Trek-a-Week #31: Far Beyond the Stars

Ben:

By sheer coincidence we wound up hitting Far Beyond the Stars on our viewing list just a few days after Klansmen, Neo-Nazis, and white supremacists marched on Charlottesville, Virginia, resulting in mass violence and at least one death. As graphic videos of a black man being brutally beaten with flagpoles circulated on Twitter and the news cycle rightly remained abuzz about the president’s tacit(?) near-endorsement of these same white supremacists, we settled down on the couch to watch a Star Trek episode from 1998 that sadly seemed more on-the-nose today than it did two decades ago.

The last time I watched Far Beyond the Stars prior to this viewing wasn’t too long ago, but my reaction to it this time around has been quite different, viewed as it is through the lens of recent events. Case-in-point: some of the dissenting comments I stumbled upon that last time I watched this generally highly-regarded episode. A few examples:

“Other than racism is bad, I dont (sic) see a point to the episdoe (sic) at all.”

“RACISM IS BAD is something we already know and accept…”

“I don’t need over-acting Avery Brooks to tell me racism is bad…”

While I didn’t necessarily agree wholeheartedly with these assessments of the episode when I watched it previously, I at least understood the general underlying thinking: maybe this episode is too on-the-nose.

Here’s the truly tragic thing, though: Seeing Far Beyond the Stars in August of 2017, days after the president of The United States defended abject racists, claiming that there were some “very fine people” among them, yeah, I guess people really do need to be told: racism is bad, don’t be a racist.

Also in that pile of comments is some push-back on the two police officers in the show — specifically that they’re portrayed completely one-sidedly as cruel thugs. Again, this is a beef that’s unfortunately harder to argue for in 2017 than it was in 1998, given the police currently seem to be able to basically murder black men with impunity.

One character in Far Beyond the Stars who definitely isn’t portrayed in a one-dimensional manner, though, is Douglas Pabst, the magazine editor. On the one hand, he seems to bear Benny no particular ill will for his race (nor Kay Eaton, the only female writer on staff, for that matter, for her gender). And yet, Pabst refuses to actually do anything to advocate for them, falling back on a “that’s just the way it is, I can’t change the world” line. Is Pabst simply a pragmatist or is he the supposed “ally” who doesn’t actually do anything for the marginalized? I’m not sure, but I think it’s telling that it’s Pabst’s actions (or lack thereof) that eventually drive Benny to his final breakdown.

And speaking of that nervous breakdown… There are complaints as well that the breakdown as portrayed in the episode is unrealistic. If this is meant to refer to Avery Brooks’ acting, well, he’s got a distinctive delivery and you just kind of have to take it or leave it (see also: William Shatner). If, though, this is meant to suggest that a breakdown isn’t a realistic response to the repeated personal and institutional barriers that the character’s been banging his head against for a lifetime, well that’s another matter. As far as that goes, I’m reminded of a comment Spike Lee had about his film Do the Right Thing. Lee: “White people still ask me why Mookie threw the (trash)can through the window. Twenty years later, they’re still asking me that. No black person ever, in 20 years, no person of color has ever asked me why.” As Benny says in Far Beyond the Stars, “I’m tired of being calm. Calm never gotten me a damn thing.”

Look: It’s not as if outright racism, police brutality, etc. had been successfully banished in 1998 and then tragically and magically reappeared in 2017, but there’s a sense of hopelessness in seeing the same stuff that’s being addressed in Far Beyond the Stars still very much in the headlines today. In evaluating this episode, I keep thinking of Barack Obama’s post-2016 election quote, “progress doesn’t follow a straight line.” That’s true. It doesn’t. But when an episode of Star Trek that bordered on being too ham-handed in its addressing of social issues two decades ago seems like desperately-needed moral advocacy now, I wonder if that line isn’t hopelessly bowing backwards.

Extra thoughts:

• The framing story never really adds up, but who cares? I guess we just chalk it up to a “vision from the prophets.” It’s too bad because the occasional 12 Monkeys-style incursion of DS9 into the 50’s setting (“ Write those words, Brother Benny...”) and vice-versa is potentially pretty cool.
• I’m guessing the plot point with Benny being told to change the race of the astronaut character is a deliberate reference to the famous incident with the E.C. Comics story Judgement Day.
• I absolutely loved the rocket model from Tintin Exporers on the Moon (Which in another odd coincidence, I just finished rereading this week).
• Here’s yet another DS9 episode that’s all about the importance of writing and stories!
• I will for sure admit that the very ending speech is way, way too on-the-nose. “ But maybe, just maybe, Benny isn’t the dream, we are…” YEAH, WE GET IT.

