Star Wars Deep Space Nine4/23/2021
Almost immediately, Deep Space Nine set itself apart from its predecessors.If previous incarnations saw their story lines born from a place of peace and exploration, Deep Space Nine was born of the fires of war.No incarnation of Star Trek before or since has lived up the ideals of diversity quite the way Deep Space Nine did over the course of its seven seasons.
Star Wars Deep Space Nine Series Introduced TheThe series introduced the franchises first black lead in the form of Commander (and later Captain) Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), a widow, single father, and religious icon to the Bajoran people who is tasked with bringing the newly freed people of Bajor into the Federation while heading a space station at the edge of a previously undiscovered wormhole.![]() ![]() The show favored long-form arcs, which allowed its stories to be as emotionally resonant as they were politically profound. It is a beautifully acted, impactfully directed, and resolutely gritty show. ![]() In honor of its 25th anniversary, here are the top 15 episodes of Deep Space Nine, all available on Hulu. The Star Trek universe reflects this history, but in doing so, sometimes the complexity and tangled nature of certain social concerns get lost in translation. Deep Space Nine often made the bold decision to eschew allegory and instead tackle race, poverty, and identity with a more gimlet-eyed approach, which gave us episodes like the season three two-parter, Past Tense. In it, Sisko, science officer Lieutenant Jadzia Dax (a luminescent Terry Farrell), and Dr. Julian Bashir (the always amazing Alexander Siddig) are thrust about 300 years into the past because of a transporter malfunction. San Francisco in 2024 is a harrowing landscape in which the homeless are sectioned off from society, poverty is rampant, and racism is still very much a reality. Its fascinating watching how each Starfleet officer contends with the thorny political moment as well as the lengths Sisko goes to ensure that the future remains intact. As men of color, Sisko and Bashir contend with racism in ways they never have to in their daily lives, as it is a thing of the past in Earths 24th century. As Robert Greene II wrote for the Atlantic, Past Tense was notable for depicting racism not from the perspective of a well-meaning white liberal, as seen in previous iterations of Star Trek, but through the eyes of people of color directly threatened by violence and indifference. This is true of everyone from silent supporting figures like Morn to crucial antagonists like Kai Winn to Starfleet officers like Chief of Operations Miles OBrien (Colm Meaney), who was introduced on The Next Generation but came into his own on Deep Space Nine. Many episodes that focus on OBrien put him through an existential, often surreal hell. Whispers is definitely part of that tradition, as OBrien returns from an away mission to find his wife, Keiko (Rosalind Chao), and his colleagues treating him with strange suspicion. Taking inspiration from films like The Parallax View and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Whispers creates a miasma of dread that builds to a gut punch of a surprise ending. Duet crystallizes the transcendence of the series as the writers smartly established the emotional lives of each character as important, making the political and historical commentary resonate on a deeper level. Duet fleshes out one of the best characters in the series, Kira Nerys (a fierce Nana Visitor), a Bajoran former freedom fighter (or terrorist, depending on who you ask) who now acts as the first officer aboard the station. She confronts the past of her people when a Cardassian she suspects to be a war criminal boards the station looking for medical help. Duet eschews any subplot to focus entirely on the morality play between Kira and a man she believes is responsible for hideous crimes against her people during the war. In doing so, it introduces a host of fascinating themes about the nature of war and its aftermath that are consistently explored throughout the run of the series.
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