sleepwalking at times. I didn't care for Quark, the comic Ferengi relief, or Odo, the gruff security guard. Odo just seemed to be a copy of Data but without the innocence and charm of Data. I didn't care for Bashir, the high strung British doctor. And I certainly didn't care for Kira, played by Nana Visitor.

Now, this is kinda a weird complaint to make, but part of the reason I didn't like Kira was because Nana Visitor looked, to me, almost identical to Frenchy from "Grease." And you remember Frenchy, right? She was the really fucking annoying girl who always said or did something obnoxious. And Nana Visitor just seemed to be some sort of visual doppelganger of her. Hell, for a long time I thought Nana Visitor did play the role of Frenchy in Grease. It turned out she hadn't, but the similarity was unnerving. Chief O'Brien I did like, but that was only because he was from TNG and a nice character.

Avery Brooks' acting was pretty weird. He either seemed like he was sleepwalking through scenes, or he'd be shouting in a bizarre halting manner.

But more then that, the character itself does really odd and nonsensical things. Like that episode where they go to recapture DS9 from the Dominion. The Dominion finally succeeds in destroying the Federation's self-replicating minefield, and what does Sisko do? He foolishly takes the Defiant into the wormhole to singlehandedly hold off the incoming Dominion reinforcements.

Like yeah, if you read the script and know ahead of time that the Prophets are going to wipe that fleet out of existence, then it totally makes sense. But he didn't know that was going to happen. He just somehow decided to take his one ship into the wormhole to battle the entire Dominion fleet? Why? What does that accomplish? Who the fuck thinks that's a good idea? It just made him seem suicidal and crazy. And if you want to just commit suicide, well... okay, I guess that's your own personal choice. But don't take the whole crew of the Defiant along with you, you crazy Jonestown motherfucker.

And he's made out to be some great tactical officer, and the right hand man of Admiral Ross. You see him commanding fleets in the war and all that, while Picard's off on the other side of the galaxy putting tribal beads on top of his head for diplomatic missions and whatnot. Yet Sisko's brilliant idea when the minefield goes down is just to try and defeat the Dominion fleet with his one ship? This is our tactical genius at work? What? Why do this? How does this accomplish anything? Is the Dominion fleet going to be stymied by the amazing prowess of the Defiant? Or are they just going to blow it up in one salvo? Why condemn Dax and Worf and Bashir and all his friends to death like that? Who does he think he is?

It's one of the stupidest moments in that show.

The Defiant is the single worst part of DS9.

Here we've got a ship that's a brick. Seriously, that's basically what it is, a brick in space. You ask me to describe the Defiant to you, that's all I can come up with. It's a turd. It's a little turd brick and that's about all I can do. The thing looks godawful. What is one of the reasons that people like Star Trek? Well, because Star Trek has beautiful ships. There's an aesthetic appeal that drew me in when I was a boy growing up. The Enterprise is probably the most iconic spaceship in pop culture, god bless Matt Jefferies for his innovation and vision. You look at the Enterprise, and while it might seem a bit impractical, the design itself is unlike anything that we had traditionally thought of as a spaceship. It is not a rocket with fins. It is not a lazy ass giant triangle. It is a saucer connected to a cylinder with a neck and long graceful warp nacelles at the back. That's ingenuity. That is something that we don't see everyday and it looked great and endured through the decades. Starfleet ships have proudly carried on that Jefferies visual aesthetic until the Defiant.

The Defiant just looks terrible. It's got this retarded looking snout up front, with the deflector dish. Only it's not even a dish, it's this weird triangular blue thingy that we've never ever seen before. But they say it's a deflector dish, so whatever. Then you've got the inconsequential warp nacelles on the sides. Except they don't look like nacelles, they're stuck on and basically part of the hull. And uh... there's not much else. You've got the weaponry, but they aren't really displayed either. I've never really seen the phaser cannon ports.

So it looks ugly. Visually, it's a disaster. There's nothing redeeming about the design. But now let's discuss the actual ship.

The actual ship itself, as written, is a fucking joke. It is a joke that is not funny. It strikes me as something that a fanfiction writer on usenet would be embarrassed to show people. This ship is tiny, about the size of four or five runabouts, but apparently is the most powerful goddamn ship in the universe. This ship possesses phase cannons that seem to rip apart battleships in one or two volleys. This tiny ship is portrayed as being as powerful as 2 or 3 Galaxy class starships, apparently. This is a retarded idea. This is idiocy. There is nothing as stupid as this in television history. This is a fanfiction ship. This is something that someone would write as being the hero ship in fanfiction. There is no goddamn way that I am gonna sit and watch a show that employs an ubership that is small, fast, and more powerful then much larger battleships. This ship is an insult to Star Trek.

