Greatest Moments in Trek: Part 3, The Next Generation

            After I got done with the last post, I went and watched a few episodes of the animated series, and you know, if I hadn’t known that they were trek cartoons, I’d never have guessed it. Of course, the visual effects probably give it away, but what can I say. I had a really hard time limiting myself to just two Next Generation episodes. Yeah I know, I’ve said that each time, but TNG really starts to get into my favorite trek, and what was difficult with the original series becomes nearly impossible for Next Gen. My fiancé suggested that, after this blog cycle is complete, I go back and write posts about particular episodes. That’s exactly what I was planning on doing. But I want to finish this first.

            When Next Gen came out, a lot of fans weren’t sure how to take it. To many, it seemed like the creators of TNG were trying to ape the original series, and doing a bad job of it. That was one of the reasons Spock appeared in Reunification, to bridge the gap between the two camps of trek fans, old series fans and TNG. For me, young as I am, it’s hard to imagine those two groups being at odds, but these were early days in 1987 when “Encounter at Farpoint” first came on television.

            I remember my first real exposure to star trek, and it was to TNG. I was eleven. I’d come home from a three-day camp for blind and other disabled kids near Waco Texas, and my mother had taken me to Wal-Mart. While there, she asked me if I wanted anything; it was our tradition at that time that, money being sufficient, I got one tape of my choosing (yes, younger fans, I listened to cassette tapes and I was 13 before I had a CD player). I wanted the recording of Woodstock 94. Well it wasn’t available, so instead she came back with what she told me was something she thought I might like. She said it was a book on tape. Well, I’d never owned a book on tape before. I’d borrowed from the Library of Congress’s Library Service for the Blind, and so of course I knew they existed. But actually have one? Never did. The book was the three-hour-long abridged novelization of the recently released Star Trek:  Generations. It was read by John Delancy.

            Now I knew my mother and father occasionally watched star trek, and I’d caught snippets of the odd episode here and there. I’d heard of some ship that was called, Enterprise, but I didn’t know anything about it. But I took the book home and began listening … and I was hooked. My mother jokingly claims to have been regretting that purchase for almost twenty years. Well, Generations is a hard first introduction, because I didn’t understand why the book took place in two different timelines, and the Nexus was really hard to grasp. So I went back and read the novelizations of the first six movies, watched some TNG, and I understood. The rest is, well, history. History that culminates in, among other things, this blog.

            When it came to selecting episodes of TNG to talk about here, it was agonizingly hard, because TNG has so many standout episodes. “Best of Both Worlds 1 and 2,” “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” “Relics,” “The Inner Light,” so hard to choose and so many reasons to include any one or any two of those. One episode, though, was without any doubt going to be included. No, it’s not “Reunification.” Good guess though, because I am attached to Spock. What is it then?

“The Measure of a Man”

Story by Melinda Snodgrass

Wikipedia Summary:  While the Enterprise is docked at Starbase 173 for routine maintenance, Cyberneticist Commander Bruce Maddox pays Lieutenant Commander Data a visit, wishing to better understand how Data's creator, Dr. Nunien Soong, was able to overcome certain problems in designing and constructing Data's positronic brain. It quickly becomes clear that Maddox has an ulterior motive: that of storing Data's positronic brain in the Starbase mainframe computer and shutting down and disassembling the android, to learn how to recreate Soong's technology -- though Maddox promises to restore Data after the analysis is complete. Data, aware of the delicate nature of this procedure, to prevent damage to himself, refuses to succumb to Maddox's desires, forcing Maddox to turn to Starfleet to order that Data submit himself to "experimental refit". Captain Picard stands up for Data, while Data believes the only way to avoid the order is to resign from Starfleet. Maddox, however, points out that Data is the property of Starfleet and not a sentient being, and as such, Starfleet need not permit him to resign.
Picard requests Starfleet Judge Advocate General for the twenty-third sector, Captain Philippa Louvois, to hold a hearing to determine Data's legal status. Louvois agrees; however, as her office is understaffed at the moment, she drafts Commander Riker to represent Maddox's interests, and the position that Data is the property of Starfleet -- and without the broad array of human rights accorded in the United Federation of Planets-- and Picard, to serve to represent Data's interests, that Data is a sentient being, with the choice to resign from Starfleet and to refuse to undergo Maddox's procedures. Riker, forced to prosecute against Data to prevent a summary ruling against him (to ensure the issue is accorded due process of law) enters the same argument Maddox had made years before, where Maddox was the sole dissenting vote as to Data's petition to attend Starfleet Academy and pursue a Starfleet commission.
Picard initially finds Riker's prosecution difficult to challenge. However, during a recess, Picard talks to Guinan, who suggests that regardless of whether Data is a machine or not, Maddox's goal is tantamount to sanctioning slavery; Picard uses this to defuse Riker's arguments when the court reconvenes. The discussion of Data's sentience turns to metaphysical matters. Picard points out that Data meets two of the three criteria that Maddox uses to define "sentient life". Data is intelligent and self-aware, but Picard asks anyone in the court to show a means of measuring "consciousness". With no one able to answer this, Louvois acknowledges that neither she nor anyone else can measure this in Data (nor in any other person present) and, as such, Data, as a matter of law, is a sentient being. She therefore rules that "Data has the right to choose." Upon the court's ruling, Data formally refuses to undergo the procedure.

            Best thing I learned out of this episode? How to play poker, of course. Well, ok not quite. But I did learn most of what I know about poker from the various card games scattered throughout the series. That’s neither here nor there though, so we’ll just, as they say in Vegas, let it ride. This episode does hold special significance for me, though. I’ve had the pleasure of introducing several people over the years to star trek with various results. In any case, no matter what series they end up liking, or even if they ultimately decide it’s not for them, I always start here, in TNG’s 35^th episode. Mostly I use this one as a starter because it doesn’t rely on any implied knowledge the viewer may have about the characters’ backgrounds. It also uses things most people know, like lawyers and court rooms, so there’s an air of familiarity with it. One person said it was like Law and Order in the twenty-fourth century, and I can see that. It’s not very sci-fi heavy, even if the protagonist is an android. So here I always begin.
            Now we come to the issues. That’s another reason I always start with this episode. The issue is both very clear to the new viewer and very complex. Often times, I’ve observed something of a startled reaction from people who were expecting run-of-the-mill sci fi, who instead found themselves provoked into fascinated thought and wound up discussing the issue of Data’s sentience with me. And what an issue. Voyager’s seventh-season episode, “Author, Author,” explores what is essentially the same question applied to a hologram, but “The Measure of a Man” both does a better job at it and was the first episode to tackle the question of Human Rights (as we call the concept today) being applied to artificial constructs.
            Of all the deep and abiding questions that that show raises, one interesting one never comes up at all. If we agree that Data is a sentient life form and is protected by the rights we accord to sentient beings, when did he become so? When, in programming a machine, do you pass the threshold and find yourself operating on a sentient entity? Think that’s an irrelevant question for today? Well, consider all the work we’re currently doing in robotics and artificial intelligence. Our sci-fi is bursting with the implications of intelligent, manmade machines. Everything from Data to C3PO to Azamoth’s three universal laws of robotics. In any case, what seems clear is that the human imagination can conceive of machines that can think and act for themselves. TNG’s “The Measure of a Man” asks the question, how ought we to regard them? As property? Or as sentient, reasoning beings whose rights ought to be respected? So in today’s push to make smarter, more intuitive computer interfaces, when will we pass that critical point where our machines will, ethically, need to be given equal status with us. I’m imagining the Supreme Court’s ruling on that day, and if someone doesn’t watch this episode on that day, they sure ought to.
            In addition, the deep metaphysical questions that crop up aren’t something that you normally see on television, and the show does a great job of both not getting too bogged down in philosophical abstractions, as philosophers themselves too frequently do, and of not skimming over the questions it raises by giving them short shrift. Picard is right when he demonstrates that there is, within the scope of that judicial hearing, no way to prove Data’s consciousness or even Picard’s own. Even the judge, who is at first inclined to sympathize with the cyberneticist Maddox, is moved, and if you listen to the opening of her ruling, you would almost think she was fighting back tears. By the end, even Maddox himself, our antagonist, has come to respect Data, seemingly as a sentient being with the same due consideration he himself would expect.
            Picard’s finest move in that hearing was to paint a picture of the future as it could be if Data is allowed to be dismantled without any thought given to his status. One android, he says, is a marvel, a wonder even, but thousands? Now you’re talking about a race, and history will judge humanity, he argues, by how we treat that race. A hard point to argue, and one that really put pressure on the presiding judge. I’ve never been a judge, but I can’t imagine that decision weighted easily on her. The most touching scene comes at the end. Riker has to prosecute, not because he wants to or because anyone else wants to see him prosecute his comrade and friend, but because due process must be observed. Both sides must have a fair and equal hearing, and Riker knows that if he just breezes through, the penalty will be a summary judgment against Data. Yet at the end, Riker’s rather depressed. He’s beating himself up not because he lost, but because he almost won. Now there’s a man who was never gladder to lose an argument, I’d say.
            The episode “The Measure of a Man” is frequently rated in the top three of most top ten favorites lists of Next Gen episodes and with good reason. Data is a very popular character, and that always helps. But I think that the questions this episode raises and the way it goes about dealing with them have more to do with why fans keep coming back to this one. The next episode I want to tackle isn’t as well known, but its questions are no less hard-hitting.

