Trek Thursdays: Trekking Towards Sixty — “Past Tense” And “Nor The Battle To The Strong”

On September 8th, 1966, an intrepid crew of explorers boldly went where no one had ever gone before on television. At that moment, Star Trek was born. A series that launched a franchise that has kept a firm grip on audiences for decades.

As the sixtieth anniversary approaches, we here at Comicon are ready to celebrate one of the greatest science fiction franchises. While Star Trek has graced the silver screen, most of its life has been on our television screens. So, that’s where our focus shall remain.

Every week through September, we’ll be spotlighting two Star Trek episodes, from any and every iteration, that we feel are some of the greatest. At this point there are over 950 episodes of Trek, so it goes without saying some favorites won’t make the cut for this list of 60.

Reflecting the world around us is something Star Trek has done since the very beginning. With barely veiled allusions and allegories painted from the events that shaped lives, communities, and generations. Sometimes those events were hard to talk about, a real society needing to look at itself in the mirror sort of moment.

It was often those episodes where the franchise took a look at our collective path and wagged a large finger, playing out what can and does happen when these moments take over and become full reality.

This week we look at a two-parter from the 90s that could have been written today about our very reality, and another that took a real hard look at the true effects of war. It’s a full Star Trek: Deep Space Nine edition as we move closer to the final episodes of the list and the big anniversary itself.

-RED ALERT: SPOILERS FOLLOW-

“Past Tense”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 3, Episode 11 & 12 (01/08/1995 & 01/15/1995)

Synopsis: Trapped three hundred years in the past, three of the crew must confront one of the darkest hours of Earth’s history, while taking part to make sure history itself plays out as it should.

Laws target the homeless and make sleeping outside a crime, as economic woes make people more and more destitute. Government sanctioned groups round people up and forcibly remove them to special camp like areas. The poor and the marginalized are the biggest hit by these tactics as the government turns more of its back on the people it’s supposed to answer to and protect.

If that sounds like any given day in 2026 America, well it should. That is our reality every single day as things get dimmer by the day and the people are boiling ready to explode and possibly even riot. Those conditions were also part of an alternate 2024, the version taking place within the history of the Trek Universe.

As if having a crystal ball, or just common sense and an ability to read the room, the writers behind DS9 threw a dart at the far flung year of 2024 and painted a picture that is far too precognitive.

In high Trek fashion, a transporter accident leads to Sisko (Avery Brooks), Doctor Bashir (Alexander Siddig) and Lieutenant Dax (Terry Farrell) being sent back to 2024 Earth. There they find themselves separated and thrust into different spaces in the vastly divided and growing darker version of the United States. It’s events like the Sanctuary Districts, the spaces where the poor or unwanted or ‘others’ are sent, that led to Earth’s darkest hour of World War III — the war which devastated the planet and its population, eventually leading to Zefram Cochrane’s (Glenn Corbett in the original series, James Cromwell in Star Trek: First Contact and subsequent appearances) warp flight and first contact with the Vulcans.

Long story short, there is a revolutionary named Gabriel Bell who has a part to play in a hostage situation which led to full scale riots, later called the Bell Riots. The uprising at this sanctuary district led to armed soldiers being sent in and hundreds died during the skirmishes. Those soldiers followed rumors that the hostages were dead only to find that they were alive, thanks to Bell who sacrificed his life to save them in the end.

Word of Bell’s actions and the reveal of the true internment camp atmosphere of the Sanctuary Districts led to public outrage and the end of the Sanctuary District program. It’s held up as one of the watershed moments which began humans on the path towards the eventual “utopian” society of the Federation. There was just the bump in the road that was World War III down the way, which further solidified feelings which rose during this time.

The double episode doesn’t hold back. It’s very raw and true to the way that society views the “undesirables” and how the United States is a very reactive rather than proactive society. We blame those who are victims of a broken flawed system rather than fully blame the system, because when you benefit from the system, even a little, it’s often “easy” to just exist and try to keep what you have rather than risk losing more or all.

