The contentious, almost impossible dilemmas being portrayed in DS9’s themes were a reflection of the times. By the time we got to DS9, we were on the tail end of a sudden recession, race riots in LA, police brutality coming into sharp focus as more and more people started carrying video cameras, Mike Tyson went from hero to convict for rape, and the world started to shrink and become scarier. The cocaine-fueled optimism of the late 80’s was morphing into the technicolor international stage of the 90’s, increased media exposure was showing a lot of people the darkness we spent decades trying to pretend wasn’t there. Terrorism, plane crashes, wars we saw in full color on the ground, dictatorships rising and falling. We’re still feeling the effects of this reconciliation/confrontation with our actual history and social norms.
The contentious, almost impossible dilemmas being portrayed in DS9’s themes were a reflection of the times. By the time we got to DS9, we were on the tail end of a sudden recession, race riots in LA, police brutality coming into sharp focus as more and more people started carrying video cameras, Mike Tyson went from hero to convict for rape, and the world started to shrink and become scarier. The cocaine-fueled optimism of the late 80’s was morphing into the technicolor international stage of the 90’s, increased media exposure was showing a lot of people the darkness we spent decades trying to pretend wasn’t there. Terrorism, plane crashes, wars we saw in full color on the ground, dictatorships rising and falling. We’re still feeling the effects of this reconciliation/confrontation with our actual history and social norms.