“Half a Life”
Story by Ted Roberts and Peter Alan

The U.S.S. Enterprise takes aboard Deanna Troi’s eccentric mother Lwaxana and Dr. Timicin of Kaelon II. Timicin has been brought aboard to conduct an experiment which he hopes will save his threatened home planet. The lives of the people of Kaelon II are in jeopardy as the sun their planet orbits is in a state of near-collapse. The Federation has enlisted the Enterprise to take Timicin to a sun in a similar state of decay to conduct experiments which may yield a method for saving the Kaelon system from destruction.
Upon arrival at their destination, the crew assists Timicin in modifying a photon torpedo to be fired into the proxy sun in the hopes that it will repair the damaged star and prove that the technique can be safely applied to the Kaelon sun. The torpedo is fired and, although the experiment seems initially to rectify the damage, the effect is short-lived and the experiment is declared a failure. The Enterprise returns to Kaelon II and Timicin is crushed. After some questioning by Lwaxana, Timicin reveals that his experiment's failure is not the only fact troubling him. Indeed, Timicin is about to turn 60, and on Kaelon II, everyone who reaches the age of 60 kills him or herself in what is known to their people as "the Resolution," a means of ridding their culture of the need to care for the elderly. Lwaxana is outraged by this fact, and when Picard makes it clear that he will not interfere in the planet's internal affairs, Lwaxana tries to beam herself down to the planet to halt the process. When she is thwarted, she goes into hysterics until Deanna comforts her.
After Lwaxana and Timicin end up spending an evening together, he tries to explain the custom of the Resolution to her, stating that they should never expect to be repaid for the care they show their children, and a fixed age had to be selected because just randomly choosing a time to die would be heartless. However, she still considers the custom barbaric, and refuses to accept their tradition, citing an example in Betazed history of a woman who went against the tradition of wearing a ridiculous wig and changed their civilization for the better. When Timicin's analysis of the failed test turns up some promising options, he suddenly realizes that no one else has the knowledge to carry on his work to save his world, and requests asylum on the Enterprise.
B'Tardat, the Science Minister on Kaelon II, is outraged, and sends up two warships to ensure that the Enterprise does not leave the system with Timicin on board. As Picard orders the bridge crew to analyze the offensive capabilities of the Kaelonian ships, Timicin realizes that his situation is not as simple as he had hoped, for the planet below will not accept any further reports from him. Indeed, he's informed that even if he finds a solution they will not accept it. The final straw comes when his daughter Dara beams on board to insist that he return. She cannot bear the thought, she says, of him being laid to rest anywhere but next to her mother and, although she loves him, she is ashamed of him. Timicin realizes that he is not the man to forge a cultural revolution, and agrees to return to Kaelon II. Lwaxana, despite her disagreement, realizes that Timicin's decision is his to make and, as it is the custom for loved ones to be present at the Resolution, beams down with him to be at his side as he dies.

            My seventy-four-year-old Shakespeare professor opens our discussion of King Lear with these words,  “I always liked King Lear, but until I was an old man, I didn’t really understand Lear, the man.” When I watched “Half a Life” again here a couple of weeks ago, I told my fiancé, “you know, remind me to watch this again when I’m 60 myself.” She smiled and said that I didn’t have to be aging to understand this show, and I thought of that professor and I thought, maybe not, but how might my perspective change, or not change, when I have aged.
            The social security program is currently set to deplete its money reserves by about the year 2040. By then, I’ll be 57 years old, still several years away from being able to take advantage of it. Today we hear all the time about pensions being cut, retirement plans evaporating, Medicare and Medicade being overrunn by the healthcare needs of America’s senior citizens, a population that is projected to swell drastically over the next two decades as the millions of baby boomers born during the post-World War II population explosion enter old age. I don’t know how many people in their 50’s and 60’s I’ve met who aren’t looking forward to a peaceful retirement, or to any kind of retirement. “I can’t afford to retire,” is something I’ve heard more than once.
            The working situation of America’s senior citizens is only one facet of things. I can’t overlook the multitude of nursing homes, both state-funded and privately held, of retirement homes and retirement communities, that have cropped up across this country over the last few decades. Now, I know that America is different economically and sociologically from the country that saw grandparents moving in with their children in their old age on a regular basis. It’s not the norm anymore to see people taking on eldercare. I know that economics has made it hard for people to care for themselves, let alone their parents. And yet I am left feeling like we could do a much better job as private individuals of caring for our aging parents than we do as a country. America institutionalizes its senior citizens who are no longer able to care for themselves, and even the terms, “senior,” and “senior citizen,” have a sterile, sanitized feel to them. Old age is not something we do well in this country. Nobody wants to be, “old,” or to be thought of as, “old.” We fear old age, because inevitably, old age is the last stage of death, which many in our ultramodern nation fear most of all. The fear of death is natural, but the fear of aging? Now I’m not so sure. There are cultures where a person of many years is considered to possess great wisdom, and the elderly are among the most respected and venerated, because they have lived so long and attained great age and the insights that presumably go with it. “Romanticism,” some say. Well fine. Some cultures romanticize old age; ours fears it and tries to avoid it.
            “Half a Life” is a very pointed commentary on our treatment of the elderly. I don’t doubt that some of the concerns I mentioned above were running through the storywriters’ minds. What does it say about a society that institutes a practice like the Resolution? And look at the word. For whom is it actually a resolution? The people who commit suicide? That’s what Kaelonian society teaches. In actuality, it’s a neat and tidy resolution for the young folks who don’t want to be bothered to care for their parents as they grow old, and even Timicin gives in to the cultural practice. Lwaxana’s reaction is the perfect foil to Timicin’s capitulation. Being about Timicin’s own age, she is outraged, disgusted and revolted by a society that would institute a practice like this. What’s most shameful to us as a culture is Timicin’s moment with his daughter who transports aboard to tell her father how ashamed she is that he won’t go through with it. And at last, for the sake of his children, Timicin does. And how many younger Americans have pressured their parents into nursing homes, “for your own good?” Just a question.
            I know we can do better by our elderly, and “Half a Life” encourages us to do just that. It’s an episode with its focus on an issue which, like many of star trek’s finest issue-oriented episodes, is highly relevant and pressing in our own day. It’s not an episode with a happy end, and in that way it reflects life, in which there are sometimes sad, sometimes bitter, and sometimes just puzzling or ambiguous answers. Either way it serves one of star trek’s foundational purposes, to comment on our own times. In that way, TNG continued and expanded upon the original series’ best episodes. And now it’s on to Deep Space Nine.

Greatest Moments in Trek: Part II, The Animated Series

            I’ve just got to start with this. The animated series is cute. When I first heard of it, back during that same summer when I consumed the original series (see part 1), I at first dismissed it. You’re too old for “cartoons,” I told myself. If I had been imagining anything, it was a slightly done up version of the Jetsons, and I didn’t like the Jetsons! Don’t ask me why. I just … didn’t. What I didn’t know was how well Hal Sutherland actually directed twenty-one of the twenty-two episodes that make it up, nor did I know that most of the character actors lent their voices to it, turning it from a kids’ cartoon into little mini star trek episodes. But that’s what happened. The twenty-two half-hour-length shows were released in two seasons from 1973 to 74. Today, I can’t name one person who would name the animated series as their favorite. I suppose that’s alright.

            They deserve mention in my blog because they’re very well done as far as I can tell. I’m not qualified to talk about the visuals, except for information that I’ve picked up over the years, but the quality of the voice acting was good, some of the episodes made fine connections to the actual series, and one or two actually made thought-provoking points that take them beyond mere cartoonishness. So I watched them all. It took less time, about a day really. And since Paramount considers them to be real canon, that is, events considered to have taken place in the star trek universe,  get to deal with them a little bit here. Actually all this is making me want to watch them again. So here are my two picks.

