I am the only Star Trek fan I know who was not a big fan of the dominion war arc. I really liked some of the later season episodes, but the arc itself was a bit of a letdown.
OTOH, DS9 is the only Star Trek that my wife will willingly watch with me; she finds the others too campy. As another data-point she likes the dominion war arc as much or more than B5, which was her favorite sci-fi series previously.
Now that episode I loved, but the parts I liked would have worked just fine in a TOS-style episode where the same 4 characters are captured by <some random species we've never heard of>.
It makes a lot of sense to realize that DS9 was direct competition to B5, which was being produced and aired at the same time. That’s why DS9 is so different from other Trek. It was trying to be or beat what Babylon 5 achieved.
Even saying that though, I don’t think you can say one is better than the other. I can see why your wife likes them both though.
> It makes a lot of sense to realize that DS9 was direct competition to B5, which was being produced and aired at the same time
I know; they were even aired in the same timeslot (IIRC Wednesdays at 7) where I lived, and I had a prior engagement on Wednesday nights and only one VCR, so I had to pick which one to record. I settled on B5.
I didn't watch all of DS9 until it was on Netflix.
Brooks turned in a stellar performance in that episode, and everybody else (including my wife), seems to love it, but it would not rank among my 10 personal favorite DS9 episodes.
