![]() ![]() In another victory for real live humans, Deep Space Nine showed us a commanding officer grappling not just with grand existential concerns, like obeying the Prime Directive or avoiding a war with the Romulans, but with the decidedly more earthbound demands of parenthood. And by doing so, it creates the most vital statement on race that Star Trek has ever attempted. That’s what makes Far Beyond the Stars so affecting: it doesn’t let its audience off the hook-it’s addressing itself to us. Episodes like the original series’ Let That Be Your Last Battlefield – in which an alien race segregates its members based on the pattern of color on their faces - point out the absurdity of racism without actually engaging with it, treating it like some logical fallacy to be disproven, or a primitive “idea” long since dispensed with, rather than something still out there, deeply engrained in human society. Star Trek had taken on racism before, but it always felt like something of an academic exercise - the work of writers fundamentally opposed to racial prejudice while also being safely insulated from its real-world horrors. As if that weren’t enough, Russell must endure racism both blatant and subtle - in the form of police brutality and workplace discrimination – all while being strangely drawn to write a story about a “fictional” space station called Deep Space Nine. Far Beyond the Stars finds Captain Sisko ( Avery Brooks) caught in a time-traveling reverie: he’s stuck in 1953, living the life of a science fiction writer named Benny Russell, and totally unaware of having ever been the captain of a space station in the far future. ![]()
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