By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Over the last 60 years, Star Trek has brought its fantastic stories to life through both television and film. Occasionally, the movies will reference the TV shows, like alluding to “The Best of Both Worlds” in First Contact and the Dominion War in Insurrection. Surprisingly, though, it’s very rare for the TV shows to reference anything that happens in the movies. There are exceptions, of course, like when Picard and Spock dish about The Undiscovered Country in “Unification.” For the most part, though, the big-screen exploits of The Original Series crew are almost never mentioned…at least, in dialogue.
Just because the TV shows rarely included these references onscreen (presumably at the request of the producers) doesn’t mean that the writers didn’t find clever ways to sneak them in. One of the best examples of this occurs in the Deep Space Nine episode “Second Sight.” This episode features a terraformer preparing to complete his life’s work: reigniting a dying star so it can sustain life for nearby planets. It’s a cool idea that isn’t fully explained onscreen. Later, however, one of the writers confirmed that the terraformer modeled his tech after the Genesis Device from The Wrath of Khan and that this was an intentional homage to Star Trek’s best movie!
Starfleet To God: Your Move, Buddy
“Second Sight” is a pretty wild Deep Space Nine episode. The main plot is about Sisko falling in love with a woman who isn’t real; instead, she is the telepathic projection of a woman who is stuck in a marriage she hates. That woman, Nidella, is from a race that marries for life, so she’s stuck with her husband, a terraformer planning to reignite a dying star. When he learns that his wife might die from sheer misery, the terraformer kills himself to complete his mission. It’s a success: his wife is happy and healthy, and he died having (somewhat ironically) completed his life’s work.
How does the terraforming work, exactly? In the episode, the terraformer, Seyetik, says that he’ll “deliver proto-matter into the dead star. This will cause a cascade effect which will transform the star’s carbon and oxygen into elemental hydrogen.” While he doesn’t name-check the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, fans of that movie perked up as soon as he said “protomatter.” After all, that’s what allowed the Genesis Device to create life from lifelessness, including transforming the Mutara nebula into a planet that resurrected the dead Spock.
Starfleet’s Accidental Superweapon Keeps Getting Re-Used
Was the mention of protomatter an intentional homage? Yup! As recorded in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, “Second Sight” writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe said that Seyetik’s terraforming technology was based on the Genesis Device, which was “established Federation terraforming technology. Of course, the Genesis device didn’t work, but obviously Seyetik’s work is built upon the research of previous scientists. And it was a nice way to reference the movie.” It’s a fun bit of trivia that also shows how the Genesis technology evolved over time. Now, it’s capable of bringing dying stars back to life, something original developer Carol Marcus could never dream of.
The fact that the terraforming tech in “Second Sight” is built off the Genesis Device is pretty awesome, but it does make some later Star Trek plot points a bit confusing. For example, in Picard, we see a replica of the original Genesis Device inside Daystrom Station, where Starfleet keeps weird tech developed by shadowy organizations like Section 31. But why keep a 1:1 replica of the original in the secret weapon hideout when there has been a century of innovations? A compact version of the Genesis Device was also Nick Locarno’s secret weapon in Lower Decks, which makes little sense; after 100 years of tech evolution, shouldn’t Starfleet have effective countermeasures against Genesis by now?
These nitpicks aside, though, it’s really cool that the Deep Space Nine writers hid an homage to The Wrath of Khan in plain sight. It’s the kind of Easter egg that makes a cool episode like “Second Sight” that much more awesome. Also, when you factor in the Genesis Device homage, Bashir being genetically augmented, and Sisko sacrificing his life to save everyone, DS9 is more like TWOK than any other show in the franchise. The best Star Trek show keeps channeling the best Star Trek movie, often when you least expect it. Is it any wonder more fans fall in love with Deep Space Nine, each and every year?
