Thanks to my trusty Netflix subscription, I have access to lots of great TV, past, and present, to help me on my night shifts when writing doesn’t come as naturally to me. Every so often I’ll go “digging in the crates” for something good to binge-watch. This week, I rediscovered a mid-to-late 90’s gem, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Premiering in 1993, DS9 tells brought several things to Star Trek canon that no series had done before and to this day, has yet to be repeated. Set on a re-purposed mining space station that became a boom town after the discovery of a stable wormhole in the first episode, the show explored complex themes that flew in the face of Star Trek’s typically Utopian vision of the future. Things like slavery, racism, religion, war, occupation, fatherhood, and duty came into play, and it did so with a black man featured prominently at the center of the experience.

Avery Brooks played Commander (later Captain) Benjamin Sisko, a widowed father who reluctantly takes a post on a dilapidated space station orbiting the backwater world of Bajor, recently liberated from 60 years of occupation by the Cardassians (strangely, none named Kim). Bajor’s profile is immediately and permanently elevated with the discovery of a wormhole to a previously uncharted region of the galaxy, the Gamma Quadrant. Sisko’s discovery of the wormhole and the Prophets—the beings living inside the wormhole that the Bajorans worship—turns him into an unwilling religious figure in Bajoran culture, the Emissary. He must now balance these roles and their attached duties while remaining true to the things that he values most.

For seven years, DS9 explored a powerful and (at the time) uncharacteristically serialized narrative that detailed the goings-on at the station and the lives of the colorful people who inhabit it, as well as the implications of treading into an unknown region of space and the slow-burn conflict with the Dominion, the ruling empire of the Gamma Quadrant. Depictions of war were unheard of in Star Trek during the time of The Next Generation (even though there was a great two-episode battle with the Borg that leads directly into this spinoff), but DS9 handled it with unflinching honesty. Characters died, got captured, suffered lasting injuries, and made choices that clashed with personal ethics.

One of my favorite episodes (It’s Only A Paper Moon) sees Nog, the first Ferengi in Starfleet, recovering from the amputation and replacement of his leg by staying in a holosuite with a sentient program, while he tries to cope with the PTSD he suffers from being injured in battle. Another favorite of mine (In The Pale Moonlight) has Captain Sisko recount

the steps he took and the lies he told to gain a powerful ally in the war against the Dominion, and how his guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. The willingness to paint its heroes as imperfect is in stark contrast to the antiseptic cleanliness of The Next Generation, where Jean-Luc Picard was unflappable and always made the right decisions.

It’s been 20 years since Deep Space Nine wrapped, and I’m happy to say that it still holds up. I suggest that all of you sci-fi fans out there watch this gem.

#2018 #scifi #startrek #DS9 #Legacy #90s #TV #Blackrolemodels #author #character