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.
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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.