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).
“A Simple Investigation” See this for a plot summary.
A non-political episode but a good one, I give it three stars out of five.
“Business As Usual” See this for a plot summary.
A political episode about arms dealers. Considering how probably some large majority of the time they arm forces I don’t support I’m not very fond of arms dealers. Is that in conflict with me supporting the IRA? Considering that the IRA got a lot of their arsenal from Libya, the Irish military and the British military and manufactured a lot of their weapons themselves, and considering that I’m concerned about the world outside of Ireland, I’m fairly comfortable saying that I support the IRA but not arms dealers. The overall affect of arms dealers is negative.
On the other hand, there are some conflicts where it’s not the flow of weapons that fuels the fighting but the flow of injustice. So, although I’m not fond of arms dealers and I’m sure they usually arm forces I don’t support, the main thing is that we need to change the world so there aren’t conflicts to be fueled by arms, and although the flow of arms often makes that difficult, it certainly doesn't make it impossible.
So, you could say I have mixed, mostly negative feelings about arms dealers, but I see the actions of participants in a conflict as the biggest problem, and it’s possible that those actions can be stopped without necessarily cutting off the flow of arms. Also, crucially, to one degree or another, the flow of arms to the wrong forces can be cut off by the global community (the fact that there will be disagreement about who the wrong forces are, doesn’t matter to me- that argument is inevitable and we can win it). And if we get to a point where there are no longer arms dealers, we’ll probably also be at a point where people aren’t being oppressed. And if not, there are other ways for oppressed people to get arms.
The last thing to consider when I say that I support the IRA and not arms dealers is when the latter sold guns to the former, they did it for money- it’s not like they did it for free and deserve gratitude.
These mixed but mostly negative feelings are well illustrated in the episode when it turns out that the arms dealers on DS9 supplied the Bajoran resistance with arms, and now the Bajoran government is shielding them from the law.
“Ties Of Blood And Water” See this for a plot summary.
This episode is kind of about a movement for democracy on Cardassia and also about the occupation of Bajor. I usually find episodes with one or both of those themes very enjoyable and very inspirational but not so much with this one. I give it two stars out of five.
“Ferengi Love Songs” See this for a plot summary.
Another episode about how Ferengi society treats women. Such episodes are pretty good.
This blog is mostly about 3 themes- Irish Republicanism, Star Trek, and opposition to bigotry, primarily in America (racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, etc.). It is mostly about Northern Ireland. It will mostly be about these issues in general and past events and will only sometimes touch on current events. Feel free to comment on the earlier posts.
About My Blog
My blog is about history, popular culture, politics and current events from a democratic socialist and Irish republican perspective. The two main topics are Northern Ireland on one hand and fighting anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia on the other. The third topic is supporting the Palestinians, and there are several minor topics. The three main topics overlap quite a bit. I have to admit that it’s not going to help me get a graduate degree, especially because it’s almost always written very casually. But there are some high-quality essays, some posts that come close to being high-quality essays, political reviews of Sci-Fi TV episodes (Star Trek and Babylon 5), and a unique kind of political, progressive poetry you won't find anywhere else. (there are also reviews of episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and reviews of Roseanne)
(my old blog was not showing up in Google search results AT ALL (99% of it wasn't being web-crawled or indexed or whatever) and there was another big problem with it, so this is a mirror of the old one although there will be some occassionnal editing of old posts and there will be new posts. I started this blog 12/16/20; 4/28/21 I am now done with re-doing the internal links on my blog) (the Google problem with my blog (only 1% of this new one is showing up in Google search results) is why I include a URL of my blog when commenting elsewhere, otherwise I would get almost no visitors at all)
(The "Table of Contents" offers brief descriptions of all but the most recent posts)
(I just recently realized that my definition of "disapora" was flawed- I thought it included, for example, Jews in Israel, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and with the Irish diaspora, the Irish on that island. I'll do some work on that soon (11/21/20 I have edited the relevant paragraph in my post about Zionism))
(If you're really cool and link to my blog from your site/blog, let me know) (if you contact me, use the word "blog" in the subject line so I'll know it's not spam)
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