Almost Every Star Trek: DS9 Episode in the early seasons is relevant today (Circle, Paradise, etc)

The Circle’s tag

The three part episodes, The Homecoming, The Circle, The Siege, are about an isolationist group called The Circle who would kick out all non-Bajorans (as MAGA would kick out recent immigrants), including their allies, the democratic Federation.

Rescuing the Legend Li Nalas still held prisoner by Cardassians

Of course the force which occupied them for 5 decades, the Cardassians would then swoop back in. The enemies in fact are (waiting, hidden) behind the plan, they are supplying weapons to The Circle. The Circle is unaware of this — but they should be smart enough to know that the Cardassians would take advantage of an isolated Bajor with no strong allies, whether or not the weapons are directly coming from Cardassia. Think about how this speaks to today: do we want to keep our democratic allies and keep enemies at bay? Or do we want to coddle the fascists and hope they won’t keep invadng democratic sovereign states?

A Cardassian soldier trying to stop the rescue

The episode Paradise — it may look like a hippie commune, but really we have an authoritarian in charge of keeping the community poor, without any modern technology, allowing people to die. At first it seems lovely — they have created a lovely community, given the fact that they crash landed and had no ability to use modern technology. They should be proud of how they have survived so well. But this rosy view does not last long.

It is a small community (like Florida or a town in Texas) — and the leader who brought them there has dragged them back hundreds of years, at least. We are shown some of the bad — lack of medical technology, primitive imprisonment that is like torture. And we learn that it was no accident after all that they ended up there.

We do not see what happens if a woman has an unwanted pregnancy or a complication, but we do know they all die of preventable diseases because the technology is kept from them.

Because it is such a small isolated community, the people have become close and want to keep their community — but they are shocked that they have been lied to, and will decide together whether they want to bring back that good modern technology that saves lives.

As with the leadership in Paradise, so in America: they have access to the technology and resources—and their family and friends are unlikely to die unnecessarily — in Florida and Texas, they could access technology if they want, they have the resources. Some may come to like a primitive life, but any who don’t are tortured — and many die unnecessarily. Project 2025 would bring these kinds of primitive backwards communities to every community, make much of it national.

I could go on. I have written about several other episodes before. It just amazes me how much of DS9 predicted what we face today. Predicted in the 1990s, happening in the 2020s.