So far it’s fair to say that Deep Space Nine has a lot of promise, but so far has only showed a couple of attempts to really grasp it.
The thing this season has done really well is avoid awful. There were really only two ‘bad’ episodes (*The Passenger* and *If Wishes Were Horses*). That’s impressive for a new show, when a lot can go wrong with early episodes. But that’s been done by avoiding risks, and the vast majority of the season was ‘ok’, not ‘good’ or ‘great’.
But there are still signs of great potential, especially with the episode *Duet*, which is an example of taking risks, and of taking the show in a direction that TNG doesn’t.
Overall it was a strong first season – not quite enough to edge ahead of season 1 of the original series, but very very close.
That brings the rankings so far to:
– TNG Season 3
– TNG Season 5
– TOS Season 2
– TNG Season 4
– TOS Season 1
– DS9 Season 1
– TNG Season 2
– TAS Season 1
– TOS Season 3
– TAS Season 2
– TNG Season 1