#of science' to 'damn i have experienced a lot of wild shit. oh the space god who's obsessed with me is here

[croc-odette]

One of the first conversations Sisko has with the Prophets is about non-linear perception; why would anyone want to experience time in linear progression, ignorant of what happens next? Sisko explains the benefit of linear perception through a baseball game– the game is only enjoyable if one is constantly wondering what will happen next.

SISKO: With each new consequence, the game begins to take shape.

PROPHETS: And you have no idea what that shape is until it is completed.

SISKO: That’s right. In fact, the game wouldn’t be worth playing if we knew what was going to happen.

The Prophets are associated with religion, faith, and non-Federation culture; aspects of Star Trek that were either taboo in the writer’s room or in need of ‘correction’ from Starfleet and its futuristic scientists. The Prophets raise a question for the viewer; is non-linear thinking also in conflict with Star Trek’s usual commitment to science and rationality?

-

Star Trek as a whole is both linear and non-linear. In linear fashion, it is a show about the future where technology has advanced humanity to the point that we can explore space, create matter out of energy, teleport, and meet extra-terrestrials. In non-linear fashion, episode premises are often about how familiar problems such as prejudice, war, sickness, and violence reoccur in the future despite the progress of technology and social causes. The show was originally set in an idealistic 2260s, but written to look constantly behind its shoulder at the current problems of the 1960s in the United States. The original series’ politics could be radical at the time it aired; but in non-linear back-and-forth fashion, a show written in the 1960s, set in the 2260s, and still watched in the 2020s reveals outdated and blatantly offensive tropes. At the same time,  newer shows written in a post-War-on-Terror United States can feel more conservative than their predecessors. The quality or messaging of the franchise cannot be argued as a linear progression, but is itself a messy and changing reflection of the writers, the show’s subjective goals, and the political atmospheres it’s both created and viewed in. If the franchise (or the audience) was truly linear, then the older series (30-60 years old) would have no meaning or purpose to today’s viewers, and would have been discarded in favor of more recent series. Instead, new generations consistently still find relevance in older series.

-

Star Trek, especially TNG, tends to suggest advancement in technology as an obvious replacement for religion. The simplified linear idea is that a society begins with religion and ends at the ideal state of pure science. The Federation and Starfleet must be good, because they are our main characters, and therefore their exploration and desire to expand their purely scientific culture (linear) must be presented as a logical good.

DS9 challenges this concept not only by investing two of its main characters in Bajoran religion, but by overwhelmingly revealing the horror and tragedy still present in Federation societies with access to advanced technology. The Dominion War (much like the conflict with the Borg) kills tens of millions of people and seems hopeless. The scientifically advanced Federation still employs torture, assassination, forgery, and biological warfare in attempts to win it. Earth, a peaceful and insulated paradise, becomes wracked with paranoia when one Founder infiltrates. Bajor and the space station Deep Space Nine represent a gruesome history of colonization, occupation, and post-occupation, regardless of the occupying force’s technological capacity. The Federation, Bajor, and the Cardassian empire view each other in a barely held together truce with distrust, hatred, and disdain. Even when the Federation sends aid to Bajor, the limits of technology become more visible than they often are on Starfleet flagships. Machines for revitalizing polluted soil are fought over, and homes and land have to be obliterated for mining and energy. The space station itself was built by Bajoran slave labor and during the occupation was used as a dangerous ore processing facility. The toll of technological advancement becomes apparent in a way that Star Trek usually dodges; what does it take to build a space station? Who builds it, and under what conditions? Where does the material come from? Whose home is destroyed in order to get it? Who gets access to this technology? Who profits? If technology has to invent solutions to problems it created with past ‘solutions’ (see: the combustible engine leading to global warming), then has it created an objectively linear progression or a snake racing after its own tail? Is technology objectively advancing humanity if it still creates a massive imbalance of suffering and resource depletion where we choose not to see it?

