I have parkinson's, I'm not a witch

Star Trek: The Next Generation dated pretty quickly, by which I mean that it dated before it even went off the air, filled as it was with "unique" characters meant to function as self-contained story engines somewhere down the line from the pilot.  It had the only android in Starfleet, the only kid genius, the only Klingon, the only half-human empath, the only Frenchman who had manners, and so on.  It was all very 1980s - which was unfortunate, as Star Trek: TNG continued well into the 1990s.
By contrast, Deep Space Nine had a rather regular bunch for its central cast if you looked past Odo, who the writers clearly struggled to do anything with once they'd got past the pilot and realised that those Terminator 2 SFX were kind of lame actually and so went for broke with his backstory in the show's third season.  DS9 had a mid-level bureaucrat as its main lead, abetted by a bitter but unremarkable ex-terrorist, a dull but inoffensive scientist type, the second-best doctor in his graduating class, a capitalist, and the space-age equivalent of an Irish sparky - though admittedly when ideas were being thrown at the wall later, some of these character types were given overhauls that were either genius or deeply unconvincing depending on your bullshit tolerance: for me, Bashir's turn as a secret super-genius was a low point, while Sisko's life being retroactively altered by trans-linear aliens just because he's incapable of having faith in others was a high point.  These are, for the most part, just run-of-the-mill types from the Star Trek universe, and as a result they've traveled well in the BUGGER ME SIDEWAYS 21 years since the show debuted, but Past Tense, a 2-part time-travel outing from the 3rd season, has not dated quite as badly as I'd hoped, and it makes me hope that no-one in the current government ever sits down to watch it in case it starts giving them any of the wrong kind of bright ideas.

Past Tense  tells the story of how, after a transporter accident deposits them in America's distant past (but the viewers' near future), Bashir and Sisko encounter police officers who take issue with the pair not having any ID, so they're taken to a holding area that is effectively a concentration camp for the poor and get caught in a riot when people try to make themselves heard and are killed by the hundreds in the violent government response.
Despite (or because of) the cops being fellas in overalls wandering around with shotguns effectively mugging any brown people they come across, it's a depressingly plausible scenario for many reasons beyond that it's happening to the only obviously non-white faces on the cast while their attractive Caucasian crewmate finds herself surrounded by affluent white people, so there's a wee bit of class commentary going on here even though it's essentially just setting up a major coincidence or two for later in the story.  It's interesting how the episode does these long panning shots of homeless people just laying around on any bit of the streets where they fall and it looks like a post-apocalyptic fantasy rather than an attempt at relevant social commentary, but the longer you watch, the more the huge logical cracks start filling in with depressing (though likely serendipitous) insights like the "sanctuary districts" being a PR exercise by the ruling classes to keep their cities attractive to investors by simply hiding the poor from view, which we know is already going on, even here in the UK, where the government regularly covers up sexual assaults by its private contractors by deporting witnesses to the assaults - yes, people seeking asylum, possibly from death squads - and all to save pennies and keep the illusion of a fair go being offered, so the elements of the story that have dated most are, shockingly, that it doesn't go far enough, instead assigning no blame to the cops who throw our heroes in Poor Prison, or even to cold-blooded murderers like hat-wearing jerk "BC" as there is no blame here because the fault lies not in conspiracy but in neglect of and apathy towards the vulnerable.
Predating the plot of First Contact, the characters also have to ensure history plays out as it's supposed to so that there's a Star Trek universe to go back to, and it's a nice touch that rather than something grand and epic like meeting aliens, the utopian ideal can only be achieved by humanity first taking care of the horde of people who make no mark at all upon history, and even if they'll be wiped out shortly in a nuclear holocaust (if you're watching the canon in any way), the episode is essentially saying that though not everyone is important to the larger narrative of history, caring for them is a lesson we have to learn if we're ever to move forward - that we have to become better beings before we can create a better world for ourselves, and unlike First Contact, Past Tense makes our improvement a thing we bring about simply by being better than we are now, rather than something given to us by an outside agency like time travelers or aliens.
At the end, Sisko is asked how America ever got into such a state, and the last shot of the episode is his troubled expression as he admits he doesn't have an answer, which is both hilarious and depressing at the same time, because the writers don't have an answer to why this could happen beyond that perhaps we just weren't good enough to each other.

So yeah, basically I watched an old episode of Star Trek today and that is what I'm blogging about now.