Far Beyond the Stars Star Trek Deep Space Nine Speaks on Race
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Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination
I'm sorry. This article is rubbish! Far Beyond the Stars does not portray the Science Fiction community as racist. The episode actually portrays the science-fiction writers, as someone who pushes the boundaries of storytelling and their connection to real life issues. Which is true to the genre.
Futhermore "Far Beyond the Stars" is in no way any sort of sequel to "Past Tense". I disagree with almost every point raised in this article.
Good effort, but bad writing - sorry!
I'm sorry but I have to disagree.
We're told over and over again that there is no place and no Science Fiction magazine that would publish Benny's story simply because his hero is black. That was simply untrue. Had the episode simply stated that this particular editor would not, it would be one thing but insisted that no one would.
It also positioned the SF writers as basically useless, people who were interested in robots but not in fighting social injustice.
Finally Far Beyond the Stars isn't a literal sequel to Past Tense but a kind of conceptual one.
thank you for your comment, Saab. I agree role models are important but they have to be authentic ones backed by genuine progress happening behind the scenes, rather than simply corporate marketing products.
Hey again Daniel
I just realized my comments was written too harsh. It's not bad writing on you behalf. Sorry - that was uncalled for! I guess i come off as a mad trekkie... heh
Actually your piece is very well written. I just disagree with a passion.Your last point about Trek being far beyond the stars until it's "the other way aroud" i really disagree with. I find that any writer can - if the piece is sufficiently good - comment about anything. No matter race, gender or age etc.
I think i'll go back and rewatch the episode once more (no real effort there - i find it as one of Treks masterpieces), and point be a little more creative in my criticism.
Once more - sorry for the 'Bad writing' comment.
No it's okay Jonas, I've spoken and debated passionately about Star Trek many times myself. If that's being a mad trekkie, consider me one too
I agree that any writer can comment about anything but the question is how authentic is their comment. A male writer can write about a woman being raped but it will never have the same authenticity as coming from a woman who actually regularly experiences legitimate fears of being raped
And the problem is that Far Beyond the Stars wasn't simply about the oppression of racism, it argued for 'Representation', it argued that you needed someone to burst through and include his culture and people in the overall narrative. And what I'm saying is that FBTS isn't living up to its own standards.
I agree Far Beyond the Stars was a great episode but I question its legitimacy and I welcome your coming criticism and that of anyone else and enjoy the dialogue
btw I notice incoming traffic from TrekBBS to this Hub, was this posted on a discussion thread and can anyone link me to that?
Yes, there's a thread in TrekBBS about your post. That's where i came across it.
The url is: http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=0&
Thanks
Fascinating. Have you all read Nichelle Nicols' autobiography Beyond the Stars? After reading it, I was firmly convinced that Gene Roddenberry did not marry her solely because she is African-American and the marriage would cause rascist retributions at the studio. The studio bigwigs had apparently put pressure on him for dating her as well as for hiring her, and she was the only of the TOS regulars without a contract, she revealed in her book. It's all too sad -- her grandfather was the son of a slave owner who refused to continue owning slaves and married one of them. If Nichols' book is all true, then I wish Roddenberry could have been that brave.
Heya! I published a paper (Seeking New Civilizations in a special issue of The Bulletin of Science and Technology, February 2007) on the handling of race in Trek throughout the entire franchise. Personally, I found that Far Beyond the Stars had a mixed message - it wanted to acknowledge past racism but didn't know how to do it within the context of Star Trek as a whole. Race, specifically Sisko's blackness, plays a part only in another episode, "Badda Bing, Badda Bang", where Sisko refuses to take part in the holographic simulation of the club because blacks would have been barred from such a club in "real life".
Past Tense is interesting, but I didn't really examine it because I felt that it dealt far more with class than with race. It seemed the fact that the person who led the rebellion and prevented a massacre was black is strictly incidental. There wasn't any implication that blacks or any other ethnic group were ghettoized.
Good article though. :)
Interesting Patty but I think there's also the reality that Roddenberry was more than a bit of a womanizer so I'm not too sure the race issue was preeminent. Roddenberry had been cheated on by his first wife while in the service and I believe he basically didn't trust women for quite a while and that's reflected somewhat in the original series.
