Like the episode about the luddite who stranded a group of people on a planet, forcing them to resort to primitivism to discover their "lost humanity" and casually murdering a few people in the process because "sacrifices had to be made". There is the standard "marketplace of ideas" battle between Sisko and the luddite; Sisko won't bend to her will, she pretends to hold the moral highground, yada yada. It's revealed that the leader was restricting their tech the whole time and could have saved those people, yet no one is mad. They're all like, "yeah that sucks but look at this great life we've built with sticks and herbs!" The episode ends with this psycho smiling and beaming aboard a ship with Sisko and O'Brien, presumably to go to jail. And the lesson here is "moral superiority wins the day, no further justice is needed."
Are you fucking kidding me?!!
edit: it's come to my attention that it gets better. fingers crossed.
Have no idea what episode you are talking about without googling it. If it is a S1 or S2 episode I probably haven't seen it. One word: Episode guides. Skip S1-2, maybe watch the handful of good episodes of both seasons each and move on to S3. You wont miss anything trust me.
In general I'd say yes of course Star Trek has fairly liberal takes of course because Gene only ever got as far as creating a mix of the most basic understanding of socialism e.g no money, no "jobs" in exchange for survival, nobody owns the "economy", absolute equality of race/gender and framed it squarely on his own American biased liberal ideology e.g worshiping of "Freedom" in a very abstract sense, "individualism", explorers aka entrepreneurship etc.
But DS9 gets better, I think S3-6 are the best seasons. I wont spoil it but there is definitely more maturity and attempts at tackling real world issues related to war, exploitation, psychological consequences etc... You'll even find a few timely episodes for our climate and excellent examples of good time travel episodes. The problem with DS9 is consistency and some very heavy handed elements(the whole religion thing), so when DS9 goes off the rails it really goes off like a freight train.
But when they manage to find a topic and execute it well it is one of the best science fiction TV ever.
It's season 2, e15, "Paradise". This is the first time I'm watching through it, so I just thought it was going to be this glib the whole time.