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).
“The Homecoming,” "The Circle," and “The Siege” See the links for a plot summary.
This three-parter raises the issue of “Bajor for Bajorans” and the related issue of Starfleet’s presence on Bajor’s space station that I already addressed in the first DS9 review, while discussing the episode “Past Prologue.” Some other notes:
1) I like the part about rescuing the Bajoran POWs. This is mostly because the Bajoran resistance was a good cause and I’ve gotten the impression that they conducted their struggle honorably. I also like POW stuff in general, especially World War II Allied POWs and Irish Republican POWs.
2) Considering that the station is Bajoran, the “Bajor for Bajorans” people don’t like the many non-Bajorans on DS9. It even affects Jake when his Bajoran date cancels on him beccause her father won’t let her date non-Bajorans. At one point, as the coup drives further wedges between Bajorans and non-Bajorans, we learn that a human Starfleet officer is engaged to a Bajoran. Although it’s nothing new on ST and I won’t be making a note every time this comes up, these two items are obviously good swipes at hostility towards inter-racial dating.
I recently looked up some polls on the sectarian or anti-sectarian attitudes of people in N. Ireland. I was surpised at how high the percentage of Protestants who say they’d have no problem with a close relative marrying someone of a different religion was (68%) and how low that figure was for Catholics (85%) (the figures for those who would mind a lot were 3% for Catholics and 9% for Protestants (almost everyone else was in-between with their attitude)). Even though my earlier estimate for those figures was off by about 10 percentage points (i.e. I thought about 95% of Catholics were comepletely okay with such marraiges, I knew there was a problem with that. (I wouldn’t be surprised if the reality isn’t quite as positive as what the survey indicates).
3) The politician who is launching a kind of coup is in agreement and alliance with the conservative, fundamentalist clergy member vedek Winn who I described in the last DS9 post, while discussing the episode “In The Hands Of The Prophets.” When Sisko bends his orders and ignores what the new government (after the coup) says about how non-Bajorans need to evacuate the station, I wonder if that counts as a (justified) case in which he doesn’t respect Bajoran independence. On one hand, Sisko’s Starfleet superiors believe that Sisko resisting the coup is in violation of the Prime Directive because the coup is internal to Bajor (there’s evidence of some minor Cardassian involvement, but it is basically a Bjaoran coup). On the other hand, Sisko had reason to believe that the Cardassians were helping the coup-plotters because they wanted the Federation to be tossed out by Bajor so that they could then re-occupy Bajor as part of seizing control of the worm-hole and he was also kind of following his original orders in terms of trying to maintain a positive relationship between the Federation and Bajor. Also, as a viewer, I feel better about what Sisko does knowing that (and this is not a big surprise) the “Bajor for Bajorans” forces are also allied with conservative religious fundamentalists.
Overall a very good three-parter. The plot is good, the action is good, the politics are good. All together I give it four stars out of five.
“Invasive Procedures” See this for a plot summary.
A very non-political episode, but a good one. I’d give it two stars out of five.
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