Personally I disliked the whole introduction of religion into the Trek setting, though DS9 is still a great show. It just felt like a weird step back in an enlightened future defined by knowledge and science to suddenly have "gods" fucking around
Fair enough, though they don’t have a religion worshipping them and are not at all very god like aside from their omnipotent powers. They seem more like bored Greek pantheon gods, pretty normal and flawed people with superhuman abilities.
Thats a good point I hadn’t considered, it’s been a while since I watched TOS.
But I would argue that especially the latter was more a lesson that superhuman powers don’t constitute a god, whereas DS9 seems to be a lot less critical in their depiction of the bajoran belief system and the wormhole aliens / prophets.