DS9 pulled off a political space drama that could rival Dallas or MASH and they got 7 seasons. I'm rewatching it again and I still can't believe that prime time viewers would sit through these episodes that are just 2 people arguing the nuances of humanity for 45 minutes. It's nothing like TV is today.

As far as a movie, I think the TNG movies weren't that Trek. They often took the characters in strange directions, favored more digestible plotlines, and wrote dialogue that you'd expect from AI. I value the television wellspring of Trek in the 90s/early 2000s. It is so cool, and that era is still bearing fruit today.

I would like to see more of the DS9 characters, and like to see what a movie budget would do, but I don't trust that a DS9 movie would've been given the reverence needed to make it right. It has been great to see Picard and the ST world in the later years, but I don't know if it makes the lore any better. I'm not sure that we are any closer to another golden decade of ST.

Thanks for posting this and helping me get some of my thoughts on DS9 coalesced. Do you have a DS9 movie plot you think would've worked? Those 'golden years' of Trek were also open to the most fan input, with concepts and entire scripts being submitted. If we had 26 episode seasons to play with, maybe they'd take our call.

Remember that Deep Space Nine and Voyager were regarded as “spin-off” series at the time. It would have been harder to justify a theatrical outing for either of them because they weren’t the “main” Star Trek or had the Enterprise like The Next Generation.

And the TNG movies were still being made after both of those series went off the air. It would have been nice if they could have rolled Deep Space Nine or Voyager into one of those movies (some early leaks from back in the day suggested they tried to do that).

I think there are a couple of reasons. STIX and STX were failures, one so bad it ended the franchise. Also, IIRC Avery Brooks wasn't happy about the Sisko ending and he has pretty much stayed out of the limelight since DS9. While it was on the air the viewing figures weren't extraordinary. Worf was thrown in to get more TNG fans interested in the same way Jeri Ryan was put in a catsuit on VOY. DS9's last two seasons were binge TV before we knew that existed, it was ahead of its time, which explains why it's a sleeper hit and fan favorite. But not a great financial success at the time.

Agreed... maybe because the series ended with such finality?

people were absolutely sick of star trek, after more than a full decade of back to back trek series and a run of average to terrible films

I would watch “A quadrant of their own”