I'm up to S7: E14 of DS9. Season 7 isn't as good as S6. Which was itself patchy. There are good episodes here and there, but while I do like DS9, I don't think it's as good as TNG.
There are some good ideas and some good episodes, but it feels far more soap-like, and at times not very Trek like at all.
And then there are the episodes where it clearly thinks it's being dark, but just isn't as dark as it thinks, and it comes off very unconvincingly. I'm thinking of the one where Sisko and Garak plot to bring the Romulans into the war. I found myself quite bored, to be frank. It might have worked better with a better lead actor, but I doubt it. (Kirk would have been far, far better. He knew how to ignore directives, prime or otherwise, when he needed to and still stay infuriatingly sure of his moral rectitude). Or the one where Nog loses his leg defending a communications array. It's supposed to be a horrors-of-war study, but it's ground that is covered far better elsewhere and it suffers badly from any comparisons that are brought to mind.
I had hoped Ezri might be given some good stories, but the one with her family and the feckless artist brother (Ted from Mad Men) who turned out to be a killer! Oh my. That was excruciating. It was often like a 60s sit com. And then when someone commits murders on the station a couple of episodes later, she seems to have forgotten that she has a murderer in the family, saying "I can't believe anyone would commit murder [in this post scarcity utopia, being the implication]".
So, I'm saying I like it, but it's definitely going below TNG in the ranking. And this last season is nose diving rapidly.
