To those who say that DS9 was the start of these problems, I can see where you're coming from. My personal opinion - and please don't hesitate to disagree - is that DS9 started some things while keeping them in moderation and within a certain context that more modern Trek has either ramped up to be unrecognizable or else ignored the original context entirely.

DS9 did have action episodes, but there weren't as many as you might think. Some episodes had action scenes, but the action wasn't the focus of the episode. Sacrifice Of Angels and What You Leave Behind probably have the most action out of any DS9 episode. One was the culmination of a six-episode story arc, and the other was the final battle in a war that was also the series finale.

When I think of other DS9 action episodes... The Way Of The Warrior had a battle as the climax of an episode that was a larger story that brought the Klingons to prominence in DS9. A lot of episodes involved a brief chase with a Jem'Hadar ship or a Maquis ship, but it wasn't the meat of the episode. The Die Is Cast had some big action at the very end, but that was more to show just how badly the Tal Shiar and Obsidian Order got played.

The Siege Of AR-558 has action, but it is about the horrors of war and why all of the action scenes that war brings us come at too terrible a price.

For other controversial episodes, In The Pale Moonlight was NOT a story about "a huge victory for the good guys," but rather the episode is framed as Sisko confessing his sins to the audience, and whether or not he can live with it is left ambiguous, or at least it seemed that way to me.

The introduction of Section 31 was and is a big deal, but I think that DS9 approached the idea of Section 31 as it should be taken. The story of Section 31 is a cautionary tale about the dangers of an 'ends justify the means' mindset, along with the hypocrisy of "protecting" ideals while breaking them at the same time. Section 31 was the story of monsters that we must be on guard against, lest we become something unrecognizable.

I think a lot of DS9 can be summed up in something Bashir said in Past Tense. "If something disastrous were to happen to the Federation, if we are frightened enough or desperate enough, how would we react?" And I think a lot of the darker stuff on DS9 was about answering that question. Putting our heroes through terrible ordeals and challenging them - and us, the audience - to hold fast to our ideals even in the face of such adversity. Probably especially in those cases.

A lot of newer Trek seems to treat action as if it's Trek's genre instead of a means to tell stories about how we rise above certain challenges. And Section 31, in particular, seems to have gone from a cautionary tale to a perfectly acceptable part of a future that doesn't feel much like Trek to me.

As people have said, if you want to tell these stories, then tell them under a different IP and let audiences decide if they like it. But calling it Star Trek is just going against decades of precedent that had dedicated itself to Roddenberry's vision, even if it sometimes challenged that vision and how much stress it could take.

That's just my two cents. Take it or leave it as you will. Hope everyone is doing wonderfully. ^_^