5x03 Ensign Ro

[7.7/10] One read on the blockbusters of the last twenty years is that most of them are relitigating 9/11 in some way, shape, or form. Scott Mendlson argued that part of the success of 2012’s The Avengers is that the “Battle of New York” reimagined a version of that fateful day where we were saved. Zack Snyder’s Batman v. Superman makes explicit visual parallels to the September 11th Attacks. Even J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness plays with similar ideas and images.

But one point made by another commentator is that most creators don’t really think the implications of these parallels through. They want to give their climaxes the flavor of these events, because it provokes a certain emotion in the audience or, more charitably, creates a sense of catharsis. Channeling real life creates an emotional shorthand for the viewer. But when you mix in triple-layer conspiracies and alien invasions and the other fantastical bric-a-brac general audiences demand, you can accidentally send a message that you don’t really intend. Making the story exciting or engrossing can have knock-on effects for your theme when you invoke the real world to get there.

That’s what I have to remind myself of when watching “Ensign Ro”, the debut of not only a new recurring character for The Next Generation, but of one of the most important species in all of Star Trek. The Bajorans would become a vital part of the franchise, and their conflict with the Cardassians, a group only introduced last season, would make up the foundation of Deep Space 9. That’s a lot of baggage to append to a single episode when revisiting a show like TNG that spurred its own sixteen-year cinematic universe.

But that is, to put it mildly, nothing compared to the baggage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict invoked by “Ensign Ro.” Make no mistake. Creatives behind the show like Executive Producer Rick Berman, head writer Michael Piller, and story editor Ronald D. Moore have all disclaimed that the Bajorans were meant to represent any single group. It’s true that you can map their struggles onto many different groups across history. But it’s plain, especially for 1991, that they are meant as a reflection of the Palestinians and, by extension, America’s approach to the Middle East.

That makes it uncomfortable when the episode reveals that a supposed Bajoran attack on a Federation colony was actually perpetrated by the Cardassians. It makes things feel squeamish when one mendacious admiral (aren’t they all?) conspires with the Cardassians to provide an excuse for Starfleet to intervene and flush out the Bajoran leader who’s been causing problems for them under false pretenses of trying to aid in the peace process. The episode flattens and dramatizes the conflicts it’s pulling from, and that’s before you get into allegations of torture and cultural exclusion and beyond.

But taken purely as a story -- with surprising final act twists and the usual unreliable representatives of Starfleet command and Captain Picard taking a moral stand against his own leaders -- the episode is great! Our heroes are forced to try to negotiate with a group of people who resent Starfleet both for its interference and non-interference. The course of finding a Bajoran leader who can answer for the attacks on the Federation colony and Cardassian civilian outposts requires navigating communities that have a very different perspective on Starfleet and using very different channels than we normally see vis-a-vis diplomacy on the Enterprise. One benefit from pulling from real life events is that it lends a distinctiveness and complexity to the international relations Picard and company have to deal with.

It also gives us the titular Ensign Ro. She is a Bajoran member of Starfleet, known for insubordination and who resents her assignment to the Enterprise at the evil admiral’s behest. In all candor, she tells Picard (and a very testy Riker) that she’s only there because it’s preferable to prison. But despite her orneriness, Ro is an asset to navigating the Bajoran conflict and community, with her willingness to call out Picard and company for their naivete.

In her initial appearance, Ro starts as an archetype I’ve grown very tired of -- the too-cool-for-school rebel who just doesn’t wanna be part of your system, man! She’s been to jail! She doesn’t follow orders! She marches to the beat of her own drum! She talks back to Picard! She doesn’t adhere to Starfleet niceties and no one’s real enough to get her! She’s got her own dry cool way of going through life, and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks about it! It’s become such a stock, flat cliché of a character type that I instantly roll my eyes at it these days.

But TNG does two things that quickly turned me around on her. For one, it has Guinan see through her posturing and get through to her. As I mentioned in “Redemption”, Guinan has a way of cutting through to the core of people and getting past their defenses. That makes her the perfect foil to Ro, someone who can call her out for claiming not to want company but sitting in a private place, and encouraging her to go to Picard and trust him with her issue rather than moping about it while confined to quarters. In short, Guinan sees through the act, and reveals the depths to Ro -- someone a little bit in pain, who feels like she doesn’t have a home, and who lashes out accordingly -- that reveal a richer character beneath the archetype.

