Last month, I guested on the New York radio show Hour of the Wolf (WBAI 99.5FM or wbai.org—you really should be listening), discussing with host and friend Jim Freund my thoughts on this year’s slate of Oscar-nominated animated shorts and features. When he asked me which short I’d choose to give the statuette to, I didn’t hesitate with my answer: Wander to Wonder, a twisted little offering out of the U.K. in which a trio of tiny, stop-motion animated Mister-Rogers-meets-Teletubbies TV characters struggle to carry on after their aging human host abruptly keels over and dies (the feet of his fly-ridden corpse can occasionally be glimpsed in cutaways—like I said, twisted).
“I did like the very grim humor,” I said. “Yeah, you tend to skew that way, I’ve noticed,” Jim replied.
Him saying that didn’t really come as a shock, but it was a kind of revelation. Yeah, I do skew dark. Weird thing is, for all the shadows I embrace, I’m not a pessimistic person.
A couple of years ago—almost exactly two years, actually—I wrote here about the powerful, and criminally overlooked, SF film Never Let Me Go. The article did quite well, got a good number of comments, as far as these things go. What struck me was that there were at least a couple of responses that went along the lines of, “I’ve heard it’s good, but I’m not going to watch it—too depressing.” And yes, it is a dark film, about the plight of a group of young clones raised in system that’s long institutionalized the harvesting of their organs. But never once over several screenings of the film did I emerge depressed. Instead, I walked away exhilarated, energized. It isn’t the only film that’s had that effect on me—there are lots of somber, despairing films that paradoxically impart in me a sense of optimism.
This is not of some kind of bizarre contrarianism. It’s just when life goes gloomy, my choice of entertainment goes gloomier. There’s a logic to it, which I will get to, but the fact is I look at the state of things, and instead of reaching for some silly, upbeat fluff, I do a deep-dive into the murk. That may explain why, in confronting our present times, I found myself taking solace in revisiting one of the darkest and most troubling episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
“In the Pale Moonlight” (S6, E19, 1998) doesn’t cut the viewer any breaks. It starts with Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) initiating a personal log entry, and just by the tone of his voice we can tell that whatever’s troubling him goes beyond the day-to-day challenges of running an interstellar waystation. “I need to talk about this,” he says. “I have to justify what’s happened, what I’ve done, at least to myself.” As we will soon discover, the tale he has to tell would haunt the conscience of anyone who’s not a total sociopath.
With Sisko functioning as his own Greek chorus, the episode recounts the events of two weeks prior, when the Captain, sickened by the grim duty of posting weekly casualty figures in the Federation’s (losing) war with the Dominion, resolves to shift the tide of the conflict. His solution: Coerce the Romulans, who have signed a nonaggression pact with the Dominion, into the war. Easily said, not so easily done, as Sisko and Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) discover when they roleplay an attempt to convince the Romulan proconsul that, sooner or later, the Dominion will turn on them. (A beautifully written and acted scene, BTW.) The two come to the conclusion that words alone aren’t going to convince the Romulans—there will need to be proof.
Sisko thinks he knows where he can find it, reaching out to resident DS9 tailor (and former Cardassian spy) Garak (Andrew Robinson) to see whether he can leverage contacts back on Cardassia Prime in order to dig up evidence that his home world, which has joined forces with the Dominion, is readying a Dominion-led invasion of Romulus. When Garak points out the risks of such intrigue, the Captain replies, “I am prepared to do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal.” He will regret that declaration.
The plan doesn’t go too well: Garak reports back to Sisko that everyone he contacted has subsequently turned up dead (“I suppose that’s a testament to the effectiveness of Dominion security,” he casually notes). But the Cardassian offers a Plan B: Convince Romulan Senator Vreenak (Stephen McHattie), who orchestrated the treaty with the Dominion, to make a secret side trip to DS9, and present him with a forged hologram purporting to show the planning meeting for the Romulus invasion. All it will take is for Sisko to spring a highly-skilled (and nauseatingly obsequious) forger, Grathon Tolar (Howard Shangraw), from his death sentence in a Klingon prison, stare a powerful member of a notoriously paranoid species square in the eye, and lie like a bastard.
That Sisko can see the weasel visibly drain out of Tolar’s demeanor as soon as the forger hears that Garak is involved doesn’t help to allay the Captain’s regrets over his Faustian bargain. Nor does the next set of compromises he’s compelled to make: Convincing the Ferengi barkeep Quark (Armin Shimerman) to drop charges against Tolar after the forger attacks him, in exchange for facilitating the release of some impounded contraband (one assumes that if Constable Odo (Rene Auberjonois) doesn’t want Quark to have it, it probably ain’t cotton candy); and ordering Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig) to turn over a mass quantity of a dangerous biological substance to the procurers of an ultra-rare data rod needed to seal the authenticity of the recording. The look Bashir gives Sisko as he accedes to the order is so withering that it’s a wonder the Captain didn’t resign his commission right then and there.
…And it turns out it’s all for naught. In one of DS9’s more legendary moments, Vreenak strides into Sisko’s office, brandishes the data rod in the Captain’s face and hisses, “It’s a faaaaaake!” The Senator then promptly retreats to his shuttle to report back to his home world, where he’s likely to advocate for Romulus joining the war on the Dominion’s side.
[Hey. Major spoiler coming up. If you haven’t seen the episode yet… Go! Go watch! It’s great!]