Good point Allen,
I can't disagree with anything you have said. I agree the handling of race was basically clumsy. On the one hand the franchise clung to the interracial kiss that never happened and the overall appearance of tolerance bought about by the interracial crews. On the other hand Star Trek presumed a future utopia in which race was no longer a factor. The scene in Badda Bing only happened at the insistence of Avery Brooks and it was the only real acknowledgement. Really Avery Brooks was the driving force behind presenting Sisko in a racial context, pushing to have a stronger relationship with his on-screen son and adding certain decorative touches to his quarters.
The problem is really how do you talk about race in what is supposed to be a color blind society filled with all sorts of strange aliens. But on the flip side how do you ignore race when living in a society that is very much aware of race. Idealism only carries you so far.
You're right, Past Tense was about class but there was a racial subtext to it, for example the mention of Dax's 'tattoo'.
You're a good writer, but I still think you were way too hard on what was probably one of the best examples of what the medium of television is capable of. I hate to nitpick, but I just have to quibble with how you called Far Beyond the Stars, "a cliched version of the 50's". Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet were cliched versions of the 1950s, Far Beyond the Stars was hella realistic. Especially when it came to depicting the cops as they were, and unfortunately, still are. Having the same actors who played the villains of DS9 play 1950s cops in the episode was pure genius. It was one of the few times I, as a black man in Amerikkka, felt good about TV. Until next time, the name is Bell--Gabriel Bell ..!
I would have to argue that cliches come in different packages. FBTS was as much of a cliche as Ozzie and Harriet, it just went in the other direction from it, but both were stereotyped images of a complex world and a complex decade boiled down to a simplistic portrait with no grey areas.
There were clever and awe inspiring moments, including Benny looking into the window and seeing Captain Sisko there, it's a moment any writer can relate to and I would have liked to see more of that sense of a man's vision without the mumbo jumbo about the Prophets or turning the whole thing into an evil vision that ends with Benny in a mental institution.
"a complex world and a complex decade boiled down to a simplistic portrait with no grey areas"
What grey areas? What complexity? That episode's depiction of the cops, excuse me, pigs is as accurate as a documentary. The 1950s was a horrid, apocalyptic nightmare for anyone who wasn't white, pretty and middle class. Not to mention how the CIA began installing puppet dictators like the Shah of Iran and the death squads of Guatamala during that period ...
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/CIA_G
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zepezauer_Mark/B
No, it was fairly black and white, no pun intended. Here, check out my review of Far Beyond the Stars ...
http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2005/02/2
I recently found the following in the Rev. Pat Robertson's The New World Order:"We all could indeed craft a world society where there was a wise administration of law, an end to war and oppression, and a guarantee of the basic necessities of life for every human being."But just when I was about to take back every nasty thing I've ever said about the Religious Right, I read the very next paragraph:"Indeed people have dreamed of such an age for at least three thousand years. Because the philosophers and dreamers leave out the two ingredients that are guaranteed to sabotage their beautiful dreams -- the corruptible nature of man and the presence of spiritual evil -- these dreams usually are impractical."How disappointing!Robertson went from sounding like Gene Roddenberry to some snide cynic from Las Vegas' café scene. It's also ironic, since many of these cynics claim they rebelled against their extremely religious upbringings. Therefore, if they're con-vinced that simply being born human is a detriment, then maybe the cynical clique of the late Café Roma, for instance, is more like their fundamentalist relatives than they care to admit.For proof that a Roddenberryian utopia is possible, look no further than the struggle of blacks in America. Las Vegas is 100 years old this year. And 100 years ago, a black man would've been publicly executed -- sometimes within a matter of minutes -- for having anything to do with a white woman. In contrast, we now have VH1's "Strange Love" with Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen. So who knows what will be possible in the future.Such social progress is the only reason I haven't given up on whites altogether and joined some militant organization. It's also why I'm as much of a Trekkie as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. clearly was. And to wrap up this Black History Month, the last criminally obscure book I'll highlight is Steve Barnes' Far Beyond the Stars, a novelization of my favorite "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" episode.After the episode and his novel were released in 1998, I called Barnes up. When we talked, I saw why Barnes was tapped to novelize the episode; he's just that good.Far Beyond the Stars opens with "Deep Space Nine"'s Capt. Sisko being depressed enough over the death of a comrade to contemplate quitting Starfleet. Sisko is then plagued by visions of people in mid-20th century attire haunting his space station.Suddenly, Sisko finds himself in 1953 Harlem and possessing the body of Benny Russell -- a science-fiction writer for a monthly magazine. At work, Russell's editor tells him he won't be appearing in an upcoming staff photo because he's black. After