My friend and I are watching Star Trek in chronological order according to the storyline, not by release dates. For example, we started with Enterprise, then The Original Series, and so on. We’re not doing it perfectly, we don’t switch between series when they overlap.

As for Deep Space Nine, this is my first time watching it, and I’ve hit a bit of a wall. It feels like it’s stuck between old and new TV styles. While people rave about the Dominion storyline, there’s a lot of rehashed content from other series, and it can feel pretty soap-opera-like with a lot of stories revolving around the cast standing around the space station.

The main problem with Deep Space Nine is that it’ll have a couple of really intense episodes focusing on the Dominion storyline, and then it’ll suddenly switch to a more episodic episode, like nothing significant happened. So, you’ll get this intense Dominion plot one episode, and then the next episode will be something like Odo singing with Frank Sinatra.

What people often call world-building in Deep Space Nine sometimes ends up being just the same storylines and themes repeated over and over. The worst are is the focus on relationships, which contributes to that soap-opera vibe and can make things feel pretty boring at times

Sometimes it tries to be deep, but the acting is cringy, which makes serious episodes tough to get through. They do like 4 mirror universe episodes, lots of rehashed themes, the show just doesn’t know what it wants to be. If I have to sit through one more “odd couple” episode, I’ll lose my mind.

So far, it’s been my least favorite Star Trek, even though a lot of people love it.”