The one thing that I always remember about Jake Sisko was an episode where he was trying to hide something from his dad, and at the end of the episode, dear old dad catches him trying to teach a young Ferengi how to read.
Alternative episode: Sisko believes that he can solve something in the normal, intended way and not a horrible, fucked up way. He solves it with baseball.
Edit: I love that for a brief moment this had a higher count, but the masses being what they are, was soon surpassed. Louise Fletcher was a master at getting people's ire.
This woman won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for playing Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. She's so good at acting you literally dislike her character. She makes you uncomfortable.
From someone who did the same: there is no way to understand what DS9 is about without watching it end to end, it's just designed differently than TNG or TOS or Voyager, which were made for people to catch individual episodes and feel like they watched something. DS9 has intricate plot points that expand over an entire season, and then on into the next. I thought I knew what the show was about, but I was so very very, wonderfully wrong! Instead of it being my least favorite, I see now that it's the deepest of them all, though they all have their individual contributions, especially for the historical time they were released in.
So my advice is to wait until you have a few hours, then watch all of season 1. You'll be glad you did, and can decide when to find time to continue with season 2.
Learning about Garak will be infinitely more satisfying that way:-). He is one of the most "interesting" characters on the show, but really when you think about it, they all are.
Best reply I've ever recieved on the question. Thanks for that.
There's only two of us in the house and only one of us like watching Star Trek which makes it very hard to find time to watch on my own. We like watching TV and movies together but when your significant other doesn't like what you like, it isn't easy to watch what you want on your own time.
I think the estimate is that DS9 has 126 hours of content across all episodes ... now I just need to set aside about five days alone and without sleep to be able to watch it all.
If anything the anticipation of watching the series is very exciting for me.
I always loved that ... in an age of replicator technology, instant manufacturing and duplication, automated systems and digital recreations ... no one ever finds it unusual that there is an individual of the species that was a former military opponent posing as an old school clothing merchant on a space station.
It would be like having a simple humble scientist from 1940s Germany working as a common rocket engineer in the American space program in the 1960s .... weird right?
Yup I have to save this post. I agree with folks about Quark, however I'll add the wrinkle that the things that make Quark grow emotionally only serve too shred his dignity among the Ferengi.
Also occasionally we remember the Marquis exist and have an episode about them. Sisko comes up with basically the same solution as always, but at least it's not the Dominion.