work, Russell is then bullied by two cops who found it hard to believe he writes for a living.Ah, the good ol' days!In Barnes' novelization, Russell's thoughts are fully explored: "I can write aliens because I understand them. More, I can write aliens because I long for a world where we are all alien. ... If we are all aliens, then none of us are."Possessed by Sisko, Russell writes a story about a dark-skinned human commanding a multi-racial space station. Though impressed, Russell's editor rejects the story and says: "The way I see it, you can either burn it or you can put it in a drawer for 50 years or however long it takes the human race to become color blind. ... You want me to publish it? Then make the captain white."Russell instead changes the story's ending, so that the black captain's entire life turned out to be a mere dream had by "a shoeshine boy or a convict." Unfortunately, that compromise wasn't enough: After spending a month recovering, because he got the shit beat out of him by the same cops who harassed him earlier, Russell limps into the magazine's office -- only to discover the entire run of the issue with his story has been destroyed and that he's been fired.In the episode, Avery Brooks' portrayal of the nervous breakdown Russell has in the magazine's office is truly Emmy-worthy. In Barnes' novelization, the scene is just as heartbreaking: "The anger began to fade, and they [Russell's white co-workers] saw beneath it the fear and loneliness of a man who had worked long and hard to earn their company, and now understood that he never truly had it."Sisko's consciousness is finally excised from Russell's body and returns to Deep Space Nine with a far better appreciation of how good he's got it in the color-blind, civilized 24th century. Black history can't just be about the past, it has to be about the future as well -- unless, of course, y'all are planning to kill us off before the year 2375 ...
All life is complex and has grey areas. Only fiction is devoid of complexity and everything boils down to simple opposites. Good vs. Evil. Right vs. Wrong. That ironically is very much the sort of thinking a Pat Robertson engages in. Some cops then and today were like those portrayed in the episode. Some were good guys. Most fall somewhere in between, willing to hold the wall of silence. It's that way in every system and society. It's how people are. We aren't all good or bad. We're a mixture . The worst of us still has redeeming qualities and the best of us holds evil within. I regret never having read Barnes' novelization and it seems as if it was a good deal better than the episode. If Barnes had been also writing the script, the result might have been a far better episode.
"That ironically is very much the sort of thinking a Pat Robertson engages in."
Actually, Robertson would agree with you--that "the worst of us still has redeeming qualities and the best of us holds evil within"--because he'd use that as an excuse to divorce the rich of any obligation to invest in job creation (GOOD) as opposed to Mutually Assured Destruction (EVIL). Robertson's exact words were, "the corruptible nature of man and the presence of spiritual evil," but in either event, it results in failing to draw a clear, distinct line between right and wrong.
http://www.coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?artic
For instance, Oskar Schindler was a Nazi, but try telling a Jew he was a GOOD Nazi and see what happens. Today, the Nazis are unanimously considered to be evil, period, end of story--and NO survivor of the Holocaust is going to want to hear otherwise.
Keeping that in mind, let's look at the cops, excuse me, pigs. You said, "Some cops then and today were like those portrayed in the episode. Some were good guys. Most fall somewhere in between." The problem I and every other black is going to have with that is what all too many whites still have a hard time admitting ...
http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2002/02/1
Let me put it this way: Let's rephrase your sentence: "Some NAZIS then and today were like those portrayed in the episode. Some were good guys. Most fall somewhere in between." Now, how does THAT feel ..?
Rodney King, Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, Timothy Stansbury Jr., Sean Bell, and God knows how many others--how many more black lives have to be lost before the pigs are FINALLY, unanimously considered to be as evil as the Nazis? Is black life that cheap? The whole point of civilization is NOT having to wait until another six million dies before you end whatever madness is causing that much death.
The same, exact thing goes for the CIA ...
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/CIA_G
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zepezauer_Mark/B
... that having been said, what is the definition of good? Well ...
http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2004/04/1
Ken Butigan's Pilgrimage Through a Burning World: Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site proves how "Power to the People" isn't just a '60s slogan. According to Butigan, "The U.S. peace movement played a key role in ending the Cold War." And Burning World backs this up by citing a series of historians -- including Lawrence S. Wittner, author of 1997's The Struggle Against the Bomb. Writes Butigan: "In his book, Wittner argues that the missing ingredient in any explanation of this reality is the world nuclear disarmament movement that has mobilized millions of people around the world. Wittner confesses that he hadn't expected to reach this conclusion. He assumed that the anti-nuclear movement had failed because nuclear weapons had not been definitively abolished. Yet as he pursued his research, he came to understand that this 'people power' movement had played an important role in curbing the nuclear arms race and preventing nuclear war."
