[Christopher Halsey]

For me the best thing about Deep Space Nine was the characters, not only did you have a large, varied and interesting recurring cast but for the first and probably only time in Star Trek did you really have a cast of characters with different agendas and they didn't fit perfectly in to good or bad like the rest of Star Trek, there were lots of shades of grey.

The main cast are comprised of the Starfleet and Militia senior officers and most of them are pretty solid characters but then you have the likes of Quark (and his extended family), Garak, Dukat, Martok, Weyoun and Winn who add even more.

[Wesstan]

but then you have the likes of Quark (and his extended family), Garak, Dukat, Martok, Weyoun and Winn who add even more.

I would also put (especially in the first seasons) Kira (and later) Odo on that list.

[Dark]

I would have excluded Kira from my list. :emoticon_ShiftyEyes

Odo's great, though.
"I'm disappointed in you, chief.... If anyone could break a prisoner out of a holding cell and get them off the station I'd have thought it would have been you. On your way."

[Bridger]

DS9 starts to be really good with Season 4.

[Soral]

For me, it was all about the characters. I loved the concept of the show and, of course, the defiant. But it was the characters that made the show for me.

For those that want to understand what the characters brought to the show, maybe to inspire you to watch the series, here's a link to an article I wrote back in 2014 about that very topic.

Deep Space Nine - A Subtly Different Star Trek

[adun12345]

I really enjoyed DS9 - it's one of my favorite Star Trek series.

The best part about DS9 is its commitment to explore different aspects of "the final frontier." The idea of "frontier" has always been important in Star Trek, but in TOS and TNG the frontier was a largely empty area in which the protagonists could fly around and find cool new things to explore. Don't get me wrong - these series were very effective, and I really enjoyed them. However, they hardly exhausted the possibilities of what exploring "the frontier" could be about.

DS9 takes a very different approach to the idea of frontiers, ones that are actually populated by other people. In DS9, the frontier is not an ever-expanding Federation into largely empty space, but rather the border between the Federation and the Cardassian polities, with the Bajorans and their wormhole caught in the middle. Exploring the frontier occurs less on a spatial level (from planet to planet each week), and more through the various other ways that people along frontiers interact - settlement, trade, religion, intellectual exchange, shared history, negotiation, espionage, and war, to name a few.

DS9 also plays with concepts of the frontier as a "primitive" space, filled with superstitious and violent people very different from the enlightened and peaceful emissaries of the Federation. Of course, over the course of the season the lines between enlightenment and superstition, between violence and peace, break down significantly, in ways that challenge the simple dichotomies set up at the beginning of the show.

Anyway, I recognize that it's not necessarily for everyone, but I think that DS9 does a good job of telling a "frontier" story in the Trek tradition, while putting a unique and interesting spin on things.

[Husker]

DS9 is probably my second favourite behind Enterprise. I don't know why people rate them lower than TNG or even Voyager. I thought Voyager was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

[Michael]

DS9 grew on me, it took me a while before I ever watched it. It definitely picks up at season 3, so since you made it that far just keep watching. I like it even more once Worf comes on board (hope that doesn't spoil anything for ya). Even though I watched DS9 almost last, it grew on me so much it's probably the most watched series by me. I love them all and Voyager was my favorite but now I DS9 and Voyager are about tired for me.

However on a side note, I look forward to the new series in the works for 2017. I really hope they just go further into the future and come up with a great story.

[aceman67]

DS9 is by far one of my favorite series.

It was the first Trek series to make Federation society realistic and believable (from the social aspect of it). It added politics and intrigue. It was the first one to show Starfleet to not be this infallible organization. They got their nose bloodied, they went to war. They lost fights.

It tackled many things society is dealing with now on a regular basis long before they were even known about, the biggest for me, growing up a Military dependent, PTSD, in the episode "It's only a Paper Moon" where Nog deals with what happened to him during the war.

It added so much to the Trek Universe. It fleshed out the backstory for so many things. For example, the Klingons we know today are a direct result of the things that appeared in DS9.

Season 3 is where the series 'grew its beard'.

Keep going.