I don’t remember the episode and season numbers, but the episodes of DS9 where Cisko, Bashir and Dax are sent to the point in ST’s alternate history that sparked the socio-political revolution. Where they’re taken hostage in -to my memory either a bank or a jobs center- and have to become the heroes because the historically proper hero is killed (do to Cisko being where he temporally shouldn’t be).

In these episodes, we see a world of hyper-capitalism, where greed has led to the caging and separation of the poor, where the rich live in luxury, where the police are unabashed agents of the bourgeoisie and are the enemy for almost all of both episodes, two episodes that gave us scenes like this one; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugTTy_u61gM]. A perfect theatrical “calling to attention”, but, they flub the allegory. The final scene, Bashir asks Cisko ‘what could drive the world to become this way’ (or something to that effect, it’s been a hot second), and Cisko doesn’t reply ‘capitalism’ or ‘greed’.

He replies “That’s a good question. I wish I had an answer”.

  • the_next_stage
    5·
    5 years ago

    I finished watching all of DS9 a few months ago and recall being similarly frustrated by that scene, practically yelling at the screen “CAPITALISM, IT’S BECAUSE OF CAPITALISM!”

  • Muad'DibberA
    5·
    5 years ago

    That was a really good episode tho still, it showed a proletarian uprising, mass homelessness and starvation like currently exists, an accurate depiction of the bay area too lol.

    But yeah same, totally at the end, … its capitalism.

  • Star Wars Enjoyer OPMA
    3·
    5 years ago

    TBH, DS9 was an amazing show, but they repeatedly tried to push liberal naratives. Such as, most notable in my mind, the one where the lesson to be learned is an equivalent to “don’t kill nazis, jews. That’s bad and murder is bad!”

    • Muad'DibberA
      4·
      5 years ago

      Def, some of the episodes were centrist posturing, but a lot of them were about the realities of fighting a war against the dominion and how you have to cut corners to survive too. Its a bit less idealist than a lot of other treks in that sense. Siskos: “I can live with it”. Garaks realpolitik, etc.

      Once you get some time, I’ll post this here sometime too, but someone wrote a super-long article about DS9’s politics, focusing on anti-imperialism.