The alternate simplified linear thinking is, well, okay then, religion is good and technology is bad. However, DS9 also critiques Bajoran religion rather than presenting it as an absolute good. Rather than bashing it for daring to exist at all, it pays attention to moments of corruption, fundamentalism, and power grabs. And technology in DS9, typically medicine, saves people and makes life in general easier. In an early episode called “Paradise,” Sisko and O’Brien crash on a planet where a previously stranded group of people have formed a cult without Starfleet technology. Later, it’s revealed that their leader had manipulated them into crashing, in order to forcibly deprive them of technology and shape them according to her own interest in ‘the ancient religions’; conveniently, she is at the top of their strict power structure. Rather than dismissing religion entirely, Sisko only coldly tells her “Perhaps one day you’ll even feel the hand of God on your shoulder.” The conflict is less about her shallow claims of technology versus religion, and more about her clear desire for punitive and total control over other people.

Both religion and technology are ancient aspects of human life, and cannot be simplified down to opposing or competing ends of a spectrum. Even for a non-religious society or individual, our interest in what’s mysterious or unfathomable about our world gives us humility, comfort, and curiosity; staring at stars or listening to music is not a ‘rational’ exercise that requires explanation in order to feel good. Modern humans evolved with a focused capacity on making and using tools, and the ability to teach and learn between generations, helping us survive and develop art and culture. Perceiving either our interest in the unknown or in science as the only ‘true’ way forward to a better life– however that may be defined– leaves little room for critique of either, and corrupt and exploitative power structures can grow without question. The idea that a single tool forward, a clear linear path, must be decided upon and committed to entirely– whether it’s to a futuristic utopia or existential salvation– tries to dodge the harder questions of personal choice, human behavior, and quests for control that often create the reoccuring problems in Star Trek no matter the time period.

-

Sisko understands non-linear perception of time more personally than other Star Trek characters we’ve seen. He’s studied history, specifically flashpoints of Earth. He’s deeply aware of the racism that would have prevented him from enjoying a 1960s Las Vegas casino. His grief over his wife’s death is what helps him understand the non-linear time of the Prophets, just as his love of baseball helps them understand linear time. He starts off doubtful and clinical towards the Bajoran religion and his posting near the planet, and by the end of the series is sincerely committed to Bajor.

In an episode that focuses on Sisko’s identity as an African American and a Bajoran religious figure, he experiences a past life as a scifi writer in the mid-20th century United States on Earth. The episode explicitly raises non-linear thinking through Sisko’s questioning of whether he imagines the writer or the writer imagines him, and we as the audience watch a man from the distant future see himself as a man from our recent past. Racism, rather than being masked through genre allegory as prejudice against aliens, elves, or mutants, is undisguised racism– the episode deliberately draws the parallel and then removes it again when Sisko imagines racist cops as Cardassians for several seconds. A non-linear problem in Star Trek is it originated as a show interested in civil rights and social progress, and over time became so bogged down in convention and metaphor that fans openly and unironically raged at the idea (both for DS9 and Discovery) of a Black captain and perceived ‘political correctness’. The episode points to the linear through-line of scifi, when Sisko’s past self asserts that even though his story about a Black astronaut will not be published, the fact the idea existed at all proves it could one day happen. The events that lead from Benny Russell’s story to Benjamin Sisko’s existence, however, are hardly a straight line. Sisko’s actor, Avery Brooks, experienced racism on the set of the show, both from showrunners and lot guards who racially profiled him when he would drive in to the parking lot. Even in Star Trek’s stated premise of a future where prejudice on Earth has disappeared, the franchise itself has been plagued with overt racism, sexism, and homophobia. Sisko’s character, despite existing in a show that is supposedly post-racism, shows the way progress does not move forward in a neat line, but often double-backs and pulls constantly from both the past experience and knowledge of the oppressed, and from the past prejudice and control of the oppressor.

