The Gulf War was definitely an influence and for pretty much the reasons you laid out. The Yugoslav Wars were also going on through the run of the series, and the Lebanese Civil War had just (mostly) ended, and the messiness of those conflicts, with their shifting ethnic and sectarian alliances and clashes, influenced us as well.
Overall, I think these events influenced DS9 to be a bit muddier than other Star Trek shows. The elegant, hopeful, but perhaps overly simplistic, “See a problem, solve a problem, warp away” storytelling of much of TOS and TNG seemed a bit less “true” given the times. We tried to bring in less certainty, more shades of gray, while still telling stories about good people trying to make the universe a better place.
hey sorry I wrote your boyfriend into a dialogue btw. yeah he’s demonstrating the action of philosophy via in-narrative discussion and thus teaching the reader to question and develop their understanding of the world as an extra-textual participant in the dialogue. yeah no he’s only a literary representation of his historical self now. he’s meeting socrates. sorry
oh god I have zero points, I am pointless and ancient and gentle
1 point. The AOL email addy.
Two points. Never had an AOL address (although I was sort of on AOL after they bought Compuserve) and never had a MySpace account because the aesthetics of MySpace were like all the fingernails meeting all the blackboards.
A point because there were walkmans in my midst but I wasn’t enough of a music fan until personal CD players.
Unless the innards of a Teddy Ruxpin count as a walkman…
