A Geek History of Time - Episode 259 - Ben Sisko the Father with Kokayi Nosakhere Part II

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

See, people when they click on this, they'll see the title, so they'll be like, poor Ed. What does that even fucking mean? However, because it's England, that's largely ignored and unstudied. I really wished for the sake of my sense of moral righteousness that I could get away with saying no. He had a goddamn ancestral home and a noble title until Germany became a republic. You know, none of this highfalutin, you know, critical role stuff. So they chewed through my favorite shit.

No, I'm not helping them. I'm going to say that you're getting into another kind of, you know, Mediterranean, or psyche archetype kind of thing. Makes sense. Also trade winds are a thing. Ha-ha, just serious. Like, no, he really has a mad on him. Yeah, we'll go upon a tangent. As we keep doing.

Like, yeah, this is how we fill time. Yeah. I'm going to go to the bathroom. This is a Geek History of Time. Where we connect nursery to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a world history and English teacher here in Northern California. And in my history classes, I have been covering ancient Greece because it's sixth grade. And that's one of the units that we cover. And just like basically everybody else does in the state of California, the part of the focus is looking at Athens and Sparta on a spectrum with, you know, Athens at one end, Sparta at the other end. And unlike everybody else, this year I approached the material with the idea of I am going to roast both of these civilizations thoroughly.

Thoroughly neither one of them is going to come out of this looking like the good guy Because Athens like historically like everybody always winds up painting Athens is this you know great shining city on a hill literally And I decided no you know what there was enough fucked up about the Athenians that like I'm not doing that And that left me in the rather difficult position of having to explain what an Athenian symposium was without mentioning heterasty or the sexual assault of slave women, like overtly, like, cause they're sixth graders. Yeah. Cause they're sixth graders. Yeah. Cause they're sixth grade. Cause the, you know, the, the oldest among them are 12 and so, um, yeah,

I kind of painted myself into a little bit of a pedagogical corner there. Like, well crap, I can't really have this pay off like a hundred percent, but you know, um, so yeah, crap, I can't really have this pay off like 100%. But, you know, so yeah, what did wind up happening was I mentioned that later on over the course of a symposium, there would be entertainers who would come in and there'd be, you know, dancers and musicians and all this. And one of my students God bless that this kid Made the remark well. Yeah, like maybe they were strippers or something and another kid went. Oh my dude What do you get green school? You can't say that and that gave me the opportunity to look over and go well, okay

Look, I didn't say it I'm also not saying that's wrong. And then I moved on. You're wrong, but you're not incorrect. You're not. Yes. Yeah. And, um, so yeah, I, I, I felt, I felt like, like that was, that

was a victory that day that that was where that was where I could, I felt like that was a victory that day. That was where I could put up a W with that lesson. Because see, now you're going to be curious to go get the facts for yourself. And that's what I need. That's what I want to have happen. So there you go. So yeah, and the Athenians came out thoroughly roasted and the Spartans came out massacred,

literally, because Thermopylae. But yeah, so that's been the high point of my life recently professionally. How have you been? Oh, I've been good. My name's Damian Harmony. I am a US history teacher at the high school level up here in Northern California.

And I don't want to, no, actually, I don't want to tell that story because I didn't get my son's permission. So I'll tell you this one instead. There are a few recipes that my children's mother, my ex-wife, made that were phenomenal. Like, oh, my goodness.wife made that were phenomenal. Like, oh my goodness. There were many things that broke my heart

when the divorce happened. One of which being that I lost the recipe for enchiladas. And so the thing was, when she would make them, I would just be so gaga for them. I would literally, there would be days where all I would eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner were those goddamn denture lattes. They were fantastic.

That's holy cow. Oh yeah, yeah. And don't get me wrong, I wish I had up a day back then, but, so I don't know how or why it started happening, but when I would smell that she was making them, I'd go over and I'd put my hand on the wall and I'd rub the wall and I would just go, enchiladas.

I don't know why. And she thought it was hilarious because when you're married to a comedian, oh my God, you're so funny. And then it turns into everything's goddamn joke with you. Yeah. But I would just do that every time. So when the split happened,

I didn't have the recipe for a good long while, and then I finally found it, and I started making it. And I think it was either I found it or I just kind of recreated it enough in my mind and did it from memory. And so my daughter asked one day, what are you cooking? And I went over to the wall and started rubbing it. And went, Angelada.

And she was just like, what is wrong with you? So tonight. Who the fuck are you? So tonight I was cooking them and my son who is damn near my height comes over and my daughter starts rubbing the top of the counter and my son goes, Angela. It was,'s kiss. Just warms the cockles of your heart, doesn't it?

It really does. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's my stories and Chalada's. We have a guest again. I need that recipe by the way. Oh, you got it. We have a guest again.

Sir, please identify yourself. I am someone who is in the midst of great nerdom. That's what I is. After those two stories, I am in the midst of great nerdom. I am honored. My name is Kokai Nosikere. I am a community organizer. I'm currently in UG, Oregon.

I'm visiting here in the coast. And when I'm not managing my boot chits over pro wrestling, I am on social media. You can find me on TikTok. I am on my 16th account because I am mass reported. I get a lot of community guidelines violations. So you want to get in contact with me via email my email is royal star 907 and I am here for the illustrious experience of walking the yellow brick road of history with the two of you. Thank you. I would point out that somewhere between Athens and Sparta being roasted and enchiladas lies the truth with

Koukai. We shall see. Yeah. We shall see. All right. So last time we did a whole bunch of looking at certain studies and critiquing how they were done, not even like getting into like the sociology nitty gritty of like, is this a valid study or not? But just looking at it with our layman eyes, our historian eyes, our community organizer eyes, our author

eyes, I think, and looking at it and going, their frame was really off. And the thing is, while the frame was really off, and by the way, if this is the first episode that you're listening to about, I should probably reset the title of the, about Commander and then Captain Benjamin Sisko was a positive single black father figure on TV that had to be snuck in on a science fiction show because mainstream America wasn't willing to see it otherwise. If this is the first episode you're listening to,

you need to go back and listen to the other one because there's a social contract you need to maintain. But the framing of that study, of the many studies that I actually discussed, absolutely fed into the zeitgeist that made television and who controls the stories, controls the culture, and television became the hearth around which suburban families and urban families, quite honestly, because in the G.I. Joe episode I gave you the figures of how many families had televisions, and I've forgotten them. But the hearth around which families experienced each other and the world was television by

the 1960s. And at the time, the top 30 TV shows on television networks by 1965 had zero black fathers on screen as main characters. Zero. Now, it did have at least three family shows with a dead parent. So apparently that was the thing, which makes sense in 1965. This is right after the Korean War. This is a generation removed from the end of World War II. Dead parents are kind of a thing.

But interestingly, they were all dead moms. Lassie's owner, well, oh no no, Lassie had a dead dad. Yeah. Lassie's owners were the family of a grandfather, his daughter, and her son. My Three Sons was about a widower. Andy Griffith was a widower. In fact, it takes until 1968 until we have a main black character, and that's the TV show Julia with Diane Carroll as the titular character. And it had an 80 episode run, a little more than 80 episodes, like 87 I want to say.

And Diane Carroll played a nurse who worked for an aerospace company, which I don't quite understand, but I think I, maybe you have an in-house doctor at an aerospace company. And her husband had been a pilot and he had been shot down and killed in Vietnam. And she was a new widow raising their young son Cory, who had barely known his dad. So that is pretty heavy. It is. And that's the first time you have a black character as a main character and notice who is missing already Now at the same time it's also referencing Vietnam, which is Exactly what peanuts did why by introducing Franklin by the way his dad when he first meets Linus He speaks about his dad who is over in Vietnam somewhere, or this place called Vietnam.

That's Franklin's dad. Just kind of interesting. By the way, there was a lot of pressure by Southern newspapers to try to get Charles Schultz to agree to never do a scene in a school where Franklin was there with Charlie Brown and everyone else. And Charles Schultz basically said, go get bent. It's my goddamn comic, everybody loves it, fuck off. Yeah.

And so they had to accept that or they would just not run it, you know, those days. When he made the TV specials, he had less creative control and that's why the Thanksgiving one made the TV specials, he had less creative control. And that's why the Thanksgiving one has Franklin sitting on one side of the table and everyone else on the other. What the audience can absorb. That's what the audience can absorb. And Norman Rockwell had the same issue, right?

He could, which is wild, because you look at the shit that he wanted to draw and the stuff that he really did like, And Norman Rockwell had the same issue, right? Which is wild, because you look at the shit that he wanted to draw and the stuff that he really did like, and it was very multiracial, it was very much very inclusive, and the things that were allowed in the Saturday Evening Post were not. They were very whitewashed. Interestingly also in the Thanksgiving one, Snoopy does the soul brother handshake to the point where it becomes parody Again Schultz didn't have full creative control if he had it would have been a different story. Yeah, so but Interesting. Yeah, I just I just want to jump on one detail there sure in

What was the title of Diane Carroll TV show Julia Julia? so her her Husband her late husband had been a pilot yes Who was shot down? There is something very interesting to me in that because Being a pilot within especially a combat pilot within the US military has historically been a position of prestige. That is, that is a, you have to have a college

degree. You are a commissioned officer And You know there there is they they view themselves and they are viewed as an elite Mm-hmm, and I find it interesting that that would be The set of circumstances that would be written for that for that background Based on this the the sort of the the society in which That was that was being produced Like there's there's a conscious set of decisions being made there That that choosing that context is is interesting to me on the part of the writers

Context is is interesting to me on the part of the writers Absolutely, because that because that elevates that elevates the social status of the whole family in In meaningful ways as a In a world-building way Just just by just by creating that set of details in the background And can you can you dig into it a little bit more? Just make it a little bit more explicit what you're saying there well, they're there they're the the writers of of the show have made the decision that okay, well, she's a she's a

Resumably relatively young widow With a with a young son. And she's in a highly trained professional job. She's a nurse. Right. In the 1960s aerospace, the aerospace industry was kind of the 1960s version of the tech industry today. It was, you know, all those guys were on the cutting edge of the space race that you know

Jet aircraft were still very new and still had you know Cachet and glamour You know and kind of sex appeal in a weird way kind of kind of associated with them You know this is this is the leading edge of technology and her husband had to have had to have had a college degree was a commissioned officer, which for anybody who hasn't listened to enough episodes where I talk about, you know, my, my own background, my father, that is in the U S military, there are warrant officers and there are non commissioned officers. anybody, you know, any brand of Sergeant is a non commissioned officer. And then a commissioned officer receives a commission from Congress to serve as

a Lieutenant some higher or higher. Right. And so there is a last distinction that is enforced by regulations in the US military between commissioned officers and ordinary soldiers and CEOs and enlisted people. Right. And he was a captain, by the way. Okay. Well, so, yeah. Do you remember whether it was Air Force or? It was Army and he flew an artillery spotter plane. So essentially a Cessna. Okay. An Army Cessna. Okay.