Why even bother making any regular ships at all? Why do anything but make these ultra powerful pocket battleships that have phase cannons that rip through shields and oh yea... it's got ablative armor, so even if you somehow knock the shields down, there's still not much you can do? This is just retarded. The ship is insanely overpowered and completely ridiculous. Whatever happened to the beautiful Trek ships of yore? Can't we just be happy with nice curved saucers and regular phasers? Do we need phase cannons that are tiny but severely overpowered? What is this? I know it's designed to defeat the Borg, but that's no excuse for something this monstrous, this over the top, and this ugly. Plus, the Borg's greatest advantage was their ability to adapt. So even if you have phase cannons and quantum torpedoes, the Borg will just adapt to them and you're still screwed.

The Defiant had a cloaking device and after the first two episodes that pesky Romulan officer mysteriously vanished, so they could use the cloaking device whenever they wanted to, even out of the Gamma Quadrant. They just gave the Defiant the cloak so the ubership could be even more uber. Ira Steven Behr just liked doing whatever he wanted to, and he wanted to show you how kewl his ship could be, because fuck the Federation and Gene's policy of not sneaking around. Federation ships not having cloaking devices is so lamesauce, isn't it? So the Defiant had to have a cloak, which the friendly Romulans were kind enough to hand over. Sure, that made sense. Sure the Romulans, who had just brutally tried to turn Geordi into an assassin, sure they'd hand over their cloak to the Federation. Because they needed the data from the Gamma Quadrant, and they couldn't just get it in their own cloaked ship. The Romulans didn't have any cloaked ships of their own to explore with. They just had to get the data from the Federation, for some reason. They had to give the Defiant the cloak. Sure, they're not paranoid or secretive or hostile at all. It all makes perfect sense. And that Romulan officer leaving after the first few episodes... she probably just had some vacation time saved up and had to leave. No need to take back the cloak, the Romulans love the Federation. It made total sense. Or maybe that Romulan officer was still around, but we just never ever saw her oncamera again. Maybe they just kept her hidden inside one of the Defiant's supply closets, and she just monitored the cloak from there. Why not? Don't worry about pesky little details like that. The important thing is, we gave the Defiant a cloaking device. Because Federations ships are lame without cloaks. It's just so darn boring. We gotta give em more, more, more. Spice things up. It doesn't matter that they aren't allowed to have cloaks by the Treaty of Algeron. That's stupid, man. Give em cloaks, so we'll be such a cool show. It's such a cool little ship, ain't it. It's got a cloak and ablative armor and phaser cannons and it's really small and fast and it doesn't afraid of anything.

In all seriousness now: It's like the US giving China an F-22 stealth fighter in order to gather intel on North Korea. Would we ever do that? No, hell no. And it's obvious why. Not to mention that the Romulans had just learned that the Federation was trying to develop phased cloak technology and break the Treaty of Algeron, in "Pegasus." Is this knowledge going to make the Romulans more favorable to handing over their own cloaking technology? Hmmm, let's think about this one. I think the answer here is no. And one Romulan officer being sufficient protection is laughable. Remember, these are Romulans... a deeply paranoid people who excel in cloak and dagger. The thought of one lone Romulan officer protecting the cloak would hardly help the Romulan High Command sleep at night. And after the introduction, even that one Romulan officer disappeared. Even that flimsy excuse was done away with.

The Romulans also wouldn't care about risking one of their ships in the Gamma Quadrant, as opposed to relying on the Defiant. They seem to place relatively little value on life. They sent a lone ship across the Neutral Zone to test their new cloak (Balance of Terror). They sent a lone scout ship across the Neutral Zone to scout Galorndon Core (The Enemy). They blew up a scout ship to trick the Federation into buying the story of a defector (The Defector). They sent Warbirds to intercept Tinman at maximum warp, causing serious damage to their warp drives (Tinman). They blew up their own transports that were about to invade Vulcan (Unification Pt 2). They sent Remans to fight as cannon fodder (Nemesis). The Romulans were perfectly fine with risking their own ships and lives, so I don't understand why they now felt like they had to rely on the Federation for help.

And guess what happened when the Defiant went through the wormhole with the cloaking device for the first time. Answer: It got boarded and captured and the entire crew were placed in some VR simulation. The Dominion could now just take the captured cloaking device and reverse engineer it, or develop counter measures. So the Romulans would've never handed it over to some soft Federation crew. If they'd sent their own ship in to scout the Dominion, they could've given them orders to self destruct in case they were about to be boarded. The Romulans had no control over the Defiant or its crew. So no, it made no sense to hand the Federation a cloak.

