This Week In Retro: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

January 3, 1993: Star Trek explores a new kind of frontier

by Diamond Feit

A long time ago in a galaxy not far away at all, Star Trek was not a billion-dollar global multimedia franchise. It wasn’t a brand that companies fought over or a shared cultural experience that everyone just understood. It was merely a science-fiction television program on the NBC network that, after three seasons of disappointing ratings, got the ax. Star Trek existed, and then it stopped. The end.

That Star Trek did not actually end when executives decided to remove the show from the airwaves is nothing short of miraculous, as a multitude of unlikely occurrences came together to resurrect the series from obscurity. First and foremost amongst these was a passionate fan base who continued to meet and share their love for Star Trek long after the final episode aired on June 3, 1969. Today, thanks to the Internet, communities can easily gather around even a mildly successful property and create fan fiction, podcasts, and entire wikis dedicated to every one-off character. The roots of that kind of dedicated, organized enthusiasm lie with Trekkies, who managed to write enough letters to save Star Trek from cancellation after season two and who never let the show leave their hearts when a second cancellation order finished the job.

Star Trek’s crawl back to the mainstream took decades; a big-screen adventure in 1979 reunited the cast and proved profitable enough to garner multiple sequels. By the mid-80s with the show approaching its 20th anniversary (and the primary cast pushing retirement age), ideas for a new TV program featuring a new crew resulted in Star Trek: The Next Generation premiering as a first-run syndicated drama. Instead of answering to a single national network and worrying about time slots, TNG aired around the world on any station willing to pay for it. Those same dedicated fans had their doubts about a Starship Enterprise without a Kirk or Spock standing on the bridge, but the experiment worked. The Next Generation drew viewers by the millions and suddenly Star Trek was bigger than ever before.

The continuing popularity of a new Star Trek that lacked returning characters or actors from the 60s gave the franchise license to do what it truly had never done before: Expand. With TNG a critical and commercial smash, producers felt it only made sense to create a new show about new characters living in that same universe that they had spent years carefully crafting. Yet instead of molding this new series around a different spaceship on its own mission to explore strange new worlds or seek out new life and new civilizations, this time the story would center around a space station, a facility set in a fixed location. 30 years ago, Star Trek fans met Commander Benjamin Sisko as he (and they) first set foot on Deep Space Nine.

From its very first episode, "Emissary," Star Trek: Deep Space Nine demonstrated to viewers that while they could count on seeing a lot of familiar concepts like Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, they shouldn't expect Commander Sisko to act like famous captains of the past. Sure, he might be a decorated officer and able to lead others, but he's not exactly willing. As a single father, Sisko doesn't want to raise his teenage son Jake aboard a reclaimed, run-down alien station orbiting a small planet called Bajor still in recovery mode after decades of hostilities. Even as he accepts his assignment, the idea of living on Deep Space Nine is so distasteful to him, Sisko considers resigning so he can return to a quieter life on Earth.

Worse still, he has to review his orders with Jean-Luc Picard, famed captain of the Enterprise but also a man who once led a Borg invasion of Earth (against his will). As a major event depicted on The Next Generation, the Starfleet/Borg conflict destroyed dozens of vessels and killed thousands of Federation citizens. "Emissary" shows the audience that Sisko had fought against the Borg and barely escaped with young Jake, but lost his wife Jennifer in the battle. In a briefing aboard the Enterprise three years later, Sisko can barely contain his contempt for Picard's role in Jennifer's death, but he begrudgingly accepts his new position as commander of DS9.

Sisko's surrounding staff share his uncertainty regarding the situation on Deep Space Nine and their collective future. His first officer, Major Kira from the aforementioned Bajor, views Starfleet as another outsider infringing upon the freedom of her people. The head of security on the station, Odo, retains his position as appointed by the previous tenants, so neither he nor Starfleet have complete confidence in the other. Quark, a bartender and head of the station merchant's association, would prefer to simply walk away before Bajor and the station face any more threats. Sisko's three ranking officers all have his back, but two of them are young and inexperienced and the third, Chief O'Brien, has a family and shares Sisko's anxiety about raising children in such a place.

From this brief description of the premise alone, we can see the major difference between Deep Space Nine and all previous incarnations of Star Trek: Instead of a core group of Starfleet officers with a common past and shared sense of duty, DS9 features an eclectic bunch of people from very different backgrounds who don't necessarily agree on, well, anything. They're not on board to map star systems or study celestial phenomena, they're just here to live their lives, day by day, and try to make things better than when they arrived. And at the end of each episode, no one flies away towards the next adventure; DS9 is their home now, whether they like it or not.

With that sense of permanence as the series backbone, Deep Space Nine necessarily developed multiple long-term storylines, another departure from Star Trek of the past. Continuity always mattered in the franchise before, but on the whole, most episodes served as stand-alone tales that any viewer could enjoy. Deep Space Nine's first season features a lot of similar episodes with visiting alien-of-the-week encounters and even periodic guest appearances from TNG characters, but quickly forges crucial relationships between individuals and organizations that will butt heads for many seasons to come.

