What follows is an in-depth discussion of my thoughts on the lessons that I have learned from Star Trek: Deep Space 9. It includes massive spoilers for the entire series, especially the season six episode called, “In the Pale Moonlight.”
“Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?”
—the Joker, in Batman
My name is Holly MathNerd, and I’m a Niner
Star Trek: Deep Space 9 is my favorite Star Trek series.
DS9, and especially my favorite episode, has been on my mind for two weeks now, to the point that I know there’s something for me to discover there.
Writing is how I discover almost everything, and if you’re reading this, I apparently decided to share the journey this time.
We Trekkies who love it the most, among all the Star Trek series to love, are sometimes called “Niners”. The captain of DS9 loves baseball, so there’s a whole line of merch that lets Niners find each other.
Just Enough Context To Get The Rest of This Post
The series is set on a space station, the Deep Space 9 of the title. It has a cast of characters who live on the station full-time, a combination of Starfleet officers and residents of Bajor, the nearest planet. The Bajorans have just recently won a war against the Cardassians, an enemy that occupied their planet for fifty years in a brutal analogy to the Holocaust. The Federation has an uneasy peace with the Cardassians and are trying very hard to help the Bajorans recover from the occupation and ready themselves to join the Federation.
If you’ve seen the show “Little House on the Prairie,” you already get the dynamic. Just as Star Trek: the Next Generation was a workplace drama, DS9 is a small town epic. DS9 is in every way its own small town, with people who live there full-time and new people moving in and out for various reasons. The starships that come in and out bring in friends, enemies, and in-betweens, with conflicts arising and being settled. The people who live there include characters from Star Trek: the Next Generation — Miles O’Brien and later Worf—and a Cardassian exile named Garak, a tailor who is also a former spy.
Captain Benjamin Sisko, a widower with a teenage son, commands DS9. They are represented as being from the New Orleans area on earth, so the show presents, among other things, a powerful model of devoted fatherhood among black Americans, which is an aspect of the show that I enjoy and appreciate.
“In the Pale Moonlight”
In season 6, the Federation is at war with the Dominion, a powerful race hellbent on authoritarian domination of the entire Alpha Quadrant.
And the Federation is losing. Badly. Losing to the tune of weekly lists of casualties on which nearly everyone recognizes a name.
At the beginning of episode 19, “In the Pale Moonlight,” Captain Sisko breaks the fourth wall, over and over. He stares right into the camera and tells his story, and the viewer is immediately drawn in.
He says: “I need to talk about this... I have to justify what's happened, what I've done - at least to myself. I can't talk to anyone else, not even to Dax. Maybe if I just lay it all out in my log, it'll finally make sense. I can see where it all went wrong - where I went wrong.”
He has realized that the only hope the Federation has is to get the Romulans to enter the war as Federation allies.
The Romulans have been neutral to this point, determined to stay out of it—a position that makes sense to them. Sisko has to change the calculus to make it seem, to the Romulans, that it makes more sense to get involved than to continue staying neutral.
To do this, he enlists Garak’s help and together they concoct a scheme to assassinate a Romulan Senator and blame it on the Dominion. Their scheme requires the help of a criminal, an expert forger, who must likewise be killed rather than left alive to possibly reveal what they have done.
It is impossible to exaggerate the violation of his own ethics, and his Starfleet training, that this behavior represents. Starfleet officers are known throughout the galaxy as trustworthy, upstanding citizens who are reliably ethical and honest.
And he, a proud Starfleet Captain, now suborns murder to achieve his aim.
Garak, the spy who is much more accustomed to making ethically murky and difficult decisions, comforts him:
“….and if your conscience is bothering you, you should soothe it with the knowledge that you may have just saved the entire Alpha Quadrant. And all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain.”
The scene where Sisko admits to himself what he has done, but worse—that he can live with it—is chilling for its rawness and honesty.
He stares right into the camera, making a full confession to his personal log. He says:
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.
So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it.
I can live with it.
Computer - erase that entire personal log.
I embedded a YouTube clip of that scene below; you may have to click and watch it on YouTube, depending on the limitations of your device/app.
This gives me enormous fodder for thought, always, and certainly during my periodic re-watches of DS9.
The Longest Negotiation
Three, almost four, months ago, I had an important realization about myself and one of the ways that a past trauma has shaped me. It took something I thought was true about myself and falsified it, in rather grand fashion.