Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Reviews J

This is one of my posts where I “review” Star Trek episodes. I will be giving each one a star rating. I sometimes will make some comments about non-political parts of them that I like or don’t like. I’ll sometimes use the issues raised in the episode to discuss similar issues in real life. And I will sometimes simply high-light the progressive politics of ST. ST is in-line with the three original themes of this blog, as I explain in the first ST post where I offer some general thoughts about ST.

I’m not very familiar with The Original Series and there might be some small amount of material there that would affect what I say about Star Trek (i.e. how often religion is mentioned)

Lastly. multi-culturalism is such a pervasive theme in ST that I only comment on it when it goes beyond the norm (i.e. inter-species partners).

This one will be a long one. There’s a two-parter that straddles two DVDs, so I’m doing both in one post.

“Playing God” See this for a plot summary.

A very non-political episode, but a good one. I give it two stars out of five.


“Profit and Loss” See this for a plot summary.

A fairly political episode, it could apply to lots of situations in the real world, including, to some degree, Iran. The episodes which are about democratic forces on Cardassia are always ones I like. Democracy is a very good thing, and I feel inspired by stories about people in Cardassian society that are working for a democratic Cardassia. Such forces would probably also tend to have a good understanding that what happened during the occupation of Bajor was wrong and was intertwined with how totalitarian Cardassia is.

We also see Quark behave better than usual, although it has almost everything to do with love and almost nothing to do with supporting democratic forces on Cardassia.

A good episode, I give it three stars out of five.

UPDATE 1/12/12 I should have added this a long time ago, but I DO find the Arab Spring inspirational and I do support it.


“Blood Oath” See this for a plot summary.

A very non-political episode, but a good one. I give it three stars out of five.

Kira has some good lines about how ugly, were her activities killing people while with the Bajoran resistance (in other episodes she made it clear that it was necessary, justified and helpful, and in general the resistance conducted itself honorably).


“The Maquis” parts one and two. See this and this for a plot summary.

UPDATE 11/11/11 I used to link to a page on startrek.com that describes the Maquis. It's no longer there. I think I'll have to just type something up myself, but in any case there will soon be either a new link or a brief explanation written by me.

I have mixed feelings about the Maquis. On one hand, in general I share the politics of ST and the Maquis are sort of, mostly portrayed as something close to “bad guys.” On the other hand:

1) A significant part of the Maquis, as was highlighted in a The Next Generation episode, is Native Americans who felt that their colony was the home they’d been looking for for 200 years. Their reluctance to leave is justifiable, considering that they felt that land was part of maintaining their culture.
2) Bearing in mind that Cardassian politics remained roughly as they were during the occupation of Bajor, it’s not surprising that they were treating the Federation colonists poorly.
3) Chakotay makes a pretty good Starfleet officer on Voyager, as do some of the other Maquis, especially Torres.


Going back to the other side of this, I’m not sure if most of the settlers had a good argument in favor of the idea that their desire to stay is worth causing problems for the Federation and possibly dragging them into a war with Cardassia. Most of them you could probably argue should just leave their colonies. On the other hand, some of the colonists probably had good arguments for staying and the others would have been reluctant to leave those ones behind. It seems like the negotiators who redrew the border screwed up- I can’t imagine why they felt the need to put some Cardassian colonies in Federation space and vice versa. It’s suggested that the Cardassians thought they’d come out ahead because the Federation would shelter the Cardassian colonies while they would get rid of the Federation colonists in Cardassian territory. But why would the Federation agree to swapping colonies? It seems like, after the outbreak of hostilities with the Maquis, the solution would have to be a re-negotiation of that part of the treaty and either re-draw the boundaries to avoid this problem and/or evacuate colonists wherever necessary in order to create Federation colonist-only planets and Cardassian colonist-only planets.

Like I said, I have mixed feelings about the Maquis.

