Honestly this is one of the things I appreciate about Trek. Things don’t just automatically get better and better throughout human history. But in both Trek and real life, people want things to get better and will fight to make them better if given a chance. Past Tense might be my favorite episode of TV in general because while things might still get worse before they get better, the Bell Riots are one of the things that spurs people into action.

I think there’s a lot to be hopeful for in that respect. We’re seeing a resurgence of unions and labor action after they collapsed in the 90s, the development of an incredibly large anti war movement, and people are realizing things only change if we force them to.

Anyways, there will always be bad things happening in a capitalist society, but there will always be people fighting to make things better, and right now a lot of people are realizing they want to be a part of that group.

So yeah, shit sucks but there will always be people who want to fix things.

Lots of cast members ended up directing over the years. 90’s Trek had a reputation for being a factory for directorial debuts. It’s really neat, it brought a lot of variety and personality to the episodes.

It’s the broad brush that gets me. Going dark has to be a principled choice. DS9 nailed it with the “it’s easy to be a saint in paradise” mentality. The hope in most Trek writing comes from a worldview that most people are inherently good unless their environment forces them to act otherwise (which I would very much say is how the world actually works). When shows go dark using something closer to a “people are inherently evil unless they really fight back against their nature” mentality, it feels bad and rings hollow.

“Staring Jeffrey Combs as Brunt”: HELL YEAH!

“Staring Jeffrey Combs as Weyun”: HELL YEAH!

“Staring Jeffrey Combs as Brunt and Weyun”: LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOO!