By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
One of the stranger evidence that sometimes flows on the internet is that Star Trek should not be political, with enemies saying that programs like Discovery Focusing on a strong black woman is a kind of major gap compared to franchise standards. In reality, Star Trek has been political from the start, and even the stars often read links with real events in the stories of another world that they give life. Example: for the New deep space The episode “Dramatis Personae”, the actor of Quark Armin Shimerman saw the riots of Los Angeles reflected in the tension between Sisko and Kira.
Armin Shimerman and Bajorans
To inform you, “Dramatis Personae” is an episode where the inhabitants of DS9 fall under the telepathic influence of orbs of an extraterrestrial race which died out a long time ago. They died due to a power struggle, and the telepathic nature of orbs led, among other things, to a similar power struggle between Sisko and Kira. It made a fascinating television, and in the eyes of Armin Shimermanused Kira’s Bajoran race to explore otherwise delicate subjects of Los Angeles riots.
The actor said that he “loved this episode” and “this revolution broke” symbolically via “the conflict between Sisko and Kira, a person who is a national and who only thinks of his world”. According to Armin Shimerman, such nationalism was regularly exposed to Los Angeles at the time: “We had our riots because the districts thought that they did not obtain a good part of the wealth of Los Angeles, and there are the Bajorans who fight because because they do not get a good part of what they think deserves. Here, he refers not only to Kira’s personal struggle, but also to the reconstruction of the Bajorans after their brutal occupation of Cardassian.
Especially at the start of New deep spaceWe see how Bajor was often taken between a rock and a hard place. Starfleet is in orbit to help the planet rebuild, but Sisko does not always do things about how Kira or other Bajorans would prefer. In “Dramatic Personae”, for example, the conflict starts when Kira wants to have a ship that she suspects of bringing arms to the Cardassians and Sisko refuses, both on legality and the principle, to hold a ship without proof.
Interestingly, Armin Shimerman considers this conflict between Starfleet and the Bajorans as symbolic of the conflict between local police and rioters. These rioters, like Kira, have put their people – or at least, their people and their neighborhood – approach all other concerns, including laws and police which could very well suffocate them. The quark actor says that this tension is “very intrinsic for the life we live in Los Angeles, so when it is represented on television, I feel for that”.
It seems that Shimerman had the same emotional breakthrough as many of us know by watching a good episode of Star Trek. A well written episode can be downright therapeutic, helping us to understand our next man that we have considered impossible. Maybe these empathic breakthroughs are why Star Trek: the film Had such a daring slogan: “Human adventure is just beginning.”
While we always like to hear the ideas of the great actors of Star Trek, the link by Armin Shimerman of the nationalists of Bajoran and the rioters of Los Angeles is really fascinating (as Spock might say). Certainly, many have considered Kira’s people as metaphors for others in the real world, including the Palestinians. The actor DS9 can very well be one of the only ones to associate these alien With his riots in Los Angeles, proving once and for all, there is always something new to learn episodes of the best trek program ever made.
