DS9 VOY was truly dire by this point. I remember watching 7.02 Imperfection and nearly vomiting in disgust when Tom says "come on, lets go in the Delta Flyer" or something, despite it the fact it was destroyed in the Season 6 finale. Oh yes... I guess they just built a brand new one already... and didn't even bother explaining it... and it looks exactly the same... Simply poor
DS9 gets my vote. The Final Chapter has slipped a tiny bit over the years but first-run it was a thrilling ride. I loved its epic scope, the number of characters involved, everyone contributing their part to the greater mision, the resolution for the cast. There were weaknesses such as Worf/Ezri/Bashir, Extreme Measures, the link between Odo and Founder ending the war but overall it was fun and that is all I can ask. Then there were episodes like Treachery, Faith and the Great River; Badda Bing Badda Bang, Take Me Out to the Holosuite etc. Granted there were a few disappointments like Chrysalis, Afterimage, Covenant, Prodigal Daughter etc but even a few of those in repeat aren't nearly as bad as I remember. This season very well may be my favorite of DS9 because it used what it had established so well, really felt like a bittersweet final season and by the time it ended felt like it had generated enough momentum to carry over into another season something TNG or VOY didn't do in its seventh and final year. TNG would come next. TNG is my favorite series but even I would have to admit it was a shadow of its former self. The show took a hit from so much going on and attention being divided among DS9 season 2, getting VOY ready and work on Generations. I also suspect writer burn out played a role as well. And the show's two best writers, Brannon Braga and Ron Moore, being less involved didn't help much either. The show just felt like it was running on fumes. Several episodes like Masks, Emergence, Eye of the Beholder, Force of Nature etc had good ideas that just weren't mined as well as they could. Others just didn't work. I still enjoyed some episodes like Parallels, Genesis, All Good Things. I think this was an example of a tv show going on one season too long. VOY I would rank last. It wasn't awful it just was mediocre. The much hyped showrunner change with Ken Biller didn't bring about the quality improvement many believed it would. It still had its weak hours---Friendship One, Natural Law, Nightingale, Drive, Q2, Prophecy etc and its bizarre contrived elements like Seven/Chakotay. Endgame as a two hour episode is entertaining but as a series finale is lacking a great deal in terms of resolution and poignancy although Kate Mulgrew did a great job portraying two different Janeways, the visuals were outstanding and Alice Krige did a great job even though by this point the BOrg were nothing like they used to be. You could tell attention was clearly being focused on ENT pre-production. Well actually Drive was shot first and was meant to air after Unimatrix Zero II but instead Imperfection was shown.
Voyager was just mediocre by season seven, no doubt about that. Less than a dozen episodes are even worth the time of day. Really, despite all the sour grapes over Endgame, I think it's one of the only worthwhile episodes of the whole lot. Deep Space Nine was pretty good in season seven, but that doesn't stop it from having significant difficulty in getting its footing again after the curveball of Jadzia's death and Ezri's introduction. There's a number of great episodes, but the final chapter isn't nearly as good as it should be, culminating in the disappointing What You Leave Behind. I think TNG's seventh season, despite recieving a bad rap, is actually the best, just above Deep Space Nine's seventh (and way above Voyager). And it had such a wonderful finale that puts it over the edge, too.
Well, what a surprise, but DS9... wins again for me. There were disappointments in DS9 S7, to be sure (Ezri wasn't a patch on Jadzia, and there were too many expositional episodes revolving around her in the early part of the season. And I never really liked DS9's portrayal of the Vulcans. Worse than ENT's character assassinations, IMO. The Vulcan serial killer in Field of Fire was just..weird). What You Leave Behind was not without its problems, either. Part One was great, but I have a few issues with Part Two (Sisko manages to get to the fire caves of Bajor very quickly in that runabout, doesn't he?) But the final 10 episode arc was indeed breathtaking and stunning. It's something Trek has never had the guts to try, before or since. TNG had a good final year, IMHO. I was in junior high school when it first aired, and I couldn't get enough of it at the time (I'm 25 y.o now. Granted, I have not watched it in several years. It could just be rose-coloured glasses. TNG was the first Trek series I ever saw, so I have a special affection for it, although some episodes have not aged well at all). Genesis, the Pegasus, Gambit part one and two, Parallels, and All Good Things... were all good episodes. And I rather like Masks, despite its silliness (Masaka is waking!) By VOY S7, I was really struggling to care about the show. I had enjoyed it in its earlier years, but I felt in later seasons like I was watching it as a chore, out of loyalty to the Trek brand name. The writers just did not care anymore, so why should we? Endgame, ironically, was one of the better episodes of that messy season. It's a shame, because for the most part, I did enjoy VOY.
