Past Tense, Part II (S3E12)
Airdate: 9 January 1995
Written by: Ira Steven Behr & René Echevarria Directed by: Jonathan Frakes
Running Time: 46 minutes
Star Trek fans had long since grown accustomed to a particular pattern with two-part television episodes: the first instalment would open with considerable promise, establishing an intriguing premise and building toward a compelling cliffhanger, only for the second part to deliver an anti-climactic disappointment that failed to pay off the narrative debts accumulated by its predecessor. Past Tense represents a refreshing exception to this well-worn rule. The second part is not merely a competent continuation but genuinely looks better and feels slightly more imaginative than the first, resolving its narrative threads with a confidence that its setup only intermittently suggested. The episode was also notable for a more prosaic reason: it was the last Star Trek episode to air whilst Deep Space Nine represented the sole torchbearer of the franchise, before sharing the mantle with Star Trek: Voyager, which would soon premiere on the fledgling UPN network. The era of Star Trek syndication exclusivity was over, and Past Tense, Part II marked its quiet conclusion.
The plot resumes in San Francisco's Sanctuary District, where the protest has escalated into a full-scale occupation with police officers and district officials taken as hostages. Sisko, having assumed the identity of Gabriel Bell—the protest leader whose death in the original timeline proved catalytic—knows from the historical record that this siege ended in bloodshed. He endeavours, with characteristic determination, to ensure that the protesters' grievances are heard before the inevitable violent crackdown. This proves exceedingly difficult owing to the presence of B.C. (Frank Military), one of the riot's hotheaded and violent faction leaders, who seems determined to sabotage any prospect of a peaceful resolution. Sisko issues his demands to California Governor Chen, insisting that a television channel be permitted to broadcast the protesters' case and allow them to articulate their grievances publicly. His demands are clear and specific: the sanctuary districts must be closed, and their inhabitants allowed to seek honest employment and reintegrate into society.
Meanwhile, Dax, who has been monitoring news coverage from the office of Chris Brynner, the wealthy CEO whose patronage she secured in the first part, grows increasingly concerned for Sisko and Bashir's safety. She resolves to take action, using an underground sewer line to infiltrate the Sanctuary District. Her plan goes awry when she is apprehended by armed protesters and brought to the employment centre for interrogation. Characteristically resourceful, Dax turns this setback to her advantage, using the opportunity to confer with Sisko and Bashir about their next steps. She subsequently sneaks back out of the district and convinces Brynner to allow a communication terminal at the processing centre to be connected to the television broadcast. Through this act of technological subversion, the general public learns about the terrible conditions prevailing within the sanctuary districts, and public sympathy begins to shift towards the protesters' cause—a crucial step in the historical transformation that Sisko knows must occur.
Back on the Defiant, Kira and O'Brien have been working to pinpoint the exact moment in time to which Sisko, Bashir, and Dax were displaced. Their search requires them to visit candidate time periods personally, and they beam down to 1930, 1967, and finally 2048. The latter proves particularly disquieting, presenting an Earth that looks considerably worse than the history books of the 24th century would suggest. Recognising that the point of divergence must have occurred earlier, they correctly identify 2024 as the proper date, beam down, and establish contact with Dax, who hopes to reach Sisko and Bashir, still trapped within the District.
The siege, as the history books recorded, ends in violence. Governor Chen dispatches SWAT teams and the National Guard to restore order by force, and the ensuing bloodshed claims many lives. Sisko, however, manages to save the life of Vin (Dick Miller), the initially unsympathetic police officer played who had been taken hostage. In a gratifying act of reciprocity, Vin and his partner Bernardo Calvera (Al Rodrigo), help Sisko and Bashir escape by taking their identification cards and slipping them onto the bodies of dead rioters. The Starfleet officers are subsequently beamed back aboard the Defiant and returned to the 24th century. Sisko later discovers, however, that history has been subtly altered: the historical photographs showing Gabriel Bell, the alleged riot leader, now display Sisko's own face—a permanent, if minor, scar upon the timeline.
One of the principal reasons this episode surpasses its predecessor is the direction of Jonathan Frakes. By this point in his career, Frakes—an actor and The Next Generation veteran—had all but completed his transformation from performer to renowned director. His work on this episode, characterised by a surer command of pacing and visual storytelling than Reza Badiyi's competent but uninspired handling of the first part, would subsequently contribute to his landing the highly coveted directorial assignment on Star Trek: First Contact, arguably the finest Star Trek film of the TNG era. Frakes brings a kinetic energy to the proceedings that elevates the material beyond its occasionally didactic script.
The episode also works because Frakes keeps weaving subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—references to the past triumphs of Star Trek into the fabric of the narrative. Most notably, the episode echoes The City on the Edge of Forever, the celebrated TOS classic that remains the gold standard for Star Trek time-travel stories. Where that episode used temporal displacement to explore profound questions about love, sacrifice, and the greater good, Past Tense attempts a similar alchemy, albeit with more modest ambitions and less devastating emotional payoff. The structural parallels are evident: Starfleet officers stranded in Earth's past, forced to navigate unfamiliar social conditions whilst working to preserve a timeline they dare not alter. The debt is acknowledged rather than concealed, and Frakes seems to relish the opportunity to engage in cinematic conversation with Joseph Pevney's direction of the original.
There is also more humour on display here than in the first part, most notably in the character of Grady, a mentally ill resident of the Sanctuary District who steals Dax's combadge before being gently talked into returning it. The role was originally intended for Iggy Pop, whose punk credentials might have lent the character an intriguing edge, but owing to his unavailability, it was given to Clint Howard. Howard, an iconic character actor who had appeared as a child in the classic TOS episode The Corbomite Manoeuvre, brings a peculiar pathos to the role that suits the episode's tone rather better than Pop's presence might have done.
The character of B.C., however, remains the weakest element of the plot. Frank Military plays him as an angry young man, but the performance is unconvincing, oscillating between generic menace and unconvincing vulnerability. Much of the responsibility for this failure rests with Ira Steven Behr, who insisted that B.C., despite having been portrayed as a dangerous and violent man who murdered someone in cold blood in the previous episode, was not "a murderer." This curious insistence on semantic rehabilitation did the character no favours. The episode failed to evoke genuine sympathy or understanding for B.C., and instead all but confirmed all the worst stereotypes of Hollywood's limousine liberal approach to difficult social issues—well-intentioned but ultimately patronising, more interested in moral posturing than in honest engagement with the complexities of poverty, violence, and institutional failure.
Nevertheless, the episode generally works, providing a somewhat satisfying conclusion to what was, in its first act, a disappointing and heavy-handed piece of television. Taken as a whole, however, Past Tense remains very far not only from the high standards set by the best of Star Trek—standards epitomised by The City on the Edge of Forever—but also from the high standards that Deep Space Nine's third season was increasingly establishing. The two-parter's heart is in the right place, and its commentary on social inequality retains an uncomfortable relevance, but its execution too often falls short of its ambitions. Frakes's direction, the improved pacing, and the moments of genuine humour elevate the second part above the first, yet the overall narrative remains more lecture than drama, more sermon than story. It serves as a reminder that even Star Trek at its peak could stumble when attempting to balance entertainment with social commentary, and that the line between effective allegory and preachy melodrama remains perilously thin.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo Substack https://draxster.substack.com
LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e
BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9
