You just named 2 of my favorite episodes. Clearly they just weren’t for you? The fantasy one did a fantastic job showcasing a father’s love for his daughter and the musical episode was both funny and moved the characters forward a lot… I don’t see how either of these could possibly be bad things but ig to each his own.

My theory for the behind the scenes:

McFarland: I would like to make a star trek parody!

Fox: oh sounds awesome, lots of funny jokes and stuff. Should be funny.

M: yes haha, funny.

F: yes… Anyway here’s the money

Making episode one

M: I gotta make sure there’s loads of jokes so I can show this to execs and they see the haha bits

Making episode 3

M: okay I think they’re gone… Time to just literally make normal star trek episodes

making the last episode of s1

F: hey I see you’re almost done with the first season so I’m just checking in that the show is still funny

M: quickly adding in as many jokes as the last second as possible haha yes humor! Jokes! Plenty of them! Haha yes

Idk if I would really call it any of those. Characters in it are those but the episode itself was constantly showcasing that these things are bad. One thing I especially liked was the parts where they had to learn how women move since practicing being a specific gender is a real thing trans people do and deal with.

Throughout the episode multiple characters are being shown being misogynistic, transphobic and so on… But then being that is now shown as good it’s being actively shown as part of the problem with the ferengi that they are trying to solve.

SNW has light moments but they are only there to hide how extremely dark it can be. That show goes DEEP into a lot of dark topics and only adds in the joke episodes so it’s not constantly depressing.

According to him, he’s openly a big star trek fan and grew up on the show. I’m sure he’ll put a lot of effort into it but it is really weird to see.

That level of dysfunction is exactly what I love so much about DS9. These are PEOPLE! They just met! Everyone there is desperately trying to rebuild from a massive war and just trying to hold everything together as long as possible… There isn’t a single team that would be fully functional under all of that. They get better as crewmen as they get to know each other better which is exactly how teams work in real life too. It’s great!