Somewhere in another universe there's a version of DS9 where the focus was on rebuilding Bajor and all the complex post-revolution politics that inevitably happens, and not on technobabble and CGI space battles. We got glimpses of what it could have been like with episodes like "Duet", "Shakaar", "Progress" and "Past Prologue". What could have been.
Oh fully agreed on that. My personal litmus test is what they think of "Duet". If they don't remember it, that's a bad sign, because it's easily the best episode of the series.
I do think that DS9 was consistently better written than TNG on average. But on rewatches I just find myself disappointed with how many missed opportunities there were. In canon, Bajor is an old world, rich in a variety of cultures. There's so much that could have been done with that setting in a post-occupation political-infighting context. The first few seasons started to go down this road. But in the end we got almost nothing. Honestly during rewatches I tend to skip most of the latter half of the series. I just don't find the war to be interesting.
In contrast TNG was never really trying to be anything other than modernized-for-the-1980s TOS. Just high-concept episodic sci-fi. It succeeded brilliantly at that once Roddenberry's counterproductive micromanagement was over by the end of season 2.
Somewhere in another universe there's a version of DS9 where the focus was on rebuilding Bajor and all the complex post-revolution politics that inevitably happens, and not on technobabble and CGI space battles. We got glimpses of what it could have been like with episodes like "Duet", "Shakaar", "Progress" and "Past Prologue". What could have been.
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Oh fully agreed on that. My personal litmus test is what they think of "Duet". If they don't remember it, that's a bad sign, because it's easily the best episode of the series.
I do think that DS9 was consistently better written than TNG on average. But on rewatches I just find myself disappointed with how many missed opportunities there were. In canon, Bajor is an old world, rich in a variety of cultures. There's so much that could have been done with that setting in a post-occupation political-infighting context. The first few seasons started to go down this road. But in the end we got almost nothing. Honestly during rewatches I tend to skip most of the latter half of the series. I just don't find the war to be interesting.
In contrast TNG was never really trying to be anything other than modernized-for-the-1980s TOS. Just high-concept episodic sci-fi. It succeeded brilliantly at that once Roddenberry's counterproductive micromanagement was over by the end of season 2.