Into the wormhole
MY FIRST CONTACT WITH THE FERENGI & THE CREW OF DEEP SPACE 9.
Star Trek is in the air this season — and doubly so in Canada.
Bryan Fuller’s new Star Trek television series will begin filming in Toronto this September. And Bell Media announced last week that it has licensed all 727 episodes of previous Trek instalments — they’ll air in syndication on Space, and be made available to stream nationwide on CraveTV — while Netflix Canada introduced the complete Trek back catalogue to its digital library at the start of the month. And, last weekend, millions of us ventured to the multiplex to enjoy Star Trek Beyond, part three of Paramount’s expensively refurbished blockbuster trilogy.
Like Pokemon, Ghostbusters and the Clinton administration, Star Trek has returned from artifact to phenomenon anew.
It’s time to get acquainted. Or reacquainted. For many people, Star Trek ended when The Next Generation did. It was the only one of four Trek spinoffs to be created and produced by Gene Roddenberry, father of it all. It was the most watched, the most beloved, the most decorated and acclaimed. It was the only one to yield a feature film. ( And it would go on to yield three more.) The Next Generation is widely agreed to be the best Star Trek series. Based on its reputation I’d long assumed it was the only Star Trek worth watching. I was wrong, it turns out. A few weeks ago, compelled by the franchise’s improbable return to fashion, I sat on my couch with a glass of beer and a bowl of barbecue ringolos, and submitted myself to the 90 minute pilot of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It had me laughing, smiling and shaking my head in amazement, and for a moment, nearly tearing up. It’s one of the best television pilots I’ve ever seen; I loved it.
Now I’ve just about disposed of the first season — 20 hour-long episodes, almost a full day, devoured on nights and weekends. It’s interested me more than Stranger Things or Unreal’s second season or the new episodes of Mr. Robot. Even my wife likes it, and ordinarily she’s allergic to science- fiction. Hallelujah! Deep Space Nine is terrific.
Deep Space Nine began in 1993, toward the end of The Next Generation, and remained on air, moderately popular, for six years and seven seasons. Like its immediate predecessor, DS9 — as it’s more commonly known among fans — is set in outer space in the middle of the 24th century, among alien species both friendly and malevolent. Unlike its predecessor, there isn’t much spacefaring, or intergalactic combat, or escapades on other worlds. Other Star Trek shows are about space ships that roam, scout and battle. Deep Space Nine is about a space station. And that station stays quite still.
But oh boy, does this modulation have a seismic effect. The Deep Space Nine’s Federation crew isn’t obliged to hopscotch from one planet to another, on the lookout for weekly extraterrestrial intrigue. While The Next Generation’s favoured story templates involved investigating an oddity that proves dangerous, happening upon strife or responding to a distress signal that imperils them all, DS9’s action is drama is furnished by whatever descends upon the station each week. That could mean an alien fleeing from a Running Man- style pursuit stowing aboard, warring species visiting for a heated arbitration or a puckish deity boarding and wreaking havoc!
It’s like a western: the space station is a frontier town, replete with Sheriff and saloon. Law and order prevails only tenuously. Anarchy is only a baddie with a six- shooter away from breaking loose.
Would it be a stretch to call this Star Trek’s Deadwood? There’s even an appealing Al Swearengen figure in Quark, DS9’s rapacious Ferengi bar manager, whose schemes and mischief are the source of much amusement. The whole ensemble is lovely, in truth. There’s Odo, the station’s ship- shifting chief security officer, a no-nonsense lawman — almost a Spockish figure — with shades of Hercules Poirot. There’s Dax, a host-hopping symbiont getting used to her seventh body. And there’s Commander Sisko, head of DS9: he’s Star Trek’s first black lead, and as likable a star as Picard or Kirk before him.
Deep Space Nine — the station, not the show — hangs suspended beside a wormhole that bridges Federation space and the other side of the galaxy: the Gamma Quadrant, home to an infinite supply of never-before-seen visitors. This, of course, affords the writers license to manufacture all kinds of novelty crises. Sometimes it’s an airborne plague, as in “Babel” where everybody turns aphasic and starts speaking gibberish. Or maybe, as in “Move Along Home,” it’s a dispatch of gambling addicts who force the officers to play a game for their lives. Something ludicrous is always poised to tear the place apart. Usually whatever it is proves enthralling.
There is, needless to say, a truly colossal amount of Star Trek available to stream on demand. If you decided you’d like to watch it all — every episode of The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, and then the feature films Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home, The Final Frontier, The Undiscovered Country, Generations, First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis, and finally the 2009 reboot and its sequel, Into Darkness — it would take you 543 hours. It’s good to be reminded just how much Star Trek is already out there.