“The Counter-Clock Incident”

Wikipedia Summary: The Enterprise is taking its first commander, Commodore Robert April and his wife, Sarah, to a diplomatic conference on the planet Babel and his planned retirement ceremony, when it encounters a ship flying at fantastic speeds directly into a supernova. The Enterprise attempts to assist by grabbing the vessel with a tractor beam and locking onto it, but instead both ships are pulled through the supernova and into a negative universe where time flows backwards and everything works in a counterclockwise fashion. Consequently, everyone aboard the ship begins to grow younger--to de-age. With his crew members reduced to children, "April, now a thirty-year-old man, retakes command and must bring the Enterprise to safety before it's too late.

            This episode establishes a bit of Enterprise history. If Robert April commanded the ship first, then the Enterprise had three commanders in sequence:  Robert April, Chris Pike, and James Kirk. Dianne Carry explored the character of Robert April and that early crew (one that included Kirks father) in her bestseller, Final Frontier, which was released in 1989. It’s quite a good story.
            As for this particular episode, it’s not the first time that rapid aging or age reversal is explored in star trek and it’s not the last time either. The Next Generation Episode, “Rascals,” also sees members of the Enterprise crew reverse aged down to children, and Voyager has a second-season episode, “Innocence,” that sees Tuvok supervising some children who turn out to be adults at the end of their race’s life cycle. Finally, both the original series as well as the Next Generation have episodes that deal with rapid aging as the result of some catastrophe. It seems to be a popular topic. That being said, this one is great on action, and the notion of a universe where the aging process works in reverse is an interesting one.
            Lastly, the episode strikes me as a positive commentary on aging. I’m not the first one to have thought of this, but I’ll go on and put it out there. Too often we like to dismiss or stereotype our elderly as being past the point where they can contribute anything useful to society. This episode laughs at that idea, because it’s the old man who has to come in and save everyone’s bacon. We should be more grateful for their contributions, I think.

“The Slaver Weapon”
Wikipedia Summary:  Onboard the shuttlecraft Copernicus, Spock, Uhura, and Sulu are en-route to Starbase 25 to deliver a stasis box, a rare artifact of the Slaver culture. The now-extinct Slavers used these objects to carry weapons, valuables, scientific instruments and data. The boxes can detect each other and evidence shows that another device is located nearby.
Following the signal, the shuttle lands on an ice planet where the crew is captured by the hostile catlike Kzinti. The Kzinti had an empty stasis box of their own and were using it to lure in passing starships. They are trying to steal stasis boxes in the hopes of finding a super weapon that will return their empire to its former greatness.
Intrigue builds on intrigue as the box changes hands several times between the Federation and Kzinti crews, until the Kzinti manage to retain control of it for a time. As they explore the device's many settings, it starts talking to the Kzinti and asks them to provide several code words. When they fail to provide them, it concludes they are enemies and self-destructs, killing them.

            This wasn’t one of my personal favorites, but I have to include it because of Larry Niven’s contributions. Even by 1973, Niven was well-known as the author of Ringworld, and Jean Rodenberry suggested he adapt his short story, “The Soft Weapon,” for the star trek universe. The animated series episode is, in essence, that story, with Spock playing the role of Nessus, while Sulu and Uhura were the appropriate analogues to the human couple in Niven’s story. The Kzinti are there, and as in the short story, they are cunning and ruthless. Having read the short story myself, I find the star trek adaptation preferable, but I freely admit that’s my own personal bias. The adaptation was done well, and the show was reviewed by many critics as the animated series’ best show. My personal favorite was “Yesteryear,” because it features Spock traveling back through time to save himself, but hey, I said two episodes and I meant it. I wasn’t going to include the animated series in this post cycle, as I may have said before, but I felt I had too, and like I said, they’re just fun television. Now it’s on to the Next Generation. Now that’ll be fun.

Greatest Moments in Trek: Part I, The Original Series

            With this post, I begin a multi-part series of short entries, Greatest Moments of Trek. Now I want to tell you why I’m doing this, other than the fact that everyone, and I mean everyone, has their own favorite episodes. I feel, in this age when action and sexual tension outstrip meaning in star trek, as though we’re losing something vital, something never meant to be lost in star trek, and I know I’m not alone in feeling that way. I want to build up some credibility with all of you and to show you that I appreciate how great and masterful star trek has been, so that when I start slamming some of its latest incarnations, you’ll understand that I’m not just some guy on a rant, that I am, in fact, deeply offended and bothered as a fan and I hope, if you have loved the show long and long, that by the time we get to something like Star Trek Enterprise and I get royally ticked off, you will be ticked off too, or at least inclined to listen. In short, this is a reflective look at star trek as it has been and hopefully, as it may one day be again, though not as long as J.J. Abrams has anything to do with it. We’ll get to him. This little mini-cycle of blog posts will concern themselves with a different series in turn, and this being the first in the cycle, we go back to the original series. From each series, I’ll talk about the themes and questions and great moments of two episodes. First I’ll paste in the Wikipedia summary of each episode that I want to discuss, just so we all have a common frame of reference, and besides, the Wikipedia summaries are pretty good and they save me some work even if I do edit the summaries a bit now and again. Then I’ll talk about whichever episode it is. Two eps per blog post means that I will have discussed 8 all told, 10 if we include the Animated Series, and I will because it’s both cute and quite underrepresented, 12 if we include Star Trek Enterprise, and I’m saving a really special post for that one. But it’s not part of the Greatest Moments of Trek, series. Finally, my salute to you die-hard fans of the original series, including the cast. Yes, I know it’s been overlooked by a lot of folks in recent years, kind of getting shelved in favor of more modern stuff. And like Leonard Nemoy, I think that fact is a damned shame and that he and his fellow cast members need their contributions refreshed in many minds today. I also know that many of you weren’t overly thrilled with Star Trek 2009, and that those of you who were, liked it mainly because somebody was trying to deal with old trek again. Fair enough. I won’t say more about Star Trek 2009 here. But I put the original series first in my series not only for reasons of chronology, but because I, young though I am, agree with you and share your love for it. So here goes.

            The Original Series. Well of course it wasn’t called that in 1966. There was no need to call it that, obviously, because it was the only trek on television and in 1966, no one had envisioned the long history it’s had. Originally, Jean Roddenberry was envisioning a sort of Wild West in space. At first, he wanted to call the show “Wagon train to the Stars,” and the original name of the ship was to be the Yorktown. Just goes to show you how some great ideas change from conception to actualization. The original pilot episode, “The Cage,” starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike, was, as we all know, rejected by NBC and the series didn’t take off until NBC’s acceptance of the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” These aren’t the two episodes that I choose to feature in this blog post, but I had to begin at the beginning, and each of them is a good piece of star trek. If you’ve never seen “The Cage” in its entirety, please do so.

Now, I’m only 28, so the original Star Trek wasn’t something I saw on television. It wasn’t even the first series I came to know. First I came to know TNG and the movies and at the same time too. Then I went back and watched the original series. I watched it in a span of about two weeks over one summer break, making trips to the Clarksville Tennessee Public Library, which carried it, and checking out as many videos as the librarians would allow. They tolerantly allowed me to go over the limit. I’d bring the episodes home 15, maybe 20 at a time, stack the tapes up around the sides of the TV out of Mom’s way, and wait for her to go to work. I’d even get up early to maximize my viewing time, and I’d start watching. Being blind, I never knew which cassette I was slipping into the VCR, so it was a surprise every time. Also a bit frustrating if I wanted to see a particular one. You see, the tapes weren’t mine, so no braille labeling allowed, and I generally forgot to ask Mom to help me order the tapes on the shelf. Oh well, I thought. I’d watch them all anyway, and I did. I watched the greatest ones,  “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “A Taste of Armageddon,” “Journey to Babel.” I watched the average ones, “The Corbomite Maneuver” “The Apple,” “Who Mourns For Adonis.” And I watched the ones that fans and cast alike considered drop dead flops, among them such gems as “Spock’s Brain.” I got to know the rather impetuous and headstrong Captain James Kirk, the ever logical Spock and the crusty and compassionate Doctor Leonard McCoy as well as anyone ever did who saw them in the 60’s, if I may get away with saying that. And now it’s a pleasure to pick out two of the finest episodes and talk about them with you.

