Deep Space Nine's wartime morality plays show that good writing is timeless - Part II

Part I

Following on from yesterday, when the Deep Space Nine episode "Paradise Lost" initially aired, I remember being a bit disappointed to find out that the attack on the Earth's power grid wasn't part of a Changeling plot.  I wanted to see the Changeling threat at last boil over and instead was treated to a story about how an Admiral's paranoia mixed with his best intentions put him and Starfleet on a path to compromising their own principles for what they believed to be stronger security.  I didn't think it was a bad episode - I just wanted action and instead I got a morality play.


In retrospect, this was one of the early examples of how DS9 would use the Changling threat and the later Dominion War to great effect.  The emphasis was not on space battles, but rather on morality during wartime.  Time and again, we were reminded that this war might not cost human lives, but also the very principles of those seemingly fighting for righteousness.


I find this compelling because those storylines rendered the series almost more timely ten years after it aired than it was when those episodes were first produced.  If the episodes had been written in a post-9/11 setting, surely some critics would say that the writing was too on-the-nose and too much of a direct exploration of 21st Century events.  Yet the DS9 writing staff couldn't have intended their work would be more relevant years after the series ceased production.


Writing ages well when it deals with big ideas and also universal ideas.  The morality plays of the original Star Trek still can be potent today, and the war stories of Deep Space Nine are timeless not because they deal with specific events, but because those "big events" are used to explore the characters and their conditions.  Writing that's about big ideas can resonate longer than stories that are just about flash and explosions.

The excellent (and extremely comprehensive) book Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion by Terry J. Erdmann has a behind-the-scenes look at this episode, with some interesting quotes from the writing staff.  Writer/producer Ronald D. Moore, who's own Battlestar Galactica would also heavily explore wartime morality, recalls that this two-parter began life as a story about the Changlings turning Starfleet and the Vulcans against each other.  When attempts to follow that concept proved unsatisfactory, the writers changed course.

"We started talking about a military coup of the Federation by Starfleet, ala Seven Days in May.  We thought that was actually more interesting, and more unexpected in the Star Trek universe - that Starfleet would take over the government out of fear and paranoia.  What the fear of the other, of an enemy, could drive even Starfleet to do."

Episode co-writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe confirms that they hoped to draw the audience into the paranoia as well.  "We wanted to make people think we were doing a different story.  The whole thing is a misdirection.  Part I is a total misdirection of Part II."

If anything in these two episodes disappoints me, it's that the ending of Part II is a bit too pat.  As you might expect, Sisko thwarts the coup.  In the process, he narrowly prevents one Starfleet ship from destroying another.  Though he gets the corrupt Admiral to resign, it's hard to overlook the fact that everything the Admiral and Sisko were saying about the Changling threat in Part I still applies.  With their new security measures rescinded, that means that the Federation is no closer to halting the infiltration than they were at the start of the story.

And yet the tone of the ending doesn't totally acknowledge that. It's made somewhat clear that the real Changling threat is to foster enough fear and paranoia so that the Federation essentially destroys itself.  However, the final scenes of the episode don't play quite foreboding enough.  Sisko should be disturbed and uneasy that a man he respected would so easily toss aside his principles for a cause that he believed was righteous.  This should be treated as the first major salvo in what would turn into full-blown war down the line.  Instead the show raises a lot of really strong issues, takes them to a head, but leaves them jarringly unresolved.  Had the final scenes conveyed that "unresolved" feeling, sold the sense that things will soon get a lot worse, it would have made for a more powerful ending.  Oddly all the pieces are there that should make for this kind of ending.  The issue seems to be more one of execution. Later seasons would be more effective at dealing with that conflict.


I remember sitting in a college ethics class a few years after these episodes aired.  The topic of morality and principles during wartime came up (again, it was prescient because this was pre-9/11) and I distinctly recall being able to apply no fewer than a half-dozen DS9 storylines to some of the issues we discussed.  In fact, I was probably better able to develop and articulate my own moral stances in the class discussions specifically because my exposure to DS9 had already forced me to confront where I stood on those sorts of issues.


We aren't always lucky enough to deal with such grand ideas in our own writing, but if the opportunity presents itself, don't shy away from it.  Even if your story feels like it could be action-driven, see if there's a way to use that action to force your characters to confront something in themselves - something that challenges their own beliefs.

