Forest of Illusions

One of the telltale omens of the looming Long 1990s is a desire to see stories where heroes fail, lose or make bad decisions. I’ve spent a good amount of time, space and energy looking at the psychology of this, which is curious considering I haven’t actually begun looking at the Long 1990s yet (although there is the argument that the groundwork has already been laid by numerous sociocultural factors and a handful of influential works).

This desire to voyeuristically engage with failure is not a guiding principle of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Although future Star Trek creative teams will most assuredly take this as gospel, most of the touted “conflict” of this particular series was designed to hinge around the natural tension that organically emerges when you take a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds and make them live and work in close proximity with one another. You can actually see a number of good examples of the show’s approach to this throughout the various subplots in “Progress”: The B-plot is the obvious one, where Nog tries to teach Jake some basic Ferengi philosophy to make an “opportunity” out of a supposed setback. But Nog isn’t able to turn a profit on his own, because he’s not capable of negotiating with respect to the various positionalities of the parties involved in his transaction (the only thing he can do on his own is subtly manipulate Quark, which is just him working his native Ferengi system of social mores). It takes Jake to come in and help steer the negotiations into a direction that’s beneficial for everyone’s interests, which provides an interesting echo for the events of their subplot in “The Storyteller” last week.

There’s also the obvious anxiety of the Provisional Government’s representative in Ops before the A-plot kicks off in earnest, who’s not sure he can trust Commander Sisko and Jadzia Dax to oversee the drilling project, and isn’t sure what to make of Major Kira working with them. Kira has to be their spokesperson to him, and bridge the gap between the two teams, which subtly foreshadows what she’s going to have to do once the story itself gets going (and fails to, but that’s getting ahead of things). But the best example is actually the scene where Kira and Dax are in the Runabout en route to Jeraddo: Wonderfully, it’s the first glimpse we get of Jadzia’s signature libido, as she chats to Nerys about attracting Morn’s attention, almost bragging about it. Nerys is repulsed because not only does she not share Jadzia’s taste in friends-with-benefits or her promiscuity, but she can’t even conceive of how someone could swing that way in the first place. She doesn’t think less of Dax, but she’s entirely incapable of putting herself in her shoes. Which is Jadzia’s entire point: She knows Nerys is too buttoned-up and too immersed in her comfort zone, which is something that comes with youth.…

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One of the big advantages Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has, regardless of whether or not Star Trek fans think it’s actually an advantage or not, is, as we have established, its stationary location. But this asset doesn’t just apply to the titular space station, it also applies to the nearby planet: After all, the whole point of setting this show so close to Bajor in the first place was to allow for development of one specific planetary society above and beyond what just having a representative as part of our crew would facilitate.

The biggest problem Star Trek has from an ethical anthropological standpoint is its well-known predilection to fall into the “planet of hats” issue. In less netspeak terms, this means Star Trek has an annoying tendency to depict extraterrestrial civilizations as monocultures in service to metaphor and allegory. Star Trek isn’t the only sci-fi-fantasy work to have this problem (in fact I’d argue it’s effectively endemic to the genre) and I don’t even think it’s anywhere near the worst perpetrator of it, but it is a problem Star Trek is famous for having. There are a number of reasons for this, most of which have to do with the inherent problems of using people or groups of people as dolled-up metaphor in this way, but the one that’s relevant to tonight’s discussion is the inescapable fact that a voyaging starship can’t stay in one port of call long enough to flesh out any given society to the realistic extent they really deserve. Because in theory this is something Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is primed to alleviate and another huge reason why it’s such a necessary second perspective on the Star Trek universe. With our city’s proximity to Bajor, there’s really no functional narrative reason why it need be depicted in the traditionally shallow and superficial sci-fi-fantasy way.

(Actually I tell a lie for the purposes of argument. Star Trek’s biggest problem from an ethical anthropological perspective isn’t the planet of hats issue, it’s the Prime Directive. But I’m not about to dig up that old chestnut again.)

