by Mindy Clegg
It should be obvious by now that science fiction of the 20th century wasn’t in the business of predicting the future. Low earth orbit space travel does not reflect the commercial feel presented in 2001. We’re no where near having robotics and artificial intelligence as advanced as that of Blade Runner. Our current iteration of what we’re (probably incorrectly) calling artificial intelligence (AI) has not remotely reached the level of a Skynet in Terminator. But if any sci-fi franchise correctly “predicted” the current era and the struggles we currently face, that might be Star Trek, especially Deep Space 9 (DS9). In fact, 2024 ends up being a pivotal year in the Trek time-line and some of the events set in that year seem incredibly plausible in the world right now. Rather than predicting the future, these events reflected political and social issues of the day in which the show was produced. DS9, in fact, were deeply embedded in the domestic and global politics of the 1990s. The show addressed critical issues, such as ongoing decolonization movements, the fall out of the end of the Cold War, and domestic social issues like homelessness, racism, and inequality. All of these have gone to dangerous places recently, as we seem unwilling to understand the warning found in a show like DS9. Of all the Star Trek shows, few seem as critical to understanding our modern condition than this one. I’ve been reading David Seitz’s excellent book A Different Trek and it informed much of this essay.1
More than any other series in the franchise, DS9 includes some rather pointed critiques of modern American liberalism, even as it seeks to defend the ideals behind that liberalism. Star Trek originally premiered in 1966 during the Cold War and carries an implicit argument for an end to conflict and inequality. The show premiered against a backdrop of hope. After one of the most dangerous moments in the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Americans and Soviets eventually opened up more productive relations (at least until the 1970s). Those seeking to free the global south of European domination saw some major wins. The Algerians had successfully thrown off French colonization and many across the global south saw that as a major victory for the global anti-colonial movement. The non-aligned movement gave many an alternative to aligning with either the Soviets or the Americans. Civil rights activists who had just scored major legislative victories domestically began to turn towards bringing greater awareness to both America’s imperial war in Vietnam and to a focus on economic inequality with the Poor People’s campaign (which Dr. King hoped would be a cross-racial movement). People power seemed to be on the ascendancy, and that is the context in which Star Trek premiered. According to Simon Tyrie, Roddenberry’s vision leaned into an embrace of social and economic equality that would help humanity flourish. Roddenberry embraced liberal institutions and sought to show how they could be improved over time. Most social problems of that era explored via allegory in the original series (TOS) and in The Next Generation (TNG). These allegories could sometimes be ham-fisted, such as with “Let that Be Your Last Battlefield.” But they still sought to bring the issues to the viewer’s attention.
DS9 embraced allegorical storytelling, but often the creators of that show added greater depth by not making the right answers clear. The characters on the show struggled and changed over time. They made wrong choices at times. Anti-colonial themes are one example. Seitz explored the anti-colonial themes woven through the series via Bajor, the planet which owned the space station where the show was set. The second in command, the Bajoran major Kira Nerys (family name first) had recently been a resistance fighter against a brutal occupation of her planet by the Cardassians.2 The series often explored the occupation by focusing on Kira’s evolution. They never softened the trauma many Bajorans suffered during that time, Kira included. She discovers her mother was sexually enslaved to the last Cardassian administrator Gul Dukat, a reoccurring character who becomes a major antagonist over the course of the show, though he was not always written as the heavy. Despite her trauma, Kira manages to embrace some Cardassians such as the half-Bajoran, half-Cardassian daughter of Dukat, Tora Ziyal. She and other Bajorans are shown working through their trauma in various ways. They confront Cardassians they meet, they lash out, push back against the Bajoran government’s attempts to normalize relations with the Cardassians and the Federation, and sometimes support those efforts. The Bajoran government signed a treaty with the Cardassians that Kira is skeptical of, but does eventually back. Not everything was positive, such as when a former file clerk attempted to pass himself off as a Cardassian war criminal out of guilty for working in a labor camp. But when Kira releases the man due to his lack of participation in any war crimes, he’s stabbed by another Bajoran who wishes to kill all Cardassians regardless of their actions during the occupation.
