"Past Tense" (1995 episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

[ChicagoRonin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Tense_%28DS9_episode%29

"The crew of the Defiant is thrown back in time to 2024 on Earth. The United States of America has attempted to solve the problem of homelessness by erecting "Sanctuary Districts" where unemployed and/or mentally ill persons are placed in makeshift ghettos."

"hey have arrived just days before the "Bell riots" . . . The Bell Riots happened when tensions rose to the breaking point, the residents of the Sanctuary Districts angry about the loss of their dignity and the inability of the government to provide them the means to honestly support themselves. Dozens will be killed"

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkTAlajIAF4

[earthside]

1. DS9 now available on Netflix.

This spin-off was one of my favorite Star Trek shows.

[TheWraith]

7. I agree, although I think "Past Tense" was one of their weaker showings.

Anything involving time travel is almost always formulaic in the extreme. But overall DS9 did much better than any other Trek show in creating an immersive world that felt genuine.

[Gamow]

14. It was good, holodeck baseball games aside, it was a good show. nt

[Speck Tater]

2. Good series. I need to go back and rewatch them all. nt

[Posteritatis]

3. Particularly neat ep of the series, too. (nt)

[LongTomH]

4. Two of the best episodes of the whole Star Trek franchise.

They brilliantly represent Gene Roddnberry's hopeful, humanistic view of the future. The exposition of the episodes explains that this was a turning point, leading to the more egalitarian society of the Federation.

[Abin Sur]

5. Gene Roddnberry's hopeful, humanistic view of the future...

is why I prefer Babylon 5. In Babylon 5 people operate businesses for the express purpose of making money, there are wrongful death lawsuits, unions have labor troubles, and various organized religions are still thriving.

In other words, science fiction setting aside, it's realistic.

[hunter]

6. I'm sure the people of ancient Babylon would have thought our culture "unrealistic."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon

[Abin Sur]

8. Ancient Babylon was *thousands* of years ago

whereas Star Trek and Babylon 5 are both set around 250 years from now...bit of a difference.

Star Trek is a utopian setting, and utopias are boring*





*Star Trek II aside...that movie rocked.

[Cannikin]

11. I'll come back and debate this with you when Babylon 5 celebrates its 45th anniversary.

[Abin Sur]

13. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

[LongTomH]

19. Disagree! I don't see Star Trek as 'Utopian.

It wasn't a perfect society; it was a society where people - and society - were learning from their mistakes. As for utopian ideals, look to some of our founders: Thomas Jefferson wanted a classless society. So did Thomas Paine, who also favored ideal like a progressive tax system and even a guaranteed minimum income. Both founders. being men of the enlightenment, believed human beings were perfectable; that doesn't mean they expected them to be perfect, just that they could continually work toward an ideal of perfection, even if that was never achieved.

And somewhere, in the afterworld, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine are watching reruns of Star Trek, and Gene Roddenberry is passing the popcorn.

[Abin Sur]

22. Quoting Captain Picard:

"A lot has changed in the past three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of things. We've eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions. We've grown out of our infancy."

"This is the 24th century. Material needs no longer exist.
(Ralph Offenhouse) Then what's the challenge?
The challenge, Mr. Offenhouse, is to improve yourself. To enrich yourself. Enjoy it."

Not a utopia?

And somewhere, in the afterworld, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine are watching reruns of Star Trek, and Gene Roddenberry is passing the popcorn.

Hm...which Founding Fathers are watching Babylon 5?

[LongTomH]

23. Eliminating hunger and want are achievable goals!

And ones we should be working toward!

And no, even with hunger and want eliminated, that isn't utopia by the classical definition. The society isn't perfect; look at the STNG episode: Drumhead. A McCarthy-style witchhunt led be a Starfleet Admiral.

[Abin Sur]

24. Hunger...I'll give you that one.

With enough tech I can see hunger being eliminated. "Want" is a bit trickier. How do you define it?

As for eliminating the need for possesions and people only working so they can improve themselves...how could that be defined as anything but utopian?

Frankly, given the setup I think around 99% of the male population would be living in their home holodeck banging Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch, and all the glamour stars of the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd Centuries. That would take a long time to get boring...

[LongTomH]

26. At least we can agree on the hunger question!

As for want, I'll grant that's difficult to define; it really depends on the person. The important issue is, that we can meet the real human needs of food, shelter, medical care.

Actually, that's just reaffirming FDR's Economic Bill of Rights from 1944.

[TheWraith]

10. In technology, but not in motivation.

I dare say that people had most of the same basic motivations then as now; making a living, raising their families, making the best of their lives--and our culture today is living proof that higher technology doesn't automatically make everything easy or make everyone saints.

[Abin Sur]

15. Exactly right.

While cultural mores change over time...sometimes radically...people's ambitions, drives, and motives are essentially the same now as they have been for thousands of years. Now, if you want to deal with advanced technology changing human nature itself that would be real science fiction.

In other words, not what we see on television. :7

[bigmonkey]

9. Your assertion that this behavior is "realistic" is polemical.

You're attempting to trump disagreement with your position. It's a shameful technique.

(edit for spelling, whoops)

[Abin Sur]

12. "Shameful"? Yeesh, drama much?

I made an assertion. You want to disagree? Go ahead! I'm not "trumping" anything.

