Holosuite whitewashing

Just rewatched the DS9 S7 ep “Badda-bing Badda-bang.” There's this really awkward scene I guess they felt obliged to insert, in which Sisko says he objects to the Vic Fontaine holosuite program because of the way it whitewashes Vegas history, presenting a false version of the early 1960s in which black people are welcome in casinos. And I’m like, y’know, that’s an irrefutably correct point, but if they were going to make it, they'd have been better off just abandoning the whole story altogether. Because Kasidy’s rebuttal, that the holosuite program represents an idealized version of history the way it should have been, rather than the way it was, is really silly and lame, given that the entire story is about Mob violence and corruption. But rather than point that out, Sisko is like, OK, now that I've recited the disclaimer, count me in.

So obviously, it's not history the way it should have been, but rather contemporary TV paying lip service to, but then blatantly choosing to ignore, the obvious problems raised by inserting characters of color into the conventional time-travel (or in this case, fantasy time-travel) story. They're basically saying, "It's 1999, and we can no longer ignore the elephant in the room, but we haven't come up with a good way to explain it, and we aren't willing to give up this popular trope that provides us with so many easy-to-write episodes that we can shoot for little money on the back lot using whatever costumes and props we happen to have lying around, so we're going to hand-wave furiously and hope everyone thinks that's good enough."

It's exactly like that moment in the Doctor Who episode "The Shakespeare Code," when Ten takes Martha back to Elizabethan England. When she questions whether, as a black woman, she'll be "carted off as a slave," Ten, whose appearance is as white and male as can be, blithely replies, "Just walk about like you own the place. Works for me." Well alrighty then.

[EDITING TO ADD: It seems to me it should be possible to write time-travel stories that neither put characters of color in awkward or dangerous situations due to their race, nor demand the audience to just ignore this obvious issue. But how to do it? Racking my brains...this is a tough one...I dunno...I guess you could have them time travel to places where people look more like them? Crazy idea, I know. Do continents that are not Europe even have a past?]

Also, pet peeve of mine: period pieces about the 1950s and early 60s in which men do not remove their hats indoors. I don't care if it's a holosuite full of fake people who don't even notice the aliens with bumpy noses and misshapen foreheads. They would be programmed to notice men wearing hats indoors. Otherwise, what would be the POINT?

DS9 shines a light on the Shithole

On this Shithole morning, when we are so painfully reminded of the racist culture of which we are a part, I find myself watching DS9 "Far Beyond the Stars." It just happens to be up next in my rewatch. And it absolutely guts me. Somehow, I'd basically forgotten this episode entirely, and it's like watching it for the first time. I'm not even going to describe it, because maybe someone reading this, like me, has forgotten it -- or maybe they never saw it at all -- and it's out there, waiting to be discovered or rediscovered.

If you love Star Trek because of the possibilities it unfolds, or if you just believe that telling a story can be a powerful act of illuminating the present and imagining the future, take an hour out of your day and watch "Far Beyond the Stars."

Sisko of Arabia

So I'm rewatching the DS9 episode "Starship Down," a rather contrived, thinly plotted story about the Defiant being badly damaged, and the resultant personal struggles of survival that are meant to illuminate character relationships. A badly injured Sisko is trapped on the bridge with Kira. In an effort to keep him awake, she tells him Bajoran stories. The thought crosses my mind, How Arabian Nights-like. And that's when it hit me.

Benjamin Sisko is Lawrence of Arabia. I've never encountered that idea before, but now it makes so much sense that I can't unsee it. Certain characters enter the cultural consciousness as archetypes that pop up in fiction again and again, often with no conscious reference to the original, yet the influence is clear. I'm not saying anyone intentionally set out to create Sisko in the image of Lawrence (the movie version, not the historical one), but he fits the type so well. (If you've never seen Lawrence of Arabia, you should, if for no other reason than that it invented a good deal of the visual language we now associate with the "sweeping epic," including Star Wars. And if you ever get a chance to see it on a big screen, it's well worth going out of your way for.)

