Abstract
As one of few scholars to critically explore the cultural geographies of Star Trek, it was my sheer delight to read David Seitz’s most recent monograph: A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine, the first book-length approach to Star Trek written by a geographer. I read the book from three perspectives: its cultural geography contributions; its engagement and reflection of a beloved, yet often overlooked, Star Trek series from the 1990s; and its possibility as a course textbook. Overall, I found A Different Trek a scholarly impressive deep dive and methodological example of an affective cultural geography for critical geographers and adjacent audiences and a clever, if at times heavy-handed, means of introducing critical theory to a perhaps (un)willing audience.
A Different Trek’s structure is compelling for those familiar with Star Trek and translatable for those unfamiliar with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) but still critically aware of character-led television. Seitz centers the unique use of place within DS9, as compared to more traditional planet-of-the-week Star Trek, to explore place-based character development and the role of placemaking by characters, actors, writers, producers, and fans throughout and since the airing of the series. Chapters largely revolve around characters or groups of characters, and a set of illustrative episodes which allow breadth and depth and offer a somewhat predictable rhythm to what is a remarkably long book about a single television show. However, for those familiar with DS9 and its 173 episodes, we can recognize the concise treatment of a vast storyline set within an even larger (880 episode, 13 film) Star Trek universe.
Like the show itself, Seitz allows the places and people (and their metaphorical representations) drive his work. On the one hand, I worry slightly this may dissuade some non-Trek readers looking for the rich postcolonial and queer theoretical contribution of the work to not see the forest through the trees (aliens and planets, in this case). For instance, one of the strongest chapters (chapter 2 on settler colonialism and decolonization) does focus primarily on one character and a set of four to five episodes but they do not drive the chapter. Instead, Seitz allows for the patterns of contemporary geopolitical contexts found within the characters and episodes, but also from the writers, actors, and production staff, to sculpt a broader point about the reflection of Israeli occupation and US settler colonialism within the series’ arc. Elsewhere, such as in Chapter 6, Seitz’s structured approach of taking just three characters and exploring their queerness seems relatively shoehorned when compared to the space allotted in his chapter on the Black radicalisms of Captain Benjamin Sisko or the context-specific chapter on the Ferengi Alliance’s reflection of neoliberalism through clearly interconnected arcs. On the other hand, as Seitz so eloquently illustrates, any critical scholar unfamiliar with the series could perhaps benefit from indeed familiarizing themselves with the series to better conceptualize and visualize the interlaced and compelling arguments Seitz sets forth.
As a self-pronounced Trekker, the audience for this book certainly includes myself, but broader constituencies are harder to pin-point. I teach a third-year geography of SciFi course, and while I believe it will be a struggle, I will be including this book as a required reading this year. I expect students to struggle with the heavy-handed theory and the specificity of content from DS9, but Seitz does an excellent job introducing readers to specific episodes and characters. I suspect the book would fit best within a (post)graduate reading group, where self-selected Trekkers with some familiarity of social theory may dive into each chapter or even sub-chapter, given the denseness at which some concepts are overlaid upon character, plot arcs, and theoretical exploration.
Overall, I find A Different Trek contributing significantly to cultural geographies. Methodologically illustrative – analyzing the 27 appearances of a secondary character to explore gendered social reproduction and sexual politics or dwelling deep within specific people, places, and dialogue using narrative analysis to understand the sentiments of imperialism in a single scene – Seitz brings Star Trek firmly into conversation with critical social theory and geography at a scope and scale not yet attempted. I hope this is just the beginning.
