Deep Space Nine, Where to Start

A 10-episode path into Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, from Emissary to It's Only a Paper Moon, and where the series streams in each of our five markets.

By Jeff Cameron November 13, 2026 5 min read

Photo: CBS/Paramount Published 13 Nov 2026 Edited by Andrew Lovesey

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ran for seven seasons and 176 episodes between 1993 and 1999, and it is the Star Trek series that stays put. Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) and a Starfleet crew run a remote space station at the edge of a frontier, where much of the galaxy’s business seems to pass through. That fixed address lets the show do what the other series of its era rarely did: build arcs, enemies and a war across years.

That is also why it can look daunting from the outside. These 10 episodes are The Remote‘s starter path, in broadcast order, chosen to introduce the station, its people and its long story without needing the whole run. Season and episode numbers follow Paramount+.

The starter path

1. Emissary (season 1, episode 1)

The two-part pilot opens with Sisko still grieving his wife, killed in a battle with the Borg while Picard was under their control. A newly found wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant, and the factions that want it, set up mysteries and politics that pay off seasons later.

Jake and Benjamin Sisko see the station for the first time in Emissary — In pictures 7

A scene from the season one episode Duet — In pictures 7

2. Duet (season 1, episode 19)

A Cardassian arrives seeking medical care, and Major Kira Nerys arrests him as a war criminal from a labour camp during the Occupation. Nana Visitor’s performance carries an episode that turns on what the truth really is, and her view of Cardassians is never as simple again.

3. Crossover (season 2, episode 23)

A wormhole mishap sends Kira and Dr. Bashir into the Mirror Universe, where Kira meets the Intendant, her own cruel counterpart, on the mirror version of the station. It was only the second Star Trek series episode to cross over, and the show would return.

4. The Visitor (season 4, episode 3)

Jake Sisko gives his life to rescuing his father, who is lost in a temporal anomaly and reappears only once every few years. Told from Jake’s side, with Tony Todd as the older Jake, it won a Hugo Award.

5. Our Man Bashir (season 4, episode 10)

Bashir and Garak in a holosuite adventure, and a lighter hour to set against the heavier ones around it.

6. Trials and Tribble-ations (season 5, episode 6)

Made for Star Trek’s 30th anniversary, it sends the crew back into the original series’ “The Trouble with Tribbles” to stop a Klingon plot to kill Kirk, cutting the DS9 cast into 1960s footage. Sisko meets Kirk on equal terms.

7. Ties of Blood and Water (season 5, episode 19)

Kira’s adopted Cardassian father, Tekeny Ghemor, is dying, and his final days reopen the loss of her own father. Gul Dukat makes it harder.

8. Far Beyond the Stars (season 6, episode 13)

Directed by Avery Brooks, it puts Sisko inside the life of Benny Russell, a science-fiction writer in 1950s Harlem whose story about a Black captain of a space station is rejected and pulped. The cast plays new characters, and the episode asks where the station’s story really lives.

9. In the Pale Moonlight (season 6, episode 19)

With the Federation losing its war with the Dominion, Sisko enlists Garak to bring the Romulans in, and the plan runs to forgery and worse. Sisko accepts the result and lives with what it cost.

10. It’s Only a Paper Moon (season 7, episode 10)

Nog, having lost a leg in combat, retreats into Vic Fontaine’s 1960s holosuite lounge rather than face the world. The war seen from the side of one young officer.

What to watch next

The path above skips most of the war arc, which begins in earnest with “The Way of the Warrior” (season 4, episode 1). Viewers who want the full story should go from there in order to the finale, “What You Leave Behind” (season 7, episode 25), in which Sisko leads the invasion of the Dominion homeworld.

Two character episodes are worth adding to any path. “Progress” (season 1, episode 15) has Kira trying to evacuate Mullibok, a farmer who refuses to leave a Bajoran moon that is about to be tapped for energy. “The Begotten” (season 5, episode 12) gives Odo a baby Changeling to raise, with the Bajoran scientist who once studied him at his side. For context across the franchise, our guides Every Star Trek Series, in Order and Fourteen Star Trek Films, in Order map the rest, and The Remote also covers where to stream The Next Generation, the series that DS9 grew out of.

Where to watch

Canada: all seven seasons stream on Paramount+, the Canadian home of Star Trek since August 2023.
US: all seven seasons stream on Paramount+.
Australia: Paramount+ lists all seven seasons.
UK: a subscription home could not be confirmed on the platform’s own page; Deep Space Nine is available to buy digitally.
New Zealand: no subscription home could be confirmed; the series is available to buy digitally.