The best episode of Deep Space Nine is “Far Beyond the Stars,” in which Captain Sisko is suddenly and without explanation catapulted into the life of Benny Russell, a black science fiction writer in the 1950s. The great tragedy of Deep Space Nine is that you cannot immediately show this episode to any potential acolytes of the show, because in order to understand why it is the best episode you must have seen every episode leading up to it, so that you will love every character and understand every trope associated with them and weep in the final scene when Benny Russell insists that he has made a world, that knowledge alone can make a world, that the space station with a black commander really exists, it’s real, it’s real, it’s real!
im gonna slide in here to also just say that if you have a story in you, any kind of art, be it a comic, or just visual, or just literature, and you’re scared other people won’t like it or it’ll never get done, it’s still worth it to try and make it. Even if it’s just for you yourself at that point. Even if you never publish it, or you publish it and it doesn’t get the reaction you hoped, I really think it’s worth it to construct the things you feel passionately about. No matter what it was practice and it was a chance for you to reflect on how you think and feel and put something in the world that wasn’t there before.
