Pluto TV Marks Precipice Of Bell Riots With Airing 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine' “Past Tense” Episodes
Rising up, out on the streets, traveled time took my badges.
Oh it’s definitely that time again. Another far off future date used in fiction has arrived for us to feel old and point and laugh and reflect on the inaccuracies. Today is August 30, 2024. Yesterday Netflix released the Terminator ZERO anime because Judgment Day, the day SkyNet became self-aware, was originally August 29, 1997, according to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and while victories and long gaps in installments meant the date kept being pushed back until it was a different set of events, but being the most popular Terminator installment meant it was the one clung onto. But August 30, 2024 is the date in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s third season two-part episode “Past Tense”, originally aired January 2 and 9, 1995. In one of the franchise’s most politically and socially-conscious episodes, a transporter anomaly lands Commander Benjamin Sisko, Chief Medical Officer Julian Bashir, and Chief Science Officer Jadzia Dax there.
Dax, played by Terry Farrell, actually ends up separated from the others, played by Avery Brooks and Alexander Siddig, where in San Francisco she ends up with the privileged and affluent, namely Chris Brynner, owner of Brynner Information Systems, a television network-owning company. while Bashir and Sisko end up in the walled-off sanctuary districts designated for the homeless, poor and mentally ill that had devolved into overcrowded slums resembling internment camps. Sisko is more aware of what led up to it in the preceding history, and also that what’s to come is a complete uprising known as the Bell Riots, which occur in early September. Except when Bashir is assaulted for his ration card (being part of things because neither he nor Sisko have any ID on them), Gabriel Bell is stabbed to death trying to help them. To preserve the timeline, Sisko assumes his identity. The riots are incited by a fight between a “dim” and a guard. The “ghosts” attack, capturing the Processing Center and taking six enployees hostage. Sisko as Bell would be the face of negotiations and resolution. Reconnecting with Dax, she convinced Brynner to reconnect the Processing Center, allowing the district residents’ stories of their imprisonment to reach not only the greater public, but other Sanctuaries. And the state-sanctioned reprisals still happen, resulting in the deaths of hundreds, including two of the named characters who had been part of things. Sisko protects the hostages as it originally had gone, and it’s where the officers plant “Bell” and Bashir’s deaths after the fact since Kira and O’Brien rescue the trio when they’re able to, meaning they would’ve disappeared and been considered missing otherwise. The Bell Riots turn the tides of public opinion against sanctuary districts, leading to their eventual abolishment.
Now, there was no expectation for any of the cast or crew to acknowledge the arrival of the date. Farrell, Kira Nerys actress Nana Visitor, Jake Sisko actor Cirroc Lofton, and Quark actor Armin Shimerman are still rather active with Twitter, while the former is also active on Instagram, but only her and Visitor have any involvement in the episode of that group, making for otherwise loose connections. Brooks, Siddig and Colm Meaney don’t have social media presences at all. Rene Auberjonois, who played Odo, and Dick Miller, who played officer Vin but is known for a bunch of films including as Murray Futterman in both Gremlins films, died in 2019. However, Pluto TV might have come in clutch, and it might be by accident.
See, Star Trek’s presence on the Paramount-owned free ad-supported streamer has grown from a single channel for the franchise that was primarily original series, Next Generation and their movies to having individual channels for Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and the movies, with a “More Star Trek” channel that had them along the way. While the Deep Space Nine channel did not do 24 hours of running both parts, it seems by all indications that it naturally happened to land here. And not just at any time, but from 8-10 PM Eastern. A primetime spot? Oh how fancy. But yeah, the first episode I had seen playing today was “The House of Quark”, the third episode of season 3, while scrubbing ahead finds “Family Business”, the twenty-third episode of season 3, at 8 AM tomorrow. The channel was just cycling through as normal, but the serendipity is appreciated. As there is no formal acknowledgement yet genuinely could come up that with normal progression they stay continue moving well past it over the next three days that the event is supposed to happen.
If you’re looking for comparisons in what the real 2024 has been, especially in the wake of recent developments in the measures that California has passed to deal with its homeless population (while it ain’t this extreme, they ain’t great either), this is not the place. I’m not in the mood. It would be way too much of a time sink and I’m sure others have already done so, hopefully accurately (it risks falling askew very easily). Get in loser, we’re starting the Bell Riots.
Source: Memory Alpha