“Mirror, Mirror”

Story by Jerome Bixby

Wikipedia Summary:  After failing to persuade the Halkan Council to allow the Federation to mine dilithium crystals on their planet, Captain Kirk, along with Dr. McCoy, Scotty, and Lieutenant Uhura, return to the Enterprise. An unexpected ion storm causes a transporter malfunction, and the landing party beams aboard an unfamiliar Enterprise. The group realizes something is amiss as they arrive on the transporter pad: a goateed Spock harshly disciplines the transporter operator, Lt. Kyle, for carelessness in nearly losing the ship's captain. Parallel universe crew members carry "agonizers", which superior officers use to punish them for dereliction of duty. Kirk deduces that they must have switched places with their mirror-universe counterparts, that the landing party from this universe must now be aboard his Enterprise, and that his landing party must impersonate their counterparts until they can find a way home. In this alternate universe, the USS Enterprise is called an "Imperial Starship" or ISS Enterprise, and a brutal Terran Empire is in power rather than the Federation. Officers rise in rank by assassinating their superiors (as Kirk discovers when Chekov nearly succeeds in assassinating him), and as a result all high ranking officers must hire a personal bodyguard. Uniforms in this alternate universe are very different; side arms and daggers are standard issue, while the clothing itself is much more revealing. Torturing subordinates - by flogging, agonizer, or the “Agony Booth” is an acceptable form of discipline.

Meanwhile, on board the USS Enterprise Mr. Spock notices the changed personalities of the landing party and orders security to take them to a holding cell. The mirror Kirk tries to bribe Spock with offers of power, money or even a command of Spock’s own if he, Kirk,  is freed, but Spock simply replies, "fascinating," and continues investigating. Spock comes to the same conclusion as Kirk: the ion storm must have opened a barrier between parallel universes, and the two landing parties have switched places.

Back on the ISS Enterprise, Kirk goes to the captain's quarters, which are quite different from his own. He discovers that the mirror-Kirk has been ordered to annihilate the Halkans if they refuse the Empire's "request" to mine dilithium; horrified, he studies his counterpart's records further. In this universe, Kirk gained command of the ISS Enterprise by assassinating Captain Christopher Pike and was responsible for massacring 5000 colonists on Vega IX, among many other atrocities.

When Mirror-Spock informs Kirk that the ship is ready to attack the Halkans, Kirk orders a 12-hour delay. This piques mirror-Spock's curiosity, and although he obeys the order; he does report the suspicious activity of his Captain to the imperial Starfleet Command, and receives orders to kill Captain Kirk if he does not carry out the order to destroy the uncooperative Halkans.

Having failed to sabotage the weapons systems, Scotty and McCoy work secretly to figure out what happened with the transporter. While Scotty searches for a way to return them to the correct universe, Kirk goes to his quarters and meets the beautiful Lieutenant Marlena Moreau, who refers to herself as the "Captain's Woman". It appears that female crew members may attach themselves by agreement to particular men - Marlena is evidently tiring of her Kirk. Marlena shows Kirk the Tantalus Field, a device in the captain's quarters which can secretly monitor anyone on the ship and "eliminate" them. When he prevents her from eliminating the mirror-Spock, she realizes something is wrong — her Kirk would not have hesitated.

Kirk stalls the mirror-Spock while his crewmembers search for a way home, but Spock is suspicious. Spock, not wanting command of the ISS Enterprise as it would make him an instant target of assassination, decides instead to study the Captain as long as he can.

Scotty has, with the aid of McCoy, rigged up the necessary connections to make a return switch. Mirror-Sulu, the security chief, is distracted from his monitors at the vital moment by Uhura. Kirk reaches the transporter room, but the mirror-Spock leads him at phaser-point to sick bay, where the landing party has gathered. In two ensuing fights, Kirk sequentially knocks the Vulcan and the mirror-Sulu unconscious (Marlena has "eliminated" Sulu's thugs with the Tantalus Field). Uhura, Kirk, and Scotty head for the transporter room again, while McCoy stays behind to make sure that mirror-Spock is all right. In the transporter room, they meet Marlena, who now knows the facts and asks them to take her with them. Kirk refuses on the grounds that the energy is set for four people. Marlena persists and is disarmed by Uhura.

Mirror-Spock suddenly comes to and quickly mind melds with McCoy in search of answers. He discovers the switch, and decides to operate the transporter so that the entire landing party may return to their own universe. This convinces Kirk that this universe's Mr. Spock is still an ethical Vulcan guided by logic. He suggests to mirror-Spock that a Federation-like system is more logical than the ruthless barbarian Empire. Spock objects that one must have power; Kirk informs him of the Tantalus Field, and Mirror-Spock agrees to consider the idea.

On board the USS Enterprise, Spock decides to attempt the beaming sequence at the same time the ISS Enterprise attempts theirs. The switch is successful. As the episode ends, Kirk meets his own universe's Lieutenant Marlena Moreau, who is quite a different woman from her counterpart in the other universe. Kirk tells Spock that Moreau "seems like a nice, likable girl" and that he thinks they "could be friends". The real Spock also comments that the ruthless attitude of the Mirror Kirk, Dr. McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura were refreshing, and "the very flower of humanity".

Aside from getting Spock’s quote at the end of that episode somewhat mixed up, that summary’s pretty good. That episode really started something, apart from its themes and questions that is. Both Deep Space Nine and Star Trek Enterprise dabble in that same alternate universe with DS9 devoting 5 episodes to it. That particular alternate universe has also spawned quite a number of books and short stories including at least one short story anthology. What’s obvious is that fans have remained darkly fascinated with what they perceive as a universe gone awry. I’m one such fan. I admit it.

            What really strikes me is the notion that things in that universe are not so implausible as we’d like to believe. As the alternate O’Brian comments a century later in that universe’s timeline (see DS9’s second-season episode,  “Crossover”),  “It made me start thinking … how different each of us might be if history had been different just a little …… If the conditions we live in were slightly changed.”

            We look at an episode like “Mirror, Mirror,” and we say to ourselves, “Thank Heaven that’s not me. That couldn’t be me.” Couldn’t it? To what extent are we products of the moral and ethical zeitgeist that we inhabit during our lifetimes? That is not to negate the role of free will or free choice, but the morays and ethics of the cultures and times in which we live play their parts in shaping the basic frameworks in which we operate, deciding that this course of action is ethical and right, and that some other is wrong. Even if we choose a framework wholly opposed to the beliefs and customs of our own time, as some people do, those beliefs and customs had to shape the framework we choose to live by, even if what they did is to insure that we choose to set ourselves apart from them, if that makes sense. You have to have something to be apart from before you can say, “I’m going to live apart from this culture’s ideals and values.”

            So, a militaristic culture where officers advance in rank via assassination, where exploitation of new civilizations is the norm and is policy, a culture where greed and ambition are considered wholesome and healthy parts of a human being’s character. Well, we don’t need to look into space for that. We can see elements of that sort of thinking in many cultures of our own past, from ancient Rome to Nazi Germany. And we have to ask ourselves this:  if you and I had been born into a culture like the one in “Mirror, Mirror,” if we’d been born as average people into that culture, how would we feel about the ethics of assassination or exploitation or cruelty? My guess,  and it’s only a guess, is that even the most decent among us, decent by our actual standards today, would condone the culture’s ideals to one extent or another. Even Spock, who in the alternate universe is still a logical being, was shaped by its morays. As he reminds our captain Kirk:  “Terror must be maintained or the empire is doomed. It is the logic of history.” And in that time and place that was indeed the logic of history. It was also, as Kirk points out at the end, the logic of waste. Ultimately, “Mirror, Mirror” shows us that humanity, even in Jean Roddenberry’s universe could be savage, unprincipled and barbaric, as Spock mentions, and that often times, the accidents of history are the only things that make us turn out any better. I take it as a warning. Wouldn’t you?

“The Enemy Within”

