Star Trek: EVERY Season Ranked Worst To Best

Deep Space Nine's fifth season was seen by executive producer Ira Steven Behr as the show getting back on track, in the direction that it had been headed at the end of season 3. He wanted to move away from the Klingon Arc.

Before they could get there, they had to wrap up the Klingon storyline, and with this settled more or less in the first episode, the show then moved on to the next milestone: Star Trek had turned 30.

Trials and Tribble-ations is one of the most fun and loving tributes to the Original Series that has ever been produced, dropping the crew of the very modern Deep Space Nine into the now-retro setting of the old Constitution Class USS Enterprise. It was done to pay tribute to where the show began, while also highlighting just how far it had come.

Star Trek: First Contact was released mid-way through the season, resulting in the Starfleet uniform change. With the darker palette came darker stories, with Rapture, The Darkness and The Light, In Purgatory's Shadow and By Inferno's Light being among these. Finally, the real General Martok was introduced.

Call To Arms requires an article to itself. It was both one of the greatest season finales in Deep Space Nine's run and a massive headache for the producers. The iconic final shot of the USS Defiant and the IKS Rotarran joining the Federation/Klingon fleet is awe inspiring and not at all the ending that was intended, which is why that poor, broken fleet is limping along in the opening shot of A Time To Stand.