DS9: In the Pale Moonlight

"Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?"
-the Joker, Batman

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or the one."
-Spock, Star Trek II

So Deep Space Nine is probably the most controversial Star Trek show, at least among Trekkies, and "In the Pale Moonlight" is probably the most controversial Trek episode ever. Which is understandable, because it is so far away from Gene Rodenberry's utopian vision that it might as well have been an episode in a different show. To most people - we'll call them the traditional Trekkies - Star Trek is about idealism and principles. Deep Space Nine, on the other hand, shows the Federation on a war footing and tests many of those principles to the breaking point. "In the Pale Moonlight" is just the greatest example.

Setting: the Dominion War. The Dominion and the Cardassians are pouding the Klingons and the Federation, while the Romulans are sitting on the sidelines. Long story short, Sisko (DS9's commander and apparently the only guy involved in the war efforts who has brains, competence and initiative) decides that the only way they're going to win the war is by recruiting the Romulans. It doesn't take him long to realize that the Romulans won't commit to an alliance without definitive proof that the Dominion is plotting against them. So he asks the station's resident spy and magnificent bastard, Garak, to procure said proof. Garak eventually decides that such proof doesn't actually exist, but he's not the sort of person to let that stop him. This is the same guy who tortured Odo that one time, continued sputtering lies about his past even when the truth could have saved him considerable pain, and, if the spin-off book penned by his actor is to be believed, killed Gul Dukat's father. In other words, he's exactly the sort of person you should never in a million years let convince you to let him forge some evidence. Not because he won't be able to, you understand, but rather because he'll do it so creepily effectively.

And yet that's exactly what Sisko does, because the stakes are so damn high. In order to get the right type of recording unit, Sisko has to give an unknown contact enough magic goo ("biomemetic gel") to make a biological weapon. To get the right forger for the job, he first has to get said forger a pardon (as the forger is rotting in a Klingon prison, about to be executed), and later has to bribe Quark not to press charges after the forger attacks him. Quark is the station's resident capitalist pig, a greedy SOB who's only ever in it for himself, or so he'd like you to think. When Quark tells you that he's just proven that yes, you do have a price, you need to take a step back and re-examine what you're doing. But Sisko can't. Because the stakes are too high. If he can't bring the Romulans into the war, the Federation will be wiped out.

Eventually the recording is completed, and a Romulan senator arrives to review it. Unfortunately, he finds out that IT'S A FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE! However, it turns out that this was Garak's plan all along; Garak has planted a bomb in the senator's ship. The senator dies, but the recording is found in the wreckage. Garak assures Sisko that any signs of forgery will now appear to be imperfections caused by the explosion. "And with a dead senator in one hand and a seemingly genuine [recording] in the other, what conclusion would you draw?" The Romulans are drawn into the war, and all it costs is the life of a senator, the life of a forger (Sisko mentions his death, which presumably happened offscreen and was cut from the finished episode), and Sisko's principles.

It's easy to understand why some people don't like this episode, and indeed DS9 as a whole. A Starfleet officer abandoning his principles to drag other people into a war for the Federation's benefit is about as far away from peacefully seeking out new life and new civilizations as you can get. I think the following season's "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" (In Time of War, the Law Falls Silent) was written to address fan concerns; here, someone else goes no further, really, than Sisko went, but in that episode, all of our heroes are appalled. (The main protagonist of that episode is Dr. Bashir, who is the closest DS9 has to a bleeding-heart liberal. In contrast, Sisko has already shown that he easily loses his cool, and has on one notorious occasion basically gassed a planet to capture a criminal.)

Bear in mind that this episode aired in 1998. Then, nobody had ever heard of Guantanamo Bay. We weren't at war. There was no reason to think, so the traditional Trekkies claimed, that we'd have to resort to underhanded methods to win a war.

Well, that was then. In 1998, the concept of a full-scale war like that was an interesting thought experiment, to see if Roddenberry's utopian ideals could withstand such an extreme threat. The traditional Trekkies don't like the answer.

The episode is framed by Sisko narrating his personal log and trying to come to terms with what he's done. Perhaps the most damning thing is the fact that the episode ends with the realization that, even though with the benefit of hindsight, it's obvious even to him that he was treading down the road to hell, he can live with what he's done. He sacrificed his principles to save as many lives as he could. (Of course, he could have sacrificed even more principles and saved even more lives by arguing for a surrender, but nobody on either side of the debate seems to be too keen to point that out...)

It doesn't treat its subject matter lightly, and Avery Brooks' serious performance here helps tremendously. I'll call him out for overacting in various other reviews, but here I think he hits every note perfectly. The writing is perfect too. This episode forced Trekkies to confront serious wartime issues in a way that clearly made many of them uncomfortable.

At the beginning of the review I quoted two things that were not this episode. The first, from Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film, is the line that named this episode. Dancing with the devil is precisely what Sisko does here. The second, the famous line that foreshadows and explains Spock's self-sacrifice in Star Trek II, is really only a minor variation on the old Communist line: "From each according to ability, to each according to need." There's no denying that this is perfectly in line with Star Trek's generally leftist ideology. And yet, really, that is no different than what Sisko does here. The need is too great not to sacrifice his principles.

Frankly, until I saw Battlestar Galactica's "33," I thought this was the best dramatic plotline American science-fiction television had ever produced, and for exactly the same reason I love "33" so much. It doesn't shy away from the fact that in dire emergency, principles are the first thing to go. There is no such thing as a perfect solution. Star Trek generally likes to pretend that we're all going to be perfect in the future. The Deep Space Nine writers knew better, and they proved it here.

10 out of 10.


Saturday: Buffy: "Becoming"
Sunday: Doctor Who: "The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People"
Monday: BSG: "33"
Tuesday: Buffy: "Fool for Love"
Wednesday: Angel: "Darla"
Thursday: BSG: "Water"