Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

The imaginatively titled “Cardassians” is a solid story about innocent bystanders whose lives are upended by political gerrymandering. There are the Cardassian War Orphans, most notably the young Rugal, who are ripped away from the lives and families they know on Bajor in order to cover up a potential scandal involving a number of military higher-ups. But there is also the crew of Deep Space 9, namely Commander Sisko, who end up tasked with the unpleasant duty of uprooting these children from their homes as part of their jobs in order to avoid a diplomatic incident.

Like last season’s “Progress”, “Cardassians” examines the repercussions of life for administrators and local officials trying to do their best to represent their people, but who are ultimately at the whims of powerful governments and other systems of centralized authority who wish to consolidate power regardless of whether or not it serves the best interests of those who live under them. There’s no way to argue that being forcibly relocated to Cardassia, a planetary society he fears, distrusts and doesn’t even know, is going to be a net benefit for Rugal, so I’m not going to address it. Apart from the false equivalence in critiquing Rugal’s hatred of the Cardassians by paralleling it with the decades of brutal oppression those selfsame people inflicted on the Bajorans, there’s also the rather uglier implication that adopted children are always better off with their biological parents in every circumstance (the episode by no means endorses this perspective, but it doesn’t do enough to refute it either). But ultimately, this is a story about the Deep Space 9 crew having their hands tied in order to prevent them from making the obviously correct choice and exploring how to react to a situation like that.

The regulars themselves are a slightly mixed bag on this front…Commander Sisko is generally excellent, as are Garak and Doctor Bashir, but I disagree with some of how Miles O’Brien is written. His speech to Rugal near the end about how it’s wrong to write off an entire people with generalizations, stating that he himself has met some Cardassians he liked and some he didn’t, is beautiful knowing his backstory and an utterly perfect Star Trek moment. Or at least it would be if the chief’s history with the Federation-Cardassian War and the dismissive speciesist feelings he once suffered as a result of it were left unspoken and implied. Instead, the scene earlier in the episode where Miles expresses concern to Keiko about Molly associating with Rugal sort of undermines that moment’s effectiveness for me.

I know it was meant to show moral ambiguity and that racism is difficult to overcome overnight and how even good people can slip back into bad habits from time to time. But the thing is I don’t agree that was a good call. That’s not a Star Trek: The Next Generation message. This series is supposed to be showing us how we can *overcome* our various foibles and vices.…

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You don’t want to disappoint Commander Sisko, do you?

Wait, you thought I was going to let Star Trek: Deep Space Nine off the hook for being the younger show? Whyever would you think that?

I have held a grudge against “Invasive Procedures” since 1993. Everything about this episode, from top to bottom, from conception to execution, repelled me at every turn from the beginning. At the time, I was only just starting to become a serious fan of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, that is, becoming actually invested in the setting and the characters as opposed to just watching the general aesthetics unfold from a distance with cautious optimism. And though it was still fairly early, I already knew that Jadzia Dax was going to be my favourite character from this cast. I liked Major Kira a lot too and she was the other early standout for me (in fact extremely early on I got the two of them confused) but it was Jadzia’s cool competence and poise that won me over the strongest, So how do you think I felt when the *very first* episode I was cognizant of to deal explicitly with Jadzia’s character was also the one that depicted her at her absolute lowest? It’s the exact same experience I would have rediscovering Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation, like history repeating itself again

Somehow it strikes me as a bad sign that, when confronted with a joined character with several lifetimes of experience, the only way the creative team can come up with to convey this concept is to show what it’s like when she becomes un-joined. Emphasis on “she”-You don’t see The Doctor on Doctor Who suddenly unregenerate back to his nascent iteration with the show’s writers giving the excuse that they couldn’t figure out how to get across all his lifetimes of experience without a proof by negative. And you certainly would never see The Doctor reduced to a mewling, vulnerable damsel character to engender sympathy and give the male characters someone to fight for and protect. But that’s literally *all* anyone involved with “Invasive Procedures” talks about when defending their creative decisions: They all talk about how they needed to bring “vulnerability” and “tenderness” to Jadzia in order to “humanize” her and “develop her character”. It’s true that we all have moments of confidence and weakness and that we each have dominant and submissive sides, but that’s not what this story is about: This is a story about taking a strong, confident, independent woman and stripping away all of her strength and agency because the creators thought that made her distant and unrelatable.

And of course it would be Jadzia who would stump these writers. You could bring in Kira as a possible counter argument here by saying that her retaining all her power and authoritativeness cancels out what they do to Jadzia here, but that’s not how that works.…

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In the previous episode, “The Circle”, Major Kira undergoes an Orb experience and receives visions from the Prophets of the events of “The Siege”.