An army Cessna. It'll be spotter plane. So a recon plane. Yeah, essentially. It's a roll. Say it again. A bird dog. Yeah, they were referred to as bird dogs, which by the way, required balls of titanium. Yes. Because you're flying. It wasn't even a Cessna. I'm going to I'm going to go into that. I'm going to get pointy headed about this,

because like airplanes is a thing. It was a Piper Cub, which is a very lightweight, very low powered aircraft with a fuselage, with a mostly open, empty fuselage. Like the top speed around you. And yeah yeah almost it's like me and a Prius yeah like me and a Prius yeah it's a high wing monoplane yeah it's a it's a high wing monoplane mm-hmm and

It has a top speed Absolute like throttle all the way to the firewall like as fast as you can go. It's only gonna go 60 miles an hour So and the altitude and the altitude that you're flying at in one of those spotter planes is In in combat conditions, I don't think they got above 1500 feet You got to see what you're doing which means He the the bad guys from your point of view on the ground with with handguns are in a position to take you out and and so that

is a position that requires incredible intestinal fortitude and nerves of steel okay so that's written in to a character that we never see on on screen Yeah, yeah, and and so Anybody who who knew anything like any of the any of the guys who had been on the ground in Vietnam Coming back who are watching this show? Are gonna know? Okay, her her late husband is is a goddamn hero know okay her late husband is a goddamn hero you know because you know the job that he did for the men on the ground was vital and doing it put him in major harm's way. Okay, and this is 1968, and so, I mean, at no point did you have more than 50% of the

country against the war, by the way. Like despite the fact that we all know how terrible it was and what a bad idea it was, and we all acknowledge it, at no point did you have more than half the country against that particular war. So it would have been playing to a popular audience? Yes Yeah, please say Julia went on for 80 episodes, right? Yeah, like 87 years It was from 68 to 71 Yeah, I was gonna say about I remember the movie Claudine with Diane Carr.

You got James Earl Jones and it's the premise is a total opposite. They're poor. They're in the hood, but it's single family could. Right. She's on assistance. No different than what you were just saying in the first episode. And six kids. Yes. And James Earl Jones is a garbage collector. So you have the total opposite as far as

where instead of being the elite, able to achieve within a segregated society, here you have the average Joe, who's stepping in to become the father figure and fight, they fight the bureaucracy together. Who's coming into the house in order to do the bean counting and measurements, you know. That's really interesting that Diane Carroll's career

was being framed in that manner as far as what the public could absorb of her. Especially like a movie you can opt in and out of, a TV show is, you know, opt in and out of a TV show is, you know, you got TV guide talking about every week. And like you said, you had the average Joe, whereas she is in service to the bureaucracy in this series. Right. She's in, I mean, and honestly, she's in service to the industry that ended her husband's life on some levels.

service to the industry that ended her husband's life on some levels. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it occurs to me that everything I just said might have been a way for the writers to try to make the character for lack of a better way. I can't think of a better way of saying it, but palatable to a certain part of their audience. I was going to say acceptable to a white audience. Yeah. By elevating their position and their social prestige.

Sure. Whereas the movie was appealing to the masses in order to get tickets in a totally different audience. You could say it's, I mean, it's, how to put, it's not a black exploitation film by any stretch. Um, because it's a serious draw. She wants to watch for right. Yeah. She wants, she wants awards for this too. She makes sense. That's what I'm saying. The contrast of how she's presented. Yeah. And who they're presenting her in front of is

interesting. Yeah, because she's coming. And the other thing, the thing about movies is you go out to them. You inhabit those spaces. And so certain theaters would or would not run movies too. Whereas TV, you are bringing this family into your house on some level, right? And that's a very different dynamic. to your house on some level, right? And that's a very different dynamic. Now, in the series, she dates two men, seriously.

So you've got a woman who is moving on with her life, having a romance on some level. The inference is at least that she is owning her own sexuality. The first man is Paul Winfield. Wow. Yeah. When I read that, I was like, wait,

am I mixing up names here again? Cause I've done that. I have mixed up Dick Cavett and Dick Gregory, which if you look up Dick Cavett, there's no reason he should be mixed up with Dick Gregory. Yeah. And I was always stunned that Dick Cavett, like, because I thought he was Dick Gregory, I was always stunned that this milk toast, very bland white guy who was in Beetlejuice

is saying all these really revolutionary things. Turns out I... It's a whole different personality. Yeah. Yeah. Totally like the dumbest version of whitewashing that a person could do and I did it. So like just so dumb. But yeah, so Paul Winfield was her first love interest in it. And then Fred Williamson.

Stop the presses, man. Really? Yeah. That's before black exploitation. That's Fred Williamson. Yes So Ed you might remember Paul Winfield as Well, let's go Terminator. He is the black cop who gets shot up in term. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah And I was I was looking at like wait a minute. Okay, you know that guy. Yeah that name

I know that name Fred Williamson is the guy Again, he's also black the guy in dusk till dawn Who talks about how he stabbed everybody one night? As the guy realizes he's been bit and he's trying to hide it Yes, so those are just like the most iconic in our lifetime kind of roles that these guys had for action movies They did tons of other stuff like Their their CV is just really Williamson was an NFL player. Yeah, right. So super tough

um Ebony magazine actually critiqued Julia as quote a slice of black America actually critiqued Julia as quote, a slice of black America, Julia does not explode on the TV screen with the impact of a ghetto riot. It is not that kind of show. Since the networks have had a rush, a rash of shows dealing with the nation's racial problems, the lighthearted Julia what provides welcome relief, if indeed relief is even acceptable in these troubled times. So that's what Ebony was saying at the time. Yes, back to the idea of what are they trying to escape from. Right. And also, the Black experience is not a monolith.

True. Yeah. It's not just the footage that Star Trek used to show, you know, devastation of a city. It was the first American TV series that featured a black female lead in a non-stereotypical role of some sort of maid or service industry. That said, it is a nurse. It's a woman in a nurse's job. She's not a doctor. I think that that's still a very gendered stereotype at that time,

especially considering she's wearing the weird little hat and the cloak and things like that. This does not mean that it was accepted in whole by black Americans at the time, many of whom called out the idea that the show's removal of a black father enabled it to be safer and thus quote less likely to grapple with issues that might upset white viewers. So you do have the absent father trope for a black family here. Diane Carroll was the first black woman to get an Emmy nomination for a lead role and then she actually won a Golden Globe for this too. She did

not get the Emmy award. She did get the nomination I think two years in a row though. In 1969 the Bill Cosby show aired but this is Bill Cosby as a bachelor and he's a PE teacher at a high school and so there's some aspects of being a father figure that are in there because he's a PE teacher at a high school. And so there's some aspects of being a father figure that are in there because he's a PE teacher at a high school. But I'm gonna say that this doesn't quite count because it's mostly just in that context that we see him doing that.

And being a mentor and an advisor is not the same as being a father. You are always walking away from the job by the end of the day, and it's accepted that that's just a slice of your life. In 1971, and I was just looking at the top 30 of every year. In 1971, Sanford and Son debuted in 1971. I don't think we can count this one either because Lamont was the adult son mm-hmm so we do we don't we can't count it as a single black father TV

show that's what I mean that's what I'm looking for single black fathers here you do have the fact that Fred is a widower as Elizabeth had died when Lamont was a child. And he's always referencing her, right? Elizabeth, I'm coming. But that's just backstory. It's not really the betrayal. In many ways, Lamont is the father figure to his dad. You've got an inversion there and his dad is an aging hustler of some sort. Room 222 also debuted in 1971 and it starred Lloyd Haynes who played a US history teacher at Walt Whitman High School. Fake high school didn't exist. He's dating the guidance counselor who is a very light-skinned woman

and to the point where I had to do some digging on her. I was like, is this the first interracial relationship on TV? And no, she was acceptably black enough for white America to be okay with him dating her. But she is very light-skinned. And she's childless and a guidance counselor, and he's childless. So same dynamic of being a mentor. I'm not

going to say that this is Black fatherhood either. It's not single Black fatherhood. Then we get to 1975, the Jeffersons. And Lionel is George's son. Lionel's already an adult. And George is still married to Lionel's mom, so you don't have single black fatherhood here. There was a father in What's Happening, which started in 1976, the year that Ed was born. But, oh, you were born in 75.

Okay, so yeah, this is is you've never lived in a world the world has never known a time where you didn't exist but there's been times where what's happening didn't exist. Yeah. Yeah. So but what's happening I grew up watching what's happening it was on the reruns for me. So there was a father and what's happening. Raj had a dad. Raj and Dee had a dad, but he wasn't around much and he absolutely played into the stereotypical uninvolved father who only returns after a long absence with a scheme or he returns to

ruin their mom's Christmas. And he doesn't even do it on purpose. It's kind of he shows up. If I recall correctly, he had a windfall of cash and he took the kids and spoiled them for Christmas and their mom had Christmas alone as a result. So it was like she was collateral damage to the dad's on Unconcerned what's the word? I'm looking on a non compassionate approach to fatherhood Yeah, there you go indifference and It's not what I call a positive fatherly figure here at all

Although I will point out that in other later episode he is cast in a more sympathetic light at one point Times are tough money is tough. It is the late 1970s and they need to take in a border To help you know make the make the payments and he actually Moves in as the border So that he can give mom money without her objecting to it. Wow. Yeah, which I go right back to that study of you have a family unit where the dad is, in this instance, in that season, he was being a very supportive dad and a very present dad, in that season, he was being a very supportive dad and a very present dad, literally present, and he's contributing to the family, but it is a non-traditional, according to the study, relationship.

That is manufactured. Yes. That is manufactured by public policy to be that way for them, because again, it goes back to, this is the strategy, the coping strategy in order to get around public policy so we can still be a family. Right. And it meet the measurements of we're broken. Right. And I would also point out that it's a platonic relationship

at this point. It is a partnership in which he is contributing to the family. Oh my. Yes. And so in many of these judgments that we saw in that previous study that are implied or explicit,

being an involved father means propriety over mom's body. Because if he's living in a room that he's renting from his ex-wife and they're living platonically there is no sex between them, it doesn't count as a family. Not in the traditional manner. You're correct. Not the way that the more and more is counting and measuring. Exactly. So I just broke Ed's brain there.

I could tell by the whites of his eyes. Yeah. I'm really glad I thought to bring a beer in here for this episode because I needed one of the end of the last one. And I might need to take a break to go to another one in the middle. This one, because that's fucked up. Right. The, the level of un-interrogated bias and, and, and yeah, wow.

