The rising popularity of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has been a slow b⛦urn if ever there were one. To be sure, the Star Trek: The Next Generation spin-off always had its fans, from its premiere in January 1993 to its grand finale in June 1999. But it existed within the shadow of its indisputably more beloved elder sibling, and its scattershot syndicated nature helped to ensure that even when Next Gen signed off from the airwaves, and Star Trek: Voyager came to replace it as a network fla🌼gship for the burgeoning UPN television station, DS9 remained something of a black sheep.

Yet hushed whispers of Deep Space Nine’s excellence have grown into a chorus as many years have passed since its departure. Today, you’d be hard-pressed not to encounter a “Niner” at most science fiction conventio⛦ns. But how did its individua♕l seasons stack up against one-another? Let’s take a look.

7 Season One (1993)✤

As a rule of thumb, you can count on the earlier years of each of t💦he Rick Berman era Star Tre👍k shows - that’s 1987 through 2005 - as being the weakest. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine struggled to find its footing in its first, truncated, batch of 20 episodes (remember when 20 episodes was considered “truncated”?), frequently at odds with its own premise.

DS9 promised the opportunity for more serialized storytelling tꦑhan most of what TV had on tap in the 1990s. But long before Netlix’s “binge model” gained traction𒉰, such continuous plotlines were deemed risky investments. How could audiences possibly be expected to keep up? Between studio skepticism and the simple rigors of writers who had to retrain themselves to trust fans to care about long-form narratives, season one was something of a mess.

A fairly decent series premiere in the two-hour “Emissary” i𝕴ntroduces the flawed and haunted Commander Benjamin Sisko and his multilateral mission to defend a former Cardassian outpost and its newly-freed Bajoran star system against galactic aggressions when the first stable wormhol🌳e opens up the infinite allure of a new frontier in space. And yet, so many subsequent episodes are not just totally standalone - which is hardly a problem in and of itself - but frequently feel like rejected pitches for TNG.

The result is a bevy of messy, at times downright embarrassing, episodes: “Babel”, “The Passenger”, “Move Along H🗹ome”, and “If Wishes Were Horses” the worst offenders. Thare are glimmers of greatness toward the end, however; Bajoran liaison Kira Nerys’ tit-for-tat with a suspected Card𝔉assian war criminal in “Duet” remains a timeless classic.

6 ⛎ Season Two (1993-1994) ൩

It’s difficult to overstate just how m🍸uch better DS9 season two is in its back third or so. A string of eight good-to-excellent episodes, highlighted by Jadzia Dax’s first big breakout outing with “Blood Oath”, the stakes-raising Star Trek: Voyager two-parter setup “The Maquis”, Cardassian tailor Garak’s “The Wire”, the devilish return to The Original Series’ Mirror Universe with “Crossover”, Chief Miles O’Brien’s very bad day in “Tribunal”, and the all-important “The Jem’Hadar”, which introduces DS9’s loom🌃ing series-long enemy with The Dominion, are all standout affairs.

While few among them have quite the punch of second-half Deep Space Nine bests-of-the-best, they are e🥀xcellent neverthel⭕ess.

The challenge in our ranking the seasons, then, is how best to handle this year’s far🅰-and-away weaker portions. The three-parter which opens the year, beginning with “The Homecoming”, does appreciably make up for lost time by pushing forward some of the early seasons’ main plots; but it struggles with pacing, and its resolution is a whimper. “Cardassians” is a great look at the titular culture, and “Necessary Evil” is a strong Odo outing, but what of the rest?

“Invasive Procedures” is awkward. “Melora” is annoying. “Second Sight”, “Sanctuary”, and “Paradise” are dismal. “Rivals” is off-kilter, “The Alternate” is a weaker Odo-exploring h꧅our than it ought to have been, “Rules of Acquisition” is a lower-rung Ferengi episode. It piles up. The middle of season two is quite possibly the roughest stretch of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - even more so than any overall string of season one episodes.

5 𓂃 Season Three (1994-1995)

Opening passably strongly with “The Search”, a two-par🦹ter which begins to explore the implications of the Dominion, season three is when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine really starts to grow comfortable in its own shoes. Most of the worst episodes still limp by on strong character moments, and the classics are more evenly distributed than they are in season two.