The Prophets’ connection to nonlinear time has already been well documented, but what I find interesting about their reappearance here (for the first time since “Emissary”, it may be worth noting) is the way this is conveyed: Images, experience and snapshots of memory, repurposed and rearranged. It’s a dream meant to convey a message through coded symbols built out of memory. My first exposure to “The Homecoming”/“The Circle” /“The Siege” was all in one piece as part of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine sometime in either late 1993 or early 1994. So when I watch Kira’s Orb vision in “The Circle”, I don’t see portents of events to come, but a distorted reiteration of events I already have a recollection of.

“The Siege” itself operates on the level of images. Namely, iconic memorable setpieces. The battle in Bajor’s atmosphere between The Circle and the transport runner piloted by Kira and Dax is one of the most spectacular action scenes from Star Trek’s golden age, a remarkable series of shots that pushes the boundaries of what can be accomplished with model-making practical effects on an episodic television budget. In fact, I daresay this is probably as complex and striking a scene as could ever have been done at this particular time with these particular resources. Once again, we get another bright, sunny and colourful outdoors setting, conveyed aptly through the use of a matte painting overlayed with shots of the motion controlled models.

But what I remember is actually the interior of the Bajoran raider, and Kira and Dax’s outfits: I think the bright colours of the control panels, their clothes and, funnily enough the phaser blasts all really compliment the verdant setting outside and help to convey a uniquel special and memorable vibe. I guess you could say this begins for me what you might call the real “summer blockbuster” phase of Star Trek, which I’ve always associated primarily with Deep Space Nine, and in particular this season. “The Siege” is really one great big action sequence, but it’s got a lot more going for it than most of the other Star Trek riffs on the action genre, and I prefer it head and shoulders above anytime the franchise attempts something like this in the years to come. One of these things is the colour coordination, which really does evoke a breezy, fun summer vibe to me, or at least the memories of that feeling.

There’s a deliberate and overt artistry to the action here I don’t see in most science fiction, especially Star Trek (and even most action films for that matter). Funnily enough, this sort of thing *is* the province of Dirty Pair, especially Dirty Pair: The Motion Picture and Original Dirty Pair, but actually now that I think about it the other place I can think of right off the top of my head that gives me a similar feeling is…Project A-ko.…

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There are two Circles that give their name to the title of this episode. One is, naturally, the xenophobic nativist fascist terrorists we were introduced to last week and who execute their master plan in this episode. But the other is the circle of friends on board Deep Space 9: A major theme in this story arc is demonstrating how close knit and fiercely loyal to one another this team has grown in just the short period of time they’ve been together: Last time there was Commander Sisko’s breezy interactions with Jake, Kira and Dax, O’Brien’s dedication to Kira’s cause, and Dax’s gentle but firm support and guidance.

We also saw another example of the more congenial side of Odo and Quark’s relationship in a way we haven’t really seen since “Babel”: Yes, they’re still trying to outplay one another, but there’s a familiarity and respect there. And this carries through to this episode as well-Although the “deputy” subplot is largely played for laughs, Quark still comes to Odo willingly because he’s concerned about the Deep Space 9 community being put into danger by The Circle’s actions. Furthermore, he goes straight to Commander Sisko in the climax with the crucial information about where Kira is being held and it was, of course, him who gave Kira Li Nalas’ earring in the first place, letting her know that he was still alive and where to go to find him.

Kira herself sums it up to Li pretty well by stating that while she may not have wanted this job at first, Deep Space 9 has become a home to her, and her fellow residents have become her friends. We could say much the same for the show itself. And the scene in Kira’s quarters near the beginning really drives it all home: It’s a routine straight out of a Marx Brothers film (literally, in fact, to the point director Corey Allen had it done all in one take, just like in A Night at the Opera) and captures the unique and distinct personalities of everyone involved perfectly. Kira’s arc in this trilogy effectively mirrors that of a presumed audience: She begins in self-imposed isolation away from daily life on Deep Space 9, her loyalties still primarily with Bajor. It’s only when confronted with the possibility of being removed from the station, and after suffering through the persistence of the crew, that she begins to realise how much affection she really has for the place and the people. And at the end of the episode, after witnessing the crew risk their lives to save her even though she’s no longer one of them, that she fully accepts and understands where she belongs.