And, and just, again, if you call it a moral failing that this has happened because of this manufacturer's standard that you've created, on some level, you are judging a woman's sexual self ownership as being a detriment to a family. Yeah. Her independence is a detriment to the family. Yes. You know, a detriment to the family. Yes. You know, it's like, wow.

Now later in another episode, I think I want to say in like the fourth season or so, he gets remarried. And Dee has a huge problem with this, actually. And you can kind of get into that. And again, we talked about that in the study, where you do see, in the 98 and the 2000 longevity studies, you do see a decrease in parental involvement, in the other parent's involvement, if one of the parents gets a new romantic partner.

And that happens. I remember in what's happening, and I didn't chase this down enough because I wasn't really, it's not an episode about single mothers sexual activities. I remember that their mom, whose name I don't remember right now in what's happening, because I just remember Dee always saying mama.

But I remember her having a date or two, but it never really goes anywhere. And in later seasons, she's not even, I think, I don't think she's even in the cast, I think, by the end, because they just mention her in passing. Oh, she's at work, or oh, she just headed out, you know, and that kind of thing um which happens uh also this this series there was an episode where uh and i'm not even going to mention the dubie brothers um but

there's an episode where roger and rerun uh started a renter's strike which is wild because that episode came after Rerun and Wayne, the actors who played them, actually refused to come to work until they were paid a more equitable wage. And their absences were allowed. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, exactly. So that's that gets us that 76 to I think 79 or 80. Then we get to 1985. 227. Oh, okay. Yes. Yep. Now this does feature a black father in a positive light and he's a loving dad to a child, not an adult. So okay, we're starting to check the boxes.

However, he's married. so not a single dad. Okay, so not in the scope of what I'm discussing here, a very valid, and again, I got no problem with showing black married families on TV. I'm not saying that that's a problem, but to date, we have not seen a single black father. We've seen three single white fathers, at least, because they were widowers. But no single black fathers.

And again, you get back to that trope of, well, of course not, because they're all missing. That's what's degrading the family. It's like, that's not how that works. Family matters. Very positive black father figure, again, very married, that's 1989. And what we're seeing in 227 and Family Matters is there is a, you have fathers who were present, right? So previous to this, right, we don't have,

we have the Jeffersons who part of the joke was how, I mean, it's even in the song, we're moving on up. Part of the joke was how this black family exists with, and it's really just an older married couple, and they're probably younger than we are. But in the 70s, everybody all looked in their 50s. But you have the part of the premise and the humor is them fitting into a wealthy white world. If I recall, he bankrolled a car accident into owning a dry cleaning business. Yep. Yeah, he took the settlement from it, which kind of does a tropey thing there of, did he earn that money? Kind of like there's, you know,

raise the eyebrows a little. All of the family. Yeah, and it was a spin off of all in the family. They were the neighbors of that family. And if I recall correctly, Lionel didn't like how racist, oh God, Archie was, but he also accepted him because...

Accepted. Yeah, and there's also a layer of like, well, despite the fact that he's a bigot, he's got a golden heart if you are deemed worthy enough by him. It's this weird... Yeah, yeah. Right, which is why, and it's the younger version of the character. Yep. All of them. Yeah, that's right. That's right. which is why, and it's the younger version of the character. Yep.

All of them. Yeah, that's right, that's right. So, okay, so in the Jeffersons, they're wealthy. And then you get back to what's happening and mama's barely hanging on. I think she works two jobs quite frequently. And again, they take in a border, you know, on occasion. So working class, Julia was upper end of working class, but nurses absolutely were nerking working class at

that time. 227 they're living in brownstones. So working class, they're out on the stoop, um, yep. Two income families, family matters. Also working class. You had a cop and you had an elevator operator as his wife, cause it was a spinoff from perfect strangers and she runs the elevator at a newspaper. And it's okay. Yeah. Like, um, there's a lot there. There is. Um, so that's 19 eight now they own their own home. There are, and it's a multi-generational family.

Uh, there's a grandma living with them. There is an aunt who's moved in with her child. She's a single mom. Three kids. And the Winslow's are all making it work in this house in middle class Chicago. But they're doing it with two incomes. Then in 1990, Uncle Phil, very, very wealthy, right? In Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Again, we're tying affectionate parenting to wealth on some levels here and being a married man.

In fact, Will's dad shows up and he absolutely fulfills the trope of the absentee black dad. He's a- Big time. Yeah, a much more selfish, making promises, can't keep them, kind of a lout and a disappointment version of Raj's did. Yeah, he's definitely a flake.

Continuing the absent father theme, the lack of integrity, giving Phil the foil to which to be the big cuddly, but stern dad. I always loved that Uncle Phil does the voice of Shredder in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. But then in 1990, True Colors debuted. And this is one that flew under a lot of people's radar. This was not in the top 30, but I think it's worthy of note because

It's it's a a multi-generational multiracial family. It's a Brady Bunch update on some levels So the first season was Frankie Faison playing the dad If you watch the wire or if you remember silence of Lambs, he was the orderly that yells to Clarice, you know, on the right, stay to the right, that guy. In Hannibal, he picks up the bird, saves the pigeon. But anyway, he plays the dad, who's a dentist, and he marries a kindergarten teacher. He's black, she's white. She has a white teenage daughter. He has two black teenage sons, one older than her, one younger than her,

or one older than her and one right around the same age as her. Thievon Little actually takes over the role after the first season, and there's no discussion of it. It's just like Darren on Bewitched. The problem is Cleavon Little takes over right as his health starts to deteriorate, and he ends up... He and the woman who plays the mother-in-law both have deteriorating health. The show, quite honestly honestly feels snakebit from the

beginning. You replaced a guy who was doing the job and I could not find out why, but you replaced him with Cleavon Little. So part of me is like, oh, you're going for star power and or a guy who's got comedic chops. I actually preferred Frankie Faison for the role just because of what he brought to it, but whatever. The main character was a dentist who was widowed and he was married to a kindergarten teacher who was divorced. Yeah, I covered the daughter there. His wife is played by Stephanie Farrissey. And Ed, you will recognize her as the star of Goldie and the Bears. Right. I will totally pick that up.

Yeah. Yeah. Goldie and the Bears, just so you know, Kokai is a... Who's that? Goldie and the bears, uh, just so you know, uh, Koki is a, yeah, it's a pilot, uh, that never got picked up in the 1985 starring her Hulk Hogan, uh, the guy who played the, the big mustache guy in Conan, the barbarian, um, and oh God, who was the third one anyway, uh, there are three football players who loved her dad, who was their coach so much, and she became a private eye after her dad died.

I'll throw the trailer for you into the chat so you can enjoy it after it's high concepts. Hot garbage. Like it's. And and and and it's one of the occasions early on in which a whole Kogan was in the credits as Hulk Hogan Not Terry Balaya, right or Terry quote Hulk unquote Hogan He was he was fully k-fabbed. Oh The other guy who was in layers the other guy who was in it You would remember as Julius Carrie

the one who played the Shogun of Harlem in the last dragon Yeah, oh wow yeah, so okay show no show enough. Yep. Who is the master? Kiss my converse Yep, who is the master? Kiss my converse So but also if you don't remember her from that you'd remember her as the wife from the great outdoors Yeah, see If we had not done

four episodes on Hogan's okay Blocked several of them from my memory from the trauma, but if we had not spent Yeah, if we had not spent so many episodes talking about the construct That is Hulk Hogan. I would I would have had no idea Yeah, because because it deserved to slip to obscurity Don't get picked up, you know It's better. It's better for the memory of the human race as a collective that that one stays, right? So he's in the vault. Yeah, so in five on the studio floor

That's two shows that involve pilots that didn't get picked up Too soon. Fuck you. So okay, the the the show is absolutely about a white family and a black family living together trying to knit together as a family unit. You have a lot of reactions of her mom to the youngest son being kind of what drives the comedy, but largely it's about adolescence with a sprinkling of these cultural differences. Now I'm going to give it some points here because the dad remarries, which means at one point he was a single dad. So he's not quite single, but he's also not quite married to their mom character either.

And again, quite right. You know, given that he's married to an entirely different woman. Um, but, but, uh, so again, it goes into that which part of the study is this right? And then you mentioned I want to say Coraline but it's Claudine right? Claudine. Claudine. And James Earl Jones plays a trashman. In 1991, a TV show that I really really enjoyed starring Charles Dutton, whose voice is not quite as deep

as James Earl Jones's. Pretty goddamn close. But yeah, Rock debuted. And you've got an older father who's retired. And that older father is a widower. And he's being cared for for his responsible, hardworking son who's the trashman, which is kind of an inversion on Sanford and son.

And they're struggling to make ends meet. There's a wife who also works. So you've got a married family. There's something about Charles Dutton's performance in this that is just so magnetic. It's one of those shows that I absolutely wish they would bring back and put it on a streaming service. Because I think it would get a lot of play. It never actually got past number 71 in the Nielsen rating, so I'm kind of going away from my own formula of looking at the top 30. But I think that it's find positive black male figures and they

still aren't single dads. Now in fairness, his wife gets pregnant at the end of the series and it's a... They cut it off. What's that? Yes, but then they cut it off. Exactly. They end the series too soon Yeah, so the child's never actually extant. So he's not even a black father Now you could say he's the father figure to his his brother who's a hustler as well

and And you could say he's a father to his own father But again, we are we're stretching to to get there. And that brings us to 1993. Now to wit, this is the only positive male character, black single dad character, where being a dad is central to his personality that I have been able to find on television, and it's 1963, or it's 1993.

This means then that Benjamin Lafayette Sisko predates Ray Campbell, the single black dad who is a widower on Sister Sister, who immediately moves the adopted daughter's twin and her adoptive mother, played by Jack A, into his house. A non-traditional family, which would still count as she's been abandoned, which would still count as illegitimate children, even though they were both adopted. And it just, again, how we measure these things, right? And yet at the same time, aren't they setting up a nuclear family there? Two parents living platonically with the two kids, right?