Not long after, Sisko receives troubling news: A shuttle carrying an influential Romulan senator has exploded, and Dominion sabotage is suspected. Confronting Garak—after slugging him hard enough to send him across the room—Sisko gets the truth out of the tailor/spy: While the Cardassian had hoped that Tolar’s forgery would pass muster, he hedged his bet by sabotaging Vreenak’s shuttle, counting on the Romulans to retrieve the mutilated data rod from the wreckage and assume that any flaws in the recording were the result of damage caused by the explosion. (He also mentions in passing that, to better cover their tracks, he’s killed Tolar.)
Turns out Garak bet well: Sisko wraps up his log by noting that the Romulans have declared war on the Dominion, and begun a concentrated assault on the invaders’ bases. Sisko’s plan has saved the Alpha Quadrant, at the nominal cost, Garak points out, of the lives of one despicable criminal and one isolationist senator. (Plus his entourage. Plus the delivery of a dangerous biological substance into suspect hands. Plus giving Quark evidence that even the most forthright human can be corrupted. Plus considerable damage to Sisko’s moral compass.)
Does it bother the Captain? “I can live with it,” Sisko admits to his log. But he has to repeat the phrase, as if trying to convince himself. And then, after pausing to reflect, he orders the computer to delete the entire recording.
Deep Space Nine was always the impertinent outlier of the Star Trek universe. While still largely adhering to Gene Roddenberry’s vision of what we humans could achieve once freed from the curse of bigotry, the corruptions of capitalism, and the constraints of religion, it dared to suggest that there could be a place in the universe for faith, that those who exchanged goods for gold-pressed latinum could still be moral individuals, and that, in elevating itself as a shining light for all sentient beings, the Federation might well be indulging in its own form of prejudice. And still, within that conceptual context, “In the Pale Moonlight” distinguishes itself by flying in the face of everything that Trek was supposed to stand for. It indulged in moral ambiguities, shrugged off wanton murder (albeit with all instances of the act occurring off-screen), and defiantly declared that, yes, the ends do justify the means.
And yet, and yet, I emerge from each viewing not depressed, but thrilled. Not just from the sheer joy of watching the cast, Brooks and Robinson especially, bringing their A-game, or from seeing how the entire production team—writers and cast and crew—spins a compelling hour of TV from what is essentially a dialogue-heavy bottle episode, but because it gave me the comfort of an SF framework to delve into a challenging moral issue. At the end of the episode, after Garak has owned up to his insidious plan, he confronts Sisko with a damning observation: “That’s why you came to me, isn’t it, Captain?” he says. “You knew I could do those things you weren’t capable of doing.” And if (like me) you’ve identified over six seasons with one of the Starfleet’s most admirable officers, you now had to ponder what you would have done in his shoes. (Me, I probably would have slipped out of them. I got tiny feet.)
It isn’t impossible to conceive that a good, moral person trapped in a dire, seemingly inescapable situation might look to someone that they know is morally compromised, who they’ve seen lie and cheat and get away with it, and feel that this person’s capacity to flaunt, or flat-out break, the rules might well be able to achieve results impossible for those who strive to color within the lines. One might even try to overlook the dubious techniques such an individual might employ, and the suspect partners they might recruit, if one thinks the net gains will be worth it. If you can maintain hope that positive ends are in sight, who could blame you for saying “Fuck the means”?
But here’s where fantasy diverges from reality. After six seasons of DS9, we the fans knew on which side of the moral divide our cast of characters fell. At episode’s end, Sisko himself declares—albeit with no lack of bitterness—that he is one of the good guys. The horrendous acts of “In the Pale Moonlight” are explicable because we know the motives are pure—or at least not completely appalling. But why I emerged from the episode energized instead of bummed is not because the lesson to be learned is that the ends justify the means. It’s that I believe in witnessing the worst-case scenario, we the audience have the capacity to identify what our own blinders are, and recognize when we’re using them to shield us from uncomfortable realities.
Because more often than not, the person who acts bad is bad, and the dark deeds they do are not in the cause of the greater good, but to fulfill their own, self-serving purposes. One can be excused for giving such people the benefit of the doubt when they profess to be acting for the benefit of all, but once their malign intent becomes manifest, that’s the time when one must abandon all comforting rationalizations, and see the person for who they truly are. A science fiction show set on a distant space station can play out a scenario to its careening resolution, good or bad. In the real world, we have the option of changing course, of letting those who have taken advantage of our trust know that enough is enough, and that the abuses must stop. It doesn’t call for cold-cocking anyone across a tailor shop, just saying clearly, loudly, and firmly—either directly or by motivating those who speak for us to do so—“Oh no you don’t.”
Funny how a show that seemingly defied its franchise’s whole reason for being, that was willing to explore the shadows and the ambiguities that are part and parcel of our dealings with each other, could still lead us to an appreciation and an embrace of our better natures. Chalk it up to those who oversaw Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—among them Rick Berman, Ira Steven Behr, Michael Piller, and Ron Moore—to speak to those human values that are and will remain universal. Two-plus decades have passed since DS9 ended its run, and yet the series, and “In the Pale Moonlight” in particular, remains as pertinent today—and maybe more—as it ever was.
Any list of top ten Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes is bound to include “In the Pale Moonlight.” I’ll go as far as to say that it lands right at the top of my list—although, admittedly, it might be a three-way tie between that, “Far Beyond the Stars,” and “It’s Only a Paper Moon.” What do you think? Do you feel the episode carries the same impact now as it did when it debuted? Are there other episodes you’d contend better address the times in which we live? Feel free to contribute to the comments section below. Just be courteous and thoughtful when you respond. Let’s keep peace in the Alpha Quadrant.
