Aw man! Just like that soap opera where the dude wakes up nekkid in the shower and realizes it's a dream. What was his name, Patrick Ewing? Bobby Duffy? I never watched "Dallas", only heard the story... come to think of it, basketball helps me achieve 40 Z's without the need of medication too...
Or Roseanne when she revealed she wrote it all in her writing room in the basement.
In seriousness, I dunno. It would have been a bigger shock to audiences than Sisko's ascension to the Prophets...
The positives involving the "it's all a dream" are the following:
* TNG-Trek remains the goody-goody pure, unfettered society that DS9 questioned (while generally being conscious of TNG's themes during the creation of a clever but underlying layer nobody anticipated in TNG's worldbuilding)
* it's clever, seeding the idea in a mid-era run and saying nothing about it until the very, very end
* Bashir uncharacteristically being a puppy around Data now has a plausible explanation (early chapter by a new writer in town)
* it adds gravitas to even more characters, and - yep - the first one I will mention is Quark from "Move Along Home". Which is great in its own right in terms of Quark's development but even more so as an added layer and complexity, as written by Benny Russell. Also as an early entry to show Benny's underlying raw talent for character development
* even makes "Profit and Lace" easier to stomach - trust anyone who's seen it, that's not easy to accomplish
But the negatives:
* too meta and self-aware. Becomes a unintentional parody of itself
* deconstructs so much put into the Trek universe as a result
* makes it all tons of hours worth of worldbuilding now just a bit of throwaway
* only long-time fans that remember would appreciate the twist. Casuals will go "Huh?" and/or say "That was stupid"
Yeah, I've got ambivalence for it. In ways it's clever but in ways it's too self-destructive for the show and DS9 took what was best from TOS and TNG then added a serialized format. It made some impressive innovations.
But DS9 worked to create its own core audience to tell its own sagas. It didn't run around like a drunken Saint Bernard dog humping the leg of any casual stranger flipping the channel, now did it. DS9 was more substantial and required more from the audience. Which isn't to sound derogatory toward TNG, the two are very different shows with different goals. Both are entertaining, both are valid, both have a place. Both have some depth. But neither show could really do the other's format with any amount of success. Even if some TNG and TOS episodes were retooled, there's still enough DS9 conflict involved to make the bulk of those episodes original. Give me "Starship Down" over "Disaster" any day of the year, for example.
