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).
“Visionary” See this for a plot summary.
A very non-political episode, but a good one. I give it three stars out of five.
“Distant Voices” See this for a plot summary.
A very non-political episode. One tiny element of politics is that we learn about the Cardassian equivalent of mystery novels. In the enigma tale, all the suspects are guilty and the mystery is what they’re guilty of. The message sent is that if the authorities suspect someone, they must be guilty.
A good episode, I give it three stars out of five.
“Through The Looking Glass” See this for a plot summary.
A very non-political episode but there are some minor aspects that are political.
1. At the very beginning, it’s made clear one more time that ST and the Federation are against animal fights for entertainment and gambling.
2. I think this is the first episode where we see that the mirror universe Kira is bi-sexual. Unfortunately, she’s a villain and the fact that it’s the mirror universe further erodes the anti-homophobic statement made by having a non-heterosexual character.
Although I’m not a big fan of the mirror universe episodes, this one is good, I give it two stars out of five.
“Improbable Cause” and “The Die Is Cast” See this and this for a plot Summary.
A very non-political two-parter, but a very good one, I give it four stars out five.
“Explorers” See this for a plot summary.
There’s one political aspect to this episode. The Cardassians don’t believe Bajoran claims that early Bajoran spacefaring efforts 800 years earlier made it as far as Cardassia. These are the same Cardassians who must have convinced themselves that Bajorans were inferior in order to justify their occupation of Bajor. Denying achievements by Bajorans would be part of that. It reminds me how the indigenous people of the Americas are denied credit for the many achievements they made before Europeans did. I haven’t studied that for about 10 years and only vaguely remember a few, but there’s an average sized book about it that I read, there were something like 100-150. things that the indigenous people taught to Europeans. The United States constitution was influenced by the Iroquois Confederacy’s Great Law of Peace. I remember reading that some farming techniques were first used by indigenous people of the Americas. There’s a ton of others.
“Family Business” See this for a plot summary.
This episode is basically about how Ferengi society treats women. Not well as it turns out. It’s basically the second of, I think about 3 DS9 episodes that are about a Ferengi woman challenging the sexist nature of her society.
It’s a pretty good episode, especially considering the politics, so I give it four out of five stars.
“Shakaar” See this for a plot summary.
A very political episode and the politics are a bit complicated. Here’s how I see it:
Kai Winn, basically the Pope of Bajor, somehow becomes Interim First Minister of Bajor until an election can be held to elect a replacement for the last First Minister who died suddenly. It seems like a big mistake- to have Bajor’s spiritual leader retain that position of power when she becomes Bajor’s political leader as well. That’s too much power in the hands of one person. Of course I also don’t like Winn as she’s a conservative religious fundamentalist.
One of her first moves is to demand that some crucial farm equipment be returned to the government by farmers in one province. The first problem is that they had been told they’d have the equipment for a year and had only had it for two months. The second is that Winn wants the equipment transferred to another province which produces agricultural products for export. She believes that exporting food will improve Bajor’s chance of being admitted to the Federation. There are two flaws with that- first, she probably came under the influence of one segment of the business community that would benefit from such exports and second I doubt the Federation would turn them down because they weren’t exporting. Considering all of that, the drastic steps Winn takes to assert the government’s authority (using the Army, introducing martial law) are a total over-reaction and almost lead to civil war. It’s just a further illustration of how anti-democratic Winn is.
Overall a good episode, I give it four out of five stars.
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