Star Trek and History (25 page)

On Earth, there is no poverty, no crime, no war. You look out the window of Starfleet Headquarters and you see Paradise. Well, it's easy to be a saint in Paradise, but the Maquis do not live in Paradise. Out there in the demilitarized zone, all the problems haven't been solved yet. Out there, there are no saints—just people. Angry, scared, determined people who are going to do whatever it takes to survive, whether it meets with Federation approval or not! (
DS9
, “The Maquis, Part 2”)

Sisko's less-than-optimistic speech reveals how difficult it is to uphold Starfleet values and ideals in the real world, just as the U.S. government struggled to make the case for its own values in a complex post–Cold War world where terrorists possessed their own compelling causes and beliefs.
3

Less than a month after the broadcast of
Deep Space Nine
's two-part episode “The Maquis,”
Next Generation
offered its own examination of these renegade Federation colonists in “Preemptive Strike.” After the USS
Enterprise
interrupts a Maquis attack on a Cardassian vessel near the Demilitarized Zone, Cardassia declares that it will take matters into its own hands if the Federation does not force the Maquis to uphold the peace treaty. Starfleet command decides to send Ro Laren into the Maquis community as an undercover operative. Since she spent much of her life fighting the Cardassians, Ro is uncomfortable with the assignment, but she accepts the mission out of loyalty to Picard. She quickly infiltrates the Maquis settlement and grows close to the older Maquis leader, Macias. Ro's spy campaign takes a turn when Cardassians attack and kill Macias in front of her. At this point she decides to join the Maquis and to betray Starfleet's plan.

Like
Deep Space Nine
's handling of the Maquis-Cardassian conflict, “Preemptive Strike” paints the Cardassians, who are developing a biogenic weapon to use against their enemies, as treacherous and evil, thus making the Maquis that much more sympathetic. Macias's paternal relationship with Ro further humanizes the Maquis. Yet at the same time, Starfleet and Picard regard the Maquis as traitors, which obliges viewers to question their sympathy for the Maquis.
Next Generation
writers further blur the line between just action and terrorism when Ro, a Starfleet officer like Lt. Commander Hudson in
Deep Space Nine
, turns against Starfleet and betrays Picard's trust.

As
Next Generation
left the airways in 1994,
Deep Space Nine
continued to explore the Maquis-Federation struggle. One significant episode, “For the Cause,” explores the feelings of disaffected Starfleet officers who side with the Maquis. Starfleet security officer Michael Eddington arrives onboard Deep Space Nine to protect a Federation shipment of replicators to the Cardassians from possible theft by the Maquis. Eddington then informs Commander Sisko that he believes his girlfriend, Kasidy Yates, is a Maquis smuggler. Sisko is encouraged to follow Kasidy to catch her meeting with the Maquis, but he quickly discovers that he had been lured away from the station as part of a ruse by Eddington to allow him to steal the replicators from Deep Space Nine and take them to the Maquis. Eddington later contacts Sisko, urging him to leave the Maquis alone, but Sisko pledges to find Eddington and to make sure he spends the rest of his life in a penal colony.

Deep Space Nine
writers again present an ambivalent view of the Maquis by having a Starfleet officer betray Starfleet values and duties. They also use two prominent characters, Worf and Miles O'Brien, to explore contradictory opinions of these renegades. Worf contends that the Maquis are little more than terrorists and criminals who lack honor, while O'Brien suggests that “they are just fighting for something they believe in” (
DS9
, “For the Cause”). Eddington, however, shifts the blame to Starfleet and the Federation after Sisko angrily announces that he will hunt him down:

I know you. I was like you once, but then I opened my eyes. Open your eyes, Captain. Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis? We've never harmed you. And yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You're only sending them replicators because one day they can take their “rightful place” on the Federation Council. You know in some ways you're even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious. You assimilate people and they don't even know it. (
DS9
, “For the Cause”)

In this brief speech, Eddington argues that from the Maquis' perspective, the Federation is as much the enemy as the Cardassians. Portraying the Federation as akin to the Cardassians or the Borg only complicates
Star Trek
's depiction of terrorism. The writers of this episode have said that it was in fact inspired by the initial reaction of Americans to the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City: “For the first few days after the event, everyone was so sure that it was foreign terrorists. Anyone who appeared Middle Eastern suddenly was under suspicion for no reason at all.”
4
When the public learned that it was not a Middle Eastern terrorist but a white American named Timothy McVeigh, writer Mark Gehred-O'Connell wondered what might happen if a terrorist attack took place on Deep Space Nine. He said that “in a situation like that, who would they immediately suspect? What if it turned out to be the last person in the world to come to mind? I just wanted to play with that idea. And it ended up being a story where Kasidy Yates turns out to be the number-one suspect.”
5

Timothy McVeigh, the domestic terrorist who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, harbored strong antigovernment sentiments and turned to terrorism to punish the federal government's actions at Ruby Ridge and Waco. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing marked the height of the right-wing militia antigovernment movement, as many Americans who may have shared similar antipathy toward the federal government subsequently rejected militia groups' use of violence and terrorism.
Star Trek
's exploration of terrorism also slowly subsided with the last story on the Maquis broadcast in 1997, in which Eddington is killed defending his fellow Maquis from a Jem'Hadar attack as part of the Dominion War. Even Sisko eventually admits to Lt. Dax that Eddington was not a traitor but was loyal to his cause until his death.