“Second Skin” is an excellent waking-nightmare Kira episode which pushes her hatred of Cardassians in an unexpectedly poign𒁃ant direction. The “Past Tense” two-parter gained newfound recognition just last yearꦿ when its harrowing events of Star Trek’s 2024 suddenly came across as not-so-unbelievable.

“Destiny” finally begins to explore Sisko’s discomfort in the role of Bajoran emissary to the Prophets and speakin🔯g of Prophets, “Prophet Motive” is one of the two best Quark episodes in the series. “Improbable Cause” and its direct sequel, “The Die is Cast”, are jointly the best Dominion-focused chapter until the fifth season, upping the galactical political stakes in a huge way.

Low points include “Meridian”, an unlikely and fairly nauseating Jadzia love story; “Fascination” is, er, bad; poor Doctor Julian Bashir’s “Oh no, I’m 30” episode “Distant Voices” somehow manages to fumble even fan-favourite Garak; most unfortunately of all, the season finale, “The Adversary”, is merely OK. It advances the Dominion story, and pivotally introduced the Changeling infiltration of Starfleet, but the contrived manne🐎r with which it brings a heretofore-never-mentioned alien ♒race into a season-ending limelight just doesn’t work.

4 𒁏 Seaso💮n Four (1995-1996)

At this point, it might seem like we’re simply counting down in backw♓ards order. Season one’s the weakest, season two’s next-weakest, season three is a bit better, and here we are now with season four. Well, as far as we’re concerned, a show thaꦉt continually improves has nothing to be ashamed of, right?

Season four is best known for its introduction of The Next Generation’s conflicted Klingon, Worf, to Deep Space Nine. Worf’s arrival, and 🐈the related temporary shattering of the Federation’s ali🍰ance with the Klingon Empire, is very much a ratings ploy, as DS9 wasn’t quite delivering the numbers that Paramount would have liked. Does it work? Yes and no. On the one hand, pinning the Federation against the Klingons is unexpected and action-packed, and the deception and machinations of the Dominion that prompt this crisis are appreciably dark.

On the other hand,✱ it can all feel rather akin to a detour from DS9’s main event: the looming war against the Dominion itself. Wꦛe do get some noteworthy delivery on the Federation paranoia of Changeling infilitration with the mid-season two-parter, “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost”, but otherwise, not a lot happens until the season finale, “Broken Link”.

In the interim, season four rather puts its hair down, so to speak. “The Way of the Warrior”, the splashy two-hour Worf introduction, soon gives way to the nigh-universally adored father-and-son tale, “The Visitor”. “Rejoined” is a gripping Dax story; “Little Gre𒀰en Men” is the right kind of silly; “Our Man Bashir” is a James Bond parody with plenty of hilarity; “Return to Grace” gives Kira and Gul Dukat strong development; and more.

What puts the fourth season head-and-shoulders above its predecessors is the ease💎 at which the cast gels at this point. Character interplay is fully-formed, and the dynamics at play are nearly flawless in execution. Occa♍sional like the quasi-space-vampire episode “The Muse” can’t keep Deep Space Nine down.

3 🐻 Seaso🙈n Five (1996-1997)

Once again, we’re moving forward inch by inch, although it’s arouওnd this point that some DS9 diehards may begin to question how long its final season has lasted. More on that later, of course. In season five, the show refocuses its efforts on the Dominion, and it does so with aplomb. Things really heat up, and the writing is firing on all cylinders. The serialization sharpens, and the groundwork that’s been laid in past seasons begins to pay off.

The season premiere, “Apocalypse Rising”, puts a quick and appreciated bookend on the war with the Klingons, allowing the two powers to come together in common cause once more. “The Ship” follows with a clever examination of the Jem’Hadar and their Vorta handlers - two of ♔the Dominion’s primary species. “Trials and Tribble-ations🍒” is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s TOS-centric, time-bending, celebration of the franchise’s 30th anniversary.

“The Darkness 🌱and the Light” is certainly more the former than the latter, as Kira goes up against an old foe in twisted fashion. “For the Uniform” capitalizes on “For the Cause”, a season four episode that reveals the duplicity of Maquis sympathizer Michael Eddington; Sisko’s revenge chase is a spectacle. The two-parter, “In Purgatory’s Shadow” and🍨 “By Inferno’s Light”, officially kickstarts the war between the Federation and the Dominion, and puts recurring frenemy Gul Dukat decidedly in the enemy seat once and for all.

