Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — 3x11 — Past Tense, Part I

Aired 1995-01-02

SpaceOpera.com rating:7

Average reader rating:6.6

Synopsis

A transporter accident sends Sisko, Bashir and Dax three centuries back in time to a crucial point in Earth's history.

Filler rating: partial filler

There is a minor reference in a future episode (DS9: Little Green Men) that won't make sense unless you see this episode, but otherwise there's nothing essential here unless you're interested in some historical trivia about what the year 2024 was like in Star Trek's alternate history of Earth.

Remarkable scenes

Dax and Kira complaining about the water color on Earth.
Dax smoothly lying about who she is and easily fitting into the historical Earth.
Sisko realizing the importance of the current date.
Sisko assuming Gabriel Bell's identity.
Rules of Acquisition; 111: Treat people in your debt like family. Exploit them. 217: You can't free a fish from water.

Review

This is a very intriguing episode. The first point to discuss is the temporal repercussions. Star Trek has a long history of "predicting" events which do not come true, the first of which are the Eugenics wars of the 1990s. From the period of the eugenics wars on, we're supposed to assume that in the Star Trek universe, events are no longer parallel with real Earth history. My favorite detail is the mention of the US going through a rough economic period, which would seem to fit well with the supposed occurrence of the prior eugenics wars in the 1990s.

4 reader comments

Holy crap, they predicted the financial crisis! :D Let's hope this doesn't come true either. I don't particularly like the prospect of a 16 year long depression.
by Remco | 11/21/2008 at 4:03 pm

I was pleasantly suprised with the time travel in this episode - too often when sci-fi shows travel back in time, they end up in modern day Earth or some pivotal moment in Earth's past (TOS: The City on the Edge of Forever, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, VOY: Future's End, etc.) in an attempt to be trendy. Past Tense had a nice break on this cliche, by setting it in our not-too-distant future, yet still in DS9's past.
by Sean Freeburn | 07/15/2009 at 10:32 am

As a non-American Star Trek fan I have a serious problem with this episode a lot of the 'reforms' were already in existence in European countries at the end of the 21st Century. The throwaway line 'Europe is a mess' doesn't cut it.
by Phillip Watson | 08/06/2009 at 6:38 pm

One nitpick: both in this two-parter and in The Search, the entire senior staff leaves the station -- taking the Defiant with them. Who is back at DS9 keeping things together? Especially in this episode, given the Dominion threat, how can they justify leaving the station without any senior officers and without their greatest weapon?
Obviously they did it in order to get all the main characters (except Quark) onto the shows without adding a station-based B-plot. So I get it from a real world perspective. Just kind of ridiculous from the fictional world perspective.
by tigertooth | 10/02/2016 at 5:05 pm