Although it at first must seem like a traumatic crisis of faith for Kira, it does help her to find Bajor has betrayed her trust in them. Much of Bajor supports The Circle, who are far more dangerous and powerful than anyone anticipated and, backing by the Cardassians aside, are working in direct opposition to everything Deep Space 9 stands for and that Kira has come to as well.…

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“The Homecoming” opens on one of the more triumphant notes Star Trek: The Next Generation/Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has done in recent memory. There’s a slow pan across the new set for the Promenade upper level into Quark’s, where the man himself in engaged in one of his classic verbal sparring matches with Odo. The energy carries through to the scene where Quark visits a brooding Kira in her quarters to deliver Li Nalas’ earring. Finally, we get a jovial and upbeat Ben Sisko having a charismatic father/son moment with Jake, followed by a friendly and breezy lunch date with Kira. Well, up until she springs the news she wants to take a Runabout to Cardassia 4 to spring a jailbreak.

The sense we get is of a show that’s on top of the world, elated by its recent success. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is *back*, refreshed and energized to continue the creative high it came off the previous season on. And it has every reason to be comfortable and pleased with itself: Late 1993 into early 1994 was the critical, creative and commercial high point for Star Trek as a franchise, and it’s on Deep Space 9 that this is manifesting the most visibly and effortlessly. This must have been around the time I started taking serious notice of the show too, because it’s “The Homecoming”/“The Circle”/“The Siege” that’s among the first crop of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine stories I can recall having an active understanding of the plot and character details from, as opposed to merely faint recollections of dissociated images and scenes. Most of this was due to my having recently getting into Starlog’s official Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine around this time (or really, the following Spring) to catch up with the series, but that warrants its own chapter later down the line.

The ironic thing is that by definition, a peak is a high as one can possibly go, and there’s nowhere to go from there but down. And while this second/seventh season is in many ways just as good as the crop of episodes that came out the year before, there’s an impossible-to-ignore shadow hanging over all the proceedings here, and as good as this opening volley was and is, it also marks the beginning of the end of Star Trek’s imperious phase. This won’t become clear for another few months though, nor will the plans being drafted behind the scenes that will conspire to make life a living hell for cast and crew alike over the next year, and ultimately bring about Star Trek’s end.

For the moment though, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is riding high. The first half of “The Homecoming” is truly iconic to me-There’s Kira and Chief O’Brien in undercover civilian attire in a fierce shootout to liberate Bajoran POWs on one of the very few alien planets where it makes absolutely perfect sense that it’s plainly a quarry.…

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In his Network Society trilogy, sociologist and Neo-Marxist Manuel Castells argues (among a great deal other things) that the titular concept, referring to the sociocultural, political and socioeconomic restructuring of the world and its methods of production through globalization and information technology, will inevitably, and perhaps ironically, lead to an increase in fundamentalism and violence beget from it. The argument goes that, far from opening up their eyes to a literal new world of possibility, those inclined towards a reactionary fundamentalist movement will, when exposed to new ways of thinking through globalization, instead dig their heels in even further and violently lash out against a perceived threat to their way of life.

Writing in 1998, and again in 2010, Castells seems ahead of his time, and I’ve often thought he got a beat on the direction the geopolitical climate was going well before it became evident to all of us. Living as we do in an age where it seems the world is poised on the brink of war between various assorted fundamentalist terrorist organisations and equally reactionary state governments, Castells seems downright prescient. And, airing in 1993, so does “In the Hands of the Prophets”: For its season finale, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine seems to have suffered the same fate as so much other science fiction before it, unwittingly predicting the future’s worst case scenario through cautious rumination on humanity’s worst impulses.

Writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe insists that “In the Hands of the Prophets” isn’t so much a condemnation of fundamentalism as much as it is a criticism of people who feel the need to impose their beliefs on others. Wolfe believes that anyone has a right to believe anything, so long as they don’t force anyone else to hold to the same beliefs and that this is ultimately the angle he was going for. When I was younger, I found this to be a deeply profound truism, though in retrospect the sentiment seems a bit shallower than would perhaps be desirable…For one thing I find it difficult to see how you can have one critique without the other: Fundamentalism by definition demands that its adherents hold to it without question, and the very reason it’s reactionary is specifically because it’s convinced it’s the one universal truth that everyone needs to be converted to, by force if necessary. A fundamentalism that retreats back into its own insularity to avoid contact with other ways of thought is not the fundamentalism we see manifesting in the world as a result of globalization and the network society, and it’s not the fundamentalism of Vedek Winn and her orthodox Bajoran terrorists.

Where I do see in Wolfe’s interpretation of his work, and especially in Commander Sisko’s position all throughout the episode, is a statement of a kind of anarchist ideal: “My philosophy is that there is room on this station for every philosophy”. Or perhaps “A utopia is a framework for utopias”, if you prefer.…

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There are classics, and then there are classics.