But it would not have counted as a legitimate family. I would count that show as a single black dad show. I think that that counts. Because the premise of him moving them in was more a Vehicle for getting the two daughters to meet And he is a positive character. Absolutely He also predates the widowed Floyd Henderson dad on smart guy Which is who was played by John Marshall Jones

And and so that was in 97. So 1993, Benjamin Lafayette Sisko is the first positive single black dad that TV has given to us. And that show lasted for seven years. And he never stopped being a single dad until his own son grew of age. And even then, they dealt with those dynamics in a very honest and and very caring way. And so the first question of

why this matter why this matters is clearly manifest. Representation, right? Representation absolutely matters. This is what we've pulled into our TVs, is what we're pulling into our houses. It's on Syndication it is not on network though So it's gonna have a different standard as to why it gets to stay on the air Mm-hmm, um and given the history of television and the portrayal of single black dads It seems like that report that was delivered in 65 became the guidebook of how to write black dads into TV until here. Yeah, I mean, the thesis is pretty clear there. Yeah. You know, it's it's in so many ways it's remarkable how our

National the stories that we tell about ourselves as a society collectively are so Hourfully Influenced I don't necessarily want to say controlled quite we can quibble on that But how how how heavily they are they are shaped? by a very small number of people because like in 1963 right or 65 65 when when the Moynihan report came out? Like who how many people read the Moynihan like actually sat down and read cover to cover the Moynihan report Right very many right but a bunch of the people who did read it were news people news writers journalists and

Journalism in this country, broadcast journalism in this country, is intensely focused as an industry in the Northeast, specifically in New York, which is why so many stories about New York wind up going nationally when stuff going on in Austin, Texas doesn't write stuff going on in San Diego, California and Sacramento, California in, in Eugene, Oregon, stuff does not go national unless it is really, really big. Whereas, or fits a narrative. Yeah, or having having gone national for a week. Yeah, yeah fair, but yeah but What what we? Like there's been this there's been this huge

oof-a-raw over the the intellectual integrity of Harvard University, you know and and and you know policy stuff going on with Harvard University and you know, and policy stuff going on with Harvard University. And the mainstream media outlets of, you know, network television, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and all these back east newspapers are making this huge big deal about this stuff. And for 99% of the population of the country it doesn't fucking matter. Because how many people attended Harvard?

How many people have a chance of attending Harvard? Like it's bullshit but it dominated headlines because for the people that were writing those stories this was a big deal because a whole bunch of them came from ivy league backgrounds, right? Right And the same thing I feel like it's the same mechanism that's going on here with the moina hand report turning into this gigantic Force Being being

Pushed on to the narrative that everybody who was gonna write any stories about the the black family in America Was being influenced by this like they they either had read it or they were in circles with people who had read it Right and and and because of this this top-down Dissemination or this this kind of focus within within Those those Rarified social circles not hate and I hate to talk in this way talking about elites

But I think it really applies in this case Yep is like because because those those folks had the access to the microphones And they had the access to Getting their story makers. Yeah. Well, yeah And they were the ones who had the connections to get their stories selected to have TV pilots made about them You know whereas the lived experience people actually living in those communities like how insulting is that no my dad's around Right, you know

You know and like they didn't even they didn't even bother talking to School teachers in those neighborhoods like no their fathers are around Like it doesn't it doesn't look the same way it does for, you know, Bobby from the suburbs, but like they're there, they're, they have family networks, but they're, they're, they're living a different way. Or better yet, it does look the same way it did for Bobby from the suburbs, but you don't see that.

Yeah. Big time. And you have movies that are defying the art. So South Central comes out where the main character goes to prison, comes back, and like literally fights the streets to be a father in his child's life. Right. So, and it wasn't like, you just got through saying it,

it wasn't lived experience. Because on the ground, there were in Anchorage, Alieska, where I grew up with, the church had 800 families, black families. That was the largest black church. Everybody was intact. There wasn't, you know, there wasn't the brokenness that the Mohan report seems to be dictating

the presentation on television. You've got a lot of family matters. You've got a lot of full house being reflected. You know, because in contrast for Punky Brewster, it was nothing for her to be with an older father. Right. Who if I recall was he was was he was he was a building manager. He wasn't a landlord. He was a building manager. Okay.

And the father figure because he best was there because it was an even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, it's funny. You said South Central and that that also pinged because right around the same time John Singleton's Boys in the Hood and Lawrence Fishburne 100% played a single black father who was tender and loving as well as stern

and strict. Both of those things existed. Like he hugged his son. He kissed his son. He also like was very stern to him too. I don't think he ever raised a hand on him either. Well except to almost prevent him from going out the door with the gun to participate in a murder.

But even that, it was give me the motherfucking gun Trey. It was never I'm going to hit you. So even there, you know, and it's, and at the beginning of that movie, and again, these are movies and people go out to see movies and I can tell you living in Walnut Creek, how much cultural pressure there was on not going to see that movie.

Walnut Creek is like Orange County of Northern California. More cops per capita than any city in California. I'll tolerate that. Because they guard the white people's property. So, which that literally means everyone's property because it's Walnut Creek. One of my favorite things is somebody from my my 20th year anniversary

or 20th year reunion said to me once, because you become friends with them again on Facebook, you know, like, oh, how you been? Oh, how's this going? One of them said, you know what I liked about growing up in Walnut Creek? And I'm like, oh, god damn it. Every time somebody says that phrase, I'm like,

okay, what racial thing are you gonna say now? But it was, we never had any race problems say now? Uh, but it was... We never had any race problems. I'm like, of course we didn't. We looked like Finland. Right. It was... I was, I was like... No contrast.

I lived, helped live, because I lived in townhouse apartments. Like, we had two, two black students in my entire class. Of course. nothing to contrast. Right. So of course we had no race problems. The whole place was a race problem.

The whole place was, was the, the result of the equation of what is the race problem in the United States. Right. Yes. So, you know, we were one of the two Americas. We didn't try to have to, you know, it's like, you took Bart to come work there if you were a person of color. But-

Wow. Anyway. Wow. Yeah. The area rapid transit, in effect. Yes, sir. Yeah. But, okay, so, but, where was I?

We were talking about... Oh, yeah. Boys in the Hood. 1993. Yeah, 1993. Boys in the Hood. He is a caring black father who has an agreement with the mom. The two of them have espresso together. The two of them are co-parenting, not in the same domicile, that again, in that 1965 study, would not count for anything. He would have been an abandoner.

She's upper class rich and he's still in the hood. That's right. And giving lessons on the billboard and on cash for houses and all that kind of shit. And it is obvious in every scene how much he loves his son. It is obvious in every scene how much he cares and how not an abandoner he is. That's obvious.

Like what are we, abandoner? Yeah. So. Yeah. So OK. So we've gotten to the Cisco and I have highlighted a few episodes that that really stood out to me. And after that, I would just love us to just open the conversation fully into him. And obviously talking through it as we go because that's the whole point of this this whole two-part series is discussing

Benjamin Sisko as a positive single black father. First I just kind of want to get into his personality. When you first meet him he is deeply grieving the loss of his wife. He's not a stoic shell of a person. He's dedicated to his son the whole time, to the point where his son in the first episode, the emissary says, are there gonna be other kids there? And they leave arm in arm hugging each other, walking onto the promenade. He is a newly widowed father helping his son through his loss, managing his own loss, and

then as a single dad of a growing child who grows into a man who is decidedly not like Ben Sisko. He's not raising a clone of himself. And then he raises him into a man who finds his passion. Sisko himself finds dedication in his work, and then he finds love again with Cassidy Yates, and then who I still think is one of the most badass women. She's a smuggler.

And you know I love smugglers. But she's one of the most badass women in sci-fi history. He then finds and accepts purpose beyond his work as the emissary of the prophets and at the point at which they have to abandon the the Deep Space Nine station, Jake stays behind and Ben has to wrestle with that and let him live his own life no matter how foolhardy and stupid it might be to do that and to make his own destiny which is so different than Ben's and he as a dad accepts that and supports it. And yet one of the things I love the most, okay so the Beyond the Stars episode is easily my favorite episode of the whole thing.

It's where he has the fever and he hallucinates that he's in the 1950s. Mm-hmm. Do you remember what his job was as Benny? He was a writer. Mm-hmm. He was a sci-fi writer. What's Jake aspiring to be? Journalist. A journalist.

A writer. And who is Benny the most tied to? But Jake's cut out character as a street hustler. And when he gets killed, Benny is crushed. That's when he gets attacked by the police because he is so enraged at the loss of this kid who's not his son in this hallucination, but is 100% his son in this hallucination, but is 100% his son in this hallucination, but he's living out his son's dream in his own hallucination.

That's how intertwined with his fatherhood he is. Even in hallucinating an entirely different existence, he's tied to his son in multiple ways. I love Ben Sisco. This has just all been an excuse to get to talk about Ben Sisko. Okay, so the first episode that I've noticed is Sanctuary, season two, episode 10. Really, it's the first episode that we see Jake having a romantic interest that he pursues, and it sets the tone for the ability of Cisco to recognize that his son is growing up. This is the first time he's interested in a girl that Cisco doesn't approve of because

she's a Dabo girl and she's four years his senior. But they meet because they're both like writing. And in subsequent episodes, we see the trope of bringing the girl home for dinner, and Cisco straight up intended to intervene and end their relationship. But then he talks with her and realizes that he doesn't know his own son as much as he thinks he does. And he recognizes that he needs to let Jake

make his own decisions and his own mistakes. That's November of 1993. That's the second season in. The end of the second season is the Jem'Hadar episode where they crash. This is the first time we see the Jem'Hadar. Nog and Jake and Quark and Sisko are traveling and then they end up crashing on a planet where they discover the Jem'Hadar. Sisko and Quark argue about raising kids,

but what I really liked about this episode was that Ben straight up tells Jake, I'm gonna take you on a trip and we're gonna get to bond. And Jake invites his friend along without asking his dad. And it's that dynamic. And the reason why he asks his friend along is because Nog is ready to drop out of school and Jake is like, no, I got to help this guy learn to read. I got to help him be a better student.

And so you see this disappointment in Ben's eyes initially. And then it gets supplanted by him still adapting because he realizes he needs to make space for his own son to do these things. And then there's some really tender campfire moments where they have a remembrance of his now deceased wife, Jake's mom. And Jake even says something like, I don't remember a time where we were happier. And they share that moment. And there's such a joyous laughter between the two of them. And one of my favorite things about Cisco is when Avery Brooks would have him laughing,

his whole body would laugh. His shoulders would rock with laughter. And you don't see that on TV that often. Not from a dad, not from a black dad. Certainly not from a black single dad since this is the first one. And then Cisco and Quark get captured by the Dominion and Cisco actually says, oh, Jake's going to try to come find us. He has faith in his son's love for him and refusal to give up on him.

And when he sees him again, when they get transported back up to the runabout and then they're making their escape, one of the first things that he does is he very warmly goes to his son. And that's June of 94. So that's just a couple of the episodes. I don't need it to be just me traipsing us through it.

