How Would Iraq War Have Effected Star Trek?

[Dayton3]

Enterprise of course was on the air for the first couple of years of the Iraq War.

But I was thinking of the other series.

In particular, if DS9 had been produced while the Iraq War was ongoing how would it have effected that series since they had a war storyline?

For that matter, what about Voyager or ST:TNG?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Not sure it would have had too much impact, or that it would have been a good thing if it had. Plotlines that are tied too strongly to real-world events can come off very klunky, espeically if they don't manage to capture real-world subtleties and complexities - see BSG's Caprica arc for an example of that.

DS9 might have used Iraq as an inspiration for post-Dominion-War Cardassia, but of course the analogy wouldn't be direct since the situation was not tied to any particular real-world event. That's the way I like these sorts of analogies to be used, so that would be a good thing.

They could have introduced a sectarian war on Bajor, which would have made the Bajorans more interesting so I'm actually in favor of that. Or they could have made more than they did out of the notion that the Dominion is the "bad" face of religion and the Bajorans are the "good" face, and set them directly in conflict with each other - something I wanted to see, and was disappointed never happened.

If you want the Federation to be the Bush Administration, we could have the Feds making atrocious mistakes and having to clean them up. Ironically, this is what actually happened in DS9 - take a good, hard look at the plot arc, and you could make a good case for the Feds actually starting the war by ignoring the Dominion's territorial integrity and CLEAR warnings to stay out. The Feds act like they own the whole damn galaxy. No wonder they're always fighting their neighbors.

So maybe DS9 would have proceded as it did, but with more acknowledgement that the Feds contributed to the carnage, which is something we never got from DS9 except for a fig-leaf statement at the very end (the peace treaty ceremony).

To shoehorn the Iraq War into VOY's established planet-of-the-week format would have resulted in something gratingly simplistic - Janeway stumbles across a planet in the grip of sectarian war, etc, gives them a lecture and flies away. For this sort of horseshit to have some current events tie in would have been more maddening than usual.

 

[Dayton3]

I find the suggestion of Bajor devolving into sectarian strife to be interesting. Things similiar to that had been hinted at during the Cardassian occupation.

You could've had four sides battling each other.

Pro Federation
Pro Dominion
Pro Pah Wraiths
Pro Prophets

 

[Tralis]

Like our Vorta freind said anything on Voyager would have been a one-shot analogy that would have been simple and stupid.

DS9 would probably have dealt with it eventually after it wrapped up enough plot threads to start a new one. DS9 might have even just done a one-shot back to the Cardie occupation. However I think the writing would be subtly affected no matter what.

ENT did partially take place during the Iraq occupation. I think under Coto we would have seen references and hints, but his focus was primarily on ENT as a prequel.

 

[captcalhoun]

if DS9 had been running while the war was going on, the DW mighta ended 4 eps sooner and we'd've then seen Bashir or O'Brien serving on Cardassia during a messy occupation...

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

On DS9 the characters serving in the occupation would have spent most of their time playing in the Holosuites.

 

[Matt]

You know what would have been a great twist?

If when Archer and the NX-01 went into the Expanse, they found out there was NEVER a WMD nor did they have the capability to build one... He'd also find out that the Xindi had nothing to do with the attack whatsoever.

But in the end change his reasons to 'spreading freedom'

Which would lead to why Archer is never mentioned post Enterprise, because HE is the reason they make the Prime Directive.

 

[Sci]

For an example of how the Iraq War has influenced Star Trek -- albeit non-canonical Trek -- read A Time to Kill and A Time to Heal by David Mack.

 

[Kegek]

Well, the Iraq War did influence Enterprise - the Vulcan leader V'Las wanted to go to war with the Andorians based on faulty information about their posession of Xindi weaponry.

As for the other shows... I suspect DS9 would have broached the issue of torture more directly at some point. It alluded to the idea once or twice (Dukat saying in "The Maquis" that even these allegedly edgy Federation rebels are too squeaky clean with their high-minded anti-torture ethics to get the job done), but never really the focus of an episode. Of course, TNG did it as well as DS9 might ever have done in "The Chain of Command", so that's a moot point.

Most of the issues broadly concerning the Iraq War - faulty evidence for a war, terrorist and torture concerns, an ideological conflict, and so on - already existed and were relevant throught Star Trek's run, and one can find many appropriate allegories if searched for.

 

[AJBryant]

AFFECTED!! dammit, AFFECTED, not EFFECTED!

 

[Sisu]

AJBryant said:
AFFECTED!! dammit, AFFECTED, not EFFECTED!

Wow, Star Trek is affected? Those gays are everywhere...

