The Darkest Star Trek Prediction For 2024 Is Coming True

If you’ve never seen the episode, you’re probably wondering why Star Trek would present the best solution to government corruption in 2024 as riots. As usual with Deep Space Nine, it’s complicated: as time travelers, Sisko and Bashir have the benefit of hindsight, and they know that the awful Sanctuary District conditions they are witnessing are destined to come to an end. In this case, they know that a man named Gabriel Bell eventually stood up to the corrupt police and led a riot that finally improved things.

Our 23rd-century Star Trek heroes are stuck in 2024, and they originally have no intention of taking part in the so-called “Bell Riots” or otherwise affecting history. However, when the real Gabriel Bell gets killed, Sisko takes drastic measures to preserve history. Specifically, he impersonates Bell and personally leads the riot that helps the government claw a bit of its humanity back by not treating the homeless as disposable, second-class citizens.

With that Star Trek history lesson out of the way, how well do this 1995 episode’s predictions about 2024 stack up, and why does it seem like some real-life Bell Riots might be inevitable? Right now, California has a major homelessness problem: specifically, 28 percent of America’s entire unhoused population resides in this one state. Now that the Supreme Court has decided that states can ban people from sleeping outside, Governor Newsom signed an executive order for authorities to sweep the state of all homeless encampments. 

In retrospect, it’s striking that a Star Trek episode that came out decades ago could so accurately predict both our 2024 homelessness epidemic and the government’s cruel response to it, but the lack of specific Sanctuary Districts might keep the riots at bay for the moment.

So far, Newsom has pledged billions of dollars to build much more humane shelters, ones that he insists will safely house the people that he is forcibly removing from the streets. However, critics of this plan warn that explicitly targeting the homeless might just be the first step toward the bleak world that Deep Space Nine warned us about.

Regardless of your politics or your support (or lack thereof) for Newsom’s plan, it’s almost impossible to watch “Past Tense” without noting how eerily prescient it feels. Sisko tries to explain to Bashir that “the social problems they face seem too enormous to deal with,” prompting the doctor to respond that while he can understand hurting people you hate, it’s harder to understand “causing people to suffer because you have forgotten how to care.”

Here’s hoping Newsom and California voters heed the warnings of this Star Trek episode before the casual governmental cruelty of 2024 leads to riots meant to overturn oppression and ultimately save lives.