So what are some impressions that you guys have? What are some thoughts that you guys have? Why are we seeing positive single black fatherhood in the 1990s? I'm trying to think about the time period that we're talking about and what might have led to that being a thing. Deep Space Nine casted Avery Brooks as the commander of the Deep Space Nine space station shortly like what are we one or two years after the Rodney King riots? Mm-hmm. Okay, Star Trek is still going on the next generation still going on and rocks

Yep, yeah Roddenberry's dead Yeah, and and a whole lot of the DNA of Deep Space Nine Was built around or coiled around Roddenberry not being there anymore to enforce the idea to push on the story Bible that the Federation was a society without conflict, that the Federation was this ideal utopian, they don't do anything wrong. If there's a Federation villain, it's never a systemic thing. It's never anything wrong with the Federation. There's this one officer who is corrupt. There's this there's this situation

Yeah, they're they're possessed by Heinlein's, you know puppet masters, which amazed the Heinlein estate never went after him like but You know and and so the The the original series and for a while TNG wanted to talk about social issues, but they always approached him with this ham-fisted and volitious, like, you know, we're going to drop an anvil on this, you know, kind of kind of kind of approach because because Roddenberry, yeah, because Roddenberry wouldn't allow those things to be looked at through the lens of okay, well, what if this problem exists within Starfleet? What if this problem exists within

the Federation? What if this is a structural issue? You're telling me that a guy who was the PR officer for a police department known for corruption didn't want to look at institutional issues? Really? Big time. Yeah, no. Big time.

I'm telling you that an atheist fuckboy would not want to deal with the... no. He would not want to deal with that. And so all of a sudden they now have, and I'm totally forgetting the guy's name who piloted, ran up the flag for DS9 in the first place. Oh, is that Stephen Bear? E.E.H.R. Yeah. Ran up the flag for DS 9 in the first place But he went on to be even bear yeah, okay? Yeah And cuz I went on to be a big a big part of Battlestar Galactica A bunch of years later

Which which was like DS 9 you know but we're gonna take all the interpersonal angst and conflict and dial it up to 11 right That's that's the whole drama the show the Cylons are incidental like you know yeah We're this is all gonna be about Apollo's daddy issues but Where was I got I had sidetracked by my own joke quest

Yeah, but You know and and so they they they were able to say okay. You know what we're going to We're gonna we're gonna approach these things in a more realistic in a more nuanced and a more effective meaningful or effective kind of way and So I think there was a I would argue that putting that relationship front and center Was their way of approaching that social issue Because they could now because because under Roddenberry right you wouldn't you wouldn't have had that be a thing

Sure, you know Because you couldn't have a character with a tragic backstory like like Cisco's like the the the boys Cisco You know you could not you could not have Benjamin and Jake have that tragic backstory without one of them Being an episode of villain of the week because you know they're twisted and angered by their by their experiences So they're gonna try to get the planet killer, and you know right you know um And so I think maybe it was You know, um, and so I think maybe it was, um, you know, to borrow, to borrow a phrase it or to switch around phrase, it was the possibility of the imagination being present now.

Hmm. Yes. Yes. And still limited by the boy, a Moy report, still limited by what the elites could distribute over syndication. Because next generation is a for all intents and purposes, a brand reboot of the original series to update it to where we can accept it and it's still not be flash-ported. So with the feeling out of the world, it allows for different kinds of stories to be told,

even though it's still colonialism, but we get aliens in conflict with each other in the fleshed out world. I have a question on why the aliens reflect us and look too much like the earth geopolitics, cause they're not given to us in a way that would be consistent with other worldly problems other than like Odo, because he turns out to be Dominion. Right, right. Dominion actually turns out to be, and as a changeling, he's got the inner conflict,

I mean, because that was the big thing that Deep Spade and Snipe brought to the table is the Marvel-like expansion of story to where there's inner conflict within the character before you have conflict between interactions with the personalities. So Odo is a changeling. He knows he's rejected or his storyline gets rejected

and he's dealing with rejection on a regular basis because he can change. Right. Oh, we lost you on that. You said after you said because he could change, we lost you on that. So because he could change. Yeah, because he could change up,

he's got the security position. So his weakness is his strength, but it's also the source of alienation. Yes. You know, so you get the chance to do that kind of story. I hear you with the emotional range that Avery Brooks brought to the position, but I mean, there was also the expansion of emotional range for Captain, period. Because the stoic aspect of being a captain, and it's, it's wrought through it because as soon as you get to what,

episode five, when they start the Dominion War? Season five? Yeah, yeah, season five is the Dominion War. But we first see the Dominion at the end of season two. But yeah, right, right, right, right. Um, but the pressures that he ends up having to deal with on a station, because it's a totally different environment, instead of the ship in a bottle going through space, you've got... Everything has to come to them.

Yes. And you've got the wormhole and the quadrant that hasn't been explored and the Bajoran relationship because it's an abandoned station that the Federation partners in order to to set up to keep a frontier. Speaking of colonialism, keep the frontier. Yeah, right. Because because because beforehand the popular idea of Avery Brooks was Hulk,

but Spencer for hire. Spencer. Okay. Yeah. No, go ahead. Because that's a that's when he comes across as the badass rebel. Right. Yeah. No, go ahead. Because that's when he comes across as the badass rebel. Right, right. He's got the hot car. He's got the gun. He wears shades at night.

Yeah. We were thinking he's super cool. He's Shaft all over again. So to see him in the Star Trek world, we had lots of expectations, but in the beginning, because he's captain, he does have the limited range. We don't really see him use touch until he interacts with Jake. Who is with Nog, they're always touching each other.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that you brought in the touch thing, because that's one of the things that really, I appreciate that you brought in the touch thing because that's one of the things that really... I'm a very cuddly dad. My kids literally were leaning on me while we were watching The Next Generation Tonight. The fact that he touches Jake so much and he does it so effortlessly is just one of my favorite things about him with that too. And I think in many ways,

it shows the juxtaposition between, I mean, here you have a character who literally, he puts his hand on his son's ribs right here. That is a deeply personal space, and his son kisses him on the top of the head. There's all kinds of wonderful loving touch. And he's also the guy who in the pale moonlight, uh, orchestrated the murder of a Romulan to bring them into a war.

Yeah. Right. Like, yeah. Wow. Right. Organizes an assassination. Yes. Right. Right. You know, organize this assassination. Yes. Yeah. Right. And so I mean, go ahead. I know. But I mean, he changes his tone, slows down when he's with Jake. I completely get that presentation. However, it also is allowed on a space station. It isn't what he's trying to prepare Jake for, because he wants Jake to be a captain. He wants Jake to go into Star Freak. Jake is the one who puts up resistance to that.

In part because of the inventions that they have off of the space station. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's actually a set of dialogue between Jake and Ben. Um, O'Brien, it's actually in season two, episode 16, uh, shadow play. Ben has Jake shadow O'Brien because he wants to get him ready for Starfleet. And Jake tells O'Brien, I don't want to fucking do this, man. And O'Brien's like, tell your dad. And Jake says, quote, Dad, I don't want to join Starfleet.

Cisco, since when? Jake, since forever. Starfleet is too much like you. I need to find what's me. Does that make any sense? Cisco, perfect sense. Jake, it does? Cisco, It's your life, Jake. You have to choose your own way. There is only one thing I want from you.

Find something you love and then do it the best you can. Jake. I'll try. Cisco. Good. Then you'll make an old man proud. It's not do what made me the man that I am. It's not do what makes sure, whatever you do, make sure it's practical. It's not do what made me the man that I am. It's not do what makes sure, whatever you do, make sure it's practical. It's not live out the dreams I never could live out. It's do what you love. And that was that for Jake.

The other thing I really liked is that when Jake decided not to flee Deep Space Nine, when the Dominion took over, Ben was livid. He was pissed. He's going off on the bridge, on the Defiant, about how stupid his son's decision is. He catches hell from his dad, and he defends Jake's stupid-ass decision. And when they're like, do you want us to turn around? It's like, no, he's his own man. And I have to accept that no matter what.

And just that respect that he has, the struggle that he went through and still he comes to that same conclusion. I absolutely love that about that. And he gets an opportunity to raise a child without the social justice wheel. Yeah. As a pressure because of the environment that he's in, it literally is the

ethical choices that you end up having to make. And he makes, I mean, and in lawful Jake's best friend is a alien. That Cisco's bigoted against for quite some time and then becomes his biggest booster. Yeah. Well, yes. Yes. And then once the war starts and the Ferengi show up, a quark shows and has his back, then a lot of that bigotry dissipates.

Yeah. But we also get to see a different side of Ben, because it's now the action orientated, it's not the theoretical captain who's keeping a station alive and functional, right? Keeping it moving, right, which is the team building, which is totally different. So I mean, one of the things that it took me a moment to like pick up and or keep at the forefront of my mind was these are military operations. This is the space army. At no time does it stop being the space arm.

So you know, it's the barracks. Jake is a soldier's kid. Yep. Oh, yeah. He's a military brat. That's a soldiers kid. Yep. Oh yeah. He's a military brat. That's a good point. And doesn't have the options of, well, he didn't want options of following, going off war world, even though they have the sail ship, even though they, they get to do stuff together.

He doesn't want the adventure of space travel, right? Because he had the stationary, literally the stationary environment stuff together, he doesn't want the adventure of space trap. Right. Because he had the stationary, literally the stationary environment operate from. So now I can go around and know the gossip in that area because there's enough people who live here long enough in order for gossip to actually form. They're not task oriented like on a ship.

Right. That's true. Yeah. There's an episode called the abandoned, which is in season three, it's episode six. In it, Ben finally meets Marta, which is the the Dabo girl that Jake is gaga over. And that whole discussion I already kind of talked about, but the thing that I liked is it's Cork buys a salvage lot and there is an infant in amongst the wreckage. And he's a baby gem hadar. And these are ugly ass aliens by human standards. They're also brutal brutal conquerors. They are

the mirror to ourselves. They are what the Calvary was to native peoples. And what I love about it is Cisco picks up the infant and holds it so gently and picks up the infant and holds it so gently and so tenderly it does not matter from whence it came because he's a dad first before he's even a commander um and he he he like reminisces about holding Jake and he's like kind of doing the holding the baby sway and he's doing all these things. Even though it's an it's it's an the child of

his enemy, he's just enraptured and in joy about holding a baby. Again, cannot escape the fact that we're talking about a black man who is in charge of a largely white cast and not just being a stern taskmaster or anything like that. He's holding a baby. He's loving, he's enjoying something. Now this episode actually was directed by Avery Brooks himself too. This was absolutely a choice that he made as an actor and a director. But it's one of those moments that just absolutely captured me.

Again, loving being a dad and stuff like that. But that fatherhood extends. And it's not a fatherhood that extends in the same way that we see in other tropes where it's an older black man who coaches Rudy into not quitting, it's... It's... It is holding, even if it's the enemy, they have babies too. Yeah. What I found really remarkable, and I didn't have the language to articulate it at the time but now I do and What I find remarkable about about Cisco's character and about Ben's relationship to Jake

is He is a multi-faceted Masculine figure multifaceted masculine figure Like there is definitely the traditional. I'm commander. I'm a military commander Hypercompetent, you know all all of those all of those tropes are there but in the same person We see him on multiple occasions being nurturing being empathetic I see him on multiple occasions being nurturing, being empathetic, relying not on hop down authority, but relying on negotiation, empathy, and the ability to build connections, make alliances.