“The Storyteller” is the first episode to really grapple with the potential this setup offers the show, and it succeeds with flying colours. We get not one, not two, but *three* different representations of Bajoran culture that differ from what’s been established thus far across both the A- and B-plots and the story even throws us Kira in specific opportune moments to further the contrast. There’s of course the village of the Sirah that Julian and Miles visit, but also the Paqu and Navot delegations that Commander Sisko has been asked to mediate between. In each case, we get to see glimpses of folk belief and cultural norms and attitudes that differ just enough from established dogmatic Prophets theism that it’s uniquely memorable: The first Sirah obviously talks a lot about destiny and chosen ones being sent from on high wand whatnot, but it’s obvious this is mostly rhetorical bluster and the village has a special set of folk spiritualism all its own based around the Dal’Rok and the telling of the tales that’s found nowhere else on Bajor.…

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I tend to go back and forth on “Battle Lines”. I think it’s because, on paper, it sounds like an almost paint-by-numbers Star Trek story reminiscent of nothing so much as Original Series episodes like “A Taste of Armageddon”, “Day of the Dove” and their ilk (and indeed, “Day of the Dove” was a primary inspiration for “Battle Lines”). As such, what usually tends to happen is I watch the episode, like it a whole lot, then go a long while without seeing it, forget how much I like it and think “oh, it musn’t be that good. It’s basically an Original Series episode and I hate it when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine just chases the Original Series”. Then I watch it again and love it.

Writing this essay should finally break that cycle for me, because “Battle Lines” is most assuredly excellent.

Bear in mind I adored “Battle Lines” at the time, and that probably says something. I especially loved the gritty iconography of these ageless, immortal soldiers constantly slaughtering each other in a bombed out desert cave on a godforsaken moon somewhere with Major Kira and Commander Sisko caught in the middle. In hindsight, yes, it’s just another Planet Hell shoot, but for me this is among the most memorable uses of that venerable old studio. It’s probably because the slightly Mad Max-esque Ennis and Nol-Ennis have a kind of grungy, 1980s post-apocalyptic aesthetic to them that I quite like. We haven’t seen much of that in Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine since the aesthetic’s glorious peak in the Gatherers of “The Vengeance Factor”, costume designer Bob Blackman seemingly preferring to emphasize a kind of forced frumpiness in his outfits for the chronological 1990s.

It’s perhaps not coincidental then that “The Vengeance Factor” was the final episode aired in the chronological 1980s. However that said I find it really interesting, now that I’ve brought it up, how we seem to be seeing little echoes of “The Vengeance Factor”, or at least the zeitgeist it was a part of, showing up again this season. The Gatherers themselves showed up in “Vortex”, and they were every bit as fantastically 80s as there as they’ve always been. And in “Battle Lines”, we once again have a story about a ceaseless war stemming from clan conflicts that may have meant something at one time but which are beyond ancient and petty by now. It’s very fitting that little signifiers like this start to crop up again in Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine this season, as I consider 1993 and 1994 to be the real last hurrah of the Long 1980s, before the vibe finally gives way to the grimdark and apathy fueled Long 1990s and the climate we’re arguably still living in today. It’s also perhaps not a coincidence that this season is far and away the best the series has ever been.…

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Odo is a shapeshifter. I know that sounds obvious to any fan of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but I’m not just talking about his plot superpowers here. Rather Odo being a shapeshifter is a diegetic allegory for the role he plays on the series, and clue as to his character’s true nature.

Odo got the first spotlight on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine following “Emissary”, and while it was excellent it was more about the setting of the titular space station itself and inviting comparison with Westerns than Odo himself; it’s that “Fort Laramie in Space” again (Star Trek certainly does seem fixated on its precious Hollywood Westerns and seems to want to invoke them whenever and wherever possible). While “Vortex” draws upon Westerns to a significant degree as well: The script took its inspiration from the movie The Naked Spur such that Peter Allan Fields hired Sam Rolfe, the writer of that movie and an old mentor of Fields’, to handle the teleplay for “Vortex” (Rolfe had previously written “The Vengeance Factor”, which is probably my favourite episode of the third season, and the script even specifies that Ah-Kel and Ro-Kel had at least two of those gloriously 1980s Gatherers as part of their crew!). But there’s more to this episode than simple genre romp pastiche, and “Vortex” is the key moment in establishing precisely who Odo is.

