I’m probably in a minority where I preferred tng to ds9, and I identify ds9 as the “darker grittier trek” that led to the long vacuum of trek. It was extraordinary, but like a lot of outliers, I think it gave the studios the wrong message about what people wanted.
I've noticed a recent trend of people enjoying DS9, but for most of my life TNG and TOS have been the golden boys. People always compared Picard and Kirk, and rolled their eyes if you mentioned Sisko or Janeway. Or Archer too, I guess.
Just because more people are expressing fondness for something than they had previously doesn't mean it's suddenly "the favorite". At most it means it's a slightly more untapped place to mine for shitposts.
DS9 is more appreciated when watched as a whole, which lots of people didn’t probably have a chance to do before streaming. Unless they shelled out for the DVDs. I was lucky enough to borrow them off a mate in the early 2000s and binged it all in order.
Guess that depends on who you ask. My boss LOVES DS9 over all but I’m more on VOY closely followed by TNG (except I think the first season is cringy). I also really like LD but I know with old school trekkies it’s hit and miss - my mom is a big trekkie and can’t stand it.
TNG's "The Battle" is an outlier in that it's one of the franchise's best episodes in spit of being a TNG Ferengi episode. Otherwise TNG Ferengi episodes are not good but even if they were it would be unfair to make them try to stand up to Quark centered episodes. Quark's is the Star Trek sitcom spinoff we deserved but never got.
What I think led to the long vacuum was too much Trek. TNG and DS9 overlapped. Pretty sure ds9 and Voyager overlapped. It was kind of burnt out (and Enterprise just didn’t help). I’m worried that the multiple series right now will lead to another long vacuum.
TNG was a mainstream TV hit - I think it's hard for people who don't remember the 90s to realise that TNG was popular like something like Game of Thrones was popular, it wasn't just fans of the genre who watched it. DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, etc were all very small fry relative to TNG.
So I don't think you're in a minority generally in preferring TNG to DS9 - that's what the viewership numbers say too. My general experience is that DS9 is most popular with hardcore Trek fans who love the way it challenges our expectations as fans of the franchise - typified by those who cite In The Pale Moonlight as their favourite episode. ITPM is a great episode when cast against the backdrop of (at that point) 19 seasons of Roddenberry-influenced Trek, but it's a terrible episode to use to get a non-fan into the franchise because it doesn't show anything that makes Star Trek different to everything else out there; in many ways, the same can be said of DS9's later seasons more generally.
I absolutely agree with the second part. DS9 knew what they were doing with the grit they added. They still held to Federation values for the most part, and when they broke them, it was a big deal. And they also put in enough lightness to balance it out, like the episode in the final season where the whole crew basically takes the day off to do a heist in the holodeck.
But when Discovery and Picard took the grittiness further, it was just terrible, and you can definitely see some of the roots of that in DS9
I think ds9 and tng are the two most beloved series and it’s not uncommon at all to prefer tng. If you prefer TNG ferengi episodes, though, I would say that’s an amazingly uncommon opinion.
I just watched captains holiday last night from tng season 3 and at least the ferengi “slovak” was recognizable as a ferengi. They seemed pretty figured out by that point. It was nice… the season one stuff was ridiculous.
Yeah, he was in a couple ferengi episodes, I believe. Along with Armin Shimmerman and even Ethan Phillips (Menage a Troi)! It's always fun seeing actors who became main characters show up in TNG and DS9.
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