The war with Dominion on DS9 is the best storytelling arc in the entire Star Trek franchise. I'm not watching it right now or anything. I just have this thought regularly because it's true and I care.
DS9 was very politically experimental. It went places subsequent storytellers just weren't allowed to go in a post 9/11 United States. So in that way, Treks that followed were at a disadvantage. But DS9 was always the black sheep and it was always better for that.
When I think about the most striking moments on DS9, there's a lot of messaging that would have been condemned if written post 9/11. Beyond the obvious stuff, I think even the Jem'Hadar, as a critique of U.S. militarism, would have gotten push back as being too harsh.
Kira was def a character we were not going to see the likes of again for many years, if ever, after 9/11. Her history, her anti-colonial militancy, her refusal to regret what she did for freedom, her role in the homestretch of the war -- no network would have allowed it.
Pale Moonlight would have landed differently bc a lot of people were more amenable to war crimes post 9/11.
What about Miles & Julian going after Section 31 for personal reasons? 😂 Think about what the real-world equivalent of what they did would be. Luther Sloan was basically Jack Bauer. But things played out a bit differently for Sloan. Also, you were never supposed to root for him.
The thing I always come back to is that the hope DS9 gave people living in 2024 was a riot, and they told us that without that uprising here in the U.S., there was no hope for the future. They told us the Trek world we knew & loved couldn't exist without a rebellion in our time. 
The Dominion arc specifically drove home that even when there is seemingly no hope left, there are some things you don't surrender to. In Statistical Probabilities, Julian was like "but we are gonna like for sure lose and die " and Sisko was like "bitch, don't be a bootlicker."
I think there were actually a number of episodes of DS9 that were just about how you shouldn't be a bootlicker.
There is some stuff in the final episodes, story wise, that prob should've been cut (those final montages were so unnecessary), but up through the resolution of the war, it's all so damn good. Like the stuff on Cardassia in "The Dogs of War" -- just wow. Those scenes. My heart.
None of them were food. If you mean "good," you are wrong and that's your right.
I get that TNG brings back warmer memories for folks. I loved it as a child and I still do. But I also recognize that while it was draped in certain socialist ideas, TNG basically *was* liberalism, and there are certain limitations there.
