I love monster-of-the-week too! Watching The X-Files for the first time a few years back made me have a lot of thoughts about the introduction of serial/overarching to speculative television. As that transition was happening, the results were never perfect—X-Files in particularly can be wildly weird in tone/too huge in overarching plot/insubstantial or unsubstantiated, none of which bodes well for a conspiracy theory narrative in particular; it's so obvious that they were figuring out how to write the thing, how to redefine the genre, as they went along. On the other hand, it works so well. There's an innate appeal & so much potential, and it was a huge part of the show's success. To say nothing, obvs., of Buffy, which does the same but often more capably.

It's an art form I want to preserve. And it could be tricky to pull off, writing for a more developed audience, with less "we're literally still figuring out how to do the thing" excuses. But it's my ideal Trek.

TBH, for me, tho, DS9 is almost effectively perfect; like, it has objective flaws, but I don't care, I'm mostly content to just rewatch it for the fourth time.