DS9 for me also. TNG really had to try hard to get itself up to par in season 7, which is kind of sad when you see that they could still pull it off with great episodes like "The Pegasus" or "Lower Decks" and then see a lot more wasted time and effort with junk like "Masks".
Personally, I thought DS9, TNG, and Voy all had fairly weak 7th seasons. Pound for pound I'd say a tie between TNG and DS9
I think DS9 edges out TNG - I didn't even bother with Voy S7 I fell to the wayside after S5. DS9 always felt like it was going somewhere - TNG didn't advance the characters or situation very much, e.g. Riker still a Commander after being offered 3 commands etc. so by S7 you knew DS9 was going to tie up most of it's plot threads in a spectacular fashion, whereas most TNG plot threads were confined to a single episode.
DS9 - TNG was in coast at mediocre+ mode by that point with a couple of stand out eps. VOY was complete cr\p from mid series 4 onwards.
What rubbish, CDP - TNG and DS9 had surprisingly solid final seasons, even though I felt DS9 was rattling apart a bit and TNG sagged halfway through. Season Four of Voyager never turned to crap halfway through and was broadly much better than the first three seasons, even though it turned to back shit somewhere in Season Six, with Season Seven being quite "meh".
DS9 - weak first half leading into a strong-as-ever second half gives it an easy win; at least two episodes from this season would make my Top 20 Trek episodes list. TNG - honestly its S7 didn't make enough of an impression on me for me to have much idea how it differed from other seasons, it's just one big gray mass to me now. VOY - uniformly terrible, even worse than previous seasons. It's not that DS9 is so amazingly great; it's that it has a lot of strengths and its Trek-sibling competition is for the most part pretty weak - only the first two seasons of TOS are real competition.
TOS! Definitely TOS, because of its.....what? Really? Oh, okay, then.... Enterprise! Why when I think of.....huh? Only four? Are you sure? Hmmm...... Well, DSN then? Okay, great!
Deep Space Nine. It was the best Star Trek series as a whole. So naturally it had the best seventh season.
DS9’s season 7 is by far the best of the lot. TNG’s was good but DS9’s last outing was simply much better, what with the end of the war and the politics of it all. The Dominion War arc is the best I’ve seen in Star Trek. And while I haven’t watched the last 2 and a half seasons of Voyager (just lost interest mid way through season 5) I know I would have preferred DS9’s.
In all honesty, it is hard to compare Deep Space Nine to TNG or Voyager. DS9 was more of a serialized version of Trek, so in that, it had all of the plot elements leading up to that point to strengthen the overall episodes, even if they weren't that great. With that in mind, I would have to say, as Stand Alone episodes, TNG takes the cake. Episodes that stand out in TNG: Gambit - Well, that's cheating, it's a two parter, but was good none-the-less Attached - Picard and Crusher episode, which was much overdue Inheritence - One of the final Data Episodes with his mum. Parallels - Watching Worf think he's going insane after traveling through an anomely--- (Michael Dorn didn't get enough solo time in TNG IMHO for as good of an actor he is) Pegasus - Rikers past catches up with him+Romulans=Goodness Lower Decks - Nice Nod to DS9 with Bajorians and Cardassians taking a central part, as well as seeing junior officer life Thine Own Self - Another Data Episode Genesis - Fun episode, if not convoluted Preemptive Strike - The Ensign Ro/Maqui Episode. Good penultimate episode to go out on. All Good Things - Need I say more? No Trekkie could forget this episode. As far as duds, I'll just list them: Sub Rosa, Force of Nature and Masks. Now, DS9 had many good episodes when you view the later season, maybe even moreso than TNG. However, as I mentioned before, their Season 7 was the culmination of 6 previous seasons worth of plot. TNG was structured as stand alone episodes, so many of the episodes in TNG could be swapped out easily. It's harder to make a stand alone episode that is just great with nothing but previous character development and no single overhead coherent piece of plot available. TNG did just that. However, the question definitely was, which season was better. Because of everything I mentioned, I did have to vote for DS9. Though it hurt. ^.^