And on top of that being internal to his character, the whole sequence, the whole story arc with him letting his son make his own decisions. His son wants a future that's very, very different from his. And he implicitly recognizes and encourages his son in the idea that there is not only one way to be a man. Yes. Also to add on the story allows that to occur because up to that point, you don't have a space within Star Trek canon where you can have that option.

You're right, they're all shades of Riker or shades of Kirk, really. Yeah. Kirk. Yeah. Kirk. Yeah. No, you mentioned the solar ship, the solar sail ship one, and that's season three, episode 22.

And it's absolutely father and son road trip. So for folks that don't remember, Cisco takes Jake on an adventure of just the two of them on an ancient Bajoran spacecraft that they built themselves. And it's absolutely a bottle episode and this time no pun intended. But again, I come back to this theme that I really enjoyed. And it kind of plays off what you're saying there, Ed,

is that you can be masculine and show tremendous tenderness and patience and respect to your own son. It's not my way or the highway. It's, and he's showing his son like how to do this thing that he's very good at, that he has studied and he's sharing it with him. And Jake's lack of enthusiasm doesn't deter him. He's just patient with him.

Yes. And one scene, and it's almost an entirely optimistic scene set in a season that is getting decidedly dark. And that's one thing I loved about Star Trek is that they would always give me a let me up match after a series of just brutal, hardcore matches with all the blood and all the stakes. And then it'd be like, you know know Owen versus Skinner. You know it

would you would have like I mean you remember when Nog lost his leg and he's dealing with the trauma of that and then they played baseball and it's just like just they they always were so good at letting me up before taking me back in right and this was one of those. Jake had actually started writing by this point and thinking that this is what he wants to do. And he finally has the courage to ask his dad for his reaction. He's like, can you critique what I wrote? And Cisco goes and reads it and he offers a bunch of critiques and he kind of points out, Jake, you have no experience with this. Like you are an inexperienced writer, which is a valid criticism, but not you're inexperienced.

So I don't know what to tell you. It was, you should continue to write. You should continue. And he doesn't quite say it, but it sounds like you should continue to be bad at this so that you can get better at it. Yeah. Keep sucking. Yeah yeah the patience at that and And what I love there is that Jake then turns around and tells him you should start dating again, too And you're gonna suck at that, right?

but like just the fact that Ben was able to accept his son giving him advice too. It's not just Sage on the stage. It's not just I'm the wise dad always dispensing with the wisdom. There was a give and take between the two. That was May of 95 actually that they had that. So and in season four episode two there's one called The Visitor. Um, this is like probably one of the top three most popular of the whole series.

It had giving tree vibes to me, so I didn't like it as much, but it's, it's for its emotionality, it's, it's quite something. Um, it actually lost, it was up for a Hugo award that year for most compelling dramatic Episode best TV best genre TV episode something like that. Yeah. Yeah, it lost to Babylon fives the coming of shadows I Understand why it did sure as I understand why it did sure as a bad five fan like I mean sometimes Sorry, you know like

Sometimes you can be Hakeem Olajuwon and have to play in the same time as Michael Jordan Sorry, you know, I know who my favorite was but I can also recognize who was better. You know, it's OK. Now, this puts it October of 95. This is the one where Jake gets pushed out of the way of a warp core or the warp drives inversion thing on the Defiant. Pushes Jake out of the way. He gets hit, Ben gets hit and ends up in subspace. They all think he's vaporized. They have a funeral.

Everybody mourns. Jake moves on. Ben gets hit and ends up in subspace. They all think he's vaporized, they have a funeral, everybody mourns, Jake moves on, and every once in a while, at certain intervals, Ben shows up and sees what Jake's doing. And Jake becomes obsessed with that and starts working toward, working toward, working toward, and then the interval of Ben showing up gets further and further and further

to the point where it won't happen again in Jake's life until this one night. So Jake went back to doing his writing and the whole conceit of the episode is Jake's biggest fan has come to his house in the rain and he brings her in and he tells her all about this. And it's just some fantastic acting by the actor who is not Jake, and I forget the actor's name. I didn't write it down because I was so focused on Cisco. But he does an amazing job of it. He's very old at this point as Jake, and he has figured it out that when Ben shows up, if he commits suicide, that that will reset everything and he tells Ben all you got to do is get out of the way of the fucking beam and I can have the life with you that I was supposed to have and Ben shows up and he tells Jake

like let go Jake if not for yourself then then for me. Because Ben is ageless. He's stuck in subspace. He's seen his son grow past him and yet not do anything with his life because he's obsessed with his dad. And the heartbreak that that represents for Ben, he sees Jake actually commit suicide and dies in Ben's arms. And Ben is weeping and Jake tells him, give us that second chance.

I bet everything on this basically, give us that second chance. Flashback, Ben's there, the inversion happens, he tackles Jake out of the way. Jake is like, oh my God, what happened? Ben still has the memory of everything that happened. So he's got a tear in his eye and he's like, I guess we were just lucky. Um, so, yeah. Wow.

So, I mean, that that episode is, um, is iconic. It's, it's usually in people's top three of favorite episodes, and it's focused on the love of a father and a son. And again, you can do that in a TV series about a space station a quadrant away from us, 400 years into the future. Then you can depict black fatherhood as a single man loving his son. Because then it's remote enough from our experience having been given the template in 1965.

And I would say that template exists long before that. I mean, even Avery Brooks points that out. I've got a quote from him that I was going to read later, but he basically, let me find it. He says, it's something that we have to see more often, the relationship of a brown man and his son, because historically, that's not how it began in this country for brown families

who didn't have the freedom of their own will and volition, let alone the ability to hold their families together. So, Every Brooks 100% recognized what he was doing on TV. Yes. Oh yeah. So. He recognized as Hawk. Say it again. No one was doing as Hawk. Yeah, as Hawk too, yeah. I was a little young for Spencer for hire.

And also, who was it that played Spencer? I didn't like that actor Ulrich fuck yeah, yeah, Robert Ulrich. Yeah, didn't like him much. Yeah, jerkface. Yeah, but so yeah but but having Hawk as a character who is Yeah, but having Hawk as a character who is kind of the better version of Spencer in all the ways. Yes. Yeah, as a private investigator. Yes. Right.

Right. So then the last episode I really wanted to highlight, and you can kind of see a theme of the things that matter to me as a dad. The tenderness, the lovingness, the care, the respect. It's from season five episode four so at this point the Klingons and the Federation are still at war. Okay because the Klingons came in, bullied their way in and the Federation was like no you can't do that and they're like fine Kinmer Accords we're ripping them up. Here we go um

And it's called nor to the battle the strong or nor the battle to the strong which apparently is is from Ecclesiastes And I it's the the the race doesn't go to the to the swift nor the battle to the strong Yeah, but only but only through but only through the will of God, some, something like that. Sounds biblical, yeah. Yeah. So Jake and Bashir end up needing to divert to a field hospital while the Klingons

and the Federation are still at war. Jake is a very young man, but he is a man now. And he's filled with this like, naive thirst for adventure, and like, kind of starting to smell himself as far as I'm a writer. And honestly, he starts irritating me more than Wesley ever did, because at least Wesley was young.

But, his metal gets tested at every turn in this hospital. This episode I always liked because it was like equal parts all quiet on the Western Front, mash and ER. And Jake is very much forced to confront his own ideals, his own naivete, and he finds himself wishing for his dad's strength, idolizing his dad, who is largely not there for the episode, but by no means is he absent from Jake. It's not he left me, it's God, I wish he was here, and I think there's a distinct difference there.

And he faces the very real possibility of dying, a number of times. Now, Ben, at the end of this, is very proud of Jake and during the thing, he's trying to get to his son, he faces the very real possibility that he could lose his son and he's the very real possibility that he could lose his son. He's absolutely gutted by it and he needs to get to him sooner and sooner. Ben feels incredibly helpless.

He's almost frenzied in his worry and so he's got all of these vulnerabilities coming to the fore as a parent would have, as a father would have at the idea of their son, their only child, being in danger. At the end of it Jake comes away from it with a lesson and the lesson is essentially that the line between cowardice and courage is a very thin one indeed. It's a lot slimmer than he thought. Ben reads his writing and I love that this is three seasons later. He's reading his son's writing again and this time he tells him you should publish it every single word and that he's proud of him for being the journalist that he is.

And that's in October of 96. So those are all the episodes that I highlighted. There's a few quotes that I have from interviews and stuff, but I definitely want to hear from the two of you on this as we're going here. So why is it that we're actually only seeing a single black dad as a positive in this sci-fi? What's going on in the 90s? single black dad as a positive in this sci-fi? What's going on in the 90s? What's going on that we've been able to accept this

despite all the tropes that we have accepted? And of course, any other questions you guys wanna pose or answer? I don't know how accepted it is. This one has a lower rating when it comes down to the iterations of Star Trek than the other ones because it's syndicated, it's not mainstream. That's true. Also got Next Generation still running, which is the flagship at that time.

And it has the most crossover. You puns too. Everybody does it. True indeed. Yeah,s too. Yes. Everybody does it. True indeed. Yeah, but you're right. So,

Cisco could act human in this iteration in a way that Bill Cosby's acting human on the Cosby show. Or Winslow as a cop. Even though he's a fat cop. Yep. Come across as, well, Dr. Phil, I mean, yeah, Mr. Phil. Uncle Phil, yeah.

Uncle Phil. Uncle Phil, I don't know why I'm saying that. He's a judge, yeah. Uncle Phil, as you know, as a technocrat. Yeah. And we're used to soldiers. Being as a soldier can come across. And the military is supposed to get rid

of the social justice wheel. There's no need for it because of the task-orientated nature of the military. Right. In an environment. Yeah, I mean, there's only a couple episodes where his blackness is addressed at all. It's very much a post-racial world.

It's addressed when he's hallucinating back to the 1950s. 400 years prior. He's gotta go all the way back to get to our world where we have that problem. And then when they do the heist episode to rescue Vic Fontaine from his story, Ben straight up says, I don't wanna go on this fucking heist with you, Cassidy,

because there's a pretense in there that our color doesn't matter, and it 100% kept us out of there. She kind of sweet talks him into it. Like it ends up being a non-issue, but those are kind of the only two where it's talked about, you're right. Big Fontaine, dude, the hologram.

