I’m watching S7E20 right now and the entire scene before the Defiant undocked from DS9 had that cinematic vibe you only get from a bonafide Hollywood movie.
I’m watching S7E20 right now and the entire scene before the Defiant undocked from DS9 had that cinematic vibe you only get from a bonafide Hollywood movie.
Tng already started, they had more popular actors and generally were a larger commercial success.
Honestly: cardassians were a major part of ds9 and we’re publicly unpopular because they were such complex characters, and the dominion weren’t much better.
Tng has an excellent rogues gallery, they invented most of those races, and data was, at the time, the most popular character in trek, potentially outshining spock himself.
Ds9 wasn’t flashy or digestible in comparison, it was more cerebral than even tng, even their wars were complex.
Finally, ds9 was a second tier syndication, it got worse airing times and worse networks than tng, especially as UPN started pumping voy and tng was on… Either scifi (before syfy) or USA.
And people were starting to tire of trek near the end, especially with voy.
Also Avery Brooks wasn’t interested in playing Susko anymore. Nana Visitor wanted to raise her kid. Tensions between her and Alexander Siddig father of the kid. So casting would be a problem.
DS9 being a more story arc focused show that had wrapped up it’s stories didn’t help either.
That whole thing between siddig and visitor was crazy, amazed they fit that into the plot as well as they did.
Siddig is fun to watch, but he also seems really skeezy given all that.