Wedged between the operatic, trailblazing perfection of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the charming (yet wildly inconsistent) Star Trek: Voyager, Deep Space Nine was at an immediate disadvantage. Where were all the ships? The voyages? The jefferies tubes, dammit? Why would we want to watch a dialogue-heavy drama set on a badly lit space station?
But Deep Space Nine is like The Americans in space, or a le Carré cold war novel set in the dying embers of a horrific occupation. It’s about racial tension, religious fundamentalism and newfound faith. It is, hands down, one of the smartest things ever to come out of mainstream science fiction.
Here’s the turbolift pitch: Cardassia – a militaristic race with bumpy heads and few scruples – have ceded occupation of Bajor, a highly spiritual and scrappy planet. Terok Nor, a Cardassian space station floating above the planet, is renamed Deep Space Nine. Bajor wants to avoid being invaded again, so they ask the Federation for membership.
Starfleet commander Benjamin Sisko (played by Avery Brooks) is assigned to manage the station. When he arrives, a wormhole opens between Bajor and the far-flung Gamma quadrant, making the planet suddenly strategically vital. But wait! The Bajoran’s gods, the Prophets, live in the wormhole, and Sisko is made their emissary – and that’s just the first episode!
“The show looked forward,” says Nana Visitor, who plays Kira Nerys, the brilliant and fiery Bajoran liaison officer assigned to Deep Space Nine. “And it stands up! And I think that’s why there’s a resurgence. People watch, and go … holy shit! This is what we’re going through right now! Nothing has changed!”
Kira is one of a truly stellar cast of characters who jettison the profound but sometimes flattened ethos of Starfleet in favour of unprecedented moral messiness. Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney), the friendly Irish transporter guy from Next Gen, shows up and becomes one of Trek’s best characters, hands down. (He’s a union man, dammit.) Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) is the arrogant, effete medical officer whose unfolding friendship with a mysterious Cardassian tailor, Garak (Andrew Robinson) takes viewers to some truly incredible places. We meet Dax (Terry Farrell), who is a Trill, a species that gives Doctor Who a run for its money. There’s Odo (the late, great Rene Auberjonois), the station’s chief of security and a shapeshifter whose origins become a major plot point later on. And there’s Odo’s nemesis, Quark (Armin Shimerman), the Ferengi bartender. In a franchise which presents humans as post-capitalist idealists, the Ferengi are a truly complex, hilarious and disturbing portrait of a society built solely around money.
I ask Shimerman why people should give the show a shot. “Watch us for the performances,” he says. “Watch it for really good acting. And what makes good acting? Good writing. Watch it for the writing. Many pooh-poohed Trek because they thought it was all about the phasers, and starships … yes, we have that! But our show is really about social issues. Watch it to inspire a philosophical discussion.”
Deep Space Nine resonates now because it is set in a bifurcated world, much like our own. “Deep Space Nine is not about solving the problems of the world every 46 minutes,” Shimerman says. “But rather, how do people live together who don’t like each other, but have to? Have to form alliances, in order to survive, to just get through life?”
Admittedly, many viewers get thrown off early. The first season treads a lot of the same ground as the other Star Trek shows. But right near the season one finale, Deep Space Nine reveals its true face, before diving into dark, deep philosophical waters. It’s possible to come away from certain episodes and story arcs feeling almost physically winded. The show-runners brilliantly seed impending plotlines well before they emerge, and pull off some staggering twists, drawing in major players from the Trek universe to tell stories which, frankly, often put the rest of Trek to shame.
The significance of having a black Starfleet captain, a single father, stationed in the middle of simmering racial tensions is one of Deep Space Nine’s greatest strengths. Sisko, throughout the show’s tenure, becomes as potent a Trek captain as Jean-Luc Picard at his zenith, bringing a true cinematic heft to his performance. And Deep Space Nine has, more so than any other Trek show, a sense of place. You’ll come to crave the promenade, miss the hiss of the turbolift and long to enter Sisko’s office again, and have him swivel around to greet you, tossing a baseball in the air.
Miraculously, we’ve been given the chance to return to this world. There’s a brilliant new comic series that explores the fates of some key characters, and the excellent animated series The Lower Decks is set five years after the finale of Deep Space Nine; Visitor and Shimerman made their triumphant return as Kira and Quark too. “Kira is always just off stage left for me,” Visitor says. “All the conversations I’ve had over the years, hearing what she meant to other people, trying to explain to them what she meant to me … makes her very fresh and alive in my head.”
As we wrap up our call, she elegantly sums up why Deep Space Nine is worth watching. “It was in a franchise that was travelling out to discover other worlds, and we had the nerve to say, wait a minute. The journey from here … ” she gestures at her head, “to here … ” and she draws her finger down to her heart. “That journey? That’s quite a journey. Let’s focus on that one.”
