Deep Space Nine Reviewed! (by a pedant) S3E12: PAST TENSE (2)

First, commenting from sanc district

I've known far too many people like kid douchebag and you're right about him. Even douchebags can do the right thing when the goal is obvious enough the right option. In the end he chose societal progress over the chance to get rich and f***-off, atleast from his perspective.

We don't have sanctuary districts yet but we have sanctuary states sad how accurate star trek got it

REST IN POWER GABRIEL BELL

This Gabriel Bell guy looks a lot like captain Sisko.

That BSG photo though...

The B5 picture was hilarious! Great commentary!

It's scary to see how a story written in the 90's about humanity's worst crimes is currently not only being replicated but surpassed.

Also, one has to wonder how the communications would have been established without Jadzia in the timeline where Sisko and co. didn't accidentally ended up there.
Did Chris find another stranger on some steps to take care of who went through the sewers too?

Maybe it wasn't 2024 but Star Trek has an odd way of predicting current trends. And a trend we seem to be dangerously close to repeating is internment camps. [ One thing you never wanted to be right about Star Trek was intermittent camps in the 2020s.] Im not a doomer here to say it will absolutely happen. But we make stories like this one to remind us of how easy history can repeat itself.

Stories like this are made to repeat the sentiments of the people making it during that time, and reflect there fears. This is something we've been fearing could happen again for a long time. And I hate the sentiment that it can't happen here, or it can't happen again. Like just because we've moved past it in time It doesn't mean that history and progress is always linear. Just because it's the 2020's doesn't give us immunity

Studies were done and over 47% of Americans surveyed support the "rounding up undocumented immigrants and putting them into militarized camps" gestapo style. And i don't think it will stop with just undocumented ones.

clint howard will always be "the icecream man" to me 😁😛

I just looked up Clint Howard, and man, that guy is not just ST royalty, he's cinema royalty.
No way he was in all this stuff without absolutely loving what he does.
I wonder if that carreer would be possible nowadays.

Excellent stuff. I still find the main character's names to be made of Teflon. No sooner do I hear them, do they drop off. At what point will their names stick? I have given up trying for now, instead I focus on the analysis and have a bloody-good chuckle. Nice one. Cheers.

Someone pointed out that the real Gabriel Bell (the one who died) must have not had any friends or family that could have identified him when they showed his photograph.

Voyager forgets the eugenics wars, ds9 forgets world war 3.

To be fair I don’t think they’ve explicitly changed the start date for WW3 yet, at least from the update in First Contact. It’s still scheduled for some time in 2026, and the way the world is right now… I’m not so sure they’ll have to update it.

Quite frankly I’d accept a 2026-2053 WW3 (plus a quarter century or so of the “Post-Atomic Horror”) if it actually meant humanity ended up becoming the society we see in Star Trek: Enterprise onwards (which with flashbacks, happens some time before 2121). It would certainly make the rest of my life miserable and, being disabled, probably pretty short, but it would be very much worth it to ensure future generations live in a society vastly more enlightened than our one.

I’m not saying a 27 year WW3 with a few decades of extreme nastiness afterwards definitely would give humanity the precise boot up the rear it so desperately needs, but if Q appeared before me and assured me of this outcome, I’d immediately take that Lancian Bargain.

So, no comments comparing current US immigration policy to the Star Trek Black guy and ethnic beige guy ending up in the camps? And of course, the beautiful white woman, with no documentation, meets a rich, straight white guy that breaks every rule just for her? Not sure if this was accidental by the writers any more than Rios ending up treated the way he was in Star Trek Picard.

Bravo on your closing analysis! Never understood why anyone would accuse Star Trek of being too political, progressive, or 'liberal.' It has always been so, and I hope it will always be so. If someone claims to be a Star Trek fan, and doesn't understand that it is meant to be this way, then they aren't really a fan, and should probably go watch something else.

Adding to what you said at the end, the thing that always sticks out to me about this episode is that in the 90s something akin to sanctuary districts were on the agenda in the us. Haunting how we think we’ve come so far.

I wish these conservative morons would just not like Discovery and Picard because they are poorly written shows like the rest of us.

What I just realized is this: it's stupid that the time line changed. Sisko was sent back in time and Gabriel Bell died. But it was Sisko who was already in the past who set it right, so the consequences of Bells death shouldn't be there for the Defiant. Only if influence by the Defiant had changed the outcome of the riots should that have been the case but they just picked Sisko up afterwards...

I must admit, I really liked the performance of Frank Military, the actor who portrayed B.C. aka Kid Douchebag.

Great summary.
I've been a Trek fan for over 30 years, since TNG, really. Trek has always tried it's best to be woke and tackles the issues of the time, and although sometimes massively missing the mark (Code of Honor), it can be, and is often, brilliant. From a diverse bridge crew in TOS, slavery (Measure of a Man), tackling PTSD in DS9, through to LGBTQ+ characters in DISCO, it has always attracted a left-wing audience. However, it has also attracted a very right-wing audience, which I have never understood.

I think the best thing about good sci fi is how it doesn't necessarily show us what COULD happen as much as what IS happening. It repackages the ideas of the time and helps one better understand whats going on in the world we live. As another commenter pointed out. This episode despite being about some future event in human history dealt with subjects America at the time was considering. Its perhaps part of the resson these stories ALWAYS have their detractors who wanna call it "preachy" or "too political" they dont like seeing things they support thrown in their face and shown in a new light.

