Racial Issues and Star Trek's Deep Space Nine

Abstract

HIGHLY OFFENSIVE FERENGI: RACIAL ISSUES AND STAR TREK'S MULTICULTURAL DEEP SPACE NINE STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE is the third official Star Trek series based on the ideas of the late Gene Roddenberry. The popularity of the Star Trek series has earned them an honoured place in America's popular culture.(1) Likewise, scholarly attention to Star Trek points to its importance to the study of media culture.(2) Star Trek, even before its broadcast of television's first interracial kiss, has always had two missions. The first, its entertainment mission as part of the television industry, is the well known: "Its five year mission is to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man [sic] has gone before."(3) Deep Space Nine's creators, Berman and Pillar, state the second is the less publicly articulated mission of addressing matters of socio-cultural...