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).
“Penumbra” See this for a plot summary.
A non-political episode, but a good one, I give it three stars out of five.
“’Til Death Do Us Part” See this for a plot summary.
A non-political episode, but a good one, I give it three stars out of five.
“Strange Bedfellows” See this for a plot summary.
Since I have earlier explained that i don’t like Kai Winn (almost the entire series, she’s a conservative religious fundamentalist), I should say that although I’m not a big fan of the Pah-Wraith aspect of the last couple seasons, I do kind of like the idea of Winn following them. She’s so bad it’s easy to believe that she would go down that path.
Another aspect of politics for this episode is Damar turning against the Dominion. It kind of reminds me a bit of how the most threatening resistance to Hitler came from the military. I read somewhere that some of the officers involved did have good democratic politics and weren’t just rebelling because Hitler was losing the war and Germany was bound for destruction. The odds are that many of the Cardassians who join the rebellion have backgrounds in the movements for democracy on Cardassia. On the other hand, based on statements in the next episode, Damar seems unconcerned about democracy but upset about not being treated as a full-partner by the Founders, Vorta, Jem’Hadar and Breen.
Overall, though, a non-political episode. But a good one, I give it three stars out five.
“The Changing Face Of Evil” See this for a plot summary.
One thing I kept forgetting to bring up earlier is the holo-suite program Bashir and O’Brien use about the Alamo. At the very best it wasn’t a good choice by the creative staff. Although I can’t remember many details, and so far cannot find a VERY good source on the internet, the Texas Revolution was more or less part of the Westward expansion by white American settlers. ST should have gone with something else.
Besides that and further development of the Cardassian rebellion, a non-political episode. But a good one, I give it three stars out of five.
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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