Yeah. The lounge singer. Yeah, Pally, yeah. See, yeah, some of the characters, the way that they tried to reflect the 90s they tried to reflect the 90s culture back to it's, so that you had some buy in. Yeah, they had an opportunity to where

it literally became the ethics of the time, where it actually became the bond. That's why Odo doesn't go with the Dominion, but rescues the crew when the Dominion traps them. And what is it? Um, uh, uh, changing things don't hurt each other. Right. Like the one rule that they had, you know, in that level of unity.

So they were able to, even on the alien, like actually start exploring what it really means to be an alien and not just an extension of human. Yeah. It felt very much like we too wear the mask with Odo. Yes. You know, because I mean, literally he could change his face. Yes. You know, literally he could, he could blend in, he could pass and yet he

couldn't because he wasn't good at passing. And the very nature of how he was trying to pass. Along with the Ferengi. Where they are just like Vulcans, a singular trait. So all they care about is trading. Until, that's not what you need to care about. Right. they care about is trading until yeah until wrong not what you need to care about right yeah in fact you get to yeah so you get to explore on the station a level of

difference that you aren't in other iterations because the environment is so different. Cause they seem to go back to the normal troops, troops, which one has the woman commander? Oh, it's Voyager. Voyager. Yeah. Right, they seem to go back to the, what made next generation, next generation. Yeah. Back to the colonialism.

Mobility. Yes. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, again, I think the fact that it's on a station means the plot has to come to them, which means quite honestly, you have a totally different structure from TNG. Next Generation was, let's take these archetypes and put them in different environments every week. Whereas with Deep Space Nine, it was, okay, they're on a station. Ah, shit, the plot's got to come to them. and put them in different environments every week. Whereas with Deep Space Nine, it was,

okay, they're on a station. Ah, shit, the plot's gotta come to them. And you can only have so many archetypes show up at your filling stations. So we actually need to have a plot arc. You didn't have a plot arc in The Next Generation for quite some time. You had very minimal character growth over time.

Worf was the one who grew the most probably, him and Data. Yeah. There were some subplots with Geordi and whatnot, but you very much didn't have, the characters were roughly the same from season one to season seven. Yes, yes. Whereas in Deep Space Nine, they had changed so radically

because the plot had to come to them, which means that all of their, all of what made them interesting, like you said earlier, was them internally wrestling with things. They actually had the conflict. Right. And you get the imagination that it's the existential crises that we have from being sentient is what is animating things, not interchangeable parts. Alien isn't just interchangeable human character.

There's a reason why the Kardashians and the Bajorans and the Glingons, why there's a fight going on with the Dominion. Mm-hmm. Bajorans being distrustful. We just got free. We don't need to do this again. We don't want to get close to not being free again. We're still in survival mode.

But then you come to find out that everyone's in survival mode on this space station. It's just they're masking it better than than others. And Cisco's masking it the best. The present moment. Yeah, because he's dealing with the trauma of his loss. Correct. Start with. Yeah. Losses throughout throughout it all. Mm hmm. Where with, yeah. Losses throughout, throughout it all.

Mm-hmm. Where Jake is gaining. Yeah, even when he, when he finds love with Cassidy, he has to send her to jail. Still dealing with loss. Yeah. Right. Still dealing with loss. Yeah.

Jake is trying to craft the, literally craft the new way forward. I don't have to do what you did to survive. Right. Right. Yeah, there's, you know, what I took away from them was again, the touch. Not not this stern, I'm going to teach you to be a man I'm gonna, I'm going to sculpt you. Every Brooks spoke of this in 2012 in an interview. He said, the relationship between Cisco and his son was also very important.

That was something else you still don't often see on air, at least as it concerns black and brown men and their sons. We got to play complicated, emotional, and intricate scenes, and we got to have tender and fun moments. And I love that part about the fun, by the way. It wasn't a pat relationship or an easy one, and it was very realistic. The show never took the easy way out when it came to situations,

be they personal or political, and that provided us with a lot of great things to do as actors. And he also said in the following year, That provided us with a lot of great things to do as actors. He also said in the following year in an interview, he said that one of the reasons he took the job was because originally he was like, no, say no to all Star Trek shit. One of the reasons he took the job was because he found out that Cisco would have a living dad and a living son. And he said it was the, quote, opportunity to have a conversation about succeeding generations that intrigued me.

And the way that Cisco raised his son wasn't so much about, you know, molding this unformed clay. It was accepting the parts of Jake that were not Cisco and loving him for those self same reasons and still maintaining his relationship with his dad as well and recognizing that his dad and his son would have their own relationship. So that dynamic between the three of them and you And remember his dad was a chef who chose to not replicate anything and who chose not to travel.

And Cisco on the other hand, chose the military life. Which I mean, that's without, I wonder if, I think it's probably without realizing it, the writers basically took the 1920s and the 1940s and the 1960s. Because you have you have the guy who worked in the service industry, whose son became a soldier and a veteran, who then with the GI bill made it so that his son could go on and do something academic. White collar. Yeah. Something very white collar. Very. Yeah. So yeah I would be remiss if I didn't mention this. At the end of the series you've had seven I think incredible I think I my personal take is that Deep Space Nine is my favorite of all the Star Treks.

I think it is the most complex from a plot perspective, from a story perspective, from an internal character perspective. I think Voyager has the best idea for a series, and I think Next Generation had the best singular episodes and the best archetypical characters. Enterprise just, well Enterprise I think we did on episode 3 of our series, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention this. At the very end of this wonderful wonderful series, Ben Sisko has gotten Cassidy Yates pregnant. They chose to have a baby. He's been through it before. She has not. So he's very patient and loving as a soon-to-be dad. And then the prophets intervene and tell him what he needs to do as an emissary

and the writers saw fit to have him leave his pregnant wife and his adult son and tonally it frustrates the hell out of me because the whole point of Ben Sisko was that he was present as a dad and they ended it with him being an absent dad Or and in this this is this is also something that's interesting for religious reasons Which never would have happened with Roddenberry. Oh god, no Like the idea that there would have been any legitimacy to any religious anything anywhere ever. True.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a weird, it's a really weird off note. Yeah. I think in the way that they chose to do that. Yeah. And he's sacrificed at the end. Self-sacrifice, but sacrificed.

Yeah. So, oh man, I just depressed myself because you have this positive black single father figure and we're gonna kill him off. Yes. As we do Dr. King. Right. As we do Malcolm X. As we do the hero,

the end has to be tragic. But I'm like, the fact that they actually had that story arc without the need for blackness being what is the cross. Right, is his commitment to the Bajoran, right? Am I off right? His commitment to the Bajoran. Yeah, yeah. He goes to stop Goldecott, who has now taken on the Pahwraiths.

Right. So it's like, who is being more... comes down to the relationship because... Yeah. Sorry, when it comes down to the relationship, it's like, who's being more human, as far as to the relationship, it's like who's being more human as far as with the crossover, because the Bajorans pushed the envelope on that front, beginning with the frame being

we're dealing with sentient beings, we're not dealing with aliens that are so far removed that we can't identify. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It. But it's beautiful because again, it gives you a presentation that is beyond what we normally work with. So it's outside the box where the imagination like, okay, we're Afrofuturism. What does it look like? Sure. You know so we're not gone anywhere and we're not mitigated to set roles or set boxes.

You've got the entire 360 degrees but we have never seen the hundred 360 degrees on both on either of the arcs, whether it be the grandpa, the father, or the son. Yeah. And how do you deal with new ground? Sure. What does it look like? What does the evolution look like when you don't have the societal pressures?

What does it mean to be free? Right, well, and ultimately free is free to choose, and he chose, like that is the thing. Yes, he's martyred. Yes, he sacrificed, but it wasn't at an assassin's bullet. Correct. It wasn't at the FBI and the Chicago PD's bullets. Correct.

It was his choice to do that. And I think you're absolutely right. I think that gets to the freedom, the freedom of volition. And honestly, Jake and Cassidy both accepted it. It was a conscious choice that he was going to make and he discussed it with them both. He wasn't just ripped away from them. Like all of the fellows we mentioned earlier.

away from them. Like all of the fellows we mentioned earlier. That being said, I do come back to, he still chose the one thing that narratively seems to have been the same each time for all the people that we just mentioned. Like he didn't get to retire and raise cabbages. It's, it's another, we keep coming back to the limitation of imagination. Yeah. And I think- Even, I'm sorry, I'm gonna interrupt real quick. He even made a model of the house he was going to farm in. He had his 40 acres. He had them. He had a replicator that would have done the plowing. That is

his mule. He had those things and he still chose otherwise. But Ed, you were about to say, I apologize. Well, yeah, it's on a, we have to look at who, who were the people writing the stories and what is the wallpaper like in the, in, in, in the back rooms of their subconscious. And there are limitations limitations on imagination and Giving him a retirement that looked too much like Picard. Ah Wasn't you know was was I Think you know to the people who were doing the writing That you know He's he's a different you know in in their heads. They're thinking well. He's a different kind of hero than right was he's he's a different, you know in in their heads. They're thinking well, he's a different kind of hero

Then right was he's he's he's a wartime consignor. Yeah, and Yeah and you know, um, and and so I think they could not conceive of a they could not conceive of a way to bring all of those narrative threads together for him in the end that didn't involve some kind of, you know, heroic last act. Yeah, I mean, and that is, I mean, that is the arc of, hey, you're the emissary of the prophets, you're the emissary of the prophets. You're the chosen one like I get that But they killed him in like four different episodes, too

Like they I mean as Benny he had all of his agency removed because he was institutionalized Yeah, when he went back in time and we did this episode and we should probably Revisit it this year because this is the year for the Gabriel Bell riots. But when he went back in time, he fucking became Gabriel Bell. And Gabriel Bell dies. Which is again one of the times in the series where his racial background did matter. Was highlighted and did matter but he he gets killed as Gabriel Bell he effectively dies as Benny because he loses his agency and then he dies again and I you know and and from a story

perspective that's cool because those are echoes and that's that's you know or shadowing or shadowing you know all the technical things my daughter very impressed. Yeah. Yes that said How many times do you need to kill a black man in a TV series where he's the center of it That part So the last time he doesn't really die he becomes a part of the cost Yeah, you know and and a punt yeah Yeah, you know and that's a punt. Yeah I mean in some ways an onside kick that you know, I'm sorry. No that doesn't that yeah You know what? That's a double. That's a double DQ finish. That's what that shit is

Oh, nobody's going over that's I will say this it did end as a cliffhanger That's I will say this it did end as a cliffhanger Right show that there's more story well also because he's literally hanging on a cliff but Yeah, well I'm shot yeah like I'll start But No, he he he left. He left the mortal plane of existence Yeah, no, I'm sorry for all intents and purposes. He's dead and you know No, he left the mortal plane of existence. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. For all intents and purposes, he's dead.

