That would be me.
I was 12, and after I got over the lack of a Spock, I loved it; bad writing and all.
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… what, like, in the afterlife?
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I remember the same thing in the beginning days of DS9. If everybody, but O’Brien, had been blown into space I wouldn’t have mind. It seemed like none of the characters wanted to be there and pretty much loathed each other. Eventually they softened up and they all became good friends. Maybe that’s part actors getting used to each other and part writing.
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Soap opera plots - like dealing with trauma for a decades long occupation, and whether or not resistance fighting is terrorism or not? Or whether or not particular actions are justified if they kill a non-combatant, but it gets people what they want? Homelessness and racism? What happens to mixed race children after a brutal occupation? Where does one come down when one’s birth family turns out to be brutal dictators? How would be people be different in very different circumstances? Black, single fatherhood?
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It’s easy to see why on a rewatch. Season one is totally unwatchable. It’s a low budget cringe-fest from start to finish. Season two is a little better, and then it really hits its stride from then on. It’s notable that the network stuck with it. They wouldn’t nowadays. It would have surely been killed after that first season, or at least halfway through the second.
That said, the standards for TV were different back then. I watched it when it was on TV as well (oldie high-five 
) and it seemed fine at the time. When I go back now and watch the other stuff we’d have been watching at the time- reruns of Knight Rider and MacGyver, etc, it’s easy to see why. TV was mostly really bad in those days, and up against that, ST:TNG fared well. Certainly no worse.
As for DS9, I think it was wildly under appreciated at the time, and remains so to this day. It was Moore’s warmup for Battlestar Galactica, but the world wasn’t ready for grimdark space opera yet. People didn’t get what DS9 was, I don’t think. They had only ever seen Monster Of The Week and Cheap Moral Lesson sci-fi. An epic story of everything going to shit for no good reason other than things go to shit sometimes is not something people understood yet.
I still rewatch DS9 pretty regularly. It remains the best Trek ever made, in my opinion. Tedious Bajoran senate hearings and all.
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Oh you are in for something special, friend. I am jealous of anyone who has not seen it and gets to experience it for the first time.
If you like hard sci-fi, The Expanse is easily the best sci-fi in a generation, if not more. Do yourself a solid and make some time for it.
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DS9 was my first pandemic binge. Before that, I had watched the final episode and thought it seemed ok and watched parts of a few other episodes, due to curiousity from playing Star Trek Online.
The series is waaaaaaay different if you watch it the way it’s intended. The character building is amazing and never done in any other Trek. Heck, Orville does far more character building than your average Trek. And some of the episodes were just plain amazing. Of course the always mentioned ones about Avery Brooks when he was playing as a “sci fi writer”. The trauma one. The segregation one. But also the one where he builds a ship. The ones about modifying genetics. And the ones that featured Garak - that actor made me simultaneously love and hate the character. It was fantastic.
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Apparently, it was a soap opera… 
And I think I should note here that I think it was soaps that pioneered interconnected, ongoing storytelling on TV… they’ve literally been doing that since the rise of TV, as a matter of fact (and going back into the radio days).
That’s a great one… Past Tense 1 & 2, In the Pale Moonlight, the last 2 episodes of the first season (Duet and In the Hands of the Prophets) are both fantastic… Second Skin, where they turn Kira into a Cardassian… so many good episodes. Oh, god, the WHOLE entire arc with Gul Dukat’s half Bajoran daughter, Ziyal!
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Not to mention the Dominion War, which had me on the edge of my seat for every minute of it. That was fully a prototype for BSG. When Moore signed on to re-make Battlestar Galactica, I’m pretty sure he just said, “I’m gonna make an entire show that was that final arc we did in DS9”.
A huge number of people are now BSG fans who have never seen DS9. I always tell them to go watch it! It’s like being a Matrix fan but not having seen Bound. You appreciate the art so much more if you see how the artists got there.
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