The 1990s was the perfect time to be exploring those themes. We often think of the height of the decolonization movement as the 1960s and 1970s, with countries across Africa, the Caribbean, and South East Asia regaining their independence. Of course, that process continues to play out even today in global politics. Seitz highlighted how the Bajoran struggle for freedom mirrors that of the struggle of the Palestinians, an obviously ongoing topic of interests for us right now.4 But a another wave of decolonization happened at the end of the Cold War as the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc fell apart.3 People have argued that the Soviet Union, despite its anti-colonial language, was itself a colonial empire. However one feels about that claim (it is a contested one), new states emerged at the end of the Cold War, and people took stock of their recent history and sought to reorient them into the future, much as Kira and the people of Bajor did over the course of DS9. The Bajorans never left behind the trauma and violence they suffered, nor did some give into that trauma, but forged a better path forward. DS9 dealt with the difficulties of economic, social, and cultural reorientation that comes with decolonization. That certainly describes many Eastern European countries at the end of the Cold War in addition to the global south.
We can see this theme with religion in DS9. Religion played a major role in the show and ended up being a location of contestation among Bajorans, and between Bajorans, the Federation, and the Cardassians. The Bajoran faith was violently suppressed under the Cardassian occupation, a claim made by people of faith under communism. The leader of the faith in the final years of the occupation and into decolonization (known as the Kai) was a woman named Opaka. She was central to their victory by providing hope and a figure of unity. When the Federation arrives to help the rebuilding process, they prove dismissive, if at least more accommodating of the Bajorans belief in their Prophets. Commander Benjamin Sisko, leading the Federation officers in this mission, meets with the Kai Opaka. He shows her respect but he’s privately skeptical. Kai Opaka believes Sisko to be an important figure for Bajor, allowing him to view their last remaining Orb. She then calls him the “Emissary”, a figure prophesied to lead Bajor during a difficult time in their history. He soon discovers the celestial temple, a stable wormhole to a distant part of the galaxy known as the Gamma quadrant. This discovery starts to unify the people of Bajor while giving them a new importance in the alpha quadrant. Sisko treats the faith with polite skepticism until later in the series, referring to the prophets as “worm hole aliens” as dictated by Starfleet rather than the Prophets. While not untrue, it certainly speaks to how the Federation viewed religion as a relic of the past that “mature” peoples will abandon in time. Later Sisko embraces his role as Emissary. Both capitalist and communist states in the 20th century sought to treat belief as a step along a logical path of rational development. One of the key arguments during the Cold War against communism was religious communities were sometimes violent suppressed, considered a major crime against humanity. Rightfully so. But religion under capitalism was and is often stripped of its spiritual import in favor of more vacuous kind of faith that centers identity and consumption rather than spiritual sustenance, making it easy pickings for political extremists. Modern evangelical Christianity in America is one example of this. These more culturally oriented groups seek to suppress the faith (or lack thereof) of others. Modernity, be it capitalist or communist, often treated religion as a relic of the past that will eventually fade into history or a political tool of social control. DS9 refused to accept either framing and instead showed how faith can play a complicated and positive role in people’s lives, even as it can be used as a tool of suppression and violence.
Star Trek always rejected racism. Creator Gene Roddenberry insisted on an integrated crew in TOS. Seitz addressed the importance of the inclusion of Nichelle Nichols on the bridge of the original Enterprise. This was important representation for Black Americans at a time when they were rarely depicted as more than servants. But it also meant that white viewers could see Black people portrayed as social equals, rather than merely subordinates, which certainly helped some white viewers rethink their views on race. According to Nichols, Martin Luther King Jr. believed that her character Nyota Uhura was “a matter of world-historical and universal significance.”5 TOS rarely dealt with racism in Americas past, however, but explored it via allegory. DS9 brought a new urgency to examining racism as it existed at the time of production. Avery Brooks served as the first Black lead on a Star Trek series as commander and later captain Benjamin Sisko. By the time the third season aired, a reactionary movement had taken control of congress, based in part of racist, classist, and reactionary politics.6 Almost as if in response, two episodes addressed racism head on in American history rather than through the usual allegorical means. First, in “Far Beyond the Stars” Sisko was transported by the Prophets to the 1950s and where he became sci-fi writer Benny Russell. He worked for a sci-fi magazine and wrote a story that was essentially DS9. The daily racism Russell faced was shown in explicit and even violent detail, such as when his friend was shot by the police and Russell was beaten by the police when he objected to their actions. He refused to change his story to have a white captain to appease the white editor (though he did make it a dream to get it to press). Once the editor signed off on the story and it went to press, the owner of the magazine had that entire issue of the magazine pulped rather than let the story of a Black captain in space be read by the public. The episode is largely considered one of the best of any Star Trek series.7 It certain brings to mind an essay by sci-fi author Samuel Delany and his experiences as a Black man writing science fiction which came out in the late 90s.