They also tie her reactions and personal history to her complicated relationship with her people. Again, going back to “Redemption”, I’m a sucker for “child of two worlds” shtick. Ro Laren has internalized the oppression of her people. She opens up to Picard and tells him how she was ashamed of her heritage for a long time, after a tragedy and trauma with her father, and is only recently reasserting it and learning to accept it.

But to do so, she has to overcome the discrimination and ignorance that persists even in the Federation. A prickly Riker immediately demands she remove her Bajoran earring because it’s not part of the regulation uniform (something that plays as reflection of conflicts over religious dress in the U.S. military). Picard calls her “Ensign Laren” at first, not realizing that the family name comes first for Bajorans. She bristles at how the Federation breaks bread with a “respectable Bajoran” who gets invited to prestigious conferences but has little real influence over his people.

Respectability politics and the struggles of maintaining your cultural identity in a place that sees it as suspect or at least encourages you to hide it or assimilate are potent personal and political issues. They add dimensions to Ro, putting her at the intersection of multiple peoples and purposes, that make her a more compelling character.

A combination of Guinan’s encouragement and Picard’s trust sees her reveal the villainous admiral’s plan to Picard. What follows is a double-bluff, where Picard exposes the backroom dealing of his suspect commanding officer in a trap dreamed up by Ensign Ro. It makes for an exciting set piece and gives you that “Aha!” moment of craftiness for our heroes. They haven’t suddenly solved the conflict du jour or found a path toward peace, but they’ve thwarted the people who would manipulate the truth of the situation for their own ends.

That truth is a complicated one. Many of the Bajorans, including the militant leader, make no bones about a willingness to attack civilians if it makes people hear their pleas. The Cardassians are faking terror attacks to dupe Starfleet dopes into helping them do their dirty work. Rogue(?) admirals are lying to their subordinates about the peace process so as to make them pawns in a larger game. That all works as more cloak and dagger, proto-Game of Thrones-style political posturing with twists galore, but it feels more problematic as an artistic representation of real people, real conflicts, and real events.

I spoke in my review of “Darmok” of how Star Trek is something that brings people together. I still believe it. I believe in the ideas of universal brotherhood and understanding that the series evinces on a weekly basis. But what must it be like to watch this franchise as someone from Russia or China or another people analogized as some fantastical other? Sure, TNG and its predecessor would take time to humanize Romulans and Klingons and other foes, but they were made less recognizably human, more frequently villainous and untrustworthy. Even if you like the show, how must it feel to see a community you care about depicted that way?

I’m spoiled (or, more accurately, privileged) in that it’s almost never something I have to face in Star Trek. I’m a straight, cisgender, white male who lives in the United States of America. To quote Homer Simpson, “Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are.” I can indulge in the flattery of the Federation as a metaphor not just for human potential, but for America, as the flawed but noble protagonists of the future. It’s a splash of cold water, then, to see a community you care about, that you may even identify with to some extent, as the conniving villains of the hour.

It’s then that I force myself to remember that real life is a jumping off point for these sorts of stories. I doubt that if Berman or Piller or Moore were pressed, they would confess to believing in false flag terrorism or similar conspiracy plots in real life. I suspect they’d say that while they wanted to speak to current events, the way Star Trek ought to, ultimately they just wanted to tell a good story.

But part of what a good story is does is challenge your perceptions and perspective. Roger Ebert famously referred to movies as empathy machines, for the way they can put us in the shoes of anyone and make us understand their plight and their troubles. And yet, they also give us the chance to do the reverse -- to see what it feels like to be cast as the villain, to watch our own struggles and frustrations made into the motives of the adversary, into the thing that must be overcome.

On the one hand, it can help us to see more plainly the way our favorite shows and stories can flatten or oversimplify its antagonists, even and especially when they pull from real life events, in ways that are harder to detect when we’re able to identify with the good guys. And on the other, it can challenge our assumptions on that front, to consider whether we might be the bad guys, or at least something short of what we aspire to be, when viewed through someone else’s lens.