Your error lies in assuming this premise, from which the rest of your argument flows. It is illogical. :dubious:
The actual purpose of Star Trek is to tell science fiction stories, and there are multiple ways of doing that.
And DS9 did it the best.
DS9 best part was the relative lack of a time travel reset button. That seemed to plague STV. Every time something interesting happened and someone “died”, there was a reset. Hell the series ended with a time travel episode.
Also the redshirt of the week didn’t die every episode and there were effects of the decisions made. Also liked the arcs that turned it into a several episode long “movie.” STE had problems with distance and technology - too advanced too soon. Needed, I know, to be able to tell the stories. And again the time travel BS. Over a season of it. TNG was just too polished, no real drama.
Oh yeah, but where’s the trekking? Without that, it’s just “Star.”
I thought DS9 was worth it just for Worf’s character development. Yes, it was a spinoff that was a little different, not immensely different in the greater scheme of things. It was quite good.
They trek plenty. Lots of adventures through the wormhole, and later with the Defiant. And the first six episodes of season six consist of an extended trek through the middle of a war.
Not to mention, to Earth, to the Mirror Universe and other alternate realities, through time, and into each others’ subconscious.
Agreed; it’s my favourite Trek series.
It wasn’t the best of series, it wasn’t the worst of series.
I get the OP’s point, but I diagree it’s the worst. That is Enterprise, more for wasted potential than stupid stories. If we went by that, Voyager takes the honors.
I vote it lower because 1) I’m not a fan of long story arcs, and 2) I didn’t like THESE long story arcs. It’s not that the Dominion wasn’t a credible threat, it’s that it was a boring threat. Every week, some new Dominion play that puts the Federation on the brink of downfall. But of course it isn’t so yawn.
Yes, the same can be said for the weekly adventures of Enterpirse based shows, but for me there’s a difference when it becomes the core essence of the season storytelling.
DS9 was the best trek because it was the one that deliberately copied Babylon 5. An emphasis on more “gritty” realistic narratives, a focus on politics, meaningful consequences for actions, story arcs, etc.
(The similarities weren’t just superficial - Babylon 5 was pitched to Paramount, they borrowed the series bible for a week to review it, and then a few months later announced a Star Trek show with about 5 dozen structural similarities to B5)
I’ve been thinking about a DS9 rewatch, but basically skipping every scene involving Bajor or their religion. That took up about 40% of the early seasons and never amounted to anything interesting. Most of the interesting stuff is character based (Garek may be the best Star Trek character), or the later stuff when they went full arc-plotting in the last third of the series.
DS9 is the best. It’s not sanitized, everyone has their faults and tries to overcome them.
Sisko had his bitterness over his wife’s death, Kira had her anger over the Federation swooping in after the Bajorans did all the hard work kicking Cardassian ass, Odo didn’t know where he came from, Bashir was arrogant in his intelligence and needed to be taken down a peg, Quark was a sleazy opportunist, Rom was a poor businessman who became a great engineer, Dax was getting used to being a new host. I loved the series.
In the Pale Moonlight is the best Star Trek episode of all of them, hands down.
Yeah, not my fave Trek, either. No hate from me, tho. Some really good eps, but mostly bored by the arcs.
By the OP’s criteria Enterprise was the best of all the Star Trek series because it was 100% about exploring the unknown. Every planet they visited they were the first humans there.
DS9 was my favorite as well. The characters all felt more real, almost like family, compared to the other Trek series. There was more than just one alien character that was developed. Quark and Garak were my favorites, and I could go on and on with the relationships between the characters that weren’t present in TNG, Voyager, or Enterprise. I love the friendship between Bashir and O’brien, the cat and mouse rivalry between Quark and Odo, the relationship between Sisko and Dax, the interspecies friendship between Jake and Nog, and so on. The few time travel episodes were well done, especially the one where Quark and his family travel to Roswell. The whole series was excellent.
