I actually found DS9 to be the best of all of them. Aside from the terrible Dr Bashir character, they felt believable, and like any real environment had personality clashes, personal issues, baggage, and of course interpersonal conflicts.

The difference was that rather than turn it into soap opera porn, the characters actually tried to behave professionally (most of the time).

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1potato an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Agree. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that they gave Captain Sisko's character -- not to mention Worf, O'Brien and others -- a lot more room to develop and grow.

I really enjoyed TNG as well, and DS9 probably wouldn't have even happened if not for TNG's excellence. I never really felt like the writers gave Picard's character a lot of room to change, though. A lot of the time, he was almost like the sitcom dad who was mainly there to teach the kids a lesson at the end of the episode. That's not a knock on Stewart's acting ability; I'd say he was almost certainly the best actor on the show.

Also agree about Bashir.

	▲	outworlder 5 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The Inner Light begs to disagree. Plus his Borg summer camp. But yes, those instances were a bit rare.
	▲	hnlmorg 14 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Though in defence to Bashir, without him you wouldn’t have Garak, who is possibly one of the best written characters in all of SciFi. And some of O'Brien‘s best performances were counterpointing Bashir too. I think as a solo character, he’s a little shallow. But he works exceptionally well at being an anchor for other characters to play off.

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derefr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thus "increasingly" :)

• DS9 only had a little soap-opera drama, serving as almost a kind of fanservice sprinkled judiciously into otherwise-thematic B-plots.

• VOY had more, with entire B-plots of episodes now being character-focused, including a few arcs that would have worked just as well if transplanted into some modern-age military drama with no SF elements.

• Drama-as-the-A-plot episodes were appearing by ENT.

(After that I stopped watching, but I've heard the trend has just continued from there.)

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AngryData an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The Lower Decks was good as a love letter to older fans, I do recommend that. But both Discovery and Academy were horrendous and I regret the time spent. Picard had a few good episodes and it was nice to see the old crew but was not great. Stranger New Worlds had some good things and wasn't a butcher job but not anything to write home about in my opinion.

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hnlmorg 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Strange New Worlds started strong. But the last couple of series was so bad for the drama. In fact one episode was a literal soap opera.

	▲	outworlder 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I would have ZERO issues with the wacky episodes if and only if we were back to the 20-ish episodes per season format. Then sure, do a puppet show. Musical episodes (for how much I HATE musicals, it was decently enjoyable, Klingon boy band was super unexpected). But when you only have half a dozen-ish episodes per season, you can't afford filler.