I can still remember this brave experiment airing during the heyday of "The Next Generation" and thinking...'Wow, what a Piece Of Stagnation'. I'm known, of course, as the guy who hates Deep Space 9. No wait, strike that and reverse it...I'm one of the biggest Captain Sisko fanboys out there, but I'll be the first to admit that this was not my initial opinion of the show. It probably had the strongest start of any Trek series (except the original, of course, since it just had to, you know, be good), but compared to Picard's crew, these people fought and grumbled, had conflicts and imperfections in life. Heck, a fair amount of even the regulars weren't even Starfleet! How can that make for good Star Trek? Actually it made for better than good Star Trek, it made for good storytelling.