Movies - TV
How One Of Star Trek: DS9’s Most Controversial Episodes Twisted U.S. History
By DEVIN MEENAN
"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" was the first "Trek" series to break with the franchise's utopian vision; the greatest example is season 6, episode 19, "In The Pale Moonlight."
In the episode, it's the height of the Dominion War, and the Federation-Klingon Alliance is losing and needs help from the Romulans, who have thus far remained neutral.
A plan to lie that the Dominion will invade Romulus is manufactured, and events like a shuttle explosion and murder seal the fate of getting the Romulans to enter the war.
Episode writer Michael Taylor told the Hollywood Reporter that the espionage plot idea came from the Zimmermann telegram of World War I fame.
In January 1917, the German Foreign Office sent a message (the Zimmerman telegram) to Mexico proposing an alliance with the Allied Powers should the U.S. enter World War I.
The message was intercepted by British intelligence and made public. Ultimately, it accomplished the opposite of what Germany wanted: the U.S. joined the Allied Powers in April.
Taylor gave real history a sinister twist: "What if this message was faked to get us into the war? What if Sisko did something similar and was behind a concocted forgery?"
In this analogy, the Romulans would be the U.S. (the neutral sleeping giant), the Dominion would be Germany (the would-be conquerors), and the Federation would be the British.