Deep Space Nine's wartime morality plays show that good writing is timeless

Pretty much since its inception back in the mid-sixties, Star Trek has often told stories within its far-future setting that are an allegory on events in our own time.  It was Gene Roddenberry's way of telling provocative (and in the context of the time, perhaps subversive) stories under the guise of being simple science-fiction.  In one of the more infamous examples, he tackled the idiocy of racism by showing a race of people with two classes.  Both classes had faces that were white on one profile and black on the other, though those whose right profiles were black despised those who were their mirror images.  Likewise, those whose faces were white on the right side were equally devoted to destroying their alternate cousins.  It's a conflict that comes at a terrible cost.



Of course to the viewer, this war would have seemed stupid.  "Both these aliens have half-black and half-white faces, why would they fight over such a thing?"  Hopefully, that's the point where the light bulb goes off and the viewer realizes "So why exactly should whites and blacks on Earth be at odds."  A trifle clunky, I admit, but it was the sixties.  Throughout its history, Trek has made use of even defter metaphors.

With that in mind, what if I pitched you a Star Trek story like this:  The Federation is facing an enemy that might have infiltrated them at the highest levels.  They've got hidden agents on the Federation's homeworld - Earth.  They can blend into the population and they've recently pulled off an attack on a diplomatic conference on Earth that left psychological damage at least as bad as physical.  With tensions high, Starfleet security demands more authority to implement stricter, more invasive security measures.  The Federation President is reluctant to give the military that authority, but when the planet's entire power grid is taken out - leaving Earth defenseless - he has little choice but to give the Starfleet admiral the authority he wants.

But soon we learn that the destruction of the power grid was actually engineered by the corrupt admiral, intent on manufacturing a crisis so that he could seize power.  Essentially, this admiral will have used the paranoia to pull off an overreach of authority.

I have a feeling that if this episode were produced today - and especially if it had been made during the Bush Administration - there would be a lot of voices on the right decrying liberal Hollywood for such a pointed attack on George W. Bush.  But here's the kicker - that's actually the plot of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that aired in early 1996!  It was a two-parter contained in the episodes "Homeland" and "Paradise Lost," written by Ira Steven Behr & Robert Hewitt Wolfe.

(If you're so inclined, these episodes are available on Netflix Instant, in the 4th season.)

The enemy at that point were the shape-shifting Changlings, aliens with the ability to look like anyone.  They had declared their intent to infiltrate the Federation and had already used their powers to lure the Romulans and the Cardassian fleets into a horrible defeat.  Starfleet had never faced an enemy so able to slip within their own ranks. 

"Homeland" focused on the aftermath of the attack on the conference, with Captain Sisko recalled to Earth to help develop new security measures against the Changlings.  In a sneaky bit of plotting, the viewer is actually made to sympathize with Sisko and Admiral Leyton as their proposals are met with resistance from the Federation President.  Because we - the viewers - have seen just how dangerous the Changelings are, we're frustrated when the President pushes back against tests that only seem reasonable.

The President isn't the only opposition.  Captain Sisko's own father is greatly offended and resistant when he's told that as a relative of a Starfleet officer, he must consent to a blood-screening (purportedly the only way to expose a Changling imposter.)  Of course, his refusal to take the test only makes him look suspicious.  After all, why should an innocent man have any reason to oppose this sort of compulsory search-and-seizure?  Surely if he resists, he must have something to hide and be viewed with suspicsion, right?  As it turns out, he isn't an infiltrator - though he offers one of the episodes more resonant lines: "There's no test a smart man can't find his way around." 

The first episode ends with the President finally giving in in the face of a planet-wide power outage.  In fact, it's Captain Sisko who delivers the critical line: "Give us the authority we need, Mr. President, and we will take care of the rest."  It's a line that feels far more chilling than in 1996, just like Mr. Sisko's warning about tests. And yet, it was written in a world where a trip to the airport didn't necessitate full-body scans and invasive searches and pat-downs; A world where the Patriot Act sounded more like something from the mind of George Orwell than anything that would could ever become real.

With a cliffhanger that featured martial law being imposed, most viewers expected that Part II would be a tense action-packed hour of our heroes taking on the Changelings.  But that's not what Trekkers got, as we will explore tomorrow.

Part II