Doing it in release order the 90s Trek rewatch puts Emissary after Chain of Command, so now I'm dovetailing DS9 and TNG. I've seen Emissary however many times but it's something else to experience it in order, after six years of TNG.
To be clear, I love this. It's nuts.
It's impossible for me not to read this scene as a criticism of TNG. The scene, positioned between two sequences on this dusty, full of crap promenade on this broken, crappy station, is like some gleaming Tolkienian citadel standing tall against brown plains of muck. Picard's uniform alone is brighter and more colourful than anything on that station, and the same uniform looks so out of place on Sisko he's already changed out of it before the next scene starts. Picard's Borg trauma was nicely tidied up for him three years prior, yet Sisko's still stuck with it, because for him it had serious, permanent consequences. Picard has the balls to try telling Sisko that Starfleet officers have to go where they're sent, sat in his comfortable chair on his spotless ship with his perfect crew and no dependants. In isolation, everything about this scene screams 'ivory tower'.
What's weird is the decision by the writers to do this. What's the point of this? Who is this for? If I'm not already watching Star Trek in 1993, I'm not going to start with DS9: it's the same era, same uniforms, same creative team, same aliens, even some of the same characters as TNG. If I am watching Star Trek in 1993, I presumably like TNG and its characters, and I've just got done watching Picard get smacked about by David Warner for an hour, so my sympathy for the guy is as high as it's ever going to be. Why would I want to see TNG cast in this light?
All that said, it does make for some damned good and interesting television.