The 5 Worst Episodes Of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Every "Star Trek" series, no matter how great, has its stinkers. Everything from the original "Star Trek" that started it all in 1966 up through the ongoing "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" on Paramount+ has given us a healthy mix of good episodes and bad, and even the best shows have truly awful episodes to balance it out. "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" might have some of the best episodes in the whole franchise, but it also has its fair share of hot garbage.

"Deep Space Nine" had a unique challenge in that the show's central ship was a space station (the titular Deep Space Nine) and thus didn't do much traveling the stars. It was also not under the strict watch of late franchise creator Gene Roddenberry, who died two years before the show premiered; his successor, Rick Berman, eventually spent so much time working on "Star Trek: Voyager" that certain "Star Trek" rules got a lot more relaxed. "Deep Space Nine" was willing to get into romance and war in ways that its predecessors had never dared. That was usually a good thing — but when it wasn't, it was very, very bad. 

Let's take a look at the five worst episodes of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," each almost guaranteed to grate on even the biggest fan's nerves.

The first seasons of most "Star Trek" shows are when the shows are figuring things out, and Season 1 of "Deep Space Nine" was no different. The much-hated "Move Along Home" is annoying, but at least it inspired a killer "Star Trek: Lower Decks" subplot. 

The first total disaster episode of "Deep Space Nine" comes in Season 2, with "Second Sight." In the episode, Commander Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), the head officer on Deep Space Nine, starts falling in love for the first time since the tragic death of his wife during the battle of Wolf 359. The only problem is that the woman he falls for, Fenna (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), is actually a telepathic projection created by another woman on board, Nidell (also Richardson-Whitfield) — which gets even messier when it turns out Fenna only exists when Nidell is extremely stressed or ill. Oh, and she's married to Gideon Seyetik (Richard Kiley), who basically thinks he owns her since their people don't divorce, which has led Nidell to become so depressed that she's dying. 

Sisko would eventually get a pretty great romance with a freighter captain named Kasidy Yates (Penny Johnson Jerald), but this early attempt at giving him a romantic arc was both depressing and weird. Not only that, but Seyetik is so one-note that when he eventually makes a total turn-around and sacrifices himself so Nidell can be free, it feels incredibly forced. 

Unfortunately, Sisko wasn't the only one to get an awkward one-off romance, and in Season 3, Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) received her own awful impossible love interest in the episode "Meridian." In the A-plot, Jadzia falls in love with a scientist on a planet that phases in and out of the universe every 60 years, which makes dating a bit difficult. In the B-plot, Ferengi bar owner Quark (Armin Shimerman) tries to obtain a digital copy of Deep Space Nine's first officer, Major Kira (Nana Visitor), for a guest who wishes to use it in an erotic holosuite program. Ew.

Jadzia went through some interesting romantic storylines throughout "Deep Space Nine," including one with another woman that was rather shocking (and inspiring) when it aired in the mid-1990s. She would eventually end up married to everyone's favorite grumpy Klingon, Worf (Michael Dorn), after he transferred to Deep Space Nine from the Enterprise, where he had served during "Star Trek: The Next Generation". But in the early seasons, the writers just kept trying to pair her with the most random side characters, and it never really worked. Her romance with a science nerd who's going to blink back out of time, however, is definitely the worst.

While Worf and Jadzia's romance was ultimately wonderful and gave fans several great episodes, including their initial courtship in "Looking for Par'Mach in all the Wrong Places" and their wedding in "You Are Cordially Invited," there is one truly awful episode centered around the two of them: Season 5's "Let He Who is Without Sin." 

In the episode, Jadzia and Worf take a vacation to the pleasure planet Risa along with a few other crew members, and Worf ends up teaming up with a group of radicals who wish to stop the hedonism on the planet by turning off a system of weather controls. Worf is a pretty intense guy who would eventually become the universe's first Klingon pacificist, so while the whole situation fits his personality, the episode is just about as much fun as a ruined vacation. 

There are a few cute moments in "Let He Who is Without Sin." Sisko gives Jadzia a hard time about how rough she and Worf are in the bedroom. Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig) and Leeta (Chase Masterson) share a rather blissful Bajoran break-up ritual. But since most of the hour is just Worf trying to rain on everyone's parade, it's kind of a wet blanket of an episode.

There were some goofy romances on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," but nobody had a worse go at love than Major Kira Nerys, who dated a couple of rather boring Bajoran men of high stature before eventually shacking up with the space station's shapeshifting security officer, Odo (Rene Auberjunois). Things got really weird for her, however, when the mirror universe counterpart of her dead boyfriend Vedek Bareil (Philip Anglim) came into the prime universe trying to get away from the evil mirror version of Kira, the Intendant, in the Season 6 episode "Resurrection."  

"Star Trek" fans can be picky about mirror universe shenanigans because they're such a well-worn trope of the franchise, and while Visitor as the Intendant is always a delight, she's the only highlight in an episode that's otherwise just plain boring and, unfortunately, utterly skippable. 

The Ferengi are an odd species in the "Star Trek" universe. First created to be one-note villains in "The Next Generation," they were more fleshed out on "Deep Space Nine," and there are some truly fantastic Ferengi "Deep Space Nine" episodes. However, Season 6's "Profit and Lace" isn't one of them. 

In an attempt to stop the villainous Brunt (Jeffrey Combs) from becoming the new head of the Ferengi people, the deeply misogynistic Quark goes undercover as a "female," complete with body modifications courtesy of Dr. Bashir. While the episode was actually kind of progressive at the time, showing that men and women really aren't all that different and that gender is more nuanced than we think, it has also aged like milk and can feel tone deaf at best and borderline transphobic at worst. 

Quark is arguably one of the best characters in all of "Star Trek," but this is by far his worst outing and one that should be left to the past.