Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Season 3, Episode 11
Original Air Date: January 8, 1995
 |
| via Memory Alpha |
Due to a transporter malfunction, Commander Sisko, Bashir and Dax arrive in San Francisco, year 2024. Right place, wrong time - off by three-and-a-half centuries. It's a few days before a riot which changed the course of (in-universe) history. They must figure out how to survive and get back to their own era while not corrupting the timeline - no easy task.
The social commentary is direct and heavy in "Past Tense." In 2024 San Francisco, the jobless were kept in Sanctuary Districts, walled off from the rest of the city. Sisko and Bashir found themselves in Sanctuary District A, home to about ten thousand residents. Housing, food and hope are all in short supply. Speculative fiction dystopia? While the episode was in production, The Los Angeles Times ran an article outlining a proposal by Richard Riordan, real-world mayor of Los Angeles in 1995, to create fenced-in havens for the city's homeless population in order to make the downtown area more appealing for businesses. Fortunately, that particular idea never went anywhere but neither did LA's homeless problem.
"Past Tense" (a two-parter; I'll get to Part II next week) does very well on best episode lists, not just for DS9 but for all of Star Trek. I won't deny the production quality but Trek's typical time travel clumsiness prevents me from listing the story among my favorites. The technical justifications not only for the transporter gaffe but also for the Defiant crew's ability to remain unscathed by an already corrupted timeline are ridiculous. Truly, they would have done better to simply drop the three characters in 2024 without any explanation at all.
Acting Notes
 |
| via Miami Vice Wiki |
Bill Smitrovich played Michael Webb, a resident of Sanctuary District A who becomes a civil rights advocate. Smitrovich was born William Stanley Zmitrowicz, Jr. in Bridgeport, Connecticut, May 16, 1947. He attended Bridgeport University as an undergrad, then Smith College - a significant institution in my family - for graduate school.
Smitrovich has had principal cast roles on several television shows, including Crime Story, Life Goes On, The Event and A Nero Wolfe Mystery, one of our family favorites. His films include Independence Day, Air Force One and Iron Man.
Crime story was cool :D
ReplyDeleteI never watched it...
DeleteI agree, sometimes they want to explain so much about the story and time lapses and end up spoiling the whole plot! And in 1995, 2024 seemed so far away!!!
ReplyDeleteRight? On the other hand, 1995 feels like a million years ago. I was living a very different life at the time.
DeleteI don't think you really need to worry about the mechanics too much.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, has long been one of my favorites.
I can't help it. Unless it's a time travel show - Doctor Who, for instance - I always feel like it's an easy option when the writers are running out of different ideas, even for Star Trek. I realize some of their strongest stories are time travel stories but even "The City on the Edge of Forever" drives me crazy along these lines.
DeleteI'll acknowledge, "Past Tense" doesn't feel this way. It's more an attempt to tell a bit of in-universe history from an early time period. I respect the sentiment but the mechanics are clumsy and I always struggle to see past that.