Comment by jasonwatkinspdx

Yeah, also I think part of that was Gene wanted to portray a more optimistic vision of the future as a principled thing, which I get, but that also made Classic and TNG feel a bit superficial and low stakes a lot of the time. DS9 is personally my favorite series, mostly because of the age I was when it came out, but also because I liked that they shifted it to be a bit less idealistic.