I'm willing to suspend disbelief about faster than light travel because it's a familiar sci-fi trope and it allows writers to easily tell stories about space exploration. I don't even mind the whole teleporters because it's just another piece of technology and I know it was in the original series because it was easier and cheaper than having scale models of ships landing and taking off.

In other words, you're willing to accept conventions you already know, but deeply uncomfortable with new concepts you are unfamiliar with.

I am lost at the whole organization chart because it does strike me as unrealistic and counter to logical structures and human behavior.

It's entirely possible that the concept of duty, and what it requires of us, is a through-line explored via O'Brien through the course of not just many seasons of DS9, but several seasons of TNG.

thought the tailor as a spy was weird. I wish they focused more on the relationship with Kira and the "former" terrorist. I think it ended too cleanly. But it was an okay episode.

It's almost as if this were a narrative thread revisited throughout the course of the series.

Also, I knew who Q was through cultural osmosis.

But you didn't know that Vash is Picard's erstwhile girlfriend.

You can have it one way or the other: you can be mad that the shows are all self-contained or you can be mad that they don't have any continuity from episode to episode. You can't have it both ways.