“Soldiers of the Empire” is a Klingon story for Worf that rivals TNG’s best, “Chidren of Time” is a classic, “Empok Nor” is splendid DS9-does-horror; “In the Cards” is simultaneously heartwarming and precipitous; and the season finale, “Call to Arms”, begins what proves to be an incredible seven𒀰-parter (!) leading into season six, as the Dominion successfully conquers Deep Space Nine itself, putting a battered Federation on defense for the foreseeable future.

2 🉐 Season Seven (1998-1999) 💞

Hey, look. We finally shifted things around a tad. The seventh and final season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is an admittedly more uneven affair than its fifth and sixthဣ, but its heights are so rapturous as to make up for its lows in spades.

Most fandom discourse surrounding season seven justifiably centers on its nine-part, ten-hour (!!), finale arc, which Paramount appropriately billed as collectively “The Final Chapter”. Beginning with “Penumbra”, and concluding with the two-hour “What You Leave Behind”, it gives us a few of DS9’s greatest ever episodes: “The Changing Face of Evil”, “Tacking Into the Wind”, and “What You Leave Behind” itself - notwithstan🔯ding a somewhat anticlimactic conclusion for the feud between Sisko and Dukat, and the Prophets and the Pah’wraiths - are all-timers with nail-biting moments that live up to the hype.

Unfortunately, the introduction of Ezri Dax (following the departure of Jadzia Dax’s actress, Terry Farrell, at the end of season six) is 𝔍somewhat hackneyed. Some feel that too much time is spent bringing Ezri into the fold, and some downright dislike the character. We disagree on both counts, but we can’t deny the deleterious effect on the show’s pacing. “Prodigal Daughter” exemplifies this, although Ezri does get a better opportunit💜y in “Field of Fire”. “Chrysalis” and “The Emperor’s New Cloak” are both pretty bad.

“Take Me Out to the Holosuite” and “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang”, however, are our two pick✅s for the best comedy episodes in all of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Possibly in all of Star Trek. This unexpected one-two punch of peak levity in the midst of the final, otherwise-tense, season works tremendously well to give the crew some much-needed time off, and the placement of the latter just one episode behind the final non-finale-arc episode is a stroke of brilliance, as it celebrates DS9’s cast chemistry.

1 ✅ ꦐ Season Six (1997-1998)

When Star Trek: Deep Space Nine roared back to the airwaves in September 1997, Star Trek’s fanbase was on edge. “Call to Arms” gave the station and Bajor to the Dominion. Gul Dukat was at the height of his resurgence in supremacy. Starfleet was fighting a losing war. Our bel🔴oved ensemble cast was separated by serious circumstances, uncertain whether they’d ever see each ot♒her again.

The ensuing six-part comeback tour, starting with “A Time to Stand” and culminating in “Sacrifice of Angels” - with what may still be the coolest fl🌠eet battle in Star Trek history! - made good on the premise. It was event televi🌱sion in a way which only season seven’s endgame could rival. It made this humble author tremble with anticipation at the tender age of nine, even when I could barely comprehend it all.

Immediately after our heroes reclaim the station, Worf and Jadzia have their꧙ long-awaited wedding in the hilariously emotional “You Are Cordially Invited”. “The Magnificent Ferengi” is the one Quark episode that trumps “Prophet Motive”, and yes, it’s super-cool that it co-stars Iggy Pop of all people. “Waltz” has its detractors, as it begins to two-dimensionalize the crestfallen Dukat into a sneering one-track villain, but we adore the ways in which it pits him against Sisko in a battle of𓄧 monologues.

There are too many additional master-class outings to mention, except that we must, o⭕f course, draw attention to two in particular. “Far Beyond the Stars” is Avery Brooks’ first of two sixth-season power hours and one of the most moving critiques on racism that’s ever been put to television. Later in the year, “In the Pale Moonlight” is often heralded as DS9’s number one episode, and frankly, we agree. The depths that Sisko plummets, and once again, the impact of Avery Brooks’ performance, come together to forge Star Trek: Deep Space Nine at its finest.

Computer, erase that entire personal log.