I tend to skip over the episodes which don’t focus on world-building/character development/the Dominion War. Seven seasons of 20-26 episodes each are too damn many, anyway.
DS9 tries to go for an edgier tone, more gray areas and darkness, but that feels antithetical to the optimism of Star Trek. TNG largely remains true to this optimism, to the point that even when it becomes overly comfortable with itself and eschews real world drama it is at least settling into that quietly radical philosophy.
Trek became so insufferably smug with TNG’s self-satisfied utopianism; it needed a spoonful of deconstructive humility to reduce the swelling in its head.