10 Reasons Deep Space Nine Is Secretly The Best Star Trek

Star Trek has ALWAYS been diverse in its casting, it's what drew people to the original series to begin with.

While being made in the 90's meant that there was only so much they could do (compared to Discovery who were allowed to go all out explicit with - for instance - their characters sexuality), DS9 still found workarounds that the audience could easily interpret as being allegory for this or that identity or group.

Dax, for instance, is clearly genderfluid. While she isn't human, she looks and talks and acts like a human for the most part so it hardly matters. And in case you're thinking they just leave it as subtext, no, they broach the subject of gender-fluidity in multiple episodes featuring Dax, all of which come down on the side of this being totally okay and normal.

Finally, not only does this show have the first black lead in Star Trek history, it avoids the tokenism that plagued Uhura in the original series by having multiple actors of color in its main and supporting cast. This means that Sisko can be a fully fledged character without the pressure of having to represent the entire black identity for the show, the inevitable consequence of tokenism.