That kind of work - hard, open-minded, challenging, and intersectional - has to come from the many. The figurehead can raise their voice, but one person has never been enough to sustain a movement. But it also absolves us of the effort we need to put into challenging our own perspectives. That focus on the individual is comforting: 1995 syndicated TV comforting.
Bell as the sacrificial figurehead, Chris Brynner as the rebel media corporate providing illicit network access, San Francisco as the catalyst for coast-to-coast, and eventually global, introspection.
Instead, the episodes reach for an easy answer preaching the strength of the individual. Perhaps because, for all the weight of “Past Tense”’s acidic forecasting, it can’t address the extremes of political polarization. That benevolence feels like a much more distant dream, no more accessible than replicators and warp travel. The Bell Riots are so inherent to Star Trek’s canon of western history that without this juncture, the Federation would simply never come to be. “Past Tense” predicted it all.īut even in the mire, the episodes have a central benevolent belief: that a singular event - the murder of an incarcerated black man by the police - can be the catalyst for nationwide societal change and recognition of systemic prejudices and inequalities. As we barrel closer to 2024, the severity of its prescience is even more undeniable predicting incarceration-as-benevolence (ICE detention camps and the continued internment of refugee children in the US), the destabilization of Europe, propagandist control of the internet and the essentiality of free platforms, and the ever-presence of privilege and nationalism to justify the most inhumane acts. The episodes tackle subjects as pressing as homelessness, racial inequality, the displacement of society’s most vulnerable, corporate and political apathy, class and gender division, and police violence. First aired in January 1995, “Past Tense” remains a taut exploration of the distance between Star Trek’s inherent values and the hurdles of today.
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