The opening scenes of Deep Space Nine are the best introduction to Star Trek

The first bold step would be one of many It ran for seven seasons, Deep Space Nine Opens with Star TrekThe game’s new hero stares into the terrifying face of his old self: Jean-Luc Picard, the corrupt and perverted Locutus of Borg. It’s a great setting on which to meet the series’ newest hero, more than three decades later, in those opening scenes aboard the USS. Saratoga remains one of Star TrekMost worrying and cCompelling opening shots.

On this day thirty-two years ago, on January 3, 1993, Deep space nine“Envoy” pilotopened not on the titular space station that would become Commander Sisko’s home, but with a title card bearing a trip Going back to what was at the time his greatest and one of Starfleet’s lowest points: Wolf Battle 359 in The next generationThe opening of Season 4, concluding one of the greatest series a trip Cliffhangers of all time in ‘The Best of Both Worlds’. There, the series kept the Wolf 359 massacre off screen. now, Star Trek He was willing to show it, putting a new protagonist at the heart of this horror. It’s an incredible maneuver, instantly telling the audience that this is new Star Trek The series will not go where they expected.

Scenes on the ship Saratoga As she prepares to be one of the many doomed ships that assemble to stop the Borg, Wolf 359 holds up a magnificent mirror that reaches… a trip It was in this moment. Star Trek We are used to scenes of Starfleet officers thriving under pressure, in the face of impossible odds, but there is a stark reality to how this is achieved. DS9 Depicts the events of the battle TNG It never showed up. the Saratoga Standing no chance against Locutus, a calm and collected Starfleet was not given enough time to take control and confront the ship which was instantly helpless, slaughtering the bridge crew. This isn’t an attack where they roll around the bridge and get up; Most of them just died, as Sisko and the sole surviving Polian lieutenant realized the ship was lost.

The scenes outside the bridge are even worse: years and years after filming project As a ship with a thriving civilian crew, it is always protected when it flies into battle, corridors Saratoga– a Miranda-class ship, very small compared to the size of the Galaxy – class – full of injured and wailing civilians scrambling for life pods. It all comes to a head, of course, at the humiliating personal cost of Starfleet’s arrogance to Cisco when he returns to his private quarters to find his wife Jennifer dead in the wreckage, and his son Jake barely alive, being forcibly dragged away, wailing in grief. To the shuttle as well Saratoga It exploded, and the fireworks it destroyed were reflected in Cisco’s viewport In a vengeful way glow from. In just four and a half minutes, Star Trek Fans have just watched their new star face a tragedy unlike anything they’ve been able to see before, and more importantly, they’ve seen it through the eyes of a man who probably acted more like any of us would than to the ideals of someone like Kirk or Will Picard.

It’s this tragic, vulnerable humanity that informs the Sisko we meet throughout the rest of “Emissary” — forming a central character far removed from what we assume of him as a typical character. Star Trek protagonist. He’s petty, both in the way he deals with the people he works with when assigned to Deep Space Nine and with Starfleet itself when he finds himself face to face with Picard (now back to his heroic persona and not expecting to be challenged in any way). (Not to mention the way Sisko works). He’s still very clearly being shaped by Wolf 359’s trauma, and hasn’t fully processed or even compartmentalized it – and it almost takes a literal act of God for him to even begin to do so, when he encounters the wormhole entities that the Bajorans worship as their spiritual gods are almost entirely compromised by the fact that Sisko doesn’t He can move on after losing Jennifer.

It’s a clear view of Starfleet in the shadows of what had been, up to that point, one of its lowest points never been depicted on screen: Low point can only say what Deep Space Nine Itself will enter later in its run through Dominion War. And that candid look comes in the form of Cisco himself, a man who’s been allowed to be vulnerable and flawed in ways that defy what we’ve come to expect (and still, for the most part, expect — just look at the friction) even after all these years on how to do it. discovery Portrayed by Michael Burnham, who charges as one of Star Trek Ansar Most shaped by Sisko’s legacy since). It is the form that consists of the minute Deep Space Nine The show begins, which still defines the show after all these years.

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