The stuff the Defiant does is ridiculous. In its first episode "The Search pt 1", it destroys a Dominion attack ship with one hit from its phaser cannons. I don't think the Odyssey managed to destroy any attack ships with its phasers. Then in the episode where they go to rescue the Detapa Council, the Defiant manages to lower its shields and transport the council from a Galor class ship, while simultaneously holding off three Birds of Prey and a Vorcha attack cruiser. Then it goes back to warp and escapes any further attacks. I don't think even a Galaxy class starship would've been able to survive against three Birds of Prey and a Vorcha if it lowered its shields. I think there's a couple of episodes where it manages to destroy Birds of Prey with one or two hits from phaser cannons, which again... never happened with the Enterprise-D. If you'll recall the movie Generations... phasers weren't able to penetrate the BoP's shields.

Now, what does Ditl.org think?

To me, the Defiant has never made sense. She is, quite simply, far too small for the job she is supposed to do. [...] Defiant's small size means less space for weapons, for shield generators, etc. [...] Defiants pulse cannon are only about three or four metres on a side, yet four of these are supposed to put out a lot more power than the two hundred emitters which make up even one of the main arrays of the Galaxy.

I'm also reminded that I really dislike the Ferengi characters. Quark and Rom, they're just horrible. I can't stand the buffoonery that those characters showcase. And this is why I like TNG... there wasn't any of that bullshit comic relief. In TNG, the bartender was Guinan, and she had a sense of humor to her, there was a warmth, but she wasn't just used for cheap laughs. Whoopi Goldberg also brought a lot of dignity and gravitas to the role. Okay, there was the barber Mr. Mot, and I guess he's the closest thing to Quark, but he was in... maybe 2 scenes through the entire series? With Quark, I really feel that he's a lot like Neelix on Voyager. It's that same sort of comedy or buffoonery that I really dislike in my Star Trek. Not to mention all those ridiculous excuses they concoct to somehow place Quark on the Defiant, which always feels stupid.

And people will somehow complain all day about Voyager and Neelix, and rightfully so, but Quark on DS9 gets a pass. The whole Neelix and Tuvok relationship is just a repeat of Quark and Odo on DS9. And Rom, my god... Rom is like a functioning retard or something. Yet somehow he ends up marrying the dabo girl? What the hell was that about? I don't know, it seems really silly.

Now, the one Ferengi that I actually thought they did a good job with was Nog. Nog actually has this interesting arc through the series, where he starts as a no-good thief and loves to engage in mischief. And then gradually, over time... he's influenced by Jake to change his ways and even goes off to join Starfleet, which you'd never guess from his original circumstances. It's this unexpected but believable change that engages you and makes you want to see what'll happen. And uh, it's also just so much more interesting to see how Nog will fare in Starfleet Academy, as opposed to the bland overachiever Wesley Crusher in TNG. Nobody cares about how Wesley does in Starfleet, outside of "The First Duty" which added a wrinkle to his story.

So yeah, Nog I like. Quark and Rom can go die in a fire.

DS9's big space battles never had any ships with shields. Seriously, you watch them. No shield bubbles on any of em. It's ridiculous.

I didn't see shield bubbles on any ships, at all. No shields in Star Trek? Thank you DS9, you lousy piece of shit. Ugh.

Me, I've always been a stickler for the bubble shields. Conformal shields just look boring by comparison. Mind you, I grew up watching the TNG series, so I'm very very used to the bubble shield look. It's kinda ingrained in my consciousness. When I think of shields, I think of blue bubbles. There's a majesty and a pageantry to them. You get the feeling that the bubble is protecting you from harm. They're more visually impressive. The only time we got to see shields in the original series films, Star Trek The Motion Picture, they also used bubble shields. You could just sense the power of the Enterprise's bubble shields as they held against the destructive green power of V'Ger. It was awesome. The bubble shield, not the movie. God, that movie was boring.

And ya know, while Generations was also a terrible film, I really liked the visual look of the shields. Even when they got penetrated by that Bird of Prey. You could see the blue little shield light up as the disruptor bolts pierced them. You couldn't get that with conformal shields, no siree bob. And remember when the Enterprise actually fired back at them and the phaser fire was sorta streaming in every which direction, as it dissipated against the green bubble shield of the BoP?

I really like bubble shields. Conformal shields just don't do it for me. They don't say Star Trek. There's no visual splendor there. But uh, getting back on topic there... see, the thing is... the DS9 battles don't even show conformal shields. They don't. They just don't show shields period. No shields at all.

