Finished the series yesterday. I will writer a longer post later detailing my thoughts, but in summary: taken as a whole, I thoroughly enjoyed DS9. So much so that I think it's taken the crown from TNG as far as my favorite Star Trek series.

Wondering whether I should push on ahead with Voyager. How does it compare with TOS, TNG, and DS9? Thoughts?

I really should get back to this... got distracted by Netflix.. hopefully soon

After DS9 I wanted to follow Voyager from the beginning as it came out, but quickly gave up on that. It's only years later that I found out why Voyager was so bad (there are several interviews with actors on the net, I'll look for it. Especially Robert Beltran (Chakotay) had a lot of interesting things to say on the writing and production process).

fake edit: www.startrek.com/article/catching-up-with-robert-beltran-part-1

In short; Voyager never capitalized on its main assets: a new and unknown part of space and a crew compromised of both Starfleet and Macquis members. Pretty soon though the new space was pretty much the same as the old one with the aliens being a bit different than before and going back to the Borg as recurring villains and the former Macquis just became regular Starfleet members. Beltran also points out another problem: quite a few characters never interacted with each other, you had a few defined relationships, but they kept going back to those relationships. Later on, the focus was mainly on 3 characters out of the entire cast instead of developing the characters that had little focus given.

Can't believe I finished DS9 almost a month ago... meant to write this a lot sooner, but life happens.  Anyhow, here are some of my more drawn-out thoughts about the series.

Like its predecessor, DS9 had a clunky start.  With the exception of a few strong episodes ("Duet" being a great example), the first couple of seasons were fairly mediocre, and for the most part stuck to the formulaic villain/threat/mystery/space anomaly of the week template.  I think the show really started to come into its own once it started to explore its own corner of Star Trek mythology and embraced serialized storytelling -- the Maquis, the Cardassians and their occupation of Bajor, and of course the Dominion.  Between this and the previously unused setting of a space station instead of a starship, DS9 really carved a niche for itself in the Star Trek franchise.  

Overall, I think the greater emphasis on continuity helped DS9 to present a more believable universe.  Watching TNG, there are times where it's sometimes quite shocking how the consequences of an episode are completely ignored in later episodes.  Take an episode like "The Inner Light", one of Star Trek's finest episodes IMO.  At the end of the episode, it's clear that Picard is quite shaken by what has happened (as he should be), but you wouldn't know it because by the next episode he seems to have forgotten all about it.  True, they do make a couple of acknowledgments in later episodes, but overall the lack of continuity really undercuts the profoundness of Picard's experience.

I also think the darker themes and gray morality lent itself well to creating a more mature interpretation of Star Trek.  In fact, I would go so far as calling DS9 "Star Trek for grownups".  Not that other iterations of Star Trek wouldn't appeal to grownups, but I think that they had more of a mass appeal that would make them suitable for all ages viewing, whereas DS9 was definitely more geared to more mature audiences.  I'm not just talking about violence or sex or that kind of thing, but more the nuanced manner in which characters are portrayed.  You have a character like Dukat who ends up very much being the villain, but along the way you're not quite so sure and could see him going either way.

I also see a lot of parallels between DS9 and Battlestar Galactica -- the use of war as a backdrop for character drama, religion and spirituality, etc.  Not surprising given Ronald D. Moore's involvement in both shows.  

And as much as Marvel Studios makes all these excuses about how coordinating  continuity between movies and TV shows is difficult and that's why it seems like the movies don't acknowledge the shows, blah blah blah -- Paramount was doing exactly that during this period of the franchise.  While watching DS9 I also rewatched the TNG films.  And while they were subtle, there were plenty of references to activities in other productions -- Sisko mentioning the destruction of the Enterprise-D when Worf comes on board, the Defiant showing up in the First Contact, the Borg invasion mentioned on DS9, the Dominion War being name dropped during Insurrection and Nemesis.  

There were a few things that didn't work for me.

They should have killed off Dukat after season 6 when they retook the station.  He was basically a useless character after that, and his role in the series finale was silly.

Speaking of series finale, the Pah-Wraith half of the story was big letdown.  I realize they probably wanted to wrap up the story of Sisko being the Emissary, but this was not the way to do it.  The big take away was that the Emissary was brought into being so that he could shove the bad guy down a pit.  

I was pretty shocked by Sisko's actions in "In the Pale Moonlight".  Yeah, war is ugly and I get that they wanted to portray the hero as not so black and white.  But this was an example of how DS9's usually tight continuity betrayed itself.  Sisko's notion to involve the Romulans in the war comes out of nowhere, and there seem to be no apparent consequences to this episode.  The events of the episode might as well have never happened, and they could have explained away the Romulan involvement in later episodes by making reference to an offscreen events.  It would have been more realistic if the plan had somehow been discovered and there was some kind of follow-up.  Once again, lack of consequences undercuts the stakes.

I thought the Jem Hadar was one big cliche.  An artificially created slave race designed solely to fight wars for their creators?  Where have we seen that idea used in sci-fi before?  More like, where have we not seen that idea used in sci-fi before?