At first, it would seem like he’s being depicted as the stereotypical mythic lone gunman Western hero, with Odo, Croden and the script all waxing fairly poetically (and melodramatically) about being an outsider and not having a home to go back to. But this is actually obfuscating pomp and circumstance: Odo is projecting his anxieties about belonging onto his search for his origins. He feels out-of-place with Starfleet and the Bajorans alike and is hoping that if he finds “his people”, he’ll finally have a place to belong to (true, but not in the way Odo is conceptualizing it here). But what Odo doesn’t realise that the majority of his isolation is self-imposed, and that he’s too insular and self-conscious to figure out that his home has always been Deep Space 9. He probably knows this deep down, but he’s too stubborn to actually accept, admit and vocalize is to himself, much less to anyone else. So when he asks his pendant at the end about where home is, it’s every bit as much of a rhetorical philosophical question as it is an inquiry about a physical location. He’s not looking for a place to belong as much as he is looking for permission to admit that the place he belongs is where he’s spent the better part of a decade dutifully making a living.

And this does beg an interesting question: Can one actually “belong” to a place like Deep Space 9? The station is, after all, ultimately a port city, and port cities on Earth have traditionally been considered deeply liminal places.…

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There’s always been an aspect of duality to the Ferengi. On the one hand, they’re meant to be dangerous and threatening capitalists, working as pirates and marauders who use intimidation and strongarming tactics to turn profit at all costs. On the other hand, thanks to their infamous “crazed gerbil” depiction in “The Last Outpost”, there’s an undeniable and irreducible silliness to them that at once seems at odds with this intended narrative function.

However as I have previously argued, I feel these two interpretations are not necessarily mutually exclusive; there’s a great deal to be said, after all, about a group of antagonists who at once embody ruthless capitalist values and blatantly misogynistic attitudes (many of which are at least taken for granted and accepted as “the way things are” in modernity, thus becoming hegemonic, or, in the absolute worst case scenarios, idealized and triumphed) and are also seen as a completely harmless laughingstock by the Star Trek universe. I still believe “The Last Outpost” walks this line fairly well, gerbils notwithstanding, but subsequent Ferengi stories have had a rougher time trying to maintain that careful balance. Too often we’ve been expected to see them as genuinely menacing and ignore their kind of inherent silliness, which is kind of a hard swallow given the aformentioned gerbil jumping (though there was a Michael Jan Friedman story from the third season that actually managed to pull it off in my opinion). Or, the opposite problem: Writers will portray the Ferengi as a total joke and not taken seriously whatsoever. In stories like “Ménage à Troi”, “The Price”, “The Perfect Mate” and “Rascals” the Ferengi’s clownshoes quotient is dialed up to such a degree they become so grating to the point of becoming absolutely unwatchable.

By the first/sixth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and our first regular Ferengi character in Quark, the show has been sort of forced to develop some more nuance with them, although it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing either. After a good show in “Emissary” and a few assorted memorable moments in other episodes (most notably Quark’s subplot in “The Passenger”), for as much good as we’ve gotten there’s also been a lot of bad. As fun as Quark and Odo are to see bicker, when they get overexposed to the point of hijacking the show, such as in the insufferable “Odo and Quark Save the Day” of “Babel”, things become less fun. And then there’s the utterly obnoxious grovelling Quark is made to do in last week’s stupefyingly awful “Move Along Home”.

With “The Nagus” though we now have an entire episode pretty much dedicated toward exploring Ferengi culture in ways we haven’t really gotten the chance to see until now, and thankfully the show more or less manages to pull it off and make it seem somewhat respectable (well, as respectable as the Ferengi can ever get I suppose).…

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