Hope is abundant in the Star Trek universe.
The show is of course at its core, a hopeful view of the future.
It has its fill of heartfelt, deeply moving moments that inspire the feeling that anything
is possible.
It is so earnestly optimistic.
There's a plethora of scenes I could list when it comes to hope and Trek (maybe one
day I’ll make a top ten list, who knows), but I couldn’t help but think of one in
particular: Deep Space Nine’s Take Me Out To The Holosuite.
This episode is in the last season, the home stretch of the war before things really ramp
up.
All the characters have experienced loss, fear, anger, and worst of all not knowing
who they are anymore.
Could they be the same people after all they had done?
What will the war bring?
The uncertainty of the future is something that’s weighing on them all.
A Starfleet ship, that also happens to be an all Vulcan crew, is docked at the station.
The captain is an old classmate of Sisko’s and he challenges Sisko and his crew to a
baseball game.
That’s it, that’s the plot of the episode.
You gotta love Star Trek sometimes.
The crew forms and practice starts, they're all dedicated to learning the game thoroughly
and eager to play, but Sisko is getting progressively more hard on them until he cracks and throws
Rom off the team.
Midway through, we learn why Sisko is being so competitive and obsessed with this, besides
loving baseball.
Captain Solok, in their Academy days, had beat him in a wrestling match that Sisko angrily
challenged and has not let the incident go since, using every chance he can to use the
example in papers to prove his point that Vulcans are superior to humans for their ability
to not experience emotions.
Frustrated and humiliated, Sisko is determined to set him straight on his own home turf.
And frustrated he should be.
Vulcans, though intensely trained on how to suppress and calm their emotions, to not make
decisions based on them, do in fact still feel emotions.
They are not void of them.
And Sisko knows that, hell lots of people do.
What Vulcans often lack is a deeper understanding of those emotions, due to simply suppressing
them rather than exploring them.
Later on in the episode we even see the crew jabbing at him, teasing him for the fact he
is feeling and displaying emotions whether he’s stoic or not, and it’s his actions
that prove his own point wrong.
And like Sisko explains, Solok is gloating, he’s using every opportunity to remind him
of his win, and wants to continue to humiliate him further.
Telling Kassidy this story in confidence, she obviously told the rest of the Niners
so they’d understand.
And understand they do, vowing to do their hardest to help prove Solok wrong and to stand
next to their captain doing it.
While putting in their absolute all, they quickly fall behind to the Vulcans.
They’re playing rough and the crew knows it, like Jake says “these guys are playing
to win, sporting doesn’t factor into it”.
But they’re nonetheless happy when they get the little wins, Rom clapping excitedly
for them too.
When Sisko gets thrown out for touching Umpire Odo, he has to leave to join Rom in the stands.
Sisko is able to have a different view of his surroundings.
His anger fizzles out until he just sees his friends having fun.
And with his new perspective he sees not a battle ground, but a playing field.
A place where he loves to be, raising Jake on baseball games and playing catch.
Where he’s laughed and cried and all in the company of his favourite game.
Sisko sees where he went wrong about this whole match, that while he wants to prove
Solok wrong, in trying to do so he was proving that his anger and emotions consume him to
make the wrong decisions, but instead taking a step back and reminding yourself why you’re
doing it to begin with.
It’s when he repeats his own words back to himself, from the pilot episode with
the Prophets, and he’s reminded not just why he loves life, but why he’s on the station
to begin with.
Love, the people around him, his family.
With them by his side, an old feud doesn’t matter anymore.
With them by his side, he can win.
Sisko sends Rom up to bat, because what’s a baseball game without everyone having fun?
Or even better, family playing baseball together.
And in all Rom’s efforts, it's in his accident that he bunts the ball.
Rom and Sisko have an interesting dynamic.
For one, Rom was barely a nobody when the series started, Quark’s brother and Nog’s
father.
Once he got more material, and his character fleshed out, he became fiercely independent,
clever, and incredibly supportive of Nog, his wife Leela, and his friends.
Even when he got kicked off the team, all he wanted was for everyone to have a good
time instead of quit with him, and was genuinely enjoying himself while he was watching the
match, cheering on those he loves.
I think it’s not a leap to say Rom admires and looks up to Sisko.
He is also a single father, captain of the station, and has a healthy relationship with
his son.
Rom wants to emulate that, not just for Nog but for himself.
He forms a union, demands better treatment, gets a better job in a field he loves and
is good at rather than one he feels forced into.
And he supports Nog, unapologetically defending his decision to join Starfleet and being a
proud father for it.
Sisko sees Rom in all of his unabashed enthusiasm for cheering on the match, no matter how they’re
losing or not, and he’s reminded of that earnest hope at the core of why he gets up
every day: For this, to be able to laugh with your friends and be at peace, no matter who
wins or loses.
This isn’t a story of overwhelming success, or an epic speech that inspires and speaks
to the greater good.
It’s not a grand encounter with another species that proves humanity is striving to
be better, and it’s not an action-packed and emotional face off with a villain that
changes the course of the story forever.
This is a story of family, and the love between them.
Rom bunts the ball, and they score.
Their only point of the game, but it doesn’t matter, because they did it together.
And those aforementioned moments give me hope too, a lot of it.
But this one is a moment of living, truly living, with the people closest to you.
Hope in the comfort that no matter what was, or will be, there will be people in your life
who love you, care about you, support you, and celebrate you.
Hope can be a lot of things,But sometimes the strongest place that you can draw hope
from is simply the comfort and joy of those around you.