So how is Sisko like Lawrence? He's an officer sent to a remote location as a liaison from a colonial power that sees itself as enlightened and benevolent (British/Federation), but is not above pursuing its own interests in global/galactic conflicts. In this case, it is inserting itself into the conflict between a backward but noble, spiritually oriented people (Arabs/Bajorans), and an empire against which they are rebelling that is brutal, oppressive, and, one suspects, on the decline (Ottomans/Cardassians), but nevertheless remains a threat to remote colonies under British/Federation protection. In many ways, the depiction of Bajor in DS9 is reminiscent of the orientalism oozing from Lawrence of Arabia -- simultaneously admiring and condescending. Along the way, Sisko/Lawrence becomes a spiritual figure to the Bajorans/Arabs and comes to value their independent interests more than the distant ones he's supposed to be representing, which he never fully abandons, either. He is not one of them, but he respects them and is willing to use their regard as a valuable tool, a means to an end. He inhabits an awkward position between two worlds, never comfortable with the veneration directed toward him, but ultimately coming to see himself as chosen for some greater good.

(I know a lot of people bristle at the idea of the Federation as an inherently colonialist enterprise, pardon the pun, but it is. The Federation is yet another version of the grand tale we in the West like to tell ourselves about our highly evolved values that we have but to expose the world/galaxy to, and they will inevitably come to appreciate and share them, and when they do, they will be ready to join us in a kind of secular holy alliance. It's the story America tells itself, and Britain told itself before that. In aspiring to be better, we tend to take what we know and idealize it. When we set that story in the future, we call it sci fi.)

Thoughts on DS9: The Visitor

I always say, there are no bad stories, only badly written ones. And conversely, if a story is good, it's good because it's well written. DS9's "The Visitor" is a prime example of this rule. There's so much that could have gone wrong -- and in lesser hands, often does -- but that here goes very right.

I just rewatched this lovely episode, which, to be honest, I'd all but forgotten. This tear-jerker could have been embarrassingly cheesy. It could have been deadly dull, focusing as it does on a version of a character we don't really know (adult Jake Sisko) and featuring the regulars very little. The technobabble-based premise of Jake dragging his temporally shifted father through time could have stretched credulity to the breaking point. The framing story of old Jake's tale to a stranger is hardly original ("The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone/He cannot choose but hear/And thus spake on that ancient man/The bright-eyed Mariner"). And yet the episode manages to be authentically touching. By crafting a plot that's not killingly obvious, and by striking emotional notes that ring true, the writing walks a thin line, avoiding (sometimes barely) veering into the maudlin or the melodramatic, keeping us nailed to our seats and emotionally invested. (For comparison, check out "Facets," the Dax-centric story just a couple of episodes earlier. It's so thinly written, you can't get past the flawed premise that, if Dax has all the memories of her previous hosts, she ought to already know that Curzon had been in love with Jadzia. But I digress.)

Of course, the acting has to be up to the writing, and it is. Tony Todd as adult Jake is spot on, but the story also owes an awful lot to Cirroc Lofton, who sells bereaved young Jake for all he's worth. I mean, that scene in sick bay...wow. The kid delivered.

On the downside, if an episode makes me cry, but it doesn't have an impact on the characters and the series as a whole, I just feel so ripped off. Having grown up on the highly stylized, episodic storytelling of American television, I never used to hope for more. But now, when I see something like "The Visitor," where there's a climax with great emotional impact, and then the whole denouement is maybe two minutes, tops, it's so unsatisfying. What's more, because I'm binge-watching, I'm quickly on to the next episode, and it's like the whole thing never happened. That's why I'm so grateful ST is getting a chance to do fully serialized storytelling in Disco. But "The Visitor" also makes me realize that I hope Disco takes some time in its second season to slow down a little bit and give its characters room to breathe. All through season 1, it's been driving hard to pack a ton of plot into every hour, to deliver the kind of breathless pace that's become the norm for big-budget action film and TV, and to keep the audience guessing about the characters' secrets and motives. But once we get on a firmer footing and resolve some of that, I hope there'll be more (non-cheesy, believable) character pieces. We got a taste of that with Saru in “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum,” and even better, with Stamets in "Magic to the Make the Sanest Man Go Mad," where the character development was an organic part of an entertaining twist on a vintage plot (talk about "no such thing as a bad story..."). I want a whole lot more.

