A Brief Guide to Star Trek

person say that as opposed to a Cardassian, Ferengi or Bajoran was telling, because Sisko was learning.
Deep Space Nine
was the series that refused to play it safe. We all knew it, every writer was behind it. It was an exhilarating place to be creatively.’
    Section 31 dealt with threats to the Federation that could not be tackled successfully in more acceptable ways, but gave those involved plausible deniability. For Section 31 operatives like Sloan, the end always justified the means and if that meant breaking a few rules along the way, so be it. This was not a viewpoint Bashir (representing Roddenberry) could agree with and he refused to be co-opted (at least willingly) by the organisation. Despite Bashir’s interest in espionage narratives, displayed through his James Bond-like fantasy holodeck activities, real-world spying and betrayal was not for him. Section 31 would reappear in several episodes and the organisation’s origins would eventually be revealed in the
Star Trek
prequel series
Enterprise
.
    Deep Space Nine
even looked back to the original
Star Trek
series for ideas to develop, hitting upon the mirror universe of ‘Mirror, Mirror’ as ripe for exploitation. That episode saw a transporter malfunction send Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Uhura to an alternate universe where the benign Federation is an evil Terran Empire. Each of the
Enterprise
crew has their Machiavellian counterpart, launching the cliché that alternative universe evil twins sport goatees.
    The second season
Deep Space Nine
episode ‘Crossover’ provides a direct sequel to ‘Mirror, Mirror’, revealing that Kirk’s intervention led to the fall of the Terran Empire, with mirror Spock as a reforming leader.
Deep Space Nine
’s series of mirror universe stories (encompassing the episodes ‘Through the Looking Glass’, ‘Shattered Mirror’, ‘Resurrection’ and ‘The Emperor’s New Cloak’) allowed actors to play alternate, more extreme versions of their usual characters. It also allowed for even darker stories to be told, perhaps revealing the kind of show
Deep Space Nine
might have been if Roddenberry’s
Star Trek
restrictions had been thrown off entirely.
    This time an accident within the wormhole sends the characters to the mirror universe, around 100 years after Kirk’s intervention. Here a Klingon–Cardassian alliance dominates and the station is still Terok Nor, with Bajor under the control of Bajorians who own human slaves. Terrans are seen by those on Terok Nor as the bad guys, called ruthless barbarians by Kira Nerys’ opposite number, the sultry Intendant. With the help of the displaced inhabitants of
Deep Space Nine
, the human ore miners of Terok Nor are able to form a resistance movement, led by Sisko’s mirror alternate, and free themselves from Bajoran domination.
    Deep Space Nine
also rescued the Ferengi from their status as comic relief characters in
The Next Generation
. Originally intended as serious villains, their hobgoblin looks had meant that the capitalistic Ferengi instead became caricatures. It was easy for writers to use them in a comedic way to comment on very human traits – such as greed – that the supposedly enlightened twenty-fourth-century humans had left behind. The Ferengi became more complex in
Deep Space Nine
, with a number of regular characters – especially the bartender Quark (Shimerman) – being well developed. Just as Worf on
The Next Generation
had allowed the writers to explore and elaborate on Klingon culture (and use it to mirror human culture and history), so
Deep Space Nine
gave the Ferengi a depth previously missing, especially in the war-related fate of Quark’s nephew,Nog. Issues of capitalism’s exploitation and perceived sexual norms were tackled through the depiction of the Ferengi, with Quark often involved in major events on his home world.

    Initially, critical reaction to the arrival of
Deep Space Nine
was very positive.
TV Guide
described it as ‘the best acted, written, produced and altogether finest’
Star Trek
series. However, George Takei was one of many who felt that the show had moved too far from Gene Roddenberry’s view of the future. ‘The people that really understand and love
Star Trek
are no longer there’, he told
iF Magazine
in 2007. ‘When Gene Roddenberry passed, that really was the end of
Star Trek
as we knew it. The series that came on immediately after was
Deep Space Nine
, which was the polar opposite of Gene’s philosophy and