Story by Richard Matheson

Wikipedia Summary:  The Enterprise is doing a geological survey of the planet Alpha 177. Geological Technician Fisher falls from an embankment and injures his hand. He is immediately beamed back to the Enterprise for medical treatment. During the beam up, the transporter system behaves oddly. Nearly losing the technician, Mr. Scot checks over the transporter equipment, but finds nothing wrong. He does notices magnetic dust from some ore samples covering Fisher's uniform when the technician materializes, and Scotty orders him to have the uniform decontaminated.
Soon afterward, Captain Kirk beams back to the ship. The transporter seems to work smoothly, but Kirk feels disoriented. Scotty escorts him out of the room, leaving it empty. A moment later, a second Captain Kirk materializes on the transporter pad and no one is aware of his arrival. This Kirk is the "other half" of the Captain's split persona: a physical manifestation of his more selfish and evil qualities.
The first thing the "evil" Kirk does is head to sickbay, where he demands a bottle of Saurian brandy from McCoy. McCoy doesn't understand this sudden, aggressive mood swing.
Back in the transporter room, Scotty beams up an animal specimen from the landing party, which appears to be a small, horned, dog-like creature. Two "dogs", however, arrive on the transporter pads. One is extremely vicious, while the other is very timid, yet both look identical. Confirming that the team only beamed one animal to the ship, Scotty realizes that something is very wrong with the transporter system. He is forced to leave the remaining landing party (including Lieutenant Sulu) on the planet until further notice.
Meanwhile, the evil Kirk, appearing drunk and out of control, enters the quarters of Yeoman Janice Rand and lies in wait for her. When she arrives, he grabs and assaults her. She manages to fight back, scratching his face with her sharp fingernails, and then tries to escape. She cries out for Crewman Fisher to call Mr. Spock. Unfortunately, the evil Kirk incapacitates Fisher before he can help. Simultaneously, elsewhere on the ship, the good Captain Kirk begins to show signs of weakness, apparently losing his ability to make decisions and give orders, the so-called "power of command".
The evil Kirk acquires a phaser from a crewman, whom he also incapacitates, and then hides on the lower decks of the ship. Anticipating his moves, the good Kirk finds the evil Kirk on the Engineering Deck, and Spock disables the latter with a Vulcan nerve pinch. Spock is unsure how to proceed until he observes the evil Kirk showing signs of fatigue, which indicates that he may be dying.
It is quickly surmised that neither Kirk can survive for long in his separated state. Time is running out not only for the Kirks, but also for the stranded landing party, the members of which are slowly freezing to death as night falls on Alpha 177.
Scotty reports that the transporter unit ionizer is damaged and would normally take a week to repair; however, he and Spock rig up a connection to power the transporter from the ship's impulse engines. They recombine the dog-creature, but it dies as a result of the strain. Not giving up hope, Scotty continues to work on the problem.
In the meantime, the good Kirk releases his opposite's bindings in Sickbay when the evil Kirk promises not to fight back. However, the opposite does just that: he overpowers the good Kirk and rushes off to the bridge, where he orders the ship to leave orbit. The good Kirk follows and confronts him. The evil Kirk soon collapses from the strain. Good Kirk takes him to the transporter room. With fingers crossed, Spock dematerializes both Kirks, and finally a single Kirk returns. Demonstrating that his power of command has returned, along with his intelligence and compassion, Kirk's first words are: "Get those men aboard fast." The landing party members are beamed up, and aside from a "little" exposure and frostbite, they are fine.

            Among its other notable features, this first-season episode demonstrates the use of the Vulcan nerve pinch. Originally, the script called for Spock to sneak up on the evil Kirk and club him over the head with a phaser. But Leonard Nemoy, feeling that that would be too savage a gesture for such a cultured and logical Vulcan, proposed a nerve pinch that would be best performed by a Vulcan as the means to render the bad guy unconscious. And so it was.
            The great theme that this episode explores is the positive role that the darker sides of the human psyche play. How would it be, the show asks, if we could just strip away our anger and fear and fight or flight instincts and all the rest and leave the rest of the human machine as it is? What kind of people would result? Well, utopianists would like to tell us that we’d get a race of passive individuals that don’t hurt each other and we’d have a world in which war didn’t happen. Remember this was during the Vietnam era, so the notion of peaceful co-existence was on a lot of people’s minds. Now, don’t take that to mean that this episode is in favor of violent conflict. It’s not. This episode’s essential message is that the human being is what he is, and that if he is to be an upright and ethical and moral person, he needs all of his faculties, including his less pleasant ones.
            Kirk, without his violent alter ego, is indeed passive and probably wouldn’t swat a fly if it were on the end of his nose. True enough. He is also crippled by indecision. The, “power of command,” that Spock refers to consists of his decisiveness, his ability to make judgment calls and his ability to lead and give orders. Not to say that he has to be a raging lunatic like his evil counterpart to do those things, but those qualities are missing from this passive, tired, weakened Kirk. The alter ego, meanwhile, is incapable of prudence, restraint, rational decision-making or considering the consequences of his decisions. He is an impulse-driven being, wholly caught up in his emotions, none of which are moderated and all of which are exhibited in the extreme. Without the checks and balances that are placed on us by what I suppose would be our higher brains and higher cognitive skills, we would, in all likelihood, spend our lives behaving as the alternate Kirk did. I’m neither a neuropsychologist nor a psychologist of any stripe, so I couldn’t say for sure.
            The point that this episode drives home, though, is that neither Kirk alone can accomplish a thing. Only when the two halves, light and darkness, good and evil, ying and yang if you want, operate in unison can the man get anything done. It seems we need our rationality and our anger, our fear and our reason, to function as parts of a single gestalt. In short, don’t dismiss the negative qualities you have within you; make them work together for positive good. That they can work together for positive good, is the uplifting note on which the show ends.

            I probably didn’t choose someone’s favorite episode in here, but I did say I was going to limit myself to only two. If you see other themes in the two shows I mentioned, post a comment and tell me about them. By no means do I consider my own word on the subject to be the final, definitive commentary. I agree with what Leonard Nemoy said in a recent interview, that the original series has been overshadowed, and if this blog post is a bit longer than the ones coming up, hopefully it serves to draw the original series back into the light. I hope you enjoyed it. Next we’ll talk about the animated series.

The Differences of Deep Space Nine

As an eleven-year-old, I was first introduced to The Next Generation series. Then came Voyager. Then, the original series. I loved them all. I was in my early 20’s before I had the opportunity to really sit down with Deep Space Nine and watch it all, but I finally did. And I learned that what is often said of Shakespeare's use of setting, theme and character can also be applied to DS9:  namely, that there is a character, a place and a theme in there for each and every one of us. Swashbucklers, hardworking blue-collars, devious and cunning types, intellectuals, and that’s only scratching the surface. What about themes? Marriage, religion, money, power, politics in both domestic and foreign flavors, terrorism, it's all there. For openers,  let me start with something that’s hitting home across the American Midwest today, money and labor relations.

Union workers across America are seeing their benefits slashed. State workers in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and now I hear in my home state  of Tennessee have had various work-related and bargaining-related rights taken away. It's been tried here in Illinois too and doubtless will be again. Two years ago, in fact, I participated in a lawful strike on behalf of our own graduate student union. The particulars aren't important now, but when I came home, having observed the picket lines, I watch the fourth-season episode, "Bar Association." You may recall, that's the one where Rom and the rest of Quark's employees form a union and go on strike to protest Quark’s 30% across-the-board pay cuts. Ok, maybe it was on a space station, and maybe it involved a bunch of strange aliens with huge, comical ears. Yet that episode resonated with me, because I knew what it was to have to struggle against an enormous, indifferent power structure, and me being at the bottom of the economic food chain. And that's only one flavor in which money is represented! For another example, consider the fifth-season episode, "Business as Usual." That's the one, just in case you need a brief reminder, where Quark is drowning in debt and his cousin Gaela persuades him to go into arms sales. Yeah, pretty much any money-related episode is going to feature the Ferengi, but then, unlike the Federation, the Ferengi still use money. So there we are. As for "Business as Usual," an interesting question of principle comes into play:  do the ends justify the means? A cliché question, some say. A timeless one, I say. We’ll come back to that question in a much more meaningful way in a bit. If you haven't seen it in a while, watch it again and notice how Quark's friends, the station's command crew, answer that question. They clearly disapprove of his way of getting out of debt. easy for them to say, one is tempted to add here, since his friends don't use money and aren't facing crushing debt and imminent ruin. Fair enough. But remember also, Quark himself is faced with the ultimate test. Will he do the thing in the end that will bring him riches beyond his dreams, or will he balk on moral grounds? His choice doesn't concern us in this discussion so much as the way money is dealt with and represented in the Ferengi-based episodes. And speaking of those Ferengi and their money ...

The Ferengi are infamous for two things:  their greed and their treatment of women. Quark's mother, for one, is definitely not willing to subscribe to the accepted morays:  that women should always be naked and in the kitchen, never allowed to participate in the business world, forbidden by law from earning profit. Note how Ishka, Quark and Rom’s mother, protests that she, being a “female” and all, is just as capable of earning profit as any male and much more skilled at it than many. I’m referring to the third-season episode, “Family Business.” These strictures are so extreme as to appear ludicrous. I grant you that. But in their own way, the struggles of Ferengi women mirror women's struggles in many a culture of our own day, including the good old U S of A! In many employment sectors, women are still underrepresented and underpaid. Even here in America there are religious groups who see Woman's place, as the old saying has it, "bear-foot, pregnant and in the kitchen." The troubles of Ferengi women and the Women's rights movement that Quark's mother initiates, resulting in the reforms that Brunt and Quark talk about in DS9's next to last episode, “The Dogs of War,” mirror the travails of as well as the progress made by women's rights organizations in America towards a more equitable society.

