A DS9 beginning

The very first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is airing right now on the Spike cable television network.

For those of you who aren't home during weekday daytimes, Spike has been running two episodes of DS9 followed by three episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the noon to 5 p.m. time slot. Yesterday, they ran the final two episodes of the DS9 series, and I didn't know what to expect with the time slots today; often, networks use syndicated series endings as a time to change their programming and switch to other shows. DS9 has had no such terminal fate today, though.

As I watch this "first" episode, it brings back a lot of memories from years ago. DS9 debuted over a dozen years ago, on January 3, 1993. That day, I had flown to Miami to attend a legal continuing education conference, so I had to watch the show from my room at the Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach. It was quite different from what we were used to: The Next Generation was still in the last two years of its production, and this new show was so different! DS9 is a very dark show, both in terms of scene lighting and in terms of plot themes. Non-human characters were much more prevalent. And, DS9 became much more of a prime-time soap opera, with story arcs that continued from show to show and season to season. Eventually the series would become rather bogged down in the bleakness of interstellar war before its conclusion in 1999, but along the way, it presented a number of important social issue discussions.

Two of the most important issues were related to critiquing religion as a force in society at a time when America was uneasy about its religious beliefs while the nightly news was constanting discussing the sexual peccadillos of a Southern Baptist president and a nice Jewish girl.

Set on a space station near the planet of Bajor, DS9 balanced the secular humanism of the Next Generation tradition with the extremely devout religious beliefs of a near-theocracy on Bajor. Bajorian religion also had a lot of interesting parallels to Hinduism and Buddhism, and included a group of "Prophets" or gods who intervened regularly in the day to day activities of the people on Bajor; non-Bajorans, however, thought of the Prophets as "wormhole aliens" who were superior, powerful, supernatural beings living in a space "wormhole" tunnel. The Bajorans also struggled with their religious leadership controlling their laws, politics, and government, something with which modern-day Muslims and Evangelical Christians are similarly struggling.

The other major issue was more subtle, yet academically more important. A character, security officer Odo, was a part of a race of people known as the Founders or the Shape-Shifters, all of whom had the ability to assume any shape, be it humanoid, animal, plant, inanimate object, or even gases and fire. On their home planet, they lived in "The Great Link," a conglomeration of all the beings combined as one in liquid form, making most of the planet a vast ocean of beings. When I was teaching my ancient and medieval humanities classes, I had my students consider the Great Link and compare it to the ancient Egyptian concept of "ka," where each living thing in the universe contains a little piece of life force/sustainance from a common source. We then explored the evolution of that thought into Judeo-Christian concepts of the "soul," asking if humankind's soul is a little piece of "God" broken off, and after the death of the corporeal body, which returns to "God" or "The Light" and becomes again one with the whole. We also looked at parallels between Founders in the Link being one, yet being able to pull out into a separate corporeal entity, and the Christian concept of Trinitarianism.

And, thus, we teach with popular culture.

So, the impact of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine continues, and cable-connected Trekkers across the country can continue their watching and worshipping. The sociological impact of Gene Roddenberry and producer Paramount Pictures on American society has always been significant and they have never been shy about addressing controversial issues. Their artistry in raising these issues and molding opinion is something I've always admired.

Meanwhile, when is some network going to show the reruns of Star Trek: Voyager or Star Trek: Enterprise? We all pretty much have the original series and Next Generation shows memorized, and we're getting close to the same with DS9 shows. There are dozens of Voyager and Enterprise shows I've never even seen. If Spike-TV can devote five hours a day to the Star Trek franchise, surely they can allot a single hour for one of the newer shows. If not Spike, maybe someone else can take the lead.

Why? Because (to my friend Tony's grammatical consternation) it will allow them to boldly go where no man has gone before.