In a primary daring transfer that might show to be one in every of many over its seven-season run, Deep House 9 opens with Star Trek‘s new hero staring down the horrifying visage of its outdated one: Jean-Luc Picard, corrupted and perverted into Locutus of Borg. It units a outstanding stage by way of which to fulfill the franchise’s newest protagonist, and over three a long time later, these opening scenes aboard the USS Saratoga stay one in every of Star Trek‘s most haunting and compelling opening salvos.
Thirty-two years in the past at the moment on January 3, 1993, Deep Space Nine‘s pilot, “Emissary”, opened not on the titular house station that might grow to be then-Commander Sisko’s dwelling, however with a title card that took Trek again to what was then its biggest, and one in every of Starfleet’s lowest, factors: the Battle of Wolf 359 in The Subsequent Era‘s season 4 opener, concluding one of many biggest Trek cliffhangers of all time in “The Better of Each Worlds.” There, the sequence had saved the slaughter of Wolf 359 off display screen. Now, Star Trek was prepared to point out it, and put its new protagonist proper on the very coronary heart of that terror. It’s an unimaginable gambit, one which instantly tells the viewers that this new Star Trek sequence was not going to go the place they anticipated.
The scenes aboard the Saratoga because it prepares to be one of many many doomed vessels gathering to cease the Borg at Wolf 359 maintain a outstanding mirror as much as what Trek was in the intervening time. Star Trek is used to scenes of Starfleet officers thriving beneath strain, within the face of unimaginable odds, however there’s a stark matter-of-factness to how DS9 depicts the occasions of the battle that TNG by no means confirmed. The Saratoga has no likelihood in opposition to Locutus, and Starfleet calm and collectedness shouldn’t be given time to prevail within the face of the ship being instantly incapacitated, slaughtering the bridge crew. This isn’t an assault they roll concerning the bridge and rise up from; most of them are simply useless, as Sisko and a sole surviving Bolian lieutenant understand the ship is misplaced.
The scenes outdoors the bridge are even worse: after years and years of depicting the Enterprise as a ship with a thriving civilian complement, one all the time safeguarded when it flew into battle, the corridors of the Saratoga—a Miranda-class ship, tiny compared to the size of the Galaxy-class—are full of wailing, injured civilians scrambling for all times pods. All of it climaxes, after all, with a humbling private price to Starfleet’s hubris for Sisko when he returns to his personal quarters to search out his spouse Jennifer useless among the many particles, and his son Jake barely alive, as he himself is forcibly dragged wailing in grief to a shuttle because the Saratoga explodes, the fireworks of its destruction mirrored within the viewport Sisko vengefully glares out of. In simply 4 and a half minutes, Star Trek followers have simply watched their new star face tragedy in contrast to something they’d actually gotten to see earlier than, and crucially, they’d seen it by way of the eyes of a person who acted maybe extra like all of us would than the beliefs of somebody like Kirk or Picard would.
It’s this tragic, susceptible humanity that informs the Sisko we meet all through the remainder of “Emissary”—shaping a focal determine removed from what we’d assume of a typical Star Trek protagonist. He’s petty, in the way in which he offers with each the folks he’s working with upon project to Deep House 9 and with Starfleet itself when he finds himself nose to nose with Picard (now again to his heroic self and never anticipating to be challenged in any method, not to mention the way in which Sisko does). He’s nonetheless very clearly formed by the trauma of Wolf 359, not totally processing it and even compartmentalizing it—and it virtually takes a literal act of god for him to even start to take action, when his encounter with the wormhole entities the Bajorans worship as their religious gods is nearly fully compromised by the truth that Sisko can’t transfer on from the lack of Jennifer.
It’s an unvarnished view of Starfleet within the shadows of what was, as much as that time, one in every of its lowest factors ever depicted on screen: a low level that’s arguably solely matched by what Deep House 9 itself would get into later in its run throughout the Dominion War. And that unvarnished view comes within the form of Sisko himself, a person who’s allowed to be susceptible and flawed in ways in which defy what we had come to count on (and nonetheless, for essentially the most half, come to count on—simply take a look at the friction even all these years later over how Discovery portrayed Michael Burnham, who charges like one of many Star Trek protagonists most shaped by Sisko’s legacy since). It’s a form that’s shaped from the minute Deep House 9 will get going, and one that’s nonetheless defining the present all these years later.
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