Well ok, enough about the Ferengi and their money. Truthfully, they’re not my favorite race. How about marriage? True enough, we've seen a marriage or two in star trek before. The O'Brians' wedding in the fourth-season TNG episode, “Data's Day," was particularly event-filled. Yet DS9 deals with the topic from multiple perspectives. Culture, gender and value clash all in one? Can't do better than Rom and Lita’s subplot in the fifth-season episode, “Ferengi Love Songs.” In Ferengi culture and law, when a woman enters into marriage, it's customary for her to sign a document known as the Waiver of Property and Profit. This is somewhat similar to old English Common Law, wherein any property or money held by the woman transfers to her husband upon marriage. Lita, being Bajoran,  refused to sign, and Rom was faced with a choice. His choice is summed up in this conversation.

Rom:  “Latinum lasts longer than lust, rule of acquisition 229.”

O’Brian, “Maybe, but lust can be a lot more fun.”

In the end, he decides that this waiver is far less important than keeping his fiancé and his engagement. Good for him, I say. On second thought, I can go you one better. How about the sixth-season episode, "You Are Cordially Invited." Warf and Jadzia's wedding. A Klingon and a Trill? A fun-loving Trill and an ever serious Klingon with little sense of humor too. You may recall Jadzia's refusal to kowtow to Martok's wife as the mistress of the house into which Dax wanted to marry, and the cancelation of the wedding that happened as a result. At one point, Warf, thoroughly depressed and at loose ends, is sitting in his quarters aboard the Defiant when Martok comes calling. I've told my own fiance that I could kill the script writers for writing such a profound dialogue between those two. Warf is reflecting on the many differences between himself and his erstwhile fiance, and he observes that she's nothing like the woman he always thought he'd marry:  "Anyone can see that we are hopelessly mismatched. She is Trill, I am Klingon. She's had five marriages, this would be my first. When she's laughing, I'm somber; when I'm happy, she's crying. She plays Tongo with the Ferengi bartender; I can barely stand him. She mocks everything, while I take everything seriously. ... She is nothing like the woman I thought I'd marry.”

After Martok commiserates, discussing his wife Sirella’s own particular shortcomings, he tells Warf that in spite of all those things, he loves her deeply. Martok then goes on to make a statement about marriage that, couched as it is in Klingon custom and culture, is the best defense of and justification for marriage I've heard:  "We Klingons often tout our prowess in battle and our desire for honor and glory above all else ... but how hollow is the sound of victory without someone to share it with. And honor gives little comfort to a man alone in his home ... and in his heart.”

As for other aspects of family, let's not forget that DS9 does a much more thorough and more consistent job of portraying family struggles than the other series manage. Benjamin Sisko's struggle to raise his son on the station is a recurring theme throughout the series. And, I might add, I'm glad Jake didn't join Starfleet. That would've been too much the expected thing, following in his father's footsteps. There are lots of great Ben-Jake moments to choose from, so many in fact that for any one I might choose, someone else could argue that some other would have been better. I can respect that. At least there is such a large number to pick from. Yet, if I had to pick just one exemplifying episode, it'd have to be the fourth-season episode, "The Visitor." TV Guide ranked it in the September 21, 1996 issue as the best episode of trek, any trek, ever produced. In 2004, it slipped to fourth place. It's a truly phenomenal piece of television, nominated for a 1996 Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation, and fans and cast alike frequently hold it up as their favorite. I'm right there too. Tell you what, go read the Wikipedia article for the plot summary, or better yet, watch it. You don't have to be a star trek fan generally or very familiar with DS9 in particular to appreciate it. When I first showed it to Nicole, and even with her being as unfamiliar with star trek at that time as she was, she cried her heart out over it. Hope you don’t mind me telling people that, Dear. Go on ...  there, seen it? Excellent! Jake's devotion of half his life to the rescue of his father, and his choice to make the ultimate sacrifice so that his father would be restored to his rightful place in the timeline, thereby nullifying the older Jake's entire existence, is only comprehensible if we can be brought to understand the love and the bond that existed between father and son. No other episode of trek handles that relationship nearly so well. And who can forget that immortal bit of advice that Benjamin gives to young Jake and that, many decades later, Old Jake gives to the young writer who has come to visit him,  “It’s life, and you can miss it if you don’t open your eyes.”

Let's move to religion. Benjamin Sisko's role as the Emissary of the Bajoran Prophets is a thread that runs throughout the series and impacts both its beginning and its end. Personally, I don't think it was the best move on the creators' part, but they did it, a lot of folks like it, and it affected the series in some interesting ways"'. Recall that the Bajoran Wormhole is an artificial construct built by alien beings who exist wholly outside what we know to be space and time. To the people of Bajor, they've been a sort of deity, appearing in the people's holy writings for millennia. So the first question that comes up is, who are the Wormhole guardians, the Prophets of Bajor, or just some super evolved life form? What troubles Sisko throughout the series is that they may be wearing both those hats. Just the same, how ought we to think of them? I'm put in mind of the final episode of season 1, “In the Hands of the Prophets.” The school teacher, Keiko O'Brian, is caught up in a controversy over how to present information to the school kids about the wormhole. Should she, for example, teach that the wormhole is a scientific phenomenon and that its builders or  occupants are simply another in a long line of alien races the kids learn about? Or, as Vedek Winn demands, ought she to teach that the Wormhole is the literal Celestial Temple of the Prophets? what if both are true? Does anyone look at that discussion and not see the decades-long debate over how and what to teach our own school-children about evolution, creation and so-called intelligent design? I certainly see the connection. My guess is, I’m not the only one who does.

I want to switch topics radically now. This being my blog rather than my doctoral thesis, I can do that. From religion to terrorism. On second thought, that’s not such a radical shift after all. Terrorism has this interesting thing to note about it. It polarizes. You may have heard that old axiom, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter/revolutionary/martyr/hero.” Well with DS9, star trek had come of age and was ready to explore this issue in the form of the Maquis.

A brief intro to the Maquis is in order. The name comes from the old French resistance in Nazi-occupied France. So, when the Federation and the Cardassian Union signed their permanent (or not so permanent as it turned out) treaty, they created a demilitarized zone (DMZ) between their two spheres of influence Ideally, no Cardassian ships were to enter the zone and pick off Federation colonies, and no Starfleet ships would cross into the DMZ and wipe out any happy Cardassian settlers. Well there were problems. The DMZ wasn’t placed precisely between Federation and Cardassian territories, but rather it was a zone of space that strayed into both. So picture a few Cardassian colonies in Federation territory and a few Federation colonies in Cardassian territory. This is what you call, “trouble.”

We first hear of the trouble in the two-part second-season episode, “The Maquis.” You see, the problem with telling your people, “hey, your colony world is now in our former enemy’s home space, you need to leave,” is simply this. They may not want to leave. And they didn’t leave. Trouble, in the form of one set of colonists attacking the other, wasn’t long in coming. Colonists on the Cardassian side were secretly gifted with weapons from the Cardassian military, and since the Federation wouldn’t reply in kind, Federation colonists resorted to getting weapons by any means necessary for what they claimed was self-defense. Sounds like the Israeli-Palestinian situation to me. As you can imagine, feelings ran high. There were those on both sides who sympathized with the colonists, and there were those who saw them as terrorists, plain and simple.

In truth, there was nothing simple or black and white about it. Why else, for example, did Starfleet officers, sworn to protect and defend the Federation, resign their commissions and go to work for the Maquis? TNG’s Ensign Ro Laryn, Commander Cal Hudson from the DS9 episode just mentioned, Voyager’s Commander Chakotay, and DS9‘s Commander Michael Eddington are the examples that come to mind. The answer is this. The situation wasn’t black and white. As one officer said, “it’s a bad treaty. We gave too much away.” And what do you do when faced with a bad treaty and an opposition who refuses to play by the rules. The colonists’ answer was, if the Federation won’t help us, we’ll break the rules to survive. And so they did.

The thing I like about the Maquis theme that runs through DS9, also through Voyager and the end of TNG, is that it shows life in the twenty-fourth century as less than ideal. Jean Roddenberry wanted to present star trek as being an ideal that humanity can reach if it wants to. His reasons for this creative decision are beyond reproach, and he did well. There have been many who reprove the creators of the Maquis and of the Dominion, which is our next topic, because they take away some of that idealistic shine from the star trek universe. To me though, what they did was to make it a more believable place. Michael Eddington said it best in the fourth-season episode, “For The Cause” when he told Sisko, “Nobody leaves paradise.” For whatever it’s worth to fans of the Original Series who see star trek’s cause gone awry in Deep Space Nine, and there are many of you, I still think Jean Roddenberry’s universe, Dominion War and all, is a better one overall in which to live.

