10 Reasons Deep Space Nine Is Secretly The Best Star Trek

Gene Roddenberry was a visionary of the science fiction genre, but his vision did narrow the kinds of stories that one could tell in the world he created.

For one, while the optimistic view on humanity that permeates his work is appreciated, especially nowadays, he had a very nasty tendency to put humanity on too high a pedestal to the point of absurdity (Starfleet apparently doesn't use cloaking technology because they "don't sneak around"? What kind of logic is that?).

It's one of the reasons I personally had trouble getting into Star Trek, none of the human characters in the original series or TNG were allowed to be flat out, unquestionably wrong. They were always the prophets of righteousness to the "backward" and "wrongheaded" aliens they encountered.

Deep Space Nine, on the other hand, has the entire latter half of its run filled with the human characters screwing up. In The Pale Moonlight is a perfect example of this, where straight-laced Captain Sisko is backed into a corner by the Dominion and is driven to make moral compromises that are on no uncertain terms wrong. We still sympathize with him, because we see his desperation in Avery Brooks master class acting, but the show is quick to remind him and us that what he did in that episode was just plain wrong.

Characters who are allowed to screw up, have to own up to their screw-ups, and be better people post-screwing up, are by default more interesting than characters who do not.