 

[23skidoo]

Funnily enough the Dominion War arc probably could have run as-is as it touched on a number of topics that seem to be in vogue with Iraq war-related productions, ranging from the moral ambiguity of the conflict to the aftermath for injured soldiers to the guilt some face over their actions.

Has anyone noticed, though, that the Iraq war hasn't really generated the same level of pop culture awareness as Vietnam did or even the Gulf War? Maybe it's still too early. I'm not saying there isn't any, but it just doesn't seem to be as pervasive as it was with previous conflicts (well, the Gulf War of 1991 was too short to really generate this during the event itself). I was just mentioning to a friend that, unlike say during World War 2, you'd be hard pressed to tell there was a war on (2 actually, to include Afghanistan) based on our films and TV. The occasional movie aside, the nebulous War on Terror is getting a lot more play, maybe because it's our generation's equivalent of the Cold War, which of course was ubiquitous in pop culture, including Trek.

Cheers!

Alex

 

[Kegek]

23skidoo said:
Has anyone noticed, though, that the Iraq war hasn't really generated the same level of pop culture awareness as Vietnam did or even the Gulf War?

Maybe because it's not as violent. I remember recently -well, maybe a year ago - the death toll of American troops became equal with the bloodiest month in Vietnam. Yeah, around three years = one month. Also, no conscription. Conscription builds resistance over time to wars - there were riots in New York late into the American Civil War over exactly this issue.

 

[JD]

23skidoo said:
Funnily enough the Dominion War arc probably could have run as-is as it touched on a number of topics that seem to be in vogue with Iraq war-related productions, ranging from the moral ambiguity of the conflict to the aftermath for injured soldiers to the guilt some face over their actions.

Has anyone noticed, though, that the Iraq war hasn't really generated the same level of pop culture awareness as Vietnam did or even the Gulf War? Maybe it's still too early. I'm not saying there isn't any, but it just doesn't seem to be as pervasive as it was with previous conflicts (well, the Gulf War of 1991 was too short to really generate this during the event itself). I was just mentioning to a friend that, unlike say during World War 2, you'd be hard pressed to tell there was a war on (2 actually, to include Afghanistan) based on our films and TV. The occasional movie aside, the nebulous War on Terror is getting a lot more play, maybe because it's our generation's equivalent of the Cold War, which of course was ubiquitous in pop culture, including Trek.

Cheers!

Alex

It might be because somewere along the line someone decided that it was inapropriate to do stuff on TV that dealt with a current ongoing war. I don't know where that came from exactly, I just remember that it was big issue when Steven Bochco's show Over There started on FX.

 

[trevanian]

If DS9 had been on the air during this war, I think you'd've seen more tries to be relevant to the times.

From what I saw of little Enterprise, I think they tried to project a toughness/stoicism that was supposed to read as a genuflection toward patriotism, but I didn't see anything that was anywhere near as edgy as even the TOS PRIVATE LITTLE WAR's ambiguous and mildly haunting denoument.

EDIT ADDON: I was commenting today in another thread (about the enterprise incident) and it was in regard to the PUEBLO incident in real life in 68 that served as its (much-altered) basis. They weren't permitted to tell a story that was relevant and directly related to an ongoing incident at the time, so maybe you have to figure that the most controversial and/or timely political aspects are always going to be hands-off unless you're on pay cable (or you're on LAW&ORDER, where according to people who watch it, half the stories are ripped or ripped off from headlines.)

 

[WalkinMan]

I think DS9 was doing a WWII analogy with the Dominion War in some aspects. I think Trek is topical at times but it isn't necessarily 'ripped from the headlines' like some shows, and that wall of separation is a good thing. ENT tried the Xindi attack and 9/11, to middling success.

The Prime Directive was pretty clear on non-interference with the internal affairs of other planets/civilizations, and I think derived from the Vietnam War.

I doubt ever the Federation would endorse preemption as a matter of policy, and the Federation would likely be much more willing to impose sanctions, blockades, and enhanced development of defensive, less offensive, technologies. In some cases, the best defense is not an all-out offense, because it can embroil one in a quagmire. The Federation has wisely stayed disintangled from other planetary disputes...while some argue it may prolong the inevitable, it has also prevented needless wasted efforts, and allowed the Federation time to develop better technologies and defenses--if forced into battle, as a last resort, the Federation Starfleet has gotten better and better at responding effectively.

 

[Odon]

You'd have had a time-travel episode where the Borg steal all weapons of mass destruction in Iraq hours before the US invasion.

 

[Dayton3]

Odon said:
You'd have had a time-travel episode where the Borg steal all weapons of mass destruction in Iraq hours before the US invasion.

Sadly, that probably would've been better than most of the Borg episodes actually produced.