... this means that the protesters all too many are all too quick to dismiss have in fact saved this planet from destruction--sounds pretty GOOD to me. There isn't any grey complexity here: Either the world was reduced to dust by a nuclear apocalypse or it wasn't. Life or death, black or white, good or evil.
Actually Pat Robertson would simply define conservative Republican policies as good and liberal Democratic policies as evil. This is how the religious right usually handles it.
The problem with drawing that distinct line is that it's usually artificial.
Calling Goering a "good Nazi" might be an argument of sorts. Schindler was an economic oppurtunist more than a Nazi as he had no real committment to the beliefs of the Nazi party. He was a guy who was in it to make money until what he saw sickened him too much. Sadly few people in corporate America are capable of that.
The real "Good Nazis" were former true believers who had turned against Hitler.
Talking about cops these days as a purely white entity is misleading. It was misleading even in the 50's. No part of America was truly divorced from supporting the power structure in some way.
The police are an extension of the social system. They wouldn't function without support from the communities they police in, black and white and asian. You can look at parts of France today to see what happens when communities genuinely don't support the police.
Nuclear war never occured because neither side was really prepared to go to the mat all the way. Both the USSR and the US was run by guys who in the end wanted to survive and were enough in touch with reality to realize that a nuclear war would wreck both their plans.
I never said the cops were a purely white entity (black cops are colaborators like the "kapas" of the concentration camps), and you're not giving the peace movement the credit it deserves. I also didn't mention Goering at all. Did you read what I posted?
http://orion.math.iastate.edu/burkardt/wordplay/pe
kapos - plural of "kapo", a prisoner put in charge of others in a concentration camp
... my bad, I misspelled it. Oh, well, they were traitorous collaborators anyway ...
"Schindler was an economic oppurtunist more than a Nazi as he had no real committment to the beliefs of the Nazi party. He was a guy who was in it to make money until what he saw sickened him too much. Sadly few people in corporate America are capable of that."
They ARE capable, they're just not willing, there's a difference, and you're letting corporate America off the hook big time by not acknowledging said difference. They in turn let themselves off the hook by going on and ON about how "the world's a complex place with shades of grey" in order to rationalize their greed and apathy. America needs to be invaded and occupied by the ghosts from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. MAKE them care. It worked for Scrooge, it'll work for Fox's Rupert Murdoch and Exxon's Lee Raymond ...
The scene in Schindler's List, in which Schindler laments over how he could've pawned some more of his shit and saved even more Jews ("This pin--two more people. He would've given me two for it. At least one.") ... I wrote a piece in college about how every single movie critic on the planet slammed that scene but praised the rest of the movie. Can we say capitalist CONspiracy ..? Where's the shade of grey there?
"Nuclear war never occured because neither side was really prepared to go to the mat all the way. Both the USSR and the US was run by guys who in the end wanted to survive and were enough in touch with reality to realize that a nuclear war would wreck both their plans."
The only way this could possibly be true (again, you're not giving the peace movement nearly enough credit) is if these guys were to have abolished and dismantled those missiles, and clearly, they ain't ...
http://www.truemajority.org/bensbbs/ http://youtube.com/watch?v=bc-cNQ_YjvQ&mode=re http://coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId http://www.coanews.org/tiki-read_article.php?artic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzqrdANIjYo
... this is getting boring, so I'm going to end with the words of the Emissary himself from the episode DS9 episode Waltz ...
Sisko: You know something, old man? There are times when life seems complicated. Nothing is truly good or truly evil. You start to think that everything is shades of grey. Then you spend time with a man like Dukat... and you realize there really is something like truly evil.
Jadzia: To realize that is one thing; to do something about it is another. So what are you going to do, Benjamin?
Sisko: I'll tell you what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to let him destroy Bajor. I fear no evil... from now on, it's him or me.
Saab Lofton 5 years ago
Good piece--very well written. I disagree with it; I know role models (particularly black ones) are important from first-hand experience, but it's still great nonetheless ...