While the Maquis story line disappeared from
Deep Space Nine
, it was central to
Voyager
.
6
In the 1995 premiere episode, Kathryn Janeway commands
Voyager
's mission to capture a Maquis ship when a displacement beam hurtles the two ships into the Delta Quadrant. Now seventy thousand light years from home, the two crews must merge into one and work together if they wish to return home. Janeway, for example, remains captain, but she appoints the Maquis leader Chakotay as the ship's first officer. The primary story line during the show's first year was the crew's struggle to overcome mutual feelings of distrust and betrayal. Unlike the more pessimistic
Deep Space Nine, Voyager
holds onto the promise that terrorists like the Maquis can be reintegrated into Starfleet, perhaps reflecting the hope that right-wing militias could likewise successfully rejoin mainstream America.

By the late 1990s, terrorism as a story line receded from the
Star Trek
franchise. However, in September 2001, just as the latest series,
Enterprise
, began broadcasting, Americans faced the worst terrorist attack in the nation's history. With the first season mapped out and an American public still reeling from the 9/11 attacks,
Enterprise
producers largely steered clear of plotlines dealing with terrorist attacks.
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In the final episode of season two, however, a probe from an unknown alien source unleashes a devastating assault on Earth, killing millions, including Chief Engineer Charles “Trip” Tucker's younger sister. After Captain Archer learns that the probe that attacked Earth was sent by the Xindi, a distant species who believe humans will destroy their home world in the future, he and the crew decide to go find the Xindi in a mysterious region called the Delphic Expanse in order to stop them from developing a more powerful weapon that threatens to destroy Earth. “The Expanse” marked the beginning of yearlong story arc that would focus on the
Enterprise
's efforts to thwart any future Xindi attack.

The Xindi story line was clearly informed by 9/11, when “alien terrorists” staged an unprovoked attack on the United States, producing much death and devastation. Reflecting the anger and desire for vengeance that many Americans expressed in the wake of 9/11, Tucker and Archer talk about what they will do if they find the Xindi. In some ways channeling the views of the Bush administration, Tucker observes that he hopes that the
Enterprise
crew will not be stopped by “that non-interference crap T'Pol's always shoving down our throats.” Archer agrees that they will do “whatever it takes” to spare Earth from annihilation by the Xindi (
ENT
, “The Expanse”).

The Xindi attack and the crew's reaction are not the only parallels to post-9/11 terrorism. For example, the remainder of the Xindi probe that attacked Earth lands in Central Asia, not so coincidentally the heart of al-Qaeda and Afghanistan. Likewise, rather than have the
Enterprise
remain near Earth to protect it, Archer takes the battle to the Xindi homeland, just as the U.S. government took the war to Afghanistan in its global war on terrorism. Even the Delphic Expanse is described as a dangerous region of space where many Vulcan ships have gone missing. The Vulcan ambassador Soval adds that the region is also rumored to hold several hostile alien species and unexplainable phenomena and that in some areas of the expanse, even the laws of physics do not apply. This depiction of the Delphic Expanse in many ways mirrors descriptions of Afghanistan as a mysterious and dangerous region that is home to hostile ethnic groups, and where powerful groups, like the British and the Soviet Union, seemed to have lost their way and struggled to survive.
8

By the end of season three the
Enterprise
had successfully destroyed the Xindi weapon and eliminated the threat to Earth. Terrorism remained a popular theme in
Enterprise
's final season, although it was often as the backdrop to Vulcan internal political struggles or as the xenophobic terrorism of Earth isolationists who wished to undermine the formation of the Coalition of Planets, the predecessor to the Federation.
9

For nearly two decades the more recent
Star Trek
television series explored important social, political, and cultural issues, ranging from race and gender to religion and AIDS. As terrorism engulfed American society,
Star Trek
likewise addressed this issue in ways that reflected the fluctuating attitudes and experiences of the American public. In doing so,
Star Trek
not only incorporated terrorism into the history of the fictional
Star Trek
future but also allowed us to reexamine our own recent history. In short, it clearly went where no one had gone before.

Notes

1.
Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman,
Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages
(New York: Little, Brown, 1995), 191.

2.
Chris Gregory, Star Trek:
Parallel Narratives
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 175.

3.
The comparison between the Maquis and right-wing paramilitary groups included having the colonists live in impoverished or isolated settlements. The Maquis championed the poverty and isolation of the colonists, as did many American paramilitary groups, which celebrated their survivalist skills by living in often primitive conditions and separated from mainstream society.

4.
Terry J. Erdmann and Paula M. Block, Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine Companion
(New York: Pocket Books, 2000), 339.

5.
Ibid.

6.
Gregory, Star Trek:
Parallel Narratives
, 176.

7.
The one exception was the episode “Desert Crossing,” broadcast at the end of the show's first season, in which Captain Archer and Commander Tucker are invited to a planet where they are asked to help an oppressed group of people who the planet's government leader claims are terrorists. In the end Archer avoids intervening in the dispute, but he tells T'Pol that he believes the accused “terrorists,” cause is just (
ENT
, “Desert Crossing”).

8.
While in this episode Captain Archer compares the Expanse to the Bermuda Triangle, many viewers saw a striking parallel to the American invasion of Afghanistan. See, for example,
http://catpewk.diaryland.com/03091815.html
and
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/enterprise-3
.

9.
See the Vulcan Syrannite conflict in
Enterprise
, “The Forge,” “Awakening,” and “Kir'Shara.” Xenophobic terrorism was the subject of the
Enterprise
episodes “Demons” and “Terra Prime.”

Karma Waltonen

Riker:
Someone once said, “Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgment.”