Deep Space Nine had to violate this central theme in order to give us some of Trek’s best episodes, and the writers and producers were very well aware that Gene Roddenberry would have disapproved of what they were doing.

After the creator passed away in 1991, Rick Berman kept a bust of his head on his desk and would blindfold it whenever writers were discussing a topic that the franchise creator would have disliked. Presumably, that bust stayed blindfolded for the entirety of the bloody Dominion War arc, but this arc is how the show achieved true greatness.

It’s not the focus on war itself that makes Deep Space Nine Trek’s best show…instead, it’s the show’s consistent willingness to tell us stories that are very different from what we got before. For as good as TNG was, the bar for expectation was relatively low…writers and producers simply needed to give us more of what made The Original Series so great. DS9 was the first spinoff that tried to do several new things, including ongoing religious themes in each season.