Lastly, the situation kind of reminds me of the situation in Ireland with the island partitioned between north and south. The nationalist population was abandoned by about half of the republican movement, with little reason to believe that they would be treated well. They weren’t treated well and the IRA intermittently carried out operations until 1970 and then almost constantly carried out operations until 1997, and that often brought them into conflict with the authorities in the South. In 1948 they adopted a General Order that force was not to be used against the State in the South (there was a lot of hostility most of the previous 30 years between republicans and the state in the south). This amounted to some degree of de facto recognition of the Dublin state and resulted in very few shootings or bombing by republicans in the South. In 1986 Sinn Fein decided that if their members got elected to the Parliament in Dublin, they would take their seats, which was sort of, almost completed the recognition of that state, although it fell short of agreeing to stop attacks on the British, and there were some small problems here and there.

I’d actually say that republicans should have taken the approach they took from 1986 until 1997 earlier. That is, the approach where they recognize the state, but insist that pressuring the British to get out of the North is more important than listening to Dublin about the IRA’s activities. In the mid 1950s a small republican group took that approach and at the same time that the military wing was attacking the British, the overall leader was a member of the Irish Senate. So it would have been possible and probably would have been helpful as the population probably would have been more supportive and the security forces probably would have been less hostile.

Going back to the episodes, they’re pretty good, I give them three stars out of five.


“The Wire” See this for a plot summary.

In a few places, civil liberties are raised. First, Odo continues having an attitude about maintaining order on the station that conflicts with Federation concerns about civil liberties- something that seems to come up, at least so far in the series, about every other episode. Although Odo is obviously a good guy, it’s made clear by the Starfleet characters pretty consistently, especially by Sisko, that, with some reasonable exceptions in emergencies, civil liberties are a priority. Second, the way that the Cardassian security/intelligence organization Obsidian Order maintains a totalitarian eye on the private lives of Cardassians is described.

Besides that, a very non-political episode, but a good one. I give it three stars out five.


“Crossover” See this for a plot summary.

In general a non-political episode, but some things are worth discussing.

First, when they describe the history of the mirror universe, they mention how the terran (human) empire was reformed by Spock and then, after the reforms were completed, the Alliance of Cardassia and the Klingons conquered the terrans. The idea is that the reforms weakened the terrans’ ability to defend themselves. I don’t know exactly what the reforms were but I can imagine they were basically progressive-socialist and included some degree of demilitarization. I wouldn’t say there is zero risk of something like that when you reduce the size of your military, but A) in general the benefits are worth it and B) in some ways it improves your security.

When I think of the US decreasing the size of the military, I’d say there would be a lot of benefits, both in general, and specifically for our national security. In terms of our security, i’d say the following:

1) Some of the money that would be saved could be put into debt forgiveness and/or non-military foreign aid. That would improve the world’s opinion of the US and make it less likely we’ll be attacked and more likely that if we are attacked we have a lot of allies.

2) Some of the money that would be saved could be put in to domestic social programs like health-care that would improve the image people have of the US. There’s a large chunk of the planet’s population that don’t like the US PARTLY because of how poor and working-class Americans are treated in America.

3) Many throughout the world would make it clear that they are against an attack on America and would come to America’s aid if it were attacked if we didn’t have the fairly threatening military posture we currently have. We’re basically saying “see this gun? DON’T FUCK WITH ME!” A lot of people then don’t care if someone DOES fuck with us. A reduced military would change that.


What I outline above would work best if accompanied by a general change in American foreign policy, but even just shifting some money around in the federal budget would help make America safer.

Making America more democratic and decreasing inequality would, overall, decrease the threat to us and increase the willingness of other countries to stand with us, discouraging attacks and helping us after attacks if they happen.

Going back to the episode, I’m not a big fan of the mirror-universe episodes. I give this one three stars out of five.


“The Collaborator” See this for a plot summary.

A fairly non-political episode, aside from the role of Vedek Winn, who I have described before as basically a conservative fundamentalist religious leader, and who is, of course, the antagonist of Starfleet, especially Sisko and O’Brien.

Overall, a good episode, I give it three stars out of five.