10 Reasons Deep Space Nine Is Secretly The Best Star Trek
8. A More Fleshed Out Setting
One of the biggest issues with Star trek is - ironically - one of the founding tenets of its premise. The problem with boldly going where no man has gone before is that you don't really have time to get to know each planet the characters visit. This franchise is actually where the trope "planet of hats" originated from, because the show only spends one episode on each planet. Thus the planet has to have one defining trait and rarely anything else.
Deep Space Nine starts off its entire run by avoiding that pitfall. Sure Sisko and the crew go to other planets sometimes, but they're mainly stationed on the eponymous space station above the planet Bajor. Bajor has just liberated itself from the oppressive regime of the planet Cardassia, but tensions are still high and the Federation is there to mediate.
Because of this premise, we get to see the Bajorans and the Cardassians become two of the most well developed races in the entire Star Trek mythos. It makes the universe of this show feel so much more alive than any number of one off allegory planets could ever accomplish.