“Find something you love and do it the best you can. That’ll make the old man proud.” ~ Commander Benjamin Sisko to son Jake
A Niner Before Niners Were Cool
I was a Niner before the term “Niner” was even coined to describe a DS9 fan. DS9 was my Star Trek, growing up. Because our religious sect forbade television in the homes of its members, I had to get my Trek fix in brief glimpses at my Grandmother’s house.
But my Mom was a rebel Trekkie, and she found a way to include us kids in her fandom. She had a tiny television hidden away and late at night when DS9 came on, she recorded the episodes onto a Memorex cassette tape. The sound was scratchy, and we didn’t have visuals, but we listened to those recordings over and over, getting to know the characters through the voices and the stories.
Kyra Nerys: A Role Model for Young Women
We bought the Star Trek magazines when they came out, which provided us with the missing visuals. We each came to choose a favourite character to relate to. My favourite was, and still is today, is Kira Nerys.
A strong woman who had suffered tremendously and fought for her freedom, yet was a devoted friend, a good officer, and a woman capable of growing and changing. She was a deeply spiritual person who didn’t force her spiritual beliefs on anyone but sought to live them quietly. Nerys became a powerful role model for young me as I was growing up in a misogynistic religious sect in which women were second-class citizens and had no voice.
DS9: From Entertaining to Life-Changing
All this goes to show that DS9 was a delightful form of entertainment, and an anomaly in our sectarian religious culture that frowned upon “worldly” forms of entertainment. But as DS9 progressed as a show and as I grew from a child into a young girl, DS9 went from being entertaining to being formative. Perhaps the most formative of all the characters’ journeys was, at that time, young Jake Sisko’s.
His Dad, Benjamin, assumed for a long time that his son would follow him into Starfleet, just as my folks assumed that I would choose to settle down and make a life for myself within the sect. Like Starfleet, our religious sect was a lifestyle.
Like Jake, I was having second thoughts. I knew that if I remained in the sect, I would not be able to be the writer I dreamed of being. I would be restricted to writing the bland, pious, preachy, colourless morality plays that were the officially sanctioned reading material of the sect’s youth. Jake knew that he would not be able to become the writer he dreamed of being while he was struggling to learn Isolinear rods with Chief O’Brien.
Explorers
In Explorers, Sisko is mourning that his son is growing up too fast and growing away from him. Jake is struggling to find his own identity apart from his father. He finally realizes that what he needs is some father and son time, and his father’s solar sailboat provides the perfect private place for Jake to get his father alone, away from the crisis and demands and responsibilities of the station and confide in him his dearest dream: that of becoming a writer.
Jake does the bravest thing any writer can do he offers his work to someone whose opinion he trusts for feedback. And unlike many budding writers, he receives the perfect response: just the right amount of encouragement, constructive criticism, and assurance that his story shows a lot of promise. “Jake, I think you should keep writing,” Benjamin tells his son. I took those words to heart. Ben Sisko was saying those words to a twelve-year-old me.
The Visitor
In the episode “The Visitor,” Jake Sisko is an old man, a man who has written words that touch the hearts and inspire the imaginations of countless people, and yet he has stopped writing. But he gets to take the encouragement and inspiration he received from his father so many years ago and pass it on to a young woman who desperately needs it.
Many older and more experienced writers can be condescending and dismissive of young and aspiring writers; Jake Sisko invited her into his home, his life, and his heart. His words to Melanie became his words to me.
Far Beyond the Stars
“Explorers” and “The Visitor” aired when I was twelve; they inspired a young woman in less-than-ideal circumstances to write. But it was “Far Beyond the Stars” that encouraged me, a divorced single Mum long since departed from the oppressive religious sect I grew up in, to pursue my childhood dream of becoming a writer, a dream I had long since given up on.
The episode showed us that even as late in history as the 1960s, Black and Brown people, women, and minorities of all kinds were not encouraged by society to be writers, to contribute, to make their voices heard.
One of the greatest writers in Star Trek history, Dorothy Fontana, used her initials so that her colleagues would not know she was a woman. A certain aide to Gene Roddenberry, Richard Arnold, held the belief that “women cannot and should not write Star Trek.” Many gifted women writers have been proving him wrong ever since.
“Write the Words”
“Write the words, Brother Benny. Write the words,”
The Prophet masquerading as Benny’s father encouraged him, just as Benjamin Sisko encouraged his son so long ago. Those words speak to my heart on the days when I wonder why I ever decided to become a writer. Because the words of a writer can change the world.
