For me, the appeal of DS9 was that certain episodes In the Pale Moonlight etc. are a bit like a play, very self-contained even if they are in a certain setting. Babylon 5 is kind of the opposite, no plays, just parts of a long arc.

I think both have their appeal, but it's easier to timebox the enjoyment of a play. It's also easier to discuss, or think about.

I watched all of TNG, Voyager and DS9. To me DS9 will always be behind the other ST series.

I felt like it was a bit too much of the social stuff, maybe because it plays mostly on a station instead of an exploration vessel, but I guess that is exactly what people like about it. The characters and their development and so on. I liked the Garak character for example, but disliked Zisko being some chosen one for the wormhole gods or something. I much prefer Data, or Picard or most of their crew, even if they don't develop as much.

Well, to each their own, they are all good series to watch.

I probably agree but my emotional attachment to DS9 keeps it in front.

It's also crazy how relevant to modern times the plot of B5 is and how many parallels you see.

I think because B5 had already a story to tell from the beginning while DS9 was a setting at first.

I doubt that the changelings and the dominion where planned from the beginning.

DS9 and B5 came out at roughly the same time and shared a similar concept: The (mis)adventures of the crew of a bustling space station. The divergence from there is extreme.

DS9 very quickly brought in the Defiant so that its characters could escape the station and go on more traditional Star Trek adventures. The station was home base, but the crew got out a lot. It typically felt like the station was well under control, with only minor differences between it and a star-fleet vessel. (Toss Quark and Garak out an airlock and you'd pretty much have a standard starship.)

B5 did send its characters on excursions, but they were fewer and far between. The station was not a safe home base. It was a bigger and wilder place than DS9 ever was. It always felt like some crisis or another was ready to spiral out of control and the staff generally needed all hands on deck to deal with whatever was happening. DS9 had the occasional crowd scene, but B5 had bigger crowds (in record shattering amounts of alien makeup) every episode. DS9 felt like a sleepy frontier fort. B5 felt like a city.

Then there's the continuity. There just wasn't a lot of continuity in anything other than soap operas in the mid 90's. TNG occasionally had multi-part episodes and sometimes referenced earlier episodes, but it was always careful to explain things so you could jump in anywhere and not be lost. DS9 was initially episodic, but had some larger arcs in later seasons, perhaps as a response to what B5 was doing. B5 broke the mold. The first season seemed episodic at first glance, but each episode advanced the central story-line. You could jump into Season 1 at any point and be a little confused, but figure things out. That swiftly changed. Later seasons became completely continuous, and frequently relied on bits of story that happened in earlier seasons without any kind of hand-holding. This caused big problems that probably prevented B5 from being as well received as it should have been.

This is for the young whippersnappers out there who grew up with the internet, streaming, and home video: Today, if you decide to jump into a show, you can call up every episode on demand. If it's not on a streaming service, it's on DVD or VHS. Failing that, there's always piracy. When B5 came out, it was not a given that a TV series would be released on VHS or DVD. The internet was there, but it wasn't yet up to distributing video. There was no such thing as streaming. The era of Netflix mailing you physical discs was years in the future. If you wanted to watch a TV show, you had to tune in when it was broadcast. It was, essentially, live TV.

The kicker is that most broadcasters were utterly irresponsible in how they aired shows. Episodes would frequently be pre-empted or aired out of order. Broadcasters were used to purely episodic content. Who cared if people saw episode 5 before episode 2, or missed episode 3 until it got reran the following year? This royally fubar'd people's ability to follow B5. My personal memory of B5 when it first aired was fragmentary and frustrating. I'd watch an episode and really enjoy it, try to tune in next week only for it to be pre-empted by golf, and then be lost when an episode from much later in the season was aired the week after that. It wasn't until B5 came out on DVD (years later) that I was finally able to watch the show in order and finally appreciate how special it was.

Continuity between episodes is normal now. Everyone is used to shows that play out as one long narrative instead of hitting the reset button every week. B5 blazed the trail for them before TV distribution was really ready for continuity. There are a lot of warts to overlook. CG was in its infancy back then. DS9 was still using physical models in its first few seasons. B5 looks like it came out of somebody's Amiga because it literally came out of somebody's Amiga. There probably won't ever be a quality up-scaling of the special effects because a lot of the files from that Amiga were lost. The set design is clever, but stagy. The budget of B5 doesn't even add up to half a shoestring by modern standards for a show with 10 episodes a season, and B5 had 22 episodes a season! The story is so grand and detailed that it still feels rushed at times. (They thought the show would be cancelled at the end of S4, so they crammed most of S5's plot into S4. The result is fantastically dense and frenetic!)

