“Past Tense, Part I” and “Past Tense, Part II” aired on January 2 and January 9, 1995. They’re part of a long line of Star Trek time travel episodes, but only a few of those time travel episodes visit an Earth that is in the characters’ distant past but the audience’s near future. As such, they are among just a handful of Star Trek stories that take place during the part of the Star Trek mythos where humanity had to overcome its differences to get to the utopia awaiting us in the 2300s.
[…]
Since he wrote that episode of Star Trek, “the militarization of police has gotten even more advanced. They have even more weaponry and seemingly more willingness to use it,” Wolfe told me. “As the SWAT team was coming in [to the Sanctuary District during the riots], they were somewhat careful at least. Today, we probably wouldn’t portray that the same way.”
Yet even if “Past Tense” didn’t predict the future with 100 percent accuracy (which, again, shouldn’t have been its goal to begin with), it remains a chilling look at our present by a TV show looking out its own window in the past and seeing the problems we’re still dealing with today. In many cases, those problems have even gotten much, much worse.
“As a writer, all you can do is be a voice in the wilderness, sometimes. You can yell, ‘Fire!’ but you can’t put it out,” Wolfe says. “It’s disappointing that we’re still grappling with this problem. I certainly would have hoped it would be better by now, and people would be like, ‘Ha! Remember that Deep Space Nine episode that said homelessness would still be a problem in the 2020s? They were so gloomy!’ But one of the themes of the show is that paradise doesn’t come for free. Even if it does get handed to you, you have to continually work to protect it and renew it and advance it.”
Emily VanDerWerff