I do enjoy the B5 references. :3

How does the world end due to America falling into ruins? We were told it was happening in America only not the entire world!

Another way of doing this story would be, instead of time travel, it would be about an ancestor of Sisko.

Poor space dog. Only the finest in computer interactions.

I always found this episode one of the most overrated and a rare borefest from DS9

When I say that Trek has always been progresive. The response is usually "Yeah but before it wasn't in your face. Now they use woke as a replacement for story and character."

I get your point at the end, but the problem is that Discovery and Picard aren't even good stories :(

The 'Too preachy / too left wing' thing was not really considered at the time. Yes, there most likely were those voices, however they were a lot quieter and ignored. Overall, the reception was good to these episodes, most people were not aware of the right wing elements or just laughed at those lunatics. Now, those lunatics have power.
I suppose you could say progress is not always a good thing in that regard.

As for Kid Douchebag, yes he was supposed to be the c*ck who, in the end, does the right thing. You could debate with your friends exactly why, it was not supposed to be clear cut.

I love how they use the separate and then converging paths of Sisko, Bashir, and Dax to parallel certain points: by sheer luck, Dax winds up running into someone sympathetic and helpful, and consequently on an upward trajectory in society, and by equal sheer luck Sisko and Bashir run into someone predisposed to assume the worst of them and wind up shunted into an uncaring and unforgiving biased system. The only way they actually successfully achieve their goals beyond the system they're trapped in is by Jadzia deliberately crossing her upper society path into theirs and exploiting those contacts to get people's voices out. It's tidy on several different levels.

Pedantry: It’s a transporter, not a teleporter.

I'm not sure if you heard this, but literally a week after this episode aired, San Fran Sisco make a suggestion to make a district that fully fell in line with this episode. ... The writers were blown away because they thought that they had just come up with a worst case scenario, but it was laterally on the books.
Reference: DS9 special features.

It's possible to find something 'preachy' without disagreeing with the point being made. I don't think that's the case here, mostly because Avery Brooks balances sympathy and anger so well. The bit with the hippies is just another example of why hippies shouldn't appear on Trek, though.
But consider something like TNG's "Force of Nature." Having an environmental message is fine, doing it in such a hamfisted way is not. Especially when the dangers of warp drive to the fabric of space are quickly forgotten in future Trek.
Or the original series 'Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.' Watching it is like being clubbed in the head with a mallet that has "Racism is bad and stupid" written on it. Something with a bit more subtlety (ie any subtlety at all) would have been more effective without treating the audience like idiots.

You talking about how progression in Star Trek always seems to come after tragedy reminded me of something I read once. When it comes to worker health and safety regulations, they are all "written in blood". Someone had to die or was seriously injured before these laws were written because corporations are always willing to cut corners and save money at the expense of human lives until they told that they can't (and that still doesn't stop some of them). Unfortunately, that seems to be what is required to motivate some people to change things for the better and all too often, it takes more than one loss of life.

This story is goddamn fantastic, said it before and will always say it. The hero remembered by history, both Sisko and Bell, are black men in a time where black men were uniformly villains or supporting characters on TV. Trying to stop the violence is portrayed as the truly good action. Men who act like shitheads realise that they have the chance to be better and take it even when they'd not be blamed for opening fire on the opposition. Good men balance on the very edge of their morals.

It's complicated and painful and human and I'd say it's the most important story in all of Star Trek.

Kid Douchebag felt like a thousand angry teenagers I have met. He has given up and wants to lash out, and I kind of dig how he plays the impatient angry kid who feels he jas nothing else. Ya he is a massive ass but he feels so real to me. That's why I love this episode, the sanctuary people feel like real people even with only two two episodes to flesh them put, it feels plausable and respectful to the people who would be stuck there. Not saints, not villains, but people who are scared, hurt, and some who want to lash out.

"It's not your fault." "We tell ourselves that ...and nothing ever changes."
Kudos to her delivery of that line, which gives it additional hutzpah.

I don't think it's just Star Trek that connects major advancements to catastrophes and devastating events. It's something that's shown in history, such as the end of the age of empires (British and American empires notwithstanding) coming from the end of WWI and the end of legal slavery in the US coming out of the American Civil War.

Question... IF the police officer took Sisko and Bashir's ID card's and planted them on some rando dead bodies then why is Sisko's face in the historical text for Gabriel Bell?

I always considered the causality loop the other way and the history books always had a picture of Sisko as Gabriel Bell.

I feel like given the larger context there was a missed opportunity for a bell-end joke about the character you called Captain Douchebag.

waaaay to underrated channel

One thing that always strikes me about these episodes is that even in Trek's dystopian view of 2024, the homeless have a sanctioned place to exist and a government issued ration card. Best we're willing to spend public money on in the real 2024 is to install spikes under the freeway overpass so you can't sleep there.

2024? 🤔Seems to be about a year off.
The guy who is going to become US president in January 2025 has already promised what is going to happen to people he doesn't like. I'm afraid a lot more people are gong to die in the real future 2025 "Bell" riots than in these ST:DS9 2024 riots.

It pleases me deeply that you acknowledged Clint Howard.

Great review, as always.

Being unpleasant doesn't make one immoral.

Today's Thought Experiment: What happened to the unfortunate combadge thieves who, presumably, found themselves in the teleporter room of the Defiant when they didn't turn them off?