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)



(The "Table of Contents" offers brief descriptions of all but the most recent posts)


(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)

YOU NEED TO READ THE POST "Trump, Netanyahu, and COVID-19 (Coronavirus)" here. It is a contrast of the two on COVID-19 and might be helpful in attacking Trump. And see the middle third of this about Trump being a for-real fascist.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Reviews Q

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).

“Indiscretion” See this for a plot summary.

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


“Rejoined” See this for a plot summary.

“The lesbian kiss that wasn’t” I can’t find where I read that, but I like how it describes part of this episode. Two women kiss each other, but it’s actually heterosexual since they’re motivated by feelings that their symbiants have for each other from earlier hosts when one host was male and they were married.

As I’ve described elsewhere, aside from the issue of non-heterosexual characters, ST has a fairly good record of being anti-homophobic.

UPDATE 3/24/22 When I watched this recently, I decided that it WAS anti-homophobic. Not the kiss really, but something else. Although I don't consider same-sex relationships to be "taboo," historically the word "forbidden" might be appropriate. The two Trill women wrestle with doing something (starting a new romantic relationship when their symbionts have a past together as a couple) forbidden by their society, because they love each other. They talk about pursuing that love even though they will be disowned by their society. In THAT sense it kind of IS anti-homophobic.

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

“Starship Down” See this for a plot summary.

A very non-political episode, although there’s one minor thing I’ll address. I’m not going to say something every time Ferengi greed is displayed, it happens something like every other episode.

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


“Little Green Men” See this for a plot summary.

There’s some good political commentary about Earth history (and our present)- the greed, bigotry, war, nuclear fission, and tobacco.

The story is pretty creative and well-done, I give it four stars out of five.

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