Speaking of paradise, it’s time to talk about the Dominion War. I stayed away from this topic until now for a couple of reasons. First, it’s such an obvious thing to talk about, and is so often the first thing that people think of when they think of Deep Space Nine, that I wanted to cover other things first. It’s also one of the things that drew the most criticism from old line fans of trek. “A war,” they said, “you can’t have a nasty war in star trek. It’s not what Jean Roddenberry would’ve wanted.” Actually, I can tell you that this was the last series he knew about before his death, and while he didn’t have a hand in its inception, he did approve the direction in which the creators, Ira Stephen Behr and Michael Pillar, wanted to go with it. The interesting thing about war is that it tends to bring out all of our best and worst qualities. It also represents a radical departure from a show that’s mostly based on exploration like TNG, and it drives home the idea that not everything in the galaxy is necessarily amenable to our ideals or our ways of doing things. The Dominion War was an enormous plot concept in the series, and this series marks the first time in trek that a plot concept was introduced and sustained over a long span of time. Because of the skill of its handling, I’m going to discuss the way the plot concept was introduced, and then hit on a few things that bring us back to particular characters and particular questions of principle. So bear with me.

The first mention of the Dominion was deliberately set in a comical Ferengi episode, the second season episode, “Rules of Acquisition.” We don’t know much about it, merely that it’s there, it’s big, and Quark might get to trade with it. The closing episode of season 2, “JemHadar,” reveals the Dominion to be a large collection of civilizations headed up by the Founders, Odo’s fellow shape shifters, the Vorta, the Dominion’s diplomats and advisors, and the JemHadar, the military arm of its empire. In “JemHadar,” as well as the two-part episode that opens season three, “The Search,” we are brought to understand that the Dominion is a ruthless organization that is not to be trifled with. I find the subsequent three seasons’ buildup towards war to be magnificently done. Consider the paranoia about changeling infiltrators in the fourth-season episodes “Home front” and “Paradise Lost,” the Founders’ (changelings or shape shifters) attempt to destabilize the quadrant by provoking the Klingons and the Federation into war, see “Way of the Warrior” and “Apocalypse Rising,” and the Dominion’s efforts to create allies in the alpha quadrant as a prelude to its all-out assault. See the fifth-season episodes, “In Purgatory’s Shadow” and “By Inferno’s Light,” which should have been one episode with a part I and II, if you ask me. Seasons six and seven deal with the Federation plunged into all-out conflict. As I said, the buildup of the Dominion and the war as a plot concept had never been tried over so many years within star trek before. Having said that, there are numerous episodes I could discuss, numerous questions that could be raised. You could probably make a book out of all that can be said in regards to the themes, questions and issues that the Dominion War plot concept is able to deal with. But this is a blog, not a book. So I limit my Dominion War focus to two concepts that explore the timeless ends versus means dilemma.

The first is section 31. In the sixth-season episode, “Inquisition,” they are revealed for the first time. A small, highly covert, highly autonomous intelligence outfit, they are neither answerable to nor connected with the main Starfleet or Federation power structure. They are revealed as being a highly elite and unprincipled group of people whose sole goal is the preservation of the Federation at any cost, and any cost means any cost. Deception, sabotage, murder and downright genocide are not beyond this organization. Naturally, the question surfaces, does an idealistic state like the Federation or even, let’s say, the United States, need such groups to do its dirty work? Can such groups be justified? In the seventh-season episode, “Inter Enim Silent Leges,” Dr. Julian Bashir, who is asked time and again to join 31, is arguing with a 31 operative who offers him this justification to think about:  "The Federation needs men like you, doctor. Men of conscience. Men of principle. Men who can sleep at night. ... You're also the reason Section Thirty-one exists -- someone has to protect men like you from a universe that doesn't share your sense of right and wrong.”

Do men like Dr. Bashir and the normal run of Americans who work our 9-5 jobs and watch sports on the weekends need a section 31? When the Patriot Act came out and all the controversies surrounding wiretapping, indefinite detentions, waterboarding, and our habit of turning terrorist suspects over to foreign countries for their nastier version of interrogation came to light, there was a lot of outcry from civil liberties organizations. :That’s very un-American, we don’t do that!” Except the truth is that we did, and still do. So I ask again, does America have a section 31? What would happen to America if it didn’t have a section 31? Do we, as Operative Slone suggests, live in a world that doesn’t play by our notions of right and wrong? You may notice that I’m not offering any answers to these questions. The answers are for you, not me, to decide. Throughout the section 31 thread of episodes we see the main characters reacting in opposition to the methods of 31 and disagreeing with its idea that any means of guaranteeing the Federation’s safety is valid.

            Yet there is a counterexample to the characters’ staunch, “no,” to 31. I’m referring to the sixth-season episode, “In The Pale Moonlight.” This is another all-time favorite of both fans and cast alike. The war is going badly for the Federation and its Klingon allies, and Betazed has fallen to the Dominion. That’s Deanna Troy’s home planet, in case it sounds familiar. Sisko knows that the resources of the Romulan Empire, which has thus far remained neutral in the galactic conflict, could provide the allies with what they need to turn the tide of the war, or at least, to prevent the Federation’s fall. What’s interesting here is the slippery slope path that leads Sisko from considering how to locate genuine evidence of a Dominion plot to assault Romulus, to thinking it would be more feasible and necessary to forge that evidence himself. All that Sisko does along the way, from liberating a criminal from a Klingon prison to get him to create the forged holo-program, to bribing Quark into silence after Tolar tries to stab him, is done because he sees  it all as the only way to accomplish the greater goal of bringing new allies into the war on the Federation’s side. This is a goal that is beyond reproach, and the question at hand is method versus motive. Sisko is very much aware of the moral dilemma he’s found himself in. Yet as a station commander determined to preserve the Federation, he sees his service to the greater good as superseding his own legal and ethical violations, even if he is still tormented by those violations as is clear in his log entry:  “people are dying out there. Every day. Entire worlds are struggling for their freedom and here I am still worrying about the finer points of morality. I had to keep my eye on the ball. Winning the war, stopping the bloodshed. Those were the priorities that mattered!”

One has to wonder who he’s trying to convince, us or himself. Juxtaposed with Sisko in this story is the Cardassian tailor and ex-spy, Elam Garak, who has no such moral scruples. His planting a bomb on the Romulan senator’s shuttle was the result of ruthless calculation. As he explained, the Romulans would blame the Dominion, and the more the Dominion protested its innocence, the more the Romulans would think them guilty, and in the end, Garak reasoned, Sisko would get what he wanted. And so it happened. And was it a high price to pay? Garak doesn’t seem to think so as he lectures Sisko in the final scene:  “If your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant, and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don’t know about you, but I’d call that a bargain.” Well if history is our judge, Sisko and Garak were vindicated. The Romulans entered the war on the side of the allies and the Dominion and its allies were subsequently defeated. So the question remains, does Sisko’s goal justify the wrongs that he did along the way? A better question might be, can you live with what you did, your goals being what they were. Sisko gives us his own tormented answer before deleting his entire log entry. I wonder if it’s the same answer I would give,  “Garak was right. A guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. so I’ll learn to live with it.”

            Now I’d like to turn my attention to character development as we witnessed it in Deep Space Nine. Star trek has never lacked for colorful, well-developed characters. Character is one area where all the major series have excelled. Truth be told, my own favorite characters aren’t DS9 characters, but there is something about character development that DS9’s very nature makes possible to a greater extent than is possible in a series like TNG or the Original Series.

            I said earlier that DS9 was a show where problems persist. There’s no Enterprise or Voyager that can go to warp and leave the problem or the troubling person behind. So, the creators of the series had the chance to do some major character development with relatively minor players, even some working for the other side. After all, we’re used to our captains and our other big-time protagonists being thoroughly developed, but the villains and the minor players being developed? That’s rather new.

            Let me start with the Cardassians. Gull Dukot, skillfully played by Mark Alaimo, (who we also saw portray star trek’s first ever Cardassian as Gull Masset in TNG’s fourth season episode, “The Wounded”), starts out as an urbane, seasoned commander in the Cardassian military. He’s introduced to us in the first half of “Emissary” as the former Cardassian commander of the station formerly known as Terok Nor and now called Deep Space Nine. He shows up in every season, and we follow his fortune as he falls out of favor with the Central Command as demonstrated in Episodes like the second season’s, “The Maquis,” as he maneuvers and plays civilian power politics, ingratiating himself to the new Detapa Counsel in the fourth-season opener, “Way of the Warrior,” and finally as his rise back to power hits the fast track with his exploits in the fourth-season episode, “Return to Grace.”