Katherine:

Star Trek is not shy about addressing issues of inequality. But I would say Far Beyond the Stars does it more openly and aggressively than any episode I’ve seen. With the events of Charlottesville barely a week behind us, the sentiment of this story hits especially close to home.

We begin with Kira delivering news to Sisko that a ship has been lost, to Cardassian aggression, captained by a friend of Sisko’s. He takes it hard and we can tell that the stress of his job is getting to him. Sisko’s father Joseph is visiting from Earth and is supportive but we get the idea that Joseph believes that, while the journey is tough, Sisko needs to buck up and persevere.

In his tense state of mind, Sisko starts seeing things, people passing him on the station in 20th century Earth dress. He snaps and we see him on a busy city street in what looks like early fifties America. Sisko stops at a kiosk to buy a sci-fi magazine typical of the pulp era with stories set on alien planets. The vendor comments that he doesn’t like those kind of magazines because “it’s all make believe.”

O’Brien shows up and he and Sisko, now “Benny”, know each other and walk together to their office. The magazine headquarters is a spectacular scene where we get to see, along with Sisko and O’Brien, Odo, Kira, Bashir and Quark as humans in 1950s dress, barking fast, snide comments at each other around the room. Think J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man, “What, are ya lookin’ for a raise? Get out!” So much fun to see the characters out of alien costume and all in the same shot together.

The illustrator for the magazine sifts through images so that the writers can select them and create accompanying stories. The last one is of Deep Space Nine and Sisko/Benny takes it. On his way home to start writing, he passes a preacher, actually his dad but not recognized as such in this story line, sermonizing to passers-by. He and Sisko make eye contact and he urges him to “Write those words, Brother Benny. Let them see the glory of what lies ahead.”

And write he does, producing a story that is passed around the office the next morning and heralded as “a damn fine piece of writing.” The only problem is that he’s made the hero of his tale, the captain of the space station, be a black man. The editor argues that he can’t publish it saying simply that people won’t accept it.

Supporting scenes in Far Beyond the Stars include a café run by Sisko’s girlfriend who tries to convince him to give up writing and join her in buying the place, Worf, almost unrecognizable out of make-up, as a cocky baseball player, and Jake doing a terrific turn as a slick, petty thief who cackles at Benny’s story, “Colored people on the moon?!” We also see Benny harassed by police and slipping back and forth between this life and DS9.

Cutting between timelines as it was done in All Good Things… was a bit much for me, making a jump every few minutes, or seconds by the end, from one scenario to another. But I really like the way it is done in Far Beyond the Stars where only occasionally, and jarringly, does Sisko become Benny or vice versa as we feel him cracking under the weight of stress in both situations. Especially effective are the split-seconds when characters morph within the wrong time, like police beating him appearing momentarily as Cardassians, or the baseball player clapping a hand on his shoulder and appearing, only for an instant, as the Klingon Worf.

As the viewer might predict, the story of Benny in the 1950s does not end well. A fellow writer suggests that they could get his story published if he edits it so that the Negro captain of a space station is revealed to be a dream at the end. The editor submits this version but the magazine owner not only decides not to print it but to have Benny fired. He breaks down at this point, raving, having lost everything and is taken away in an ambulance. The only thing he can still claim are his ideas.

I am guessing this is one reason Ben selected this episode, because it elevates the notion of creating a character and a story to a power essential to human thought. Benny can lose his job, his security, his status. But he can still make and share stories so that they, in a sense, become reality.

We return to Sisko in sickbay on DS9, weak but recovering from having been out for only a few minutes. His father prepares to return to Earth and asks if Sisko will continue as commanding officer of the space station. He says he will stay and finish the job he started. Then Sisko contemplates that idea that instead of having dreamt of Benny, maybe Benny is real and is dreaming of him, as if a dream itself can bring something into being. Or, at least, that it’s hard to say how the experience we have of life can be proven to be more “real” than a dream.

This is a philosophical enough question to make for a good episode. But after watching Far Beyond the Stars I am more left with the sad impression that racial injustices keep happening no matter what progress we think we’ve made, that it must be human nature to blame another set of people for your troubles because that’s easier to accept than random bad luck or, worse, your own inadequacies, that if I think it’s okay to rest because African Americans hold a better position in society than they did sixty years ago, I need to remember that it is a constant battle to fight against hate and intolerance. The preacher in Benny’s world admonishes him when he prematurely celebrates his story’s publication, “this is only the beginning of your journey, not the ending.”

Ben reminded me that a wise person once said that progress isn’t always a straight line, that there will be setbacks along the way. Benny, like MLK, had a dream of what a brighter future could be. As Sisko knows, making dreams reality is hard work, and on most days you’ll want to throw in the towel. Star Trek took a stand against racism in the sixties and was still having to repeat that message in 1998. And apparently we need to keep repeating it today.

Next week: In the Pale Moonlight