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It's Hard to See In The Pale Moonlight [1]

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Date: 2023-04-26  

This month is the 25th anniversary of the Deep Space Nine episode In The Pale Moonlight. It is a critically acclaimed episode with excellent acting and direction. Avery Brooks did a marvelous job, as did all of the supporting actors. It has been called the best episode of the serious and praised for being a "smarter version" of Star Trek.

And I hate it.

Okay, hate is probably too strong a word, but I find the praise well over the top. Frankly, the episode, despite the excellent acting and direction, seemed less and adult and dark and more simplistic and morally lazy.

The premise of the episode, for those who have not seen it, is that the Captain of the space station Deep Space Nine, played by Brooks, feels that his side is losing a war with a semi-genocidal race of aliens called the Dominion (because we are all about subtlety in Star Trek) He and a friend, a former spy for his side's previous enemy, determine that they need a trick to get the remaining large player in the area to join the war on their side. They come up with the idea of the Zimmerman Telegraph in Spaaaaaaaace (we kid because we love) and set about forging one. Brook's character gives a deadly substance to a criminal in order to facilitate the forging. The plan doesn't work, leaving the Captain afraid that the other power will side with the Dominion. Fortunately, his friend blows up the ship of the other power's ambassador, making the forgery more believable. Brook's Captain is angry, but goes along with the decision in the end, saying he can live with it (in a line reading that has become well known among sci-fi TV watchers) and deleting the evidence. The framing device for the story is Brook's character retelling it to us in the form of a kind of diary and we see him getting drunker and more upset as the story goes along. At the end, we are meant to believe that Brook's Captain has paid a terrible price for betraying his principles, but that the cost was worth it as his side is now going to be saved.

It is a giant load of poppycock.

Brook's character took the easy way out. It is easy to give into violence as a first resort under duress. The Captain got away with everything he did and was rewarded with everything he wanted. The show very clearly wants us to believe that giving up his principles and murdering two people was the right choice because it saved his people. After all, the Captain, the audience surrogate and man we are meant to identify with, says at the end that he can live with the choice and does his best to ensure he will never face consequences for his actions. He gets to be the hero (at least to the audience), and the people he killed get to remain dead. Clearly, the show is saying, principles are nice, but real men abandon them when the going gets tough. And that is one of the easiest, most cliched, and morally wrong-headed tropes of all time.

Giving into our worst natures is easy. The point of having rules, of adhering to principles, is to keep us from taking the easy way out. To quote another famous science fiction franchise, "Good men don't need rules. You are about to find out why I have so many." And there are very few people who need no rules to do the right thing all the time. Principle keeps us honest, keeps us moral. Not listening to principle when it is hard to do so is easy. So, no points for taking the shortest path, dear Captain. Instead of the easy way, the how could have shown us the Captain struggle to save his people within the parameters of his principles. If he failed to live up to those principles, it could have shown hum being willing to take the full consequences for his actions. Either of those choices would have been infinitely more entertaining and infinitely more mature than the cheap, contrived, "wouldn't you kill a baby to stop a nuclear bomb going off in Atlanta? (No. Atlanta sucks. Kidding. Maybe.)" moral dilemma fit only for stoned college freshmen.

And what morality are we left with at the end? What are we meant to celebrate? The notion that people's lives don't matter, that they can be a playing piece on a gameboard and used as the player sees fit. It is the same notion, treating people as things, that is at the heart of communism as it has bene practiced, fascism, and neoliberalism (or bossism or late-stage capitalism or whatever label you want to put on this particularly messed up era we live in). None of those groups see people as people, intrinsically valuable in and of themselves. Communism, as it's been practiced, sees people as cogs in a historical machine. Fascism sees them as instruments of the glory of the state. Neoliberalism sees them as economic factors only, valuable only so far as their economic output indicates. No, I am not saying the three systems are morally equivalent. Differences of degree are still differences. But each of those systems does see people as things and not as people, making it easy to disregard their happiness, welfare, and even lives in the pursuit of some higher goal.

It is the morality of oppression. If people are tools, it is easy to use them for your own goals. And while it may start out with the best of intentions, history clearly demonstrates that such usage gets easier and more frequent with time. And no, this does not represent a case "the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few" to quote another Star Trek character. That line refers to a moment self-sacrifice, a conscious choice by the character in a desperate situation to sacrifice themselves for the betterment of their friends. Brook's Captain makes no sacrifice himself, he merely violates his principles and hides the evidence of his and his friend's wrong doing. That is not heroism. That is tyranny. As someone once said: if all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. Well, if you have the sacrifice of others as a tool, pretty soon you will find many problems that can be solved by other people's sacrifice. That is not morally complex -- it is just morally wrong.

No, then, I am not impressed by the episode. It takes the easy way out of the presented dilemma, for both the characters and the audience, and in doing so teaches a pernicious form of morality that inevitably leads to suffering and oppression. It's not mature, it's not complex, it's not morally grey. It's cheap, easy, and wrong.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/26/2165221/-It-s-Hard-to-See-In-The-Pale-Moonlight

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