I've now watched the whole of DS9

Well, after some time I finally got to the end of Deep Space Nine.  Unfortunately I didn't manage to do this before it all got taken off Netflix who seems to have lost the battle for old Star Trek with Amazon and the new Paramount plus or whatever it is so I had to pay to see the end of the last series.  It's taken me about four years to get through DS9 and frankly some episodes are a bit of a slog.  The ending is kind of unsatisfying as we don't quite know when (and if) Sisko is returning ... The final face off between Gul Dukat and Sisko I think noticeably owes something to "The Final Problem" of Sherlock Holmes... Apparently the original intention was to kill off Sisko but they decided that killing the first black Captain wouldn't be a good look so what we're left with us a literal cliffhanger that is never resolved.  No sign the Emissary popping back for a Picard-like cameo yet...

Among the other things I noticed were Brunt and the various Weyouns being the same actor in the same episode (but only because the credits told me so ... You really can't visually tell).  Sisko's father being Tom Robinson from To Kill A Mockingbird - nice to see him still working in his twilight years... And the station set being cleverly redressed as other space station other episodes to save money...

Most amusing is the episode "Far Beyond the Stars" which takes place largely inside Sisko's head in which we get to see all the main characters without their prosthetics and Sisko becomes the writer of DS9 writing in the 50s who can't get it published because of racial prejudice... apparently a reference to sci-fi writer Samuel R. Delany who had similar problems publishing stories with black central characters.

"In the Pale Moonlight" is possibly the standout episode of the entire run as Sisko, unable to produce the evidence required to convince the Romulans to join the war on the Dominion, engages in a grubby False Flag operation faking the evidence instead with the help of Garak.  This results in at least one seedy murder and he gets away with it and conceals the truth from the rest of his crew but at what cost to his own soul?  It opens up deeper questions about the militaristic nature of Starfleet and how innocent it is...

Other standout episodes include "It's only a paper moon" where Nog tried to escape the PTSD he suffers after losing a leg in the war by going and living in a Hollosuite programme with holographic lounge singer Vic Fontaine who then has to start dealing with the problems of being real or nearly real like needing to sleep.  Perhaps an inspired twist is he then becomes obsessed with balancing the night club books.  When Nog objects that the financial transactions inside aren't real, Vic responds that they're "real to him" and he and Nog bond over financial planning... However, when you really think about it is course, all money isn't real.  It's value only exists in other people's minds.  More so in these days where physical cash is disappearing and all we have is numbers on computers ...

Interesting too is the Jake/Benjamin relationship.  It's fun that Jake doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps and as a writer and later journalist is somewhat bewildered by the gungo ho attitude of some of the Starfleet cannon fodder.  It's interesting given the large number of casualties in the war that no one ever brings up the subject of Conscription.  Anyway, it's only something I thought of later but Sisko is the first Captain who is allowed to have any family.  Ok, Kirk had a family in the films but they were always kind of estranged.... And Picard was literally peadophobic... His worst nightmare coming in the episode where he gets stuck in the turbo lift with a group of children.... Although widowed Sisko is allowed a slight more rounded private life...

There are a lot of double acts in the series to the point it reminds me of Robert Holmes - Jake & Rom, Miles & Julian, Warf & Jadzia, Odo & Kira.  I feel Quark is a little underutilized.   After the early series he doesn't get quite enough exposure.... He almost has a romance with Ezri at one point but it's never fully explored... Which is a shame really.  The Klingons continue to evolve into a bizarre soap opera.  Kai Winn Adami is a particularly effective villain who sacrifices her people to her personal ambition ...with just the right level of religious hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness.  I find Kira a little hard to relate to.  I don't quite buy her as a hardened ex-terrorist ...although the episode in which she discovers her mother was a collaborator is very effective.  The Ferengi aren't as developed as I feel they could be ... But when it ends ... You do feel as though you'll miss all these characters...