I have to disagree. When “Tacking into the Wind” (Fourth from last) aired, I felt like ANYTHING could happen. (Ok, not the end of the Federation) but anyone could die. I thought they were going to off Odo right then and there.
And the redemption arc for Damar is amazing.
It didn’t grab my attention enough when it first aired, so I eventually stopped watching it.
I recently watched all of the ST series on streaming, and have to disagree with the OP on this - if it’s not the best ST series, it is nearly so. Certainly not the worst.
I really enjoyed it and was surprised that I was.
To be fair, fourth from last is 169th from the beginning. 
DS9 grew ST from teenage fantasy to maturity. Roddenberry had some great ideas but also some ridiculous rules that writers had to follow like always having an even number of warp nacelles on the ships, or that humanity was so evolved in the 24th century that they have no conflicts among each other. DS9 came of age after Roddenberry died, so the writers were able to explore more grown-up concepts that mirrored the conflicts we have today. Plus it added in season-long arcs that gave weight to the episodes that the stand-alone weekly anomaly stuff didn’t provide
I just finished re-watching the series late last year. I had seen many eps of DS9 when it first came out but I never really followed it like I did TNG. There are a few clunkers along the way and some of the goofy 90s stuff sticks out here and there but the series holds up very well.
I’m working on Enterprise now but it’s not nearly as good.
I like DS9 very much. It has its faults, but on the whole it is far more watchable than either TNG or VOY. I would submit that ENT is the best Trek, IMHO, but DS9 is a very close second.
I’ll echo many posts on here that emphasize just how awful some of Roddenberry’s ideas were. The first few seasons of TNG are almost unwatchable, and Roddenberry’s incompetence as a storyteller created a lot of problems behind the scenes. I’m not going to say I’m glad he died, because I’m not, but the fact of the matter is that the show improved after he was no longer in a position to dictate what happened on it.
I also reject the idea that Star Trek must be about exploring new planets. That was the premise of the last two shows, and DS9 had to offer the audience something different. Otherwise, why bother making a new spin-off? And the DS9 crew did explore plenty of new places.
But more importantly, science fiction is about exploring the human condition. The trope of travelling to strange new worlds is really just an opportunity to look at ourselves in a new light. The problems that Kirk and Picard encountered were, most often, just variations on the conflicts that we experience in our own world. Most of the aliens they encountered were thinly veiled stand-ins for various people or groups in our own world (cite: “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (TOS),” “The Outcast (TNG)”). In learning about these people and exploring their problems, they explored issues common to all humanity and we learned about ourselves.
If anything, DS9 had this in spades. The characters repeatedly explored crises and experiences that can be found in any wartime setting. I remember watching it in Kosovo and being amazed at how closely DS9’s plot duplicated that conflict, even though the show was made before the Kosovo War. It was able to do that because the issues it grappled with were so fundamental and common to the human experience.
The scripts, plots, and characters were superior to those of TOS, TNG, and VOY. The fact that the space station was stationary meant that they couldn’t forget about their problems. If Picard pissed somebody off, it didn’t matter because he would be on the other side of the galaxy next week. The serialized stories in DS9 made it much stronger and more meaningful because they had lasting consequences. This is another thing Roddenberry refused to permit, and in this he missed the boat, because serialized stories proved superior and now we are in a golden age of serialized storytelling.
And there’s one more thing OP said that really struck me:
I find this an odd thing to say. I’ll admit that DS9’s first few episodes do give the impression that Bajor is a lonely backwater at the ass end of the universe. This was done specifically to distance the show from TNG, where the Enterprise is a glamorous flagship and everyone on it is the best at everything. But as the plot evolved, it rapidly became clear that DS9 was the linchpin of a galactic conflict. By the end of the series, DS9 was the most strategic point in the entire Federation. The people of the future should be thankful that they had someone as capable as Sisko in charge of her!
That’s the whoosh of a Runnabout or the Defiant going to explore something in the Gamma Quadrant.