[CaptainCrunch]

Once you got to the point in the DS9 series where for the first time in any Star Trek series you felt that human existance was really threatened. You never got that in TNG even when they had the Borg, you never felt that true impending sense of doom, because you knew that the Enterprise crew would find a way to high tech blather their way out of it.

There was none of that in DS9, right up until about 3/4 of the way through the last season there was a very real chance that they were going to lose the war. There was also a very real chance that even if they won the war, that humanity might end up being forever and negatively changed to something worse then the dominion.

Martial Law on earth, super secret sections of Federation intelligence, even good men doing bad things like Sisco and the romulans.

But in the middle of this horrible war there were these brilliant little episodes with great heart and feelings. I remember the episode where they played the baseball game against the Vulcans, I loved that episode. The episode where Jake and Sisco built the solar sailor was a great little episode too, and that beneath what was becoming a grimy galaxy with a win at all costs mentality that the best of mankind hadn't been totally extinguished.

I always felt the reverse with TNG, in that man almost didn't have a darker nature to fight anymore, and that there was no man against himself or man against man conflict.