To my way of thinking, Garak the Cardassian (Andrew Robinson) was the best character ever dreamed up for the Star Trek franchise. He was stuck on DS9 and no one knew where his loyalties lay. It was played brilliantly.
If you can find it relatively cheap, Robinson wrote a novel about the history of Garak. It explains it all.
Agreed - he really brought depth to the character. I know you don't want to use the words 'Dirty Harry' or 'Scorpio' around him - he's really sick of that.
I enjoyed the second half of that series because it was gritty, dark, people weren't nice and occasionally died. Didn't get too fired up over Bajoran gods overly much but they
did get us back to the 23rd century briefly. Hot fish juice for breakfast. Arrrgh.
The Dominion Wars were more interesting although I sort of preferred TOS in that there were only 12 Starships in the fleet and they were spread thin. Whistling up a huge CGI fleet is cool but there's more drama in something like
Balance of Terror where you essentially have two men waaaaay out in the middle of nowhere decifing the fate of millions.
Reminds me of an old favorite
Enemy Below.
As I remember, the ending involved a laughing Klingon guzzling blood wine standing on a heap of bodies while two Federation types looked on with lip curling disgust, a short hop away from whipping out a moist towelette.