redonyellow:
This scene pretty much summarizes why DS9 is, IMHO, the best Trek series. It took Roddenberry’s dream and flipped it on its head—which you may or may not like—but I adored it.
TNG presented a world where humanity had surpassed its ills. The Federation’s values made humans the good guys, compared to species like the Romulans and the Cardassians. Principles and ethics, are what set us apart. As Picard said, “The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth… It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based. And if you can’t find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth…you don’t deserve to wear that uniform!“ It’s all very idealistic.
Honesty and ethics are what Starfleet is based on, yet Starfleet gives Sisko authorization to forge evidence in order to trick Romulus into joining the war. Because of our principles, humans always thought we were above our enemies — who had the Obsidian Order/Tal Shiar — only to find out we have our own version, Section 31. As Admiral Ross put it, ”Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges.” In other words, we can stay clean as long as things are going our way. If not, we’ll think nothing of getting our hands dirty.
The underlying message of DS9 was, although we like to think—maybe even deceive ourselves into thinking that we’ve evolved, when the chips are down, we are just as ruthless as the cultures we purport to have progressed beyond. And, if you stop and look at our own culture, you will see how absolutely true that is.
We all like to think of ourseles as good, moral people. That’s the easy part. DS9 challenged us to question how good we really are.
This.
Further, I feel that Deep Space 9 can be read as a meditation on the concept of humanity, and that of “human”. (This is, of course, true for much of fiction but the above readings suggests some of the shape particular to Star Trek).
The Next Generation - similarly to Star Trek - presented a post-capitalist American imperialist utopia (freedom is the worship word). Deep Space 9 turned this idea outside out and examined its implications. Most overtly by placing its utopian hew-mons next to the capitalist and patriarchal Ferengi, but also by placing the imperialist federation in Bajor just as the Cardassian occupation is lifting.
The position of Bajor is particularly instructing as it presents us with humanity’s past (and present): empire and colonialism. We are meant to sympathize with the bajorans, instructed to loathe the cardassians, but - and this is of greater importance - we are told again and again that the federation is hardly better, and that inclusion would ultimately be bad for Bajor (by the man tasked with facilitating just such an inclusion).
Previous series has led us to believe that the federation is ultimately good, and not merely preferable. As the federation is depicted as the epitome of humanity and human achievement - and the honorable Starfleet officer as the (close to) perfect human - the reading offered by Deep Space 9 subverts both of these concepts. It exposes the metaphor of Star Trek - that aliens, strange as they may seem, are people too - and shows us that not only are they “other” people (as in, other than “American” - such as the Kohms in the above linked Omega Glory), they are us. We are all, underneath, capable of being “…as nasty and violent as the most blood-thirsty Klingon.”
Hew-mons are, after all, only human.
Meanwhile (and sadly, somewhat less successfully) Deep Space 9 simultaneously constructs (or reinforces) racial stereotypes along alien lines, while subverting these by showing their cultural - as opposed to biological - basis. This is important because it places qualities that are undesirable to humans – such as the Ferengi greed, or the Bajoran “superstition” – in cultural contexts, and crucially that qualities admired by humans are contextual too. Quark’s line above can be read as suggesting that those qualities are, in fact, the happy result of human privilege. The reason this works is because it is simultaneously clear that while humans have worked to construct these privileges thus allowing them to become admirable in their own eyes, they do so at certain expense. Something not everyone - much like Bajor, and the Maquis - are willing to pay.
