Over the past few weeks, I have found myself to be more and more excited for JJ Abrams upcoming sequel to his 2009 reboot of the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek Into Darkness. As I prepare for another adventure with the newly recast original Trek crew, I began to go over why I fell in love with Star Trek and why it became my gateway into my love of Scifi, from Battlestar Galactica to Mass Effect to Blade Runner.
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| Star Trek Into Darkness looks to be an exciting followup to 2009's Star Trek |
DS9 was something wholly new in the Star Trek world. Instead of being set on a starship, this series was set on a Space Station. Not only that, but this space station was not even part of Starfleet, but the abandoned mining station left behind by the brutal occupation of highly religious planet of Bajor by the Cardassian Empire. As the Cardassian’s moved out, the newly freed Bajorians called on Starfleet for aid and help. However, as soon as Starfleet comes in, a wormhole to the other side of the galaxy is discovered and Commander Sisko, the Starfleet officer who watched his wife die in the Borg Invasion led by Captain Picard as Locutus of Borg, suddenly finds himself to be a accidental spiritual leader to the people of Bajor.
As the basic premise of the series shows, the setting of a space station allowed for extremely complex storylines, as the characters no longer had the ability to zip around in a starship and leave any lasting issues behind them. DS9 was the first Trek show to have real lasting consequences, and was perhaps, along with similar show Babylon 5, one of the first successful semi-serialized shows. It was also the only Trek show to have long-lasting, slow-building storylines (unless you count Voyagers series long quest to get home or Enterprise’s season-long Xindi storyline). As the show progressed, the series’ numerous mysteries and storylines merged, bounced, and split off each other. The religious fever of Bajor, the discovery of Odo’s ancestry, the war with the Dominion, and many other storylines all interwove with each other to create fascinating tales.
However, it was the series’ ability to mix complex storytelling with complex character development that sets it above. While the series always had an eye on the larger picture, it never forgot to show how things like war, loss, and grief can have a personal impact. In the episode “In the Pale Moonlight,” we see Commander Sisko surprised to learn that he was willing to lie, manipulate, and even kill to help ensure an alliance with the Romulans in order to save the lives of millions of Federation citizens fighting in the Dominion War, and that he wouldn’t change what he had to do if he could. In the episode “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” we watch as Nog, who we have watched from Season 1 grow from a teenager kid talking to girls on the station, has to deal with the pain and fear of shell shock and losing a limb in war as he locks himself in the fantasy world of the holosuite. These moments are not only important to the overall story, but show the powerful personal effects that galactic politics and events can have, something that many science fiction shows miss. Even side characters like the former-spy Garak and the Ferengi-turned Starfleet recruit Nog and unlikely characters like greedy bartender Quark are given interesting and complex moments.
However, it was the shows depiction of its villains that set it apart. While Star Trek always had a history of great villains (see Khan or the Borg), DS9 was the first series to try to understand its villains. Series-long villains like Gul Dukat, Kai Winn, and the Dominion were unique because we could understand that these villains did not see themselves as evil or cruel, but as the heros of their own story, trying to find their own way to fix the galaxy. Kai Winn was a spiritual leader of Bajor who believed that Sisko’s place as a religious figure on Bajor was dangerous and wrong. Gul Dukat was the Cardassian commander of Deep Space Nine and saw himself as Oskar Schindler-esque type who did his best to give Bajorans a fair shake during the Cardassian occupation of the planet. The Dominion and the shapeshifters who ran it believed the universe was full of constant chaos and death and believed that the best way to protect it was to rule and control it (similar to the Templars of today’s Assassin’s Creed games). Unlike any other Star Trek show, it was these regular villains (and anti-heros like Garak and Quark) that made Deep Space Nine so interesting to watch.
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| Complex "villains" like Gul Dukat help set DS9 apart from its fellow Treks |
Also, Gene Roddenbery, the creator of Star Trek, wanted to create a show where the future was bright, and we could see that humanity had a future. It was why he made the original bridge so colorful, in terms of actual color palette and in terms of the races and types of people who filled that bridge. It was also why he created the idea of the Federation, an inter-planetary group that welcomed diversity, freedom, curiosity, and discovery. It showed humanity that it could have a bright and positive future. Yet on Deep Space Nine, we were shown a darker future, a place where the Federation could be threatened and its very ideals attacked from not only without, but from within (see the excellent Section 31 storyline for a perfect example of this).
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| The original Star Trek was diverse, colorful, and positive |
In my opinion, Deep Space Nine is the very best of the Star Trek shows. It is the one that I most recommend to anyone who wants to see some great science fiction. I have watched this series over and over again and still marvel at how complex it truly is. It helped spawn some great science fiction writers, like Battlestar Galactica reimaginer Ron Moore. However, if someone was to ask me to show them was Star Trek was really about, and what it means in the ethos of science fiction and cultural history, Deep Space Nine might be the last place I look.
As I bring this admittedly long article to a close, I look forward to JJ Abrams new movie. However, while I have little doubt that the new film will be a great work of scifi, with a title like Into Darkness, I wonder if these new Trek will be a good representation of the original meaning of Star Trek, or if it will find itself exploring the same uncharted, even darker frontier of Deep Space Nine.