DS9: Duet and the Jewish Question

"Duet" is a brilliant episode -- DS9's first truly great one, and one of the best of any ST. ("What you call genocide, I call a day's work." That is a fantastic line by any standard.)

 But as I watched it again, I found myself wondering how it came to pass that DS9 incorporated Jewishness in such divergent and discordant ways. How in god's name did the same series morph every negative Jewish stereotype ever into the greedy, cowardly, lascivious, latinum-and-shiksa-craving Ferengi, and also transform the Holocaust into the Bajoran/Cardassian conflict? How did this crazy thing come about? Googling, I found this fascinating piece, with this insight: "To me, DS9 was largely about the Jewish diaspora. Cardassians are Nazis, Ferengis represent Jews as the world sees them (i.e., anti-Semitism), and Bajorans represent Jews as they see themselves (i.e., Israel)."

Now that has more than a soupcon of truth. But it got me thinking....

DS9 is Star Trek breaking away from Roddenberry's legendary, meshuganah commitment to a conflict-free universe. It brings back the untidiness and rough edges that make characters and situations believable and relatable. And intentionally or not -- I tend to think, mostly not -- the Jewishness of it is revealing in its messiness, too. We are outraged at the antisemitic caricature of the Ferengi, and yet somehow they refuse to be defined by our pearl-clutching. Quark just won't stay in that bottle. Armin Shimerman won't let you reduce Quark to the ugly stereotype that is so clearly his starting point. There's too much humor, exuberance, and sheer humanity about him. Who doesn't like Quark? NOBODY. Kira may embody the Jewish resistance, the Haganah, the early pioneer spirit, but she's kind of...well, dull. Quark is irrepressible. On a gut level, we know that, for all Starfleet's hoity-toity "we've evolved beyond money and materialism," and for all Bajor's spiritualism and feisty can-do attitude, you want to stick close to the guy with a backup plan. The universe could not possibly be that sincere, earnest, and perfect. The goyim and the idealists may deride the merchants, but we all know it's because they haven't figured out how not to need them.

Which is not to say that playing in the sandbox of racist stereotypes and casual bigotry is to be hand-waved. Too much about DS9's Jewishness feels accidental, like the writers didn't know how many cliches, inane conventions, and outright bigotry they were regurgitating. I will always wonder how it is that no one stood up in the writer's room and said, "Houston, we have a problem."  DS9 is a mess of contradictions that seem to have been created, at best, by shockingly unaware people. Nevertheless, that messiness somehow beats the hell out of TNG's sterile, WASPy, unconvincing niceness. They imitate, co-opt, distort, and conflate -- and it's so much better than the alternative.

One last point: As Disco's writers explore the ghosts of Star Trek past, they are clearly in the market for the aspects of the ST universe that don't quite fit the idyllic myth -- the exceptions that prove the rule. The Mercenary Outsider who doesn't buy into Starfleet's selfless altruism clearly fits that bill. Quark has a precursor: Harry Mudd. "I'm not siding with anyone. But I sure as hell understand why the Klingons pushed back. Starfleet arrogance. Have you ever bothered to look out of your spaceships down at the little guys below? If you had, you'd realize that there's a lot more of us down there than there are you up here. And we're sick and tired of getting caught in your crossfire." Without a doubt, we've not heard the last of that weltanschauung.