            Until the fifth season, Dukot is a somewhat down on his luck military officer who retains a certain urbane polish. His ascendance to ultimate power as seen in the fifth season finally gives him something to justify all of the bluff and bluster, but to me, Ducat’s most profound development doesn’t come until seasons six and seven. During his tenure as commander of Terok Nor under Weyoon’s supervision, the series creators explore a personal, even familial side of the man. For example, consider the triangle of interaction between Dukot, Kira and his daughter Ziall. Dukot, in spite of all that he’s done, still considers his daughter of paramount importance. We see him juggling the necessities of command with the concern of a father for his daughter. So on the one hand, we have Ben and Jake Sisko, and as a mirror counterpart, Dukot and his own estranged daughter. And who among us didn’t want to wheap during the final moments of the sixth-season episode, “Sacrifice of Angels,” when damar pulls a phaser and shoots Zial dead. We see Dukot kneling on the deck holding his dying daughter in his arms, and it’s written in such a way that for a moment, for just one moment, we forget that he is a ruthless warlord, and we se him as a father holding his dying daughter in his arms.

            Finally, consider Dukot’s own religious transformation in light of his mental breakdown after Zial’s murder. . Sisko was tapped to be the emissary of the Prophets, a role he never fully embraced or enjoyed. Dukot, meanwhile, became the emissary of the Pa-Raiths, the Prophets’ counterparts. And unlike Sisko, he embraces his religious role, and it transfigures him. Now you don’t have to be a psychologist to suggest that he falls into the grips of the pa-raiths because his daughter’s death unhinges him. Even I thought that much. But regardless, it happens, and for my part, I always felt a certain pity for him, even at the end. As he falls under the sway of the pa-raiths, Dukot becomes something of a madman, a Jim Jones type, a religious maniac, in short. Consider the seventh-season episode, “Covenant.” I think Jim Jones and Jonestown must be what they had in mind, considering that Dukot tried to murder all of his followers when the kidnapped Kira blew the whistle on Dukot impregnating one of his flock. The final disposition of Dukot, what we see in the story arc that concludes the series, is probably a fitting end, as he’s given wholly to the Pa-raiths and shares their fate.

            To take a more positive example, let’s consider a harder case of character development, Damar. Casey Biggs plays him consistently and well. He rises from an insignificant Cardassian second in command under Dukot in episodes like “Return to Grace,” and “A Call to Arms,” to leader of the Cardassian Union under Dominion Rule during most of the sixth and seventh seasons. What was of greatest interest to me about Damar is what was done with him in season seven. The creators really make his disaffection with and disillusion by the Dominion really believable. It’s not done all at once. It’s done gradually as he sees Cardassia supplanted by Dominion control. He comes to understand Cardassia’s secondary status in its alliance with the Dominion and eventually the Breen, and this understanding comes not all at once, but one slight and one negligent act at a time. In an interview, one of the series creators said that it had been the original plan to reveal that Damar was a double agent working for Starfleet all along, but what actually happened was more believable. The series  took a relatively flat and unnoticeable character, turned him into a villain by having him murder Zial and lead up the Cardassian Empire, and then transformed him into someone we could sympathize with and even admire as a disaffected freedom fighter. His death was the death that all self-sacrificing heroes in our movies and our novels want, a death in service to a great cause. As such his death is a bit predictable and something of a plot device, but if it’s a cliché, it is so because the cliché worked.

            Now I have to come back to the Ferengi. No, it’s not Quark I’m thinking of. It’s Rom. Quark’s brother is portrayed as the bumbling, sometimes slow, younger brother, almost a form of comic relief. In the show’s early days all we really know about him is that he’s the father of Jake’s only play mate, Nog. He’s always running around fixing things, doing what Quark tells him to do and answering, “Yes, Brother,” to Quark’s every whim. Not until DS9’s third season does Rom start to develop. First we see his deep family commitments, commitments that outweigh any sense of Ferengi custom. For example, to Quark’s disgust, Rom supports Nog’s efforts to enter Starfleet Academy, “Heart of Stone,” and when Quark sabotages the holo-suite in an effort to derail Nog’s entrance exams, Rom quite seriously threatens to burn down the bar when he tells Quark that his, Rom’s, son matters more to him than anything, even profit. See the third-season episode, “Facets.” Rom’s attachment to his mother is unwavering and demonstrated again and again in all the episodes where Ishka appears, and it would be a mistake to think that Rom doesn’t love his often abusive and domineering brother just as much. Finally, as I’ve mentioned before, Rom marries a non-Ferengi, an act that, more than any other, shows his own willingness to stand up to his culture’s morays and to set them aside. It’s often said that nice guys finish last, and if that’s true, Rom would have faded into the mists of obscurity. But Quark gets the ultimate lesson in the importance of maintaining family ties when he is passed over for the position of Grand Nagus, and Zek, at their mother’s urging, makes the younger brother, the loving son, Rom, the new Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance.

            As I bring this to a close, I look back at all I’ve written here, and I know it’s not exhaustive. I probably didn’t mention someone’s favorite character, not even mine. And likely as not, someone’s favorite episode isn’t here either. Well that’s what I get for writing a blog, which my fiancé insists is actually too long to be a blog, instead of a book. I’m certainly not qualified to put all of this in a book, and besides, who’d read it. Still, a lot has been written about James Kirk and Jean-Luke Picard and Data and Spock and all the rest. Deep Space Nine in comparison has had rather little said about it. So now, thirteen years after its final episode, “What You Leave Behind,” aired on television, I put pen to paper as it were and offer a few thoughts. Hopefully you might look up a few of these episodes and, having done so, you might see what I see in them. Or better still, you might see something that I didn’t see in them. That works too.

These are the Voyages: "Enter when Ready."

            Well, I’ve done it. I went and created a blog dedicated to my star trek posts. And why? Would it be enough if I were to stop with, I’m a geek? Probably not. In fact, definitely not. I have two reasons for creating this blog in addition to my general blog, Life-snippets, which is also accessible on Blogspot. The truth is, I have a lot to say when it comes to star trek’s ability to grapple with social, ethical, political and moral questions, and those are only a few of the questions it deals with. Yet the truth is, not everybody who reads my blog is a star trek fan. I’ll go you one further and tell you freely that most are not, in fact, fans at all. That’s fine. So I created this blog to give fans a place to go who want to read something that is, hopefully, thoughtful and insightful about the phenomenon we all love; however, I also made this blog so that friends of mine who are not fans don’t have to wade through my star trek posts in Life-Snippets to get to the topics of general interest that they care to read about. So, in doing this I serve both groups, fans and non-fans alike. But after half a life of watching star trek (Half a Life is, incidentally, the name of a Next Generation episode and a good one), I felt it was time for me to systematically set down the thoughts I’ve had over the years. I don’t know if anyone will read it, ever. And if they don’t, I can accept that with some degree of equanimity.

            This being the inaugural post in this blog, let me introduce myself briefly. I’m an ABD doctoral candidate in the German department at the University of Illinois. For those who don’t know what ABD means, we generally mean, “anything but done,” or something like that. In short, I’m almost done. That’s what my advisor thinks, bless her. I’m 28 as of today, engaged, and blind. Blind, only in the physical sense, and no, Jordy LaForge is far from my favorite character, but for the blind trek fans out there, I do have a post planned about the use of blindness in trek. In that post, incidentally, I’ll also answer questions I’ve gotten over the years dealing with how I, as a blind viewer, am able to watch and appreciate the show. These are well-intended, if tiresome questions, so I’ll get them out of the way one of these days. Not today. As for what you care to know about me, I’ve been told repeatedly that even among the more devoted fans of star trek, I stick out when it comes to analyzing the shows characters, themes and concepts and most annoyingly, for quoting the dialogue. Apologies to all those I’ve annoyed with long-winded rambling discourses or endless dialogue quoting. So maybe that analysis needs to get out there and do someone other than me some good. So here you go.

            Generally, I intend to stick to what is loosely called the star trek canon. By that I mean episodes of TV series, the animated series now and again, and the star trek films. I might occasionally talk about a book or book series, but there are thousands of books out there, and so if I do, I’ll stick to books the vast majority of trek readers would’ve read. But books won’t be a regular part of this blog. And, fare warning, we may not agree. For example, I loathe the Star Trek 2009 movie. From what I’ve seen from fans on startrek.com, many of them hate it too. It deserves its own blog posting, and it will have it. I’m also disgusted with star Trek Enterprise, and it too will receive its own blog posting. Look for those soon. Meanwhile, I have a long Deep Space Nine-related post coming up next. Look for that in about 24 hours, and I warn you, it is long. But not all my posts will be as long as the DS9 one, I promise. Why DS9 first? Well, I’m attending the con in Nashville here at the end of the month, and I want my thoughts out there before I go. I also intend to keep a written record of my thoughts and experiences at the convention. I know I always enjoy reading those. So if Star Trek fans do stumble across this blog in the future and there are topics or episodes that I haven’t yet covered, send me an email or leave me a comment on Blogspot, and I’ll get to it. Meanwhile, here’s to the voyages.