“Duet” needs no introduction. Even those who would be inclined to slag off Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s first season, either on its own merits or due to some rule of thumb about first seasons, readily admit that this is one of the very best episodes in the entire series. Any Star Trek fan worth their salt is going to go one step beyond and will likely posit “Duet” as one of the very best episodes in the *entire Star Trek franchise*. I’m not about to rock the boat on this one, not this time. “Duet” is absolutely superb.

The biggest reason why this episode is so phenomenally successful is that it’s completely unafraid to do something that Star Trek in general, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in particular, can do effortlessly well so long as it’s given the chance. “Duet” is a bottle show, one of many commissioned at the back end of the season to make up for the ludicrously expensive and overbudget episodes from earlier on in the year (c.f. “Emissary”, “Move Along Home” and “The Storyteller”): No new sets, no major effects shots to speak of and only a couple of guest stars, which is frankly heresy for US television sci-fi at this point in time. And it absolutely doesn’t need any effects shots or fancy effects to be one of the most chillingly gripping and powerful things ever. 80% of “Duet” is held together by nothing more then Nana Visitor and Harris Yulin talking to each other, and that is absolutely all this episode needs. Is there any joint performance in Star Trek that’s even remotely comparable to the show they put on here? I submit to you there may well not be.

We of course have to single Nana Visitor out here. Two weeks in a row she’s gotten some pretty unprecedented showcase episodes for her range, which is is two more than anyone who wasn’t named Patrick Stewart or Brent Spiner got at this point in the game six years ago. Nana also got “Progress” and “Past Prologue” to herself earlier on in the year, so things are already looking great for Kira Nerys. That’s a great indication of how quickly Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has attained a level of egalitarianism in comparison to Star Trek: The Next Generation: Although there are still a few characters this team struggles with (*ahem* Jadzia Dax), this is still a great sign. Again though, this is no indictment of The Next Generation, but rather a regret that really nobody who’s worked on it (*including* this team, who have obviously proven themselves fully capable on this side of the lot) ever got comfortable enough with those characters to afford them the same treatment. But either way, “Duet” is in a class of its own for Visitor: None of her previous showcases are on this level and, while some will come close, none of them really ever will be again.…

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An often overlooked entry from the first season, “Dramatis Personae” was always one of my favourite episodes to think about, even if this time around I found it a little difficult to actually watch. As is increasingly the case, the reason for this is not so much due to the quality of the piece itself as much as the fact it’s dealing with televisual storytelling norms that I find myself less and less inclined to watch as I get older.

The title says it all: “Dramatis Personae” is an exploration of performative themes, which on the one hand is nothing new, but on the other this episode is more textually overt about it than most. Writer Joe Menosky’s original idea was inspired by his observation that people tend to follow a kind of socially approved (and very, very stock) script whenever major life events happen, and there seem to be a very slight number of scripts generally available. This means that, no matter how different and unique the individual circumstances are, absolutely everyone’s story about, for example, falling in love is going to sound exactly the fucking same. Menosky saw this as a kind of voluntary self-imprisonment within a very bad pulp fiction play, and he was interested in exploring what that was like and why it happened. In a Star Trek context, this theme took the form of a telepathic matrix that was transmitted like a a virus.

For my money, this is a genius concept and a perfect fit for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. As a kind of science fiction urban community, the show offers a great setting to explore how this manifests on the level of populations and, even though this episode doesn’t end up taking the approach that “Babel” did, dealing with a disease outbreak is a solid plot to throw at a team of scientists and administrators working in a metropolitan environment. The handling of performativity itself “Dramatis Personae” does mark an interesting evolution from the way it’s been handled in the past: On Star Trek: The Next Generation, much of the performative facade comes from the cast themselves looking for room to play around with the roles they’ve been given, although at this stage the show is finally beginning to fully plumb the recesses of its sham theatricality, and this will come to a charged head next season. Here though the performativity is a crucial aspecct of the textual narrative, and that’s not actually something we’ve seen a ton of to date, although, like I said, this is starting to change.