Even the basic premise takes a major turn in the very first episode. "Emissary" has Starfleet arrive on the station with the goal of helping Bajor rebuild and hopefully join the Federation. While that mission never ends, it quickly shifts into the backseat when Sisko discovers a stable wormhole in the system that leads to a distant quadrant of the galaxy. While he (and Starfleet) view the find as a scientific marvel, the Bajorans consider the wormhole a temple housing their deities, and suddenly bestow the title of Emissary on Sisko for his role in making contact. Balancing his dual roles as Starfleet officer and religious figure becomes a major theme for the rest of the series, as does dealing with the people who live on the other side of that wormhole.

It would take too many pages to recount the entire Deep Space Nine narrative, but over the course of seven seasons, the writers continued to raise the stakes. A community of disillusioned Federation citizens form a rebellious faction after a Starfleet treaty leaves them on the wrong side of a territorial exchange. Tensions with the Klingon Empire arise anew, leading to a breakdown in relations and a series of armed conflicts. As the Bajorans enjoy a new level of spiritual awareness with the knowledge that their gods are alive and well inside the wormhole, Bajor must also contend with the existence of devils who wish to take the temple for themselves. And in discovering a shortcut to a far corner of the galaxy, Starfleet inadvertently crosses paths with a new power in the universe, leading to a massive interstellar war.

Obviously, I love Deep Space Nine, but viewing the above series of events isn't what makes the show my favorite version of Star Trek to date. The best episodes of DS9 did more than advance the plot, they also tackled hot-button issues head-on in a manner that feels prophetic. A third season two-parter, "Past Tense," has three members of the crew thrown back in time to the year 2024 where they struggle to comprehend apparent widespread apathy on Earth towards the poor and downtrodden. "Bar Association" critiques Quark's hyper-capitalist business practices as a means to address the importance of organized labor in the face of wealth inequality. "It's Only a Paper Moon" shows a young ensign retreat from the horrors of war into the holodeck as he struggles to cope with the loss of his leg and finds himself unable to face his PTSD, grief, or survivor's guilt in the real world.

The finest episode of the entire series, however, has not aged a day since it aired in 1998. "Far Beyond the Stars" transposes the cast to New York in the 1950s to tackle the ugliness of racism in the United States. With Ben Sisko, his son Jake, and later additions like Kassidy Yates and Worf from TNG, DS9 featured more Black actors in the regular cast than any other Star Trek show before or since. In "Far Beyond the Stars" the performers shed their usual makeup and spacesuits to instead portray working people in Harlem, with Sisko imagining himself as a science-fiction writer named Benny Russell. Russell dreams of a future where a Black man can be the commander of a space station, but his ideas prove too far-fetched for his editor or publisher to accept. Whenever I see outrage online dismissing people of color in science-fiction and fantasy stories as "unrealistic," I always think back to "Far Beyond the Stars" as a sign of how little we have changed in the past 25 years. I'm also old enough to remember all these same arguments occurred when Tim Russ was cast as a Vulcan on Star Trek: Voyager.

Deep Space Nine would run for seven seasons, just as The Next Generation had done, but DS9 never penetrated pop culture as a whole the way that Captain Picard and his crew managed to. A couple of obstacles prevented Deep Space Nine from reaching non-Trekkie TV viewers. First, TNG was the only new Star Trek program on television for the bulk of its run. DS9 had less than one year on the air without competition from other Trek shows, and because Voyager aired on the United Paramount Network instead of syndication, the two programs often ran against one another in the same time slot in many markets (including New York where I lived).

Secondly, as laid out above, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine committed to serialized storytelling, limiting its appeal to late arrivals. If you had never watched the show before and decided to check out "In the Pale Moonlight," one of the most celebrated episodes of the series, you'd certainly follow the action but the lack of context would severely lessen your viewing experience. When TNG went off the air, the Enterprise-D simply flew off screen with everyone at home fully aware that the ship and her crew would soon make their way to the silver screen. When DS9 ended its run, the writers dedicated the last 10 episodes to wrapping up all of the series' competing story threads. You couldn't make a Deep Space Nine movie, not 20 years ago and not today.

The good news is that modern TV viewing has caught up to what Deep Space Nine was putting down 30 years ago. You likely have access to the entire series on at least one streaming service in your region, and the show absolutely rewards both binge viewing and repeat viewings as you can see the writers laying seeds in early seasons for calamities in the later seasons. Even if the finale brought the story of Deep Space Nine to a full conclusion and no movie could possibly capture that same energy, a new season catching up with the characters decades later would completely work in ways that Star Trek: Picard completely did not. Indeed, the DS9 writers themselves already thought of a brilliant way to return to the space station and pick up where they left off, and you can see them lay out their ideas in the 2018 documentary What We Left Behind.

Sadly, as compelling as a Deep Space Nine revival would be, fate has all but slammed the door shut on such a dream project. Multiple core cast members have passed away in recent years, and series star Avery Brooks has seemingly retired from acting with no credits to his name since 2011—he even declined to appear in What We Left Behind. At this point it would take a miracle to even get the cast back for a brunch buffet, let alone a multi-episode science-fiction series with costly special effects and elaborate makeup for the many aliens needed to walk around the station as background extras.

Then again, if any Star Trek series warranted divine intervention, it would be the one where non-corporal wormhole aliens with no concept of linear time are worshiped as gods. For them, 1993 and 2023 are one and the same. Hell, for all we know, Avery Brooks is hanging out with them right now, teaching them how to sing jazz.

Are you there, Prophets? It's me, Diamond.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.