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).
“Tribunal” See this for a plot summary.
A very non-political episode. The only political part is the Orwellian form of “justice” practiced by the Cardassian court. We also see more on O’Brien’s attitude towards the Cardassians, although surprisingly he’s less hostile towards his “lawyer” than you would expect, evidence that his bigotry towards the Cardassians is pretty mild.
Overall, a good episode, I give it three stars out of five.
“The Jem’Hadar,” “The Search, Part 1,” and “The Search, Part 2” See the links for plot summaries.
This three-parter sees the introduction of The Dominion, who have been mentioned several times before and become the main antagonists of the Federation in DS9.
We learn that, unsurprisingly, Ferengi capitalism is also at odds with the Federation’s environmentalism.
Quark gives a brief lecture comparing human history with Ferengi history and claims that Ferengis look better because they don’t have the war, slavery and genocide that’s part of human history. The idea is that since humans have all that in addition to the greed the Ferengi have, humans historically are worse. Historically, from their point of view in the future, that’s probably true, and it’s a good idea to often highlight how humanity has done some horrible things. But at the same time, when Quark was speaking and for something like 200 years before that, humans were overall much better than Ferengi.
The next two parts are very non-political, but very good episodes, partly because they launch the main conflict in DS9, between most of the Alpha Quadrant and The Dominion.
In the simulated story, when they talk about how Bajor will become part of the Dominion, the Vorta says that Bajor won’t object. But at the beginning of this three-parter we learn that the Bajoran colony in the Gamma Quadrant was destroyed by the Jem’Hadar, something which would increase the likelihood of Bajoran resistance, probably followed by the destruction of Bajoran cities at the hands of the Jem’Hadar.
All together, this three-parter gets four stars out of five.
“The House of Quark” See this for a plot summary.
A very non-political episode. One small bit of politics is that we are reminded that women have second-class citizenship among Klingons.
There’s a couple of good items of character development. O’Brien and Bashir move closer towards being friends, a part of the show I really like. Also, after the station’s school closes, Keiko gets a job as a botanist, which is what she’s trained to do.
“Equilibrium” See this for a plot summary.
A very non-political episode, but a good one. I give it two stars out of five.
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