It's hard to predict the far future, but in some ways it’s even harder to predict the near future. Your guesses at fashion are likely to be just off, and your guesses at technology either too advanced or not advanced enough. By the way, I hold Robert Zemeckis personally responsible for our lack of flying cars.
Those are superficial, though. The structure of society, that's deeper but also somewhat easier to predict, and Star Trek has some chillingly prescient visions of what our near future holds.
Last night Heroes & Icons TV (Channel 2-4 in Detroit) reran the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Past Tense," Part 1. This Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe story first aired on January 2, 1995.
In the year 2371, the USS Defiant goes to Earth so Commander Sisko (Avery Brooks) can brief the Starfleet admiralty on the situation in the Gamma Quadrant. But some mumbo-jumbo happens with a buildup of chroniton particles and Sisko, Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig) and Lt. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) beam down to San Francisco, but in the year 2024.
Sisko and Bashir are picked up by guards of Sanctuary District A. Since they have no identification and no money, the guards take them to the Sanctuary District, a walled-off slum where the jobless rot, out of sight and out of mind.
“They made some ugly mistakes, but they also paved the way for a lot of the things we now take for granted,” Sisko says. We sure have made some ugly mistakes, like electing president a traitor, con man and supposed billionaire.
By the early 2020s, there was a place like this in every major city in the United States. … People with criminal records weren't allowed in the Sanctuary Districts. … [They're] just people without jobs or places to live.
If Trump doesn't get the world destroyed in World War III, Sanctuary Districts could become a reality. It's not an original thought to have while watching Deep Space Nine these days. Check out the title of this excerpt from the episode that was posted to YouTube last year:
When Sisko sees a calendar with the date August 30, 2024, he realizes things are even worse: they're just two days away from the Bell Riots, in which an uprising in Sanctuary District A leads to hundreds of deaths, but also important social reforms.
The sanctuary residents, led by Kid Rock look-alike Biddle Coleridge (Frank Military), take the workers at the Sanctuary District Processing Center hostage, and it is up to Gabriel Bell (John Lendale Bennett), a resident with a bigger picture view of things than Coleridge, to make sure that the hostages are not harmed.
Unfortunately, despite Sisko’s efforts not to mess with the timeline, Bell is killed before he can fulfill his historical duty. Sisko decides to stand in for Bell so that history can get back on the right track.
To the crew of the Defiant in the year 2371, it doesn't look like Sisko succeeded. Changes in the timeline have propagated wiping out the United Federation of Planets.
Conveniently isolated in a “subspace bubble,” the Defiant is all that is left of the Federation and Starfleet. The Romulan Empire has gotten as close to Earth as Alpha Centauri, and presumably the Cardassians still hold on to Bajor.
Chief O’Brien (Colm Meaney) concocts a way to beam back in time to find Sisko, Bashir and Dax, but because the chronitons are dissipating (the writers raising the stakes), he only gets five guesses as to the time period.
Complicating the task is that Lt. Dax was separated from Sisko and Bashir. Fortunately for her, tech tycoon Chris Brynner (Jim Metzler) finds her before the Sanctuary District guards. Thus she gets to see a nicer side of the 21st Century.
Perhaps with Brynner's help, Dax can get Sisko and Bashir out of the Sanctuary District before they're killed in the riots. But she doesn't know that Bell is dead and Sisko is taking his place.
Part 2 airs tonight. It has some comic relief as Kira (Nana Visitor) and O’Brien beam down to a few different time periods before getting to 2024. It's not a spoiler to tell you that Sisko and company put history back on track and return to the 24th Century.
What I will be watching for is this: whether there is any responsibility assigned to the wealthy. Because when poor Americans suffer, it’s usually because of the pathological greed of the wealthy.