Television
Deep Space Nine
By TERESA MALCOLM
It is ironic that as the new Star Wars movie blazes
across the science fiction firmament, a television series in many ways its
diametrical opposite -- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine -- is coming to
a largely unheralded end.
While the epic battle in Star Wars between good and
evil is painted in broad, bold strokes, for seven years Deep Space
Nine has immersed itself in shades of gray. Week to week its characters
have struggled to make complicated moral choices, sometimes even picking the
wrong ones.
Other entries in the Star Trek franchise have asked
viewers to think beyond black and white, good and evil. But Deep Space
Nine made it a way of life on its fictional space station, throwing old
enemies together on a nearly weekly basis and asking them to deal with each
other.
Most often facing that dilemma was Major Kira (Nana Visitor), a
former resistance fighter learning the ways of peace, who has found herself
working with, training, undermining, interrogating and helping the Cardassians,
the people who had brutally ruled her planet, Bajor.
The Cardassians were the ostensible villains, though we were never
allowed to see them in an uncomplicated way. Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo), the
series most prominent Cardassian character, was a power-hungry ruler who
made us uncomfortable with his odd attraction to the Bajoran women he had once
enslaved, and who never showed a twinge of conscience for the horrific abuses
he had perpetrated. But we couldnt help but relish his personal rivalry
with Deep Space Nines Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks). And we wept with him
when his daughter, the child of a Bajoran mother, was killed.
The series specialty has been to pose questions, personal
and political, that both its characters and the viewers had difficulty settling
with pat answers. What is a citizens complicity in atrocities carried out
by his or her own government? Would you go so far as the inoffensive Cardassian
clerk who offered himself as a sacrifice for war crimes committed by his
people?
What makes a person a collaborator with an occupying military
force? Are collaborators legitimate targets for resistance fighters? What are
the limits of violence that can be justifiably used against oppression?
How does one hold on to faith in a religious institution whose
spiritual leaders are more devoted to worldly power? How do you balance
tradition against the demands of the modern world?
What are the ethical and societal implications of genetic
engineering? Does a government have the right to obstruct a doctor seeking a
cure for a virus infecting a wartime enemy? What if the government created that
virus?
What do you do when you find out your government has a shadow side
in conflict with its stated democratic, peaceful ideals?
Deep Space Nine took its jumble of politics,
personalities, religion and ethnic conflicts and used its science fiction
license to parallel all manner of present-day world events and issues. And,
after a rather cranky start, it did it all with a healthy dose of humor that
became one of the series most winning attributes -- a little fun to
lighten the load of questions.
Star Trek hasnt quite faded away yet. Star
Trek: Voyager still plugs away in another part of the galaxy, far from
Deep Space Nines messy politics, but still engaging in its
share of morality plays.
But in the waning weeks of Deep Space Nine, Ive
come to appreciate its ambivalence more, knowing it will all be resolved soon.
Or will it? All hell is literally breaking loose in the plot, consumed by a
two-year war that shows no signs of ending, and the few weeks left dont
seem nearly enough time to tie up loose ends.
Whether the war ends in victory for our side and all
the characters make it out alive, it would be just like them to leave us with
one final question: How do we pick up the pieces and make a better future?
Teresa Malcolm is assistant news editor and a staff writer. Her
e-mail is tmalcolm@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, June 4,
1999
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