I'll admit I hated The Visitor when I first saw it. It was boring and nothing really happened to my 12 year old eyes. I rediscovered it on DVD and now I love it and can't understand how that B5 episode The Coming of Shadows beat it for the Hugo. I mean, its touching and sad and heartfelt. So does anyone else have an episode of DS9 they may have hated, or just disliked, but now appreciate?

At least The Coming of Shadows is a fantastic episode so it wasn't like The Visitor lost to a bad episode. I don't know, The Visitor isn't that high on my list. I mean it's touching and very well done, but it's also very slow in a lot of places. It was also (mostly) a reset episode, so even though it brought Sisko and Jake closer, it didn't add much to the arc. TCOS is a huge turning point in the arc, in addtion to being a great episode.

Hard to pick an episode, since I liked so many from the start. Or, I didn't like them from the start and still don't. I guess Move Along Home

For me, you can add almost any of the Ferengi-centric episodes to this list (well, not Profit and Lace ... that's one stinker I will never like). I guess I just didn't GET the Ferengi during the show's initial run — it seemed to me like they were little more than comic relief — but Quark and his brethren have grown on me over the years.

I'd chime in with two episodes that in subsequent viewings get better (YMMV)

'If Wishes Were Horses' is fun, and I like how Julian's version of Dax just embarassed the hell of out him instead of the real Dax.

'Treachery, Faith and the Great River' - first I thought it was boring and wrong to be in the middle of the war episodes. Much later I came to realize that there is a whole Ferengi culture point of view that went unnaddressed from most of the Trek-verse. We know the fun/greedy side of the Ferengis, but this episode shows that there are deeper underpinnings on their culture.

The casino heist one. I couldn't even watch it at first because it was all about Vic, who I thought needed to die in a fire. A holo-fire. He still does, but I'll be damned if that episode wasn't a big old ball of fun.

Am I the only person who actually likes Vic?

Yes. :-P

Nope, not at all. I like Vic very much.

I thought the Vic episodes were great, very creative stories, with very different moods. (I even bought one of his CDs, although I was disappointed because the arrangements on DS9, in my opinion, were so much, much better).

So, yep, another fan here, too.

Well this will be a little awkward since I don't actually know the episode title to which I am referring, and the episode absolutely did not suck. It was an episode that had a captured war criminal in it, but the war criminal in question turned out to his administrative aid. It was pretty complicated, and I'm not doing a good job of explaining it.

Anyway, that was the one episode of Deep Space Nine that I saw but it stuck with me for years. I didn't know any of the mythology behind the show, I'd just stumbled across it on TV one night. Earlier this year in a discussion in the BSG thread, we got to talking about it. I found myself continuing to think of it, and with the writer's strike on, and fresh runs looking scarce in the future, it was the episode that made me decide to leap into viewing.

It's kind of cool, I never would have thought I'd want to jump into the Trek franchise, but that one episode impressed me so much that DS9 was the first show that made my list of things to watch during the strike. What the heck is the episodes name though?

So, that's the episode that grew on me, and wouldn't let me go. By the way, you all are probably familiar with Ron Moore, current writer/showrunner on BSG, and one of the DS9 writers. Fans are gathering to show support for the writer's strike here. Come on over if the notion strikes you, and head to the Ronald D. Moore area. It's a way to show support for the strike in general, and for R. Moore in particular.

That episodes is called "Duet" and I agree with you that it is one of the best episodes of any Star Trek series, EVER.

I loved 'Duet' since it first aired.

Actually mine is a really questionable first season one but one I think is oddly adoreable. I have a strange fondness for 'Babel' you know the bad episode about the gobble-gook as contagion. This was the first DS9 episode I ever saw, I had, like most Trekkies I guess, an issue with the premise of the show, being on a space station and all. I wasn't overly impressed by the concept of the Bajoran Militia from what little I had seen or heard about it before it aired, (I'm British so I saw it about eight or nine months after the first broadcast in America.) I figured "what the hey, give it a shot." I HATED this episode violently, I was eventually convinced to give the show another shot, ironically the episode I watched then was 'Duet' and from that moment I knew this was going to be a special show.

The reason I have this somewhat embarrassing fondness for 'Babel' after all is that its a little 'so bad its good' thing going on and that despite the fact that's an INSANE although utterly original, for television, disease, is that it is logical in a strange way, a disease that hampers communication is the perfect kind of booby-trap for terrorists to leave on a station in an occupied territory. I also think its a wonderful attention to detail to have O'Brien, the guy whose most likely to solve the problem becoming the first guy to be affected by it and leaving Kira, the person least well-trained and least emotionally and mentally suited to a technobabble adventure to be the hero. Its as if she's placing her faith in Federation science and in the education she didn't have as a child and takes an extraordinary risk going all out, not so much just to save herself, but because she understands just how bad it could be if this disease was exposed on Bajor and I think that's a bit of mini-development in there. I also love when she realises she's finally succomed to the virus when she begins spouting nonsense and how pissed off she is by that. Its very true to the character, she's so focused on doing and not saying that the whole episode strangely feels more interesting because of it.

Does that make sense? I know, its a little convoluted. I still really HATE the Jake stuff and remain to be convinced there was much of a point of having him in the show at all, other than to say that "yes, there are families on the frontier" but that's another story.