Per usual, the real Bell meets a bad fate and Sisko must step up to be Bell so that history keeps moving forward. Except, maybe he was supposed to be Bell all along? That’s the fun bit of time travel and bootstrap style paradoxes. Had they not ended up back in the past the events which caused the universe they knew to perhaps never exist. Gotta love that trippy sort of stuff.

There was also the fun bit of Major Kira (Nana Visitor) and Chief O’Brien (Colm Meany) beaming into different decades trying to find their lost friends. Kira wearing a bandage over her nose and having to claim it was broken is some of that *chef kiss* Trek humor when it comes to aliens that are humans with a few minor alterations.

In this instance, Trek saw into the future, and was more right than they ever could have known. Stories like this come from the hope that we will avoid such things and that humans will one day reach a point of being overall better. Unfortunately, reality has a different vision in mind as in some ways things are actively even worse than the version of the 2020s that Trek was able to envision. Lucky us.

“Nor the Battle to the Strong”
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Season 5, Episode 4 (10/21/1996)

Synopsis: After diverting to a Federation hospital, Jake Sisko (Cirroc Lofton) and Doctor Bashir find themselves in the middle of the Federation and Klingon war. Hoping to find an interesting story, Jake must deal the realities of war including fear, bravery, and death.

Starfleet versus the Klingons was nothing new in Trek by the time this episode aired. A great many episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series were centered on the cold war between the two species. One that was amplified with the debut of the feature films, and then altered in Star Trek: The Next Generation where the two civilizations had a peace treaty and were closer to allies.

We never really got to see them at all out bloody war, at least until the fourth season of Deep Space Nine came around.

In a previous column, I spoke about how amazing the fourth season two-part premiere “Way Of The Warrior” was. That moment where the Klingons called off their treaty with the Federation, as they waged war upon the Cardassians, had far reaching consequences in the rest of the season. This episode is one of those which really boils down the brutality of war and how those who hope to report, or romanticize, quickly can become scarred as they enter the battlefield.

War doesn’t care if you are a soldier, an observer, a bystander, or an innocent.

This is one of those rare episodes where Jake takes the focus. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized that as much as the father and son aspect of the Sisko’s is paramount to the show, Jake appears in only 71 of the 176 episodes of the series. A good amount, but it always felt like more when I thought back about the series during and after it’s airing.

When we did get Jake, Lofton was on it most especially in these very heavy character spotlight issues. Notably so as the actor and character aged and could be part of the more serious and weighty elements. Here we see Jake wanting to weave his storytelling chops to report about the war only to be quickly confronted with stark cold reality. He runs for cover, leaving Bashir behind, believing himself to be a coward in the moment.

War was a constant through the final three seasons of the series, especially when it came to the Dominion. There is no shortage of stories about how brutal it is, I even covered “The Siege of AR-” in another column entry. This one though is different in that it follows a civilian, be it a fledgling reporter, caught in the middle. All of the rest are mainly around our wider adult characters who are in one of the fleets or have been around the block numerous times.

At the heart of the episode still lies the very strong father and son bond that was foundational to the series. Sisko must worry about his son behind enemy lines, as he’s not there to protect Jake and Jake feels similarly but also has to find his way in the world as an adult now. As Sisko explains at one point, the joys of parenthood outweigh the worries but they don’t wash them away. As the character of Jake aged, so too did the show and what it could handle and what it was willing to dive into. Not that it pulled any punches from the start, but it knew by this point what the audience could and would handle.

What Jake sees as cowardice is something that is all too real for those who are confronted by the truth of war. No matter how prepared a person says or thinks they are, the real thing is nothing like any training or simulation or mental preparation. Sisko calls his son courageous for writing about the feelings and things that so many actually feel while in battle. Putting it out there what many are too afraid or scarred to say, so that others may learn from the moment.

Come back next week as we dive into two more of Star Trek’s greatest episodes.