Trapped in 2024 San Francisco, Sisko has been forced to assume the persona of civil rights icon Gabriel Bell in an attempt to preserve history. This may cost him his life, as Bell died in the hostage situation Sisko must now control. Meanwhile, Kira and O'Brien travel to moments throughout Earth's past in an effort to find Sisko and the other missing crew members.
In my review of "Part I" of this story, I wrote about its underlying message and how it both predicted and underestimated what the world might be like a few decades later. Rather than reiterate that here, I'll try to focus on things specific to the second half. For starters, "Past Tense" wasn't originally planned to be a two-part episode. In reviewing the story outline, executive producer Michael Piller noted that the Attica-inspired hostage situation didn't even develop until Act 4 of a five-act script -- and that there was easily enough meat on that bone to sustain an entire episode of its own.
This hour gives us our first real taste of Ben Sisko as "tough guy." Actor Avery Brooks had previously played the badass character of Hawk on Spenser: For Hire (and a spin-off) for several seasons of television, but his Star Trek character had gone a different direction -- likely written to put deliberate distance between the two. But Brooks excels at depicting a contained emotion spilling over, where Sisko had previously not often spilled over. This episode makes better use of Brooks' strengths. He shows more passion here than in any previous episode, from chastising a cop for ignoring the plight around him to handling hostage takers as forcefully as hostages. In a way, this episode is a precursor of the end of this season and the start of the next, when the producers would finally allow Avery Brooks to grow his goatee, shave his head, and act in a more natural manner.
This episode is also a precursor to Jonathan Frakes, movie director. This was Frakes' third (and final) episode of Deep Space Nine, and it became part of his demo reel (along with The Next Generation's "Cause and Effect") to convince the studio executives he could direct Star Trek: First Contact. He keeps great tension throughout the episode, bringing his own sense of style while not totally clashing with the tone set by the previous director who'd made Part I.
The story continues hard with its cautionary tale of rounding up the homeless into what the writers themselves dubbed concentration camps. Improbably, according to show runner Ira Steven Behr, the show received some letters from people complaining that the story "should have presented 'both sides' and not just the 'liberal' point of view." In an interview, he wryly noted, "In other words, we should have showed the positive aspects of putting the homeless into concentration camps? And I do admit we probably failed in that – we really did not show the many, many wonderful aspects of life without money and living in over-crowded camps." On a more serious note, he noted that while of course two hours of television weren't going to solve the problem, he thought it important to treat the situation realistically.
By and large, the episode does so. But not always. The character of Grady, played by Clint Howard, feels like a misguided addition to the tale. His mad conspiracy theories are presented for broad laughs rather than in recognition of the serious mental health issues they likely connote. Don't blame Howard for the wild performance, though -- Behr reportedly wrote the character this way, intending the part for Iggy Pop. (The rock star/actor was unavailable, but would eventually show up on Deep Space Nine.)
The subplot of Kira and O'Brien's search through time for their missing crew members is also played for disruptive laughs. Kira's "I broke my nose" excuse for her appearance echoes similarly light explanations for Spock's ears while undercover in the original series, and the 1960s-era encounter with hippies is a particular groaner of a scene. (Though it's one of the few times that real world, non-classical music is used on Star Trek: "Hey Joe" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience plays in the background).
One way you can't fault the episode is for its failure to anticipate the ubiquity of cameras and cell phones in the world of today. Honestly, who in 1995 could have foreseen that? Chalk this up as one of the countless movies and television shows of yesteryear that would fall apart completely with access to a smartphone -- the hostage crisis and the effort to get the stories of the Sanctuary District "residents" out into the larger world simply wouldn't work this way.
Big as the budget is for its time, it's not big enough to do justice to the ending. Hundreds of people are said to have died in the Bell Riots. We see no more than half a dozen. The action condenses down to little more than Sisko taking a bullet for one of the police officers. It certainly doesn't feel big enough in scope to be the historical turning point we've been told this moment is. (But what are you going to do on a 1990s television budget?)
Other observations:
- Dax sneaks in and out of the Sanctuary District through the sewer. Surely once the hostage crisis began, this sort of entry/exit would have been monitored.
- There's a lot of talk about baseball, furthering the fictional future history of Buck Bokai (started on The Next Generation and continued on Deep Space Nine).
- One of Kira and O'Brien's quick visits in time is to the 1930s, a moment that evoked for scenic artist Doug Drexler the memory of the classic Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever." Drexler wanted to acknowledge that classic episode in some way, so he took a poster from "City" that advertised a boxing match at Madison Square Garden and here did a poster advertising "their first rematch since Madison Square Garden."
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