With “Dramatis Personae” Menosky has in a sense penned a kind of spiritual follow-up to “Frame of Mind”, where the extradiegetic themes about being imprisoned in a stock set of narrative tropes become diegetic. The form this takes on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a bit more straightforward and traditional than what Brannon Braga pulled on Star Trek: The Next Generation, with the crew literally being taken over by other characters as opposed to the structure of the narrative reality itself breaking down (which is, interestingly enough, a certain kind of theatrical approach).…

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So I miscounted a bit when I was planning these entries. Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine do run completely parallel, beginning and ending their seasons roughly the same week. However, when Deep Space Nine premiered in January, 1993, the studio held production on The Next Generation back a few weeks so the new show could air four episodes in a row without any potential competition for attention. I, however, missed that when I was planning my watch schedule and went straight from “Emissary” to “Ship in a Bottle”, thus neglecting the fact that “Past Prologue”, “A Man Alone” and “Babel” all went out before that episode aired.

Which means we have to go back in time a bit for “The Forsaken”. Technically speaking, having just watched “Descent” we should be passed “In the Hands of the Prophets” and into the between season material by now, but I have to make up those four episodes somewhere. But it turned out OK after all because “The Forsaken” is a great episode to kick off a brief Star Trek: The Next Generation hiatus on the site, and I like the narrative this sets up from my writing perspective better anyway. And besides, you all should be used to time travel and temporal mechanics having stuck with this project this long, and there’s going to be plenty more where that came from in the not-too-distant-future. Well, I say future. But now I’m getting ahead of myself. Or behind.

You know what? I’m just going to stop now and get into “The Forsaken”.

Of all the Star Trek: The Next Generation characters who have crossed over to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine this season, Lwaxana Troi makes far and away the most sense. It’s not like Q, who’s really bound up thematically and symbolically with Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise specifically and thus doesn’t have much of a point in being here (though I maintain you could have found a way for him to work over here that wasn’t “Q-Less”) or Vash who doesn’t have much of a point at all. And while you could conceivably see Lursa and B’Etor lurking around the area scrounging up resources for their next nefarious scheme, it takes no leap of the imagination whatsoever to picture Lwaxana here. She may have family and friends on the Enterprise but she’s an ambassador herself and has her own life outside of them. In fact, it would be an insult to her character to insinuate she doesn’t. Of course she’d be part of a Federation diplomatic delegation to Deep Space 9, the most important port of call in the galaxy.

This is very well portrayed during Lwaxana’s introductory scene in the teaser: Although it’s not required for viewers to have seen her previous episodes as she’s consciously positioned alongside the other members of the ambassadorial delegation, the show does on some level expect us to know who she is and be familiar with how she acts and the kind of stories she appears in.…

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The interpretation here seems obvious. So obvious, in fact, it almost feels hard to accept.

Stories have power. That much we have established: “What war hasn’t been a war of fiction?” as Alan Moore would say. Our ideas of how the world is are cultivated in the stories we tell about them and guide our actions in a myriad of ways, from the material psychology of the copycat effect to the more intangible power of symbols and synchromysticism. And so it’s no great stretch to see, in “If Wishes Were Horses”, our stories take on a very real life of themselves derived from the meaning we imbue them with. One way to look at it is to argue that all our knowledge of the world is in some sense a kind of story-A representative facsimile meant to stand in for experiential perception. Our conscious understanding of others in necessarily incomplete, based as it must be on what we see, what we are allowed to see and how we interpret what we see. Fantasies are narratives we outline ourselves deliberately built out of distortions and exaggerations.

None of this is new for us: We know spirituality goes hand in hand with performativity. Like Alan Moore also said, “there’s a certain amount of sham in shamanism”. Some shamanic rituals involve adopting the guise of spirits or the retelling of sacred stories. Magic, in the western sense, is just another form of symbolic language representation of individual experience. The occult is “hidden” specifically because it belongs to a realm we’re not consciously aware on an everyday basis. It’s also well-trod ground for Star Trek: The obvious point of comparison is “Where No One Has Gone Before”, but Michael Piller said since that was “six years ago on a different show” there was no reason not to do another story that “celebrated imagination”. I agree inasmuch as I believe it’s *always* important to tell stories like this.

I’m not convinced Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are different shows.

But going back beyond this particular series, the theme does tend to reoccur; “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” being possibly the other biggest example in Star Trek’s history prior to “Where No One Has Gone Before”. This does seem odd territory for science fiction, though: It’s the very thing you might think Hard SF, or at least the proponents of Hard SF, would denounce as fantasy at best and “woo” at worst. Mind and consciousness, and thus the experiential, is something traditionally seen as taboo for empiricism. And yet even in the celebrated works of the old masters you see things like “telepathic science”, hinting that perhaps the experience and the observational process aren’t as irreconcilable as we might think. Star Trek is not Hard SF, but this only means that it lacks the self-conscious narrow materialist focus that the genre has come to represent in this day and age: It does not mean, and should not mean, that it is anti-science.…

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