[Motown_Johnny]

17. as a sci-fi nut who has seen every Star Trek imaginable numerous times

I prefer Babylon 5 also



No only because it addressed things like labor disputes and unsafe working conditions (the new Battlestar Galactica did that too) but mostly because of the epic nature of the storyline. Almost every episode in the series over the 5 seasons related directly to the main plot line. No other show has ever been created to match that.



Well, that and the fact that it was the first show to use exclusively computer generated special effects (no little model space ships).

[Abin Sur]

20. It certainly helped that the entire series was essentially the work of one person,

J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote 92 out of 110 episodes, including all 44 episodes of the third and fourth seasons.

In a small way it's ruined watching other SF series for me, in that I now hope for all of them to have similarly epic storylines. I'm currently in the process of watching the entire Stargate series (all of them...it's going to take a while!) with a friend for the first time. While I'm enjoying them, I'm disappointed at how many episodes don't advance the overall storyline. Mind you, it's not as bad as Star Trek in this respect...there are story arcs, certainly more than in a show such as Star Trek, but there are a lot of episodes that could simply be left out without affecting the overall plot in the slightest.

[Motown_Johnny]

21. I have seen all the Stargate episodes (all 3 series) many times also

It is very similar to trilogy movies and/or books. The first one is best, the second one not as good and the third one is sorely lacking.


None of them measure up to B5 but IMO they are still worth watching.



The first Star Trek made a point of using different authors for the episodes. It did leave something to be desired as far as plot went but it did help keep the characters fresh.

[TheWraith]

27. Stargate is entertaining, but frankly not great.

Personally I'll disagree with the pack, and say that Stargate Universe was arguably the best of the three series on the grounds of plot. It actually had serious, well pursued continuity and grit to it.

Stargate Atlantis was good, but their strongest season was their first, in my opinion, and they went downhill toward the end.

SG-1 had it's good years and bad, some episodes that were great, and some you'd have to pay me to watch again. Truthfully though I couldn't point to a few "good" seasons and a few "bad," it was heavily non-linear in that way. I will say it improved after Ben Browder joined the cast, and again with Claudia Black. Even so, I wish they'd been more discriminating in what episodes they made and what ones they didn't. Five good seasons are better than ten mediocre ones.

If you're looking for a fun, slightly more modern SF series that has strong plotting, I would suggest you check out Farscape. It ran four seasons plus a miniseries to wrap up, and it always scored highly for plot development. Things that you might assume were one-off episodes remain relevant, in part because they're the history and growth of the characters.

[Abin Sur]

29. Farscape is on the list.

So many things to watch, so little time...I did just manage to get through Futurama. Fun stuff.

[ldf]

28. babylon 5 was absolutely incredible.

the scope of the series was epic.

it was, in essence, an incredible space soap opera. but it was so well thought out. over the five year span of shows, as you watched it, threads that started years earlier, would resolve. you met god (or it's closest equivalent). you saw the destruction of earth in the distant future, when there was nothing left here but a science lab set up to watch the end...

the interactions of the various species were intriguing.

i have the two original movies and entire series, and think it is about time for a rewatch.

[Abin Sur]

30. I've watched it from beginning to end three times.

That's quite enough for some time, I think. I may watch it through again 5 to 10 years from now.

[chalky]

16. Funny, I was just thinking the other day that as much as I loved DS9,

It was the show where the Ferengi went from villain to sympathetic protagonist.

[alfredo]

25. If you think about it, Quark was a ver moral person. He adhered

to the "Rules of Acquisition." Though he was seen as an ass, he could have been seen as a moral person in his culture.



Quark: I think I figured out why humans don't like Ferengi—

Sisko: Not now, Quark.

Quark: The way I see it, humans used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We're a constant reminder of a part of your past you'd like to forget.

Sisko: Quark, we don't have time for this.

Quark: You're overlooking something, Commander. Humans used to be a lot worse than Ferengi. Slavery, concentration camps, interstellar war; we have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We're nothing like you. We're better.

Found this on Wikipedia.

[Motown_Johnny]

32. It was a great scene, you should look for it on youtube

Sisko has a history of being unhappy with the way persons of color were treated in America. He refused to go to into a holodeck program which was set in Las Vegas in the 1950s because in real life he would not have been allowed into such an establishment at the time. He also discussed the segregation within baseball and the Negro League, also in an alternate reality / vision from "The Prophets" he lived as a science fiction writer who's story would not be published simply because his hero was black. The magazine issue even got canceled by the owners when the editor tried to publish it anyways.


Watching how Quark threw out the word "slavery" to someone so sensitive to the moral injustices his ancestors had suffered is almost indescribable. Quark was very self assured by the time he got to the "We're nothing like you" line.


Also his point is undeniable, until you examine how females are treated.

[alfredo]

33. I really liked that show. Great social commentary.

[Posteritatis]

34. Shimmerman signed on to play Quark specifically to do that, actually

He thought the TNG Ferengi were kind of an embarrassment and thought the setting needed a little more nuance. Probably contributed a lot to DS9 in general having a lot more frayed edges and gray areas than the earlier Treks.

[Motown_Johnny]

18. I always thought that was similar to the "District 9" movie which mirrored South African Aparthaid

I never liked the time travel episodes where they go back and change things. This episode was not as bad because they got around the paradox, but I still don't like the premise.



TNG, TOS and even STV would just set up parallel situations on alien worlds to deal with the moral issues there. Time travel is a cheap trick for a plot and shouldn't be used so recklessly.




P.S. For STV fans, Kate Mulgrew now has a recurring role on "Warehouse 13".

[Cannikin]

31. Loves me some Kate. Met her. She's awesome.