"Inter Arma" was very well-received at the time. Has the opinion shifted on it? (My main complaint about it was that I think it's a lesser version of "In the Pale Moonlight," but still worthwhile.)

Even the writers didn't like "Extreme Measures." (I think it has a great first act and then a lot of wandering, in more ways than one.) I think "The Dogs of War" sets the stage nicely for the finale, though.

At least we can say that we weren't forced to endure both a bad Ferengi episode and a bad Mirror Universe episode this season (there's only a Ferengi B-plot left coming up, and it's not so bad). That's some economy in your horrible storytelling right there, folks.

I'd vote for "The Passenger"/"Move Along Home," although I guess the latter has a so-bad-it's-good quality.

If I recall, B5's pilot aired about a month after DS9 debuted (hence the fan base war), and B5's first season ran parallel with DS9's second season, and so on.

I think every one of those elements you mentioned is in "War Without End," though.

And for most of its run, with just a five-man writing staff.

Ah, the B5/DS9 debates/flame wars. They are eternal.

I would think if they were going to do it, they would use it to set up the stakes for the endgame, just what losing the war would cost, like: "Here's what the galaxy looks like 20 years later under total Dominion rule."

I don't think you can really call "Take Me Out" a holosuite episode. They could just have easily told us they had a built a baseball field on Bajor for the game and nothing would have changed. "Paper Moon" and "Badda Bing" have the holosuites built into their premise.

Agreed if you except "Crossover," which I think is legitimately great.

So, Memory Alpha informs us that "Prodigal Daughter" came about quickly because they couldn't make this premise work: "a Sisko show in which he travels into the future and encounters his own future self, who subsequently warns him that if he follows a particular course of action, there will be dire consequences."

There is another good Bashir laugh line in "Prodigal Daughter."

It is really refreshing just how brutally honest the whole writing staff is about the show. If an episode doesn't work, they are plenty happy to point out that it doesn't work and where they went wrong. They are not defensive about it at all.

Unfortunately, one writer's family illness and one episode that wasn't quite working and needed help in that last arc ended up impacting the finale, which I remember Ira Behr saying they wrote in a "white hot flash" (or something similar) because they had run out of time.

"Humans would have evolved beyond recognizable emotions and situations that make for good drama."

I wonder how Zack would feel about the Doctor on Voyager if he's having this much issue with Vic as a sentient hologram. In that case, you can at least argue they have no choice but to use him. I wonder if the DS9 writers felt that Voyager had done the legwork for them and they could just plop Vic in the show and…

"Byron arc from Babylon 5…"

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SPOILERS THAT SPOIL