No, I don't believe that. And at the same time, you could point out, he is with the prophets. You remember at the very beginning, they didn't understand linear time. Yeah. Which has wonderful echoes going back and forth. So either his heroism is timeless and ageless, or the growth that he did was but a blip and

he has always been disposable like it's it's It's so easy to go either way with it that it's uncomfortable The themes the themes that you could pick up out of that arm Yeah, you can go any number of ways with it. Yeah, which on the one hand is really awesome because they're not talking down to the audience or trying to tell us what to think. On the other hand, after a certain point you're going to be like, no seriously you need to fucking pick a side. Can you give us some kind of an answer here on this? Yeah. Kukai, did you have more that you wanted to say to this? Because I've got one last piece I was going to wrap up with.

No, go ahead. Go ahead. We'll wrap up. Sure. So I do want to end this on a very positive note, despite the fact that Avery Brooks wanted nothing to do with the documentary, the fan-made documentary. He, for the entirety of the time that he has existed, number one, he has told people a number of times,

he mostly just teaches music now, but he has told people a number of times, I liked that character a lot, that does not define who I was. And I like that, that is a very British way of looking at acting, to be honest. You know, it's like I did that job. And at the same time, by all accounts, when people come up to him, he's 100% present with them in that moment. Letting them, and permitting them to be in his space about that character that meant so much to them. So there's there's something very

Genuinely sweet about that for me but he said Over time that the reason why his relationship with Jake worked so well was that he and Syrac Lofton Both discussed the very like they've both had they both acknowledged the very, like, they've both had, they both acknowledged the very real bond that they both had. Evidently during the show, Lofton's parents were going through a somewhat contentious divorce

and he was pretty down about things. And Avery Brooks himself very much stepped in as a father figure to Lofton. He would take him to Lakers games with him and his other child. And he treated him as his own son. And that's obvious when you watch any time the two of them are at a convention together and they share a stage, the love is genuine and real.

And Avery Brooks has often said that what we saw on the screen was real because he genuinely saw Lofton as his son. And by all accounts, it's been very reciprocated. Quote, because it's real, as we speak, I treat him like all my children, the same, the good and the bad. You can ask him. The idea of raising a child, it's still a work in progress. I have three children, they're grown.

However, the instruction never ceases. The importance of raising a child anywhere in the world is critical to one's existence, not just my own. Because without such importance given, where are we going to end up? Righteous. Yeah. Just a decent fucking dude, man. Right. Like. Yeah. So I mean, I'm, I'm really glad that we had syndicated TV because we wouldn't have gotten this character on the networks. No, because we didn't get this character on the networks. Yeah.

Sure. Yeah. So, uh, so why is it that we got this kind of a character out of Benjamin Sisko? Because science fiction is not taken seriously in this country. Yeah, I I keep going back to William Gibson's essay about science fiction as the court jester of literature Mm-hmm that you know it it does not get taken seriously as a Thoughtful or a well, maybe not thoughtful but as a as a as a form of art. It's considered a low art

Yeah, be a good way to describe it But what that means is that science fiction writers and creators are freed up? Because they don't have the burden of Having to be respectable. They don't have the burden of having to be respectable. They don't have the burden of, of having to be great, you know, uh, of, of writing something, you know, serious and meaningful because it's science fiction. It's not going to be, you know, serious and meaningful, which is, is, you know, completely wrong because like look at all the stuff that we've talked about in the new wave of science fiction.

You know, those who walk away from all my loss more recently, the ancillary trilogy, which which, you know, throws a spotlight on issues of gender and race and colonization and like all of these issues. And it's an amazing piece of literature as well as a really good piece of science fiction. And so that, I mean, that's why we see that in this milieu because it's it's Kid stuff Do you think this was a safe place to put a single black father who is a positive role model?

because Nobody or because our society doesn't take science fiction Seriously, and also they don't take the idea of a single black father seriously. I mean, we've been guided by the study that came out in 65, which was an observation of policies without mentioning them that had been going on since easily the 60s. I might quibble over the semantics of taking it seriously. I think they might consider it fabulous. OK, or fantastical.

They might consider it, yeah, might consider it, well, in this world, that's not possible. But OK, if you're going to pause it a world 400 years in the future, OK well, you know you sound so I think I think you sound like Benny's publisher in that episode. Yeah. Yeah Yeah precisely, you know because You know we we have accepted a paradigm as a as a society we have accepted a delivered paradigm In which that doesn't happen despite reality staring us in the face if we bother to

look for 10 seconds you know the the delivered wisdom or received wisdom tells us that that's that that's not the. And so for anybody who isn't living on, you know, who doesn't have, you know, at eye level what the lived experience of people is, because they're, you know, living in a gated community somewhere, you know, they're living in Walnut Creek, you know, they have, they, they don't have any reason to have cognitive dissonance with, with those messages because they don't see any evidence of the contrary. And they're not put in a position because of their privilege. They're not in a position to have to go looking.

Yes. Yes. The reason we wouldn't see that on network TV is because that would confront the received narrative directly. And that would make people uncomfortable because of cognitive dissonance. And that's, that's my theory. Yes. Absolutely in agreement. Because I mean, the first one, the original series being colonization, colonization, where we're going out to visit these planets and find out that they're already discovered, that they discovered themselves. With Deep Space Nine, we're the immigrants. We're not supposed to be there.

So it gives the opportunity to have that conversation as well as to imagine, like we've been saying, a world where the social pressures that we're dealing with aren't there, where we actually can practice individualism, where we actually can be the value system that we, the ideal that we talk about, but we don't live out.

It's what we can escape from. Look, we can do it in the future. Look, we can be this in the future. Look, you can have an adventure where you're literally just a sentient being, where the other things don't matter if you're human. Now if you're alien, then you got these other things that you're dealing with.

You got these bribes, you got the tradition that comes with being Klingon, you got the religion that's part of being a changeling, the link where you're one in the lake, oneness, the mystical, whereas as a human, you can literally be the Western cowboy. You could be the American cowboy and just off of agency and strength of willpower alone, be who you are supposed to be on that ship for that particular iteration. When it comes to identity formation and how I see myself, nope.

You've got to go to... I don't know if we're going to say the gesture, I don't know what you're going to say for dismissive, but I need enough distance between the art form and myself to where I can suspend disbelief and not have the identity crisis. I can escape. Right. Yeah. I would have to opt into it and therefore at any point I can opt out. Correct. Yeah. Especially if I just don't like the character after a while.

I outgrew the character, the character outgrew me. But it is a, it's seductive, the idea of being the sentient person, the sentient being, where I don't have the limitations put on me, where I actually can self actualize as myself without losing any connection to what came before and what's going coming after me and then being present because all the again all the other aliens are struggling with the same sentiency so I'm not dealing with the power differentials. I am still dealing with my loyalty to the Federation. I'm still dealing with groups and the tension

that comes with that. But I'm not dealing with the existential dread that I'm enslaving myself including with my own oppression like I do when I go to work in real life. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Man, this has been really cool. I wouldn't quite call it fun because it's some pretty serious shit we're handling. But I really enjoyed this. Next time I come up with a wrestling

episode, you got to come back on. Uh, um, and also of course, when we do the 18 part series on mourn, um, I think we, I'm joking. Wow. He's taking the Mickey on himself. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. I'm lampooning myself there. Yeah. You're on himself. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. I'm lampooning myself there. You're half serious. Yeah.

The joke is half serious. So, but yeah. Yeah. What can you say about Mourn that he hasn't already said himself? But you know who Mourn is, right? No, you're gonna have to explain. He's the Norm character. And it's literally Norm Morn, right? But he sits at the bar the whole time and never says anything at Quarks.

Oh, wow. And he's just really big fat character. And there are several scenes where like Quark is sitting there talking to him he's like look Morn if you just shut up for a minute I could tell you what I think that's when the scene starts and he's never said a word right so like that's hysterical in universe he's a chatty Cathy but we never see him talking and then there's even an in a scene there's even an episode called Who Mourns for Mourn. And he fakes his own death to get out of some bills or something like that.

It's hilarious. But he's absolutely Star Trek's version of Norm from Cheers. That's hysterical. Yeah. Alrighty. Well, we just went over what we gleaned. So I'm going to ask, we'll go in the same order, so we'll end with Kokai each time. Ed, what you're recommending to people?

I am going to recommend a Star Trek novel. Uhura's Song by Janet Kagan published in January 1985 And um, yeah, it's a it's a uh Obviously uhura centric novel from the original series and it delves into uh some details about You know her her character and she plays an important role in handling a crisis with the enterprise and a cat-like alien race. So it's very clearly taking some cues from a couple of popular science fiction series from the time.

But yeah, so that would be my recommendation based on what we've been talking about. How about you? I'm going to recommend that folks go take a look at what we left behind. It's the crowd-sourced, crowd-funded documentary on Deep Space Nine. It's really, really good. There's some real honest moments. I might be mixing it up with another one where Avery Brooks is involved. There's one of them that he's not involved in, and there's another one where he is involved, but he mostly just talks about being a music teacher. It's just interesting to see his interaction with it.

But like, we've talked about one aspect of one character for two episodes. The whole series is phenomenal. The whole cast is terrific. Both the supporting cast who show up half the time and the main cast who's there from beginning to end and Esri. They're all really, really good and to see them all talk about it is just, it's really, really cool. So it's, I know you can find it on Amazon and on Peacock. I think you could find it, you could pay for it elsewhere,

but it's called What We Left Behind. So that's what I'm gonna recommend. Kokei, what do you got for us? What White People Can Do Next by Emma Tabiri. It is the byproduct of social media marketing. In fact, the name of the book was crafted before the book was written. It is the aftermath of the pandemic.

And the angle is that Emma Tabiri is a black Irish woman. When I say black Irish, she's a black woman that grew up in Ireland. And it is her view of the American condition. Awesome. Cool. Thank you. Um, Ed, where can they find us? Oh, well, collectively, we can be found on our website at wubba wubba wubba dot geek history time dot com.

And I am a shadow in the warp, but continuing with us collectively we are findable on the Amazon podcast app, on the Apple and down on the Apple Apple podcast app and on Stitcher and Spotify tripped over that one about three times and I don't know why. Stitcher has been defunct for months. Okay all right well yeah how about you? You could find me in Sacramento performing on June 7th and July 5th at the Comedy Spot at 9 p.m. Bring $12. Come check out Capital Punishment. The gang is there. Spin that wheel. Pun, battle, win. Kokai, where can people find you if they want to hear more of your brilliance? On TikTok at RSA Mastery. Though I prefer that people email me. Once you email me, I can plug you into my newsletter, a pocket full of solutions, the classes that I engage in, the books that

I write, and we can have fun together. Excellent. Where can they email you? Oh, thank you. Royalstar at gmail.com. RoyalStar at gmail.com. Awesome. Okay, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for joining us. And yeah, for a Geek History of Time, I'm Damian Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.