Rob Bricken at io9 answered a question last week about the seeming dearth of optimism in science fiction these days, and he initially responds that “[s]tories need conflict, and having optimistic futures where humanity got their shit together narrows the possibilities of what your protagonist has to struggle against.”
This certainly explains movies like Elysium, Avatar, and the Hunger Games series, but Bricken notes that even the paragon of future optimism, Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek, has gotten the cynical treatment in the reboots:
The original Trek series — and the movies — and to an extent the series following it — were optimistic, that showed us a better future, that gave us hope that humanity might not fuck it all up. And then the new Trek movies completely ditch all that for the same old shit we’ve seen in everything else — violence, disaster porn, and war. I’m not such a Trek fan that this is such a betrayal of Gene Roddenberry’s vision that it keeps me up at night, but I do miss what made Star Trek so unique and charming.
This got me thinking about my personal favorite Trek series, Deep Space Nine. I liked it for the fact that it was darker and grittier than the other Trek series, but I think I realize now that part of what made DS9 so good was that it existed in this broader universe of optimism. To put it in cheesy terms, DS9 was good because it allowed its protagonists to be bad in a universe that was mostly good. If you look at it that way, DS9 may have been the most optimistic Trek show of them all.
I haven’t even seen all of the episodes, but I recall some remarkable conflicts within characters that we didn’t really get to see in other Trek shows. Odo struggled with his connection to his own people versus his loyalty to his friend and his love for Kira. Kira struggled with becoming an unwitting collaborator during the Dominion’s occupation of the station. A whole lot of crap happened to Dr. Bashir. And so on.
My favorite episode though, hands-down, is “In the Pale Moonlight”—I will even say it is among the best episodes of television ever. To summarize (full episode supposedly here), Captain Sisko conspires with the Cardassian tailor/stone-cold badass Garak to bring the Romulan Empire into the war against the Dominion. It requires quite a bit of subterfuge, more than a few illegal acts, and ultimately, more than Sisko thinks he is prepared to deal with. He comes to realize, though, that his crimes serve a greater good, as he explains in a log entry:
I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning thing of all… I think I can live with it. And if I had to do it all over again, I would. Garak was right about one thing – a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant.
Avery Brooks plays this scene perfectly, leaving just a hint of ambiguity as to whether Sisko really can “live with it.” What’s important, though, is that he remains a fundamentally good person. Even if he can’t live with what he has done, he does not let it change who he is. Maybe that is another optimistic message of Star Trek.
On the other hand, Sisko got away with murder, but we are talking about a show in outer space with shape-shifting aliens.
