I never quite thought about until someone mentioned it on Reddit over a decade ago, but TNG is what it is living in paradise, while DS9 leans into the cost of maintaining that paradise.
But what I always interpreted it as, is it makes sense for DS9 to have darker themes than TNG because having 2 Star Trek utopia shows simultaneously could get a little stale.
I mean, the real reason is because the powers that be went from TNG to Voyager and let DS9 be run by mostly different people (Rick Berman’s meddling not withstanding). Hence also DS9 took actual risks and had real plot lines and story arcs, and Voyager got the truncated Year of Hell and that’s like it. Pretty much the same thing happened with Enterprise, with the people from Voyager running Enterprise for the first two seasons and a completely new set of people, led by Manny Coto, running Enterprise for the last two seasons that are much better received (except for the last episode, which Brannon Braga has since apologized for).
I never quite thought about until someone mentioned it on Reddit over a decade ago, but TNG is what it is living in paradise, while DS9 leans into the cost of maintaining that paradise.
But what I always interpreted it as, is it makes sense for DS9 to have darker themes than TNG because having 2 Star Trek utopia shows simultaneously could get a little stale.
I mean, the real reason is because the powers that be went from TNG to Voyager and let DS9 be run by mostly different people (Rick Berman’s meddling not withstanding). Hence also DS9 took actual risks and had real plot lines and story arcs, and Voyager got the truncated Year of Hell and that’s like it. Pretty much the same thing happened with Enterprise, with the people from Voyager running Enterprise for the first two seasons and a completely new set of people, led by Manny Coto, running Enterprise for the last two seasons that are much better received (except for the last episode, which Brannon Braga has since apologized for).
“It’s easy to be a saint in paradise.”