In the end, DS9 was a fantastic show but felt a lot like the station featured in it. It was always well under control and its creators got everything they needed to deliver a compelling show. They knew how far to reach and chose their battles wisely. B5 feels like a wild and overreaching fever dream by comparison. It nearly span out of control, much like its titular station was always threatening to. If they decided to re-make B5 today, they'd probably simplify it immensely. It's story still seems too ambitious for a single TV series to tell. If you can get past the warts, B5 is still a unique and rewarding series to experience. Nothing quite like it has come along since.

I went on this journey with my son during COVID.

Watch a handful of classic trek to get the idea. Balance of Terror, city on the Edge of Forever, maybe Mirror Mirror or Trouble with Tribbles. They will seem very cliched.

Start TNG in the third season and just focus on the best episodes, the ones that are 8s or 9s on IMDB. Be sure to see The Best of Both Worlds I and I, the original season finale climax.

Skip a lot of the first season of DS9. Low IMDb will tell you which ones. But watch almost all of the later seasons.

Then play Star Trek Attack Wing!

It's probably worth watching TNG before DS9. The contrast between TNG and DS9 with DS9's darker tone is an important part of the show. Probably the best episode in the whole series, "In The Pale Moonlight", is made all the better when you've seen what they're contrasting against.

You can start with DS9 and understand what's going on with the characters. Like many series it takes a couple of seasons to figure out what's going on and who the characters are, but in the end the payoff is fantastic. It was the first series produced after the death (and overall creative control) of Gene Roddenberry, which allowed it to step away from a utopian vision and address real issues in a complicated ugly universe.

Yes, you can watch DS9 without having seen the other series. I hope you enjoy DS9 and also the other series should you continue.

There are occasional TNG references but they are not important to the plot.

Probably you should really watch TNG first, lots of characters and lore that would be needed to fully appreciate a lot of things that would otherwise fall flat at best or be outright not understandable. I don't think they matter to understanding the main arc but then the main arc is only a small part of the show.

(Voyager is entirely optional but a much welcome addition that happens concurrently at later seasons; I would recommend it on its own anyway.)

For all these shows, let them grow on you, the first season of each can be a bit awkward but then things start to fall into place, both in terms of characters/lore/setting/story/world building as well as actors themselves getting the hang of characters.

And yes there are absolute duds of episodes, but don't let that make you miss the absolutely fantastic ones.

For me DS9 is the best Star Trek series. It's hard to admit since I adore TNG but overall DS9 is better. A few characters in TNG become main characters in DS9. You don't necessarily need the history but it may seem odd watching DS9 and then TNG. As some of these DS9 characters play a much smaller part in TNG.

If you have the general idea about this universe you can just jump in and then watch other shows later. But mind that DS9 is a different kind of show when it comes to Star Trek. Personally, I find it much more appealing than the rest because of the core premise.

Babylon 5 explores some aspects deeply which were just glanced over in DS9 and that makes it an amazing show as well.

You can but you'll miss important context.

TOS and TNG explain the Federation utopian universe, the ongoing conflicts and races, the moral dilemmas of the captains... I feel that starting with DS9 might get you miss the point a bit.

I would say to at least try to watch a curated selection of TNG episodes.

It's the best starting point in many ways!

There are some characters from TNG who cross over into DS9, and one of the main characters in DS9 has a grudge against one of the characters in TNG due to events in TNG, whose effects offscreen relative to TNG are explored onscreen in DS9, for example. However, there are small flashbacks that act as explainers in DS9 for those who haven’t seen TNG, and the story focuses on the impact to DS9 characters and their motivations, so you might only have half of the story for those small details, but you’ll have the half that is relevant to the story that DS9 is trying to tell. You could easily watch the one or two TNG episodes involving Wolf 359 if you wanted to get the other side, though you could make do without, and come back to TNG after DS9 if you wanted afterward.

It’s hard for me to be entirely unbiased myself, as I watched the the original series (TOS) films without watching much of the OG series itself, and then watched TNG when it was airing, so I already had the context to watch DS9.

All of that is to say, I don’t think you necessarily need to watch TNG to appreciate DS9. The shows are mostly standalone and self contained. Also, I don’t think this is much of a spoiler, as the double episode premiere of DS9 pretty much includes all of what I’ve said above, in some form or fashion, with the exception of the introduction of some character crossovers of the TNG cast. I think it’s nice to know where those characters came from and what they went through prior to DS9, as the two shows were running concurrently, but neither show is written in such a way that you’ll feel lost if you don’t watch TNG first, though others may disagree.

What's the evidence? Star Trek came out before B5 and in the ST universe there were several deep space stations. Do you mean they copied characters or story lines?

And how is DS9 a soap opera? I associate soap operas with sh!t acting and not really exploring deeper philosophical topics.

DS9 had amazing actors, character development and story lines. Take Garak for example, amazing character.

DS9 has its philosophical moments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feh_Y_Q_WpE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seid0z1nKjM

I heard the same back then, plus IIRC B5 did or tried to sue Paramount for copying their plot for DS9. I believe the series was offered to Paramount first but they said no.

There were a few news articles about that in various entertainment publications.