-

In the episode “Explorers,” Sisko’s fascination with history, Bajor, engineering, and being Jake’s dad overlap. He researches and builds a traditional 16th century Bajoran spaceship that ‘sails’ on solar energy. If Sisko wanted to warp across the galaxy or replicate a model of the ship, he easily could. However, the ship for him serves as a pleasurable hobby, a way to bond with his son, and a deliberate retreading of the past and the experience of the people who lived it. The Cardassian empire (which often justifies its occupation of the Bajorans by claiming them to be technologically inferior, overly spiritual, militantly unambitious, and further behind in the Cardassian empire’s ‘linear’ understanding of a civilization’s progress and therefore right to exist) turn their nose up at the ship and its capabilities. By the end of the series, the Cardassian home planet’s reward for its commitment to technology, nationalism, and imperialism is revealed; even before the planet is brutalized by Dominion forces, it is a hollowed out, deeply polluted, and barely livable core of an empire starving for external resources to continue feeding its survival and ‘linear’ expansion. To the Cardassian empire, linear growth of capitalism, the military, and imperial reach was the perfect goal– it ends inevitably with mass casualties of its own population and major divisions. The survivors of the former empire, rather than start over and regrow into the same plant so it can hit the same brick wall, have to stop and simultaneously consider their propagandized history, devastated present, and uncertain future. The only way to actually progress and break the cycle is by questioning what their society considers progress to begin with; unstable imperial domination or sustainable peace?

-

A scientific example of forcing non-linear science in a linear box is evolution. Evolution is sometimes falsely believed to be a process which will result ultimately in a superior, perfectly adapted species; a belief that at its most harmless is used to stroke our own egos as ‘the apex predator’ and at worst used to justify eugenics. However, evolution is a non-conscious process that simply creates and recreates species that can fill whatever niches exist in the moment. A species perfectly adapted to flight in dense jungles will fail completely if placed at the bottom of the ocean. A species adapted to both will waste bodily form and function on trying to check every box, and likely be edged out by more specific competitors. There is no end goal, only a series of events happening constantly, shaping, and reshaping, sometimes retreading genetic history for a pair of legs or a life in the water again, sometimes building up to something that does well until it doesn’t, from the largest whales to the smallest bacteria.

A more poetic way to think about all of it is Ursula K. Leguin’s quote, from the relevantly titled sci-fi novel, The Lathe of Heaven; “Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new.”

Faith, technology, even the DNA of every species cannot be seen as arrows reaching a specific target, that once reached, will prevent all past problems forever onward. The argument is not that progress can never be meaningfully achieved, and neither is the argument that progress once reached will remain concrete and fixed. The argument is that any effort, making bread or a tv show or a better world, has to be constantly made, remade, pushed, held, and examined. When a modern problem arises in Star Trek, it is because the conscious effort necessary to solve that problem has grown stale or become forgotten. Characters solve their problems, with the help of technology, and in DS9 with the help of faith, but mostly with the will to confront the issue, to work collectively, to use intelligence and compassion, to bear what cannot be easily solved, and to understand the past’s continued relevance in the present and the future. Even as we perceive time in a linear fashion, and we hope to leave the world better than we found it in whatever way we can, we need non-linear understanding to consistently weave and mend our own places within history. In Star Trek, both Earth and the Cardassian Empire have similar technological advancements– but Earth only achieved warp-travel and replication technology after undergoing World War 3 and being forced to solve its social and ethical crises. Technological advancements in both societies veered into rapidly different results based on the differing cultures, and even then, future Earth risks settling into a fragile state of content ignorance rather than permanent utopia. DS9 implies that Earth’s progress depends on its capacity for maintained social self-awareness rather than technology. We need non-linear understanding to keep from kidding ourselves that we’ve permanently ‘solved’ some great problem of life, either through smaller phones or psuedo-spiritual epiphanies, and no longer need to worry about mistakes from the past. We need non-linear understanding to recognize when a step forward really has happened, and to make sure we remember that step has to “be remade all the time, made new.”

-

In the first episode, we watch Sisko calmly and rationally explain to the Prophets our reality; that we live from one moment to the next, and use our past experiences to inform our decisions in the present about our future. The Prophets start to understand, but they distrust linear life for what they perceive as aggression, adversarial behavior, and lack of responsibility. We watch a capable Starfleet officer and an intelligent human being explain the most intrinsic and inevitable part of our lives; that we can only move forward in linear time. 

However, it is only once Sisko breaks down after repeatedly bringing himself to the death of his wife Jennifer, that the Prophets tell Sisko he exists in that moment and trust him. Beings moving through linear time do not do so carelessly; Sisko begs that he does not want to be at the moment of Jennifer’s death, that he wants to leave it behind; but he can’t. The moment existed, and will always exist for him. Sisko, crying, admits that “it’s not linear.”