Left (Coming Soon) to Your Own Devices

For years, the head writer behind Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has been promising a documentary looking back on the series. He crowdfunded the effort, and it hardly seemed likely that he was scamming everyone and making off with the money... yet, year after year, no movie. But finally, this year, it has arrived.

What We Left Behind: Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is the result of this long wait. Ira Steven Behr has gathered up nearly everyone you could think of involved with the show for wide-ranging interviews on the series -- cast, crew, writers, and producers. (Notably, star Avery Brooks participated in no new interviews here, but some previously existing clips of him are incorporated. His co-stars also have plenty to say about him and his positive but unusual creative energy.)

I was perhaps a little disappointed that the film didn't delve more deeply behind the scenes than it did... but I also think I was on some level judging it against unfair competition. The book series on the original Star Trek, These Are the Voyages, remains fresh in my mind. Three hefty tomes, those books have space to delve far more deeply than a two-hour documentary ever could. They also set an unreasonably high standard for unearthing previously unknown information about the show; Star Trek has been around for five decades, with countless books written about it, yet nothing else came close.

All of this is to say that fans really in the know about the behind the scenes of Deep Space Nine shouldn't expect many new revelations from this documentary. But you do get a lot of pleasant nostalgia. Indeed, it's easier to be more nostalgic about the series than its more widely acknowledged predecessors, since you don't hear as many people talk about it.

The documentary gets into how the show was at the forefront of serialized storytelling on mainstream television, as well as racial diversity and representation, prominent use of well-rounded and powerful female characters, unflinching examination of spikier subject matter, and more. Show runner Behr also pointedly acknowledges at one point an area in which the show could have been more daring than it was: LGBT representation.

An interesting element of the film is how it uses the reunion of the Deep Space Nine writers. Five of them spent a full day together in a room brainstorming what they might do with a new, eighth season of the show, were they given the opportunity to produce it today. They wind up sketching out an entire season premiere episode in rough form, which is presented to us in bits and pieces throughout the film via animatics. It drives home the pervading sense of nostalgia as it shows off one of the hallmarks of the show: how it wasn't afraid to indulge increasingly big ideas over the years. (It's now 20 years later, and they don't actually have to make this show; imagine how big the ideas get!)

Seeing all these people reunite to reminisce and stick up for the overlooked installment of Star Trek was a lot of fun. And seeing the film screened in theaters for one night was also fun, to see fans of Deep Space Nine in particular (not just Trek generally) come out to show their love for the show. The documentary will be released on streaming and Blu-ray in just a couple of months, but this early, special screening was worth not waiting.

I give What We Left Behind a B+. If you loved Deep Space Nine, it's well worth checking out. (And if you've never seen the series, you're truly missing out.)