The evidence shows that yes, Deep Space 9 itself has shields. Apparently space stations are allowed to have shields, but not the ships. If there are shields, they're invisible. Since I believe shields flare up and are not invisible, well... there aren't any shields. This sort of thing ruins my immersion. When I watch Star Trek, I have certain expectations.

And the stuff with Section 31... wow. That was about as far from Trek as you could get. I mean, when you watched TOS and TNG, could you ever imagine them taking place in a universe that also had Section 31? I sure couldn't! It was just totally alien. And don't get me wrong, I enjoy black ops stuff, I eat that shit up in Tom Clancy novels. I really do. But that's where it belongs, in Tom Clancy novels. I don't go watch Star Trek for Tom Clancy stuff. Star Trek is a whole other universe, with its own ideals and philosophies. And Section 31 didn't make any sense in that sort of world.

And ya know, even when they do go with the dark and gritty atmosphere... they don't actually follow through on that. I'll throw out an example here. Right in the middle of the Dominion War, when thousands are dying in battle and planets are, for all we know, being exploded... they go and have a full baseball game in the damn holodeck. What the hell was that about? An entire episode devoted to this baseball game, right in the middle of the war. The whole tone was schizophrenic and very off-putting.

Contrast that with TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" where we got a real wartime story. What is it that Tasha Yar says about food replicators?

"Standard rations. Food replicators are on minimum power. So everything else is diverted to the defensive systems."

See, that's how you do it. That's how you create a believably grim and immersive wartorn setting in Trek. Everything else is diverted to the defensive systems, and not powering up those holodecks. Why have your grim AR-558 episodes mixed up with episodes about playing regulation baseball or going on James Bond adventures on the holodeck? That just feels confused and tonally discordant to me.

And the Vic Fontaine stuff... ughhhh.

You think of Klingons as probably the fiercest close combat warriors in Trek, right? So they should be vicious and obviously not taking any prisoners and just a rapid torrent of misery and destruction once they board your ship or station. But the Klingons that boarded DS9 in that one episode where the Klingons attack DS9... uh, it seemed about half of them were just wielding bat'leths and getting cut down in waves by those silly little Bajoran security guards. It was just really funny. Why didn't they all equip themselves with heavy disrupters and whatnot? Why the stupid slow moving Klingons with bat'leths?

Edit: And one last thing I want to add. I really like Marc Alaimo's Gul Dukat on DS9. I think he's fantastic, and probably one of the best villains in a Trek show. But here's the thing... I don't think they really did as much with him as they could have. Gul Dukat starts the show as a big mustache twirling villain. But then we gradually learn more and see more and there's this evolution in the character. By the time of that one episode where they go to kill the Gowron changeling, he's gone and turned into a reluctant ally of sorts. He's helping ferry the DS9 crew in his commandeered Bird of Prey and things aren't so black and white. There's a sort of love-hate relationship between him and Sisko. That's actually pretty cool, and I was onboard with this. The character grows and changes over time.

But then... nah. They go back on all of that and drop all of the development and stick Dukat back as the main villain of the show. He's just pure evil, and he kills Dax and uh... yeah, none of that nuance is there anymore. He's just a monster who has to be put down. Well, I really disliked this regression. I wanted them to go further with that more dimensional Dukat we got to see.

DS9 also gave us "In the Pale Moonlight." This episode really exemplifies everything wrong with DS9. In the past, we've been aboard the Enterprise while our courageous Captains battled to take down corrupt or misguided captains or admirals in Starfleet. In "Pale Moonlight" we find that our protagonist himself ends up being the corrupt Starfleet captain. It's a supremely disheartening feeling. The entire story is about Sisko lying and tarnishing himself. Sure, Garak is the actual one who plants the bomb, but Sisko goes right along with covering it up, as well as pursuing the fake evidence in the first place. What was that speech that Picard gave in "The First Duty?"

The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based. And if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform!

And that right there is the problem. Sisko goes and violates the first duty of being a Starfleet officer. Star Trek has always been about becoming better and more civilized and moving past the old habits and prejudices. "Pale Moonlight" argues that when pushed, we simply revert back to those ugly, baser behaviors and tendencies. And I think that's certainly something that a lot of people believe. They're free to subscribe to that. But Star Trek has always believed otherwise, that we can move in the other direction. That we can make the right choice, and that the ends don't justify the means.

Is it a provocative and compelling hour of television drama? Yeah, I think so. But is it Star Trek? No, I can't say it is.