What did the space station format of DS9 allow you to do that you couldn�t do in a ship?

Most fundamentally, the Enterprise comes to an alien planet, sees a problem, solves it and moves on. The space station doesn�t go anywhere and that means the story lines continue week after week in some fashion.

It�s still mostly episodic but Bajor is there every week, the Cardassians ain�t going anywhere, the people in the station are going to be there every week. It gradually, bit by bit, became more of a continuing story.

You couldn�t just leave problems behind you and fly away from them. You could go out and visit planets and not go to those planets again, but the core of the series, the heart of the show, was something that was going to continually evolve and change over time. That�s a very different format than The Next Generation or the original series.