"Wishing never changed a damn thing."
Far Beyond The Stars = Trek's best attempt at A Racism Episode, y/y?
Someday someone will write a book that looks at how Trek's treatment of race/ethnicity/nationality aims for a belevolent hegemony so that it eventually seems odd that Ben Sisko collects African art and knows at least some black history. I know from the internets that some Trekkies hate this episode because it makes an issue of Sisko being black, such that there's no episode at all if he wasn't. I really like it though, much as it has a faint whiff of the traditional Weren't People So Backwards Then, Aren't We So Much Better And More Progressive Now?
Avery Brooks pwns. This is fact. Some people don't like his enunciation, but I could listen to him read the phone book or really poor Jack/Ianto mpreg stories. The Sisko pwns as well as the Prophets fuck with his head to make him not give up on the war with the Dominion. I am just a bit in love with Ben Sisko, ys, so I like his episodes extra-much.
I wonder about the choice of Weyoun and Dukat as the policemen, cos it seems a bit close to "bad people are evil people" so I don't know where it was going with that. Fine choice though for Odo as the one who accepts the system and enforces it even if he doesn't particularly want to. And Quark as the liberal who wants to stop injustice.
Anyway, Benny Russell, the man literally driven insane because of racism. I like the episode while having horrid visions of how shit it could have been. It's not "preachy" it's just "here is a horrible thing, and we assume that all right-thinking people will agree that it is horrible." I think that's reasonable, don't you? And Ben learns that he has to fight like Benny did because some causes are Just. Also probably quite a bit of Ben having to defend a utopian future that people like Benny could only dream of.
Someday someone will write a book that looks at how Trek's treatment of race/ethnicity/nationality aims for a belevolent hegemony so that it eventually seems odd that Ben Sisko collects African art and knows at least some black history. I know from the internets that some Trekkies hate this episode because it makes an issue of Sisko being black, such that there's no episode at all if he wasn't. I really like it though, much as it has a faint whiff of the traditional Weren't People So Backwards Then, Aren't We So Much Better And More Progressive Now?
Avery Brooks pwns. This is fact. Some people don't like his enunciation, but I could listen to him read the phone book or really poor Jack/Ianto mpreg stories. The Sisko pwns as well as the Prophets fuck with his head to make him not give up on the war with the Dominion. I am just a bit in love with Ben Sisko, ys, so I like his episodes extra-much.
I wonder about the choice of Weyoun and Dukat as the policemen, cos it seems a bit close to "bad people are evil people" so I don't know where it was going with that. Fine choice though for Odo as the one who accepts the system and enforces it even if he doesn't particularly want to. And Quark as the liberal who wants to stop injustice.
Anyway, Benny Russell, the man literally driven insane because of racism. I like the episode while having horrid visions of how shit it could have been. It's not "preachy" it's just "here is a horrible thing, and we assume that all right-thinking people will agree that it is horrible." I think that's reasonable, don't you? And Ben learns that he has to fight like Benny did because some causes are Just. Also probably quite a bit of Ben having to defend a utopian future that people like Benny could only dream of.