The second episode that dealt directly with racism was a bit more subtle and often read as about class rather than race, the two part episode “Past Tense.” Like any good sci-fi, the episode was about the time in which it was produced. Technically, the events depicted was in the future, but in the Star Trek’s past: 2024. Sisko, Dr. Julian Bashir, and Lt. Jadzia Dax landed in San Francisco in 2024 after a transporter accident. They arrived there on the eve of the Bell Riots, which Sisko describes as “one of the most violent civil disturbances in American history.” While Dax (a white woman, though an alien) was “rescued” by a tech entrepreneur, Sisko (Black) and Bashir (played by an Anglo-Sudanese actor), were taken by the police. This story of the Bell Riots was directly informed by events like the Attica prison uprising of 1971 and the LA uprising in 1992. The story addressed both class and race in an intersecting manner Seitz argued.8 The uprising transpired in a “sanctuary district” which were set up by cities like San Francisco as they sought to hide the homelessness created by the tech-driven gentrification. Rather than ensuring affordable housing options and living wages in employment, the city set up these districts and then neglected the residents (sound familiar?). But the uprising, now led by Sisko who stood in for the recently murdered Gabriel Bell, helped inform the public of what was happening, broadcasting conditions directly from residents of the district via the internet. But the mayor orders the feed cut (reminiscent of how authoritarian states have done similarly during civil uprisings in recent years) and then orders a brutal crackdown. The three are then rescued by their comrades in the future and brought back to their present day. But by Sisko’s actions, the time-line is restored, the path to the optimistic Roddenberrian future preserved. But what is striking about this episode is just how well it captures our present moment. The creators of DS9 had a firm understanding of how the policies of the mid-90s under divided government could play out in the future, not to mention a pretty firm understanding of how to apply historical understanding to the present day context.
Star Trek was meant to offer a hopefully shared future for humanity. Many focus on the cool space-faring technologies, giving an analysis of the show a real teleological and more politically neutral spin. But it’s relatively clear that from the point of view of the creators that the social and cultural context was the primary driver of the show, rather than just the technological advancements. Both mattered of course, but the underlying argument was that moving human society towards a egalitarian, post-scarcity world would result in a better society, making major undertakings like interstellar travel a possibility. That really came through with DS9, making it the most controversial of that Trek era (the 1990s). Setiz’s excellent book gives us a pathway for understanding just how much we can get out of a show like DS9. While the show dealt with dark topics, it also still leaves the viewer with a sense of hope for the future, that people can successfully navigate the dark times and come out on the other side able to thrive again. Right now, with all we’re collectively facing, I can’t think of another message we need than that… Live long and prosper, and walk with the prophets.
Footnotes
1 David Seitz, A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2023).
2 for an expansion on that, see Seitz, A Different Trek, 16 and 86-89.
3 See James Fowkes and Michael Hailbronner, Decolonizing Eastern Europe: A Global Perspective on 1989 and the World It Made, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 17, Issue 2, (April 2019): 497-509.
4 Seitz, A Different Trek, 75-78.
5 Seitz, A Different Trek, xv-xvi.
6 Seitz, A Different Trek, 41.
7 Seitz, A Different Trek, 53-54.
8 Seitz, A Different Trek, 46-51.